Rnordman

Yellow lights (objections, stalls, doubts, concerns) posed by clients are processed first by the emotional centers of a sales person's brain and only after by the portions of the brain that generate reason and logic.  Since a yellow light can represent a threat to the sales person's success (personally and professionally), first reactions can be the fear-based emotions of fight, flight, or freeze.  Sometimes these emotions are so strong they inhibit or diminish rational response altogether.

Any fear-based emotions the sales person transmits are in turn processed by the client’s emotional centers and tend to reduce rather than increase confidence, and substantiate rather than eliminate any concerns.

Experiencing emotional reactions is non-optional; that is just how we are wired. Where we have a choice is in what happens next. With practice, we can feel the emotion, recognize it, let is pass through, and move on to a considered (rather than a reactive) response. Rather than stimulus/response we learn awareness and choice. Some yellow lights tend to cause more intense reactions than others.

LOGIC LEVELS

The following hierarchy of reactions comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and is called Logical Levels.  The “higher” the level, the more emotion it tends to generate.  If we can get past the emotions and recognize the level at which it operates, one of our choices is to see if we can establish agreement at the next-higher level.  That agreement can then set a common ground for resolving the issue at hand.

Environment: Challenges to where and when something should happen or to verifiable evidence and/or facts about the situation.

Tactics: Challenges to your implementation of the solution.

Strategies: Challenges to your major approaches to the proposed solution.

Beliefs: Challenges to what you believe to be true/false, right/wrong, good/bad, etc.  This might show up in differences of opinion about the presumed problem or beliefs about the negative or positive consequences and implications of the problem.

Values: Challenges to your personal values, such as honesty, fairness, or loyalty.

Identity:  Challenges to who you think you are — personally or professionally.  This could be anything from misperception (“You are a tactical implementation company.  How can you help us with strategy?”) to outright, if unspoken, prejudice (the potential client won’t deal with you because of race, religion, gender, appearance, lack of credentials, age, etc.).

If you disagree on environment, seek agreement on tactics; if a tactic is challenged, seek agreement on overall strategy; if you disagree on beliefs, seek agreement on values. 

Challenges to identity can be difficult because “there is nowhere to go.”  One possibility:  “If I could get you the undeniably best solution for the best value, would you hold the fact that I was ______ against me?”  Or, “I get the sense that even if I could get you a superior solution at a great value, you wouldn’t be interested as long as I am a ______.  Is that a fair statement?”

Here are some examples:

CLIENT:  You’ve got your facts wrong.  We have 10 product lines, not 8.  And you misspelled the name of our Western Region VP.
SALES PERSON:  I definitely want to get the facts right.  And I apologize for the misspelling.  That was poor proofreading on our part.  I don’t want to proceed if you feel the change from 8 to 10 materially changes the overall approach. Should we stop now or can we appropriately take that into account and look at the rest of the proposal on its merits?

CLIENT:  I think you have this all wrong.  This needs to be centralized at corporate and not driven by the field.
SALES PERSON:  As you can well imagine, I’ve heard strong opinions on both sides of that issue.  First, before we tackle the issue of centralized or decentralized, are you on board with what the initiative needs to accomplish, and it’s just a matter of the best way to do it?

CLIENT:  We can’t take people off current jobs to implement this and we can’t have people try to implement it who don’t understand how we do business.
SALES PERSON:  That’s a tough spot to be in.  And unfortunately, not unusual.  It seems like we could either give up, or at least explore some options.  Are the challenges you are facing big enough that it would be worth at least a little discussion of some possible alternatives?

Clearly, gaining agreement on the next-higher level doesn’t resolve the concern.  It can give common ground to discuss options, and as such, can be a helpful tool in our sales tool belt.

Wikipedia has been one of the success stories of the internet, growing rapidly to become the de facto reference site for many people.

There are more than 4.4m pages in the English language edition alone, and it is still growing at the rate of 771 new pages every day.

How can its impact benefit digital marketers?

While everyone has heard of, and probably uses, Wikipedia, what fewer understand is the impact it has on search results.

Wikipedia ranks highly in responses to many search queries due to the high degree of trust the search engines have in its content, the breadth of information it contains and the global, multi-language scope of the site.

Our own SEO Ranking Factors Rank Correlation study shows this clearly. Typically Wikipedia ranks second in results for a large number of keywords, for example behind the respective brand or the specific URL for the search term itself.

However, if there is no significant brand that would match the search query, Wikipedia often ranks first. This is particularly true of informational keywords (such as definitions) that are unconnected to brands.

Looking at this graph from google.co.uk illustrates the correlation between Wikipedia URLs and search results:

So how can brands benefit from the correlation between Wikipedia and high search results? I’d say there are four key ways:

1. Keep pages up to dateWikipedia aims to be an independent information source, so over developed pages about your company or products will be frowned upon by the community and potentially removed. However you should ensure that there are up to date, factual pages to ensure that you rank highly in search results.

   This is particularly true if you want to appear towards the top of results for informational keywords – make sure you are providing unbiased information that positions you as an expert.

2. Maximise your Google Knowledge Graph informationGoogle’s Knowledge Graph feature aims to enhance search results by providing immediate information on the results page. Normally on the right hand side, it gives either basic details and images/maps on a topic or company, or direct answers to very specific queries, such as What is the population of London?, without a user needing to click on other results.

   Wikipedia is one of the major sources of this information – rather than your corporate website. So make sure information on your revenues, senior management, staff and products is always up to date on Wikipedia.

3. Use photos within WikipediaKnowledge Graph also trawls Wikipedia for images to accompany results. Therefore make sure you include up to date images (such as your logo) on the site if you want to provide the latest information to browsers when they are searching.
4. Increase trust in your brandAs it has been vetted by the Wikipedia community, information about brands on the site is considered highly trustworthy and independent by consumers. It provides neutral, fact-based content, along with multiple links to specific information which encourage people to find out more.

   Not having a Wikipedia page can therefore reduce trust in your brand. 

Our Ranking Factors survey shows that while Google favours quality, substance, and ultimately, relevance in ordering its search results it always takes into account secondary factors such as Wikipedia.

The information on the site is interwoven into Knowledge Graph results, meaning it could be the first thing that a prospective customer sees about your company or brand. Therefore you need to ensure you have built the right presence on Wikipedia and are keeping it up to date if you want to benefit from its undoubted power when it comes to search.

In a world where the digital marketing landscape evolves daily, it can be a challenge keeping up to date with the latest and greatest. 

I’ve been in a series of both client meetings and pitches where someone senior client-side has asked 'how do you keep up with all this digital stuff ?' It made me stop and think about what really counts when it comes to keeping up to date in the ever evolving world of digital. 

One of the biggest challenges with digital marketing is trying to keep on top of the vast array of channels, spaces and technologies that are all evolving at a rapid rate.  

Just keeping track of the latest changes by Google to search functionality, the evolution of Demand Side Platforms in media, new responsive design and CMS technologies for websites, personalization options for email and new developments on social platforms like Facebook can be daunting. 

So, how can an organization ensure that their digital marketing people and their managers keep up to date? There are a range of options :- 

1. Article tracking, tagging and sharing 

The most obvious way to keep up to date is to read pertinent newsletters and reports. However, information overload becomes an issue and the process of sifting through reams of information to find relevant learnings can be time consuming. 

The geekier folk use RSS feed-readers like Feedly to pull all their information sources into a single point for easy skimming.

For more visual and mobile people, Flipboard is an app for both Android and Apple devices that allows you to connect all your information sources together, including Facebook and Twitter, and then flick through the content that is presented as a magazine. 

One of the problems with skimming through news and reports from a variety of places, however, is trying to remember where you saw a particular article you know you read five days ago. It is also very inefficient to have everyone in your team reading the same emails and news-sites every day.  

Creating a system of shared bookmarking can ease the load and drive efficiencies  When an article of interest to the team is spotted, it is bookmarked along with a brief description and a selection of relevant keywords.

The team can then get daily or weekly digest emails containing tagged articles. They can then decide whether to click through and read the article, based on the description provided. Not only is this more efficient, it also creates a good library of resources that can easily be referred back to.  

We use Diigo, both to share internally and with clients in selected groups, and Delicious offers a similar service. 

2. Subject matter experts  

The wide range of specialist areas in digital marketing means it is easier for individuals to focus in-depth on specific areas rather than trying to stretch across every area.  

Create subject matter experts within your team. Start by listing out the various key areas of knowledge required by the organization. Then, assign people whose interests align with those areas to be the experts.

Task them with keeping up to date with that area in particular, and sharing that knowledge with the rest of the team at key intervals. We run regular 'Zuni Uni' sessions where the relevant expert updates the whole team on their specialist topic. 

3. Tailored information sessions

We also use the 'Zuni Uni' for getting external speakers in who provide deeper knowledge on a particular area or topic. Some of our clients have a similar arrangement with their agencies (and us) who come in and do a specialist brain dump of what you need to know about a particular topic.

These can be a cost effective and time efficient way for keeping the whole team to keep up to date with the latest digital trends and their application for your industry, provided you can ensure the agency doesn’t turn it into a product sell.  

