The final quarter of the year is here, and that means for many organizations the race is on to make the year-end number.

Here are a few key things you need to be doing with every customer:

If you work with accounts on a regular basis, a few things you need to find out right now include what their hours of operations are going to be the last two weeks of the year.

With Christmas on a Wednesday, it’s hard to know without asking what each of your customers might be doing.

Equally important is finding out in October where they stand with regard to their own numbers. Are they looking to make cuts in orders or looking to increase purchases?  Waiting until they tell you can be too late for you to respond effectively, so you need to ask now.

New customers and prospects create their own set of opporutnities.  Many companies shut down their Accounting Department to new vendors a week or so before the end of the year.

Last thing you want to do is close a sale, only to find out the new customer’s Accounting Department won’t process anything until after the new year starts.

Worse yet, with regard to year-end changes, is the common practice of many companies to simply stop taking appointments after Nov 1 to allow them to focus their own energies on making their own numbers.

Problem with this is companies don’t advertise this. Typically, it’s only found out when a salesperson is attempting to get an appointment.

Another important thing to know is how your own company is going to handle things at the end of the year.  I’m always surprised at the number of salespeople who get surprised by things within their own company.  Too many salespeople fail to pay attention to emails about changes in their own company.

Be a sales leader in Q4.

It starts by being pro-active in finding out information from your company, your customers and everyone else to ensure you can satisfy as many customers as possible and ulimtately make your year-end number.

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

(This is guest post by Garrett Moon, Founder of TodayMade.
It’s not enough just to talk to customers. You have to know how.
In this post, Garrett shares his lessons learned for crafting effective customer interviews.
Enjoy…
-Ash)

When my business partner and I drafted our first outline for our next startup venture, we knew that we were onto something pretty exciting. The existing market had little to offer in terms of a great editorial calendar for blogging, and we felt that our unique approach would resonate with users. Despite our excitement, we wanted to validate our idea. We started gathering feedback through user interviews.

One of the lessons I learned after killing my first product was that I needed to pay better attention to how I was gathering feedback. That experience showed me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding on how to actually go about getting good feedback.

With the new product, I vowed to double my efforts and do it right. I bought the book Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal and studied the art of interviewing. The investment in that book was one of the key ingredients to a successful launch. Even more importantly, it is something that anyone can duplicate.

Fast-forward to today, you’ll hear me say that there is nothing more energizing and useful than interviewing your users. As a born introvert, it took me some time to understand and accept this, but learning to get over my own inadequacies and give people a call made a huge difference in the amount and the quality of feedback that we received.

Not only were we able to make connections with potential customers, but we were also about to understand their true needs. Interviewing is an art, though, and you must approach it with reverence.

Interviewing Tip #1: Stop Sounding Like An Inventor

As an entrepreneur, it is actually somewhat counter-intuitive to conduct a user interview. Deep inside almost every starter is a little bit of salesmen, but this is counterproductive when collecting user feedback. Conducting an interview doesn’t call for a sales pitch. We have to be in it for the information.

A classic example of this is when an interviewee asks for a specific feature that they would like you to include. The salesperson inside of us wants to pounce on that idea and let the user know that it is something we are considering. This is our instinct, but it is not the best way to gather feedback.

Rather than jumping into sales mode, we need to take a step back and use the opportunity to understand our customer’s motivation for the feature. Rather than responding with “yes we plan on offering that,” we should respond with something like “that’s interesting, how would you plan to use this feature?” or “would that feature make a big difference for you? How?”

This subtle change can make all the difference. Suddenly, we become someone who is gathering information rather than a list of features. Customers don’t buy features, they buy solutions to their problems. We do ourselves and them a huge service when we take the time to understand their real problem

Interviewing Tip #2: Be Picky About Who You Talk To

One of the biggest mistakes I made with my previous startup was listening to the wrong people. We had a large percentage of free users because of our freemium offering. This proved to be a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because we garnered a great deal of feedback. A curse, because little of the feedback centered around a customers willingness to pay.

This was distracting.

With this startup, we focused heavily on talking to likely customers and prospects only. We were highly selective of who we let beta test our product, or provide feedback. Our criteria was simple: would this person likely buy CoSchedule? If they answer was no, they didn’t get an invite.

It comes down to customers vs. users.

• A customer pays for your product. They matter.
• A user simply uses your product. They matter a lot less.

When you are collecting feedback you need to be talking to the people that are paying, or would likely pay to use your product. We learned this lesson the hard way, and did a full 180 in terms of feedback quality when we started getting more disciplined with our decisions.

Interviewing Tip #3: Stop Asking What, Start Wondering Why

Wouldn’t it be great if our customers, or potential customers, simply told us what they wanted and how much they were willing to pay? It would, of course, but you better not count on it. Your customers can’t tell you what you need to build. That’s your job. So, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn to ask the right questions.

What is not the question. Why is the question.

Again, this is all about context. You can’t assume that your customers think about your product as a business. They don’t. For them, it is nothing more than a solution for a felt need. Your customers are totally self-focused on their own needs. It is why they will ultimately buy your product, and that is exactly what you’re looking for.

Our goal needs to be true understanding of how our product solves our customer’s problems.When we understand why they need it, we will quickly realize what they need.

Interviewing Tip #4: Awkward Silence Works

One of the tendencies of someone leading a group discussion, or an interview, is to fill the silence with noise. As the interviewer, we get nervous, and nervous people tend to talk. When we lob a question out there and no one responds, we can easily field it ourselves as a matter of reflex, but what good is an interview with ourselves?

Another thing that we can easily do is to ask our question over and over again in many different ways. This comes out with connecting phrases like “what I mean by that is” or “to put it another way.” The words that come after these phrases are usually counter-productive and totally unnecessary. What we really need to do, is let the silence sit.

It may be uncomfortable to watch your subjects squirm, but the results will be worth it. They dislike the silence just as much as you do, and like you, they will be anxious to fill the silence. If you let it hang, you will likely turn that awkward silence it into a string of useful feedback. Let them take their turn, and soak up the feedback.

Interviewing Tip #5: Run An Interview, Not A Conversation

I once listened as one of my colleagues conducted and interview that made me cringe. It sounded more like two old friends catching up more than anything. “Aren’t you suppose to be gathering information?” I thought, but his mistake is not uncommon, especially in our climate of approachability and human business. But, as the interviewer, your job is to lead the conversation, not participate in it.

We must remember our strategic objectives. We are there to gather information, feedback, and to understand what problems we can solve and why we need to do so. There is no reason to make a friend, or even a sale. We simply need to guide the conversation in a way that we gather useful, actionable, information that will make whatever it is that we are building better.

When you start looking at the interview process as an integral and strategic part of the lean process, I have no doubt that you can become a great interviewer.

–

Garrett Moon is a founder and designer at Todaymade, makers of CoSchedule, a content marketing editorial calendar that integrates with social media and WordPress. 

Follow Garrett Moon on Google+ or Twitter.

When you operate in a business-to-business world, it's sometimes easy to forget you're selling to humans. Your marketing becomes generalized and dull, and you start talking at people instead of with them. All of which pushes people away in search a different provider—one who knows how to connect with buyers.

"A brand that talks at a consumer, that's a monologue, and monologues bore people," says Simon Pont in his podcast interview Don't Think B2B; Think C2C—Customer to Customer. "It's the dialogue—the engagement of an audience through conversation that ultimately draws people closer."

It doesn't matter if your buyer works in accounting, procurement, or marketing. He wants authentic messages that appeal to him as a human being, he says.

Not sure how to do that—how to humanize your selling and marketing efforts? Here are a few suggestions:

Start talking about the challenge of “scaling” with people, and you’ll find the term gets used to mean a lot of different things. For example, when entrepreneurs talk about it, they are usually struggling with matters of organization. Take Citrus Lane CEO Mauria Finley, whose company was experiencing some growing pains, appropriately enough; the startup sends monthly packages of great baby products to moms. After raising $5.1 million in capital in 2012, it grew from 6 to 20 employees.

Back in 2011, in Citrus Lane’s first six months, its small founding team worked in a house and ate lunch together every day around a big table. Any problem or opportunity that arose was dealt with right then and there, lest misunderstandings fester or business prospects slip away. Growing to 20 people working in a more traditional office setting did not strike anyone as extreme change, yet the team found it had to work a lot harder to unearth problems and opportunities. Even more tricky, they had to learn to articulate something that had been tacit: a shared understanding of goals, culture, and what it takes to succeed at Citrus Lane. Today, they constantly remind each other to spend time with newcomers and, as Finley emphasized, not just tell them these things when they are hired or remind them a few times. The scaled-up organization needs to hear about what matters most at Citrus Lane over and over, to live these beliefs every day, and to observe her and other leaders living them, as well. Deliberate effort is required because “it isn’t something that just happens naturally at lunch every day any longer. We are too big now.”

