Here at FranklinCovey, we are constantly reminding ourselves to focus on the essentials. In fact, all of our sales training programs have been designed with that in mind. In that vein, I wanted to take a moment to share with you what I consider to be 6 of the key essentials of this thing we call selling.

1. CONCENTRATE ON OTHERS’ SUCCESS AND NOT YOUR OWN.

It sounds trite, and just about every sales training you ever go through will suggest something similar. When you sincerely adopt this mindset and actively strive to do it, you’ll discover that it really does work! You see, as you help your client’s numbers improve, they’ll be more than happy to help your numbers improve. Try it!

2. LET THE CLIENT TELL THEIR STORY BEFORE YOU TELL YOUR STORY.

One of the most common mistakes sales professionals make consistently, is they talk too much. They talk about their other clients, their company’s history, and their products or solutions—why? It’s because they are comfortable talking about themselves and they have a quota to hit.

It has been my experience however, as I have worked closely with literally thousands of sales people all over the world, that when the client is able to share their story first, sales go up and costs go down.

Now, it may not always happen. Sometimes you’ll need to tell a bit of your story before the client will share theirs, and that’s okay. The problem arises when the client never tells their story.

3. WHEN THE CLIENT TELLS THEIR STORY, FORGET ABOUT FIXING IT AND JUST UNDERSTAND IT.

In his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey stressed the importance of seeking first to understand. As we listen to what our clients are saying with the intent to understand their issues rather than how our solution can solve their issues, they will be more willing to trust us when it’s our turn to tell our story.

4. WHEN THE CLIENT TELLS THEIR STORY, LISTEN FOR THE REAL PAIN OR GAIN.  IF YOU DON’T HEAR ANY, SAY SO.

Products and solutions have no inherent value—they derive value only from the problems they solve that people care about, and/or from producing results that people highly value. If your client is not experiencing any pain or looking for a significant gain, chances are you’re just wasting your time. Remember, no pain, no gain, no opportunity.

5. FIND OUT HOW THE PAIN OR GAIN MANIFESTS (WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE?).

Gathering evidence is a pivotal first step to building a good business case for the opportunity. A good business case bolsters the probability of success; a missing or inadequate business case is a yellow light.

Evidence defines problems and measures success. For problems: How do we know it’s a problem? What is there too little or too much of? For results: How will we measure success? What must increase or decrease?

6. FIND HOW BIG AND HOW BAD THE PAIN IS—AND HOW BIG AND HOW GOOD THE GAIN (WHAT’S THE IMPACT?).

The other pivotal step in building a good business case is defining the impact. If the issues the client is facing have a big impact relative to the investment, they will be more willing to make the investment.

Remember: when the impact is big, ask for the constraints. You might ask:  “What has stopped you from acting on this in the past?” When the impact is small, take away the solution and see what happens. You might say something like: “If this problem is only costing you X a year, a solution may cost you more to implement. What if you do nothing right now, would anybody mind?”

Stay tuned for a few more of my secrets to successful sales in coming articles. If you found these tips useful, you might be interested in learning about our sales training programs. If so, please send us an email: salesperformance@franklincovey.com or call us at 1-800-707-5191.

A couple years ago we had been having trouble with our daughter who was 7-years-old at the time.  What happened to our happy-go-lucky, agreeable little girl?  Her new answer to nearly any request was some version of “No.”  Hang up your towel?  “No.”  TV time is over?  “No, I’m still watching.”  It’s time to do homework?  “No, not now.”

We drive her to school each day and that gives either my wife or me some good-quality one-on-one time with her.  Normally we incorporate a few minutes of reading or a workbook exercise into the drive time.  I say normally because recently…that’s right…the answer has been “No.”  No reading, no workbook.

One day, on my turn to drive.  My wife handed me a book and a workbook exercise and asked that I have our daughter read to me and complete the exercise on the drive.  “Good luck,” she said as I left.   

After about 15 minutes of talking I said, “Mom sent along a book and worksheet.  I put them next to you on the seat if you want them.”  She replied, “I don’t want to read.”  I responded with, “No problem…only read if you want to.”  After a few minutes she asked, “Dad, would you like me to read to you?”  After the book, she completed the worksheet without me saying a word about it.

When I got home, I handed my wife the book and completed worksheet.  She asked if it was a hassle getting these done—I simply said no.  Two days later, I drove again and I went with the same plan.  This time two books and two worksheets!  Aha…I figured it out!

What does this have to do with sales you ask?

Recently I worked with a client on a big opportunity with a prospective customer (I’ll call them BCI for Best Choice, Inc.).  After a long pursuit, it was down to two contenders and my client was in second.  BCI gave my client one last chance to present their best offer.  They told my client they were ready to go with the competition but would endure one last meeting.

My client and I discussed approaches for the meeting.  One was the ever-popular “Here’s why to choose us” plan.  This plan is normally full of slides and claims of being the best at this and that.  It also often results in the client sitting there feeling like the only choice you are offering and respecting is “Choose us.”  So they sit patiently and at the end, say “Thanks for coming in—we’ll get back to you.”

The second strategy (and the one my client went with) explicitly put the choices on the table and made either option OK.  The central thrust of the meeting became working together to address what would have to change with my client’s solution, terms, conditions, and so forth to give BCI another good choice.  Instead of having only one excellent option, they would have two and they could choose which was best for them.

It took some work prior to the meeting to gain agreement to this approach.  In the spirit of choice, my client and BCI worked together until they felt good about the proposal.  The meeting ended with the client saying how much they appreciated the approach and that they now had a tough decision to make.  A few days later came the call to say “Congratulations…you won, and the approach to the final meeting made a BIG difference.”

This is one of many experiences I can think of where explicitly stating and respecting the choices people have opens the opportunity to work together without pressure and nonsense, and get to a place where the client has our best thinking.  At that point, they can choose what is in their own best interest.  Hence, the old adage—People love to buy and hate to be sold to.

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If you found this article helpful, consider signing up for our sales performance tips or contact us to discuss our sales training solutions. Look forward to chatting!

Not Surprised!

while ‘inbound’ has been all the rage, and many young entrepreneurs think sales & outbound sales are irrelevant…

the reality is that MarketingProf’s research fits with my experience, which i write about in the Triple Guide – while inbound and many other kinds of leadgen are important, and complementary - outbound prospecting is the best way for b2b companies to immediately add pipeline and predictably drive growth.

Read more on MarketingProfs.com Study: “Outbound the #1 most effective form of b2b lead generation”…

The post MarketingProfs.com Study: “Outbound the #1 most effective form of b2b lead generation” appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

In my many conversations with B2B marketers about their Demand Generation Strategy, inevitably buyer personas are mentioned early on in the process.  In fact, I am hard pressed to remember the last time I spoke with any marketer who did not have any kind of documented buyer personas.

However, having these documented personas does not necessarily equate with demand generation success.  In fact, I believe the way many organizations are approaching the use of personas in terms of content development is actually an obstacle to what they are hoping to achieve in demand generation and is limiting the development of effective content.

With all of the education and knowledge of buyer persona development, why is there such a disconnect between the documentation of these personas and success in Demand Generation and Content Marketing? (According to Content Marketing Institute less than 10% are truly effective with their Content Marketing.) 

1.  Most Buyer Personas are Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

In much of the work we do with large B2B organizations, the majority of the personas that have been developed are driven out of the Product Marketing team and clearly have a product-first approach.  Company A has a product and they want to know who their ideal buyer is.  The Product Marketing team begins to create this persona and lo and behold, the persona is the exact model of the person who would want to buy their product – not an actual picture of the market.

-          Age 35-44

-          Held a Sr. Manager or Director Role for 5+ years

-          Manages a team of 4-7 people

And the list goes on and this is then sent to the campaigns team to go and find these clearly defined individual.  This is not so much a persona, but an attempt at match making.  Trying to identify an individual that will match your product or solution is an exercise in futility.  Buyers do not view themselves the way Product Marketers do – buyers view their purchases in terms of need, challenges, goals and objectives, not by how many people they manage or how long they have held a title.

2. B2B Buying is a Herd Mentality

According the B2B Buyer Survey from Demand Gen Report, 50% of respondents stated that more than four people were involved in the buying process and only 9% stated they involve fewer.  The days of selling to the decision maker are over, B2B buyers buy in packs and have buying committees – understanding the roles within that committee, the unique views and how they intersect will be key to defining the Demand Generation content that is developed.

3. Go Beyond Knowing the Individual

It is not enough to understand the individual attributes of the target personas as that is a one-dimensional view.  What most organizations fail to do is document the buyers approach to the purchase (this is more than just interest, consensus, evaluation, decision).  This is a detailed view of all of the key milestones of a purchase – unless this is known, it is impossible to determine the content that should be delivered.

Secondly, vendors must understand the market conditions that exist in the world of their buyers.  Key items like global economic conditions, legislation, competitive pressures, etc. all play a role in the approach to buying and this is often overlooked.  It is for this reason that any buyer insights should include secondary research.

4. There Is Not Enough Content to Go Around

According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs most recent B2B Content Marketing  Research Study – 55% of respondents state “Producing Enough Content” as their biggest challenge.  This is due in large part to organizations trying to develop content for each and every identified persona.  This becomes unmanageable if you have multiple product lines with 5-7 personas – there is simply not enough headcount or time to develop all the content. The study also reports that only 44% of organizations have a defined content strategy, so trying to develop more content without a defined strategy is not a good idea. Things will derail quickly.

Organizations should stop trying to message to each and every persona and begin focusing on the “talk tracks” they should be having with those involved in the buying decision.   For instance, in a typical large IT purchase (if there is such a thing), you will see a VP of IT, CIO and CFO involved.  At the early stages of the process, the Engagement content will serve to cast a wide net to capture the attention of these individuals.

Buyers Intersection Points

However, as the purchase process moves on (See Graphic Above) each of these individuals will be focused on many of the same things – Total Cost of Ownership, Solution ROI, Cost of Implementation, etc.  Three individuals or personas, focused on a very similar set of issues, which converge and can be addressed with a singular content thread.  The issue here is not developing more and more content or even spending more money on content production, it is knowing where the convergence of that content is and what will resonate at the specific step in the buying process.

Having documented personas is just the first small step in achieving Demand Generation success.  There is much work to be done in order for this effort to payoff and for B2B organizations to truly connect with their buyers.

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo CEO and Principal, ANNUITAS

 

What consumers want and how to give it to them?

