Ken Krogue

Brent Christenson is one of my favorite people. He is scrappy, and that is a trait that is getting harder and harder to find.  I have found that the single most important success ingredient in running an inside sales department is a scrappy manager; so I look for stories of “scrappiness” and share them when I find them.  Here’s one:

By summer he runs a small engine repair business he calls http://www.flyingwrench.com/ throughout all of northern Utah County. When he told me he was starting that business years ago I thought he was crazy. But with three or four mobile mini-van repair vehicles and several employees later, he definitely proved me wrong.

What does an owner of a small engine repair business do to drum up more business? Normal owners would take out an ad in the Yellow Pages or hand out business cards; not Brent. He shoots Beanie Babies from a home-made compressed air cannon dozens of feet into the sky to the thousands in the Alpine Days Parade. And he does it while riding on the roof of his Flying Wrench van every single year.

When one of his many vans isn’t out on a service call it is parked in a field very close to I-15 in American Fork so hundreds of thousands of passing motorists get exposed to the Flying Wrench as the summer days fly by. That takes work, and time, and thought. Brent executes his plan, he never stops.

And while every other summer small business owner is hibernating during winter, Brent builds newsworthy ice castles that cover a fourth of an acre and grow every day to as high as 40 feet before the winter is over.  He works 14 hours a day with ice crimpons, sprinklers, and 1000′s of icicles.  http://bit.ly/6kwoie. Who wouldn’t talk about a 40 foot Christmas Ice Castle? Buzz Marketers think outside of the bun.

Everybody in Alpine knows about Brent and loves him. What many don’t know is that he has been supporting two missionaries at the same time he is running his business, shooting beanie babies, and building ice castles.

If you get a chance, watch the video and spread the word about his amazing ice castle, and visit the Zermatt Resort in Midway, Utah.

Keep up the buzz Brent!

If 100 people go to your website, how many of them fill out a form or buy something? If 2 out of 100 fill out a form, then you have a 2% conversion rate. This is slightly better than the average for most corporate websites. We were lucky (or blessed) to get the name InsideSales.com and tap into a large flow of web traffic from our very first day. In fact, we got 8 leads their first day we turned up our website.

The process of converting visitors to leads or sales is the process of website conversion. And designing your website to do this well is called conversion design. Most companies make a fancy website that looks like a nice electronic brochure but hardly generates any leads at all.

I just spent an hour on the phone with Tim Ash, the founder of http://www.sitetuners.com as he walked me through an express review of the home page of InsideSales.com.

The good news is that we have lot’s of room for improvement. We convert leads at 3-4 times better than the average. The sad news is that our previous website, though not nearly as good looking, converted somewhat better than this one does. Hmmm, look or conversion? Definitely conversion.

Of course the best is to have a great look with a high conversion rate. That is our next adventure.

Why is this important to us? More leads.

Our dialer technology is like a Gatling Gun, leads are the ammunition. One of the first three questions we get asked by our customers is, “How do I get more leads?”

This is one great way. Design your site to convert leads better. How do you do it? You continue to test and tweak your site by changing different things constantly. I was first introduced to this concept by a company called LowerMyBills.com while at my last company, UCN (now inContact.) Then I met Mat Greenfield, the founder of http://www.ConversionResults.com. He has helped many smaller and mid-size companies design or redesign their website to increase conversion.

A free and simple way is to use Google Website Optimizer and do what is called “A/B Split Testing” where you make two versions of your site; Version A and Version B. Then Google sends half the visitors to A and half to B. We then watch the conversion rate on both pages for a few days or so. Let’s say Version A converts at 5%, and Version B converts at 10%, we’ll obviously turn off Version A and focus on B and do another split test to keep getting it better. Google is free, it just takes some time and effort.

Our friends at SiteTuners go to the next level beyond Split Testing of two variables, they can test lots of variables at once; this is called multivariate testing.  In fact, SiteTuners is a considered a Multivariate Testing Website Optimizer. They help clients like Google, Facebook, Verizon, etc.

We will let you know more later about how well the help from SiteTuners has had on our overall lead management process.

You will probably see our site change in lots of little subtle ways.

Here is an outline of my Ken’s Notes for the new book “Behind the Cloud” by Marc Benioff.  Whenever I read a good book I like to take the time and summarize the book so I understand better and retain the good ideas. Hope it helps. This is a book you should own. Ken Krogue

Behind the Cloud: the untold story of how Salesforce.com went from idea to billion-dollar company—and revolutionized an industry – Marc Benioff – Chairman & CEO of Salesforce.com and Carlye Adler

Outline by Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com (more in-depth summary by parts on my corporate blog – adding one per day or so)

Here are links to my notes on “Behind the Cloud” by Marc Benioff on my corporate blog The Insider, I’ll notify of new summaries of other books I do on my Twitter/LinkedIn accounts – Ken Krogue

Part 1 – The Start-Up Playbook – How to Turn a Simple Idea into a High-Growth Company
Part 2 – The Marketing Playbook – How to Cut Through the Noise and Pitch the Bigger Picture
Part 3 – The Events Playbook – How to Use Events to Build Buzz and Drive Business
Part 4 – The Sales Playbook – How to Energize Your Customers into a Million-Member Sales Team
Part 5 – The Technology Play Book – How to Develop Products Users Love
Part 6 – The Corporate Philanthropy Playbook – Make Your Company About More Than the Bottom Line
Part 7 – The Global Playbook – How to Launch Your Product and Introduce Your Model to New Markets
Part 8 – The Finance Playbook – How to Raise Capital, Create a Return, and Never Sell Your Soul
Part 9 – The Leadership Playbook – How to Create Alignment—the Key to Organizational Success
The Final Play

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