A growing employee base represents one type of scaling challenge. Since my Stanford colleague Huggy Rao and I decided several years ago to study scaling (it’s the topic of our forthcoming book Scaling Up Excellence), we have heard about many others – so many that we thought, early on, that we might need to put a finer point on which form we hoped to shed light on.

For example, when leaders of much larger organizations talk about scaling, they’re often talking about something more akin to replication. In a 2001 interview with HBR, UPS’s then CEO Jim Kelly described the growth of the company: “For decades, we’ve been able to grow tremendously simply by expanding our core business geographically. Really, UPS’s first 75 years was spent expanding across the United States: first to 13 states, then to nine additional states, and so forth. We just took our core delivery business and applied for rights in different states.” Today that kind of marketplace scaling often means a more complicated process of global expansion– such as IKEA’s opening stores in China, or Home Depot’s failed efforts to do so.

And then there are the organizational leaders who use the term scaling to describe their desire to find pockets of excellence in behaviors and beliefs in the organization and spread them further – a different challenge than adding new people and locations. We studied how Wyeth, the large Pharmaceutical firm (now part of Pfizer) made dramatic improvements in cost and quality across its manufacturing operation. It first created pockets of excellence in a few small teams in each of eight plants (calling them “mini-transformations”) and then relied on mentoring and coaching to spread the superior practices throughout each plant, from one team to the next.

Still another variation on scaling is when better practices are transferred across networks of organizations. Between 2004 and 2006, for example, a Boston-based nonprofit called the Institute for Health Improvement led an effort called the “100,000 Lives Campaign” to raise awareness in U.S. hospitals of the importance of some simple practices (e.g., more frequent and thorough hand-washing) in reducing infection rates. Ultimately, some 3200 hospitals comprising over 70% of U.S. beds participated in the Campaign. There is compelling evidence (including analysis done by members of a Stanford doctoral seminar that Huggy Rao ran about five years ago) that the number of preventable deaths in U.S dropped by about 120,000 during this period. (Other factors probably contributed to that decrease, but the Campaign clearly played a large role.)

In each of these situations, “scaling” refers to something different. But as we dug deeper into these and other cases, academic studies, and stories, we realized what they shared. Scaling challenges nearly always come down to the same problem: the difficulty of spreading something good from those who have it to those that don’t – or at least don’t yet. It is always, in other words, the problem of more.

Finley and her team face the problem of more – and the success of her growing organization depends on solving it. The need for more of what was working well also challenged Wyeth, IKEA, and the Institute for Health Improvement. Have their successful efforts come from the same mold in terms of what they are spreading and by what method? No – and yet, we are finding a great deal of commonality in the obstacles that arise and the decisions that must be made. We’ve discovered guiding principles that turn out to apply as other leaders and teams go about building and uncovering pockets of exemplary performance, and spreading those splendid deeds.

Sometimes the way to learn more about a subject is to focus in more tightly and become more precise in one’s use of language. But sometimes the challenge itself is big enough – like the basic problem of spreading something good to more people and places without screwing up – that it doesn’t help to narrow its definition. Sometimes, even with the use of a word, it’s better to scale it up.

CMOs, how do you demonstrate that your marketing efforts contribute value to the business? Here’s the best way: Use metrics to measure your progress. No, I’m not talking about how many “liked” your Facebook page or the number of clicks on your website. I’m talking about tracking results, such as the returns from your latest media buy or the increase in marketing-qualified leads. I’m talking about showing precisely how marketing’s effectiveness and efficiency is improving. The proof you need is in the metrics, and that’s why I’m always telling my team, “Marketers, you need to make metrics your mantra.”

Here’s the problem, though: Many marketers are anxious about implementing metrics; they’re just not accustomed to this level of scrutiny. In my upcoming book, I tell the story of the CMO of a large well-established financial services institution who confessed to me that measurement made her team “nervous.” They had endured several organizational realignments and –no surprise –saw metrics as a negative tool senior management could use to “manage” marketers right out of their jobs.

Others marketers seem convinced that embracing metrics isn’t even possible; they’re tangled in the data hairball and feel certain that modern marketing practices have grown too complicated and unwieldy to accurately measure. That’s understandable, too.

But as marketing leaders, we can no longer succumb to fears or confusion. And we can no longer settle for “making do” with antiquated approaches to marketing operations.

Start by determining exactly what and how to measure. For instance, is your leadership team on the same page regarding Return on Investment (ROI) versus Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) versus Return on Marginal Marketing Investment (ROMMI)? Which of these metrics is most relevant to your company and its business objectives?

I can guarantee one thing: The C-suite will not be impressed with the number of website clicks, Twitter followers or Facebook “likes.” Executives want results. They don’t want to look at metrics for metrics’ sake. So use metrics that clearly demonstrate marketing’s contribution to the company’s objectives, such as ROMI or the number of marketing-qualified leads. In other words, give them want they want.

And please . . . Don’t get lost in data. Instead, stay focused on results and make sure everything ties back to your strategy. Work with your peers, your CEO and your team to understand what metrics matter and which outcomes will drive true value to revenue and customer retention. Then, work to measure broadly and deeply. Most importantly, take action on the insights gained from the metrics to optimize your marketing.

Today’s CMOs have to develop a holistic view of marketing. We have to work to understand the best way to measure marketing initiatives and activities, and we have to ensure the entire organization understands and see values in the metrics we bring back.

Just like the other elements of data-driven marketing I discussed in Step One: Get Smart, Get Strategic, Step Two: Tear Down the Silos and Step Three: Untangle the Data Hairball, establishing metrics can be a daunting task—but it’s one that’s well worth the effort. Aligned metrics will provide you with more confidence in decisions, improve granularity about what to focus on, enhance your accountability and strengthen buy-in and alignment across the enterprise.

See you next week for the final post in my five-step series about how to implement data-driven marketing –Step Five: Process Is the New Black.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/networkosaka/8512416918

Author: Maggie Jones

This week, our friends at Content Marketing Institute paired with the amazing MarketingProfs released their 4^th annual report on all things content marketing: B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America. As we’ve come to expect from their reports, this one is brimming with clearly presented data and sharp insights into the state of content marketing today.

To summarize:

• More B2B content marketers consider their techniques effective (42%, up from 36% last year)
• Companies are taking content marketing seriously, increasing budgets and assigning dedicated employees to content, but most organizations are still in the early stages of full adoption
• Content marketers who have documented content strategies are more effective, and face fewer content marketing challenges overall

Here are a few in-depth looks at the study’s findings:

Infographics are Hot

As we’ve written about here, visual content is the future. Dynamic visuals are a great way to break through the noise and engage your audience, which is why more marketers are turning toward infographics to share information. In fact, the study found that marketers used them more than ever this year.

Even when compared to 27 other content marketing tactics, including mobile apps, podcasts, and social media, infographics still saw the biggest rise in usage by marketers. In 2012, only 38% of B2B marketers were using infographics to showcase content. This year, that percentage rose to 51%. For more about visual content marketing, check out our SlideShare on the subject.

Most versus Least Effective Content Marketing

The study asked B2B content marketers to rate their organizations on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being “not at all effective” at content marketing, and 5 being “very effective.” Among the content marketers polled, 42% applauded their organizations, rating them as either a 4 or 5. A less enthusiastic 16% gave their organizations a 1 or 2. Patterns definitely emerged:

• 86% of the most effective content marketers have someone who oversees the content marketing strategy (versus 46% of least effective companies)
• On average, the most effective companies used 15 content marketing tactics (versus an average of 10 used by least effective companies)
• 66% of marketers with a documented marketing strategy consider themselves effective (versus 11% of those without a documented marketing strategy)

Interestingly, small companies (between 10 and 99 employees) are much more likely to have someone who oversees content marketing strategy than large companies (1,000+ employees) – 78% of small companies reported having such a person, versus 58% of large companies.

Relatedly, writing is the most frequently outsourced marketing function – a whopping 64% of marketers said that they hire external writers to create their content.

The Confidence Gap: Are Blogs More Effective Than Events?

When asked about their confidence in content marketing tactics, the overall consensus was that in-person events are the most effective way to reach an audience. 70% of respondents had confidence in the effectiveness of in-person events, which was higher than overall confidence in case studies, videos, webinars, and blogs.

But when you narrow it down to only the best marketers (those who gave their companies scores of 4 or 5), the group actually had a higher confidence in blogs (79%) than in physical events (76%). On the other hand, only 29% of the lowest scoring marketers said that blogs were effective.

