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Prospecting Procrastinators: How to Better Manage Your Prospecting Time, Activity, and Focus

“Your timing is perfect!” are words we probably don’t hear often enough. In sales, particularly when trying to connect with prospects, those words sound wonderful because they imply that the prospect is interested in talking to you.

Sales reps can’t survive on luck when trying to get prospects on the phone. You can’t just block out two hours of your day to make your cold or warm calls because it suits your schedule. If that’s your “strategy,” then you’ll likely emerge from your office having left a series of voice mails and messages that have a slim chance of ever being returned.

Prospecting with insight requires careful and thoughtful planning. You’ve done your homework to find a target organization that has a likely need for your products or services, researched further to identify the best contact in the company, and tailored your insights to create the perfect pitch to get them interested enough to have a deeper conversation or meeting. But all of that preparation won’t mean much if you can’t get the prospect on the phone.

Set Aside Sacred Prospecting Time

The time and effort you need to put into prospecting depends on the amount of new business you are expected to self-generate. You have to set your priorities. If prospecting is vital to your success and livelihood, then carve out discrete blocks of time that you need to dedicate to it and let other activities take a back seat. Literally block the time in your calendar for yourself so that others know the time is reserved.

Schedule your telephone time to coincide with when your prospects are most able and receptive to talking to you. There will be times when your prospect is inaccessible or simply too busy to talk. For example, finance
and sales leaders are typically very busy near the end of the quarter and the end of the year. In addition, research shows that executives are more likely to answer calls on Wednesday and Thursday over other days of the week. This is because people get slammed on Monday, dig out on Tuesday, and check out on Friday.

Research also suggests that executives have a greater tendency to answer calls from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. This is because they are less likely to be in meetings during those blocks of time. Don’t
fight nature! If you are really a hardcore hunter, consider working two- to five-hour shifts, and use time zones to your advantage:

• 6:30-8:00 a.m.: Call EST and CST
• 8:00-10:00 a.m.: Call CST and MST
• 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Call MST and PST
• 12:00-3:00 p.m.: Do non-call work; all prospects are eating or are in meetings
• 3:00-5:00 p.m.: Call EST and CST
• 5:00-7:00 p.m.: Call CST and MST
• 7:00-8:00 p.m.: Call MST and PST

You would also be wise to schedule dedicated time on your calendar for researching target organizations and prospects. Consider how much time has elapsed between when you generated your target lists and conducted your research on them. If you compiled a list that will take several weeks or longer to get through before making your calls and pitches, be sure to do a quick search to see if anything new has happened that could help or play into your message. You want to be seen as current and forward-looking, not out of touch and irrelevant.

When the Prospect Answers, Remain Calm and Professional

This might sound like common sense, but it bears mentioning: consider your attitude, demeanor, and voice when your prospect actually answers the phone. Especially if you call early or late in the day, try to hide your shock, surprise, or relief that they picked up. Otherwise, you can come across as sounding:

• Desperate (“Thank God I got you!”)
• Unprofessional (“I can’t believe you actually picked up this early!”)
• Critical (“You’re a hard person to reach — do you ever answer your phone?”)

If they mention that you called at an unusual time, keep your response professional and straightforward. “I know that you have many demands on your time throughout the day, and I didn’t want to intrude on your busy schedule. I thought that calling you now might better accommodate your schedule.”

The right attitude and response can signify (even subconsciously) that you’ve thought about your prospect’s workload and schedule, that you know something about their business and how they work, and that you’re conscientious and willing to work hard (and possibly inconvenience yourself) in order to meet your clients’ needs.

Prospecting is a very important activity, but few sales reps would say it’s their favorite thing to do. Like anything we don’t like (even if it is good for us), it is easy to come up with excuses to not do it. Successful prospecting requires discipline, persistence, resilience, practice, and coaching.

The post Prospecting Procrastinators: How to Better Manage Your Prospecting Time, Activity, and Focus appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Many occupations are in rapidly changing industries. Doctors need to stay informed on the latest research, techniques and medications. Attorneys must be on top of on subtle changes in legislation. Tax CPAs are constantly adapting their approach to shifting IRS codes each year. Now, you can add sales professionals to the list of jobs within a challenging and constantly shifting landscape.

One of the biggest changes is in how buyers view and utilize sales people. In the Harvard Business Review, Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon and Nicholas Toman of the Corporate Executive Board wrote, “The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to. The piece, titled “The End of Solution Sales,” goes on to say, “In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers’ needs and selling them solutions. This worked because customers didn’t know how to solve their own problems, even though they often had a good understanding of what their problems were. But now, owing to increasingly sophisticated procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data, companies can readily define solutions for themselves.”

This significant change in the buying process means that prospects are demanding a different and more sophisticated array of services from salespeople.

The post Buyers Demand Better Sales People appeared first on KnowledgeTree.

"My customers seem to have less time available for me than before. They are harder to see, and when I do get in front of them, they often seem rushed or preoccupied. What can I do about this?"

Sound familiar? It's a question that I am hearing more and more often. I'm sure you have run it through your mind a few times.

It may be that the problem is you. You may be irritating and abrasive, and over time your customers may have decided that they don't want you around.

But it's probably not you. It's your customer. No matter what you sell, it is likely that your customer has more to do and less time in which to do it than ever before. Your customer's lack of time is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't much of an issue a few years ago, but it has become universal and growing in intensity day by day. Your customer is overworked and pressed for time. As a result, there is just not enough time in the day to get everything done. Some things have to go. A long, leisurely conversation with a sales person is often one of those things that is going.

I believe we are at the beginning of a new trend - a trend with awesome implications for sales people. It used to be that being viewed as a "value-added" vendor was a desirable position to occupy in the customer's mind. That meant that the product or service you represented brought your customer more value for the money than the offerings of your competitors. It was why they did business with you.

Notice the focus was on the product or service you represented. The process involved - the sales calls you made on the customer, and the discussions you had with him or her - were viewed as a means to an end. It was what both of you did in order to come to the exchange of money for your value-added offerings.

Those were the rules, and customers and sales people understood them. These rules of sales interactions are deeply ingrained - so deeply, in fact, that many of us cannot conceive of the profession of sales being done any other way. It is what we know, and how we have made our living.

But the rules are changing. We are at the beginning of a new paradigm for the field sales person. The new paradigm is this: Today, not only must the product or service bring value to the customer, but the time you spend with the customer must also be of value to him or her. In other words, the sales process itself must bring value to your customer. Your customer must gain something from every sales call. He/she must see a reason for spending time with you - a payback for his investment of time.

Now, of course you have your agenda, and you have your objectives for the sales call. You know what value you want to gain from the meeting with your customer. But what about your customer? What is he going to gain from investing that precious 30 - 45 minutes with you?

In today's time-compressed and overwhelming world, your sales call must bring the customer some value. Here's a way to visualize this emerging new rule. Suppose you were to make a routine sales call on a regular customer. At the end of the call you filled out an invoice, handed it to him and said, "OK, John, that will be $150.00 for my time." In other words, you charge him for the value he received by talking with you. Would he pay your bill? Would he have derived enough value from the time he spent with you so that he would gladly pay you for it?

OK, the illustration may seem a bit over the edge. Most industries are not at the point, yet, where they will charge for sales calls. But in the information rich, too-many-things-to-do world in which you and your customers live, time is more precious than money.

When you ask for your customer's time, you are asking for something very limited and very precious. If you take 30 minutes of his day, he has invested 6.25% of his workday in you. He has a thousand other things he could have done in that time. What did he get for that investment with you?

The point is this: If you are going to be successful in the Information Age economy, you must focus on bringing something of value to your customers every time you ask them to invest their time in you. You must view every sales call through the perspective of the value you can bring to your customers. A sales call is no longer just about the objectives that you want to achieve, it is also about the objectives your customer wants to achieve. It's as if you present that $150.00 bill at the end of every sales call and expect to be paid.

