1. Dan Galante
Sales and Marketing
Q&A
20 Questions

2. What's the best way to get your marketing letters opened?
Direct Marketing
The first thing you want to do is to make sure you are directing your
message to the decision maker. It is important that your recipient see's
your message as valuable. In your mailing, I would ask catching
questions in terms of the person you are trying to market to. For
example, I would ask questions such as Are you happy with your
company's current sales and marketing results? Are you satisfied with
your company's standing in the marketplace? Do you want to know how
you can produce more? Contact me today for a free consultation. This
message will get the decision maker thinking because everyone wants to
produce more and you are offering a free trial of your work. This will
allow your decision maker to see you more as someone who is looking
to help them as opposed to some salesperson looking to make a
commission. You can tailor the questions to your specific offering.

3. Should A Global Company Have Only One Facebook Page?
Viral Marketing,
“A global company should have multiple Facebook pages because the
culture, needs, wants and desires of its customer base varies from country to
country. In order for a global company to maintain its place in the market, they
have to cater to customer needs. Unless a company has a patent on a
product, they face stiff competition from other companies that make products just
like they do. Companies like Coca Cola have multiple Facebook pages. So do many
auto manufactures’ and consumer brands. These Facebook pages are in multiple
languages as well. Also their products are marketed differently depending on the
region. Having multiple Facebook pages is the norm and is a digital extension of
the idea that a one size fits all approach to marketing does not work in a global
economy.”

4. In today's B2B sales world, where are the best places to position one’s self to find
customers?
Lead Generation
“I would use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find people who may be right for your
offering using key words along with hash tags. I would then use a search engine like
Google to find the contact information for these prospects. These days almost
everyone has a digital foot print online. Also many people post their web address on
Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. People also list their email address in their LinkedIn
profile as part of their name, headline or in the physical body of their profile. If this
search turns up empty, you could use a paid service like Jigsaw to get the contact
information that you are seeking.”

5. What are the metrics to measure seo efforts?
Search Marketing
“I use Google analytics to measure my seo results because it allows me to see what
channels drive traffic to my site and whether the traffic is direct or a referral from
another source. Also it allows me to see what geographic and network locations the
visitors are located in along with what if any key words they used to search for me. I
could also see if the traffic is organic or from an AdWords campaign.”

6. How do you monitor what people say about you in the web?
“I use Google alerts to monitor what is said about me on the
web.”

7. How do you use LinkedIn for business development or Generating leads?
“I use my integrated Twitter feed to promote my products and services to my
connections and those in my network on LinkedIn. I also post updates to
LinkedIn. LinkedIn groups are another place where I promote my content. The
groups I am a member of allow me to target prospects who might be interested
in my offerings. As a result, I generate a lot of leads. I have included my
LinkedIn profile to provide an example.”

8. How Much Content Should I Give Away?
Internet Marketing, Writing and Editing
“I would provide people with an outline of your message through articles, podcasts and videos.
When I say outline, I mean just enough content to get your message across and engage
prospects; whetting their appetite for more. At that point, I would make a call to action to
purchase your products and services. For example, think of how your favorite TV show cuts to
commercial or ends just when the plot reaches a climactic point.”

9. What's the best way to "own" a Twitter hash tag?
Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing
“You cannot own a hashtag. What you can do is use it a lot so that you are
associated with it. If your hashtag is already in use you could dominate it by
sharing a lot of quality content. You could also advertise the hashtag on
Twitter which will put it under the promoted tweets category. This will land
your content on the top page of that particular hashtag page and promote
your message to other Twitter users.”

10. How can online word-of-mouth marketing be used to promote our businesses?
Viral Marketing, Guerrilla Marketing
“The first thing I would do is to provide value through my product or service to all of
my customers. By providing value through your product or service you can earn the
right to ask for testimonials and referrals from your customers. I have done this.
Prospects will believe what your customers' say about you more than anything you
say. Your customers could provide LinkedIn recommendations or video testimonials.
These testimonials could be shared on your web site and on social networking sites
like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. By doing everything that I suggested above you
are in the driver seat and can get positive word of mouth marketing to promote your
business. If you provide poor service and no value to your customers online word of
mouth marketing will destroy your business. You get to choose what customers say
about your business online. Another way to provide value to your customers and to
improve your online word of mouth marketing is to create an e-zine or publish a blog
or online newspapers. I publish several online newspapers on the topics of
sales, marketing and advertising just to name a few. All of this used together will
allow you to use (wwom) to get and keep customers.”

11. What are some tips for email subject lines and placement of calls-to-action?
Direct Marketing
“I would make my email subject line very focused and specific; offering something of
value to the prospect. For example, if I were selling sales and marketing consulting
services, I would use this email subject line: Have a question about sales and
marketing? Click here to get your question answered absolutely free.”