Are less effective marketers publishing less effective blogs, or are they simply not investing enough in their blogging programs?

The More You Segment, The More You Succeed

The study found that the vast majority of B2B marketers are segmenting their content (95%), which is a huge step for content marketers across all industries. We’re big believers in segmentation, and the study’s findings definitely support the practice. Overall, it found that the most effective B2B marketers also segment the most, across every category listed below:

While B2B marketers are most frequently tailoring their content to match industry trends, around half are segmenting in response to profiles of decision makers, company characteristics, and each prospect’s stage in the buying cycle.

Engagement is Still a Top Challenge for Content Marketers

While creating engaging content was technically cited as the third biggest challenge among marketers (behind lack of time and producing enough content) I would argue that adequate time and bandwidth are essential pieces of engaging content creation. Content marketers got more budget in 2013 than in 2012, and over half of the companies surveyed plan to increase their content spend. But while budget can address the first two problems (more budget=more content producers; more content producers=more content), producing engaging content takes more than money.

In fact, to create content that your audience will actually engage with, marketers have to win at every challenge on this chart. They have to produce a variety of content (challenge #4), and they have to accurately measure their content’s effectiveness (challenge #5). If their content marketing is integrated across marketing (challenge #7), they’ll find measurement and variety much simpler to control and plan.

For the complete run-down, check out the full report on SlideShare.

Do these results match your experiences? Content marketers, are you expecting bigger budgets in 2014? What were your biggest challenges in content marketing last year?

Just In: The State of Content Marketing in 2014 was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

I love shoes. Bright ones, dull ones, suede ones, leather ones, pointy-toe ones, rounded-toe ones. I love shoes so much that after purchasing three amazing pairs from this one store, I voluntarily signed up to receive emails from the company. Every chance I got, I sang its praises. But then, six months later, I angrily unsubscribed from its email marketing.

Cue the record scratch.

Yep, I unsubscribed from my favorite shoe store’s emails. After purchasing three different pairs. After raving about them over and over again.

So what the heck happened? How could a company who I clearly was a promoter for turn me off so much with its email marketing?

What Went Wrong

Basically, my email marketing relationship with this company was taken from a mutual love affair to a creepy stalker level that I couldn’t wait to end.

When I first signed up to get its emails, I was excited. I had already bought -- and loved -- the shoes I bought from this company. I was raving about them in person to others. Why not benefit from it a little by getting special deals and the sneak peek on new shoes arrivals?

But then, I started to get an email every single day of the week. Monday: “BUY STUFF.” Tuesday: “BUY STUFF.” Wednesday: “BUY STUFF.” And so on and so forth. Literally every single day I got an email, and every single day it was pushing me to buy something.

But I continued to let the company’s emails land in my inbox in the name of company loyalty and, of course, fabulous deals on shoes.

The inbox assault continued. After the first month, this is how I felt about opening emails:

After three months, I just wanted the emails to stop. But, I still held on, getting upset every time I got an email notification from them:

After five months, I decided not to open an email from them:

Still, I rationalized, I might be interested enough down the road to open an email, so I’ll let them keep sending me stuff.

Then, after six months, I just got angry -- angry that their notification email popped up exactly every day at 1 p.m. I got irrational: "How DARE this company invade MY inbox after I explicitly gave them permission a few months ago!?!"

And then I realized, I had all of the power in this email marketing relationship. This company could only send me emails if I let it.

So I decided to take action. I still loved the company, despite the email deluge, but I just didn’t want them emailing me to "BUY BUY BUY" every day. I could deal with weekly email, though.

At the bottom of an email, I clicked on a link to change email preferences. I was taken to a landing page … and my only way of changing my email frequency was to completely unsubscribe. 

I had had it. Fine, company that I love, I WILL unsubscribe from ALL of your emails:

And since unsubscribing, my inbox has never looked so good. No way I'm ever going to subscribe to that company's marketing again.

So besides giving me a creative outlet to complain, this story has some takeaways for marketers.

What You Can Learn From This Company's Mistakes

Let’s make this complaining-fest productive. We’ve all tried our darndest to have engaging email marketing campaigns before, so it’s possible some of us have been in this same boat.

To make sure we’re at the tippy-top of our email marketing game going forward, here are three things you should do or not do when sending marketing emails.

1) Do be incredibly upfront about how often you’re going to communicate with your subscribers.

Honestly, when I signed up for this company’s emails, I thought I’d be getting an email or two a week from them -- not that many in a day. If I had known that upfront, I wouldn’t have gotten so angry to be bombarded with emails every single day. A good place to let people know how often you will be emailing them is on the landing page where they give you their email so they can have all the information at their disposal before giving you their information.

2) Don’t SELL SELL SELL all the time.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time or budget to buy shoes every day of the week. So why was this company focusing on a hard sell with every single email it sent?

Instead, try to nurture leads and delight customers with content -- just like you learned in the inbound marketing methodology. This company, for example, could have sent me tailored outfit suggestions based off shoes I already bought or even a guide on how to care for them to make them last. That is information I’d be glad to receive in my inbox!

3) Don’t make your email subscription options all or nothing. 

It’s okay for people who love your brand to not receive emails from you every single second. In fact, if they receive an email once a week, they might be even more engaged with you because they aren’t feeling bombarded. Offer multiple types of subscription options (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) to cater to different content consumption styles of your subscriber base -- you might just end up with a super-happy, engaged list.

The moral of the story? Be open, honest, and helpful with your email marketing, and your evangelists will continue to promote you -- and maybe even send you more business. And that’s something I know no marketer could refuse.

Image credit: Fotopedia

Making LinkedIn a key part of your content distribution strategy? You now have an additional opportunity to put content in front of more eyes.

LinkedIn launched its Sponsored Updates program this summer. It’s the professional network’s early foray into truly native advertising.

The new program extends the reach of content marketers by offering targeted distribution. It’s a great way to get eyes on content without interrupting a member’s browsing experience.

Until recently, most LinkedIn advertisements were akin to display, leveraging well-marked areas of the page that visitors have been conditioned to recognize as ad space. Sponsored Updates differ from other ads on LinkedIn in that they’re native to the browsing experience. They’re still recognizable, but they don’t interrupt the stream of useful content.

Native advertising represents a natural progression as LinkedIn entrenches itself deeper into the world of professional publishing. After all, paid media is a part of most good content marketing plans. The pinpoint accuracy of LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities makes advertising a must — especially if you take a content-driven approach.

Let’s take a look at what content marketers should know about the new program and how they can best use it:

What content marketers should know about Sponsored Updates

The LinkedIn Sponsored Updates program is still young. Some brands (like Adobe and Lenovo) are naturals at early adoption. Others need some time to justify the budget allocation.

Wherever you fall, you’ll need to understand how the program works. Here’s an overview of LinkedIn Sponsored Updates at a glance.

What your audience sees: Naturally, a good native advertising program doesn’t mislead your audience with poorly marked ads. Mishaps like the Atlantic’s Scientology debacle can demolish the viewer’s trust. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn doesn’t put reader trust at risk.

Identifying sponsored updates is simple. They’re clearly designated with the tag “Sponsored” next to the brand name. They blend into the newsfeed, yet are still easy for users to recognize.

Sponsored updates appear in the natural flow of a member’s newsfeed among other shared pieces of content and profile updates. They include a call to action to “follow” the brand behind the update or interact with the post in the usual ways (“like,” comment, or share). LinkedIn members also have the ability to hide Sponsored Updates they don’t find relevant to their browsing experiences by clicking the “hide” button in the upper right corner of the post.

How to define your target audience: Targeting your audience through LinkedIn Sponsored Updates is simple. Here’s how it works:

• Choose whether you want sponsored updates to display to everyone, non-followers, or current followers of your company page.
• Target based on location, filtering by continent, country, state, or metro area.
• Decide how to narrow your sponsored content based on industry and company size. You can also target based on actual company name — if you want to ensure people who work for IBM see your content, for example.
• You can also narrow your search by the viewer’s role at her company by title, function, and seniority.
• Use targeting options like “school,” “skills,” and more. (You can target based on any field a LinkedIn member uses to identify himself in his profile.) 

How budgeting works: Like display ads, Sponsored Updates work based on cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). For content-centric ads, CPC is the way to go. Your content can’t make a mark without that click, after all.

LinkedIn charges you the CPC rate any time someone clicks on your content, your company name, or your company logo — each of which can have a very different kind of impact for your content marketing. Any type of social interaction — such as “likes,” comments, or shares— won’t cost you anything.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to choose a daily or total budget based on how your campaign performs. Once you reach your budget’s limit, LinkedIn automatically shuts down the campaign until the next performance period. You can also decide whether you want the campaign to run indefinitely or until a specific date.