This infographic isn’t a compilation of different unreferenced sources, rather it’s based on a single piece of research by Sociomantic Labs who polled over 1000 US consumers via ResearchNow, specifically to assess their attitudes toward online shopping and digital advertising.

‘It found that personalized ads lead to a dramatic improvement in a marketing channel’s perceived influence, as well as a channel’s ability to encourage consumers to take action’.

Their findings delved into shopper behaviour by understanding:

• why and how consumers shop – interestingly, 41% visit a site with a ‘product in their mind’ to buy or research.
• how consumers use online shopping carts – 19% add to their cart to create a reminder/wish list.
• how consumers embrace targeted ads – 70% happy to receive ads and
• how receptive consumers are to ad targeting – targeted content converts browsers to buyers.

The infographic provides more key highlights and Sociomantic’s site gives more details.

As you may know, if you have a Facebook Business Page, Facebook has greatly curtailed the number of fans who see your posts, unless you pay them money to “boost” the post. That means that most of your fans don’t see what you’re sharing on your page.

Below are a few quick clicks you can make in your favorite fan pages to ensure that you get their posts. By sharing these suggestions, you can make sure your fans see what you’re posting!

If you like, you can use our page at http://facebook.com/RedCapSalesCoaching to give this a try.

If you haven’t liked the page yet, just click the “Like” button.

1) Hover your cursor over the “Liked” button, and a menu will drop down.

2) Click on the Settings link.

3) In Settings, click All Updates. A checkmark will appear next to it. (Facebook has cleverly set the default as Get Some Updates)

4) Click the Go Back Button at the top.

5) Click the Get Notifications link. A checkmark will appear.

That’s it! Now you can see all the information, announcements and funny stuff that Red Cap posts on their page.

Suggestion: Forward this information, with YOUR Facebook Page link, to your friends, and include it in a personal message to the people who have liked your page. It’ll boost the number of views on your page without making the Facebook shareholders any richer at your expense!

Good selling!

Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Time: 2 p.m. ET

Duration: 60 minutes with Q&A

Presenter:
Mike Schultz, President, RAIN Group & Author, Rainmaking Conversations

This live event has passed. Click here to view the recording.
 

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Sales has changed drastically in recent years. Buyers are more educated and resourceful than ever before, causing sellers to search for elusive competitive edges, differentiation, and value add.

To find out what separates sales winners from the rest in major sales today, RAIN Group studied over 700 business-to-business purchases representing $3.1 billion. This research revealed that sellers who are perceived by buyers as sources of insight are more likely to win sales—and do so consistently—than those who aren’t.

In this webinar, Mike Schultz, President of RAIN Group and author of Wall Street Journal bestseller Rainmaking Conversations, will share the keys to becoming a source of insight.

Click here to view the recording.

The race is on.

The end of the year is near and salespeople everywhere are scrambling.  Can you relate?

Chances are you can, and at this point in time, it’s game on to grab whatever you can.

Guess what?  Your buyers know you’re scrambling and to them the end of year is like shooting fish in a barrel. It just doesn’t get any easier.

Buyers and purchasing agents know all they have to do is give the salesperson any sense of a hesitation in being willing to buy and they’ll get a deal.

Problem for salespeople is it goes beyond the buyer knowing deals can be made. In fact, it goes to how the buyer wants to ultimately craft a deal.  Depending on what is being bought and the accounting standards used by the buyer’s company, there can be a huge number of options.

Biggest option available to a purchasing agent is dangling in front of the salesperson a willingness to place a large year-end order and then negotiate over terms such as when it will be paid.  Depending on the accounting standards used by both the salesperson and the buyer, the options can be almost limitless.

For many salespeople, getting an order shipped or processed is all that is necessary for them to earn credit towards their yearly number.  For many buyers, they don’t get charged with having purchased anything until it actually gets paid.  When these two situations occur its Nirvana!

Don’t kid yourself. Purchasing agents know this and will use it to their advantage. 

Where salespeople get burned is they don’t take the time to fully understand both sides of the equation before they agree to it.  This leaves the salesperson in the position of making a deal that on the surface feels good to them, only to have it turn against their company.

Does the purchasing agent know this?  You bet they do!  This is what they’re trained to do.

The rule to follow is simple. Know well in advance how your company handles each phase of a sale from ordering to receiving payment.   Failure to know this will result in every purchasing agent taking advantage of you without you knowing it until it’s far too late to do anything about it.

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

The motivational sales tip: perfectly formed pearls of wisdom, or superficial twaddle entwined in a barb-wire of pretentiousness? For each delicious nugget of sage wisdom dipped in a fondue of common sense, there’s a plenitude of tired cliché, strung together by a clothes line of vacuity. (A bit like that last sentence).

Behold some of the outrageous guff that passes for wisdom in the world of sales motivation. Whether attributed, or plucked from the anonymous churning ether of meaningless pseudo-philosophy, the people who came up with these should really have known better:

1.   “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

2.   “A sale is not something you pursue; it’s what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer.”

3.   “Cold call like you don’t have anything to lose.”

4.   “It is better to wear out than to rust out.”

5.   “In sales, a referral is the key to the door of resistance.”

6.   “Never turn down a breath mint.”

7.   “The best sales presentation is the sales presentation never given.”

8.   “Life is not about waiting on the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

9.   “Don’t spend time to save money. Spend money to buy time.”

10.  ”Before you run, check to see if the bulldog has teeth.”

What the deuce does that last one even mean? Aside from nonsense about breath mints and bulldogs, there’s often somebody willing to put his/her name to this hogwash. Cue the naming and shaming, as below:

11.  ”Arriving at one point is the starting point to another.” – John Dewey

12.  ”Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.” – Brian Tracy

13.  ”You miss 110 percent of all the shots you never take.” – Wayne Gretsky

14.  ”Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” – Winston Churchill

15.  ”A salesman, like the storage battery in your car, is constantly discharging energy. Unless he is recharged at frequent intervals he soon runs dry. This is one of the greatest responsibilities of sales leadership.” – R H Grant

16.  ”Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

17.  ”The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell.” – Andrew Carnegie

18. “Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” – Charles Wesley

19.  ”Today is always the most productive day of your week.” – Mark Hunter

Not if today’s Sunday, Mark. And:

20.  ”Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson

That from a man who probably hasn’t seen a bus, let alone waited for one, since the 1960s.

Of course, there are people who get paid enormous amounts for coming up with fluff of this calibre, one such being the late Zig Ziglar. Crazy name, crazy guy:

21.  ”Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.”

22.  ”Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”

23.  ”If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.”

24.  ”Timid salesmen have skinny kids.”

25.  ”Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”

And if that’s not enough to make your brain itch, a few more random quotes to finish off on:

26.  ”Sell the crunch not the apple.”

27.  ”To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here’s what’s exciting- there are lots of people!”

28.  ”Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”

29.  ”When someone tells me something is impossible, all I hear is that he or she in particular cannot do it. If it can be thought, it can be done.”

30.  ”Every well-built house started with a definite plan in the form of a blue print.”

The latter courtesy of the man who thinks badly built houses appear overnight, and are held together with chewing gum and a prayer.

Want to find out more about how you can sales and marketing, and all the other teams in your company working together more effectively? Then visit The Automated Company – a free online world where you can access a series of blog posts, case studies, infographics and eGuides that explain how you can make your office a more efficient and profitable place to be.

The De Paul Center for Sales Leadership is one of the leading sales learning institutions in the country. Every few years the University publishes the Sales Effectiveness survey which observes the sales practices and results of over 435 organizations across 10 business sectors.  Some useful insight is shared in this report:

Age profile – % by age
- 14% 18-25
- 27% 26-35
- 27% 36-45
- 20% 46-55
- 12% 56 and over

Annual Hiring Levels
- Less than 50 hires per annum – 68%
- 50-249 hires pre annum – 21%
- more than 250 hires – 11%

Value of Education in Sales Hiring – Percentage of sales managers that considered the education levels below very important
- Some prior training – 50%
- College 48% (37% for business college)
- Graduate 22%
* 30 of new hires did not have a college degree.

Number of Face to Face Interviews Prior to Hire
- 2 interviews or less – 31%
- 3 interviews – 39%
- 4 or more interviews – 30%

Interview Time with New Hires
- less than 1 hour – 14%
- 2-3 hours – 43%
- 4-5 hours – 26%
- 6 or more hours – 17%

Cost of Entry Level Sales Hires
- Less than 20k – 43%
- 20k-40k – 23%
- 40k or more – 34%

Time to Turnover for Entry Level Sales Hires
- Less than 12 months – 33%
- 13-24 months – 29%
- 25 months and onwards – 38%
* The number one reason for leaving was unmet expectations

Cost of Turnover
- Average cost of turnover approximately $49,508
* When acquisition, training, lost time and replacement were factored in, the average cost of turnover rose to approx. $115k

On-Boarding and Development
- organizations that had some sort of on-boarding process – 73%
- firms with an on-boarding program of 30 days or less – 60%
- primary method of determining success of training – informal management appraisal – 72%

Average Earnings by Performance
- top third of reps – $188k
- middle third of reps – $107k
- bottom third of reps – $65k

Sales Process
- value selling – 47%
- strategic selling – 38%
- conceptual selling – 28%
- spin selling – 25%
- proprietary model – 19%
* 54% of firms claimed to use the sales process always or frequently.

There are more sales function stats available in the full Sales Effectiveness Survey – 2011/2012 available below:
Summary Presentation
Full Report

photo courtesy of Salvatore Vuono | freedigitalphotos.net

Sales Training Article: Do you really listen to your buyers?

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A universal buyer complaint is that sellers are poor listeners. Whether in business or personal relationships, people get frustrated when they feel they aren't being heard. Some people feel a contributing factor is that sellers hear what they want to hear. I want to share another theory on why sellers have troubling listening.

Register for one of our sales training workshops to kick start the year and make your new number.

An important part of a seller's job is asking relevant questions, listening and reacting to buyer answers. Scientists tell us no two snowflakes are identical. I accept that as fact and would counter that by telling scientists that no two B2B sales calls (even selling the same offering to the same title interested in achieving the same business outcome) are identical, nor should they be.

This reality seems to give sellers free license to adlib every sales call. I appreciate that competent sellers will align and react with different responses buyers give them. They can't be inflexible in having a standard pitch they want to deliver. Most buyers won't tolerate such an approach.