So, how can you adjust to new situation? Here are some proven practices that will help you make the transition:

1. Understand your customer's situation as thoroughly as possible before you take his time.

Your customer expects you to know something about his business, his customers, his processes and his problems before you visit. That means that you must spend more time before a sales call gathering information about that customer. Check to see if the customer has a website, and gather useful information from it. Call and ask the receptionist to send you a company brochure. Ask around your company to see what other colleagues might know about the account. If you don't know that the customer is qualified and worth your time, you will be wasting his.

2. Think through the sales call from the customer's perspective.

Put yourself in the shoes of that customer. What else does he/she have to do other than talk to you? What problems is he facing, what opportunities? How can you bring him or her something that will simplify his job, help him overcome his problems, or reduce the amount of time he spends on your project?

This is a simple little technique that can make a huge difference in your performance. Before every sales call, stop and think about this question: What will the customer gain from the time he/she spends with me? If you can't articulate some gain for the customer, consider not making the sales call.

Courses

3. Prepare something of potential value for every call.

This is a long-range strategy. As you consistently hold to this strategy, over time you'll build up a certain expectation in the customer's mind. Don't expect an immediate payback from this strategy, but, nonetheless, stick to it for the long haul.

Try to bring something to every sales call that your customer would think is valuable. This can, of course, be your latest and greatest product or service, providing that it really would help them. Or, it may be an idea that you have found for a change in their processes, or it may be a new way to implement something they have purchased from you in the past. Maybe it's a copy of an article that you thought might help them. It can even be a good question you share with them that gets them thinking about their business in a different way.

After a few such calls, your customer will come to respect you and look forward to your calls, knowing that you're not there just to work some agenda of yours, but rather he'll come to expect to gain something from your sales calls.

You'll find it easier to make appointments and get time with your customers when you've built in them the expectation that the time spent with you will be well worth the cost of it.

If you are guided by this principle of always bringing something of value, you'll recognize that there is another side to this coin. If you have nothing to leave the customer that will be of value to that customer, you probably shouldn't make the sales call. Don't take his time.

4. Be a resource.

One of my clients suggested that sales people need to be the "customer's search engine." I couldn't agree more. Strive to be the customer's most trusted and most knowledgeable resource, the customer's source of information, not just about your product, but about the whole category of things that you sell, their applications, and their advantages and problems.

Share information that is bigger than just the product or service that you sell. If you do, then your customer will look forward to your visits and view them as valuable.

I realize that this is a change in thinking for a lot of sales reps. But it's a change that is coming, whether you want to make it or not. Your choice is to be a leader and thus gain a significant edge over your competition, or to wait until the market forces you to change. The choice is yours.

Sales managers – words have power!

When salespeople get promoted to a sales manager position there are many traps to avoid and new things to learn from: analyzing CRM data, to conducting performance reviews to figuring out how you are going to find the time to coach.

These things get a fair amount of attention. On the other hand, one “new thing” rarely talked about – perhaps because it may be classified as common sense hence no need to think about it cause it will just come naturally – is the trap of not realizing the power of your words.

What’s interesting about this trap is regardless of tenure, we’ve seen sales managers fall prey. Sales managers are busy and all too often make off-the-cuff comments. Why can that be a problem worth thinking about? Here are three reasons.

• Sales managers have positional authority – so what they say is taken seriously and that means off-the-cuff comments can have more influence than intended. Almost every sales manager with whom we’ve worked has share an experience where someone on their sales team took an unnecessary or inappropriate action based on an off-the-cuff comment.

• Off-the-cuff comments from sales managers spread quickly and morph – from one person to another as they zip through the organization. It’s the morphing part that can be particularly telling. You not only have to think about what you say but how you say it. The potential for morphing can be minimized.

• What sales managers say can be interpreted as conveying an official company position – particular when a company is going through a period of change. This little problem can lead to inappropriate action and on a bad day get the manager in hot water.

The perils of off-the-cuff comments by sales managers are not at the top of the list of pressing problems that are degrading sales effectiveness. But, at any given time, in any given company, five or six important things happening. If you are a sales manager, someone on your team is going to corner you and ask, “”what’s going on?” How you respond – the words you use are important.

If you found this post helpful, you might want to join the conversation and subscribe to the Sales Training Connection.

Becca Krass always has great insight into apps on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.  After all, she curates the site and has a perfect position to spot interesting technology that helps users of Salesforce.com.

Today she had an excellent post looking at three categories of tools for sales enablement.  It’s a great set of tools that she picks out — in fact, we use tools for each of these categories ourselves and are customers of DocuSign and InsideSales.com.

The focus of the tools is on how to make sales professionals more effective.  And the three categories are important ones:

- How do you increase your call volume?  That’s critical for teams that do outbound calling to qualify leads or generate meetings.  Tools in this space automate many tasks that, when multiplied, consume huge volumes of time: leaving messages, dialing, etc.  Over the course of a day you’re saving an hour by automating the call process.  Not to mention the qualitative benefits of consistent messaging and faster response times to leads.

We’ve seen the results first-hand.  Our outbound sales reps are able to call 30% more prospects and are able to deliver consistent, targeted voice mails to people that they can’t connect with.  

The post Improving Sales Effectiveness with Salesforce Apps appeared first on KnowledgeTree.

Looks like I might show up again in costume for my REVTalks on Monday, January 27th in San Francisco. (BTW- You can register as my guest with promo code “REV-VIP.”)

My talk on “Look, Up in the Sky……It’s a……Sales Superhero!” just screams showing up in action figure costume – doesn’t it? The last time I showed up in costume for my AA-ISP keynote was to demonstrate the “Sales Sniper Pilot” qualities of an inside salesperson and I came out in aviator suit. At least this costume is a lot sexier

The Sniper Pilot has morphed into a Sales Superhero- especially since the expectations for their success is so much higher. In the Inside Sales World, everyone is hiring and we are all striving for that super hero who has super powers with their outbound efforts. My new book, Smart Sales Manager introduces you to today’s inside sales superhero and outlines 25 top qualities that make them successful. Monday’s talk will give you a sneak peak at 8 of these super hero qualities. 

Before we start looking for this sales super hero, we must have a few things set-up that encourage and not discourage their success. Check out this article to read about the 7 Reasons Why Inside Sales Reps Fail. 

BONUS: Check out this massive graphic of every superhero power ever!

Click to see it full-sized…it’s huge!

(Courtesy of Pop Chart Lab)

The post Can you Handle a Sales Superhero on your team? appeared first on TeleSmart Communications.

When you do your research online in preparation for a purchase, what are the top things you want to know? There are five pieces of information we all want to know, according to Marcus Sheridan. An early adopter of content strategy, Sheridan turned around his company, River Pools and Spas, using content marketing. Sheridan recently gave a talk that you can see on 9Slides. He’s got a catchy nickname: The Sales Lion. Doesn’t hurt that Sheridan is totes adorbs. Roarrrr.

Sheridan boils down his strategy to four words: they ask, you answer. It’s actually a very simple matter to figure out what your customers are asking, because you are probably asking the same things yourself. Sheridan wonders if you have been asked over a hundred unique questions about your product or service in the past year, and possibly over a thousand questions in all the years you’ve been operating. How many of those questions are answered on your website right now? If you are like most companies, sadly the answer is none. This, says Sheridan, makes us digital hypocrites.

Here are the five topics you should be addressing in your content, and if you are not, turn off all the other stuff you are going on about and get on these items right now.