You have total control over how much money you want to spend on your campaign, though each campaign does have a minimum bid. This varies depending on how much competition exists for the audience mindshare you’re targeting.

Once you have sponsored updates up and running, it’s critical to make changes to campaigns based on how they’re performing. Listen to the data and you’ll be able to optimize for your unique audience.

Here at the Content Marketing Institute, we were invited to a trial program so we could share some insights with our readers.

What we learned in our Sponsored Updates trial run

Over the course of CMI’s Sponsored Updates campaign, we saw engagement rates as high as 2.45 percent for one post. The program’s success taught us some crucial lessons.

Based on the experience, here are four simple tips to help get you up and running with LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates program:

1. Include compelling and relevant images: Your content should already include great images. Recycle them as a part of your LinkedIn Sponsored Updates strategy.

Like any status update, a compelling image that matches the article topic gets more eyes. Including those images in the stream of information flowing through a given member’s feed helps differentiate your post from others.

2. Incorporate various content types, including rich media: Rich media formats like large photos, video, and SlideShare presentations offer content marketers a larger canvas within LinkedIn’s feed. As with all of your content, diversification is essential.

3. Educational and insightful content performs the best: Glance at your timeline and you may notice that some Sponsored Updates are more promotional than informational. These ads don’t qualify as native because they interrupt the user experience instead of complementing it. Which ad type performs better may depend on the unique expectations and behavior of your audience and your brand.

CMI’s top performing posts were heavy on content and education-oriented (not surprisingly), rather than sales focused. In general, it’s a good rule of thumb to focus on engaging the audience as a thought leader on how employers and employees can optimize their professional lives. During our test period, CMI found that the best performing posts were focused on careers, and on ways that content marketing could improve or enhance their professional development.

4. Pace content, and keep share-of-view in mind: Finding the right pace for your content is critical to a successful Sponsored Updates campaign. We had the best luck running three to five posts to a target audience at a time. We changed those posts every three to five days.

Don’t forget to promote content over the weekend, too. We saw high engagement rates on Saturdays and Sundays.

Weigh in

Have you tried LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates? What was your experience? Or, if you are thinking about trying Sponsored Updates, what questions do you have? Let us know in the comments.

For more tips and tools to help your audience find and engage with your content on social networks, read “Capturing Community,” by Michael Silverman. 

We spend twice as much time watching TV as using social media, according to a survey by Panasonic. That may change if people start buying the social media-enabled Viera TVs that happen to be made by Panasonic.

While it is well known that many people now use multiple devices while watching TV, this survey (of 1,000 people) shows that a lot of the time we’re using social networks we are probably also watching the gogglebox.

Even content on demand is watched more via the TV than via web streaming through a computer, tablet or phone.

The average Brit spends about 2.5 hours (156 minutes) watching television per day, while they spend on average about 75 minutes on Facebook and just 20 on Twitter.

This is also a reminder that TVs still have some way to go as content and channels converge. Netflix is migrating from internet service to a fully fledged broadcast vehicle – even winning an Emmy for House of Cards. TVs, like the Smart Viera, are beginning to offer internet integration and built in hard drives, for saving programmes to watch later.

This is just the beginning. We are probably but a few years away from being able to engage socially on the TV with other viewers of programmes. I just hope TV channels don’t allow the masses to influence what makes it into the schedules. That road leads to ruin.

Exciting times ahead though.

My primary interest is human beings. The value that I most value is empathy. I find myself moved by the kindness-connection-helpfulness that flows when empathy is present. I have noticed breakthroughs in relationship often generate breakthroughs in performance. Which is why I was happy to take up the offer to read-review-share Mark Ingwer’s book Empathetic Marketing.

Let’s start with a passage that gets to the heart of the challenge:

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

- Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception

What is it that we fail to notice? I say that we fail to notice that human beings are not just automatons, computing algorithms, merely rational beings. We fail to notice that human beings are emotional-rational-social-embodied human beings. And this has consequences for how we treat customers, treat employees, treat suppliers, treat ourselves. It has consequences for the quality of our relationships and our performance.

Mark Ingwer says we fail to notice the nuances that make us human

What does business psychologist Mark Ingwer say? He says:

What we fail to notice is the powerful effect of our unconscious on behavior and personalities.… To truly understand why people say what they say and do what they do, we must look at the psychodynamic context surrounding consumer decisions.

…. when faced with many options and advertisements ….. we often decide what’s best for us by gravitating towards what feels right (or frequently away from what feels wrong).

Even when they claim to desire lifetime relationships with their clients and customers, many businesses tactically distance themselves from the humanity of their interactions. The systemic nature of marketing and business strategy inadvertently depersonalises their audience by using language that groups customers into market segments and targets. People are commonly referred to as “buyers,” shoppers,” “payers,” “non responders,” “early adopters,” and “eyeballs.” But too often what is lost is the nuance that makes them human.

Why does this matter? It matters because when we do not keep ‘the nuance that makes us human’ at front and centre of our business decisions then we create products and services which flop. We spend fortunes in business to get people to buy our products – become customers – and then we neglect their emotional needs for the rest of the ‘customer journey’. This is what Mark Ingwer says:

I contend that emotions and resulting behaviours are the foundation for satisfying complex psychological needs…. And individual’s needs are satisfied when he or she is connected meaningfully to others, and through these connections comes to find his or her own unique value and identity. It is a ceaseless, evolving, lifelong endeavour.

.. businesses must have an intimate and conceptual framework for understanding these emotional needs and a passion for meeting them every step of the way.

The heart of the matter: putting full bodied humanity into business?

It occurs to me that Mark Ingwer is pointing at that which shows up for me as the heart of the challenge: putting humanity into business so that the one dimensional picture of human beings becomes alive in all of its many dimensions. There are three sentences in particular that resonates with me and I wish to share with you:

Physical needs create life and keep us living, whereas the emotional needs alluded to earlier are what make life worth living.

Meeting needs is not like climbing a mountain. It’s more akin …. to a lifelong game of tug-of-war.

We are beings in conflict, individuals attempting to engage with our many needs outwardly and subconsciously.

What are the fundamental needs that drive shape-drive human behaviour?

Which begs the question, what are these fundamental human needs that shape-drive human behaviour? Mark Ingwer calls attention to two needs in particular: individuality and connectedness. This is what he says:

Throughout life’s stages, we balance our primary needs for individuality and connectedness…… These two needs underlie most all human motives and serve as the polar forces of a needs satisfaction model, which I call the Needs Continuum.

Sitting on the left-hand side of the continuum, our need for individuality finds a way to sneak into almost all of our behaviour. Western society values the stalwart, self-reliant man….. We subconsciously take and borrow from every one of our relationships and connections in the world to arrive at a better sense of self.

Sitting at the opposite pole of the continuum, the need for connectedness moves hand in hand with individuality …… The need for connectedness motivates us to prioritise friends and family. We often want to buy higher quality goods and services ……. for them them than we do for ourselves. Connectedness …. defines our role as social beings. It’s impossible to live our lives without others with whom to share it. We must be cared for, loved, nurtured. We must be recognised. We must belong to something larger than ourselves.

We need to seek and achieve connectedness in order to thrive and truly know ourselves. Other people are mirrors through which we develop and sustain identity…..to be connected to others is to open the door to sustained personal growth and happiness.

On the continuum between individuality and connectedness are the following six core emotional needs: control, self-expression, growth, recognition, belonging, and care.

When approaching customers or prospects, a business must understand which of the six core needs its products or service addresses and then tailor its marketing and product development to best address that core need

In the next post on this series (based on Mark Ingwer’s book Empathetic Marketing) I will explore the powerful human need for control.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that social media is taking over the world – both business and personal. Their immense popularity has caused the networks to grow and change very often. While this is good on some levels, it can also make for a confusing landscape for people who use it for a variety of applications.

Businesses in particular have faced changes to social media platforms and terms very often. Having to adapt to these new requirements and recommendations can be exhausting. But behind it all, there are a few principles that are important to follow when it comes to social media. I’d consider theses some of the most fundamental “truths” when it comes to using these networks. Here they are:

1. The quality of what you post is so important. The old adage is of course, quality over quantity. The same is absolutely true with social media. Take the time to really figure out what kind of time and effort you can contribute to your pages. Then use that time to post quality information. If you can only make the commitment to post once every two days, but it is quality content, that is the way to go.
2. Keep your focus on your followers. Don’t forget who you actually joined social media for. While you might be tempted to push your own agenda, make sure that you post things that you think they would like to see. By focusing on the people that you hope to engage, you’re more likely to achieve the results that you are looking for.
3. Make your pages/accounts visually interesting. The more photos and video you post, the better. It’s a simple as that. On Facebook, changing your cover and profile photo often will make you more visible. People like visuals!
4. Interaction is key. Use your pages to actually talk back and forth with your followers/customers. Don’t just give a canned reply to a question or comments. It’s important to keep checking back and continue the conversation until everyone is satisfied.
5. Sharing is a good thing. While you shouldn’t share every single thing that comes across your social media path, your followers are likely to appreciate you sharing content that is relevant to their interests.