That said, during discovery/diagnosis of a buyer's situation there is usually a common set of relevant core questions that could be asked. For a CRM salesperson calling on a CFO that wants more accurate sales forecasts, here are some questions that should be relevant:

• How is the forecast created today?
• What pipeline milestones are used and how are they enforced?
• How is the achievement of milestones determined and by whom?
• What is a sales manager's role in making qualify/disqualify decisions?
• How do sellers report progress on opportunities?
• Are sellers below quota over-optimistic? If so how does that impact the forecast?
• How do you adjust over-optimistic forecasts?
• What has the level of forecast accuracy been over the last year?
• What impact has inaccurate forecasting had on your organization?

Few sellers formalize core questions for titles/business outcomes they must discuss with buyers despite the fact that they make these calls every day.

My theory is that sellers without prepared core questions have to multitask during calls. While trying to give their undivided attention to buyer responses, sellers are challenged to ask the next question that should be not only be relevant to the topic being discussed but should align with the buyer's response. Sellers formulating questions aren't fully engaged in listening to a buyer's answer.

Having core questions should help improve listening skills, allow more through calls to be made and provide better buying experiences.

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Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

You’re closing in on the fiscal year.  Soon you will be given a new number. It will be higher than last year. There are two approaches to handling this:

1. Put the entire number on your back.
2. Get marketing to take a portion.

We recommend option 2.  The rationale for sales shouldering the entire quota is weakening.  In the past, marketing’s effectiveness relied on fuzzy metrics like “Brand Awareness”.  Today the modern B2B CMO can match marketing efforts directly to sales dollars. Marketing automation systems have allowed marketing leaders to:

• Track anyone who fills out a form or responds to an email

• Track these inquiries until they turn into viable leads

• Track all leads from nurturing activities to close

• Detect the sales amount from the opportunity

This year, make the case that Marketing’s contribution be measured in revenue.  Download our Sales and Marketing Quota Agreement and propose it to your CEO and Marketing VP today.

Getting marketing's buy in isn't easy. There are three steps to get marketing to take a Number:

1. Define service level agreements and accountabilities for both sales and marketing
2. Agree on the % of opportunities and leads that are marketing's responsibility
3. Put together a sheet to track and measure progress

Define Service Level Agreements and Accountabilities

The first step is to build some good will with the marketing VP. Take responsibility for the leads they send you.  Make sure all passed leads are contacted quickly and consistently.  This will eliminate the tired refrain: You never follow up on my leads.  Here is how what you need to commit to:

Definition of a Qualified Lead.  To get Marketing’s buy-in, you can’t ask that every lead come with a pen to sign the contract.  Agree on standards that will allow approximately 25%-40% of all leads to convert to opportunities. 

A Follow Up Cadence: Commit to the marketing leader that sales will follow up with ALL leads within 48 business hours.  This will sound like Euphoria to your marketing leader.  No more rep cherry-picking. Also, sales will continue to call on un-contacted leads 5-7 times before returning to sales. No lead goes unturned.

Rejected Leads: Specify that any lead rejected by sales be coded with a reason.  Furthermore, an explanation should be sent to the LDR on WHY the lead is not suitable.  If marketing receives no feedback on why, you can’t expect them to change their criteria.

Opportunity and Win Credit:  Sales and Marketing often feud over credit for a valued lead. If a prospect has met with sales in the last 3 months and there is activity recorded, Sales gets credit.  Marketing gets credit for anything else that comes in.

If you feel these numbers don’t fit your organization, adjust.  Just remember, agreement should be a collaborative process.  These tasks require extra commitment from you.  But they also offer an enticing proposition to marketing.

Agree on Marketing’s Opportunity Pipeline

Now that you’ve built goodwill it’s time for the big ask. A B2B rule of thumb is that marketing provides 25% of Opportunities to your pipeline.  Your total may be more or less.  But it is critical that marketing agrees to a specific percentage of opportunities.  Here is how to come up with the number you should ask for:

1. Calculate your average sales price last year.  Now divide your quota by your average sales price.  This is the total number of opportunities you need to hit the number.
2. Multiply the total number of opportunities by your agreed Marketing Opportunity Percentage.  This is the number of opportunities that need to be originated from marketing.
3. Look at the data from last year. Determine how many leads from marketing converted into viable opportunities.  This your lead conversion rate.
4. Divide the number of marketing originated opportunities by the lead conversion rate.  This is the number of leads you will require.

Download our Sales and Marketing Quota Agreement and you can simply enter the numbers required.

 

 

Put Together a Sheet to Monitor Progress

Once you’ve defined your leads and agreed to a number start tracking.  The sheet should be owned by both Sales and Marketing.  Each department should track:

1. The number leads generated.
2. The number and conversion rate of leads to sales opportunities.
3. Total wins and the lead to win conversion rate.   

Each of these metrics will tell a story about qualification and sales engagement.

This conversation may be difficult, but it’s necessary.  Marketing deserves both the recognition and accountability that comes with a quota. Sales can help them earn it.

Author: Drew Zarges

Follow @DrewZarges

Follow @MakingTheNumber

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A client sales leader recently expressed frustration at the excuses she hears why her team doesn’t call higher: “takes too much time,” “executives don’t want to talk to us,” “we get referred down.”

She then shared her real suspicion:  They’re intimidated.  They’re not sure what message to deliver.  They lack confidence having the right conversation with the right person.

The necessity for engaging higher within accounts has never been greater.  Approval for even modest investments now often rests at executive levels, and deals are much more likely to stall — or worse — when  you’re unable to confidently engage customer executives.

Preparation Breeds Confidence

Preparation is the best way to build confidence for any sales call. When selling to executives, remember, it’s all about them, their business and their business performance.

Here are 3 ways for applying business acumen to help you feel as confident having business conversations with CXOs as any other decision-maker:

1.  Know the executive’s prioritized business initiatives.
Initiate executive conversations around the customer’s stated business initiatives.  This demonstrates you’ve taken the time to understand their business.  Your objective is to validate that the initiatives you’ve identified are priorities relevant to the target executive’s direct area of responsibility.

Asking executives to “tell you about their initiatives” is the fastest way to end the conversation.  Executives aren’t interested in being interviewed.  Prepare using management presentations, earnings calls and other available resources to expedite gaining customer insights.

2.  Participate in quantifying the value of your solutions.
Too many salespeople mistakenly believe that computing a project’s projected ROI is something the customer alone must own. This type of hands-off  ”let the customer compute ROI” is a flawed approach.

You’ve sold your solutions many more times than the executive has bought it — leverage that experience.  Prepare by getting comfortable talking about the positive financial impact you can deliver. That’s what executives want to know.

3.  Role play your executive conversation
If you’re not comfortable with role playing, get over it. It’s the best way to simulate the scenarios that can derail any well-rehearsed executive conversation and foresee how to effectively respond when the dialogue digresses.

When you role play to prepare for executive engagements, you develop the ability to deviate from your plan, yet still have a successful business conversation.

Business acumen and financial acumen are essential skills for today’s sellers.  When you understand what success looks like from your customer’s perspective, deals flow that much easier.

For additional guidance, view Executive Conversation’s webinar: Reaching Hard to Reach Executives.

*This article was originally posted on the blog of Executive Conversation, the latest addition to the Corporate Visions family of companies (see acquisition details here). Stay tuned for more insights around successful conversations at the CXO level.

Today's post is by Jamie Grenney, VP of marketing at Infer. Salespeople do not want to spend valuable time weeding through questionable leads or following up with prospects who will never convert. How can you reduce the grunt work needed to qualify leads without risking pipeline opportunities? And wouldn’t it be nice if your best leads magically bubbled to the top? There’s a new crystal ball that forward-thinking sales teams are using to accelerate the process of finding qualified leads. It’s called predictive lead scoring, and it helps sales managers figure out where to focus the team’s energy so that...

There are few feelings worse than knowing you're missing out on something. Scientists have even given that feeling a name: FOMO (fear of missing out). Whether it's missing out on an outing your coworkers are all going to or realizing you could have made that meeting if you only left five minutes earlier, we all get that same feeling of unrest in the pit of our stomachs when we miss out on something. 

Typically, FOMO has applied to events or actual things you could miss out on ... but there are lots of other things that give us that same feeling, too. You know, like that time you realized if you had only done one more thing to your landing page, you'd get 30% more leads.

That feeling sucks, so we want to help you steer clear of it, especially on your landing pages. Some of these could be two-minute fixes while others could be full-day projects, but each of these mistakes could be costing your business money.

So save your company some moolah (and maybe get a pat on the back from your boss) and read the following about most egregious landing page errors. 

1) It doesn't pass the blink test. 

You have 50 milliseconds. Ready, set, go! Stop.

The time it took you to read that last sentence is longer than you have to make a first impression on your landing page. A study by researchers at Carleton University found that people make judgments about a website within 50 milliseconds of viewing it. Yep, roughly the time it takes for you to blink once. Tough crowd, I know, but a crowd you've got to please if you want to improve your conversion rates.

Make sure your landing pages are passing this blink test by following the guidelines here.

2) It doesn't have a clear value proposition. 

If someone has to do lots of thinking while they're on your landing page, you're doing it wrong. The value of downloading the piece of content you have hidden behind your form should be apparent from the get-go. That way, your landing page visitors aren't spending time figuring out what the heck you're offering -- they're actually filling out the form to get it. 

There are lots of ways to accomplish this -- adding more descriptive copy or updating the landing page image to reflect what's inside your offer could do the trick. Or maybe it's as simple as clarifying what your offer is in your headline. 

If you're having trouble figuring out if the value proposition is clear on your website, try sending it to someone within your buyer persona's field (maybe a current customer of yours?) and give them zero context about what happens after someone would fill out the form. Then, ask them to tell you what they think they'll get once they give over their contact information and if that exchange (content for their contact information) seems reasonable. If it's not, you've got some tweaking to do!

3) Your form is too long.

One of the biggest mistakes people make on landing pages is to make a long form. It makes sense why you'd want to -- you only have someone's attention for a bit, so why not get all the information you can out of them ... right? 

Not quite. A long form becomes a huge barrier to entry for your landing page visitors simply because it looks like it will take forever to fill out. Even though you know it'll only take a minute or so, a minute seems like a long time to invest for your visitors -- especially those on mobile.

Those impatient visitors (aka, most of the people who'll come to your site) want to get your offer and get out, so think about how you can make it easier for them to do that. Remove form fields that are "nice to haves" and also think about using progressive profiling to capture important, yet secondary information on the second time someone fills out a form on your site. 

4) Your form is too short.

On the flip-side, your form may be too short, which could very well mean you're getting a bunch of unqualified leads flowing into your contacts database.

