I spent last week on Brickell Key in Miami (yeah – I took one for the team!) at CASRO’s 40^th Annual Conference. Good event, some really interesting speakers and sessions, well-done social activities and a couple dozen exhibiting firms (including us!).

Over the 3 days, I had the opportunity to connect with a number of new industry contacts (now called ‘sales prospects’) and – maybe more importantly – re-connect with a bunch of old friends, contacts, colleagues and clients.

Say what you will about technology and the digital world we live in, but in business, nothing is more important than that person-to-person (P2P) connection. The handshake… the smile… the laughter… a REAL connection.

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Fact… your website is your top marketing tool – the #1 place prospective clients will go to do their due diligence on your firm.

So, do me a favor right now. Click over to your firm’s website and browse around for a few minutes. Go ahead… I’ll wait!

What did you see?

If your site is like most, you’ve waxed poetic about all of the services you offer, how great your employees are, your ‘special’ internal processes and even your mission statement.

OK, I’ll say it, “Nobody cares!” Not that much, anyway.

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I had a conversation last week with a sales prospect… he was the co-founder of a firm with about 20 employees. Actually, it was the last of several phone calls and email exchanges and I was calling to find out if he was going to accept the proposal I had sent to him. He didn’t.

He said that, rather than outsource to us, he was going to have one of his employees “take care of” sales and marketing… in addition to continuing to work with and service clients, which he does now.

I’m gonna let that sink in for a minute.

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Imagine you work for a small-to-mid-size firm with a small – but active – marketing program. You have a solid website, you blog weekly, send out a monthly email blast, post to social media daily (LinkedIn and Twitter) and even produce a webinar once each quarter. Pretty good stuff!

But here’s the thing… if all of those tactics are not working together, you might not be achieving the kind of results you could be. For example…

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