We’re busy people. There’s only so many hours in a day and so many things to get done, and sometimes, we get beat by the clock.  And even though it may seem like it, the fact that we are all so connected, so real time, doesn’t always create the magic formula for productivity, or effectiveness … Continue Reading

4 Easy Ways To Improve Your Daily Social Media Workflow by Tammy Kahn Fennell - Maximize Social Business - Maximize Social Business - Your Social Media for Business Resource ... Featuring Contributions from Global Thinkers . This copyrighted content was originally published on Maximize Social Business and may not be republished on any other website or in any other format without explicit permission from the publisher.

It’s rash to conclude that the concept of target audience is a meaningful tool for building a marketing strategy. Just because someone is a member of a socio-demographic group doesn’t mean they’ll buy your products. People buy because they want to improve something about their lives, or their business, with the help of your solution, and you need to know how they think about that.

Have you ever woken up with the idea that you belong to a particular target audience, and must consume marketing messages no less than three times a week in order to decide which product to purchase? Absolutely not! People focus on how to solve their current problems, and they don’t want to be distracted by anything that doesn’t help them make a good decision.

While developing a marketing strategy, it’s crucially important to understand what problems people think they will solve by using your product and what communication context unites them during their decision-making process. To identify and provide a structured description of the context a person delves into during the buying process, Premier SV conducts qualitative research on buyers. The result is a detailed description: a buyer persona. It’s these personas that should serve as the basis for developing a communication strategy.

Here are six situations where buyer personas are a much better tool than a target audience that is determined by socio-demographic characteristics.

1. Your products aren’t spontaneously purchased within 10 minutes of discovery. Your buyers prefer to evaluate all possible options because the consequences of making the wrong decision are costly.

If we are dealing with a high-consideration purchase, branding based on knowledge of your target audience and spontaneous brand awareness are no guarantee buyers will choose you. Often, these consumers will ignore your slogans and advertising messages to rely on objective reviews from your former clients, their friends and coworkers.

2. Your target audience includes a lot of people who are not a potential customer.

If only 1 out of 10 people in your target audience needs your solution, while the other 9 aren’t prospects, it means you simply waste 90% of your efforts and resources. Though you may increase your brand awareness among your target audience and eventually increase sales, it’ll be impossible to identify if this is the direct result of your marketing campaign.

3. Your marketing activities are repetitive and very similar to your competitors.

Since companies in direct competition have the same target audience, it’s unlikely that they’ll have distinctive strategies for marketing campaigns. The result can be intense competition of creative ideas which aren’t relevant to the buyers’ context, but are just focused on framing the solution in new and exciting ways. This might not seem bad, but the further you are from the buyer’s context, the less likely the buyer will understand you and your messaging. Your marketing should be specific, clear and concise, and focus on how you’ll solve your buyers’ real problem.

4. You’re not exactly sure what people need to hear to choose you.

Messaging for target audience and buyer personas are different as in the first case you’re talking about the product while in the second case – about solving a problem. For example, a well-known slogan created by Premier SV for Herschi-Cola’s target audience of 10-20 year olds was “Herschi-Cola – the taste of victory.” While clever, it doesn’t reveal any particular reason for buyers to choose it. The same goes for the slogan “Always Coca-Cola” – it is just a way to show the value of the product, without paying attention to the context of its purchase. That’s why the winner in these messages’ battle will be the one with a bigger media budget.

Premier SV has decided not to participate in these competitions anymore. After analyzing Onduline’s buyer persona, we’ve transformed the slogan for their roofing materials and male target audience of 30-55 year olds from “Doesn’t rust, doesn’t leak, doesn’t make noise” to “Onduline – easy roof repair”. We’ve stressed the core value for buyers – the simplicity of solving the problem of a leaky roof as it stacks up to other options.

5. You’re not sure if you’ve chosen the right communication channels.

It’s difficult to find a brand that’s 100% sure their chosen media plan is the best, even if their marketing campaign is already in place. The reason why we’re unsure can be connected to an inability to understand how communication channels affect a consumer’s decision to buy a product. Traditional effectiveness metrics only reveal the number of contacts within your target audience, but no one understands how these contacts transform into an interest in a product or sales.

You won’t have these problems with buyer personas, because they uncover the sources of buyers’ decisions at each stage of the buying cycle, and identify the particular sources of information that influenced the decision.

6. Your target audience is mixed, or decisions are made by a group of people belonging to different socio-demographic groups.

The classic example of this situation appeared in Premier SV when we were researching buyers for the latest model of Toyota RAV4. We found that in most cases, both men and women contributed to the final decision to purchase the car. Additionally, in most cases both parties had equal weight in the buying process, but opposite evaluation criteria. What should be done in cases like these? Since Toyota is focused on traditional marketing methods, they decided to concentrate on male buyers. Typically, men and women use different sources of information and perceive the RAV4’s merits differently, so they decided to ignore the section of their target audience which wasn’t perceived as important.

B2B brands can also encounter the need to target 5-6 people with varying job titles, who work in different departments and all influence the decision-making process. Curious how to solve this problem?

Give up the idea of using your target audience as a tool for identifying decision makers, and start studying buyer personas. This will help you identify their roles in the decision-making process, evaluation criteria and many other factors that help buyers differentiate you from others and assure them that your product will make their life better.

Each year consumers become more savvy and sophisticated in making purchase decisions. To continue influencing them efficiently, you need to better study their behavior in the process of buying your product. Buyer personas are a step forward in this direction. When you research your buyer’s decisions, you’ll understand your buyers and create more effective marketing communications.

Has your company already interviewed buyers to build buyer personas? What was the most challenging part? Please share your ideas with us.

5 Truths About Sales Success We Don’t Want to Admit
by Dan Waldschmidt

Most discussions about how to be successful in sales include the essentials of technology and process and skills.  How to leverage all three to funnel prospects into closed opportunities.

From leads to lots of revenue.

But that discussion is misleading (in fact, quite damaging) to an organization and especially to the newest members of that team.

Because it leaves out the most important elements to being successful.

It’s the personal stuff most of us don’t talk about much.  The deep, nasty secrets that we try to pretend don’t exist.

And so we tap-dance around the edges of success, flirting with the “big deal” that will probably never happen.

When we could have looked fear in the eye and grabbed hold of the success that we really want.

1. Your future is what you make it.

Nothing could be more true than this simple statement.  No one is going to help you.  No one cares about what you want for you like you do.

Deep within your soul, you have to pull yourself together and care deeply about what you want to do.  You are creating your future.  Your future is the series of decisions that you make today, tomorrow, and next week — when you get up, how much effort you put in, how honest you are with yourself, if you’re tough enough to cry because what you want for yourself moves you.

It’s an empty canvas right now.  And with the right mixture of color and passion and patience you can make something beautiful…

2. It takes massive effort to be successful.

Look around at the people watching TV and playing video games.  They are the people making excuses.  You are going to have to work harder than you have ever imagined to be successful.

Don’t let schmucks convince you that they have an easy way figured out.  Anything fast or easy is for losers.    That’s the truth.  Avoid easy like your life depends on it - because it does.  Start talking to yourself now.  Start telling yourself that you are going to work until your eyes bleed and then you are going to keep clawing your way toward your goal until your fingernails tear off.

Nothing can stop you if you won’t be stopped…

3. Your attitude is your most important treasure.

The “5 inches between your ears” is what determines how amazing you become.  You need to feed your brain.  Who cares about college.  If you go, go. If not, spend the rest of your life with a chip on your shoulder learning everything you can get your hands on.

Stop pretending you have it all figured out.  Ask for help.  Your attitude determines our outlook.  Is the sun shining through the rain or did you only notice the showers?  And that matters because you’re going to get rained on — not just your parade, but the rehearsal, and the after-party.  Someone somewhere will be in charge of making fun of what you are trying to do.

Your attitude is body armor for your destiny…  Wear it with a smile.

4. Ignore the Crowd.  Be a Maverick.

Conventional wisdom is the banner cry for those who demand mediocrity.  You’ll hear things like -” that’s what we’ve always done” or “that’s how it has to be”.  And the reality is that the crowd is always wrong.  ALWAYS.  They may be louder than you right now.  They may look meaner.  But the crowd lacks something that you can deliver.  They need a leader.

Behind the chest-thumping are persons — weak, pained persons.  And so because they lack the stomach to stand on there own, they look for acceptance.  They join the ranks of the “almost did something amazing” and bitterly shout for you to join them.

And you’ll never know that in spite of the rants and jeers, it’s them who respect you for your bravery.

5. Fail boldly.

Mortgage your house, sell your car, live on rice and beans  - in pursuit of your goals.  Don’t half-ass it.  Put all the chips in.

What’s the worst that can happen to you?  You’re not going to die.  Heck, you might start living.  So what if life kicks the crap out of you.  Stand back up.

You won’t  amount to much in life without extraordinary failures.  You’ll fail at love.  You’ll fail at making money.  You’ll fail at a million different things.  But failure isn’t an event, it’s just a step closer to success.

Were you a failure as a baby because you couldn’t say “Dada” fast enough?  Hardly — you were trying with all the resources at your disposal to get out the words.  And trying eventually turned into success.  That’s what trying is all about.  And that’s you can never stop trying.

Success.

Maybe it’s time we talked about the real secrets behind sales success.

Maybe it’s time we started “being” better people instead of chasing the next “South Beach” sales process.