If this is a big problem for you, consider adding a form field or two to the offers that keep sending you unqualified leads. You could also leave the initial form alone, but then use progressive profiling on future forms to collect more lead information -- and the only rotate those leads to your sales team. 

5) Your landing page isn't ready for mobile.

Like we said in number 3, landing pages with long forms aren't really mobile-friendly -- but that's not the only thing that could deter mobile and tablet visitors. You might have a page that's not responsive, making your mobile visitors swipe and swipe and swipe to scroll half an inch on the page. Or maybe your landing page image is huge, making it impossible for your visitors to access your form. Or maybe your CTA is below the fold, thus making it unclear how to submit the form. 

The point is you need to think about mobile traffic to your landing pages -- engaging those visitors could mean the difference between hitting your monthly goal -- and not. So, make sure you're following the mobile marketing best practices outlined in this ebook.

6) Your leads aren't redirected anywhere after filling out a form. 

Someone wants to download your offer, so they fill out the form, hit submit, and then ... nothing. They're confused. Did their information get submitted? Will they get an email with the offer? What the heck just happened?!?!?

You don't want people to experience that confusion on your landing pages -- it makes for a poor user experience that not many (if any) visitors want to go through again. Bonus: Having that type of experience on your landing pages means you're missing out on more traffic, leads, and customers. 

The best way to fix this? A thank-you page. Basically, this is another page leads are redirected to after they've filled out the form on your landing page. There, leads can actually download or interact with the offer itself, share it with friends, and maybe even convert on another offer. It's valuable real estate you shouldn't miss out on. 

7) Your "submit" button says "submit."

You know that phrase "you don't know something until you know it"?  While it is "duh"-inducing, it's actually a great reminder for your landing page designs.

For example, if someone's filling out a landing page form for the first time -- in other words, the majority of people you hope to be filling out the form -- they have no idea what's going to happen when they hit "submit." What tangible thing will they be getting for handing over their information? What is going to happen when they push that bright red button? 

That's a lot of anxiety that comes with filling out a form on a website ... but it's uncertainly like this that could affect your conversion rates.

To reduce that uncertainty, be extra clear on what will happen when you hit "submit." Customize the button to say something like "Download your Ebook" or "Get Your Free Guide." Custom buttons will help assuage some of the anxiety your landing page visitors may have and convert them more readily into leads.

8) Your page has text on text on text. 

In short: You need images on your landing page. They help convey information faster than a hundred words of text, so you can convert visitors faster to leads on your landing pages. Sounds like a good idea, right? So go on, add a relevant image to your landing page to help communicate what your visitors will be downloading. 

Need help finding or creating visual content for your landing pages? Check out these 10 free design tools.

9) The images you do include on your landing page aren't helping anything.  

Images can tell your story quickly and easily (they are worth 1,000 words after all) ... but what if the ones you're using on your landing pages are telling the wrong story? You can't just throw up any old image on a landing page and expect people to convert just because there's an image on it. You've got to be strategic: Check out this blog post on conversion-centered design to help you pick out the right images to use on landing pages.

10) You still include a main navigation. 

When visitors get to your landing page, you want them there for one purpose and one purpose only: to convert to be a lead. Don't distract them with anything -- multiple CTAs, website footers, or even a top navigation. All of those elements seem like they'd be helpful, but they can actually reduce your conversion rates.

So on pages where your main goal is converting people to become leads -- you know, on landing pages -- cut the main navigation. Then, feel free to bring the navigation back on the thank-you page and other supplementary web pages. 

11) You're asking for the same information over and over and over again.

You know those people who ask for your name every single time you meet them, but you've met them several times before? And you know how annoying those people are? You just want them to recognize you!

That's exactly how people feel when they go to your landing pages and get asked the same questions on forms over and over and over again. So think about using smart forms and progressive profiling to reduce the number of fields people need to fill out -- and thus make it easier for them to convert on your landing pages.

Not only is it a delightful experience for your visitors, but it's also it's a way to increase your conversion rates. 

12) You set your landing page and forget it. 

Like with any other part of your marketing, you can't just set your landing page and forget it. Your conversion rates are never going to be perfect (and neither are ours), but you can always work toward more efficient and effective layouts and designs.

Thus, it's imperative you run A/B tests to see what works best for your visitors and your leads -- what may be a tried and true best practice may not always work for your audience.

So keep testing to find out what does! You never know what will work for your audience until you test it.

These are just some of the landing page mistakes we see happen all the time. What other grisly landing page mistakes did we miss? Add your ideas to the comments below.

The holiday season a great time of year to reflect on the people who have contributed to your success. Here is some of the great advice I have received from my advisers in the sales industry.

I recently started making a list of all of the mentors, advisers, and smart friends that have helped me over the course of my career. I ran out of time when the list got to 39 people---I'm not finished yet. It made me think of just how many people over the course of our lives have contributed to our success through their words, actions, and examples. Some have little idea of the impact they have made because their seed was planted a long time ago and did not really mature until much later. Others we have near us all of the time and that is a great gift.

Here are a few pieces of sales advice that I received in the recent past that I am grateful for and wanted to pass along.

• You get sent to whom you sound like--Tom Schaff, author and sales coach. I cannot remember a week in the past several years that I have not quoted this insight. It so clearly explains why certain people get to speak with decision-makers while some are relegated to non-decision makers. Every prospect in a sales situation is qualifying and sorting out whether or not the conversation has value. Busy people are looking to deflect and defer any non-crucial interaction to another time or another person. If you are speaking with someone about their problem in their language, then you get to stay. However, if you are not tuned to the language of the decision-maker, you will get moved.

• Be as real and raw as you can--Daniel Waldschmidt, business strategist. As people have become less concerned about being "politically correct," authenticity has become more valued. Prospects, customers, and colleagues are seeking the real you, without caveat or qualification. It is refreshing. It also means that your agreements and disagreements with them carry weight and value.

• Don't "should on" people--Mikki Williams, speaker and consultant. As a speaker, consultant, leader and sales person, I often get the opportunity to appear stage. Often, part of that opportunity includes answering people who have asked for my opinion. Mikki helped me to understand that "shoulding on" people, (giving my opinion as a command as to how someone else should handle a situation or live their life), created distance between us rather than connection. People naturally resist being "should upon." Advice should carry discernment, but not judgement.

• Own your failures, share your successes--Jim Schinco, marketing and management consultant. I could write a hundred pieces of advice from Jim, one of my greatest mentors, but this one is timeless. Simply, if you don't own your mistakes, you won't truly learn from them. If you don't share the successes you have with the people who helped, you will have fewer of them because people will be less inclined to help.

• Protect your swagger--Barbara Weaver Smith, author and sales consultant. My old partner always talked about the importance in sales of preserving your self-confidence. Her point was that as a consultant, just like a sales person, people are buying into you. If you are not carrying that confidence with you, then how can they trust your recommendations?

The holiday season is often a time of reflection and gratitude. Take a minute and make a list of your advisers, mentors, and smart friends who have contributed to your success. See if you can attribute a piece of advice that made you better. It is a great exercise for the season.

There always seems to be lots of ideas and discussion around what great sales people do. I think it’s just human nature to evaluate success and emulate it. We take inventory of what the successful are doing and we copy it. I’m just as guilty, as I’ve written a number of posts highlighting the things the best sales people do. Don’t get me wrong, knowing what the best of the best do is noteworthy. We should do it keep doing it. However, sometimes it’s not what people do that’s compelling, sometimes it’s what they don’t do that makes the difference.

With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to look at what the best sales people DON’T do in order to shed some light on the behaviors you want to avoid in your pursuit to better selling.

1) Don’t procrastinate:

Great sales people don’t procrastinate, they always have this sense of urgency that compels them to get things done now, instantly. Great sales people are like beavers. They are always working with a sense of purpose, never letting an opportunity slip by. They recognize the shelf-life of an opportunity can be a nano-second and they hate missing out on opportunities. No moss grows under the feet of the best sales people.

2) They Don’t Blame:

The blame game is crazy prevalent in the world of sales. Sales people are notorious complainers. The customer just doesn’t get it. Quota is too high. The product is too expensive. The product doesn’t have the features I need. The list of sales people complaints is endless. Except with the great sales people. Great sales people, rarely if ever, blame others or their surroundings. Great sales people take complete accountability for selling and do whatever it takes to be successful in the environment they are in. They accept and embrace the fact that they are in sales and have tremendous control of their selling process, selling time, selling approach and more. It’s with this recognition, they feel no need or benefit to blame others for difficulties or their own failure.

3) They don’t become complacent:

Great sales people embrace personal development. They are the first to identify and absorb new selling techniques, tools, approaches and methodologies. Great sales people live in an never ending paranoia that convinces them that there is always someone or something trying to outsell them or get a competitive advantage. It’s this paranoia the drives them to always be improving, growing, and never accepting the status quo. The greatest sales people never accept where they are as “good enough.” There is never good enough for the best sales people.

4) Sell scared:

Great sales people don’t sell scared. They build enough value into their solutions that they have the confidence and comfort that they are going to win the deal that they aren’t afraid of losing. Great sales people believe that fear comes from being unprepared, lacking a solid understanding of what the buyer actually wants and why. They know that fear gives away their ability to sell on value and exposes them to the whims of their customers. They recognize selling scared increases the chances they cave on price, miss up-sell opportunities and don’t challenge the customer. Great sales people simply don’t sell scared.

5) Have thin skin:

The best sales people know sales is a game of averages. Like a baseball player, they understand that winning happens far less than losing. Like the 300 hitter in baseball who doesn’t get a hit 70% of the time, great sales people know that they are going to lose far more often than they win and they’re comfortable with this. The best sales people are not susceptible to the continual onslaught of no and rejections. The best sales people have a rejection anti-venom that makes them immune to the sting of the a buyer’s no. Failure and rejection just doesn’t affect them.

6) Quit:

If there is one undeniable thing great sales people don’t do, it’s quit. The idea of quitting is absolutely foreign to great sales people. They are undaunted by failure. They see roadblocks, as challenges. They see no’s as yes’s. They see rejections as opportunities. Great sales people never quit. They have an insatiable desire to see things to the end. Great sales people see failure as just a transition point to learn, but keep on going. There is no quit in the best sales people.

7) Go in unprepared

Preparation is critical when is come to the best sales people. They treat preparation as a competitive differentiator. They never go to a meeting or presentation with having done all their homework. They leave nothing to chance. The greatest sales people use preparation as a way to get a leg up. They know, most sales people do very little prep work. The best know that preparation is where you can pull ahead of the pack. Great sales people are never unprepared.