4. One-on-one information exchanges

The leadership team of a business have a particular challenge when it comes to digital.  Whilst they are not involved in the day-to-day mechanics, they are often called on to make decisions about digital direction, technology or strategy that can have a big impact on the business and the effectiveness of spend.

It’s tough for senior management to ask what may seem like dumb questions around some of the technology issues, so often these decisions are made without a real understanding of the core concepts and principles that may be at play. 

One of solutions to this is where very senior people rapidly up-skill in the principles around digital and how these link to key business decisions that are being made through working in a one-on-one environment behind closed doors, where there is no loss of face.

These are both daunting and exciting sessions to run, as you’re normally dealing with extremely smart people who are time poor, and the challenge is to make this sessions of high value with low time impact. 

This process can significantly improve business confidence and the quality of discussions that are happening around digital decisions. 

The 'Head of Digital' also has particular challenges to face. They are expected to be the expert in all aspects of digital, but have no one within the organization to learn from or bounce ideas around with.

Having a digital mentor provides them with an external perspective and the opportunity to discuss the latest 'geek topic', and get a sense of how other brands, businesses and categories are using technologies without having to trawl through all the data, and smart agency folk or consultants can often provide great insights into the principles or practices being used by other clients without breaching any the confidentiality contracts that would stop the information being published in the public domain.

5. Using the technology 

One of the best ways for people to understand technologies and platforms is to simply use it themselves. I shudder every time I hear a marketer proudly announce that they are not on Facebook because they don’t have time.

Cutting yourself off from the place where your audience spends significant amounts of time seems to be somewhat career limiting. We actively encourage all our clients and training students to use Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, FourSquare and even to get involved in online gaming like Candy Crush and Words with Friends.

By actively using the platforms, the opportunities for marketing become self-evident, and you are exposed to other marketing activities (both good and bad!) that can spark ideas and understanding. 

So whilst there’s no silver bullet when it comes to keeping up to date, by using a range of approaches to managing information, it is possible for organisations to significantly improve how new digital marketing techniques are gathered and assimilated across the business. 

1. The probability of closing a marketing lead is 28% higher for companies that let their marketers change their CRM stages. 2. The probability of closing a marketing deal is 46% higher if those new CRM stages are buyer stages and not seller stages. 3. Only 24% of marketers make this change. Have you failed to take advantage of this simple fix? In this week’s blog, Hugh Macfarlane walks us through his brainchild – the Buyers’ Journey. He challenges you to put yourself aside for one moment (deep breaths) and consider the buyer instead. Aligning your CRM stage names to a buyer’s position in their journey means you are providing the right content, having the right discussions, at the right time. Are you part of that 24% closing 46% more marketing deals through this alignment? If not, shouldn't you be?

read more

Legendary sales trainer and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar often stated that selling is essentially a transference of feeling.

While logic is part of our decision making equation, people are more often moved to action for emotional reasons - and that includes responding to your social media marketing.

Understanding how to create contextual experiences that move people to action is what relationship selling is all about. This is why I like to say social marketing is the new relationship selling.

The reason in a nutshell is that the content that drives social marketing accomplishes what has traditionally been the responsibility of the sales team: engaging buyers with logic and emotion by building meaningful relationships with them.

What’s interesting is that unlike traditional selling, digital social marketing starts developing relationships with buyers even before the company is aware of them. Consider the significance of this.

It’s necessary to consider the customer experience your marketing will deliver – and the feelings your buyers will have in response to it.

What Do You Want Your Customers to Feel?

This is one reason why I interview people from my live audiences prior to building the presentation that I will deliver to them live. The better I can get to know them, the more easily I can visualize and feel a connection with them when I am onstage.

Understanding your customers is a never-ending practice for every business. Everything changes, so it’s up to business people like you and me to stay in touch with the most intimate feelings of our customers.

Once you clearly define both the logical and emotional needs of the customers you serve, you can be sure your marketing will speak directly to them. In particular, the more specific the language the better.

What Outcomes Do They Want to Experience?

The outcomes your customers desire will determine their most receptive emotional state. For example, if you are in the business of selling life insurance, it’s doubtful your audience wants to be revved up and excited.

More important for them is probably that your business is personally interested in them and respectful of their views on life, death, and family. The practical approach for most companies is instilling confidence that earns the buyer’s trust.

The truth is this: Feelings and experiences move people to action, but trust is what gets them to sign on the dotted line.

Share Stories That Inspire Actions

It’s one thing to build traffic to your website and social media channels, but unless you are also sharing stories that will hold their attention and create memorable feelings, it’s unlikely that traffic will convert to profitable outcomes.

Now, before you start thinking you don’t have a lot of good stories, let me share my personal experience.

While writing my first book was a wonderful experience, the editing process was challenging. One of the reasons for this was that in addition to reconciling hundreds of technical corrections per chapter, the copy editor always came back to me for more stories for each and every chapter!

You know what? To my surprise, when put to the test I was able to deliver; and you will do the same if you make the commitment. The reason for this is writing is remembering.

You’ve already experienced thousands of stories worth sharing. All you have to do is commit to writing them down. You too will discover that once you get going it is not that difficult.

Just commit to getting them into your content and social media marketing to make the connections that will not only inspire your potential buyers – but also move them to action.

Photo Credit

Short answer: if you need to ask, it's probably too late. Long answer: keep reading.

Many companies gather sales leads on their website by asking visitors to register, perhaps to receive a white paper, register for a webinar, enter a contest, and so forth.

In most cases, the people responsible for selling in those companies wait hours, days, or even weeks before picking up the phone and calling that prospect. It's a pretty stupid move because in most cases, the value of that sales lead (i.e. the likelihood of it resulting in a paying customer) approaches $0 within seconds.

You read that right. Within a minute (60 seconds) an inbound marketing lead is almost worthless.

Here are two charts from a recently released report from the market research firm Software Advice. It tracked the number of qualified leads resulting from callbacks of website visitors who registered for something.

The first chart shows how insanely fast the value of the lead declines within the first minute:

The second chart shows what happens to lead qualification after that minute is up, compared to an average:

This research is similar to research conducted by Dr. James Oldroyd at MIT some years ago, where he analyzed sales lead conversion data from millions of website/callback situations.

What are you waiting for? Follow up on those leads.

Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.

You’ve never made a mistake. Every sales call you’ve made has always been perfect, so this is not for you, but I will ask you to read it anyway.

Reason is simple: You probably know someone who is not as perfect as you and, therefore, needs to know this.

Read it for them. The salesperson you save may just be the one you love.

I will admit I have blown more than my fair share of sales calls and I have learned a few lessons along the way.

Here are four of those lessons:

1. Disastrous sales calls are never as disastrous as we think.

For some reason, each time I’ve blown a sales call, I’m thinking to myself how the customer must think I’m an idiot.  No, not really.  The vast majority of time, they don’t even have a clue it’s a blown sales call.

2. Just because a customer rejects you doesn’t mean you can’t reach out to them again.

Rejection becomes very personal, and thus when a customer rejects you, it feels permanent.  No, quite the contrary, but only if you’re wiling to re-engage the customer again.

3. One bad sales call doesn’t mean the next sales call is going to be bad unless you want it to go bad.

Our mental state of mind is a key part of why we’re successful or not successful.

4. Worst thing we can do is to allow a disastrous sales call to become contagious.

If it does, then you really do have a disaster on your hands.  Let it go. Nobody’s perfect, except some of you who are reading this purely to help out a friend.

In the end, the level of confidence you have going into a call is going to determine the level of success you have coming out.

As I look back on the disastrous sales calls I’ve had, the vast majority started out with me thinking they were going to be a disaster.  Amazing how accurate we can be in our thinking!

Now that you’ve read the list, do your friend a favor and help them overcome the one or two listed that you feel they’re guilty of doing.

I get it. You need the sale. But pushing it, not having patience, in the long run, isn’t the way to sell.

I’m a big bump/mogul skier. I love it. There is no better feeling than ripping a zipperline down a mogul field. It’s awesome AND hard. I’ve been skiing moguls for years, and getting good has been a life long journey. It takes practice, practice and more practice. You have to be quick on your feet. You have to have excellent flexion and extension and you have to be patient – yes patient.

The patient piece has been the hardest for me. You see, when skiing bumps, you’re going fast and they moguls are coming at you one after the other. It feels like and looks like you have to turn really quickly, but the irony is, not as quickly as you think. One of the keys to skiing moguls is NOT to initiate your turn too early. If you do, you aren’t positioned correctly for the next mogul and it will put you in the back seat as you’r not correctly situated over the mogul. (You don’t want to be in the backseat going 25 – 30 miles an hour in the moguls!) You have to wait for the mogul to come to you and turn just as your about to come down the back side. It’s not very intuitive.

Sales is very similar. I see it all the time. We want the sale to progress faster than it is coming to us. We don’t wait for it to come to us, we force it and just like mogul skiing this doesn’t position us well for the next step. When we force the sale, we miss things. We don’t get all the stakeholders involved. The value proposition isn’t delivered correctly. Buy in isn’t created. Detractors aren’t identified. Pricing concerns are missed, etc. When we aren’t patient with allowing sales to develop, it costs us. We aren’t positioned well. Yes, sometimes we still close the sales, but it’s never pretty.