We all know that social media can either really help or really hurt a business. Make yours one of the good ones!

(Photo Source)

Brand Ambassadors are such an invaluable extension of your marketing and sales force. These consumer advocates have an interest in advising a brand with everything from the product/service, customer service improvements, adding value and conveying great experiences to their audiences. Their reviews, content and opinions carry weight far beyond traditional marketing efforts. Chosen and managed correctly, they often know more about your brand than the brand manager. They often step in to answer customer service questions, come to the defense of your brand and contribute tips and tricks that can help customers make purchase decisions. In fact, Brand Ambassador-created content is clicked and shared more often than paid advertising.

Brand Ambassadors are your new assistant brand managers. They already have an “ear to the ground” about the rumblings within the interwebs. How do Brand Ambassadors know what the “average customer” says and feels about your brand? They know because they ARE the average customer. Brand Ambassadors don’t need to rely on case studies and metrics, they tell you the word on the street.

• Brand Ambassadors naturally help create loyal fans through their passion and knowledge.
• Brand Ambassadors help create emotional relationships between the brand and its customers.
• Consumers trust authentic voices on blogs and other forms of social media more than they trust a spokesperson or traditional advertisement.
• Brand Ambassadors humanize the brand, creating stories around your product by creating authentic, organic content.
• Include Brand Ambassadors on your website and social channels and they will bring their audiences to yours.

First and foremost, Brand Ambassadors want a relationship with you. They want communication. They want you to get to know them as more than a Twitter handle or a Klout score. And that means work. You can’t build the relationship just through emails and tweets. It means phone conversations, Skype, Google Hangouts and if possible, in person meetings. Think of it as dating, you get to know someone by asking questions, listening and understanding their likes and dislikes. You don’t instantly trust and bond after one date.

Here are key ways to build the relationship:

Open Your Doors

Brand Ambassadors want relevant information combined with great product experiences and promotions that are shareable. By knowing more about who they are, you can give them information that is relevant to them which makes it easier for them to create natural stories about the brand.

• Keep Brand Ambassadors abreast of editorial calendar needs and opportunities for content planning
• Invite them in as part of your inner circle
• Ask their advice in surveys/focus groups/one-on-ones
• Invite them to your events

Make It Personal

When reaching out to Brand Ambassadors, don’t start every conversation with “Hey, I have this thing I want you to do.” Ask about their dog, their cat, their family or if they’ve been fishing lately; but to be able to request something you will have to get to know them. And when possible, pick up the phone or do a Google Hangout with them. Don’t leave it all to e-communications.

• Ask them for quotes and include them in your press releases when appropriate
• Interact with their social channels via your brand’s channels
• Include links to their owned channels off of your owned channels
• They love it when you run advertising on their sites

Build Trust

Brand Ambassadors want the science, the reviews, the price comparisons, all the information you can give them to make their job easier. They’ll love you for it because you are trusting them. The information helps them build trust with their audience.

Keep It Simple

Understanding how busy they are is crucial. Make any copy presented concise and consider the usability of every application, interface and website, it has to be easy to navigate. Communication needs to be simple. Make expectations clear. Say “Here are some talking points you are welcome to use for your blog post” instead of “Enclosed is a press release.”

Celebrate

Be sure to include your Ambassadors and Advocates in brand wins. They are part of the team and helped build the brand’s success.

The traditional path-to-purchase funnel is no longer valid. Social media and technology have blown it apart. No longer linear, the path-to-purchase has been replaced by the “Path to Influence” where Brand Advocates and Brand Ambassadors have the power to make or break a brand through word-of-mouth influence, but if you work with them, treat them as part of the brand team, they can help you drive sales and customer loyalty.

Social Network Focuses On Where It Can Win

Some prognosticators are writing off Google+ as a viable social media platform. They are careful not to downplay the impact of the world’s premier search engine or the wild success of Gmail, Drive and YouTube, but some very vocal voices are simply not sold on Google+.

While it’s true that, compared to Facebook, Google+ has far fewer active users. And it has not seen the stratospheric growth of Twitter or even Pinterest. But that hardly means Google+ is a failure.

And it’s not because criticism of the platform is based on unrealistic expectations. Sure, when you consistently knock it out of the park, people may not appreciate the occasional ground rule double, but even Babe Ruth had to stay on base occasionally.

From what I’m seeing critics are missing it completely when it comes to Google+. And not because of inflated expectations. As  I stated in one of my interviews, “Google understands, more than anyone, the power of market share. Conversely, they understand the importance of entering the market in the right spot if you are coming in late or coming in against a competitor with a forbidding market share.”

He added that there are three things any business pro can learn from how Google approached social media through Google+.

#1 – Don’t waste time wishing

Google didn’t release and hope to become the next Facebook. In fact, when it was released, “Plus” was panned for being too basic, even a step backwards. But Google had other plans for its social network.

#2 – Stake your claim and work it

Google+ came in with a clear idea of what it was and where it wanted to be. More than any other social network, Google+ came into the game comfortable in its own skin. It knew where its market was and planted its flag right there.

#3 – Be the best “you” you can be

Perhaps more than any other social network, Google+ has the reach and resources to control the wider international market and to provide larger companies a greater return on its investment. This is not to say that Facebook (or even Twitter) is small. Not hardly. Only that Google has a stranglehold on searches and, through YouTube, multimedia content online.

The company would be foolish not to leverage what it can offer to position itself in the best possible market for its unique products and services. Think about that…best possible market.

What is your best possible market? What market could you best serve, or what could you easily do to serve the “right” market? These are two questions too many businesses do not give due consideration. Yes, they may want to go after a particular market. But is that the BEST market for them to enter?

Surely, Google looks at the consumer and small business markets and salivates. There are simply A LOT of us online. But Facebook has those markets down cold. Google can, in turn, use its resources to challenge for an underserved market in the social media universe.

So here’s the question: Which underserved market could you connect with? For help answering that question and to develop the communication tools to help you make it happen, contact me and 5W Public Relations via Google Plus.

So your business had decided that it would maintain an active presence on social networking sites, namely Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Moreover, it’s also been decided that your marketing team will just create one or two content items per day and post it simultaneously on all the platforms.

Great. It’s fast and efficient, right?

Not quite.

Although it may save you a lot of time to make your posts universal to all social media, it may not be a good idea if your goal is to generate positive responses from your audience. You see, each networking site operates differently from one another, and the way to attract people towards your post is just as different.

There is no foolproof recipe, but there can be guidelines that can help you optimize your posts based on the tastes and preferences of each social media fan:

Facebook

• Be a positive ray of light. Facebook users are generally attracted to things that breed positivity. It makes them excited and cheerful, resulting to positive responses.
• Be trivial. People want to learn new things on Facebook, and they are willing to keep on reading as long as you have a catchy title and an intriguing lead.
• Include images. The biggest rate of engagement on Facebook is generated by images. Make it attractive, vivid, and artistic. Include people and faces, doing something candidly.
• Be mobile-friendly. A growing proportion of Facebook users are going mobile, so make sure your posts are just as attractive when viewed on a mobile device.

Twitter

• Clear call to action. Followers must know exactly what you want them to do. Don’t confuse them by covert instructions or ambiguous text.
• Shorten URLs. Make the most of your 140 characters by shortening links. Use bit.ly or other shorteners. It makes your tweets look neat, too.
• Don’t sacrifice grammar and spelling. You’re a business, not a celebrity. You need to maintain a professional language for distinction.
• Interact. Use the power of influencers. Retweet or mention them so they could aid you in spreading your message.

Pinterest

• No human faces. Studies have shown that human faces in Pinterest posts lessen the chances of being shared or responded to. Focus on physical products and services instead.
• Be artistic. Use multiple, dominant colors in images. Make red your favorite color. Don’t let your background take up most of the image space. Better yet, hire an in-house professional to enhance your images.
• Be impeccable. Pinterest users usually stay up late. Unlike Facebook and Twitter which peak during the afternoons, Pinterest is still an active ground at night from 8PM until 1AM.
• Tap your feminine side. 4/5 of Pinterest users are females, so if you want to engage them, you have to tickle their womanly bones.