8) Get pushed around

Great sales people sell on value. They are ensconced in the value they create. They believe in the value they provide to their customers with every fiber in their being. Therefore, they aren’t prone to being pushed around. They know the value they bring and stand by it. Value acts as a mooring to the best sales people. When a buyer tries to bully them, they simply become stout, anchored by their unwavering belief that they bring more value than the customer enjoys today and therefore they don’t need to become the customer’s bitch to win the deal. The best sales people don’t get pushed around and are nobody’s bitch.

9) Sell something the buyer doesn’t need

The best sales people become the best because they are better than anybody at solving their customers problems. They have an amazing ability to influence a clients thinking and help them develop best of breed solutions that better their business. They are excellent problem solvers and solution creators. Therefore, great sales people never, ever sell something their client doesn’t need. The best sales people will tell a client when buying a particular product or add-on doesn’t make sense. They won’t let their clients spend money they don’t need to. Great sales people know that it’s not about bring in an extra dollar or two, but rather solving their clients problems and selling something to them they don’t need ISN’T solving any problems. It just creates them.

10) Focus on themselves:

Great sales people learn very early that selling is NOT about them. They know it’s not about their product or quota, or their timeline, or their needs. It’s about their customer and they are keenly aware of this. The best sales people have an uncanny ability to get into the shoes of their clients and connect on the issues and challenges their customers are facing, not what they as a sales person need or want. The best sales people are very in tune with their customers and don’t let the focus turn to them, their company or their own needs.

11) Try to be the hero:

Heroes in selling are more like egos. The best sales people know that selling is a people’s game and that it takes a multitude of people to close the deal. Therefore, great sales people don’t try to take all the credit or swoop and play hero. They do just the opposite. They share the credit and give as much away as possible. They know the nicer they are, the more kudos they give, they more support they will get on future deals. Great sales people are collaborators not, heroes with egos trying to get all the credit.

Selling is a complex profession. It’s hard. To make it, there are a lot of things we can focus on and do. But, there are also a number of things we keep from doing that can bring just as much success.  As you’re working on growing your sales career and getting better, stop for a second and ask, besides doing stuff, are there some things you can stop doing?

If the answer is yes, then stop! The return could be just as big as what you are doing.

 

 

 

Sales Training Article: Increase New Rep Productivity

By Andrew Urteaga, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)

A critical issue you face as CEO is how to increase sales productivity. As you head into 2014, you have identified or hired your key sales players. This team is going to help you make the number. You know your tenured reps can get the job done. The unknown factor is the crop of new sales reps. Two-thirds of organizations say ramp takes 15 to 18 months at the very least. This means the new hires will not make an impact until in year 1. Now you have a big issue on your hands. You are going to miss your number.

In this post, we will examine how you can greatly improve new hire productivity. You can also download The Fast Start Guide. The guide will help increase the likelihood your new hires hit target goals faster. You should also sign-up for one of the CCS® sales training workshops open now for registration and get a jump start on the new year to making your number.

Think of on boarding as a 12-month plan. On boarding is not an event it is an enabling success. Event based on boarding risks an increase in failure rates. A plan with a road map is needed. If you lack one you are asking your people to drive blindfolded. Second, you are incurring in year cost without a return. A new hire can run a salary between 85-100K. This does not even include hiring cost, HR admin cost, travel cost, benefits, etc.

A Bad First Impression
When a new hire joins the organization they are full of enthusiasm and confidence. Their first few days consist of paperwork and learning where the bathroom is located. Then off to training back at corporate. The agenda looks something like this:

Day 1

Travel & Dinner

Day 2

Welcome and Introductions

History of the Organization

Org Charts by department

Introduction to Products/Services

Day 3

This day consist of leaders from each department coming in a given an overview of what they do.

Day 4

Review Available Resources

CRM Usage

Process Overview (Contract processing, Expense reporting, etc.)

Sales Methodology Overview

Competitive Overview

Wrap up

Day 5

Travel Home

There are key ingredients missing on this plan. What customers should I focus on first? Who are my key buyers? How do I reach them? When I do, how do I message to them? How do we differ from our competition? How do we sell against them? What challenges will I face in year 1 and what does success look like? Where do the roles and responsibilities fall? What metrics will be tracked for incremental improvement? The issue here is that you have not equipped the new hire to succeed. You gave him company and product knowledge but no skill development. The enthusiastic beginner has become a disillusioned rep. A disillusioned rep thrashes and usually turns over.

Eliminate the Risk

You need a better plan. The first 12 months are the most critical time for a new hire. How you equip your team out of the gates sets the tone. Download The Fast Start Guide to understand how to lay the proper foundation.

1.Comprehensive Organizational Training- You still need to have a baseline of learning around policies, process, and procedures. Keep it minimal, as these things are easier to digest over time.

2.Comprehensive Sales Training- The training should be intense, motivating and include skill development exercises. Less talking and more role-playing. This sets the tone for what is expected of a new hire. Also allows you to assess skills they will use in the field and redirect/coach.

3.Coaching and Mentoring- You can shorten ramp with ongoing coaching and mentoring.

a.Sales Coaching- Sales Leaders need to be spending 30-40% of their time in the field with their reps. Reinforcing what has been learned and helping the new hire sharpen skill sets.

b.Mentoring- Pairing a new hire with a proven performer helps shorten ramp time. In this case the new hire acts as an observer. A rep can watch in a real environment skill sets being implemented successfully.

4.Leading Indicators- Tracking and reviewing key behaviors and sales activities. Expecting a new hire to close deals immediately in unrealistic. Using a pre-call plan or other sales job aid consistently is a leading indicator of success.

A new hire should be expected to master everything in the first few weeks. The key is to have a plan and develop a timeline for proficiency expectations. In the end new hires can be high maintenance. However, they require the necessary investment to make the number.

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Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

Facebook is launching a new way for brick-and-mortar business owners to measure if their Facebook ads drove in-store sales, even if customers never clicked. Businesses can buy ads, then send Facebook privacy-safe data on who bought what, and Facebook will tell them how much people who saw the ads bought compared to those who didn’t.

By providing confidence in return on investment from ad impressions, Facebook could get advertisers spending more, especially on mobile where ad clicks disrupt the user experience. Plus, the info could help marketers learn what ads actually resonate with people, which in turn helps users and Facebook by making ads in the feed more relevant and less annoying.

Ad measurement might not sound super sexy, but the marketing industry is experiencing a massive leap forward in how it tracks ROI right now.

Once upon a time, marketers had little idea if their ads worked. They’d buy TV or print campaigns in specific markets, and then hope to see sales lift there too. The problem was there were tons of confounding factors, and it was tough to tell if a buyer had actually seen the ad. Online advertising changed everything. Suddenly marketers could track that a user clicked an ad that sent them to their site where they made a purchase, indicating the ad worked.

Unfortunately, there were a ton of limitations. If the ad wasn’t the last click before the purchase, they were hard to tie together. That led marketers to put a premium on “demand fulfillment” campaigns like search keyword ads that could be easily tracked, but this shortchanged any “demand generation” ads the user saw before that might have contributed to their purchase decision. If users only saw an ad but didn’t click, then bought something later, the advertiser may not have known that impression had an impact.

Google, Facebook, and others eventually began developing ways to tell if someone who simply saw an ad later made a purchase online. But that still left the connection between online ads and offline sales in brick-and-mortar stores as a big mystery.

Until now. Facebook’s new Custom Audiences measurement could make it clear that someone didn’t just stumble into a physical store’s big Sunday sale, but instead saw an ad for it that inspired their visit.

Facebook’s Vice President Of Ads Product Marketing Brian Boland tells me “This has never been done at this scale, to link digital exposure to in-store sales for anyone with a CRM system.” Previously, Facebook had been privately testing the measurement tool with a select few advertisers, but now it’s available to any advertiser that buys directly from Facebook’s managed sales team.

Here’s how it works. A business collects email addresses of their customers or potential customers through online forms, requests at the register, signups for newsletters, loyalty programs, or surveys. The business then uses Facebook’s Custom Audiences targeting tool to submit the email list from their customer relationship management system in a hashed, privacy-protected way, and advertise to these people on Facebook.

When a customer subsequently makes a purchase at the advertiser’s physical location and swipes a credit card or loyalty card, or provides their email address again , the business can match the purchases to their email address. The business then submits an encrypted version of this sales data to Facebook. Facebook compares how much people who saw the ad bought versus a control group of people in the Custom Audience that it didn’t show ads to, and reports the findings to the business.

The impact of being able to measure online ads’ impact on offline sales like this is massive. “I’m beyond excited” Boland tells me in complete monotone, Ad measurement guys aren’t always the most dynamic, though, so I still believe him.

How will this change marketing? For example, an advertiser could learn that people who saw the ad spent 60% more than those who didn’t. That means it’s probably cost-effective to keep buying those ads. If the business runs multiple A/B tests, they could figure out which ad variant drove the most sales lift, cancel their other versions of the ad, and run more like the successful one in the future.

The ability to measure ROI of impressions, not just clicks, is especially critical for mobile advertising. On the small screen, you do one thing at a time, opposed to running multiple apps and browser tabs on the same screen on the web. That means clicking on an ad on mobile is very disruptive to whatever you’re doing. You can’t just pop a tab and keep browsing. That likely discourages mobile ad clicks.

But just because someone didn’t click doesn’t mean the ad didn’t affect their buying decisions. On mobile, ads like those on Facebook often take up the entire screen. They’re essentially a screen takeover. Even if you only read for a second and then scroll by, that brand name, store location, or promoted discount could stay in your brain and later get you into a store to buy something. Facebook’s new measurement technology could reveal that connection.

The tool could bring in a bunch more ad revenue for Facebook. Boland tells me “We fundamentally believe that measurement drives confidence. We’re moving away from proxy metrics [like clicks] to sales outcomes. As we build real measurement solutions, they’ll spend more money digitally and specifically on mobile.”

Of course, some users might find the idea that Facebook “knows” what they buy offline to be a bit creepy. But the sales data is all encrypted so Facebook doesn’t actually know who is who, and it deletes all the sales data once it’s made its reports to the advertisers.

But what most people hate more is being shown crappy, irrelevant ads. Along with more money, Custom Audiences measurement could even make Facebook’s users happier. Better data on what ads work lead to more relevant ads, and more satisfied users who spend more time on Facebook. Soon, you might see fewer ads for things you never buy, and more for your favorite local stores.