Dan Waldschmidt is President of Waldschmidt Partners, an international business strategy company, and the brains behind his highly popular Edgy Conversations blog.

Every content creator has one thing in common: they need goals to succeed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in fashion or inbound marketing, you’ll struggle to reach your company’s sales goals if you haven’t taken the time to set smart targets. HubSpot’s Ginny Soskey states that “blogging willy-nilly is like going on a roadtrip without a destination or map to help you get there.”

Who knows where you’ll end up if you’re solely focused on creating lots of content, without a clear picture of the revenue you want to earn or the types of customers you want to acquire?

Website traffic is often considered a measure of success for content marketers, but it shouldn’t be your only key performance indicator. While it’s critical to grow your website’s monthly visitors, a comprehensive view of the blogging goals that matter can help your brand grow faster than ever before.

Before you start building blogging goals, it’s crucial to gain a baseline understanding of your blog’s performance by evaluating your metrics closely. By determining exactly where your website lies, you can set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) to improve your performance.

For more on this topic, check out Blogging Metrics: How to Find and Apply Actionable Intelligence.

1. Increase Blog Subscribers

Setting blogging goals to increase your subscriber base could be one of the smartest actions you take to reach your revenue targets. Sales specialists believe that it takes around 7 points of touch for a company to convert a lead into a customer – and if your product is expensive, your sales cycle could be even longer. Winning subscribers means that your content is good enough that people want to read it regularly, and that you’ve got an opportunity to remain top of mind.

Master content marketer Neil Patel believes that it’s possible to reach blogging goals of gaining 1,000 subscribers in just two months time by creating high-quality guests posts for “A-List” blogs, and ensuring you have a clear invitation to subscribe on your website.

2. Improve Your Conversion Rate

It doesn’t matter if your blog is driving 90,000 visitors a month if you’re just not converting leads. Average conversion rates can vary drastically by industry, but between 2-10% is the norm:

Conversions are a measure of the quality and relevance of your content, the reputability of your website, and how well you’ve placed call-to-actions within your content. Beating your industry’s average for conversions is among the most effective blogging goals for improving revenue.

3. Double Your Social Shares

The burgeoning volume of content online means that quality isn’t always enough to rank well. Earning website authority and high search rankings can take time, and newer bloggers can struggle to grow an audience. If your website is new or poorly ranked for crucial keywords, the most effective way you can gain more exposure fast is through striving to increase your shares on social media.

GMB research has found that the primary reason people share content isn’t because it’s hilarious or contains cute pictures of cats (though those reasons certainly made the list). It’s because it’s interesting, which is really just a measure of relevance.

Set blogging goals of improving your content’s average rate of shares on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest by emulating the types of content that have gained the most social exposure in the past. Social signals are closely tied to modern SEO, so you’ll likely find your search rankings, social following, and sales skyrocketing!

4. Earn More Backlinks

Inbound links to your content aren’t the only factor in SEO anymore, but they still send a loud and clear message to Google that you know your stuff. The more bloggers who link to your content, the more quickly your site authority will rise, improving your chances of being found on search engines by your future customers.

Venchito Tambon has found that link-worthy content often share one of the following five attributes:

1. Visual appeal, like infographics and videos

2. Brand-centric and a high degree of originality

3. User-generated

4. Evergreen content with lasting relevance

5. Content that’s gaining viral exposure on social media.

Additionally, high-quality, original research, fresh statistics, and breaking news are effective ways to earn a high number of links.

Set blogging goals of increasing your blog’s annual inbound links received each month by creating more visual content, incorporating your customer’s content, and being the first to discuss the latest news items. Take matters into your own hands by establishing a program for publishing at least one or two guest posts per month.

For more insight on ethical link-building, look into An Exhaustive Guide to Exceptional Guest Blogging.

5. Create a New Kind of Content

Sure, you’re producing written posts, but are you leveraging infographics, custom videos, webinars, eBooks, comparison guides, or whitepapers? The sky is the limit when it comes to the types of content you can produce. Your metrics are an invaluable indicator of your website’s past performance, but you’ll never know whether your brand’s buyer personas go wild for tutorial videos until you try one.

Establish blogging goals to try at least one new type of content each month, whether that’s a collaborative list or Slideshow. Even if your metrics reveal there was no net increase in sales from your effort, you’ll have more actionable intelligence to shape your content strategy going forward.

6. Comment on Other Blogs

Even though modern content creators may do a lot more than just writing, there’s still invaluable lessons from the camp of authors and copywriters. Jeff Goins believes that “writers need to read. A lot. Magazines. Books. Periodicals. And so on.” Even if your average day includes social media engagement, SEO, graphic design and blogging, gaining exposure to branded content that other companies are producing can allow you to significantly improve your own approach.

Simply subscribing to other blogs and skimming through their content isn’t enough, either. Become an active member of other bloggers’ communities, and establish a goal of commenting on at least two other blogs each day. These blogging goals can allow you to improve relationships with big-name bloggers (so they may accept one of your blog posts), and gain increases in traffic to your website.

7. Blog More Often

What’s the most surefire way to increase your sales through content? Produce more of it.

Not just any content though. Your sales are unlikely to increase if you stretch your resources further and your quality drops significantly. You’re more likely to lose subscribers, credibility, and readers if you start pushing yourself to publish as much as humanly possible. Creating more quality content isn’t easy, but it’s the best possible way to ensure you reach the most people possible. In fact, HubSpot research has found that 92% of companies that blog multiple times a day have gained a customer through content.

Only you know how much more you can publish, by using in-house resources or quality outsourcing agencies. However, make blogging goals to create more without losing quality, whether that’s one more post a week or day.

Have you managed to increase your revenue with the help of blogging goals? What other metrics and targets would you add to this list?

Our job is to find highly qualified sales leads for our customers that will lead to qualified opportunities. Our clients come to us with a need to fill their pipeline and want us to do so as quickly and effectively as possible. One of the first questions usually asked when speaking with potential or brand new customers is what we ­recommend for a call strategy for the campaign. To be more clear, customers who are either outsourcing or supplementing their teleprospecting efforts to us want to know if calling efforts should be focused on cold calls, follow ups on warm leads from marketing events, or target accounts identified by their own outside sales reps.

In my opinion, the answer to this question is fairly straightforward: calling efforts should be focused on all three areas because the potential of uncovering great leads can come from any of these sources. Sure, there are caveats, like the amount of resources and time you are able to allocate to each, but in general, I think the best route is to mix things up and call into a few different sources at any given time.

Let’ start with the obvious. If your organization has recently returned from a trade show, or has just hosted a webinar that has resulted in warm leads, have your inside sales team start here. (Note: You’d be very surprised to see how many organizations have these leads sitting in their CRM untouched for months. Don’t let them get to this point and make sure you hire the necessary resources to accommodate a prompt follow up!). Not only are your prospects more likely to recognize your company name from the show, but it’s a great way for your team to get their feet wet calling on a product or service they are just learning. Because they are warm leads, prospects have their guard down, and even if they brush callers off by saying they were just going for informational purposes, it’s a great opportunity for your team to have great business conversations regarding their environment and build pipeline for later on down the road. The thing about tradeshow and webinar follow ups is that reps tend to go through these leads and disposition them pretty quickly, so it’s best to have 1-2 other list sources in the queue to eliminate the down time they will have once they’ve burned through the warm stuff.

While warm leads are like Christmas for inside reps, they often run dry quickly as the low hanging fruit rises to the top. As a result, always having a cold call list is key, as your reps’ time should be spent on cold dials as well. The main reason for this is that, while warm leads are great and usually fruitful, they are also being called by every other company that has gotten their hands on the list from the show or webinar. Therefore, prospects are being bombarded with calls, and odds are they are already in the evaluation stage of their project. The chances of passing a lead here are sometimes slim because you are entering the game a bit too late. With cold calls, you are most likely striking up some interest with prospects, and your call may prompt them to have a general interest.

Similar to straight cold calls are cold calls into target accounts identified by outside sales reps. I love the idea of target accounts because it’s an excellent way to establish rapport between inside and outside reps, on top of the benefits of reaching prospects ahead of the game before their initiatives are active as described above. Calling into target accounts is a great way to get buy in from outside reps, and once they see the results and get appointments with key decision makers at the target organizations, the relationship between inside and outside sales reps continues to grow. This will lead to increased motivation all around, impacting bottom line numbers significantly.

There are pros to every different type of calling strategy, which is why I think it is crucial to always have a healthy mix of campaigns to call, whether cold, warm, or target accounts. Aside from the benefits of the different types of prospects found in each list, reps will always have plenty to call. I have seen it happen so many times before where reps are at a standstill, wasting time because they don’t have enough people to call and are waiting for approved lists. That down time significantly affects your pipeline and revenue numbers, so always plan your calling campaigns accordingly!

Google Glass is exciting for the private sector. But I’m more excited about its business applications. There are a million-and-a-half different functions that Google Glass could be utilized for in the business sector. The business potential, in fact, is much more exciting; I have little time for more applications where small animals are thrown into buildings in an attempt to slaughter other tiny animals.

So, I’m curious, what applications will improve business strategy, increase marketing capabilities, and how will Glass put one company ahead of another company?