• Cost: Do you address pricing extensively on your website? Probably not. But how do you feel if you are unable to find the cost of something you are about to buy? Pretty aggravated.
• Problems: God forbid you should talk about the problems associated with your product. You might scare customers away. But that honesty and transparency is exactly what turns customers on. Hiding will not win trust. Being upfront about the limitations of your offering makes people feel a lot better about dealing with you.
• Versus: Should I get this or that? What are the benefits of each? Yes, it helps if you sell both versions, but if you sell one product, don’t be afraid to compare and contrast.
• Reviews: Amazon found that publishing all reviews of a product, good and bad, made for a much more robust sales environment, and one in which honesty and trust are valued above all. Turns out that people can think for themselves and are able to muster a critical view of others’ opinions.
• Best: What’s the optimal solution to the problem you are trying to solve with your product or service? If you’ve done your research, share it with your customers.

Somehow, says Sheridan, we’ve arrived at a place where we refuse to treat our customers as we’d like to be treated. Why? Because we want to control the interaction. We want to choose for them. Or we are afraid our competitors might steal our ideas. We might scare customers away. But the fact remains that they aren’t customers until they give you money.

In building websites, most businesses have their priorities backwards, putting the competition and bad fits ahead of actual prospects. Sheridan asks which of these groups pays your bills? Why would you allow anyone but the customer dictate what you talk about?

Content is perhaps the greatest trust building tool in the world, but your content must be transparent and honest if it’s going to do its job.

Infographics helped many companies make headlines last year. Visually appealing, the splash of graphics and images simplified the consumption of information, even sometimes very complex data. Not to mention, they were fun to share. For a while, many online publishers, including news, tech and business websites clamored to feature a well-done infographic and share it with their online audience. But that was then… Has the shine worn off of infographics? Perhaps a better question is, should infographics remain in your content lineup for 2014?

While online editors may now be more discriminating when it comes to including infographics sourced from other contributors, there is indeed still a place at your content table for an infographic, or two. That’s because online audiences still respond very favorably to visual content in general.  That’s right, people really do love infographics, videos, Vines, memes and more. These seemingly trendy pieces of visual content still grab your attention – and they are still easy and fun to share. Speaking of sharing, many optimization experts continue to tout the SEO benefits of infographics – because they can add up to lots of social shares and plenty of links back to your website or blog. That’s a definite win in SEO world. Another important benefit of infographics is that it is a good way to re-use content (both data and images) that you’ve already created. Infographics can be a nice way to repurpose your content, when done well.

When including infographics in your content plan this year, here are some quick tips to keep in mind:

1. Quality over quantity: It’s best to create one or two really good infographics rather than dozens of poorly designed or non-helpful infographics.

2. Be useful: Because the world has been inundated with infographics, the best way to stand apart from the crowd is to provide really good or interesting information. Create infographics that tell a compelling story. Whether your goal is to educate or entertain, the data you choose to share should be useful. As a reminder, it’s also important to include sources for any of your data at the bottom of the infographic (this is also useful for folks like me, who like to dig deeper and learn more when interested statistics are shared!).

3. Be different: There are now lots of templates available that make it easy for you to quickly create an infographic. If  you are like me and are not a graphic artist, or if you have a limited budget or scarce in-house resources, templates can be effective tools to use. When possible, however, customize the template as much as is allowed within the design so that it doesn’t get lost in the crowd of sameness. The same holds true with the data you use. Especially in B2B, I see a lot of the same statistics shared. To make your own mark in this world of content, try to find and share information that is new or different.

4. Brand it: Once you’ve created an amazing infographic, don’t forget to put your own stamp on it, so to speak. Be sure to include your company name, logo, and a link (or URL) back to your website or blog. And, it’s really nice if you include a snippet of code that makes the infographic easy for others to share (and for you to track the shares!).

Below are two examples of infographics I’ve seen recently that do a good job of standing apart from the crowd. The first is truly informative and helpful; and the second is well-designed and interesting. Have you created or seen an interesting infographic? If so, please share links to them in the comments.

This infographic was found on Social Media Today and I really appreciate the attention to detail and the usefulness of it!

This is a great representation of statistics covering email trends. I spotted it recently on Business 2 Community. Again, it’s easy to understand, visually appealing and useful. They also did a nice job of branding and adding resources.

Ten Mistakes That Kill Sales Opportunities is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Here are ten mistakes you can make that will cost your deal.

1. Taking Shortcuts: Anything that you believe leads to a faster deal leads to a no deal. You can’t rush your buyer through the process because you are in a hurry or because you are behind on your number.
2. Asking for Unearned Commitments: You can’t ask for commitments that you haven’t earned. If you haven’t created the value to deserve the next commitment, pressing for that commitment will shut your deal down.
3. Poor Follow Up: Failing to follow up on the little commitments you make only proves you don’t care, that you aren’t detail-oriented, and you can’t be counted on. Deal-breaker.
4. Selling Without Dissatisfaction: If you can’t find or create a compelling reason for your prospective client to change, you aren’t going to make a sale. No deal.
5. Not Doing Discovery: If you don’t do the discovery work necessary to know exactly how to help your prospective client, you aren’t going to create or win an opportunity. It’s over.
6. Not Building Consensus: You have to believe me here. You aren’t going to win with a single stakeholder. You will lose if you can’t help your client build consensus. No votes.
7. Failing to Make the Ask: If you don’t ask for access to the people and information you need to win a deal, you will lose that deal. You cannot fear “the ask.” Not asking is the same as no.
8. An Inability to Articulate Value: You must be able to articulate the value that you and your solution creates. If can’t tell your client how they will be made better, you have no deal.
9. Failure to Provide Proof: Your prospect is going to want some proof that you are who you say you are, that you will execute. Maybe you need a fancy ROI calculator. Or maybe you need a reference. Zilch.
10. Being Transactional: Treating your prospective client as a means to an end is the fastest way to alienate them. And it’s a surefire way to lose. Brick.

Questions

What do you do that causes you to lose deals?

What have you seen someone else do that cost them a deal?

Which of these ten mistakes are you most at risk of making?  How do you change that?

When marketing and sales clash, it’s always due to having a different version of a single client. It’s like the less extreme version of various groups have differing views on a historical person.

Take Martin Luther King Jr. On one hand, he was popularly known for being a champion of civil rights and the national hero for all African Americans. On the other hand, he’s also criticized for his allegedly communist ties and his more controversial ideas of pacifism.

Fortunately, the divide between your sales and marketing divisions need not be as drastic. As a business leader, there is indeed a way to make them get along and unify their differing versions of a prospect’s story.

The Sales’ Version

Sales concentrate mostly on direct and short term methods, providing specific services and products that match with their customer’s needs, allowing them to push up their sales more frequently. Their approach is usually one-on-one focusing on narrower concepts. This gives them a more concrete presence, which is important because they’re the ones who will be presenting directly before the prospect. Simply put, they emphasize the company’s perspective on them.

The Marketing Version

Marketing is mostly on understanding the customer’s inside point of view. Their strategies focus on determining the customer’s habits throughout the sales process, pushing them forward but not as direct as sales. This method also allows a broader perspective that can help form a long lasting, relationship with their customers while building the company’s brand name.

Making them get along

You already know very well that marketing can’t survive without sales and vice versa. Marketing makes for a better first contact because prospects are considerably more open to them (whether they know it or not). Although, this makes them less capable of completely making a sale because being too forceful can send a prospect running. Sales on the other hand can zero in but are at high risk of losing if they rely only on the details they’ll get out during direct conversations with a prospect.

Yet as you can see, despite the contrast, they’re starting to complement each other. The trick is not to emphasize the differences in their systems. It’s to tie one group’s weakness with the strength of the other. This will help improve not only the outcome of your sales but to your interaction with your customers too.

Let’s be careful not to get confused about the marketing term known as guest blogging.  A guest blog, literally, is a any blog you write, under your own name, for another blog.