Advertising is easy to hate on, but it’s what lets companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter offer their services for free to everyone. And there’s a big world out there full of things you might want to buy or learn, but you’d never discover. At their worst, ads fracture our attention and clutter our vision. But when well-targeted and measured, ads can help curate the world for us.

In our last post, we examined the first four out of eleven ways to shorten the qualified lead generation process: planning, clearly defining “sales-ready qualified lead”, quantifying the “sales-ready lead quota, and aligning sales, marketing and management with your plan.

Now, we look at the remaining 7 tips to shorten the sales process and bring in sales-ready qualified leads—in fewer than seven to 13-plus touches.

1. Improve Target Prospect Data

Forrester Research reports that 37% of firms indicate this is a significant marketing problem at their company. Our guess is that the reality is more than 50%. The prospect database is only as good as the accuracy of the data, and it is a never-ending task keeping the data clean and current. People move around from job to job and company to company; companies are acquired or merge.

Usually, your prospect database is inherited from those who came before you. It is often a jerry-rigged compilation of data from different departments, with little consistency in the kinds of data being collected. Until you have standardized and fixed the database, it will constantly create gaps in your marketing tools and CRM system.

Because database cleanup is a huge job, the tendency to delay dealing with it is sometimes irresistible. But the ROI on a really good database is significant. Devise an approach to fixing and standardizing the database by creating a formal assessment, de-duping and cleaning process. Then create a standard to keep it current and consistent. Put all potential prospect records through this process. The payback is worth the investment of your time and attention.

2. Segment Your Target Markets

As the old saying goes, don’t try to boil the ocean. It’s a great deal easier to segment your target markets into smaller, more manageable segments that it is to try to address all markets at the same time. (See Figure 1.)

Compare campaign performance by segment to identify which segments perform the best. Historically, smaller, well-focused campaigns outperform larger, less focused campaigns. Messaging can be more targeted. The campaigns tend to be less costly, yet more productive, and conversion rates are higher. Filter inbound responses into your segments and monitor the touch quotas—you are likely to see fewer touches required for conversion.

Source: Beasley Direct Marketing

3. Tell a Story with Your Content

Your content must tell your prospects a compelling story to convince them that you understand their issues and have the solution. Content must be personalized to the segment you’re addressing; the verbiage that appeals to engineers may not communicate as effectively to other members of the buying team—such as finance.

Use consistent messaging across all touch point media, and sequence it to the buyer’s journey. You must earn the right to gather the qualification information by providing relevant, meaningful information that resonates with buyers and positions you as a peer and an industry leader—someone with whom they want to speak.

Strive to be memorable. This can be done through creative images or verbal themes; just stay away from the overly cute and gimmicky if you want to be taken seriously. (This varies from industry to industry, of course.)

4. Make Your Offer Compelling

Always offer something of perceived value. Research has shown that valued offers do get better results. Content can sometimes be your best offer if you have information that your customer can use in their work. ROI calculators are usually popular, as are educational white papers and case studies. Do a little research to find out what each segment will find interesting and compelling. (See Figure 2.)

Source: PODI

5. Listen to Prospects and Engage with the Human Touch

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reports that tele-prospecting (when used properly) delivers the highest response rate of all direct marketing media. People are busy. They can easily disengage from online media, or skip over your emails without much thought. It’s harder for people to ignore a real person on the phone with a compelling message.

A personalized tele-prospecting call can be extremely efficient in soliciting information that many customers are reluctant to offer online or in any other way. Listen to the prospect like a peer—that is, as though you were in their shoes. Find out what they need/want to know. Train your calling team to provide helpful information and insights on the call to create value first. Do this before you start asking for the data you need to determine whether or not they are qualified.

Many firms struggle with the listening aspect; it’s a hard skill to master. However, history shows us that when inserted as part of a multi-channel touch sequence, the human touch can take a non-responder to qualified status quicker than other channels. Timing is everything, of course. If you wait too long after a prospect responds to make personal contact, the opportunity may be long over.

Some people ask “If a tele-prospecting effort is ultimately what’s needed, why don’t we just skip the outbound email or direct mail campaign, and just cold call?” You can do cold calling without campaign support. However, sending email and/or direct mail in advance makes it a warm call, and this helps open the door. Our experience is that “warming” prospects first with such a campaign increases telemarketing productivity by 30% to 40%. You can reference the campaign to draw prospects into a relationship and a peer to peer conversation. If they read the campaign material, the prospects may be better informed than they would be if no touch preceded the call.

6. Track All Touch Metrics

Because marketers are so busy, tracking and metrics sometimes get left in the dust. Don’t allow this to happen. Metrics are your best friend when it comes to gauging the success of campaigns and allow you to learn by comparing different approaches and their effect on the lead to sales conversion pipeline. Metrics are also the only way to justify your budget and very existence.

Set up your campaigns with the idea of testing and benchmarking tactical campaign results foremost in your mind. Make sure your systems for tracking are in place before you launch, and that Marketing and Sales are in a position to freely share and compare data status. Constantly monitor funnel conversion rates and stay current on where you stand vis á vis the master plan and sales goals. Figure 3 presents a sample tracking form based on Excel.

Source: Direct Marketing Partners

7. Acquire/Develop Comprehensive Lead Management Resources

Implement a lead management system and team that give you end-to-end visibility into all of your campaigns. Lead management is critical to staying on track with your plan and your quotas.

Important: Get the manual process working first, before you automate. If you purchase the software first, you may discover that the software doesn’t have all the capabilities you want. Refine the process, then buy the right automation tools.

Multi-touch marketing is complex. Some prospects will be touched dozens of times by multiple touch vehicles. Track them all. (If you can find marketing automation software that tracks both online and off-line touches, so much the better. Many software packages track online only, which provides only a partial picture.

You will need a skilled and experienced team to make this work. Whether you contract this work with a lead management services firm or bring it in-house is less important than making sure you have the right skill levels.

Monitor touch streams closely and fix any problems as they arise. One of the advantages of having real metrics is that they allow you to respond quickly when things aren’t going as anticipated. And yes, this does happen. By monitoring the funnel conversion metrics you can identify which approaches worked the best, what approaches should be repeated and which discarded.

In our next installment, we’ll examine a real-world case study of a firm that shifted to multi-touch, multi-channel marketing and added email and tele-prospecting sequences, reducing touch requirements down to four to five touches (versus the seven to 13+ that we’ve been discussing) while increasing their sales pipelines.

Learn how to nurture more leads to qualified with an effective marketing automation program.

Watch Marketing Automation Best Practices for Success, and get expert advice to build your case for marketing automation, select the right solution, develop the right people with the right skills, and define your implementation strategy. Get instant access to this class now.

From time to time, either by thoughtful action or good fortune, every manager gets some – they wish they had more – and they’re always afraid of losing the ones they have. Every field has its fair share – the arts, sports, business, and fortunately the world of sales. Of course what we are talking about are folks with high potential.

High potential individuals are people that have special talents, unique capabilities, high motivation, and a sense of commitment that set them apart.

But just as their existence is known so is the fact that some of these high potential sales reps go on to be top performers in their respective fields while others fall by the way side with their potential never being realized. It is always bad news when people do not develop to their potential, but it is criminal when the high potential fail to do so.

With this in mind, let’s transition to the world of sales. Assume you are a sales manager and you have a couple of young new hires on your sales team that you believe fall into this high potential category. What can you do? How can you help these sales reps develop their potential to make sure they are as successful as they can be?

Let’s explore some ideas for meeting this challenge.

Over the years the psychology literature has devoted substantial time to this issue. Recently we reviewed a blog that did an outstanding job summarizing that effort. The authors explored the issue from the perspective of what successful people do that makes them successful. The article addressed what successful people do in a variety of fields but the insights translate extremely well to the field of sales.

Knowing what successful people do provides a sales coach with information that can be used to help high potential reps achieve the success they are capable of obtaining. Could they get there on their own? Sure, some would, but some might not. Plus, coaching can help them get there quicker with fewer mishaps along the way.

From the list of behaviors in the article that successful people do, we selected five that pertained particularly well to the world of sales.

• Focus on being productive, not being busy. A sales manager can help a young high potential rep navigate the requirements, procedures, and torrents of paperwork that are inherent in any sales organization. Being busy with this and that only creates the illusion of being productive. Successful people slow down, do one thing at a time, and put first things first. As the authors note: “most things make no difference” so help a new high potential person focus on things that matter.

• Work outside of your comfort zone. Many young high potential people are reluctant to accept an opportunity because they think they are not ready. One of the reasons for this is many high potential people tend to be perfectionists. As the authors note: “they feel uncomfortable and believe they require additional knowledge, skill, and experience before they can accept a challenge.” Consequently, they miss growth opportunities and in some cases develop a negative reputation for not being a ‘go-getter.’

Here a sales coach can be a great help. First, they can be on the alert for opportunities to provide the young high potential rep growth opportunities that are good for the rep and helpful to the team. Second, they can provide the support required to overcome the perfectionist syndrome.

• Recognize the importance of other people. Any top performing sales rep knows that one key to the success puzzle is leveraging human resources – do you know and do you use others that can help you be successful. Some of the others are peers; some are in other functions such as marketing and technical support, while others are thought leaders inside and outside the organization. A good sales coach can introduce the right people, at the right time, and consequently impact the development of the high potential sales rep.

• Maintain a positive outlook and learn from mistakes. Even if you are a high potential sales person, if you are a brand new sales rep it is fairly easy to get on a “downer.” Half of your first customer contacts don’t call back, your first meeting gets cancelled and that account that you were given as “done deal” – well, it still is not done.

As the authors point out: “successful people concentrate on the positive – they look for the silver lining.” But sometimes, particularly when one is new, the silver lining can be tough to find. This is where a coach can help. A little help early in the game takes very little time and can go a long way in helping someone to learn from mistakes, as opposed to, being discouraged by them.

• Keep it simple. In sales, one can in the wink of an eye become overwhelmed with the amount of information available – product information, marketing data, pricing structures and that is just the short list. Even if one could by wizardry manage to assimilate of the information, the trick is how do you pull it together to use it effectively with customers.

One way a sales coach can help a new high potential sales rep separate the wheat from the chaff is to get them to first and foremost focus on selling fundamentals. Here is a short list that contains some simple fundamentals for sales success:

• • Do an extraordinary job understanding your customer
  • Do what you say you are going do
  • If you don’t know, don’t pretend
  • Be available
  • Be easy to work with

As a sales manager if you are smart enough or lucky enough to have some new young high potential people on your team, take the time and effort to help them navigate to success – what they will be able to achieve in the long run is often startling.