Further Unified Communications

First, unified communications will be enhanced. VoIP Business phones, laptops, smartphones, and tablets are already synced up seamlessly. Will Google Glass be able to integrate? Since most of the features are cloud-based, the answer should be “absolutely, yes.”

However, much of this success will depend on the ability of Glass to work well with 3rd party smart phone applications as well as the SDK that is made available to develop native apps for Glass. I imagine that many of the ratings for VoIP services will reflect Glass’s compatibility. Those that can integrate will have good ratings and vise-versa.

I expect to receive updates from my cloud-based deskphone about incoming calls and voicemails. I’d also like to see telecommunication companies create mobile clients for the device. Without business app development, Glass will be able to do little more than what our current devices can already do.

I’d like to be able to have voicemails sent automatically to Glass, have access to company directories with extension dialing, and the ability to send a fax through my business phone system via Glass without lifting a finger. Imagine having immediate visual access to your prospect’s CRM history when you give them a call.

Technical Assistance

If your company provides any sort of technical hardware, then you know how frustrating it is to try and diagnose a technical issue properly over the phone. “Is it plugged in? Did you try turning it off and then back on again?” Glass can provide a technician a point-of-view window into a user’s home and provide information on which cord goes where and assess any physical damage.

This can be used in a variety of instances for a multitude of businesses: doctors miles away can diagnose injuries, mechanics can assess engines when you’re broken down on the side of the road, an dplumbers will be able to tell you why your sink is leaking, gross, but useful.

Advertising

Imagine that a consumer has been researching a product they’d perhaps like to purchase and, like Google’s AdSense, when they see the side of a bus, a personalized ad for the product they were researching pops up. The ads on the side of the bus would be different to each wearer of Google Glass based on their interests. We are already bombarded by ads and that is not going away. Shouldn’t we at least have those ads personalized to fit our interests?

This can be extended to consumers picking up products or looking at restaurants. Offers will appear enticing a purchase. This seems almost as dangerous as it is profitable. We have multiple distractions already today while on the road, imagine how a driver might react when an ad pops up in front of them as they are crossing an intersection?

Google has recently patented a pay-per-gaze, which is similar to their already implemented pay-per-click advertising. So, if a consumer were to “gaze” at an ad ¬– whether it be on- or off-line – the company in charge of that ad would pay Google for the gaze.

There are other business possibilities, but right now Google Glass is tightly controlled and only available to a select few. The issues surrounding privacy are the main hot buttons. If Glass has face recognition (the ability to recognize a face and thereby pull up that person’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) how will people without Google Glass be able to opt out? Or will only Google Glass owners have the ability?

There are plenty of questions that need to be answered, but there is no doubt that Glass, if accepted publically, could have a big impact on businesses.

Given that the internet has changed a person’s ability to go viral and be successful outside of a traditional career path, the question arose: does a LinkedIn photo still need to be “formal” to get a person to their ultimate objective of a face-to-face meeting? In October 2013, Digital Analytics 101 completed a study using a 5-second test on usabilityhub.com to test that very question. Five test subjects were given the instructions to send two profile photos of themselves – one wearing a dress shirt only, and the other with a jacket on over that shirt. Backgrounds, expressions, and the shirts were identical in both photos – the only difference was the presence of a suit jacket.

Respondents were randomly selected and shown one of the profile photos for 5 seconds and then asked four questions to answer with the assumption that they had seen this photo on LinkedIn:

• Please list 3-5 adjectives to describe this person
• Based on the photo alone, would you agree to meet with this person?
• What is your age?
• What is your gender?

Over 350 responded, with testers both male and female, age 19 through 73.

Every Girl Is Indeed Crazy About A Sharp Dressed Man

Across all five men that volunteered for the profile pic experiment, all of them had more favorable results with the jacket photo vs. the shirt-only photo. When run through a statistical significance check, wearing a jacket in a LinkedIn profile picture gave the subject a 14% lift in someone wanting to meet with them. When this was further broken out by the sex of the person who viewed the photo, most of the difference was driven by female testers. When the LinkedIn photo had the jacket, women were 63% more likely to want to meet with the candidate. (For male testers, there was no significant difference in whether or not a man had a jacket on in his LinkedIn photo.)

You’re Also Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile

Another interesting trend was the impact the jacket had on how testers described the person. If the person was not smiling, in the jacket photo this was seen as proof of dedication and intensity towards doing their job well. In the shirt photo, the exact same person was seen as creepy, scary, intimidating, and angry. For subjects that smiled, the jacket photo made them seem more confident, relaxed, approachable, and professional. In the shirt photo, the exact same person was still seen as happy and fun, but also perceived as not serious or sloppy.

Smile and wear a jacket – it doesn’t necessarily impact your ability to get a face-to-face meeting with men, but it definitely helps if the target is female or older than 30. Testers also noticed the quality of the photo’s background – if it was not professionally lit or taken outdoors, comments indicated that the person was not seen as a “legitimate” contact. The presence of facial hair was always noted in the adjectives to describe someone who had it (hairy, bearded, scruffy), but had no impact on the person’s ability to get a meeting.

In a recent article at LinkedIn, Joe Pulizzi, the Founder and Executive Director of the Content Marketing Institute, observed that most of the marketing content produced by companies is “flat out awful.” He wrote, “In many cases, the content is self-serving, not useful and, maybe the worst, pointless.”

Pulizzi argues that companies produce bad content for three reasons.

• The vast majority of companies do not have a formal content strategy.
• The content marketing efforts at most companies lack focus. Many marketers feel compelled to develop content around all of the products and services they offer. The result is often content that is too broad (and too shallow) to be effective.
• In many companies, no one is accountable for the overall content marketing program.

I agree that the lack of strategy, focus, and/or accountability can result in ”awful” marketing content. I also believe, however, that there’s a more fundamental problem contributing to the continuing use of bad content.

We now know that most effective B2B marketing content is primarily educational and non-promotional. The goal of content marketing is to provide potential buyers information that is insightful, useful, and valuable, and thereby demonstrate your company’s expertise, credibility, and trustworthiness.

The problem is, this approach runs counter to the basic paradigm of marketing that’s existed for decades. For years, we’ve been trained to think that the best way to sell more stuff is to effectively promote our brand and our products or services. In the traditional paradigm of marketing, content is primarily about us – our company or our products or services.

Shifting from promotional content to content that’s primarily educational and non-promotional is a difficult and counterintuitive change to make for most marketers.

In his new book, Ctrl Alt Delete, Mitch Joel provides an example that illustrates just how entrenched the traditional marketing mindset still is. Joel writes:

“Last year, I was in a business meeting when the idea for an iPhone app came up. It was a smart idea (you know, the kind of idea that you wish you had thought of). The chief marketing officer smiled during the presentation, put his hand up to ask a question, removed the glasses from his eyes and placed them on his notebook, folded his hands, leaned forward, and said, ‘It’s genius. . . but can we put our four key brand messages in there as well, because if we don’t force people to look at them, what’s the point of this app?’”

Companies are still producing “awful” content primarily because many marketers can’t resist the urge to “always be promoting.” Strategy, focus, and accountability are all important to building an effective content marketing program, but the starting point is adopting a different mindset about what constitutes good content and what role content plays in the marketing function.

One of the biggest challenge that I always face while making my blog user-friendly is adding advertisements without hampering the user-experience. There are hundreds of ad networks out there, and multiple ways to monetize a blog, but the hardest part is ensuring your ads doesn’t hurt the readability or user-experience in any ways. One of the known fact about advertising is, it works the best when you are placing the ads above the fold, and after Google Page layout algorithm update, we were bound to shift a great percentage of ad inventory to below fold. Now the big question is, can we monetize our blog without making our blog look ad dump-yard? If you are still living in the world of contextual ads, I have few ad networks to share with you, which will help you to earn more, and best part is your users will not even mind such ad placement.

3 Reader Friendly ways to Monetize A Blog:

Viglink:

I always call Viglink as an ad network for Non-experienced affiliate blogger. If you are aware of affiliate marketing, you would not need Viglink (In most of the cases), but if you have not used Affiliate marketing, Viglink is the smart blogger method to make money. Viglink converts your outbound link into affiliate link, and you will share a part of revenue with Viglink. Viglink is partnered with thousands of affiliate networks (Amazon, Apple app store, ebay) to name a few. Getting started with Viglink is quite easy, as you just need to create a free account, grab your custom code and add it into your blog footer. If this sounds any technical, you can simply grab this plugin and integrate Viglink on your blog.

I have noticed great success on one of my client Fashion blog with Viglink, and more over it’s search engine friendly way to monetize your blog. If you are using too many links to sites like Amazon, App store, eBay, you should definitely try Viglink. One of the closest alternative of Viglink is Skimlinks, which also work in the similar way.

GiveAway.ly:

Giveaway.ly is a marketplace like BuySellAds, which connects Advertisers and bloggers for sponsored contest on the blog. This platform is a win-win situation for blogger and advertiser, as:

• Blogger gets: New readership, free product for giveaway, make money from the giveaway.
• Advertiser gets: Social media following, Product promotion, high-quality links.

Here is how Giveaway.ly  works:

You register your blog on their site, submit your blog, assign your topic, and verify blog stats using Google analytics. Advertisers login to dashboard, select blog based on niche, pay the price, and book a giveaway on the target blog. Contest goes live, and you enjoy the benefit of giveaways, and marketer gets the product promotion along with Social-media following. If you have a niche blog, this ad network will be useful for you.

