Today I received either a personal or a generic email--I couldn't tell.
If it had totally convinced me that it was personal, I would have taken their call to action (which was to join a certain Linked In group). As I wasn't convinced that the content was addressed uniquely to me (and therefore unconvinced that the person was interested in an actual relationship with me) I did my own call to action. (And if mixing your messages results in this kind of customer disobedience--are you wondering what your online content marketing is really saying to your customers??).
And my own call to action: was to politely and contritely reply after snooping the link that I was supplied.
The Sales and Online Content Marketing Question I was asked in the email was "whether a lead was ever worth $500."
(I'm sure the company who sent it was trying to do preliminary market research.)
I went to the link and decided that qualified leads all come down to the messages you give people about your company.
First, I skimmed the comments on the post. There were over 400, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it. After scrolling the first two, I realised the conversation was simply an aged (and inherently-flawed question); it must only be a question asked by people who were selling leads for $500 because the answer is too obvious for the rest of us.
You can see from the comments, many people, more qualified than me, have given logical responses to this question; everyone in business accepts that it is more expensive to find a qualified lead then to have one given to you. You only need to look at the burgeoning referral marketing industry to realise that.
As a content writer for businesses I don't think it's the refusal to acknowledge the value of receiving qualified leads--it's the lack of knowledge as to how to educate people about what makes a qualified lead for "my business."
I'm so busy helping established businesses really figure out "what they sell--in the language of the customer" (a website copywriting technique) that I have come to determine too many businesses do not know how to communicate "what a qualified lead would be for me."
Thus we remain sceptical of other people who think they can deliver a qualified lead to us.
When in fact, the problem lies within.
Then I apologized for my blunt delivery to the person who wrote to me for my opinion. I assume they were looking for honest communication, not marketing fluff, which is why they received my tort response. And if you are looking for honest communication--I do want to connect on Linked In.
PS - Have you ever led a presentation and noticed that the people were seemingly uncooperative about answering the presenter's questions? Often the problem lies in the phrasing of the question--and it is actually the presenter's fault. Are you interested in learning more about running great presentations -- we have lots of posts about successful presentations--and we'll run a workshop just for you about it, all you have to do is ask.