At the beginning of the year you were warned.  Sales Operations leaders were experiencing Diminishing Authority.  Sales VPs did not know exactly what to do with the Ops team.  Decisions were being made without Sales Ops’ influence.  We spent the year researching how Sales Ops can bring value to the organization.  The results are in.

The greatest insights come from VPs of Sales.  We will ask them, “Is your Sales Ops leader helping you set sales strategy?”   For those who answer affirmatively, a second question is typically posed. “What strategic value is your Sales Ops leader providing?”  The Top Sales Insights of the Year incorporate the value Sales Ops drives.  Use this list to ensure you are focusing on the right initiatives.  For Sales Ops leaders, it boils down to one distinction. There are two types of leaders.  One sits at the table with the VP of Sales.  One does not.

So what are some of the Sales Insights of the Year? And how can Sales Ops leverage them in their organization?

“I need clarity into my business”:

Members of the executive committee have more data at their fingertips than ever before.  The board expects them to make sense of it all.  Systems and technology are evolving and poor adoption is causing dirty data.  Strategic decisions sit on the back burner until there is clarity in forecasting. 

Sales Operations can make sense of the data. It can create repeatable processes that will create clean data.  It supplies tools for measuring success both early and late in a strategy rollout.  Without the infrastructure that Sales Ops creates, the strategy has nothing to stand on.  Sales Operations enables the sales force strategy.

“I need to spend in the right places”:

Cash is piling up and investment is being made.  But what are the most critical issues that need to be addressed first?  Executives need a priority roadmap.  They need to know where growth is taking place in the market.  They can then allocate resources appropriately to meet the demand.

Sales Operations gives the direction on how to invest effectively.  Every dollar spent improperly is a missed investment.  The sales force needs to grow, but in what direction?  The potential analysis that Sales Operations offers optimizes the size of the prize.  Sales Operations directs the resource investment process. This has proven to be one of the most valuable assets Sales Ops provides.

“I need someone to execute”:

It might be because we forgot how to grow.  In the lean years we got good at taking money out of the business.  That wasn’t so hard. You simply pulled a couple levers and EBITDA rose.  Growing the top line in times of growth is not so easy.  Once the levers are pulled, the heavy lifting begins.  Tying strategy to executable field tactics is a major challenge.

Sales Operations is the execution engine.  Supplying clean data to the organization forces accountability.  There is no hiding behind reasons and excuses.  You have either met your goals or you have not.  Creating performance expectations and holding the team to those metrics is integral to success.

“We need to grow our network”:

The race is on to expand our virtual networks.  Social selling is allowing for major efficiencies in the sales organization.  Time spent touching customers and accounts has been reduced.  The quality of the interactions has increased.  Qualified leads are flowing into the funnel from referrals and virtual connections.  Information is being shared and attracting educated buyers to specific solutions. 

Sales Operations can operationalize this growth.  What would a truly social sales team mean for the top line?  Sales Operations can create the process for expanding reach.  With each rep sharing information with 500+ connections every day, results are seen quickly.  Social selling is a new initiative that must be executed on.  VPs are putting this on the Sales Operations team.

The rest of the sales insights from the year are found in our list.  You will benefit from reviewing them. They will serve as a reminder of the value Sales Operations brings a sales organization.

Author: John Kearney

Follow @MakingTheNumber

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How to Use Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards to Actually Generate Leads

On August 28, 2013, Twitter officially rolled out their new Lead Generation Card. This card is available to any company with a Twitter Ads account. For example, a coffee shop can promote giveaways and specials through a sign-up link embedded within the tweet. If you click the link, you will subscribe to their mailing list.

This is a quick and easy way to promote your business and it ushers in a new era of digital marketing with Twitter. Here are a few ways to maximize the enormous potential of these lead generation cards.

Keep Using Twitter Outside of Your Lead Generation Card

Twitter rewards innovation and creativity because it is easy to get lost in the crowd. Just look at these statistics. There are over 50 million tweets per day and roughly 9,100 tweets per second. With these staggering numbers, your lead generation card could potentially disappear in the shuffle.

To ensure your lead generation card is seen by potential customers, first establish a rapport with the public. Send informative, funny, and witty tweets daily. Retweet relevant news stories to your business.

Interact with people, comment on other business’s tweets, retweet information that pertains to you customers. When your account has clout and followers, people will actually read your tweets instead of scrolling right over them with the slightest of glances.

Be a Twitter Personality, Not an Organization

If your business account has some personality, people will be more inclined to clicking on the sign-up link in your promotional tweet. People like to think they are communicating with an actual human with actual feelings rather than a corporate drone.

Realistic interactions with potential customers makes you seem more trustworthy. They will feel good about subscribing to your website if there is some semblance of a relationship.

Also, be sure to mention people; Twitter users can form a bond with companies that mention them in their tweets. A good way to accomplish this is retweeting positive feedback from customers, which is organic, free marketing.

Make Your Promotional Tweets Count

Research is essential. For example, timing on Twitter is extremely important. This study from 2010 has some useful details about Twitter’s relationship to time. The most important takeaway is that 92% of retweets occur in the first hour after the initial tweet. Peak hours for Twitter usage is between 11 AM and 3 PM EST. You can do the math, send your lead generation cards out during peak hours.

Even the day of the week matters, as Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s are proven to be the most successful days for promotional tweets. Monday’s people catch up on the news and their favorite websites, and Friday’s people play around on the internet and are distracted with the weekend.

The seamless blend of old and new Twitter techniques is the future of B2B social media marketing. Twitter’s lead generation cards provide you with an avenue to connect with more new customers than ever. Through analytics and research, you can reach the full potential of this newfound gift from Twitter and watch your business explode.

Your sales enablement program is probably going to be less successful than you expect because, according to a decade of 3^rd-party research, it’s highly likely that:

• Over 50% of your marketing and sales communications aren’t relevant to your customer
• More than 70% of your marketing content isn’t relevant to your sales teams

This summary data indicates that you can have all the right sales enablement components (people, process, technology, knowledge, and assets) in place and still have an underperforming program because the majority of “words” coming from your sales and marketing teams are not relevant and useful.

Enabling Sales Enablement

To address this substantial customer communications problem, organizations are using persuasive messaging as the core enablement tool because:

• It’s more highly correlated to the primary actions Sales and Marketing want the customer to take, and to what the customer wants to know
•  It enables both Sales and Marketing to engage customers with more relevant and influential conversations and content.

What Is Persuasive Messaging?

Messaging is a summary answer to the prospective customer’s primary and secondary buying questions, a.k.a. the key points that must be communicated in order to convince a person to engage and buy. Messaging is integrated into content via the copyrighting/creative process and integrated into sales conversations via the communicator. Content can be delivered in the form of documents, audio, and video.

The two messaging styles are descriptive and persuasive. The categories of messaging can include: Company, Solution, Platform/Product, and Market Segment/Role messaging. (See a Typical Customer Communications Model with these styles and categories of messaging.)

As an example, descriptive product messaging is the typical “what and how” content in a product brochure. It answers the customer’s secondary buying questions, such as:

• What does the product do?
• How does it work?
• What features are included/optional?
• What are the key benefits?

Persuasive product messaging is the “why” content that is typically missing from a product brochure. It provides clear, relevant, differentiated, provable, business-language answers to the customer’s primary buying questions, a.k.a. persuasive messaging types, such as these:

• “Why should I consider your product?” for demand creation
• “Why should I meet with you?” for meeting creation
• “Why should I change from the status quo to a new solution?” for opportunity creation
• “Why should I buy this new solution from your company instead of your competitors?” for order creation
• “Why should I buy now?” for urgency creation

As you can see, persuasive messaging is more highly correlated to key Marketing and Sales objectives than descriptive messaging, and to what the customer needs to know in order to engage and buy.

How Persuasive Messaging Enables Sales Enablement

Imagine a 1-page persuasive battle card (see examples) or best-practice answer to some of the “why” questions above, such as “Why Change?” and “Why You?” These cards enable your sales team to be an instantly influential Subject Matter Expert (SME) in customer conversations. They help Sales get and prepare for meetings, qualify, sell solutions, set landmines for the competition, etc. They are exactly what Sales wants.

As one Sales Manager said about the order-creation or competitive messaging: “It has made our competitive information much more concise; it is information that the salespeople now use. It has taught them how to ask the right questions to steer customers our way.”

Imagine a version of this same 1-page persuasive messaging summary is also deployed into the majority of pre-sales marketing content, such as collateral, demand-generation campaigns, sales tools, and sales support training. These cards enable each piece of content to be much more relevant and influential.

Without persuasive messaging-enabled content, Sales is not likely return to the sales portal and is likely to return to their old ways. And, given that 30-60% of the buying process occurs online, persuasive messaging-enabled content is also critical to the success of your “content selling” effort.

As one Product Sales Manager said: “Highly persuasive competitive messaging increased our products’ win rate by 30% and reduced the time we spent supporting the field by around 50%.”

Persuasive messaging is to sales enablement as octane is to gasoline. It makes all the “words” coming from your sales and marketing engines more effective. It’s a quick win with Sales. It’s a practical way to align Marketing and Sales. It’s why persuasive messaging should be the #1 ingredient in your successful sales enablement program too.

Professional services firms, like management consulting, financial services, and information technology, are involved in complex projects that engage large on-site staff over an extended period of time. They have extended capabilities to engage in a wide variety of work.

For these types of projects, mining every possible asset for identifying and qualifying leads has significant revenue and profit payoff. This is a case where ever stone must be turned over.

Beyond marketing, there are four major sources for identifying leads:

• Customer contacts
• Technical staff in your company that are working or have worked with the customer
• Industry partners
• Professional colleagues

Before reviewing some specifics, let’s highlight one best practice that seems to be common among companies who are getting this right. Companies engaging in this type of work often have Business Developers and very large teams of highly qualified technical experts who are onsite doing the work.

As one Managing Partner of a consulting firm shared – “We have a lot very smart and respected people onsite every day working with client contacts. They work with the clients; they eat lunch with the clients but the problem is they keep their heads down versus up when it comes to identifying leads for future work. We need to change that big time – we don’t need them to sell but we must have them identify leads.”

With that thought in mind, let’s take a closer look at each lead source:

Client Contact

• Mutual benefits are the most frequent outcome. Obtaining a reference is sometimes viewed as self-serving; but that is seldom true. In most cases, references turn into a meeting that is positive or a sale that is highly successful. This means the person providing the reference benefits as much as the person receiving it.