Monetize using reviews on your Blog:

Blog reviews are one of the best way to earn huge bucks from your blog. All you need is a quality blog, and an advertisement page which clearly reflects your blog demographic and kind of advertisements you are accepting. Now, many of you who have never used reviews on your blog, here are some tips to make money from it:

• On your advertisement page, mention that you are accepting product review on your blog.
• Make sure you accept offer of those product which matches your blog category.
• Before reviewing any product, do try it out yourself; and ask would you pay for the product?
• When doing a review post, clearly mention that this is a sponsored review.

The best part of review is, you get instant paid by the advertiser, and depending upon your writing skills, you can charge from $10-$1000/review for a good quality blog. You can read these tips from Alen of lifehacker on writing great reviews.

It’s a good idea to try new ad networks, and monetization technique on your blog, and remove the least performing ad. On my blog, I have lowered down the number of AdSense unit to 1 (468*60) ad unit, as other methods are giving me better results. I would love to know, which other monetization method you are using on your blog, which doesn’t hamper user experience?

Employees – the most important (and usually under-valued) assets that a company can ever have. Without them, you would not be able to get any real work done. They are the people responsible for dealing with your customers, ensure that your B2B lead generation campaign is working properly, or do a variety of other things that your business will need to fulfill. Now, when it comes to generating sales leads , you need to put the best people in the job. The challenge here would be keeping these best people to you. Without them, you will be having problems in your B2B leads generation efforts. So how will you do it?

Cultivate a positive work culture – you know that your employees will be spending a huge amount of their time in the office. That is why you should put some effort to engage their interest inside the office. Let them know that you have their best interest in mind. Organize company activities that will help employees bond with each other. Making them comfortable to each other inside and outside the office makes it easier for collaboration and coordination to happen.

Align your perks with what your employees need – let us put this way: it would be a waste if you offer your employees a day care service if none of them have children at all. You need to match your benefits and perks on what your employees need exactly. It does not have to be expensive or anything, what matters is that you creatively seek solutions to what they need.

Know what really motivates them – now this is a very interesting task that you, as the manager, should be best able to do. Since most of your employees are probably millennials, you need to provide them with lots of learning opportunities and chances to lead. An increase in salary would be nice, but that is not necessarily what motivates your employees. What matters is that you show your appreciation to your telemarketing team and that you can make them feel valued.

Provide career opportunities – let us face it, no one really wants to be stuck in their current jobs, and that they would search for opportunities to advance. Actually, that is pretty much the reason why B2B appointment setting specialists move from one company to another. I mean, if you can offer your employees opportunities to advance, your people will have less reason to leave your company.

In any case, you just have to know how to best approach your people. Yes, it can be pretty hard to keep all your employees, but at least you can keep the ones that you have. The means that you employ does not have to be expensive or complicated. All that is required is a little creativity and resourcefulness on your part. If you can succeed in that, then you are in a pretty good spot. You have greater chances of keeping your B2B lead generation team together. You should try it.

Read more more blogs on b2b lead generation and appointment settings HERE.

To paraphrase Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter, “Commerce isn’t about money; it’s about conversation.”

200 million of Twitter’s 500 million users^[1]send over 400 million tweets daily (nearly 60% through mobile devices).^[2] That’s a lot of conversations. While the numbers are impressive, it’s how people use Twitter that makes it a strong tool for lead generation.

On Twitter, people talk about what they care about and what’s happening around them – right now. It’s perhaps the most immediate of media. This creates context in which you can connect your message to what’s most meaningful to your customers in real time. Engaging with real-time tweets can influence those conversations in a way that can help build your business.

Here are ten ways your business can get the most out of Twitter:

1. Develop a plan

Keep “conversation” in mind as you develop a plan to guide your marketing efforts on Twitter. Specify your target audience, how you’ll attract followers, the content you’ll share, and how frequently you will tweet. As you develop your plan, remember that high quality content and frequent updates are critical for success on Twitter.

2. Learn from other companies that are already using Twitter

There are B2B companies successfully using Twitter to engage their buyers. Look at what the high-profile players in your target market are tweeting. Monitor your competitors’ tweets and assess their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses.

3. Build your Twitter profile

Write a concise, customer-centric description of your business, and link it to your website. Use a compelling profile picture and a background image that represents your business.

4. Seek followers

Start with three simple tactics:

• Follow existing customers, partners, and employees that you already know via other connections.
• Follow people you think may be interested in your product or service, including influencers, thought leaders, and experts in your market. When you follow someone on Twitter, they will often follow you back.
• Retweet and reply to people that you think should follow you. By engaging them socially, you will likely acquire new followers.

5. Make content the foundation of your tweets

You are what you tweet, so your timeline is the most important part of your profile page. Make sure that your tweets are relevant and engaging, and make sure that the majority of them link to high quality content such as blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, or videos, Tweets that include links to content see higher levels of engagement in the form of clickthroughs and retweets.

6. Tweet regularly, very regularly

Twitter is a high-velocity social network; many of your target customers are already being bombarded daily. That’s why you need to make sure that you tweet regularly. Start by tweeting twice a day – first thing in the morning, then again in the middle of the day. As you increase your tweet frequency, your target audience will be likelier to see at least one of your tweets.

7. Participate in the community

Often, there’s a preexisting community of your target buyers and influencers on Twitter. You should make an effort to participate in this community by following, retweeting, and replying to members of this community.

8. Make use of hashtags

Use hashtags for specific marketing campaigns that you run. For example, when hosting a webinar, you should create a hashtag and ask webinar attendees to tweet about the webinar using that hashtag. This creates a single stream of tweets about your event, enabling participants to have a conversation that enhances their experience. And remember that it’s all about customer experience.

9. Consider a Tweetchat

Tweetchats are virtual meetings held on Twitter; they can be a draw for people with similar interests. They’re generally held at a fixed day and time, often repeating over a week or month, and they’re identified by a hashtag.

Since Twitter fosters brand awareness and can expand your organization’s reach and exposure, hosting Tweetchats is an opportunity to help you develop an audience, gain new clients, win new customers, and greatly increase your social media visibility.

Want to see what’s available already before you jump in? Visit gnosisarts.com to see a list of Tweetchats by day of the week (default view), alphabetically, or by subject.

10. Promoted accounts, tweets, and trends

Twitter offers paid advertising by way of three types of promotions. You can target specific users based on criteria such as keywords, interests, or geography. It can be a cost effective way to gain new followers and attract target buyers to specific lead generation offers. You can promote:

• Accounts. This help build an active community of advocates and influencers for your business.
• Tweets. These are regular tweets which will be promoted to both current and potential followers you target.
• Trends. Trends are popular topics happening right now on Twitter. Because these trends are placed prominently next to a user’s timeline, they get mass exposure and give you broad reach.

11. Measure the performance of your page

There are a number of tools such as HootSuite and Buffer that you can use to track the performance of your marketing efforts on Twitter. For promoted accounts and tweets, Twitter also offers a rich analytics tool.

Did you know? Act-On customers can prospect for leads on Twitter with the Twitter Prospector. Learn about this easy-to-use tool in this video, or read about it here.

[1] http://www.statisticbrain.com

[2] Twitter heads for stock market debut by filing for IPO, by Heidi Moore, The Guardian

By this point, it’s not exactly groundbreaking to emphasize how important it is for sales and marketing teams to develop a clear understanding of the different buyer roles involved with purchasing their products / solutions. It’s also nothing new to suggest that properly aligning the entire go-to-market organization’s efforts based on that shared understanding is just as critical to your success. These are well known issues that are recognized by sales and marketing leaders, and the topic of many articles, blog posts, and best practices.

My objective with this post is to describe a framework to assess the level of clarity and alignment your organization has when targeting go-to-market investments towards the prospective buyers in the market. The framework is intended to be a guide to help you assess areas for improvement in existing operations, or to assist you with developing effective strategies for a new market.

8 things to develop to truly understand your target buyers

1. Focus

True focus requires an unequivocal prioritization of the different buyer roles and types in your target customer segments. That will make it very clear how resources (time, efforts, and investment) should be allocated by each part of your go-to-market organization to each buyer role or type, accordingly. This prioritization is based on a systematic combination of factors that include, but are not limited to, the buyer’s:

• Influence in the organization
• Importance in the buying process
• Affinity to new products
• Motivations or deterrence
• Accessibility, etc.

2. Clarity

The first step to clarity is documenting descriptions of the target buyers in your target segment that are clear and unambiguously defined with as little jargon as possible.

3. Validation

Verifying that the definition and prioritization of the target buyers is consistent with your overall go-to-market strategy and goals, either by conducting market research or by analyzing past business performance.

4. Coverage

Your official documentation of your target buyers should cover the following:

• All relevant and important buyer roles
• Their needs
• Their motivation
• Their decision-making style
• Buying behavior
• Typical stages in buyer journeys
• The context for these observations

This will allow your your go-to-market organization to directly utilize your knowledge and documentation in a meaningful, scalable way. In particular, your team will be able to use your documentation to target each of the most important buyers with differentiated messages and offers.

5. Specificity

Your documentation of buyers in your target segment should clearly define any variations in buyer types or roles. The goal is to identify any substantially distinct characteristics that are important to how your go-to-market organization will be able to interact with, interest, and win them as customers.

Buyers should be defined by any observable characteristics that are effective in differentiating the distinct buyers roles and types within a given target customer segment.