That’s easy enough to understand, right? But take into account that there are different strategies on how to use guest blogging to increase your brand. If you want to increase sales, here are the six secrets that can really help you:

Join an affiliate network

If you are a travel blogger who has built up a solid, engaged audience, consider looking for an affiliate network. I first observed these during a research project where I noticed several big-name travel writers giving shout outs to each other.

Once accepted by an affiliate network in your blogging niche, you agree to link to/mention the people in your network, and they mention you. That’s it. Everyone in the network is required to give a certain number of mentions to their affiliates, and vice versa.

Always get a byline and a linkback

If you aren’t being paid for your work, you should at least get a link back to your website, and an author’s biography attached to your name. This way, anyone reading can find you and read or support your other work.

Be weary of guest blogging opportunities that don’t provide something in return; these are just companies looking for free content from unsuspecting writers.

Do not promote to your list unless it’s relevant to your list

Make sure that you are very careful about only promoting guest opportunities that are relevant to your audience. Otherwise, this will weaken their expert opinion of you (and you might create complacency by bombarding them with too much content.)

Give link love to get link love

You have to be willing to give away a shot of your Google juice by mentioning other businesses and their relevant blog posts on your blog. In exchange, hopefully you get a little link karma and someone links to your blog, too.

Only play with others who “get it”

I cannot stress enough that you never want to waste your time with new, greedy companies who aren’t going to offer a valuable service to you in return for your guest blogging.

If they don’t promote you, or your posts, but expect you to promote them, they don’t get it. Sometimes, when a guest post is paid, it’s actually a gimmick for the company to get you to promote them to your audience.

Now, do you think they’ll hire you again? Do you think there’s any long-term privilege to that $50 in your pocket? (Psst – the answer is not really!)

Be completely transparent about your intentions

If you were paid to write an article or paid to promote it to your people, you should tell them. A lot of travel writing can be bothersome for this very reason; the writers are given free stays or perks in exchange for writing positively about a hotel.  (Trust me, it’s not a ‘beautiful gem nestled in the side of a mountain.’)

The true secret to guest blogging is simply that you need to use it as one strategy within your marketing plan to increase your brand awareness and get link backs to your website.

Follow our advice as part of that strategy and you’ll be on your way to increasing sales in no time at all.

The post Shh! 6 Secrets to Increase Sales (Like Now!) with Guest Blogging appeared first on Blogging Tips.

Many sales people don’t realise the business benefit of social media and I have had them say to me “how can I get leads from social media?”. It is usually because it can get them feeling like social media is an extra marketing activity, rather than an earner for their business.

However, social media leads to more “indirect” leads, as it helps you get more traffic that you can try to convert once they get to your website. Studies have shown that 77% of buyers are “more likely to buy from a company who uses social media.”

Generating leads using social media doesn’t happen instantly, like all other social media results. It takes a bit of effort and the bigger and better your social media profiles are, the better the chances that you will generate more leads. It’s all too easy to fall into the traps that stop companies creating genuine sales leads from their social media marketing activity and lack of a formal social media strategy is usually the culprit.

1. Social Listening

One of the first steps in a social media strategy is listening for conversations about your company, your personas, competitors or other topics of interest. Using a professional listening tool will make your social engagement efficient and effective because it’s much easier to pinpoint results and gain insight on content ideas, locations of communities online & offline and can identify key influencers.

Some recommended social listening/social media monitoring tools include Meltwater Buzz and Social Mention.

2. Social Conversation

Social conversations can drive word of mouth marketing. This is about finding and responding to conversations online – engaging with others in social media (not selling). Creating social conversations is about creating an idea that spreads from person to person. We marketers call this sort of viral sharing buzz, word-of-mouth or viral marketing.

Some recommended social conversation/social engagement tools include Argyle Social and Hootsuite.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media marketing programs usually centre on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. Businesses can take advantage of this by launching and running campaigns and promotions in social media sites.

Some recommended tools for social media marketing include Buddy Media and Shortstack.

4. Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics and tracking can be very time-consuming and expensive. Marketers need to measure and analyse results of their social media efforts across various platforms to help prove return on investment.

Some social media analytics tools include Simply Measured and Sprout Social.

5. Social Influencer

Businesses need to identify and engage with influencers that are relevant to their company or industry. True social influence drives action, not awareness. People tend to confuse number of peope in your audience with influence. Having a lot of followers/fans/connections doesn’t give you the power to drive action, it gives you the power to drive awareness.

To find out your social influence use tools such as GroupHigh and Klout.

Download our essential guide and learn how to transform your social media marketing efforts from a routine to a critical component in achieving your business goals.

You’ve heard it all before – content marketing essentially is now the SEO service. Every man and his dog is binning their link building strategies, waving goodbye to their brochures and jumping on board the blog bandwagon. Everyone is embracing blogging and content in a big way.

But there hasn’t been much change to your traffic, and you’re just not seeing much of a return. So you stop blogging.

You might have stumbled upon many an abandoned blog in your time, or maybe your own is sitting at the top of your navigation bar gathering dust. So what are you doing wrong?!

The Right Kind Of Content

It’s all very well, happily tapping away on your keyboard, swigging coffee and quickly producing 300 words of uninspired rubbish. Anyone can do that. But it isn’t what content writing is all about, unfortunately. Our search engine overlords want a very specific kind of content.

It has to be good. And we’re not talking bestselling-literary-greats good, or could-be-published-in-the-FT good. There is no need to weep into your keyboard just yet, because blogging good is a bit more obtainable.

The most important thing is that your content is relevant and interesting to your target market. The topic might not seem all that exciting in itself, but it’s your job to find an angle. Ask yourself what you’d want to know or what you’re particularly interested in, and then plan an article around that. If you’re running your own blog then you might already know the answer, but if you’re managing a blog for a business that you’re not completely familiar with then you’re probably going to have to get researching. Have a look at what has already been written on the subject, and try and come in from a slightly different angle so that you’re creating something new.

Search engines now favor natural and useful posts, so crowbarring in awkward keywords might not be the best plan anymore. Instead try and come up with an article which will naturally include instances of your chosen keyword. If your chosen keyword happens to be ‘London coffee shops’, a post on French coffee trends is unlikely to work. Instead, consider writing a post about the rise of the British coffee shop.

How Long Should My Posts Be?

In an ideal world, for the most gloriously optimized blog, 600 words is a pretty safe bet. Keyword density is best at around one instance of your keywords per 150 words, so to get four in your post, around 600 words per blog post is ideal. For instance if you were an SEO Company  writing a post on ‘Blogging As A Substitute For Traditional SEO’ including the keyword SEO Services would be easily achievable and would likely flow well within the copy, as well as delivering value to your audience, which is the primary objective of any piece of content.

Try not to just add words in order to get up to a word count; if you’re lacking things to say, try adding another new point , but make sure it delivers value. Concision in writing is a great skill, but when trying to reach a hefty word count it can sometimes be a hindrance. I always find myself deleting swathes of my writing when I proofread to keep on topic, but sometimes those little anecdotes get to stay in.

If your posts are sometimes a bit shorter, don’t panic. It is better to write a 500 word post on something really engaging which covers all the key points, rather than rambling on about nothing for 1000 words.

Super short posts won’t usually add any value for your readers, so it tends to be best not to bother. Establish yourself as a useful source of information rather than someone who blogs purely for blogging’s sake.

How Often Should I Update?

How frequently you update depends on what you can manage. A smaller company with limited access to SEO services might only have time for a blog once a week, whilst bigger companies with a focus on their blog might post multiple times a day. The more often you can update the better, and if you can get a blogging schedule and stick to it then you’re more likely to attract a regular readership.

Posting sporadically is better than nothing, but it won’t be effective in the long run. If you haven’t got time to manage your blog yourself, or the writing skills to write compelling copy regularly, content writers are available to provide that very useful SEO service. They might not have the same level of intimacy with your business as you do, but they are creative types who know how to write good copy.

The Key?