We need to be patient.

Being patient, doesn’t mean you can’t go faster. It just means you have to allow the sale to come to you. In bump skiing, being patient doesn’t mean going slow. You can go as fast as you can turn, but you still have to wait for the mogul to come to you. Turning too early doesn’t make you go faster, it just puts you in the wrong position.

The same thing happens in sales, asking for the sale too soon, trying to demo before it’s time, trying to get to the C-level too early, moving to the next stage without buy in are all like turning too soon. You think it’s going to help you, but it’s not. You have to be patient.

Sales leaders, don’t push your people to turn too early. The best mogul coach I ever had kept saying to me, patience Jim, patience. Your forcing it. The mogul is gonna come, it’s just your job to be ready when it does. It’s no different in sales.

Stop trying to force the sale, the goal is to be ready when it comes.

 

When it comes to inside sales, put aside old visions of airplane hanger-size room filled with lots of salespeople making lots of sales calls using finely polished scripts. These rooms may still be around but inside sales has undergone a dramatic shift in the last several years. Inside salespeople are no longer just engaged in small commodity type sales or as backup for completing the secondary tasks of the outside sales group.

As Steve Martin pointed out in an HBR blog companies are increasingly creating inside sales groups who are independently handling accounts in the mid-market. As compared to the past they are handling more complex sales and they are doing it by email and phone contacts with the customers.

Why the newfound interest? In Martin’s survey of 100 VP of Sales, the VPs reported the shift is driven by pressure for profitability and the belief that buyers are more accepting of remote selling. The VPs also noted that inside sales groups are faster to scale and best practices are easier to share.

As the intensity of the spotlight on inside sales increases, attention needs to turn to training. In the past, the level and rigor of the sales training for inside sales has not matched that provided to outside sales groups. In most cases this was justifiable given the difference in the sales activity and the potential for revenue generation. Since in many cases those differences are starting to blur, it is time to upgrade the sales training for inside sales.

Let’s take a look at three specific considerations for designing more rigorous sales training for inside sales groups.

• Instructional Methodology. Given the computer skill set of inside salespeople and recent advances in learning technology the use of online learning is particularly well suited for inside sales groups. Online learning can be a particularly good choice when the need exists to train a large number of reps, in a short timeframe, at an affordable cost. There is no longer a need to first install complex learning management systems; easy-to-use online sales training programs are now available.

• Training Design. Although the training design needs to be compatible with the unique requirements stemming from the phone and email driven sales process, the skill sets needed for this type of inside sale group will be similar to those required for an outside sales group. For example, they too will need to master skills such as: asking questions, active listening, handling objections, and closing. They will also need to develop expertise in competencies such as: lead identification, lead qualification, and relationship building.

• Sales Coaching. We know from the long history of classroom training for outside sales groups that the skill improvement achieved by the training will quickly decay if not reinforced. We also know the most effective approach for reinforcement is sales coaching by the front-line sales manager. So the question of how to coach the inside sales group needs to be a priority.

Here again it is possible to leverage new learning technologies. Some of the aforementioned online training systems also incorporate effective and efficient methods for coaching, so the coaching reinforcement becomes an integral aspect of the training delivery. Also there are interesting new coaching software packages that help managers to improve their coaching efforts.

It seems likely that the trend towards a greater use of inside sales groups is likely to continue. As those days unfold, it will be important to make the required training commitments if the potential of inside sales groups is to be realized.

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

Many companies are experiencing real benefits of managing customer and partner relationships through online customer communities.

Active communities provide valuable insight into your customers’ challenges and motives, which in turn helps your company to create even better products and services. Providing an always-on network of peer-to-peer support can also lower customer service costs by taking some of the burden away from call centers and other support personnel.

All of these benefits are frequently discussed and regularly touted as the reasons why customer communities are a top priority for marketing and customer support executives. Yet, there’s one sizable and seldom talked about benefit that could go toe-to-toe with product innovation and cost savings; customer communities offer the ability to increase sales close rates.

Can Online Customer Communities Really Increase Lead Close Rates?

Now, you might be wondering: how does a community built for customers help convert prospects…who aren’t yet customers? Well, businesses that are succeeding with this approach open up sections of their secure online customer communities to leads or qualified prospects on a limited basis.

While prospects don’t have access to the full community, such as the customer or employee areas, they can benefit from content, tools, and social discussions geared toward their stage of the buyer’s journey. For instance, after a lead downloads a marketing content offer, like an ebook, on your website, they would receive an invitation to join your community to get additional resources and connect with others in their industry who are using your products and services.

4 Ways to Close More Sales Using Your Online Customer Community

So, how exactly does your customer community platform help convert your leads to customers? Here are four examples that outline how a private social network of customers, partners, and employees can be used in the sales process:

#1) Your Online Customer Community Offers Social Proof

No one likes to feel like they’re taking a gamble when making a purchase. Demonstrating to your prospects that you have an established community around your product(s) serves to vouch for their success on the market.

Inviting your prospects to join certain aspects of your customer community can add assurance about your company and ease the feeling that they might be taking a risk by making an investment in your solution or service.

#2) Your Online Customer Community Showcases Your Support Network

In addition to the credibility that comes with social proof, allowing prospects to view parts of your online customer community also gives them tangible evidence of the potential network available to them if and when they make the transition from prospect to customer. Proactively giving customers visibility into your company’s online community assures them they aren’t alone when they have questions or problems.

You might consider providing access to a specific prospect-oriented blog, an “Ask a Current Customer” discussion board, or relevant documents and videos in the resource libraries. The more information and opportunities for engagement you can provide upfront, the more supported your prospect will feel in making their purchase decision.

#3) Your Online Customer Community Connects Prospective Customers With Happy Customers

In the age of online shopping where nearly every product comes with an accompanying star rating and collection of customer reviews, people are doing more and more research before becoming purchasers. Your happy customers are some of your best resources for closing more sales because prospects want to hear from people who were once in their position. Prospective customers know satisfied customers don’t have a stake in the sale, so they’re more likely to trust their opinion and the information that they offer up.

TIP: So, how do you go about connecting your prospects with happy customers? Find customer advocates who agree to be part of an online extension of your customer reference program and grant them access to your prospect sub-community. Train them to answer questions on the discussion boards or reach out to prospects that have specific concerns. However, keep in mind that your busy customer advocates might not be keeping a close eye on your sales prospect community, so you might need to monitor that area of your customer community closely and nudge your advocate corp toward an engagement opportunity when it arises.

#4) Your Online Customer Community Provides Transparency

During the evaluation and selection phases of the buying process, potential buyers don’t like to feel like they’re dealing with a company that has something to hide. When you grant them access to parts of your online customer community, you build trust by giving prospective customers insight into how your organization works.

Obviously the level of transparency a company chooses to display to prospective customers in their online customer communities will vary based on your community structure and content plan, but here are a couple of ways to show transparency:

• Access to executives. Often, some of the higher level positions in your company will blog regularly in your private customer community. Prospects will appreciate having access to those posts and insights. You might even consider including an “Ask an Executive” discussion board in your prospect community.
• Access to the social product enhancement process. Though your prospects wouldn’t be able to participate in your crowdsourced feedback, being able to see the process and recognize the fact that user feedback is being taken into consideration for product improvement demonstrates your company’s commitment to customers.

The Proof is in the Sales Numbers

Don’t just take our word for it though—a 2012 study from the University of Michigan took a closer look at the sales difference for a company who made the choice to build their own online community, rather than rely on existing public social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn. What they found is a phenomenon they’re referring to as “social dollars,” which amounted to a 19% average increase in customer expenditures after joining the online community. What would this type of revenue increase mean for your company?

Online Customer Community Takeaway

By welcoming your prospects into your private online customer community, you can help take some of the stress and risk out of the purchasing process. The support network, transparency, and ability to make human connections can all serve to establish trust and confidence, which in turn makes your prospect more likely to invest in your product or service.

 

When our clients come to us to improve their sales planning processes, they often have a misdirected focus. Their sales teams are spending too much time “working around the opportunities.” The key to driving qualified pipeline, however, is focusing your team on the territory, not opportunities.

A sales franchise mindset demands your reps work smarter. They build pipeline at the territory level and they’re more accountable for the forecast. When your sales team sees their own territories as their own business unit, the level of building pipeline is elevated.

Your ask to your reps in territory reviews should be, “What is your franchise doing right now to generate pipeline?”

With a sales franchise mindset, your reps own the plan to make the plan. They’re committing pipeline activities that target specific accounts (e.g., here are my marketing activities, the events I’m holding, here’s why these activities will generate pipeline, etc. . .). Because they’re building pipeline at the territory level, they have a better understanding of what their franchises will produce. As a result, they’ll be able to better articulate their ask of “the brand” (the sales leadership, marketing, etc. . . ), to define how the organization’s resources can plug into the plan. By working higher, sellers can also better evaluate the risk of their pipeline and, as a sales team you can take steps early to mitigate any problems.