6. Alignment

Your definition framework and prioritization of target buyers needs to be clearly communicated and accepted throughout your organization. All buyer-facing business units — sales, marketing, customer support, professional services, etc. — should use the same set of information to develop their initiatives, and build goals that incorporate these insights.

Some teams may even have specific goals or initiatives targeted at an individual buyer role or type as defined by this documentation.

7. Systematic research

Your definition framework and prioritization should be supported by a systematic research project that includes unbiased data collection and analysis (via primary or secondary research techniques) as well as insights gained by customer-facing teams and consultation with experts in the market.

This process should be documented and repeated on a regular basis to ensure that the organization’s understanding of the buyers always incorporates developments in rapidly evolving markets.

8. Confidence

This is essential. An integrated, cross-team plan to go-to-market will not succeed unless it is executed with a strong level of conviction and belief in its strategic soundness and actionability. You and your teams should have high confidence in both the definition of target buyers and your teams’ ability to execute a successful go-to-market strategy against them.

In my next post, I will venture to create a list of self-assessing questions that you can use with your teams to gauge your own organization’s clarity on your buyers along the line of this framework.

It is not sufficient to try one tactic and expect a campaign to work well. It usually takes a number of touchpoints for a customer to be nurtured, trust you, and try what you have to offer. It is not like we want to get married on the first date, is it? Well, rarely anyway, and buying something whether it is health insurance, or a new chair, is no different. Today, the conversation — with our customers and prospects –never ends.

A truly great marketing strategy leverages the appropriate marketing tactics in combinations that are right for the intended buyer. Most businesses take a fragmented approach to marketing channels. This is becoming even more noticeable with new platforms entering the mix: mobile, apps, SEO, PPC, social media like Pinterest, and more.

In CRM, the focus is on using technology to organize and automate relationships with customers and prospective customers. CRM has historically focused on efficiency rather than on the customer experience.

Integrated marketing combines three elements that are closely related to service design:

• an understanding of consumer behavior
• focus upon brand
• customer experience

Integrated marketing takes a holistic view of services, in which coordination of touchpoints is one major part of linking what is termed contact experiences to the brand. As a savvy marketer, you need to be able to understand the behavior of your audience so that you can pick the right mix of tactics and use them at the right time. It takes excellent strategic skills and the ability to translate your marketing into the right messaging to each of your target audiences. All the data is out there but you need to understand it, analyze it and use it! More than this, it takes an empathy for customer buying behavior to ensure that the mix of touchpoints are appropriate. You need an inside-out approach or customer centricity.

To own the buyer’s journey, we need to have a manageable set of critical touchpoints that allows us to focus and have a better impact on our customers’ perceptions. These touchpoints need to be distinctive, well-conceived, and synchronized. We need to break down the customer experience into distinct moments from the customer’s point of view:

1. What are the customer’s most urgent needs, insecurities, expectations upon an approach point?
2. What transactions and interactions take place?
3. How should touchpoints draw people in?
4. What products and services, and enhancements speak to a customer segment’s aspirations, motivations? What captures your customer’s attention?
5. What information is captured?
6. What knowledge is used and what is shared across other touchpoints?

Hilton Hotels touchpoints wishlist, for example:

1. Owning the welcome
2. The guest room first impression
3. The complimentary breakfast offering
4. 100% guarantee of service

McGladrey LLP defines different types of touchpoints in a recent article:

• Company created touchpoints can be seen as those planned marketing messages (e.g., website)
• Intrinsic touchpoints are experienced while purchasing or using a product or service –the “how of the experience”
• Unexpected touchpoints are the unexpected references or information that cannot be directly controlled by the company — personal communication, word of mouth communication.
• Customer-initiated touchpoints occur when a customer contacts the club (e.g., social media)

According to B2B strategists DeSantis Breindel, there are good options to keep your touchpoints synchronized:

1. Keep the dialogue going and growing

“A dialogue about a company’s product or service on Facebook, for instance, can spill over to Twitter — and overnight lead to a far-ranging conversation with thousands of voices and lots of feedback. By understanding the dynamic and keeping the dialogue going, smart B2B companies can lead the prospect through the conversation to the sales sweet spot: consideration for his or her short-list.”

2. Connect multiple platforms

All touchpoints feed one another and become connected in a web of conversation.”A print or on-line ad with a URL can lead to a microsite where a corporate buyer can download a white paper or watch a YouTube video offering valued information and insight. Or an outdoor ad can invite corporate prospects to scan a QR code with their mobile device and take them to a microsite with more information.

3. Don’t forget employees!

Employees are a critical part of customer touchpoints.

“They are not only the face of the company in every interaction with clients and prospects, they are active in social media, business networking, and society in general. Today businesses who empower employees with a compelling brand messaging platform, and help them to understand their importance in their companies’ and their own prosperity, can activate a consistently strong brand identity at thousands of touchpoints. These companies understand that it is important to link brand strategy with brand behavior so that you not only talk the talk but walk the walk.”

Are you looking for ways to advance in your sales career? Do you want to outshine your competitors and become recognized for your sales acumen? I’m excited to share Tip #7, my final recommendation from the Inside Sales 2013 Frontline Conference in Boston. Here are the links to Part I and Part II of this series, in case you missed them.

TIP #7: Practice CANI (Constant and Never-Ending Improvement)

To practice CANI, work harder on yourself than you work on your job. The Japanese word for this concept is Kaizen, and successful companies like GE refer to this as Six Sigma. CANI means becoming the best at your craft, achieving small goals each day, and measuring your progress along the way.

If you have committed to the sales profession and aspire to succeed in your career, then it is very important to master CANI. Awaken the student within you. Absorb as much information as you can. You have the same amount of time each day as the greatest minds in sales – so take advantage of it.

Second, continue to learn from experts through books, podcasts, videos, blogs and associations, etc. Below are key questions to consider throughout your career journey:

• What books have you read about sales and business to improve your skills?
• How can you build a successful attitude, think creatively and execute your ideas?
• What podcasts about sales topics can you learn from?
• What inspirational YouTube videos can you watch?
• What inside sales and sales enablement blogs can you follow?
• How active are you in professional associations?

Also, here are some of my favorite sales, business and leadership books:

Remember that when you’re not training, your competitors are…and when you are training, your competitors are too. Don’t let your competition train harder. Continue to build your knowledge and outsmart your competitors with sales intelligence.

How will you commit to CANI – Constant and Never-Ending Improvement – in the next few weeks? What resources have been the most helpful in your sales career? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Sales automation applications have gone mainstream, with more than 3.8 million global users now adopting these tools to manage client relationships, sales pipelines, and business process management at their companies. By the year 2017, it’s expected that one-quarter of all companies will have adopted an online system as a way to extend their customer service contact centers and integrate social media into their existing business departments.

As demand for tools that offer sales automation in the cloud increases, existing platforms are feeling the pressure to keep up. Here is our selection for the top four apps for sales automation in the cloud, as determined by a combination of price, features, support options, and unique value propositions.

Salesforce

Small Business solutions from the worldwide leader in CRM. No software to install. It’s simple and quick. Salesforce CRM puts everything you need at your fingertips—from anywhere. From Social accounts and contacts to Mobile, Chatter, and Analytics, collaboration across your global organization and getting deals done faster is not only possible, it’s easy. Price: Starting from $5 per month.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a web-based CRM application, which gives you a 360-degree view of your sales, marketing, inventory, customer support and more. Additionally, Zoho CRM offers integration with E-mail, MS Office and Outlook and Google Apps. Your data is kept as safe as any bank. At present, Zoho CRM has ~250,000 users and counting. Price: Starting from $12 per month.

Insightly

Insightly provides customer relationship and project management software to small businesses worldwide. More than 100,000 users in 100 countries leverage Insightly’s cloud-based application to manage customer transactions, interactions, leads, proposals, opportunities and projects from any device at any time. Insightly’s web application allows businesses to start using CRM with just an email address and a web browser. In addition, Insightly for Google Apps is the number one CRM application in the Google Apps marketplace. Price: Starting from $29 per month.

BPMOnline CRM

BPMonline managed to change the essence of CRM system transforming it from simple data collection to delivery of right and coordinated actions in your sales, service and marketing activities. With process-driven CRM it has become real. BPMonline CRM is a comprehensive online CRM system that brings easy and affordable process management tools to CRM professionals. The solution allows automating all CRM activities, driving greater response of your marketing campaigns, more closed deals, and top-notch customer service. Price: Starting from $350 per year.

Sales Training Article: Sales Management an Oxymoron?

Frank Visgatis, President & Chief Operating Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About 25 years ago, after an 18-month stint as an application engineer (i.e. techie), I was given my first sales position with Compugraphic Corporation, selling production automation equipment to newspapers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. After another 18-months of consistently overachieving my quota, I was told I was being promoted into sales management and instructed by my VP of Sales to take the six reps assigned to me and "teach them to sell like you do".

That is when the problems started.

Years later I realized that the reason I had been successful as a salesperson was that I had an in-depth knowledge of our products and, more important, how they were used by our customers to improve their day-to-day production. By combining this understanding of the customer and how our products helped them, I developed my own internal system that was my "sales GPS". However, it was my internal system. It's what the psychologists call an unconscious competent. While it worked perfectly for me, I wasn't able to clearly articulate it and, as a result, was unable to transfer it to anyone else.