There is no big secret when it comes to writing. There’s no fool proof tips which will fix every blogging slump, but there are a lot of ideas on the subject out there. Try not to let your blog become a chore and it will be much easier to produce. If you find your own writing boring then the chances are other people will as well.

Like anything, the more you do it the easier it will become. While you might be a little short on ideas, your process will still be improving.

So, if your blog isn’t working, don’t give up. Just rethink it.

Try not to let it become stale, and make sure you upload regularly. Read other industry blogs to give yourself a good idea of what works – and what doesn’t. Most importantly, focus on delivering value to your readers. If every post enriches the lives of those who read it, you can’t go wrong.

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• Facebook’s Paper App Continues the User-Experience Experiment

Only 20% of marketers are able to get deep insights by closely measuring the performance of marketing initiatives. Quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs remains the top challenge for Sales and Marketing directors.

For transformation of marketing activities from a cost centric program to revenue driven process, you need to measure the impact of marketing on sales pipeline. With Marketo’s revenue cycle management, marketers have better and realistic predictability in sales forecast, resulting in improved sales velocity and reduced cost per sale.

• Efficient Process gets more sales ready leads – In the traditional sales model, marketers rely on cold calling, direct mailers, trade shows etc. to attract and engage potential prospects. Not only this is a time consuming process but also results in many dead air leads, as they have no ability to track and filter leads. Marketo’s revenue cycle lets you deploy lead scoring process and score leads on multiple dimensions using demographic and behavioural attributes. Executing targeted marketing campaigns based on these dimensions significantly reduces your cost per sales and streamlines existing sales process.
• Better Revenue Insight gives a competitive edge – For effective conversion of prospects, it is critical for managers to derive deep insights from their marketing campaigns. Marketo helps you easily identify how marketing is contributing to your revenue with cutting edge marketing analytics. With Marketo’s revenue cycle analytics, marketers can monitor and evaluate the success of each campaign, providing them an in-depth view of each marketing activity, its impact on lead progression and revenue generation.
• Transparent sales funnel with better co-ordination – Relying on traditional sales pipeline leads to poor
  co-ordination between sales and marketing teams. This directly affects the conversion of the prospects, as sales teams are not updated about the engagement campaigns done by marketing team. Marketo’s revenue cycle allows you to optimize your existing sales funnel with marketing campaigns, sending mature and updated leads to sales team for conversion. This ensures better co-ordination between sales and marketing teams enabling them to pitch in a more effective manner.
• More ROI and engagement from marketing campaigns – Marketers using legacy sales model end up rolling out less targeted campaigns dramatically affecting overall engagement level, leading to poor ROI. With revenue cycle management, marketers can maximize performance of their campaigns with steady buyer engagement for effective lead nurturing. Revenue cycle enables sales and marketing managers to identify critical lead scoring parameters, based on which they can roll out targeted campaigns for more sales ready leads.

Grazitti Marketo Services:

Marketo implementation requires, expertise, proficiency and a process driven approach. We have the experience and expertise to help you maximize your Marketo investment. Our team of Marketo certified professionals enables you to do more with your CRM, get better quality leads, improve sales conversions and achieve better top line results.

Our key services include:

• Marketo implementation
• Revenue cycle management
• Salesforce Integration
• Integration of your existing Inbound marketing and email marketing campaigns etc.

To maximize your Marketo implementation, Contact us now.

This blog was originally published in blog.grazitti.com.

Your goals for new customer acquisition in 2014 are set. You want to get off to a running start and achieve them. Your first stop should be to check out what’s in your sales funnel.

Find the Facts in the Funnel

A sales funnel report should enable you to answer the following questions:

• How many untapped leads are stalled in the funnel—not ready to buy or not yet qualified?
• How many qualified customer acquisition opportunities are ready to emerge in the next month?
• What’s the potential value of these emerging opportunities?
• What’s our average conversion rate?
• Are there any areas in the funnel where leads tend to get stuck and not convert to the next stage? For example, are lead conversion rates from leads to demonstrations meeting your objectives?
• How long is your sales cycle?
• Based on history, is your sales funnel growing or shrinking?

The answers to these questions give you a crystal ball for predicting sales, enable you to prioritize the sales opportunities to focus on, and provide clues for funnel optimization.

Don’t Let Dirty Data Clog the Funnel

Some managers, however, can’t answer these questions because they don’t know what’s in their sales funnel. Their vision is clouded by old, inaccurate and poorly structured data—the bane of many sales and marketing managers’ existence. If that’s your problem, take these steps.

• Direct Your Data
  Data finds its way to your database from multiple channels and in a host of formats. Your database may not be structured to receive the data in all its varied configurations. It’s like trying to put together your child’s some-assembly-required plastic car with the nuts and bolts from your new bookcase. Nothing fits, stuff gets lost, and things don’t work the way they should.Thus, it’s crucial to think about where the information is coming from before you receive it—website, social media, purchased lists, and more—and what format it’s in. Then task your information technology gurus to develop a common structure that provides homes for varied data, and a roadmap that describes where to direct the data. This enables you to receive the data you need and find it again.

• Profile and Fix It
  Can you trust your data? To find out the answer to this question, you need to profile it using software that gives you a picture of how complete and accurate the data is. If your report card from data profiling is not something you’re proud of, clean it up. This may mean putting people on the phone to call contacts and ask the questions that need answers. Or you might try bumping your database up against other lists with higher accuracy.

• Optimize It
  How do you optimize your funnel? You use customer relationship management (CRM) software to guide you through every step in the sales process. It assures sales and marketing teams conquer tasks, meet deadlines, and interweave their efforts to win more sales.

A Clear Funnel Provides a Vision for Sales Success

Using Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) to manage your sales funnel enables you to measure what’s working. This not only empowers you to standardize best practices across your organization, it helps you ferret out the weak spots. For example, you can see if you’re having difficulty moving prospects from downloading a white paper to a participating in a demo, and experiment with ways to improve conversion rates.

Once your database is cleaned up, and chock full of accurate information, you have a clear vision of your sales funnel and each prospect within it. This allows you to put customers’ needs first and help them find the ideal products and solutions to solve their problems. Also, marketing managers are able to spend their budgets intelligently, maximizing their prospects for customer acquisition by reaching the right audience, with the right message at the right time.

For more information about 3D2B, visit www.3D2B.com or call +1 718-709-0900 or +39 06 978 446 60 (EMEA).

Your CRM is a tool. That’s all. And, like most tools, you have to us it correctly if want get the most out of it.

Have you ever seen a little kid use a hammer for the first time? They bang away at the nail, if you’re lucky it’s not a vase, your iPhone or the remote control, using the broad side of the hammer. If you think about it, it makes sense to a child to use the broadside, it has more surface area, it’s easier to swing and you can hit more stuff faster. But, if they have to actually be successful driving the nail. It’s gonna be awhile, so you may want to get a drink. They aren’t using the hammer correctly.

A CRM is just like a hammer. It can be used in a lot of different ways, but that doesn’t mean you are  using it right. Too many sales people and sales managers use their CRM like they are swinging a hammer broad side down and they look silly as hell doing it. Too much time is wasted and too many deals are lost or delayed because the CRM is being used in the wrong way.

When you’re using the CRM like your using the broadside of a hammer;

• You’re not putting in all the data
• You’re not putting the data in, in a timely manner
• You’re not capturing the tasks and activities required for each sale
• You just enter your contacts info, you don’t input all the stakeholders in a deal and their role in the decision
•  You’re not capturing your deal strategy
• You don’t have at least one open task or next yes objective with a delivery date for EVERY deal
• You don’t update sales stages
• You’re close dates are wrong
• You’re not adding regular, comprehensive notes that articulate what’s going on in the deal
• You’re not inputting the challenges and objections to the sale
• There is nothing about the competition and where they stand
• You don’t input the clients decision criteria
• You don’t have a personal reporting dashboard
• Nobody but you can decipher where an opportunity is but you
• The CRM DOESN’T  help you sell or close a deal

Using the CRM like a little kid uses a hammers is all too common. What’s worse, is most sales people don’t recognize it and continue smashing away, wondering why the CRM isn’t working for them and getting frustrated that their boss is constantly nagging them to update it. However, when the CRM is used like it’s supposed to be, it becomes an efficient tool that helps sales people close more deals, avoid losses due to missteps, accurately forecast the probability of hitting their number, become more responsive to clients and customers, see trends, avoid wasting time on deals that won’t close, engage others internally, find competitive weaknesses, and more.

