Since LinkedIn introduced its native video feature in 2017, it's become increasingly attractive for small and medium-sized businesses. Your business could be missing out if it's not one of them, so let's go straight into looking at 5 reasons for business owners to use it to generate more leads and sales.

As the new year gathers pace, many businesses are looking to step up their sales performance. Attracting new customers is the first step on the road – and it can be tempting to fall back on that old standby, cold calling. But hold your horses. There are plenty of alternatives that don't involve calling people out of the blue.

A lot of articles talk about a website in terms of lead generation and marketing – i.e. getting people interested before the hard work of making a sale begins. But what if you’re one of those businesses for whom the majority of sales are still made face-to-face, at events, or through referrals? Do you really need to sink money into a website in this case? Yes. Your website is your most important sales asset, bar none. And that applies even if you make none of your sales online.

In this article, we explain why, and how you can optimise your website to make more offline sales.

Increasing the flow of traffic to your website is an important first step, but is not the end goal. Many businesses find that, although their total web traffic increases month on month, the number of qualified leads does not. What are the main reasons businesses continue to find it difficult to generate B2B sales leads, despite an increase in web traffic? Let’s have a look:

To break into a new international market, you need a website that ranks well in your target country. However, there are several challenges to overcome when trying to attract customers from specific countries to your website, primarily related to language and SEO.

In B2B sales, people don’t buy from companies; they buy from other people. Every business lead you generate had a person attached to it, with a role to play in that business, motivations, stressors and other factors that affect their purchase decisions. Many businesses feel their products and services sell themselves on their own virtue – and in some cases this is true – but all lead nurturing strategies benefit from relationship building.

In the last few months, SharpSpring, the popular marketing automation platform, has launched two new features: SharpSpring Sales Optimiser and SharpSpring Meetings. So, what exactly are they and how can they benefit sales teams seeking to improve their processes and results? Let's examine each one more closely.

Every transaction between a seller and a buyer is a relationship and, like all successful relationships, this needs to be approached in a specific way to ensure that a beneficial outcome is received by all parties involved. However, when a customer asks you to lower your prices, it can be all too easy for this relationship to descend into a battle, ultimately leaving both parties frustrated.

As such, our experts at JDR Group have created this easy guide to help you out in these situations, offering you a framework to follow that will leave everyone happy at the end of the transaction. It is important to have a documented and consistent way of dealing with these situations, allowing you to treat every customer fairly, while also ensuring that your company continues making a profit.

The only thing better than acquiring a new customer is to retain an existing one. Keeping your customers coming back will always result in a greater ROI, and it only costs a fraction of what you'd spend on winning a new customer. To help you achieve this, we've broken down 10 key steps you can use to boost your customer retention.