As a sales professional, a great deal of your time will be spent prospecting and trying to generate new leads for the business – so wouldn’t it be great if your prospects actually started contacting you off their own backs?
I think I can hear the word “Yes!” ringing out across the country! This is the ideal situation for any sales professional or business owner, and there are certain ways in which you can help bring your prospects to you simply by making sure you can be found when they are looking online for the products and services you provide.
So how do you do this, I hear you cry?
Well, a good place to start is by finding out what your current online presence looks like – if you have one at all that is. Type your name into any of the major search engines and see where you show up, as the results you get will be the same results on offer if your prospects and clients were to conduct a search on you.
It’s likely that if you’re on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and have a personalised URL (www.linkedin.com/in/seanmcpheat for example), then these will show up in the top ten results when your name is searched, as these are authority sites and are ranked highly by the almighty Google – so it’s vital that these sites do you justice as they are likely to be involved in creating your first impression with potential clients online.
As you can see from the image below, “Sean McPheat” is referenced 442,000 times on the internet, and out of all of these pages my linkedin profile still shows up as the third result in Google – that’s how powerful LinkedIn really is and this is why you should take good care of your LinkedIn profile to ensure that any prospects who come across you on this platform will get the right impression of you from the off.
In terms of any other content you produce – such as blog posts, free reports and articles – every new piece of content will be evaluated by the search engines to decide where it gets indexed in their giant database, so if your name is not included in the content it will not be associated with this content – and it’s unlikely to show up when your name is searched online.
Another thing you should consider when trying to optimise your name for the web is how common is your name? You don’t tend to get many Sean McPheats but you can bet there’s plenty of John Smiths out there – so if you have a common name it will be harder to ensure you are found by the right people.
One way to set yourself apart from others with the same name and are found easily by the search engines is to include your middle name in your online presence, and even include a couple of words which describe your field of expertise.
For example, if I use “Sean McPheat, Author of eselling®” as my formal title on all of my social networking profiles and as the sign off on any blog posts or articles I produce then I am creating a manual association between my name and my field of expertise – helping my prospects to find me when they are searching online.
If your prospects can find you online, and find out more about you online, then they are more likely to contact you over a name-only rival who they can find very little information about. The more frequently your name comes up in the search engines the more leads you can generate for yourself and your business.
Sean McPheat
CEO (Chief eselling® Officer)
http://www.e-selling.com
Stop scratching around for sales and learn how to sell the modern way with my FREE 40 minute online training session. Click on the image below to find out why you’ve got to be changing the way that you prospect and sell…
As a sales professional, a great deal of your time will be spent prospecting and trying to generate new leads for the business – so wouldn’t it be great if your prospects actually started contacting you off their own backs?
I think I can hear the word “Yes!” ringing out across the country! This is the ideal situation for any sales professional or business owner, and there are certain ways in which you can help bring your prospects to you simply by making sure you can be found when they are looking online for the products and services you provide.
So how do you do this, I hear you cry?
Well, a good place to start is by finding out what your current online presence looks like – if you have one at all that is. Type your name into any of the major search engines and see where you show up, as the results you get will be the same results on offer if your prospects and clients were to conduct a search on you.
It’s likely that if you’re on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and have a personalised URL (www.linkedin.com/in/seanmcpheat for example), then these will show up in the top ten results when your name is searched, as these are authority sites and are ranked highly by the almighty Google – so it’s vital that these sites do you justice as they are likely to be involved in creating your first impression with potential clients online.
As you can see from the image below, “Sean McPheat” is referenced 442,000 times on the internet, and out of all of these pages my linkedin profile still shows up as the third result in Google – that’s how powerful LinkedIn really is and this is why you should take good care of your LinkedIn profile to ensure that any prospects who come across you on this platform will get the right impression of you from the off.
In terms of any other content you produce – such as blog posts, free reports and articles – every new piece of content will be evaluated by the search engines to decide where it gets indexed in their giant database, so if your name is not included in the content it will not be associated with this content – and it’s unlikely to show up when your name is searched online.
Another thing you should consider when trying to optimise your name for the web is how common is your name? You don’t tend to get many Sean McPheats but you can bet there’s plenty of John Smiths out there – so if you have a common name it will be harder to ensure you are found by the right people.
One way to set yourself apart from others with the same name and are found easily by the search engines is to include your middle name in your online presence, and even include a couple of words which describe your field of expertise.
For example, if I use “Sean McPheat, Author of eselling®” as my formal title on all of my social networking profiles and as the sign off on any blog posts or articles I produce then I am creating a manual association between my name and my field of expertise – helping my prospects to find me when they are searching online.
If your prospects can find you online, and find out more about you online, then they are more likely to contact you over a name-only rival who they can find very little information about. The more frequently your name comes up in the search engines the more leads you can generate for yourself and your business.
Sean McPheat
CEO (Chief eselling® Officer)
http://www.e-selling.com
Stop scratching around for sales and learn how to sell the modern way with my FREE 40 minute online training session. Click on the image below to find out why you’ve got to be changing the way that you prospect and sell…