The pipeline generation process is one of the greatest areas for sales managers to add value. As a sales leader, help your sellers build the activities needed to develop qualified pipeline:

• Analyze the territory white space and the new accounts to be pursued
• Analyze the untapped space within an account
• Determine the areas of greatest opportunity to build pipeline

Once you know the gaps, you will know how to collaborate with the rep to move pipeline through the sales process. If your sellers see their territories as their own business unit, they are (1) accountable for the forecast and (2) the planning process becomes a way for you to get the mind share of the sales rep and plug into their plan.

There’s no scrambling to close deals that aren’t ready. Your territory and account reviews are more productive and you’ll have fewer surprises at the end of the quarter. You are a better sales leader because you leverage your own line-of-sight, while coaching your reps to make their own “sales franchises” successful. Read more about developing a sales franchise mindset for your sales team, by downloading our guide below.

This blog post is part three of a series of video blogs about the impact of technology on sales. See part one here and part two here. 

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!

After our conversation, I realized how much  of the technology we were using I had taken for granted. Not only was I about to greatly improve the amount of activity I could produce within a day, but I was working with a colleague who was half way across the country as if he were sitting next to me in my cube. That got me wondering: What other changes in technology have had the biggest impact on how we communicate and operate in sales? I’ve interviewed a few of our sales veterans to see what changes in sales technology they feel have made the biggest impact within the past decade.

The third and final video is of Matt Fitts, Director of Channel Sales.

Better Than You Believe (A Note to the Sales Leader) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Your salespeople are better than you think they are. They deserve more credit than you sometimes give them.

The job your salespeople do is more difficult that you think it is. Selling is more difficult now than when you did it. It’s much more challenging, and in some ways, it isn’t the same at all.

Developing relationships isn’t what it used to be. It’s tougher and the need to create more value makes opening new relationships a serious challenge. They are trying harder than you might believe, and they need your help.

It’s tougher to create opportunities than it used to be because people (and companies) are overworked, understaffed, stressed out, and supremely risk averse. Getting the decision to move forward isn’t an easy commitment to obtain. They need your support.

Your salespeople are challenged beyond belief when it comes to pricing. Your margin is under constant and continuous assault. Your competitors are part of that margin pressure. And so are your clients (existing and dream clients). Capturing the value they need to capture isn’t easy—if it ever was. They need more help.

Your salespeople are better than you believe them to be. But there still not good enough. Your salespeople need more help than you think they do. They need more training, more development, and much more coaching. They need you to invest more time and energy in helping them to succeed if you want them to produce bigger and better results.

Your better than you believe you are, too. And you are going to need bring your game up a few notches to lead your sales force on the path you have chosen for them.

Author: Glen Gow

Because buyers are self-educating early in the sales process, the traditional relationship between buyer and sales rep has been turned completely on its head. Today’s buyer knows what products and services are out there, and what people are using to solve their problems. With all of this information at his or her fingertips, buyers have done their research and made their decisions long before a sales rep even enters the picture.

Because of this role reversal, today’s sales reps need to be extremely well-prepared when they finally talk to the buyer. If they aren’t, they will quickly find that the buyer knows more than they do–which makes your company look bad. And it’s marketing’s job to educate the sales reps and provide them with the information they need to impress the buyer and show thought leadership.

Marketing Has What Sales Reps Need

As a marketer, you know what your target buyer wants, how he or she behaves, and what he or she knows. If you’re using marketing automation, you’ve probably got more data and insight than you know what to do with.

Feeding market research to your sales reps is wonderful, but it’s not enough. If your sales reps hope to talk about products and needs on the same level as today’s buyer, they need to not only be well-informed, but socially savvy. As a marketer, you have the big data and insight your sales reps need to keep up-to-date, establish thought leadership, and connect with well-informed buyers.

You can empower your sales reps by arming them with the same or better information than the buyer. Marketers can also help teach sales reps how to use social channels (like LinkedIn and Twitter) to engage with buyers, curate great content, and establish thought leadership.

Follow the Buyer on His Journey

Most buyers put a lot of thought into the purchase process. Once your sales team is armed with the right information, they can connect with buyers at each step of a 3-stage process, which is often called the Buyer’s Journey.

1) Trigger

The buyer’s journey begins with what is known as the Trigger stage. Something has to compel the buyer to look for a solution to his problem. This is typically in the form of a problem or a pain point. With the right info, the sales rep can be the one to help the buyer find that solution. By providing the buyer with content related to solving a problem (e.g. an article about a new tech trend, a success story), the sales rep can spark the buyer’s attention and compel the buyer to start looking for a new solution to his or her problem. As a marketer make sure you are not only providing valuable content to your sales rep, but you are also training them on messaging and how to use that content.

2) Research

Once the buyer absorbs information during the trigger stage, he or she starts doing research. The sales rep should become as knowledgeable about customer problems, solutions, and the stage of the competitive landscape as possible. It’s not the job of the sales team to conduct research to keep up with buyers; it’s marketing’s job to provide the critical information to the sales team. This can be done through doing detailed buyer persona and buyer journey exercises to come up with a content plan that addresses questions at each stage of the buyer’s research. Armed with the right data, the sales rep will be ready to talk on the same level as the buyer.

3) Purchase

Once the buyer reaches the third and final stage of the Buyer’s Journey – the Purchase stage –  your sales rep should be armed to the teeth with data and insight. The sales rep needs to position himself as a knowledgeable expert, not just a salesperson. One surefire way to establish thought leadership and be seen as a trusted adviser is for marketing to provide the sales rep with great content that demonstrates a thorough understanding of the buyer’s needs. Also encourage your sales reps to become thought leaders themselves through blogging, being active on social channels, and content creation.

By following the buyer on his journey and soaking up all of the same information, your sales rep will be more than ready to prove his expertise and make the sale.

Social Selling Takes Teamwork

Social selling can help you establish equal footing with today’s buyer, but you’ve got to get sales on board before that can happen. Sales and marketing need to work side-by-side to make social selling a success.

In order to make social selling work, the following needs to happen:

• Marketing needs to train reps that are open to social media

This is simple. You won’t do yourself any good trying to convince a salesperson stuck in his ways to add Tweeting to his list of duties — it’s just not going to happen. You need to train sales reps who are open to using social media in a professional capacity. Provide sales reps with a social media rules-of-engagement policy so that they know what they can and can’t tweet, and do a formal training.

• Marketers need to share data and insight with sales reps on a regular basis

In order for sales reps to connect with social users, they need quick summaries of the big data you have mined. The sales team doesn’t have time to conduct research and comb through all the information available to marketing. Marketing needs to feed them just the right amount of information that can help them move buyers through the buyer’s journey. Set up monthly meetings to go over details. Also, many CRMs now have integration functionality with social sites so that data can available directly in a prospect’s contact record.

• Sales reps need to provide insight too

Marketing might have all the big data and social media skills, but sales reps have an insider view of buyers, their problems, and common solutions. Sales reps should share their own observations, helping marketing fine-tune the information they summarize and provide. This is highly useful, especially as marketers craft messaging and create relevant content.

Set Sales Up for Success

Today’s buyer is more informed than ever before, but sales reps still have the power to convince and convert. 

By helping your sales reps present themselves in the right light, guiding them in establishing relationships and authority, and feeding them the information they need to contribute to the conversation, marketing can set sales up for success.

If you want to find out how you can use big data and social selling to supercharge your sales team and boost revenue, I encourage you to download my latest book, “Revenue and the CMO: How Marketing Will Impact Revenue Through Big Data & Social Selling.“ It’s a fun read and chock-full of actionable info that any brand can use to connect with and sell to today’s buyer.

---

Marketers: Supercharge the Sales Team with Big Data and Social Selling was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

As B2B lead generation is rapidly turning into a purely online endeavor, some marketers are having a little problem with adjusting to the differences with traditional and digital marketing.

For instance, when it comes to leads, traditional marketers would often wait for an optimum response time (surveys indicate it to be 31 hours); however for online leads, it’s a different story. Leads that come from page visits or subscriptions forms online are live– meaning they require a faster, more engaged response than traditional leads from phone calls and events.

To be safe, here are 3 rules to follow:

Rule 1: Never make online leads wait

MarketingProfs calls this one The Taco Stand Rule.

It’s like you’re selling tacos and a customer walked up to the counter. He’s been thinking about tacos all day and could not wait to eat one. Now, you wouldn’t say “We’ll get back to you within 24 hours with your taco“. The buyer is already right in front of you, so you’d give him what he wants.

If you make leads wait, they will most likely move on to the next and find one that could satisfy their needs. Your best chance of reaching these leads is the moment when they identify themselves as a prospect.

Rule 2: The need for speed

CRM platforms can feed online leads to your reps in real time. But not all online leads are created equal, so you may have to work with your marketing team to distinguish the high quality leads from the poor leads. That’s where the element of speed is crucial.

Again, because online leads require immediate response, your team should be able to handle the task of responding to each lead based on type: inquiries, requests for data, warm leads, hot leads and whatnot. You could track response times and make reps accountable for speedy follow-up, or adjust your compensation plan to create incentives for real-time responses.