This content originally appeared at Sales and Marketing Solutions Blog.

In his new book, Epic Content Marketing, author Joe Pulizzi raves about Copyblogger. “I look forward to their great content every week.”  And we have their Chief Copywriter on Marketing Made Simple TV!

Damien Farmworth is the Chief Copywriter of the number one content marketing blog on Earth, Copyblogger! In this show, he reveals their content marketing secrets to host Jeff Ogden on Marketing Made Simple TV.

This is part one of this show and part two will air later. (Damien had so much great information, we decided to split it into two shows.)

We thank Damien for sharing great business ideas and insights on Marketing Made Simple TV. This show premieres every Thursday at noon ET/9am PT and is a production of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers. The Producer of the show is Craig Yaris of Social Ribbit ().

We also invite you to check out our wonderful sponsors, Avitage, Communication Strategy Group, and Watchitoo.

While the roughly 1.8 million B2B salespeople in the United States are the lifeblood of their companies, many don’t utilize available technologies to develop optimal sales strategies. CRM and sales performance management tools take much of the pain out of tracking deal flow and managing commissions. However, they mostly provide a historical record of past events rather than a look into the future. To become more strategic, the sales technology of the future will need to provide better guidance and intelligence through the use of Big Data and predictive analytics.

Many perceive the analysis of terabytes of data as insurmountably complicated. While still certainly an impressive technological feat, recent advances moved it out of the realm of theory into an operational reality for early-adaptors. While I do not intend to oversimplify data analysis, I do believe that automation has the power to bring these capabilities to the masses. For years, gleaning real insight from Big Data was only possible for the largest enterprises with large budgets and the foresight to hire a team of data scientists. Now, technologies are coming to market that use algorithms and machine-driven pattern recognition to perform the role once occupied by these expensive data scientists. This means that many more companies will now be able to mine data to predict customer behavior, determine the ideal market basket and help salespeople close deals as profitably as possible. This means arming sales teams with concrete data and facts to ensure they can anticipate and respond to buyer needs and do not leave money on the table.

Conventional wisdom says that selling is a delicate dance that relies on instinct and tenacity. But as technology evolves, so does every single industry it touches. Big Data and analytics in the sales process dovetail perfectly with the tenacity and instincts already possessed by most sales people, helping them maximum their effectiveness and meet their quotas. The opportunity provides salespeople with a level of insight and guidance that was unthinkable just a few years ago, such as which deals are most likely to close in any given month, what the winning price is for a given product, and which customers are most likely to defect.

In today’s hyper-connected world, the worst thing a sales person say to a potential customer, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” It is now more vital than ever to have insight and guidance when in front of a customer. Thanks to the proliferation of Big Data analytics and recent advances in automation, its application in sales is beginning to bear fruit at forward thinking organizations. Those companies that choose to ignore this trend do so at their own risk.

If you are a website owner, you know that understanding who has been visiting your site, where they are from, and what pages they looked at (and for how long) is absolutely essential if you are to have any hope of growing and developing your online presence. If you have no idea who your site visitors are, then you are walking blindfolded. The tool that most people turn to, in order to achieve this knowledge, is Google Analytics. But I can attest from personal experience that Google Analytics is not the easiest site to understand and navigate. If you are...

Read the full article: Google Starts Analytics Academy To Teach People About Google Analytics

The philosophy of aesthetics has become a widely acknowledged part of our lives. It refers to our innate need to define what is beautiful and what is not.

In the last decade a new field of study, called neuroaesthetics, has emerged which takes the philosophy of aesthetics one step further. By understanding the role of the brain we can begin to understand the neurological basis for why we find things more beautiful than others.

I believe the design world can learn a lot from the study of neuroaesthetics.

Using neuroaesthetics in website design

The practice of neuroaesthetics can and should be extended to website design. After all, like art, design is a product of our brains.

Therefore, the look and feel of a website experience and its interactions are critical factors in how it is perceived and whether it is considered to be aesthetically pleasing.

By putting human behaviour and emotion at the heart of design and considering why we find some designs more beautiful than others, we can learn more about how the brain works during the online experience.

An understanding can then be gained in the way people interact with digital technology, the reasons they do so, how choices are made and what the influencing factors are.

Using this information, designs that incorporate neurological insight and understanding can be created to provide the best possible experience for the user. 

Understanding brain concepts

The concept of neuroaesthetics can help designers to understand human behaviour and emotion during the online experience by considering how brain concepts, which are either inherited (such as colour) or acquired and generated throughout life, help people make sense of the world around them.

There is a viewpoint within neuroaesthetics that the beauty of an object resides in the brain rather than the object. I believe this perspective can be extended to website design and that beautiful design exists in our brains as an individual and unique concept.

Abstraction is one of the fundamental brain functions that allow us to perceive a very specific element of a scene or artefact. In other words it allows us to make generalisations without being influenced by another particular feature. For instance, cells have been discovered in the brain that are orientation-selective.

For example, vertically orientated cells send a nervous impulse when they see vertical lines, but don’t when they see horizontal lines. This provides a reason as to why geometry and symmetry are so important in design and why humans find such shapes aesthetically pleasing.

This demonstrates that abstraction is happening at a much lower level than has been previously considered. Simir Zeki, professor of neuroaesthetics at University College London and one of its founding fathers, explains that it represents a form of micro-consciousness - we may not actually be aware of it, but our brains are.

The way in which humans are predisposed to perceive colour before motion is another example of an inherited brain concept that we have absolutely no control over. Colour is perceived more quickly than motion by approximately 80 to 100 milliseconds. Whilst this difference may appear slight it could be massive in terms of ‘neural time’.

This means the brain perceives colour and passes it on for further higher-level cognitive processing. Colour is integral to shaping our understanding and expectation of many things. Different colours can also represent different things for different cultures. 

Expressions are another example. There are most likely evolutionary reasons why facial expressions are perceived before faces. In history, recognising a face within a group (or tribe) or faces that aren’t in the group would have been very important. There will also be specific reasons for certain emotional expressions for example, sadness, happiness or disgust. 

Understanding these concepts of the brain and how humans process design elements is an important factor in determining the design aesthetic and why we rate some designs as more beautiful than others.

Therefore once these factors are better understood they can be better considered in the design process.

Using neuroaesthetics to shape design for better user experience

In recent years designers have become increasingly aware of the importance of psychology in the design of digital systems and interaction.

The industry now needs to recognise the underlying brain behaviour and the relationship it has with psychology. Understanding that there is a fundamental relationship between psychology and neurology is very important as the brain drives emotions and learning, which are key factors in the online experience.

By putting human behaviour and emotion at the centre of the design process, a website can be created that will dramatically improve the user experience.

I therefore believe the design industry can prosper significantly from enriching its understanding of design by learning more about neuroaesthetics.

Georg Müller, Ph.D.Director Deloitte Consulting LLP

• The significance of defining economic value and estimation price elasticity,
• Understanding consumer behavior and psychology, customer buying process, lifetime value, and segmentation, and
• Establishing a technology and data analytics infrastructure.

read more

• Focus on providing easy, hassle-free, personalized solutions.
• Learn customers' opt-in messaging and communication preferences.
• Engage customers across the multichannel mix.

• Don't “close.” Instead, think of the sale as the beginning of proactive, value-based relationship development.

• Develop a plan for ongoing proactive engagement, i.e. “How can we better serve you?”
• Provide an ongoing value –add, which justifies a price premium.
• Be relevant. Communications must be highly personalized, targeted, and delivered or accessed across the multichannel mix.

According to CEOInsights.com, over 48% of inside sales companies surveyed reported that they missed their monthly revenues goals more times in a 12-month cycle than they reached them. Other sales indicators like time on the phone, closing ratios, percentage to monthly goal, etc, pipeline accuracy inevitably suffered as well as sales teams struggled to make quota and reach revenue.

In addition to missing revenue numbers, many other companies indicate that the level of training, core selling skills, and overall selling talent of their sales team could be improved as well. When asked how many companies have a defined sales process in place and a specific training program to reinforce and teach those best practices, our experience tells us that less than 35% of companies have taken the time to define and implement these processes.

While you would expect an under trained sales team to lead to under performance, what is rarely considered is the toll this takes on other factors that contribute to sales decline. Getting rejected daily and repeatedly missing sales lead to a lack of confidence which in turn leads to call reluctance. Getting beaten up for missing quotas leads to poor attitudes and these attitudes spread rapidly throughout a sales organization creating an environment that becomes toxic and self perpetuating.

Is Sales Training Enough?