This was an extremely frustrating time for me - I didn't understand why my reps didn't just "get it" - and it was frustrating for my reps because I ended up taking over opportunities and selling for them rather than developing them as salespeople.

Sign up for our one-day sales training workshop designed specifically for sales management to help reps improve sales performance. 

Unfortunately, in the 20+ years since, as I climbed the corporate ladder and eventually transitioned into the development, documentation and delivery of CustomerCentric Selling®, I've seen the exact same scenario replayed time after time. Successful salespeople who are promoted into sales management are rarely trained how to manage salespeople so they end up being 98% sales and 2% manager.

Recognizing that the first line sales manager is the linchpin to the successful implementation of a sales process that is designed to improve the consistency of revenue achievement, we recognize that managers require different knowledge and skills than salespeople. For instance:

Do you know how to calculate an "ideal pipeline"? (i.e. how much business should be working at each individual stage in the pipeline to ensure consistent revenue production?)

Do you know to calculate "pipeline velocity"? (i.e. how quickly should deals move through each separate stage in the pipeline?)

Do you know how to do "pipeline analysis"? (i.e. how to identify opportunities that are "stuck" and, based on where they're stuck, how to interpret the skill deficiency of the salesperson?)

Do you know how to do "opportunity analysis"? (i.e. how to objectively assess the quality of an opportunity in the pipeline?)

Do you know how to take the information gathered through the pipeline and opportunity analysis and provide feedback and coaching to develop your salespeople?

If you have invested in us to train you and your salespeople, we'd like to make an investment back in you as a sales manager.

We have updated the 2014 calendar and added two of the free, one-day Sales Process Management™ sales training workshops that is open to anyone who has attended CustomerCentric Selling®. There is one available in Boston and another available in Denver, so plan ahead now and don't risk being an oxymoron!

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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.

I'll never forget the time when our Lynton Web inbound marketing band of brothers (and sisters) helped a client achieve a 900% increase in leads over the course of a few months. We literally took them from roughly 100 leads a month to 1,000 leads a month.

read more

Everybody knows it – the critical centerpiece of a great customer relationship is always that fragile element: trust. Trust is never something that comes easily, but it has many payoffs, including customer loyalty. However, it can sometimes be tough to maintain if a difficult negotiation is taking place.

To build and sustain trust in a negotiation, follow the Reciprocity Rule. The Reciprocity Rule consists of two parts: (1) consistently exhibit trust yourself, and (2) expect others to be trustworthy and tell them when they’re not.

This sounds simple enough, but in major account negotiations there are many barriers to forging and sustaining trust. Here are three.

• First, failing to separate relationship issues from business issues. Handle people issues separately – do not attempt to solve relationship problems through business concessions. Relationship problems stem from misperceptions, poor communications, or general lack of mutual understanding. Giving the other party a better deal is unlikely to solve issues stemming from these reasons. Plus, giving a concession always has a financial cost. The worst possibility is giving something away and not gaining anything in return.

For example, frustrations can run high when communications are poor in a negotiation. A concession about delivery dates is unlikely to resolve a fundamental communication problem; it may even make it worse. Instead, search for ways for all parties to surface and explain their frustrations as a first step towards addressing the situation.

• Next, failing to use and build common ground. All negotiations take place because there is some lack of agreement around an issue that is important to both parties. On the other hand, every sales negotiation also involves some common ground – the customer wants something that you can provide. Common ground creates trust. So leverage common ground to build the relationship and to provide a foundation for addressing unresolved issues.

If the negotiation involves four tough issues and you and the other party have managed to resolve three of them, leverage what you have accomplished.

For example, “We’ve come a long way – those were tough issues we managed to resolve – so let’s tackle that one last issue where we still need a creative solution.” An opening statement like this one in a customer meeting can go a long way in setting a positive tone for the negotiation session.

• Failing to be up-front about difficult issues is the third barrier. Most negotiations involve multiple issues. On one issue or another, one of the parties will often have no or limited negotiating flexibility due to constraints related to legal, regulatory, or fundamental company policy reasons.

Top sales performers share these issues early, and equally as important, they help the other party do the same. By sharing these constraints, you can reset expectations, avoid last minute surprises that will probably look like a trick to the other party, and build trust

One of the most effective ways for two parties to 
create value is to share information in an open and truthful manner. The value created by sharing information with your customer will usually outweigh the risk of having that information misused.

A salesperson might say, for example, “As we start to get into this negotiation let me share that gaining access to your senior leadership will be an important consideration for us.” Hopefully the customer will in return share an important piece of information. If they do not, it is legitimate to ask a question such as: “Can you tell us some of your major concerns?”

If the initial trust between the parties is low, then this sharing of information should occur in a series gradual steps starting with information that has a small probability of being misused.

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

Managed Services: Part Two – Core Processes

In my previous post (Part One), I spoke about the importance of planning for post-deployment when selecting and implementing a new sales performance management (SPM) platform. In today’s post, I will describe the core processes needed to support the end-to-end SPM process. These processes may be managed by a single team or multiple teams, which may be internal or external to your organization. Ensuring the effectiveness of these processes will depend on the expertise of your resources, so having the right people in the right place is critical for success.

Step one: Assess your technical operations.

While this might sound like an obvious place to start, many companies fail to effectively execute and manage their core technical processes. Technical operations involve all of the activities required to run and monitor your SPM platform and quickly fix any errors that arise. For example, loading data, running calculations, generating reports and monitoring all of these tasks requires people with the right skills to implement and maintain these processes. And that requires ongoing training and investment in your existing staff. You may also need to engage a third party to provide the required expertise.

As part of your technical assessment, make sure you have a well-defined support model to quickly resolve issues before they impact the business. In other words, what path does an issue take after it is first reported? Who is responsible for investigating the underlying causes and fixing the problem which may be functional, such as an incorrect payment, or technical, such as a slowly executing process? If a problem occurs with any of your processes, you have to identify the right people to address it, whether it’s an IT or an internal development team, the software vendor or an external team responsible for your configuration.

Step two: Review your business operations.

These processes typically involve standard compensation administration functions, such as reviewing and verifying system inputs (data) and outputs (results and payments), managing schedule and payment approval processes and updating compensation plans. If your system can’t automate the review and verification process for inbound data and outputs, then you should have a checklist of verification rules to ensure authorization every step of the way. For updates to plans and other system configuration, including reports and data feeds, determine if your resources have the skills and capacity to deliver a high quality of service.

Step three: Evaluate your sales channel and payee support process

This process contains the interaction and communication activities between your compensation administration function and the sales channels and payees. The main activities to consider are query management and dispute resolution, quota setting and plan communication.

Step four: Design and execute the strategy.

Companies everywhere talk about the importance of strategy, but few actually dedicate the time and resources to developing and executing strategic SPM initiatives. But strategy development is critical because it enables stakeholders to review the plan design and measure its effectiveness. As you go through the steps to assess your processes, be sure to keep what’s working well, but realize that not all of your existing processes will be transferred to the new system. Your strategy should weed out redundancy, identify new requirements and assign responsibility for the changes.

Now that we have identified the key processes and what to consider when implementing a new SPM platform, how long can you expect the rollout to take? The easy answer is it depends on your objectives and resources. But generally speaking, you can expect to implement and begin to realize ROI all within the first year after the system goes live. The ultimate goal is to create well-defined processes with clear responsibilities and agreements in place to ensure all relevant parties, such as internal teams, your software vendor and services providers, are working toward the same goal — a strategic SPM implementation that delivers exceptional business value.

Are you currently in the process of transitioning to an SPM platform? What have been your biggest challenges and benefits?

Networks are important for sales professionals. You need to create a network that has clients, prospective clients, referral partners, other partners, past and present colleagues, and vendors.

I like to think of networks like wheels with a hub and lots of spokes. Most networks that people join already have a hub, so you become one of the spokes.

A much more powerful way to build the right network for you is to become the hub of your network, and then you craft your network based on the “spokes” that will help you grow your business.

A Sellers Network

For example, if I sell cloud computing services worldwide, or throughout North America, chances are it is not a good use of my time to go to a local business networking event. What would be much more effective for me is to go to industry events that represent who my buyers are. It could be an annual event that comes to my city, or I may go once a year to a big event where all of my buyers’ industry counterparts meet up.

If you don’t want to leave your desk, you can do this virtually too. Here are a few ideas on how:

• Create a group within LinkedIn where you can create content that helps your market niche.
• Follow a live event that may be thousands of miles away through a Twitter hashtag. Most big industry events now have a #hashtag in Twitter which makes it easy to follow top speakers’ bullet points. When there are a number of people tweeting about a live event, you can capture some great stuff – often a link to slides or even event recordings.
• Create online content through Slideshare or your own industry blog that gathers like-minded people in the industries you sell to. As your content gains exposure – especially if you are helping to educate your buyers – the word will travel and people will reach out to you.

What Spokes in Your Wheel? 

In creating your own hub and spokes to build your network, think of who the perfect people in would be, and create those spokes. Let’s say you sell cloud-based compensation tools. You might want some corporate employees who could give you feedback about what works for their comp plans, you’d want other sales reps who call on the corporate marketplace but don’t sell what you do, and a network of C-level contacts who are your potential buyers.