Rule 3: Better to be quick than accurate

Every response from a lead indicates a small timeframe window for marketers to take hold of the action. That principle allows one to prioritize the quick response over accuracy, because you can’t spend precious time making a response perfect while time is ticking away.  You can’t afford to make your response later, when it might be too late.

Strike whilst the iron is hot. If a prospect gets a response from you (even if it’s not perfect, just a good one), there will be no need for the prospect to start the process all over again with another option.

This content originally appeared at Callbox Blog.

The concept of sales going up with a higher price is counter intuitive. It goes against the basic concept of price and demand taught in school. It defies the ‘law’ of demand. But it is real. Here are a few examples:

• I wrote about a post about doubling price with no decrease in sales and a dramatic increase in profits in A Pricing Lesson from the Concorde it’s one of my most popular posts.
• Here is a story of doubling the price of software and selling ten times as many copies.
• Another software product originally selling at $3K was doubled in price with no impact to sales volume.
• An entrepreneur quadrupled subscription prices with no impact on unit sales, effectively finding a 4x sales increase with the same demand..

But the question we need to ask us is Why? Increasing price is fantastic for any business because the additional revenue goes straight to the bottom line. If you have been reading this blog, you know I am a fan of leading with value rather than discounts. Not that I every advocate abusive pricing, which is simply a form of bad profits.

Back to the question – Why is it that customers are willing to buy more products at a higher price? The answer is straightforward: price communicates value. Maybe we can be bolder: price establishes value in the mind of customers.

Imagine I told you I just found a wonderful whiskey that sells for $5 a bottle. It is not credible. Your first thought may be that I don’t even know what is good whiskey (and you’d be right, but that’s another story). Conversely, when you are at a restaurant and you see a bottle of wine priced at $150. you immediately assume it is of very high quality.

You can charge more money for a product and see higher sales when your price and the value you deliver to customers is not aligned. In other words, when you are leaving money on the table.

How do you know if you are in this situation? The first and most common clue is when the price for your products or services is determined using a cost plus model. You have a target profit margin that gets added to your total costs and that becomes the price. This happens often when finance is in charge of pricing. The alternative is value-based pricing.

Building a value-based pricing model requires understanding your customers, what aspects of your product or service they value, and how they quantify that value. Often times, the value customers put in a product or service is determined by pricing anchors. Pricing anchors are prices in the mind of the customer that provide a range of costs for a product, a service or to solve a problem.

Pricing anchors are the reference points customers use to judge the relative price of your products. In a future post, I will explore how you can set these anchors using techniques such as Goldilocks Pricing.

For now, imagine you need to replace the furnace in your home. You may think a furnace is going to cost you somewhere between $700. and $1200. (these are the numbers that came to my mind) Whether those figures reflect the range of prices in the market is irrelevant. When you call the repairmen you will judge the price based on the range established by these anchors.

As in the post about the pricing lesson of the Concorde, when your price and the expected price are misaligned, you can make a correction without an impact to demand. You can also do this with products that don’t have a strong price elasticity.

Understanding your customer segments, their anchors, their values and their price expectations is fundamental for value-based pricing.

Let’s look at another example: As told in the book Playing to Win , when P&G was re-launching the Olay brand they did test on three prices:

• At $12.99 the sales were good. It was affordable to the mass market.
• At $15.99 sales tanked. Not expensive enough to be considered a premium cosmetic for the mass market, and to cheap to be a credible quality product for the prestige shopper
• At $18.99 sales were great. A good value but not too cheap for premium shoppers, yet credible as premium and still affordable for Mass market

Launching at $18.99, Olay became a $2.4 billion dollar business for P&G with double digit growth and fantastic margins.

Pricing can make or break a business. I want to suggest another resolution for the new year (the first one is at the end of this post): understand the value model for your products and services, and use it to review your pricing strategy.

SALES QUESTION:

"I know asking the right sales questions will help close more sales, but what's the one sales question I should avoid?"

SalesBuzz Answer:

You are correct in saying that asking better sales questions will help you close more sales. And yes, there are a lot of sales questions that should be retired from the field, however, the one that is and has been my biggest pet peeve for a while is when a sales person asks a prospect:

"What Keeps You Up At Night?"

WAIT, WHY IS THAT "BAD"?

I think this is one of the WORST sales questions to ask and here's why:

It gives the appearance that you, the sales person, are simply fishing for a hot button.

So in other words, it makes me, the prospect, feel like saying:

"you really don't know how you can help me; you're just hoping that whatever I say, you'll be able to pounce on. Is that it?"

THE ANATOMY OF A SUCCESSFUL SALES QUESTION

Understand that smart sales questions lead to predictable results.

You may think that you have no idea how a prospect will respond to one of your sales questions, however, if you ask the right sales question, at the right time, for the right reason & purpose, no matter how they respond, it will be something you can work with (the key though is as mentioned: right question, right time, right reason & purpose).

If you simply fire off sales questions as they come to you and with no real rhyme or reason other than it "felt right at the moment", you are going to be dealing with a lot more needless stalls, false objections and "red herrings".

BUT IT'S WORKED FOR ME IN THE PAST

One thing you should know about me, and that is I am a big believer of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule. So if it's "working" for you, by all means, don't change.

But I would ask what your definition of "working" is. Are you at or above quota for the Month/Quarter/Year? If so, OK. But if you are not, and sales is become more frustrating and less enjoyable with each and every sales call you make, then a simple tweak in the sales questions you are asking may be all the change you need in order to make 2014 one of the best sales years you've had in a long time.

There has been a shift created by social media and the sales process greater than the valuation of Bitcoin or any stock. I have found that great salespeople share some common traits -- desire to change is usually not one of them. Marketers love change; salespeople often loathe it and understandably so.

read more

Sales Leaders have experienced a lot change in the past 10 years.  Some have embraced it and some are still in denial.  This blog represents a test.  Look at the top 10 innovations and ask yourself each question below.  Is your team embracing each trend or fighting them?

As you go through the ten, grade yourself as a leader.  Have you embraced, or been skeptical about each of them?  The leaders that embrace innovation will get the next promotion.  They will outpace their peers.

The Top Innovation Improvement Resources will help you improve in each area listed below.  Download the tool to learn how to implement each and enable your sales team.  Assign an innovation area to each person on your team.  Ask them to become an expert in that category.  Have them share best practices on how to become more effective with the team.

 

Top 10 Sales Innovations

1. The Smart Phone: Are you utilizing content that is mobile friendly?  Are you capturing cell phone numbers for leads, prospects and customers?  Are your systems and training mobile enabled?

2. The Tablet: Do you provide content that addresses your buyer’s market problems?  Or is your buyer reading someone else’s content on their tablet?  

3. CRM: Did you spend a lot of money on what amounts to a forecasting tool?  Or are you driving revenue because you have gained 100% adoption? Does your team understand the value of CRM?  Do you?

4. Social Selling: Is your profile top tier?  Do you have a plan to connect to more of your target buyers? Are you getting referred to those target buyers?  Or are you waiting to see if this is another fad. 

5. Content Marketing: Are you leading the charge or is this too much work?  Is your content accessible, customer focused, and organized properly?   

6. Customer Aligned Sales Process: Do you sell the way the customer wants to buy?  Or are you selling the way you want to sell?

7. Buyer Process Mapping:  Is your team able to spot where a buyer is in their buying journey?  Can they address questions the buyer is asking before they actually ask them?

8. Marketing Automation: A larger percentage of the buying process takes place before a rep is engaged.  Do you have visibility to what buyers are doing during this time?  Are you making investments and qualifying based on how buyers interact with your website?

9. Buyer Personas: Do you know your buyers better than the competition? 

10. Insight Selling: Are you differentiating early in the sales cycle?  Or is your team still product pitching and commoditizing your offering?

You could argue that a couple of these existed prior to 10 years ago.  They might have, but were not widely adopted.  The best sales organizations have been early adopters of these innovations.  They are stealing mindshare from you right now. 

Top 5 Most Obsolete Sales Practices:

• Solution Selling - developed in the 80s when hair bands were popular.

• Cold Calling – using a more strategic approach is probably a better use of time.

• Relying on a PC – everything a rep did on a PC should now be mobile enabled. Productivity dips every time a sales person visits the office.

• Hiring for tenure and industry experience – the tenure scale has tipped.  Being tenured can actually be a bad thing.  Knowing a lot might mean wanting to learn a little. 

• Closing techniques - buyers now have more control than ever.  In complex sales, you don’t close them.  You help them navigate their buyer’s journey to a logical conclusion.

What do all of these tell us?  With each new innovation sales is becoming less about art and more about science.  Sales people should be enabled with real time information at their fingerprints.  If you are still in the art world, you are falling behind. 

If you fall behind the competition, it will be difficult to catch up.  Innovation continues to accelerate and your competency gap is widening. Start now by downloading the Top 10 Innovation Improvement Resource Tool.

 

Author: Scott Gruher

Follow @ScottGruher

Follow Sales Benchmark Index @MakingTheNumber

If you enjoyed this post, never miss one again by subscribing your Email Here and/or subscribing to the RSS.