All companies have some form of sales training, even if it just consists of new reps shadowing senior reps for a few days before they “hit the phones.” While sales training can be graded from inefficient to very effective, there are some important points you should consider when designing your own sales training:

1) Make your overall training not only specific to your product or service, but break your training down to the various parts of your sales cycle and teach best practices for each part. For example, if your first call is simply to set an appointment or send information to a prospect, what are the five benchmarks your reps need to cover for you to consider this a qualified lead?

Having this kind of clarity all the way through your sales cycle will help not only your reps but will help your manager coach them all the way through the sale.

2) Give your reps specific, scripted responses to the sales situations they run into every day. This is the best way to empower your reps and it helps them successfully navigate the sale from beginning (getting through the gatekeeper) through to the end (getting the deal in the door).

An example would be to script out and teach them how to overcome the smokescreen objection of, “I have to show this to my boss” objection. Most sales reps don’t know how to deal with this objection so their usual response is something along the lines of, “OK, when should I get back with you?”

This simply leads to non-qualified leads that clog up pipelines.

A specific, scripted approach to this objection will teach your reps to isolate this objection to see if it’s a smokescreen or a real objection. Have them use something like this: “I understand and I think you should speak to _________. Just out of curiosity, if they say to do whatever you think is best, where are you leaning in regards to using this?”

Again, giving your reps specific tools to navigate through the sale is what is going to help them become successful.

3) Make sales training a daily event. To learn a new skill of any kind you need to reinforce it daily. We recommend running a brief sales meeting every morning to reinforce the skills and techniques that your top 20% are using successfully. Playing recordings, role playing, passing out updated scripts are all things that will help your team improve on a daily, weekly basis.

Specific Sales Solutions

In alignment with the suggestions above, here are three specific sales solutions that you can adapt and implement to immediately make your inside sales team more effective. These are proven skills that will help your team navigate past some of the common objections, brush offs and situations they encounter on a daily basis. You can use these techniques as sales meeting topics and have your team help to customize them to fit their selling situations.

Qualifying Techniques

#1 – Question the Red Flags

One of the best ways to determine who actually does make it into your sales pipeline is to make sure you avoid one of the biggest mistakes 80% of salespeople make when qualifying. And that is to overlook or not react to obvious Red Flags prospects give during the initial qualifying call.

In their haste or desperation to “generate a lead” or to “fill their pipeline,” many sales reps will hope that any possible objection they hear on the front end will miraculously go away once the prospect sees their information or product or service, etc.

But you all know from experience — it never does.

In fact, the rule for calling back leads is that:

Leads Never Get Better!

What appears to be an objection or deal killer on the front end, always is.

A sales rep told me about a prospect who wasn’t calling him back, and who (once he did reach him) told him that he was leaving the company. He wrote to me and said, “I guess intuitively I knew he wasn’t the right guy to make the decision anyway.”

And I’ll bet he intuitively knew this because he heard (but didn’t question) the Red Flags the prospect raised during the qualification call.

You can’t ignore these Red Flags! Do what the Top 20% do: As soon as you hear something that triggers your intuition or that gives you that sick feeling in your gut, stop and ask the tough qualifying questions!

Here are some examples you can begin using today:

If someone says that they usually buy from ________, but would like to see your information, ask:

“Why would you switch vendors?” Or

“How many other companies have you looked at in the last six months?”

And then: “And how many did you go with?”

If someone says that they will pass your information on to ________, say:

“Thanks. So that I make sure I’m not wasting her time it’s best that I speak with her for just a few minutes. Can you please tell her that (your name) is holding please?” (If you’re then told they are not available, make sure and get their direct line or that person’s extension and keep calling until she picks up.

If someone says that they’d be glad to look it over, ask:

“Great, after you do, and if you think that it can help you (or your business, etc.), what would the next steps be?”

And so on.

#2 Teach your reps how to avoid getting brushed off

So many times prospects aren’t really interested, but they either don’t know how or won’t come out and tell us. Instead they will say things like, “Go ahead and send me the (information, brochure, demo) and I’ll take a look.” Or, “Put that quote in writing and send it to me.”

When a top closer hears this, his/her first thought is, “I don’t have the time to do that, and I especially don’t have the time to follow up with an unqualified lead.” Here’s how they handle it and how your reps should, too:

Put off #1: “Go ahead and send me your information.”

Your response: “I’d be happy to, and if you like what you see is this something you would move on in the next couple of weeks?”

OR,

“Before I do, I want to make sure you’d be ready to act on it if you like it. Let me ask you…(qualifying questions on budget, decision-making process, etc should be asked next)”

OR,

“Sure, and after you review it, how soon would you make a decision on it?”

OR,

“And what would you need to see to say yes to it?”

Put off No. 2: “Put that quote in writing and send it to me.”

Your response: “I’d be happy to, and from what we’ve just discussed, does it sound like you’d go with it?”

OR,

“Absolutely. How does this compare with the other quotes you’ve received so far?”

OR,

“Great. Based on the quote/price I just gave you does this sound like it fits within your budget?”

Closing Technique

#3 Five Ways to Stop Talking Past the Close

Have you ever caught your reps doing this? They deliver a great presentation, think that your prospect is with them, but then they just keep on pitching.

Or, they get an objection, answer it, but then again, they just keep pitching — or worse — they go to the next rebuttal and start reading that pitch.

Talking past the close is much more common than repeatedly asking for the sale (which is what they should be doing). And why is that? It’s because it’s scary to ask for the deal and be told no. It’s much easier to keep pitching, “Maybe they’ll just cave and finally hear something they want and buy.”

Sound familiar? It should. That’s how 80% of your sales reps are pitching. They are ad-libbing, talking past the close, and even introducing new objections. What a mess!

Here are five ways to stop talking past the close, so your reps can spend more time closing, and earning the income the Top 20% do:

1) Record yourself. Before you can stop talking past the close, you first must begin hearing and catching yourself doing it. One day of recording your reps and you’ll become immediately aware of when and how they do it.

2) Use a script. One of the best parts of a well-crafted script is that it ends with your reps asking for the deal! Listen to their recordings and then craft a good response to the common objections they are getting. Then, make sure they adhere to the script.

3) Ask for the deal five times. If you give your reps a close quota of asking for the deal at least five times, then they are going to be much quicker in asking for it.

Have them keep track of this on a piece of paper using stick figures. If 20 minutes has gone by and they don’t have any marks on the paper, then you know your team is in trouble!

4) Welcome getting a no. So many sales reps are afraid of no’s, but you don’t have to be. With most sales you’ve made, you’ve probably heard some no’s along the way, so reframe the way your team thinks about them and realize the truth — each no gets you closer to a yes. So welcome getting a no. It usually means you’re that much closer to getting the sale.

5) Shut up and listen. Teach your team to be quiet after they ask for the sale. Use your mute button or cover the mouthpiece and count to five – 1/1000, 2/2000, etc. By forcing your reps to remain silent for five seconds after asking for the sale, they’ll actually have something to concentrate on rather than fear.

Conclusion

If your sales team is in the 50% of teams that aren’t making their monthly sales quotas regularly, then daily, specific sales training is your fastest way of changing that. There are other factors as well, including having a Defined Sales Process, an organized sales training program that reinforces your best practices, etc. But using and reinforcing the three techniques above will bring you and your team immediate results.

Planning for 2014 requires a fresh look at the metrics that will determine success.  As noted by my colleague Vince Koehler, Marketing has adopted new capabilities.  These capabilities force Marketing to transition to new metrics for determining effectiveness.  Similarly, sales reps and managers require a new set of capabilities.  Sales Operations must transform its reporting to track these key capabilities. 

These are either in addition to, or in place of, your standard metrics tracked.  They are all leading indicators that can help you forecast success in 2014.  In this post we will dig into the top 5.  By registering for SBI’s Sales & Marketing Research Review, you'll get the “Top 15 Metrics to Track in 2014.”  You'll also get plenty of other tools to help you meet all types of Sales Ops challenges.

Five Sales Metrics You're Not Tracking

Social Reach

Who you know is more important than what you know.  In 2014, communicating with buyers is easier and quicker than ever.  LinkedIn provides a network that includes a majority of those buyers.  How many of your buyers are your reps and managers connected with?  How many customers have your reps helped by sharing content and information? 

Social reach is not measured by overall connections.  It is measured by the number of buyers of your offerings.  Have your reps ‘tag’ connections and bucket them based on buyer type or persona.  You can now enable your team to send focused messages to targeted groups.  You can determine how likely your reps are to be found by buyers.  Social reach is worth measuring. 

Social Debt

With great networks come great (likely to close) opportunities.  But the network must be nurtured.  Over 57% of the buying journey takes place without a rep present.  When buyers are looking for help online, is your team there for the assist?