A CRM is a tool, just like a hammer. In this case, it’s a data tool and a data tool needs good data. It requires lots of data, timely data. If you’re haphazardly putting in shitty data or incomplete data, then ya, no shit it’s a pain in the ass. Hello?

It doesn’t matter what CRM you use, if you use it correctly, it will help you sell. It will help you mange your pipeline, your relationships, your opportunities, what’s critical to winning, and most importantly your quota attainment.

When sales people view their CRM as a tool for them to sell better, they stop swinging it the wrong way and amazingly the nail seems to alway go right in.

Stop using the CRM like the broadside of a hammer. Someone is going to get hurt.

We don’t use IQ tests to evaluate sales people (we are more interested in predicting how they will behave and produce in certain situations), but we know that being smart usually is not a liability if a sales person has good sales DNA.

I was curious to see who is using IQ tests in sales hiring so I jumped on google and and didn’t find much. If anyone is using IQ in sales, they are not publishing their results.

IQ tests have been a popular way of testing intelligence since they were first introduced in the early 1900′s, in spite of the criticisms that they are not accurate. According to the American Psychological Association: “intelligence testing has also been accused of unfairly stratifying test-takers by race, gender, class and culture; of minimizing the importance of creativity, character and practical know-how; and of propagating the idea that people are born with an unchangeable endowment of intellectual potential that determines their success in life.” According to the Association, although the tests have evolved over the years, the consensus is that IQ tests should not be relied upon and while it may be logical to assume that people with higher IQ’s earn more, the research to support this theory is cloudy. Research scientist Jay Zagorsky has shown there does seem to be a correlation between IQ and income, but there seems to be no correlation between IQ and wealth – as if to say smart people can earn more, but don’t know what to do with their money.

According to wikipedia a 2002 study by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis concluded that an individual’s location, inherited wealth, race, and schooling are more important as factors in determining income than IQ. That said many companies still use IQ tests and there are literally hundreds of tests available online.

Anyone thinking about using any of these online tests may want to take a look at this article in the Guardian about one person’s own experiences using online IQ tests. To make a long story short, blogger Dean Burnett took several tests which all indicated that he had very high or genius level intelligence which makes sense since he has a Phd in neuroscience. This would be a good endorsement for the ability of these tests to measure intelligence except for the fact that when he took the tests (all multiple choice), he selected answers entirely at random and very quickly (which triggers bonus points), so either his random responses were either surprisingly correct or the tests are probably useless in predicting anything.

To your success!

Sources:

Online IQ tests: are they valid?

American Psychological Association – Intelligent intelligence testing

You Don’t Have to be Smart to Be Rich

photo via Master | freedigitalphotos.net

9 out of 10 sales training initiatives have no lasting impact after 120 days.¹

Considering companies spend $3.4 to $4.6 billion on sales training with outsourced providers each year, that’s a big investment with little to show for it beyond short-term, short-lived gains.²

Fortunately, the reasons sales training fails are both predictable and fixable. By avoiding common mistakes, you set yourself up for successful training initiatives that lead to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth.

Here are the most common problems we see:

1. Before training, companies don’t have clearly defined outcomes and they don’t align the outcomes with learning needs
    
2. Training focuses on building sales skills but doesn’t build fluent sales knowledge
    
3. Sellers attributes (their drivers and detractors of sales success) are ignored
    
4. There’s no process or methodology or goal and action planning, so sellers don’t know what to do to get the best results...

The truth is that B2B customers visit your company website for verification of your business its products and services. In fact, 45% of CEOs think that the purpose of their company website is solely verification of the company. Fact-checking, confirming the detail and quality of your company — all of these things can be done by visiting your website. But what separates a mundane, “brochure” B2B website from a powerful sales engine is when companies don’t stop there.

How customers use the internet has changed. Your B2B website can (and should) be so much more than a brochure about your company: it can be a source of valuable information and education about your industry and your product/service, and yes, a sales mechanism. And it’s your job to make sure that your company website performs its best.

Ready to get started? Here are three powerful tips for empowering your B2B website as a sales tool:

1. Less About Your Company, More Focus on Your Customers

The first mistake B2B companies make with their websites is assuming that a “just the facts” approach is enough. Describe your products, your services, and your work ethic, and you’re done, right?

Wrong! Too often, a company’s web presence is dedicated to facts and figures about the company itself. The most powerful way to catch a customer’s attention is to talk about what matters most to them. Your prospects have a problem to solve, and they are researching solutions. Information about your industry, helping your prospect to compare all of their options, and stories of how customers’ problems were solved are all viable ways to make your website a sales engine.

Go check out your company website and perform a small test: how many times do you mention “we,” or “I”? How much of your detail and description is a lifeless, factual account of what you do and how you do it?

Then, look to see how many times you talk about your customer. What should be important (and clear!) on your website is an accounting of your customer’s needs and wants, and how your products and services can specifically meet them. You might also use your website to help a potential customer know when you can, or even CAN’T, help them. This can help eliminate many “tire kickers” and improve your lead quality.

2. Fine-Tune Every Detail to Your Specific Customer

Speaking of your customers, you do know who they are, right? Because in order to be specific about how your B2B services will meet their needs, you need to deeply understand their needs in the first place. Even if verification is what leads your customer to your website, strategic messaging and branding will be what keeps them around.

What are your customers needs, and how does your company address them? How is your customer’s business better as a result of what you provide them? Invest time into identifying everything you know about your target customer and their segments, or what we call client personas. Addressing details that matter most to your ideal customers on your website will enable your website to be a powerful B2B sales tool.

3. Stay Busy with Blogging and Promotion

Another effective way to empower your B2B website as a sales tool is to provide high-quality, keyword optimized blog content. Not only will this draw more traffic to your website, but you’ll also be able to speak directly to your prospective customers by referencing frequently asked questions.

But even when you’re posting frequently, your work doesn’t end there. Brainstorm ways to engage with your customers on and offline with social media channels and distribute your content around the web in other effective, low-cost ways.

A rich mine of digital content that is well-networked on social media platforms will bring your company to your customer’s attention as they research the solutions and products that are right for them. You’ll gain credibility, and you just might get the sale as a result.

What’s keeping your website from generating leads for your business?

If you really want to capture your prospect’s attention, you need a sales message that piques their curiosity and gets them to sit up and take notice. And, if you’re selling to a senior executive today, you’ve only got 30 seconds to make that happen – or you’re dismissed as not worth talking to.

But what are those attention grabbers? The best ones are industry or marketplace statistics that are relevant to your prospect – and related to what you sell.

For example, for many years I used this one to initiate a conversations with VP's of Sales: Are you aware that 75% of Sales VP's say that the root cause of their new product’s failure was a weak value proposition?

Today I could say, “Did you know that a prospect is over 60% of the way through their decision process before they contact your company?”  Or, I might say, “Research shows that your salespeople are 5X more likely to get a call returned if they have a personal connection.”

My prospects are interested in these things. And, I have services in these areas.

But how about you? Do you have industry research you can use? Do you enough? If not, get online right away and start looking. Using data from an external resource not only validates what you do – it grabs your prospect’s attention.

Download the Value Proposition Kit for more help creating attractive sales messaging.