You are crafting an ecosystem and if you do it right, you’ll be at the center, or hub, of your network. Everyone connected to you will be  people you like or admire, who also serve a purpose in your network. Don’t forget that you are serving a purpose in the networks that others have invited you to be in too.

The one thing you cannot get back in your sales role is time. The value in building a strong hub network is that you can gain more connections through referrals and warm introductions. These connections will help you identify your right buyer and will be quicker sales cycles due to being warm or referred.

Who couldn’t use a few warm referrals?

How do you build your network? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the “Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2013″ and one of “20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management for 2013″. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email  lori@scoremoresales.com | View  My LinkedIn Profile

The post Inside Sales Power Tip 137 – Build Your Network appeared first on Score More Sales.

When we published the Gain More Insight Into Sales With 3 Types of CRM Reports post, CRM user Wendy Wright wanted to know, “What % of leads were closed/won in the last month?” (i.e., how to know the total number of leads got, … Continue reading →

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

I don’t see why anyone in sales should take offence to being called a persuader, it is after all our job, to persuade people that yes it is time to buy, and buy from us. I wear the label of persuader much more proudly than one of being a mediator, a label many in sales would rather wear.

Based on a discussion I had recently with two experienced sales people who were trying to persuade me (sell me), on the fact that what they do is much more “mediate” between the buyer and their company. Mediate, really? Not sure that is what sales people are supposed to do, and as I asked I got the usual, intellectually trap-laden, politically correct snippet about relationships, and how it is the role of the sales person to look after the needs of the “client in the mix”. Hmm!?!

I know it may just be semantics, but words count for a lot in sales, especially in setting mind set and attitudes, as those two things go straight to how you behave, and it is the resulting action that counts in sales. And because of that you will get very different results if you set out to persuade or if you set out to mediate.

When we look at the Merriam-Webster definition of mediate we find it defined as:

: to work with opposing sides in an argument or dispute in order to get an agreement (US)
: to get (something, such as a settlement or agreement) by working with opposing sides in a dispute
: to have an effect or influence in causing (something) to happen

And mediator as:

: one that mediates; especially : one that mediates between parties at variance

Right off the top there is a disconnect, on the one hand we hear about “relationships” and “trust”, yet we see our role as that of the UN in the negotiations between North and South Korea.

Further I am not sure why there is a negative perception of “persuading”, it does not have to imply that you are pulling something over the buyer, it just means:

: to cause (someone) to do something by asking, arguing, or giving reasons
: to cause (someone) to believe something

You can do that, and still maintain or strengthen a relationship, especially if the buyer gains by taking action you persuaded them to take. If the strength of you belief in your product is so strong and compelling, that the buyer is moved to act, how is that worse than mediating, where there is an assumption of adversaries, one being your employer.

The same people who seem to lean towards any word other than persuasion for what they do a s sales people, are the same who are happy to interchange the word negotiate with appease, and in the process of appeasing, mediate away the last bit of margin left in the deal, and subsequent purchases that buyer makes.

The sad reality is that if these same sales people only put as much effort into persuading their buyers, as they do me in labeling their role, they would mediate less, and sell more. Besides, if you are dealing with buyer who require mediation, and see your company as the “opposing” side, you should fire those prospects, and prospect for new ones that see you as much as a partner as you see them.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

When selling to consumers gift cards, coupons, season sales or quantity discounts do increase sales as these encourages consumers to purchase or purchase more products or services. Humans seem to be easily influenced by the advantage they can take.

Sales incentives

In B2B you could be selling to exactly the same people but these sales incentives will only work if the decision taker or purchaser sees a benefit for him. This benefit can be:
- Allowing purchasing more for the same budget resulting in his bonus
- Allowing staying within the budget which results in his bonus
- Allowing the company to get an additional funtion or feature at the same price
- Getting him a personal benefit like travel or stay over in a hotel

Bribery perception

However the personal benefit can backfire fast as it is likely to be considered as bribery. The perception of bribery will immediately lead to biased choise of vendor or products.

Long sales cycles

Typically in B2B the sales cycles are long wheras in B2C the sales cycles are short as in many cases impuls purchases happen.
In B2B however the purchase decision requires time as several people need to agree upon the purchase. A sales incentive can speed up the purchase but it is not a guarantee as the biggest factor is the risk that comes with the purchase.

Recurrent purchases or one off

There is a huge difference in the type of goods bought:
- A project, unique product or unique service purchase decision comes with risks for the company and the decision takers or purchasers and often a long term relationship with the vendor. These sales are complex B2B sales with several decision stages and decistion takes. Sales incentives will probably not work.

- A product or service that is being ordered frequently from different vendors as their products or srvices are interchangeable will benefit probably most from sales incentives. It can be that the sales incentive is the sole differentiator between two vendors.

Do sales incentives work for your B2B business ?

Success is not static. Growing, getting better and honing your craft is critical. There are 1000′s of books out there ready and willing to help sales people get to the next level. However, all sales books are not created equal AND becoming a bad ass sales person requires more than just studying sales. It’s not enough to focus on selling. You need to expand you knowledge base.

Becoming a bad ass sales person requires a complex understanding of core and peripheral sales knowledge. It’s not enough to understand how to sell, but also how people think, how to execute and more.

These 8 books are must reads for anyone on a journey to become a bad ass sales person, the best of the best, an “A” player. They cover all the different aspects required to kick ass in sales. If you want to be a bad ass sales person, start with these killer reads.

1) Execution: The Discipline of Getting Thing Done- By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

There is no better book to prepare you to be successful in sales OR in business than Execution. What makes Execution so valuable is its ability to reshape your thinking processes. Execution trains your mind to think not only in terms of “what” you need to do but more importantly, “how” you are going to do it. When faced with a tough economy, a competitive space, or a high quota, knowing “how” you are going to make quota and drive the revenue number is difference between the good sales people and the best. The number one deficiency I see in sales people, besides a lack of selling skills is almost no one actually knows “how” they are going to make their number. Execution will change that!

2) How We Decide – Jonah Leher

As sales people our job is to influence the decision process of others. It’s really that simple. The execution of the process can be very complex, but it all hinges on our ability to influence others. It stands to reason then, if we understand how people make decisions we will be better sales people.

How we decide is a killer book that breaks down the physical elements that go into how we make decisions. Our mind is a very powerful organ and there are real physical processes happening in the brain when we are faced with a choice.  How We Decide lays out what’s happening inside our brains and the brains of our customers when faced with a decision.  Understanding how the brain is processing the information we put in front of them and how they are going to choose you over your competitor is a critical skill of bad ass sales people.

3) Snap Selling – by Jill Konrath

Snap Selling has made this list because it is the most relevant sales book for the individual contributor. Today’s buyer is crazy busy. They are nothing like the buyers of just a few years ago. This buyers transformation requires a different approach and Snap Selling nails it. The approaches used just a few years ago to engage and keep the engagement of buyers don’t work any longer. Buyers are buried. They don’t have the time to teach you about their business, to have a check in call or to listen to you pontificate about your product or service. Snap Selling lays out real, “fresh,” actionable steps to be successful with today’s super busy buyers.

4) Made to Stick – Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – by Dan and Chip Heath

Made to Stick is about messaging. The Heath brothers break down the fundamentals of messaging and how messaging sticks and gets a life of its own. Leveraging the acronym S.U.C.C.E.S they lay out what is at the core of all successful communication that capture people’s attention and “sticks.” SUCCES, (simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories) creates messages that leave a lasting impression on people. In sales, stories are what we tell. Knowing how to craft and build stories that accomplish all the elements of SUCCES is how you capture your prospects attention and get them responding to your emails, your phone calls and increasing their engagement. Bad ass sales people are just better at getting their messages to stick.

5) The Challenger Sale – Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

This book is on the list because its premise and thesis of challenging customers is spot on.  I think the authors could have done a better job of outlining “how” sales people can be better challengers. I find the book and the training, I have clients who have or are going through the training, to be theoretical. Although, that should be no surprise, considering the book was derived from a study and written by consultants, or theorists. That being said, the thesis of this book is killer and embracing an approach and style that allows you to challenge and teach your prospects is absolutely a bad ass sales person differentiator. Too many sales people play the relationship builder role and are afraid to challenge their prospects and customers, subjugating themselves to glorified order takers and minimizing any potential to be seen as a real valuable consulting resource. Read this book and embrace the thesis, it’s crucial.

6) Pitch Anything – Oren Klaff

If Made to Stick is about communicating messages that stick, Pitch Anything is how to deliver those messages to get your prospects to buy from you and not your competitors. Think How We Decide and Made to Stick put into a how to execute at the presentation layer. Pitch Anything promulgates a methodology for pitching ideas, new business and solutions to increase the chances you come out on top.

I’m not a fan of pitching. I believe if you’ve been relegated to “pitching” you’ve lost or are losing the deal. That being said, there are times where there is no way around it. You have to pitch. It’s the rule of the game. It’s what the buyer requires. When this happens, having the best pitch and knowing how to pitch are game changers.  Pitch Anything is a fun read, that will get you thinking VERY different about how you pitch and what you need to do differently.

