Google Alerts = Your New Best Friend Print E-mail
Written by Justyn   
Saturday, 17 January 2009 00:00

 



Google Alerts For Sales Professionals

Google Alerts is one of the most powerful single tools on the Internet for sales professionals. It’s also probably the easiest to use and it’s free.

It works very much like a traditional Google Search, except it is delivered to you automatically via email. The difference and power of Alerts is that the results which are delivered to you are new additions to the web. Instead of thousands or millions of search results, Google will provide you with links to the latest articles, blog entries and websites containing the search terms you specify.

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Because of the algorithms that search engines use to rank search results, newer articles and blog entries would very rarely make it to the top of search results for quite a while. This makes it very hard to stay in tune with what’s happening now.

I’ll give you an example of how I use Google Alerts to illustrate why this is important. I have Google Alerts setup to search for entries containing my industry and the term RFP. A big portion of my company’s business involves formal bid processes. Any time those two phrases appear on a website or article, Google tells me about it.

If I were to simply do a Google search for those terms, the first dozen or so pages of results would be either companies that I compete with, or results that are very old. The results are indirectly skewed by age, so the first fifty thousand may be from more than a year ago. By using Alerts, which will only deliver new entries, I am able to find these opportunities without sorting through thousands of pages of search results. If I waited for them to appear in search results, they would already be awarded!

Not all of the results that are emailed to you will be relevant, but the ones that are will bring a smile to your face. Once a week I find a prospect who is issuing an RFP for my product that no one on our sales team knew about previously. This week alone a single Alert has added over $400,000 to my company’s pipeline. It would take an entire staff of researches to find this kind of data manually.

Let’s say that you participate in 12 formal bids per year (this could be quite low depending on your industry). Let’s also assume that ½ of your business comes from formal bid processes. This means that you participate in 24 projects per year or an average of 2 per month. If by using Google Alerts you uncover only one additional opportunity every 2 months, you have increased your pipeline by 25% annually, with 5 minutes of work.

This is a great example of the essence of The Passive Pipeline. By working smart and using the tools that the advances in technology have made available to us we can be more productive than anyone before us and more importantly, more effective than our competition.

That’s just one example of using Google Alerts. Here are a few others;

 

  • Your Competitors – Find out what is going on with your competition today. Find out what the web community is saying about them. Read their press releases and case studies. Know just as much about your competition as they know about themselves.
  • Your Best Clients – Discover what’s new with your clients. Be aware of mergers, acquisitions and key personnel changes. Uncover new ways to help your clients succeed before they think to ask.
  • Industry News & Events
  • Partners
  • Emerging Technology
  • Sales Tips
  • Stock Prices
  • Etc.

Visit www.google.com/alerts

You can read more about this tool in The Passive Pipeline here. 

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Comments (3)add comment

Alison Kerr said:

0
 Cool tool!
Now, this is interesting. I recently had someone turn up to comment on a relevant post at my blog and I wondered how they had found me so quickly. Sounds like they were using Google Alerts. Google have so many great tools it's hard to keep up!
 
February 25, 2009
Votes: +0

Jill said:

0
 Owner
Great advice. I "google alert" (verb!) all my clients and prospects. It is a great way to learn how I can help them and I often forward pertinent info to my contacts. They are always grateful and share with their colleagues. It's a great sales tool and a great way to add some value. Love it!
Jill
www.meetingtowin.com
 
February 15, 2009
Votes: +0

Justyn said:

Justyn
 Google Alerts Now Has RSS Feeds!
Real-time is always better than daily or weekly. If you are using Alerts to find opportunities, why not be the first to know?! When setting up your Alerts, you now have the option to take delivery via RSS.
 
February 03, 2009
Votes: +1

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