• Timing matters. For example, if a solution has just been implemented or a project recently completed and you are getting positive feedback, asking your client contact if someone else inside their company could benefit from this type of effort is a good way to generate leads.

On the other hand, it is possible to imagine situations where the timing makes asking for a reference more difficult or even inappropriate. A best practice for optimizing client referencing is planning ahead. Ask for a reference or for the right to ask for a future reference when the situation and timing is right.

• Clients move to new departments. When a client with whom you have worked successfully moves to another department inside the same company they are an excellent source for leads. The move can provide either a lead you can develop or a lead you could pass on to a Business Developer in another division of your firm. In either case you are identifying a potential lead and maintaining the customer relationship.

• Clients move to a new company. If you have worked successfully with a client and they take a position at another company, this is an ideal source for identifying new leads. The added advantage is often the person will assume a more senior position. Top performers go out of their way to keep track of customers as they move from one organization to another. Fortunately today there are all kinds of online systems for making this easy.

Company Staff. The potential for lead identification from your company staff is substantial. For example, when another person’s client contact moves to one of your accounts they can make an introduction.

Also, as previously noted, there are technical and support staff on the client’s site implementing the solution – often for an extended period of time. Although the technical and support staffs are not salespeople they have an opportunity to observe changes in the client organization that may signal future work. They are an excellent source of intelligence that can be leveraged when it is passed on to someone in business development.

Industry Partners and Professional Colleagues. Sometimes companies are working on different phases of the project or one is serving as a subcontractor to the other. In many cases these companies are not competitors. In such cases the history can be leveraged for future leads.

But industry partners do not always have to be formal relationships between companies. Very often multiple salespeople from different companies call on the same client contact but they are selling products that are not competitive. In situations like these, individual salespeople can forge personal relationships with salespeople representing complimentary products – sharing contacts, introductions, and even some client intelligence.

Last, don’t forget professional colleagues. Keep track of people you meet professionally – from conferences and meetings to university alumni groups. Develop business relationships with them by keeping in contact and sharing information, research, or other professional materials you think they might find interesting. Nurturing these professional relationships have many benefits from generating leads to introducing you to key decision makers.

Final Note. Companies that are engaged in large complex projects have extensive capabilities. Often clients have knowledge of only those capabilities that relate to the present scope of work. Therefore they do not think of you when a new and different type of project is funded. Everyone in your organization needs to be on the alert for operational and financial signals that future work may be forth coming.

Since the technical and support staff in the position to observe such signals are not salespeople, they need to be trained in lead identification and lead qualification skills. In too many situations this training never occurs.

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

Here are a few ways that can help you boost your sales with Facebook. If you want more sales, more lead traffic, more foot traffic and more leads; the pointers below are sure to help you!

#1 Engaging your users 

The goal when posting to your page should be catching the attention of your followers & getting them to engage with your posts. Creating interest among your page viewers is after all the measure of success of your Facebook page. When you want to market your products you should first give interesting content to your page visitors. Remember that people don’t like to be sold to every waking minute of the day. You can include interesting posts, run contests or ask questions.

#2 If you have it, then flaunt it

If you have products and services that are worth showing off, then why not.  The power of suggestion is very strong on Facebook — especially with images that ignite the senses & passions of people. This might just convert your page visitors to your customers and push them an extra bit to buy your product. Appeal to your fans senses by showing them high quality photos and videos.

#3 Get more likes 

Getting more likes on your page is important to get the visibility on any social platform. Since numbers do matter, SellMojo has a like-gating feature that helps you increase your store likes each time a new visitor visits your page. It is also necessary to get the right likes from genuine fans!

#4 Run Contests

Contests are huge eye-catchers, especially if you are a small or local business. People love winning stuff and they love it all the more when they can win and redeem it locally and immediately. Since Facebook has updates its contest policies, running a contest has become all the more easier. Or you can simply put up a text update and your contest is set!

#5 Be Reachable

Make sure you are reachable in some ways to your users. It is important to keep all the
communication channels open so that they know they have a way to reach out to you or contact you. There are 2 ways to get in touch:
1. Facebook messages
2. Phone calls
And both these channels are really helpful to gauge what your potential customer is thinking.

Please feel free to drop your thoughts and comments below for us as well as other readers!

Don’t get an MBA.

The majority of jobs in the world are sales related. Yet colleges don’t really do a good job of teaching for it. That’s 14 million employees who were not taught how to sell. Not to mention the average MBA costs nearly $100,000.

It’s a travesty.

What salespeople need to be successful in the workforce just isn’t taught in schools. This role that could be the most important in business is learned with practice and hard work.

Here are the 4 top reasons why you should forgo the MBA and pursue a career in sales:

#1 Demand is high, supply is low

Just this year, the number of jobs in sales and related occupations jumped to to a four-year-high of 15.8 million. According to USA Today article, sales representative is the second-hardest job to fill this year, behind skilled trades. And Glassdoor ranked Sales Director in the top 5 of highest demand jobs is the nation.

#2 Successful companies are driven by a top-down sales culture

salesforce.com, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Some of the greatest businesses in the game are know for their sales culture. Additionally, a large % of CEOs are hand picked from the sales ranks. Sales skills are a requirement in business leadership and an area where you can differentiate yourself.

#3 You can teach it yourself (save the $$$)

You can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in sales. In fact, it’s better learned in the real world than through structure. Make a habit of reading, practicing what you learn, and going out and selling things on your own. Look for a future post here on just how to do that but know for now that you can create your own path to sales mastery.

4. Great salespeople are the highest paid professionals in the company

There’s an adage in the software world that CEOs want their sales professionals to make more money than they do. There are absolutely no other roles that could be thought of this way. In most cases, the sales profession offers unlimited upside in terms of career earnings.

–
Why natural abilities are important in sales, there is a huge professional body of best practices, sales methodologies, etc. Since
very few MBAs offer this track, it could be one of the best opportunities to build your amazing career.

We all know there is no such thing as a perfect resume. There are so many rules out there that sometimes even recruiters can't agree on what you should or shouldn't include.

However, you can follow the basic resume rules to perfect your resume and make it stand out. To get an objective and professional opinion of my resume, I reached out to Amanda Augustine, career expert at TheLadders, to revise my resume, which I hadn't updated since shortly after starting here at Business Insider.

Below is my original resume:

It wasn't surprising that Augustine ripped my resume apart. Here are the critiques she offered on my really, really bad resume:

Don't use headers or footers.

Although it may look neat and concise to display contact information in the header, it "can confuse an applicant tracking system," says Augustine. Instead, she advises to list contact information within the body of the document.

There's no need to list your street address.

"You don’t need to list your street address in the contact information," says Augustine. "The city, state, and zip code are plenty. In fact, if you were trying to relocate, I’d advise you to remove the entire mailing address from your resume."

Include a URL to your professional online profile.

The latest Jobvite social recruiting survey found that 93% of recruiters will look at a candidate’s social media presence, so make it easy on them by including a URL along with your contact information, says Augustine. For most, this means a link to your LinkedIn profile. This will prevent recruiters from having to guess or mistaking you for someone else.

"Given the nature of your work and your career goals, consider including your Twitter handle," says Augustine. "Before you add your Twitter handle and LinkedIn URL, make sure your profiles are fully fleshed out and align with your professional brand and goals."

Include your professional title at the top.

My resume is missing a professional title at the top of the page, which Augustine says should be located below contact information and above core competencies and work experience.

This is not necessarily the title that you currently have, but should tell the reader exactly the type of work you're targeting. For instance, Augustine advises me to have a combination of "Journalist," "Reporter," and "Editor" in the title.

"You can take it a step further and have a line directly below that to describe your specialties," she says.

Include a professional summary.

Your professional summary is basically your elevator pitch in approximately three to five lines that should include what you're great at, passionate about, and why your experience is valuable to your targeted employer.

"Clearly spell out your qualifications, based on your career goals. Since language skills are often sought after, I recommend putting 'Fluent in Vietnamese and English' at the very end of your professional summary," says Augustine.

Create a core competency section.

"Core competencies, also known as areas of expertise, are typically found at the top of the resume, just below your professional summary," says Augustine. "It’s a quick way for the reader to get a sense of your skill sets and areas of expertise."

"I would include in this section the types of work you do. Since you focus on a wide range of topics, you can either work them into this section or include them in your professional summary," she says.

Center the headings.

TheLadders research shows that a recruiter's eyes are drawn to the headers and then down the center of the page, says Augustine. "This includes your professional title, and the headers for your professional experience and professional development sections."

Use consistent formatting.

Consistency is the name of the game on a resume. "In your contact information at the top of the resume you abbreviated the state, but in the experience section you wrote the states out," Augustine points out. "Either is allowed, so long as you are consistent." The same rule applies to using consistent formatting when displaying dates, meaning choose between spelling out the month or abbreviating it.

Eliminate student positions.

Since I'm no longer entry-level, Augustine tells me to delete some of my older internship experience, which includes positions with Turner Broadcasting System and Cable News Network. She also advises me to delete my position as a press release coordinator and student assistant while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia.

Delete college scholarships awarded.

"For the same reason, it’s time to take off the scholarships you received at University of Georgia," says Augustine. Basically, it's been too long since college.

Do include specific titles.

"If your resume includes internship positions, add a word in front of the 'Intern' title that describes the type of work performed," says Augustine. "While we eliminated most of your internships, the CBS News internship still remains, since it was done more recently in your career and helps to fill an employment gap."

"Some would argue that you should remove [the internship] entirely from the resume, but I like it because it fills in an employment gap," she advises. 

List achievements in two to five bullet points.

Under each job or experience you've had, explain how you contributed to or supported your team’s projects and initiatives. "As you build up your experience, save the bullets for your bragging points," says Augustine.

"Think about how you’ve increased efficiencies, cut costs, grown revenue, and so forth," she advises. "Discuss the number of projects you’ve worked on, the size of the team you worked with, and if you were able to meet or beat deadlines and come in on or under budget."

"Your internship with CBS News would certainly only have a one-to-two sentence blurb describing your role and day-to-day activities. There’s no reason to develop bulleted 'bragging points' for this work experience, since it was only an internship and you held the position for a short amount of time," she says.

Consider re-labeling the education section.

Augustine says to name this section "Professional Development" instead, and include all of the following information: Education (in reverse chronological order), certifications, technical skills, language skills, relevant awards you’ve received since graduating school, and professional associations and memberships that relate to your work.

After much critiquing, below is a revised version of my resume:

SEE ALSO: 6 Controversial Rules Even Recruiters Can't Agree On

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