Sales Leads Through Creating An Online Presence

Are you new to a sales career? Do you want to market yourself but do not have the money to do so? Are you tired of cold prospecting and cold calling? Do you wish there were an easier way to spread the word about your services?

Does this sound like you? This was what I felt like when I got my first sales job selling copiers five years ago. My sales manager back then was into the traditional methods of looking for new business that is, prospecting, cold calling, booking appointments, doing product demonstrations, and closing sales. The problem is, when you’re new to the sales field, this is time consuming. Cold calling is not only one of the most difficult things to do, it also takes a lot of your time, time which can be better spent face to face with prospects.

So what do you do? There is still a need for cold calling, but it should only be part of your overall prospecting equation. Until you make business connections and contacts and have a big business network, try some free online resources which can help you. The following is my list of online advertising methods which you can try. None of these on its own will generate enough sales leads, but taken together it can give you a good start. Best of all, all these suggestions are free. So take a few hours and try these:

1. Post a free classified ad on craigslist.org. Craigslist is ranked the 41st biggest website in the world (by alexa.com). What this means is that hundreds of thousands of people visit the site every day that is, scores of potential clients. So if you’re an accountant, an event planner, an insurance broker, a real estate broker, a general contractor, a copier sales person, or you sell anything at all, there is category for you to post a free classifieds ad. Classifieds ads posted on craigslist.org stay there for forty five days, so you only need to post once every month and a half. But even better is that these classifieds ads find there way into search engine search results. So, even people that are not specifically searching for your product or service on the actual Craigslist site may be coming across your ad through Google.

2. Create a free profile on trade-pals.com. TradePals is a directory of business professionals, entrepreneurs, sales people, and trades people across North America. It is categorized by city and business category. The website provides qualified sales leads to its members. Basically, you create a profile and place it in the proper city and category. So let’s say that you are an architect in Boston. You create a profile and place it in the architecture category in that city. If someone from Boston is searching for an architect and sees your profile they can contact you by filling in a contact form and you will be notified by email that someone wants to do business with you. TradePals allows you to post a picture of yourself. Take advantage of this option as profiles with photos are viewed more often then ones without..

3. Create a free profile on MySpace.com and join in on the discussions in some of the business forums on that website. Myspace is populated mostly by teens and younger adults, so the audience may not be your target market, but there are some mature people using the site too so it’s worth a shot. The good thing is that this website is ranked number twenty eight in the world (by alexa.com) so a lot of people find their way to this website.

4. Create a free profile on ziggs.com. Ziggs allows for a comprehensive profile and also places it into categories. But instead of a directory style approach, it uses a search option. For example, you can search a keyword “interior designer" in San Francisco, and you’ll be shown all the results of interior designers in San Francisco that have created a profile.

5. Create a profile in business discussion forums and join in on the discussions. By adding your 2 cents into these discussions people will see you as an expert in your given field. Include you business phone number in your profile so that people that want to contact you can easily do so. Two of the best online forums that I suggest are small-business-forum.com and smallbizgeeks.com.

These five suggestions can get you started and get your name out there as a business professional. Together, these websites receive millions of visitors a day. Each of these visitors are potential clients. Building your own website costs money and advertising it will cost even more. Take advantage of websites that are already there for you to use. In addition to these, there are plenty of other websites that offer free advertising, from press release websites, like pr.com, to business networking websites, like linkedin.com. See what works best for you and use the services that they offer. So, while you are cold calling and prospecting in the traditional sense, these websites will be working for you and advertising your services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Tino Buntic's B2B sales career ranges from selling copiers to selling insurance. Currently, he is running his newly launched website, http://www.trade-pals.com