 

“Most people do no listen with the intent to understand,
they listen with the intent to reply.” ~Stephen R. Covey

 

Perhaps when you were a child, someone in your life tried to emphasize the importance of listening by reminding you that we each have two ears and one mouth. According to the well-known saying, we have two ears and one mouth in order that we might listen twice as much as we speak. There’s a lot of truth to that idea, and never more so than when a buyer raises objections during the sales process.

It is important to remember that when a buyer raises objections, they are not complaining, but are asking you, the sales professional, for help.

A common mistake that sales professionals make is to believe they know where a buyer is going with an objection before the person has even finished speaking. The temptation is to be formulating an answer to a question that hasn’t yet been asked. When you are busy putting together an answer in your head, you are no longer fully listening. In doing this, you risk losing your connection with the buyer (people can tell when they are not being listened to!) And, if you jump the gun and assume you fully understand what a buyer is asking before clarifying anything with them, you risk even more.

Rushing to respond to an objection before fleshing it out is asking for trouble.

If you assume to understand what is troubling a buyer based on one small objection and hurry to respond to what they have (barely) said, you could very likely create new and bigger problems. Here’s how that works: The buyer starts to mention an objection and feeling like you’ve heard that particular remark a thousand times before, you all but cut them off with what you believe is the pertinent information they need to alleviate their worries.

But, you could be wrong…because you don’t actually know what their worries really are…because you didn’t finish listening! So, by trying to solve a problem that you don’t fully understand, you may inadvertently plant the seed for more concerns and objections!

The way to avoid this trap is to cut yourself off, internally, when you are tempted to rush in. Instead, ask your buyer a question like “Would you tell me more about that?” when they raise an objection. Everyone, everywhere likes to be listened to and a buyer with objections will respond positively to a sales professional who makes an effort to understand their concerns in depth vs. assuming they have all the answers.

Buyers aren’t making things up when they raise objections. They have reasons for their concerns that are unique to them and it is your job to understand where they are coming from. Encourage your buyers to tell you more so that you can finish listening.

SUMMARY: To be bold in a successful way means to first and foremost be bold with oneself. This type of boldness is rooted in overcoming our knee-jerk reactions and training ourselves to embrace discomfort of many kinds, including the pain of keeping one’s ears open and mouth shut!

I am going through the most exciting time in my life and I couldn’t be happier. Not only am I expecting a baby boy in one month, but I just became an aunt for the first time. Meeting my nephew Luke the day he was born was amazing and I know the same will be true when our little one arrives soon.

Along with this excitement about becoming a mom and an aunt comes some thoughts of nervousness at the same time. I find myself asking things like: What if I haven’t bought everything the baby needs? Will the 500 newborn diapers I have be enough to get us through week one? How will I tell if the baby is too hot or too cold or just right?

This excitement and anxiousness is similar to some of the emotions associated with taking on a new job, like becoming a sales manager for the first time. You are overwhelmed with congratulatory remarks and can’t wait to move forward to the next step of your career. At the same time, you think to yourself: Oh crap! I hope I am good at this! What if I am bad at it and my reps don’t respect me? With this in mind I came across an interesting article, Advice for brand-new sales managers (from 16 leaders who’ve been there), where sales leaders I look up to in the industry share advice they wish they could have given themselves when they became sales managers for the first time.

Great advice is included in this article and I highly recommend taking a read. It prompted me to think about the advice I would give to a new sales manager and here’s what I can offer:

Don’t get frustrated if your team doesn’t operate how you did as a rep. One of the first frustrations I had as a sales manager was getting aggravated when reps didn’t follow the same process I did. Be open-minded and understand that everyone has their way of getting the job done. You need to be patient. If they aren’t as organized as you, or if they don’t make as many calls as you did, just remember that you are in a management role for a reason: to provide guidance and coaching to make your team better. Work with your reps and don’t force your methodology on them, but do coach them with it and show them how it will help them succeed. You will be surprised at how they adopt your methodologies while respecting you at the same time.

Don’t be too nice. Odds are you are in the position you are in right now because you are a nice person that everyone likes on top of having a go-getter attitude. You have most likely always been the first to lead a team – from the time you had your first group school project to leading your high school sports team to the finals. While you should use this to manage a high performing team, just remember to hold your ground so you don’t get walked all over. If one of your reps is underperforming, give them a warning if needed. If they are consistently showing up late to meetings, call them out. You have to walk the fine line of being liked while also making sure you are meeting and exceeding the goals that your boss has set for you.

Don’t let micro-managing get in the way of leading. I won’t be the first to admit that sometimes a little micro-management is necessary when goals aren’t consistently being met, or if you have an employee that you just need to keep an extra eye on for various reasons. However, what is more important is that you gain respect from your team by hearing them out before pointing fingers and scolding them for not hitting their numbers. For instance, when you see low activity numbers or goals not being hit, ask them to help you understand what obstacles are getting in the way and ask questions that will lead them to think strategically about the situation. Try to offer them tools like special reports to help them in keeping on track to hit their goals instead of being overbearing about it.

One month to go until I become a mom for the first time! It’s exciting and a bit scary at the same time. If you are a new sales manager and feel excited but a little nervous at the same time, don’t get too overwhelmed. Focus on the fact that you are in the role you are in because you’ve earned it. Now, go make it happen!

As the year draws to a close, it’s important to assess what happened and, more importantly, what you can learn from it to help you gain an advantage next year.

A question I believe strongly in is asking yourself is, “What has changed in my job this past year?”

Ask it with particular focus in looking to identify what are the things you’re now doing differently than you did at the beginning of the year.

Surprising to most people is when you really take the time to think and examine the year, you will uncover a number of items you’re doing differently.

To help you do this, go back and scan emails you sent a year ago. Scan through documents you sent customers.  Look through them to see what’s changed.

A key reason why I value spending time reviewing things from a year ago is sometimes there are things you will find that were quite good and for some reason you’re not doing now.

Why did you stop?  Do you need to start doing them again?

The more we can learn from our own experiences, the more adept we become at being able to handle rapid changes in the marketplace.

If your style of selling, including how you communicate and how you build and deliver presentations, isn’t changing at least 10% a year, I’ll argue you’re going to fall behind.

Example I’ll share is a year ago I didn’t use text messaging to communicate with clients.  My belief was texting is personal in nature and only between people who know each other well.

Today, I text with several clients, as they’ve expressed to me that’s how they prefer to communicate.  I could have chosen to remain old school, but instead I shifted my thinking.

Another example is the use of the cloud for file sharing.  A year ago, I didn’t use it with clients except in a rare situation. Today, I use it frequently.

What processes have you changed? What processes do you need to change?

If you can’t identify things you’re doing differently than a year ago, then you’re falling behind.

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

That’s a quote from Tony Hughes, author of The Joshua Principle. We learned about the book from Steve Richard…who also shared with us the analogy this post is based on. Since there are no professional standards in sales, we see lots of personas. Two popular ones could be classified as Librarians and Cowboys.

Here are their differences:

 

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Last year around this time in a video titled “The One Thing“, in which I challenged you to avoid the temptation of pursuing whole changes and resolutions going into the New Year, and instead focus on one thing. One thing that will measurably improve you execution, you’re selling, and when you master that one thing, build further from there.

Well it’s a year later, time for a reality check, let’s see how you, or we, did on that one thing, what worked, what didn’t, and why. If you did take on the challenge, how did you do?

If you did not accomplish what you set out to do, there are some things to keep in mind. If you gave it a real effort, made some progress, but are not where you want to be, that’s ok, as long as you keep going, don’t settle for “some progress”, go for your goal. If it is taking longer than anticipated try to understand why, and they adjust accordingly. At the times the goal is valid, but the means we choose is not the best. Step back, focus on your goal, the positive impact it will have on your success, and see if there is an alternate path. Don’t mistake with changing your course with changing goals or coming up short. In fact as a sales pro, at times the best thing we can do for prospects is show them how they can achieve their objective though an alternate way they hadn’t considered. If the goal is valid and really key to helping you sell better, stick with it, experiment, and apply the learning, even when it is a result of failed approach.

If you did succeed, congratulations, pat yourself on the back, reap the rewards, and then ask: “What next?”

With all the changes and continuous challenges facing sellers today, you can’t stop and rest on your laurels, you need to use you success as a springboard to your next conquest, right after you examine some elements of how you succeeded. How long did it take, what were some anticipated hurdles you overcame, what were some of the unanticipated that if proactively used moving forward will positively impact your journey.

When did you accomplish success, four weeks, three months, most of the year? Understand the elements, just as you would elements of a sale you want to repeat to ensure you succeed again and again.

Once you have an understanding of the concrete elements, it is time to look forward, and move forward. Meaning decide some things you would want to change in 2014. While you may want to look at more than one, you also don’t want to go crazy. While I will ask you to focus on one at a time, you are now in a position to plan out more through the year; as you accomplish one, roll in to the next, orderly, methodically, each building on the last, setting up the next. Just like a sale, just like planning your sales, like a process, for sales success.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Recently, I've been working with a client to analyze their customer data.  They sell both directly and indirectly and the effort required end-user level detail.  Their recent shift to new finance systems and a sales restructure created added complexity.  This data was key to the client making sound strategic decisions for future growth. 