For the first time, people accessed the internet on their mobile devices more than on their desktop computers in 2013 – OK, we all knew that was coming. What does this mean? It means that online, cloud-based, and internet solutions are taking over not just consumer markets, but business-to-business marketplaces. Especially when it comes to sales technology.

What problem are we solving? The fact that sales professionals only spend 41% of their time actually selling. I like to quote TinderBox’s Director of Sales, Adam Becker, who jokes that, as a sales manager, if your rep is only selling 41% of the time, they should only get 41% of their salary, right?

This is where sales automation technology comes into play. Automating non-selling tasks in inside sales reps’ day-to-day activities can amount to huge time savings. But, with this influx of sales technology in the B2B space, we have to ask ourselves: Is genuine human interaction in the sales cycle disappearing at the expense of automation? How could we possibly have both?

I’ll break it to you – we can. At the heart of the conversation is what your organization chooses to use software for and what your goals are. I strongly encourage every B2B business to assess their technology needs for 2014, especially when it comes to administrative, repetitive, and (basically) non-selling tasks that are a part of your sales process today. These are the biggest time challenges and sources of inefficiency.

I’ll leave you with three suggestions I’m unabashedly taking from sales leaders in our space to enable your sales team to use technology without losing the human touch that leads to success in sales:

1. Data is power. Having real-time data to make better decisions in the sales process is invaluable. Take advantage of solutions today that can easily put you and your inside sales team a step ahead.

2. Technology is not a crutch. Technology is a beautiful thing, but don’t let it be the thing you rely on in your sales process. Use software to reinforce and guide your sales team through the process – don’t let your reps forget how to be a sales person.

3. Let inside sales reps do what they do best – sell. Don’t ever interfere with an inside sales rep’s most important task: closing business. There’s an unsurprising correlation between what successful inside sales reps do well (put simply, sell) and what they don’t do as well (let’s call it, administrative tasks). Take away the menial, time-consuming tasks with technology.

If you think about those 3 things, you can set your company on track to using automation and technology the right way in 2014, while still keeping one-to-one interaction sales human.

Cooperation and collaboration – any CMO knows that to make their marketing services shine in the modern marketplace, they need to have all sides of their company working together as one. But the traditional divides between marketing and their potential allies – sales, customer services and IT – are well documented.

Vanquishing such divisions can offer huge benefits to your marketing management and campaigns.

Customer services

Weapons of mass destruction . . .

. . . are available at the click of a mouse button to consumers, enabling them to harm a company’s reputation in a matter of hours.

82% of customers have stopped using a company because of bad service.

95% of customers have acted on a bad experience.

79% of customers have told others about that bad experience.

But there is another way . . .

. . . the marketing department working closely with the customer services team.

• The marketing department can discover what consumers don’t like about a product or service, enabling marketing messages to be adapted accordingly and criticisms countered directly.

• Customer services are an ideal source of consumer-focused content ideas; their firsthand experiences mean they can spot consumer experience trends that the marketing department may not have considered before.

• Customer services have a deep understanding of the personas that your marketing is trying to reach because they engage with them on a daily basis; they could shed new light on your existing profiles.

• If the worst does happen and negative feedback goes viral, marketing should work with customer services to create a joined-up response asap.

The IT Crowd

The gulf between IT and marketing seems uncrossable, but an alliance is essential as marketing becomes ever more automated – in processes from customer relationship management to data warehouses.

So bring both sides together – the benefits can be significant . . .

• New technological innovations ideal for marketing campaigns can be identified and deployed more quickly and, if properly coordinated and managed in advance, could remove the need to outsource to an expensive external provider.

• The backbone of marketing – the key customer database – needs to be properly maintained, scaleable and updated. And the most effective way to achieve this? With an IT department that’s kept in the loop by the marketing department, not treated as a necessary evil.

• IT departments are known for following strict procedures, sometimes over-thinking and over-planning the tools needed for a particular marketing campaign. But by being brought on-board earlier in a project and gaining an insight into the marketing process itself, IT can better assess why some projects won’t need to be so “engineered”, saving time and money.

• The use of personal iPads and other mobile platforms by sales and marketing can present a real threat to a company’s security. The IT department can help negate the risks and offer key training to ensure that the threat of data leakage is kept to a minimum.

Sales

While marketers are able to create messaging that is clear, concise and often imaginative, sales know why people buy your company’s products or services in the first place.

Alas, tensions between the two camps traditionally run high . . .

87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe one another are negative.

But bringing the two together to work as a team can pay dividends. For example:

23% is the reduction in the length of sales cycles when marketing and sales work together, co-developing marketing content in lead-nurturing programmes.

69% of the best-performing companies ensure that their sales and marketing teams meet on a more frequent basis than their competitors.

A marketing and sales team working in unison means:

• Identifying “customer and business pains” is quicker and more incisive. Sales know what pains are blighting customers and can offer invaluable insights into what the customer really needs – and the marketing department can adapt its messaging accordingly.

• Holding regular meetings means that each side knows what the other is working on and can provide timely, constructive feedback so issues are dealt with then and there, and not left to fester. Hubspot calls such gatherings “SMarketing meetings”. Don’t worry, you don’t have to . . .

Remember:

• Customer services are an ideal source of customer-focused content ideas.

• Making IT an ally, not an enemy, is essential for ensuring the optimal running of your key customer database.

• 69% of the best-performing companies ensure that their sales and marketing teams meet on a more frequent basis than their competitors.

Find out if your marketing team is using the best, most efficient, and rewarding software with my eGuide: All-in-one vs. best-of-breed: what software does a CMO’s team really need?

Frank was amazed at the arrogance of the new waitress at his usual breakfast spot, next to his office. He’d given her his usual order of 2 eggs and toast and, after reviewing a few emails on his phone, he glanced up to see her putting a plate in front of him. He looked at her in surprise.

“What is this?” he asked

“Your eggs,” answered the waitress without any apparent interest.

“But I like mine scrambled, not sunny-side-up.”

“Well,” the waitress frowned at him, “you didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t ask!” Frank exclaimed in frustration.

This type of misunderstanding occurs all too often between customers/clients and sales people, or between managers and their staff, although the issue is not always so explicit. Frequently there is too much emphasis on the “what” (the eggs) and a failure to engage on the “how” (scrambled, please!), which is a major factor that influences the decision to purchase. The sales/service professional has the ability to exert a great deal of influence. Whether it is in professional services, advertising, hotels, automobiles, real estate or technology, some people will turn off customers completely while others will engage a long-term customer relationship that continues to bring in referrals.

Here are 3 important points managers need to Coaching their Sales Staff to practice:

1) Ask Questions
Value is in the eye of the customer! Don’t assume that this customer wants the same treatment and options that the last one requested. Instead, ask good questions to learn from them and clarify the “how” that will enhance the “what”. Ask yourself, “How can I make this decision-making experience a superior one?” Or ask the customer, “What would be the top 3 factors for you as you consider a new vendor?”

2) Listen to Understand
Look for clues to the “How” and even the “Why” of their needs to help you serve them better. Avoid being mentally preoccupied with what to say next while the customer or client is speaking. Occasionally a customer may be quite clear and explicit about their preferred “how”, but more often you will need to attend to verbal and visual cues, and the importance of what they are not saying.

3) Design Customized Solutions/Approach
Present solutions designed with a customer’s “How” preferences in mind. Remember, a big component of the “how” is the way in which the sales professionals communicate and serve up the solutions. Courtesy, politeness, and follow-up on the little things that are important to the customer go a long way.

This all sounds simple, but studies have shown that often in the hurry to close the “What” of the deal, sales people miss steps 1 and 2, and can turn off the client when they misdeliver on the “How”. Often strong brands (the “what”) can carry a weak sales force (the “how”), but in the long run it will lead to some sales erosion.