12. Is there a "best day" for email marketers to reach consumers?
Direct Marketing
“Any day is a great day to engage consumers through email marketing especially in
today's digital world. Consumers are on different schedules and have different needs
so it is hard to predict which day would be best to send out emails. If you wanted to
obtain concrete information on which day would be best to email consumers; you
would need to develop and implement a survey that asks consumers what day they
opened and received your message. You could use a service like SurveyMonkey to
create the survey. This information could then be compared with their date of
purchase to see how long it took them act on your message. If at first you get a low
response rate to your survey, you may need to offer an incentive like a gift card for
each completed survey or a chance to win a gift card in a drawing; this would be
dependent on your budget.”

13. What are the best ways to promote a historical building as a
venue for events in a small northern California town?
Events Marketing, Advertising
“I would partner up with your local historical society and
sponsor an event for local business people to spread the word.
You can invite members of the local and national media. They
can help show off on video what your venue has to offer. Your
local and state tourism board could also help with a national
advertising campaign. I would also use social media networks
like Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube to reach people
around the world. You can share videos about your venue.
Another thing you could do is to run print advertising in the
New York Times travel section.”

14. Does anyone know sales professionals in Charlotte, NC? I
am looking to network down in that area.
Lead Generation
“Jeffrey Gitomer is the go to guy down in Charlotte, NC . He
is an expert in all aspects of sales.”

15. How can I find more participants for our online video training?
Internet Marketing
“I would target people interested in corporate culture change using LinkedIn and
Google. Directors, VPs of Human Resources and Training would be a good place to
start. I would try to connect with them and send them an e-blast that includes a short
message about your product or service with links to your video clips. You could offer a
free consultation to help the decision maker see how your product or service can
benefit them. In this email, you should include an email signature with your web site,
Twitter handle, blog etc... Another thing you could do is to advertise on Facebook,
Google and LinkedIn. Facebook, Google and LinkedIn allow you to target the people
who you want to see the advertisement. Good luck to you. Let me know how things
turn out!”

16. Facebook page: How can I invite users to join my page?
Web Development, Internet Marketing
“You can email the interested parties the link to your page.
Also you could put a link to your page in an email signature.
You can share links to your page on Facebook, LinkedIn and
Twitter. You can also put badge on your web site. I will include
my web address to show you an example. These are the
techniques I use to share my Facebook page with interested
parties.”

17. What's your value? How did you create it?
Advertising, Small Business
“My value and how I create it is that I
differentiate myself from the competition by
being well prepared and doing research on
customer needs. I also publish online
newspapers that offer free information on the
topics of sales and marketing. I make sure that I
do my very best to serve the customer and if I
cannot help them I direct them to someone who
can.”

18. What are some of the other available products to find customer contact
information besides OneSource and Hoovers? Are there any free ones?
Lead Generation | Open
“I would recommend using LinkedIn which offers a basic account option if you do
not want to subscribe. Many people put their email and phone numbers in the
headlines of their profiles so someone like you could find them. You could also do
an internet search in a search engine like Google to find customer information.”

19. What are some of your best strategies to get your clients to
pay on time?
Small Business, Sales Techniques
“I built great relationships with my customers where they
could talk to me if they had an issue. I made sure to lay out the
payment terms which were C.O.D at the time. If they were
having difficulty paying or were unhappy with a product, I
worked out a solution with them where they were happy and
they paid the balance. I always made sure to ask for what was
owed to me. As a result, I had the lowest number of accounts
receivable in my company as a
Sales Representative from 2006 to 2008.”

20. Facebook Likes: Quantity or Quality?
What's more important in terms of a Business Page's
followers: quantity or quality?
Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing
In terms of business Facebook page followers liking a
page, quantity and quality are both equally important for
different reasons. Quantity is important because it allows
your page to be perceived as valuable; new visitors to
your page will think if all of these people like it must be
good or it is at least worth a look to find out. Now that
you have all of these people liking your page, you want
them to take action on your message. This is where the
quality of the likes comes in to play. You have to measure
how many of the people who like your page on Facebook
take action on your message. Clearly both quantity and
quality of the likes are important for a successful sales
and marketing campaign on Facebook.

21. Would you rather pay for training on how
to manage Social Media channels yourself
or hire a full time Social Media Manager
to do it for you?
Internet Marketing
“I would first try to learn all I could on my
own about social media. If at that point I
had a need for someone to manage the
channels for me, I would hire a consultant
to do training to see if they are worth
bringing on board full time. Only after
these steps were taken would I consider
hiring a social media manager full time.”

22. Contact Info
Email Dan@dangalante.com
Web address http://dangalante.com/
Blog http://dangalante.me/
LinkedIn: http://linkedIn.com/in/dangalante
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dangalante
@DanGalante