They’ve done well to make sense of jumbled data but at great cost.  The time spent on manual fixes and data restructuring is forever lost.  As a result, they're considering adding the position of Data Steward to Sales Ops.

World-class Sales Ops teams have access to reliable, timely data.  Their data and reports are viewed as the “truth” across the company.  On the other hand, bad data leads to bad decisions, lost productivity or both.  The adage of “Garbage-In-Garbage-Out” is as true today as ever.

More Data Does Not Mean Better Data

Making better decisions in our data-rich world is expected.  Almost everything needed by your boss depends on rock-solid data.  Make sure you are doing all you can to capitalize on good data by Clicking here to get your Guide to Sales Data Governance.

Fact - B2B companies that effectively use data analytics deliver 5-6% more profit.  Fact – data-centered decisions in Marketing provide ROI’s of 15-20% above the norm.   Data analytics by themselves won’t deliver revenue. The data needs to be correct, accessible and timely.

Great analysis of flawed data will blow up in your face.  So, in addition to good data, your analyst needs to be highly competent.  Take the first steps towards uncover the pot of gold hidden in your data:

1. Determine the problem you are trying to solve.  Are you trying to generate more revenue from new customers?  Are you unsure if you have the right number of sales reps?  Do you want to understand which specific rep activities lead to more profit?

2. Identify the data needed.  Do you want more customers like your current “ideal customer”?  If launching a new product, who is most likely to buy the new offering?  Consider all possible sources of information.

3. Pinpoint who “owns” the data you need.  This will lead you to others inside your company and/or to third-party providers.  You may own some of the data needed.  However, there’s a critical nuance here.  The “owner” of the data may not be the only one that can alter or adjust that data.

4. Ascertain who can alter or influence that data.  Finance may “own” the order-to-cash function for the organization.  Taking a transaction from order-entry to final invoice and collection has many facets.  Can customer service issue credits to an account?  Who can open new accounts and how do they determine pricing?  Who’s responsible for accounts getting “rolled-up” to a customer hierarchy?  Does everyone recognize revenue in the same way based on the same “triggers”?

5. Find someone that can represent sales in data creation, flow and access.  You may have someone on your team that can serve in this role.  You may need to go outside to find a data steward.  Data without governance or stewardship will lead to bad decisions. 

Let’s say sales rep “A” identifies a new opportunity.  They create a new customer record in your CRM for Acme, Inc.  The rep creates an opportunity of $100,000 potential for your product.  At the same time, someone from a subsidiary of Acme contacts inside sales and places a telephone order for $10,000.  Who ties these two things events together?  How does this affect billing, discounts, rates, etc.?  What role did marketing have in the effort?  How does the linkage of the data influence conclusions you draw about Acme?

Sales Urgency AND Data Understanding

Data stewardship is a detailed and complicated task to tackle.  Big warning signs will tell you a data steward is needed.  Is there frequent disagreement on the precise definition of a “customer”?  How much time do you waste dealing with “exceptions” to the compensation plan?  Is sales busy handling billing problems when they could be closing deals?  Like any tough problem, you have to start somewhere. 

 Assign or hire someone that will be your “Data Defender” for sales.  Help everyone see that sound data is central to future growth.  You need buy-in from Finance, IT, Operations, Marketing, Customer Service and Sales. 

Your data steward has to work well cross-functionally.  Find someone that has the understanding of IT with the urgency of Sales.  They’ll need to work with data users to ensure the right data is available.  They will protect you from bad data and enable you to make good decisions. Download the Guide to Sales Data Governance today.

 Author: Patrick Seidell

Follow @pseidell

Follow @MakingTheNumber

If you enjoyed this post, never miss one again by subscribing your Email Here and/or subscribing to the RSS Here. Comments are welcome below.

In a world where Social Media is constantly changing it’s interesting to see its journey from 2008 to present day. The roots of social media stretch far deeper than you might imagine, we have already discussed the social media stats in 2013 here. It has effectively changed everything we thought we knew about the Internet (online communications), Marketing and the overall perspective of brand messaging!

Let’s have a look at the Visual below

We just cannot ignore these key statistics from the Infographic which just made us go “Wow Social Media is huge”. At Present there are 1.7 Billion Social media users worldwide, that means 1/4th of the population uses social media.

Then and Now

In 2008, it began with 130 Million Facebook users and now it is at 1.2 Billion users that mean most of the population on social media uses Facebook and is valued at $100 Billion which is 2/3rd of the grand total of $150 Billion for all social networks. Impressive right? Followed by LinkedIn in 2008 at 30 Million users and now in 2013 at 260 Million users and is valued at $26.6 Billion. Lastly followed by Twitter it had a mere 1 Million users and now in 2013 has a whopping 225 Million users and valued at $24 Billion.

Initially there were very few social networks namely Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then entered an array of social networks Google+ (300 Million), Instagram (150 Million) and Pinterest (70 Million). All other social networks have bloomed but as we can observe, but Myspace looked extremely promising in 2008 with 115 Million users but now only has 36 Million users!

Social Media Milestones

In 2008 Barack Obama was the 1st president in History of USA, to run a political social media campaign. Facebook had surpassed Myspace in terms of users and Facebook being a new entrant then compared to Myspace. In 2009 Twitter the micro-blogging site had changed the meaning of news and Journalism. When the news of plane landing in the Hudson River was broadcast to the world by a regular citizen and not a journalist! Facebook Launched the like button a new way for brands to map their content metrics on this social platform, do you think was this the beginning of number obsession?

In 2010 Facebook had surpassed Google as being the most viewed website in U.S. Here started the trend of visual content which exploded with the launch of Pinterest and Instagram. In 2011 Social media changed the entire world stage by being used as a social change ‘Arab Spring’. Google launched its own social network Google+ and became the part of the social network bandwagon; it is still struggling till date!

In 2012 the reach of social media took to new heights, literally! Astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted images from space and Red-bull used social media to drive its stratosphere campaign. Facebook reached the 1 billion mark here and shelved that many U.S dollars to attain Instagram! This year Twitter has joined the IPO party, the very 1st day its share prices rose.

Videos are the new way to share content so twitter unveils Vine a video tool which captures and shares videos duration of 6seconds, Instagram one-upped them by releasing Instagram videos which were of a longer duration 13 seconds! We have seen the growth from content to visual impact and now videos! And lot’s of new trends like political campaigns, social causes etc. Social media has changed the meaning of online communication and wears a lot of different media hats with these social networks. Makes you wonder what is in store in 2014?

Source: Hootsuite just released this very good infographic that retraces the journey of social media since 2008. And this infographic even maps the journey of Hootsuite from 2008 with just 3 employees to present with 250 employees and 8 million users!

As 2013 comes to a close, all us content marketers are busy compiling our year end lists, aren’t we? It’s a great time to look back at the past 12 months, and reflect on the lessons we’ve learned.

I wanted to end this amazing year with some inspiration.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of 50 quotes for you, from the top social media marketers around the globe. May their words of wisdom inspire your profits now and into the new year…

50 Inspirational Marketing Quotes from Wishpond

50 Marketing Quotes from 2013

1. “Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” Ann Handley, MarketingProfs

2. “Content is fire, social media is gasoline.” Jay Baer, Convince and Convert

3. “Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.” Michael Brenner, SAP

4. “Content is King but engagement is Queen, and the lady rules the house!” Mari Smith, Mari Smith

5. “Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world you are one.” Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute

6. “You can never go wrong by investing in communities and the human beings within them.” Pam Moore, Pam Moore the Marketing Nut

7. “Don’t settle: Don’t finish crappy books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.” Chris Brogan

8. “Content is the reason search began in the first place.” Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing

9. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist

10. “Content: there is no easy button.” Scott Abel

11. “ Less is more. Keeping it simple takes time and effort.” Jeff Bullas

12. “Content is anything that adds value to the reader”s life.” Avinash Kaushik, Google

13. “Your top of the funnel content must be intellectually divorced from your product but emotionally wed to it.” Joe Chernov, Hubspot

14. “You can’t be everything to everyone but you can be something to someone.” Drew Davis, Brandscaping

15. “The future of content marketing is in your hands.” David Hahn, LinkedIn

16. “If you build it…you may still need Google AdWords.” Jennifer Mesenbrink, EditorThink

17. “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” Andrew Davis

18. “Leverage the strength that you have: that no one else can be you.” Todd Wheatland

19. “Social media creates communities, not markets.” Don Schultz

20. “Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake.” Chris Baggott

21. “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.” Seth Godin

22. “Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing.” Mike Volpe

23. “Failure is an option” Matthew Schwartz

24. “Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.” Michael Hyatt

25. “Focus on the present…It”s the best gift you can give yourself.” Carrie Kerpen

26. “Just as you don’t need to be on every single TV channel, I don’t believe a brand needs to be on every single social media one in a big way.” Shiv Singh

27. “Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology” Brian Solis

28. “Nothing begets creativity like constraints.” Christopher Mims

29. “Sell-sell-sell sales methods simply do not work on social media.” Kim Garst

30. “Strong customer relationships drive sales, sustainability, and growth.” Tom Cates

31. “As social media grows and matures, showing a return becomes critical.” Heidi Cohen