I had an experience recently that illustrated this issue quite clearly.

For many years, I had the pleasure of dealing with a very professional luxury car sales person (yes, they do exist). He was instrumental in my decisions to remain with the brand for 12 years, through four different vehicles and the changing demands of a growing family. In fact, I got hooked on the SUV model after he gave me a loaner for the weekend, subsequently leasing two of them from him. Gord understood “How”. My kids even got to know him as he would frequently greet us when we brought the cars in for servicing. Always pleasant, friendly and professional, he listened to the changing needs of our family (with my sons’ active involvement in sports) as he positioned a new vehicle every 3-4 years.

All of this changed three years ago, when I went in to pick up my last SUV from the dealership, which I’d ordered through Gord a few weeks before. I was surprised to find that he was no longer there – instead, I found myself dealing with a young lady with an attitude similar to the one exhibited by the waitress mentioned earlier. I remembered this when it came time to look for another new vehicle a recently. I went back to that same dealership, and was served by another rep who was nowhere near Gord’s style. When we spoke by phone, I had agreed to look over the specs of the new x5 model, but I was quite busy that day and so asked him to send me the information by email (the “How”). To my amazement (and irritation) he instead tried to pressure me to come into the dealership right away, that day, so that he could give me “a great deal!”

Around that same time, I connected with a salesperson at a competitor. Afsheen was extremely professional and very good at the “How”. Her dealership was considerably farther from my home, but she sent a driver to come pick me up when it was time to take delivery. In fact, her service suited our needs so well that we will be getting a second vehicle through her shortly. We are Infinitely more satisfied.

While I enjoyed my BMW’s for 12 years, it was the sales folks that caused me to take a “brand break”, and I’d prefer not to return to that dealer in the future. The dealership may have a great park view, but the service is lacking.

Managers, hire the best staff with the capacity to build long-term brand relationships through the sale. Coach them to practice the three steps of 1) Asking consultative questions, 2) Listening to understand, and 3) Presenting customized solutions of “how” they can deliver the “what” that the client is looking for.

 
Continuing our annual tradition, I've rounded up the very best of our writing and thinking from the past 12 months. So with a big thank you to our readers, new and old, here's the best of what we shared in 2013.

Most Commented Articles

Most Downloaded Resources

We've got some exciting projects in the works, so stay tuned. Here's to much success in 2014.

Good Selling! 

Q4 2013 saw a spike in quarter-on-quarter impressions and click-through rates on paid Facebook ads.

This comes at a difficult time for brands on Facebook. News feed changes on Facebook have forced posts from free-to-run ‘pages’ further down Facebook users’ news feeds. 

Brands and companies are now being encouraged to concentrate on paid ads for their Facebook marketing strategies and forget the free channel of running a Facebook page.

The latest report from Kenshoo seems to bolster the logic in this possible change in direction for Facebook into a more ad driven marketing landscape, rather than a content driven one.

Here are some more stats from the research.

Core impression and click volume metrics rose more than 50% in Q4 vs. Q3.

Increased engagement drove click-through rate up 10% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). Perhaps Facebook users are more inclined to interact with brands during the holiday season because they are already geared up for purchasing.

For advertisers using the Kenshoo platform, increased competition during the peak shopping season led to a 20%+ QoQ rise in unit costs and a 100%+ QoQ rise is spend for advertisers.

• Cost-per-click increased 21%
• Cost-per-thousand impressions increased 33%
• Spend increased 101%
• Advertiser revenue increased 60%

Facebook has had a busy news week. Although rumours of Facebook’s death having been greatly exaggerated, the most popular social network in the world saw usage fall by 3% in the second half of 2013.

Whether this is a general leveling off, which all social networks will likely experience eventually, or whether it's a sign that, as a couple of Princeton graduates have recently posited, Facebook is in fact a virulent social disease that will have lost 80% of its users by 2017. Well, time will obviously tell.

As the stats above reveal, Facebook is becoming a more profitable channel for advertisers, and as adverts and sponsored posts push free content out of users’ news feeds, perhaps the Princeton students may be proved right as users abandon Facebook for other, less advert-heavy, networks.

For more on Facebook from the blog, read our guide on how small businesses can make the most of Facebook and Matt Owen’s post on why he disagrees with Forrester on Facebook’s failing of marketers.

Author: Frank Passantino

If you’re in marketing, you probably know better than to pass “any old lead” over to your sales team. Yesterday on the blog, we shared our new infographic about defining a lead, but how do you score your leads once you’ve found them?

Lead scoring is the process of assigning a score to leads, which ranks them by their readiness to buy. Without a lead scoring system in place, your sales team won’t know which leads to prioritize. Promising leads might be rejected; bad leads might be pursued.

As marketers, here are five things to consider as you implement lead scoring:

1. Score Decay
2. Program Success Scoring
3. Interactive Scoring
4. Positive Demographic Scoring
5. Negative Demographic Scoring

Here’s an overview of those terms, and how to use them in your lead scoring:

Score Decay

“Score decay” refers to subtracting points from a lead’s overall lead score, due to website activity or interactive behavior that doesn’t align with your qualification criteria.

Take a look at the card above. If a lead visits my unsubscribe center or career page, that’s a red flag – my lead is not interested in receiving emails from my company, or they’re interested in a job, not a product.

A decay score will also be triggered by inactivity over a certain period of time. Let’s say a lead is inactive for six months. I can guess that lead has either lost interest in my product, or is longer working at the same company.

Program Success Scoring

Success lead scoring increases a lead’s score, triggered by success in your programs.

Take a look at the card above. If a lead stops by my booth at a tradeshow, I increase their lead score because it indicates potential interest in my product. I also increase the lead score when a lead reaches a pre-defined success step in my email programs – in this case, opening or clicking on an email. The last piece of success scoring is overall program successes. In how many of my programs has this lead reached a success step? For instance, if a lead has reached a success step in four of my programs, I will give that lead an additional 15 points.

Interactive Lead Scoring

Interactive lead scoring increases a lead’s score based on their interactions with all of your marketing materials. We consider interactions in six different areas, shown below:

Key web pages: These are pages on your website that indicate a lead is interested in your product, such as your pricing page. An interest in pricing obviously indicates that your lead is evaluating your product, so the lead score should increase.

Email opens: If any of your marketing emails are opened, this is “icebreaking” behavior that deserves some recognition – so increase the lead’s score.

Multiple website visits: When a lead returns to your website multiple times in one day, this indicates interest, especially if they are visiting those key web pages we discussed earlier.

Form fill outs: Does your website contain “Contact Us” forms or gated content? When a lead fills out a form requesting contact, they are interested. Depending on the form, you might raise the lead’s score more or less. For instance, a form that requests a demo might score higher than a form gating a whitepaper.

Content downloads: Downloading a non-gated asset might indicate the lead wishes to educate themselves more about your product and industry, potentially before making a purchase.

Email interactions: Last, but certainly not least, if a lead clicks a link in an email, their lead score should increase.

Positive Demographic Scoring

Positive demographic scoring is essentially increasing the score of the leads who match parts of your ideal customer profile.

Does the lead’s organization generate enough revenue to buy your product? Does the lead have a job title you typically market to? Is his or her company in the right industry? You might increase or decrease the lead’s score based on this criteria.

Negative Demographic Scoring

Negative demographic scoring is, more often than not, another form of score decay.

When a lead fills out a form with what you suspect is false information, I recommend deducting points from their overall lead score. For instance, if a lead enters a generic (rather than business-affiliated) email domain or includes a number in their name, chances are this is a “fake” lead.

For more information about lead scoring, check out Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring.

Are you using any of these rules in your lead scoring? Are there any rules that we didn’t cover, or that you’re curious about? Leave your comments and questions in the comments below.

Are Your Leads Ready to Buy? 5 Crucial Ways to Score Your Leads was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com