7) Dirty Little Secret: Why Buyers Can’t Buy and Why Sellers Can’t Sell and What YOU Can Do About it – By  Sharon Drew Morgan

Dirty Little Secret, like The Challenger Sale made the list because of its unique selling thesis.  Dirty Little Secret delves into the inherent, yet often forgotten truth about sales and that is; incumbent in EVERY sale is change. No change, no sale. Dirty Little Secret breaks down the impact change has on a buyer’s decision process. Dirty Little Secret walks you through the 12 steps buyers must go through before they can make a decision to buy. Dirty Little Secret does a good job of outlining the challenges buyers face in their efforts to get to a decision, from the system changes they will have to manage, to the implementation efforts, and more. Dirty Little Secret gets you thinking not just about whether or not your solution is the right one or a good one, but also about the impact of the change your solution is going to have on the buyer and whether or not they can handle it. Dirty Little Secret adds a killer new perspective on selling and what stalls sales that most sales people don’t see.

8) Mistakes Were Made but Not By Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts – Caroll Tarvis and Elliot Aronson

This book is more about personal accountability than it is about sales. It’s too easy for sales people to blame the economy, quota, their shitty boss, a bad territory or a poor product. Sales has more autonomy than most roles in the organization. Sales gets to decide when they cold call, if they are even going to cold call. They get to decide how much they are going to charge. They get to decide which products they are going to sell. They get to decide which part of their territory they are going to work. They decide who to call in their accounts, etc. Sales people have a lot of autonomy and therefore control their own destiny. Bad ass sales people rarely blame failure on outside forces. Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me breaks down cognitive dissonance and why against even the most compelling data people deny their mistakes and don’t own their failures. Success as a sales person starts and stops with owning your own shit.

There are sales books that will help you sell better.  You can see some of the best here, at A Sales Guy U. Being a bad ass sales person takes more than knowing how to sell. It require a broader knowledge of things like human behavior, psychology, what it takes to get things done, knowledge of todays selling environments and more.

If you want to be a kick ass sales person you have to be a deliberate learner, start by reading these 8 kick-ass books. When you’re done, create new list and send it to me.  I’m always open to learning new things.

Enjoy!

 

 

Leading sales trainer and author, Colleen Francis, recently had this to say about first impressions:

Salespeople will generally have between 4 and 30 seconds to make a first impression on prospective clients that will compel them to want to engage

This is a sobering observation. Most companies have a limited number of prospects and can ill afford to be making a poor impression that ends up in a prospect taking their business to a competitor. So it behooves the sales manager to make sure reps are properly prepared to make successful calls and/or the right reps are on the sales team.

To your success!

 

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve just returned from the 2013 CEB Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas (our annual conference of 600+ sales and marketing members), where we discussed, among other things, the next generation of commercial talent. Given all the changes taking place on both the supplier and customer side, we find ourselves questioning how this impacts commercial and talent strategy moving forward.

Before diving into the implications on organizations’ strategies, let’s first take a look at the various changes impacting the sales and marketing environment today:

• Changing Impact of Information—because of information overload, customers are now stuck in permanent ‘assessment’ mode. There is so much information for them to sort through, sales cycles are extending and deals often stall or end in no decision. As our research shows, customers are now 57% of the way through the purchase decision before engaging with a supplier.
• Changing Nature of the Customer—it’s a fact: the days of the single decision-maker are over.  Bigger buying groups are now the norm – in fact, the average buying group size today is 5.4 people. And it’s twice as hard to reach group consensus on a decision as it is for an individual to make a decision.
• Changing Nature of Work—the different paths that customers are taking to learn, and the different buying authorities/groups sellers face are resulting in greater variability than ever before. The sales process becomes less predictable in this world – throughout the sales process sellers must now infer, adapt, and anticipate customers’ reactions and possible roadblocks.

Combine this together and what becomes clear is that we’ve entered a completely new commercial environment – a more variable world that includes lengthening sales cycles, more stakeholders to select and manage, and increased steps to deal closure.

All of this change taking place obviously has significant implications on organizations’ commercial strategy, and in particular, their talent strategy. After sharing these findings with members in Las Vegas, the first question they (understandably) asked was: Is our current talent equipped to handle this new environment?

Well, in order to understand the talent they need today, organizations must first understand the environment in which that talent must operate and succeed today.

And the best way to understand that environment starts with answering these five key questions:

1)      Do we know who is involved in a typical customer purchase?

2)      Can we map our customers’ progress through that purchase?

3)      Can our reps exercise necessary judgment to impact that purchase?

4)      Can our marketers’ disrupt the customer’s purchase?

5)      How do we know?

Only once you can answer YES to all of these questions will you have an in-depth understanding of today’s commercial environment and therefore, an understanding of the talent (and support tools) you will need to succeed.

We would love to hear from you. Are there any questions you would add to this list that you believe are required to properly understand today’s buying environment? Let us know in the comments section below.

CEB Sales members, learn more about how you can empower your reps to sell to today’s empowered customers, or read more about today’s new era of selling.

We’ve all heard the expression KISS, as in “Keep it Simple Stupid.”

Yes, we’ve all seen things and have been part of things that are way too complicated, but have you thought about how KISS might work for your customer?

I’m not talking about your sales process.

What I’m talking about is what it is your customer is buying.

Is it simple?

Is it simple for your customer to understand and is it simple for them to take advantage of?

It is amazing the number of sales transactions that are simply way too complicated.

Think for a moment about how your customer is viewing it. If they see the buying process as being difficult, then that same belief is going to carry over to everything else they think about you.

Keeping it simple means at every step.

You may feel having an on-line process for the customer to monitor their order as being simple, but to them, they may see it as being complicated.   You may see it easy compared to the hassle of what your customer service used to have to deal with.   Problem is your customer may have seen the customer service interaction and the live person they spoke with as being an advantage.

Am I saying you need to incur additional cost of having a live person in order to facilitate customers who are already demanding a cheap price?  No and yes.

What I’m saying is we have to make it simple for the customer in terms of allowing them to feel safe about saying “yes” and buying quickly.

Your process might be more cumbersome than you would like, but what that means is you the salesperson have to be willing to hold the customer’s hand through the initial process.

The simpler you can make it for the customer to buy, the easier it is for them to say “yes” and the less likely they will see a potential reason to not buy.

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

Companies are deep into 2014 planning. As part of that, they are evaluating comp plans and quotas.  As a sales rep, are you wondering if your compensation fair? Do you have the ammunition you need to receive more compensation? The best way to prepare for this discussion is to know your value to the company. If you know what value you provide, you’ll know what you deserve in return.

In this article I cover the basics of calculating your sales value.  To assist you further, download the Sales Rep Value Calculator. You can access the calculator when you sign-up for SBI’s Sales & Marketing Research Review here. This no-cost tour presents findings from SBI’s market research in 2013. Become world class today.

 

Step 1 is to know your actual worth in sales to your company. Oftentimes sales reps have an inflated view of themselves and their sales efforts. You must take an unbiased look at your performance. Are you making your quota? What percentage does your quota make up of the company’s number? This should help you get a feel for your true value.

Here are the best ways you can use this info to discuss compensation:

Four Reasons Why You Need to Know Your Worth in Sales

1. Assure your Compensation Plan is Aligned: Unless you know your sales value, you won’t be able to determine if discussions are warranted. Aligning your compensation history to company performance history is a critical step. This exercise can be done without too much effort. The key components are having 3-year performance numbers for both you and the company. Aligning pertains mostly to growth and performance. Yours should be in sync with the company’s. If not, discussions are likely warranted.

2. The Case for More Compensation: There are a few scenarios where you’ll have a strong case for more compensation. For instance, if your sales are up and earnings aren't, then you have a case. Reps often believe that new compensation plans always favor the company. This may or may not be true. It could just be that the compensation plans are outdated. Oftentimes plans are based on metrics, goals, and assumptions that are no longer relevant. In that case, it is up to the sales department to drive the revisions.

The Sales Rep Value Calculator will help uncover earnings and quota trends. These trends can often help make your case stronger. (See below for an explanation of this calculator)

3. Determine if it’s Time to Make a Switch:  Industry and company trends may work for or against you. Your sales and company sales should be trending in a parallel direction. If there is an inverse relationship here, then a move may need to be considered. Are you progressing faster than the company or the company progressing faster than you? Either way, keeping your options open is a good idea.

Companies watch trends. They often live and die by them. Sales reps should also be cognizant of trends. Use them as the basis of analysis, discussion, and decision making.

4. Improve Your Skills:  A realistic view of your sales will help you justify your position in uncertain times. At times, you may find your worth isn’t what you’d hoped. This isn’t ideal, but it still helps. If you know your worth, you’ll be aware of your potential weaknesses and liabilities. Make these your areas of focus moving forward. Find ways to improve them and increase your value to the company. Improved skills and increased value give you the leverage you need for compensation change.

How to Calculate What You Are Worth

The Sales Rep Value Calculator will allow you to calculate your sales value worth.

Track your earnings and quota over a 3-year period. 3 years of data provides more than just a brief snapshot of your performance. Instead, you can illustrate trends and show consistency or improvement. 

 

The illustration below was taken from the Sales Rep Value Calculator. In the example the rep’s earnings are trending down while their percent of quota is up. This potentially indicates the compensation plan is misaligned and may need to be reevaluated. 

Once you know your value as a sales rep, you can make educated decisions about:

• Efforts to realign sales compensation structure
• Securing better compensation for yourself
• Improving your own skills
• Pursuing opportunities at outside organizations (if necessary)

If you determine a move is warranted, read Dan Bernoske’s blog How Top Sales Reps Interview the Interviewer. 

About Joel McCabe

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