32. “You can’t just place a few “Buy” buttons on your website and expect your visitors to buy.” Neil Patel

33. “Getting the Like is easy. It”s a light action. Anything else requires trust.” Jon Loomer

34. “You can’t push your sales messages on your fans too often.” Andrea Vahl

35. “Incorporate easy email marketing strategies with your Facebook efforts to see bigger results (aka profits!).” Amy Porterfield

36. “When people feel insecure about something, they look around for validation. Show them that other people trust you. “ Francisco Rosales, Social Mouths

37. “Word of mouth can be as important, if not more important, for neighborhood businesses as traditional advertising.” Ekaterina Walter

38. “On average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy, but only 2 out 10 will read the rest.” Brian Clark, Copyblogger

39. “Empower your readers with social sharing buttons.” Mike Stelzner, Social Media Examiner

40. “Start an editorial calendar that everyone involved in your blog (writers, editors, marketing team, etc.) can access.” Kristi Hines

41. “Make the prospect a more informed buyer with content.” Robert Simon, Four Seasons Hotels

42. “Too often, feeling intimidated becomes our excuse not to be awesome.” Scott Stratten

43. “The importance of gratitude is never forgotten.” Deborah Lee

44. “Going viral is not an outcome; it”s a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn”t. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanity.” Lori Taylor

45. “Our digital future is about enabling better productivity and decisions making to enjoy a better quality of life.” Yacine Baroudi

46. “This is a learning process and sometimes you have to fall in order to learn things.” Christine Korda

47. “Successful companies in social media function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners than as traditional advertisers.” Erik Qualman

48. “Most of us have experienced wow moments. We just haven’t taken time to think deeply about them.” Michael Hyatt

49. “Find your spirit, and no challenge will keep you from achieving your goals.” Christopher Penn

50.”Switch it off, get away from it all, and stop reading Marketing on your holiday.” Will Harris

What do you think? What was your favourite quote? Do you have an inspiring marketing quote to add? Share it!

We, at Optyn, have two specific jobs when it comes to helping our small business customers:

1.   Increase their Reachable Audience, and

2.   Engage their Reachable Audience.

What is Reachable Audience and why should small businesses care?

You are probably thinking to yourself: I don’t hear this term in marketing a lot but it sounds important. Well, we truly believe that it is a critical measurement of your potential success as a business owner. Reachable audience is a critical part of our business and we make every effort to make sure that our customers (small businesses/merchants) feel the same way about it.

So what is it? Reachable audience is all of your existing and potential customers that you can reach when you are engaging them through various marketing methods. Reachable audience consists of people who have opted-in to receive some kind of communications (usually marketing related) from you.

Why small businesses need to care?

So why should small businesses care? Well, few reasons:

• The bigger the better.
  The bigger your reachable audience the better it is. The first concept of marketing is exposure and your reachable audience gives you the ability to attract more eyeballs on your business and marketing efforts.
• The bigger, the more impactful your marketing dollars will be.
  Simply put your ROI (return on investment) will be much higher. When it comes to marketing spend, an initial percentage of spend is not incremental and is part of the spend regardless of your reach.  (For example, the time/resources to setup/consult a google adwords campaign for example.)
• It’s a vital sign of growth and healthiness.
  Sounds like something your mother would say but it’s true. Reachable audience that reaches critical mass can sustain itself. This translates into your business having enough customers from which to pool.

What is the most important aspect of a reachable audience?

The most important aspect is your willingness to grow it. You have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to attract and convert potential visitors (online and instore) into your reachable audience. This means being proactive, offering incentives, and being creative. Optyn helps you accomplish that and in my next article I will give you a few pointers.

Why should it be a critical metric?

It has an overall impact on all of your other metrics. It might not directly affect each metric, but it is important to take reachable audience into account when analyzing metrics so the reliability of the metric can be assessed.  For example, a 10% conversion factor would be more meaningful and reliable if it was based on the performance of a reachable audience of 5,000 as opposed to a reachable audience of 50.

How to calculate your Reachable Audience.

This is pretty straight forward. You should add up the components detailed below. In one of my next articles, we will discuss a Reachable Audience Formula that helps you give more context and dives deeper into the Real Reachable Audience.

A basic formula for your reachable audience is as follows:

RA = Sum of (Email Subscribers + Facebook Likes + Twitter Followers + [other social media accounts]) ÷ Customer Overlap Rate*.

*Customer overlap rate is usually calculated at 15-20%, but will vary depending on your business and category. There are a few ways to calculate this that allows you to get a unique reachable audience count, which we will discuss in later articles.

Ok, fairly simple and a little bit insulting you might think! Well this is just one simple way of looking at it.  Of course, once we throw in a weight factor of each type of audience along with the type of network engagement rates, you will see just how complex it can become. But for now you should just start with the basics. If you really want to know about this kind of stuff, in later articles, we’ll explore the true calculation of your Reachable Audience and how you can simply accomplish this.

Hopefully this opened up your appetite for more. Next time, we’ll discuss a few easy and free ways to grow your Reachable Audience.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an SVP of sales.  The topic was his number.  The company’s revenue is in the $700M range.  He had been given an aggressive goal for 2014.  To say he was concerned about hitting the number would be a huge understatement.  He was practically in a panic.

"I completely lost the battle on the 2014 revenue number” he said.  “My boss gave in to the CFO.  I got out-negotiated.  I am way behind where I need to be to make this happen.  I have a bunch of initiatives I think I could implement.  I know you tell me not to do too many things at once.  If everything’s important than nothing is important - I get the point.  But how do I decide which ones to execute on?” 

The SBI Sales Initiative Assessment Tool has answers.  Download it to get a framework for you and your team to use right away.  No matter what initiatives your sales organization is considering, this tool carefully evaluates them.

The Three Dimensions 

There are three dimensions across which you should assess potential initiatives: 

• Level of Effort
• Probability of Success
• Possible Return 

Level of Effort means how hard will the initiative be to pull off.  For example, you may recognize that you have a massive demand generation problem.  You may have developed a plan to close the gap.  But given the current state of your organization, how hard will it be?  Will it take too long?  Do you have the people and the money?  

Probability of Success means how likely is it that the initiative will succeed.  Do you think that it will be rapidly adopted?  How much disruption will it cause?  Will the team see the need for the initiative and embrace it?  Will managers get on board? 

Possible Return means the size of the prize.  You’ll have qualitative and quantitative ways to evaluate this.  Will the initiative contribute meaningfully to your growth number?  How much?  Will it strengthen your position in the market?  How about employee engagement and ancillary considerations – could the initiative positively affect these areas? 

How to conduct the assessment 

After you download the SBI Sales Initiative Assessment Tool, you’ll need to do a little customization.  List the initiatives you’re evaluating.  Look at the suggested statements below each of the 3 areas.  Do they need to be edited?  After you’ve done this, send the tool to your senior team.  Ask each individual to complete it.  Give them a few days.  Tell them that they should not discuss their rankings with anyone at this point. 

Next, have someone in sales ops aggregate the responses.  This will produce an aggregate bubble chart.  

Finally, schedule a call or meeting with the senior team.  Dig into their rankings and responses.  Look at the differences to learn what different team members think.  Allow debate to occur – everyone has given you their individual opinion across each dimension.  Whose arguments are more compelling?  When you do this, you will inevitably encounter considerations you hadn’t thought of before. 

Sequencing the chosen initiatives 

The other piece of assessing initiatives is sequence.  Now that you’ve determined which initiatives make the most sense, what’s the right order?  Should you take the “right away and all at once” approach?  Or tackle them one at a time?  

My colleague Dan Perry wrote an excellent article on sequence.  It is called How To Fix Your Sales Problems in the Right Order.  Dan provides a sales force assessment framework.  It helps you diagnose root problems.  

Dan cites the example of a sales VP facing a decline in revenue.  This Sales VP’s immediate reaction was to change the comp plan. “Let’s incent everyone to sell more new logo business” he said.   “This will cause the behavior change we are looking for to make the number.” 

He couldn’t have been more wrong.  Fixing the compensation plan first was incorrect.  Incenting new logo business only further frustrated the sales force.  Why?  The company had not performed any assessment of the number/geography of new logos.  Some territories were great and some were horrible.  Yet everyone had the same quota.  The sales VP needed a sales force assessment framework to put these problems into.  Only by doing this could he determine the proper sequence for solving them.  

Assessing and then sequencing sales initiatives is critical.  This is the job of the top sales leader.  We’ve all watched new initiatives sink without a trace.  Choosing the right ones in the right order exponentially increases your chances of success.  

Author: Mark Synek

Follow @MarkSynek

Follow @MakingTheNumber

If you enjoyed this post, never miss one again by subscribing your Email Here and/or subscribing to the RSS.

Today's post is by Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group. Effective qualification, as an integral part of the sales process, is a supremely valuable tool not just for the sales organization but for the company overall. Remember, there are really only two reasons why you lose a sale: 1) you shouldn’t be there in the first place, i.e., this is a deal you should not win, or 2) you were outsold. If marketing and sales are aligned when outlining the profile of the ideal target customer, then a lot of the pain associated with the first reason goes away....