Very useful post. It's great to see these kinds of processes documented, might be nice to see some funnel metrics too - talking to some folks that also do (or need) small business customer acquisition, it seems there are a lot of sticky points in that process. My personal experience with small businesses is fairly hands-off, and from a large company, so it's nice to see the other side.
Couple of thoughts:
I'd expect that having successful vendor directories under your belt makes it more likely that someone will sign up, because you seem way more legitimate. Perhaps there are some stats from the most successful site you could use in the sales technique, e.g. "Our most successful invitation vendors see over 10 new customer leads a day from our site". (Or perhaps that's something for later on in the process, if a customer isn't convinced.)
Love the human aspect, the number of emails I (still) get at my old company address from people who clearly have no idea what the company does or what I would be interested in... It's pretty astounding.
I'm torn on the "I'll create your profile for you". I've had a few spammy emails where they effectively said "You've been listed in $directory! Here's your listing! Now pay us so you can do stuff with it". Urgh. Red flags. I wonder if there's some intermediate step that works even better, like "I can create a profile for you, here's the information I have about you" - a little more personalisation.
It also just occurred to me that to really get inside the customer's head for something like this, you could set up a vendor site yourself and see what kinds of emails come in :) Probably more useful if this customer acquisition process is going very badly, than immediately at the start.
"I'd expect that having successful vendor directories under your belt makes it more likely that someone will sign up, because you seem way more legitimate. Perhaps there are some stats from the most successful site you could use in the sales technique, e.g. "Our most successful invitation vendors see over 10 new customer leads a day from our site". (Or perhaps that's something for later on in the process, if a customer isn't convinced.)"
This is the same process I used for the first one I launched, didn't see many differences in response rate. And great idea on the leads, that's a good point.
"I'm torn on the "I'll create your profile for you". I've had a few spammy emails where they effectively said "You've been listed in $directory! Here's your listing! Now pay us so you can do stuff with it". Urgh. Red flags. I wonder if there's some intermediate step that works even better, like "I can create a profile for you, here's the information I have about you" - a little more personalisation."
Well, I'm definitely trying to not do that, which is why I'm asking permission to create the profile for them, not creating it beforehand. If they agree, I'll create it on my end (not live), take a screenshot, and then send to them for review. Agreed on the red flags. :)
Couple of thoughts:
I'd expect that having successful vendor directories under your belt makes it more likely that someone will sign up, because you seem way more legitimate. Perhaps there are some stats from the most successful site you could use in the sales technique, e.g. "Our most successful invitation vendors see over 10 new customer leads a day from our site". (Or perhaps that's something for later on in the process, if a customer isn't convinced.)
Love the human aspect, the number of emails I (still) get at my old company address from people who clearly have no idea what the company does or what I would be interested in... It's pretty astounding.
I'm torn on the "I'll create your profile for you". I've had a few spammy emails where they effectively said "You've been listed in $directory! Here's your listing! Now pay us so you can do stuff with it". Urgh. Red flags. I wonder if there's some intermediate step that works even better, like "I can create a profile for you, here's the information I have about you" - a little more personalisation.
It also just occurred to me that to really get inside the customer's head for something like this, you could set up a vendor site yourself and see what kinds of emails come in :) Probably more useful if this customer acquisition process is going very badly, than immediately at the start.