Constantly offer information and education to your network.   Share insightful articles through your LinkedIn updates.  Offer to help connect a buyer with a channel partner.  Recommend a colleague for a position, or simply leave a recommendation on their profile.  At the heart of your personal brand should be Advisor and Problem Solver.  Give it out for free and the payoff will be great.  Have your reps begin to offer this assistance daily through their networks.  Could be the most effective 5 minutes of their day.

Referrals Generated

The Edelman Trust Barometer has done extensive research on B2B decision making.  They found 84% of B2B decision makers begin the buying process with a referral.  You shouldn’t find this surprising.  What may be of interest is the relative ease of generating referrals in 2014.  With the right referral generation program, connecting with buyers can improve sales productivity dramatically.

LinkedIn allows you to find your buyers in your connections’ networks.  You may only be one connection removed from a pipeline of opportunities.  Mine your connections’ networks in search of your buyers.  When you find them, reach out to your mutual connections.  If you’ve created social debt with your connections, they are likely to help.  A warm introduction from a trusted source improves your likelihood of getting the appointment.  Measuring referral activity determines each rep’s likelihood of filling their pipeline with qualified leads.  In addition, customer acquisition costs are reduced as reps create their own opportunities.

Lead to Conversion Rate

This may be a metric you’re tracking, but is it accurate?  Does each rep have the same definition of a lead?  By using the above tactics, more leads in the funnel will be sales qualified.  Our research shows 15% of socially sourced leads convert to opportunities.  It's about 3% on marketing sourced leads.  That’s a 5x bump. 

2014 is the year to begin using the Lead platform in your CRM.  As you generate social debt and referrals, track these leads.  Follow them through the pipeline.  Not only will they close at a higher clip, but at a higher price.  You see a higher average sale price when getting to buyers earlier.

Content Production

Content is the engine of Social Selling.  Expecting reps to create content will be commonplace in 2014.  When a rep is conducting a demo at the client site, take video clips.  Share these clips through your social network.  Show how the solution is benefiting clients.  Take a snapshot of a customer email thanking you for your help.  Share this recommendation to alert other buyers of your value.

Content is becoming easier and quicker to create.  You’re not asking your reps to write books or whitepapers.  Instead, content can be created and promoted to your buyers within minutes.  Implement a quota for content production amongst your reps.  Make it manageable.  A Top 10 list.  A testimonial.  Whatever it is, sending it viral will improve each rep’s personal brand.  It will remind your prospects that you exist and provide benefits to clients.

Social Selling is measurable.  It is efficient.  By tracking these new metrics you will see the impact on other key metrics.  Revenue, closing rates and new logo acquisition will improve.  Opportunities will move through the pipeline more rapidly. Your ability to make the number in 2014 will depend on your social footprint.  Start planning today to be ready for next year.

Now sign-up for SBI’s Sales & Marketing Research Tour here and you'll get the “Top 15 Metrics to Track in 2014.” 

Author: John Kearney

Follow @MakingTheNumber

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After prospects have visited your website, called, or emailed you, they’ve converted into leads. But chances are they’re not ready to make a purchasing decision. This stage of the customer buyer journey is typically research-based; i.e., your leads need preliminary information about prices, products, or services. They’re also evaluating your company for its overall customer service and professionalism. And, they’re most likely contacting your competitors during this phase, too.

After your leads have expressed initial interest in your company, you need to continue to stay top of mind with them throughout their purchase process. That way when the time does come for them to make a decision, you’re the company they choose. This doesn’t have to be a difficult or mysterious process. With some basic lead management practices, you can stay top of mind with your leads and ultimately earn more of their business.

1. Bring Them Back With Retargeting

After leads have visited your website, you can continue to reach them with banner ads as they surf the Web. Using technology known as site retargeting, you can remind them of your business so they return to your website. For example, let’s say you’re a dentist in Dallas, Texas and a prospective new patient visits your website. After reading several pages on your site, he leaves your website and visits other potentially unrelated sites across the Web. Because he has already visited your site, the retargeting technology can identify him as an interested shopper and show your display ad to him as he continues to surf the Web. It’s a perfect opportunity to re-engage him with a promotional offer like “Half Off Teeth Whitening” and a strong call to action like “Book Your Free Consultation Today” so he will click the ad and return to your website. By staying top of mind with your lead while he was in the consideration phase, you can encourage him take another step toward becoming a customer.

2. Call Your Leads Back Quickly and Ask Questions

Did you know that up to half of consumers buy from the businesses that respond back to them first? If you rely on a voicemail system or answering service to help you manage the calls coming into your business, it’s important to return those quickly – within the first hour is ideal. The longer you wait, the greater the chances that a competitor will reach your prospects before you do. When you do follow up with your leads, be prepared to collect pertinent information such as their email address, location, and the reason for their call if they didn’t tell you when they contacted you. For instance, did they want to set an appointment for an initial consultation? Were they interested in a specific product? Do they need pricing information, etc.? This information not only enables you to help your lead, it also gives you background information you can use in follow-up communications.

3. Follow Up With Emails

Emails are a great way to stay top of mind with your leads and previous customers. Following up with these consumers with links to relevant industry articles, alerts about upcoming sales and special promotions, news about your products and services, and testimonials from happy customers are just a few topics you can include in follow-up emails. By providing timely, personal, and helpful information, you can build your business relationship with your prospects so that when they’re ready to buy, you’ve increased your chance at earning the sale.

How do you stay top of mind with your leads? Let us know with a comment!

The latest Advertising Trust report from Neilsen reveals some surprises, but least surprising is the fact that “Recommendations from people I know” is the single most powerful driver to product and brand trust AND more importantly, action taking. It’s true that trust and action are often hand in hand, and we can’t discount the value of trust, but its also hard to measure. However, what creates trust and what creates action can be different. For example, consumers report that humorous ads resonate most with them. We know that humor is a powerful tool, especially in social media. It might be more powerful than cats, dare I say . However, humor is rarely what makes people take ACTION.

The action taking piece is the one I’m always most interested in looking at more closely. And its really no surprise that word of mouth leads the pack. Ads on social networks have a lower trust score than they do action score. That’s actually true for several advertising types. With respect to social media, there are two key take aways:
1) Use social to build trust and be very aware of what motivations exist for taking action.
2) The power of your tribe: when they share what you’ve got, its a more credible source. So be very aware of what and why people share on social.

Now, the challenge with a report like this is that these results are all self-reported. The challenge with self-reporting is that people don’t always really know why they do what they do. I know, YOU always know why you do what you do. Or do you? Your motivations may not always be clear even to you.

Just remember, what type of message you use impacts trust and action. Decide what you’re trying to establish in every single post. Be purposeful in your social media practice and you’ll find that you can actually be more human.

PS: If you’d like to download the Neilsen Report for yourself: click here

Sales Training Article: Creating Social Debt on LinkedIn

By Tony Albachiara, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)

In my previous blog, I wrote about obtaining LinkedIn referrals. In the digital age of selling, LinkedIn referrals are like gold. But in order to find the gold, you need to know where (and how) to look. That's where this blog comes in.

Social debt is one of the most powerful tools to obtaining new referrals. In this blog, I will cover 5 different ways that you can create social debt. Follow these tips and you'll be swimming in referrals for 2014.

LinkedIn referrals are also dependent on a few more things. First, you need to have a strong LinkedIn Profile. Secondly, you need to spend time on your network to create extensive LinkedIn Reach. The two articles I wrote on these subjects (linked earlier in this paragraph) can help get you there.

The 5 Most Effective Ways to Create Social Debt

1) Provide a warm introduction to a dream prospect. Everyone you know is working towards a professional goal. This goal may be a revenue quota, or something else entirely. In the majority of these cases, these people have dream prospects. There's someone out there who they would love to sell to. In some cases they may have been trying to secure a meeting for years. Can you connect them to this prospect? If so, you're looking golden for referrals down the line.

2) Help with a professional job search. Individuals in your accounts are naturally going to move around. Just like you, they are seeking the next career opportunity. They want to experience upward mobility and professional success. If you help get them closer to their dream job, you've successfully created social debt. Scour your connections and see how you can help. It could pay off for both parties in the long run.

Read the rest of this article from SBI.

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.

Coaching is one of the most important aspects of ensuring the success of new sales reps.

Territory reviews, daily meetings, and prospect planning are critical coaching opportunities as are role plays and call shadowing. The following is an excerpt from our free eBook The First 90 Days – Your Guide to Making New Sales Hires Produce Fast.

On Role Plays:

Even if your new sales rep is a seasoned pro, you still need to be sure that they have a thorough understanding of your product and/ or service.

Throughout the first week, have the individual present in-person or via webinar to someone on your team who resembles your typical buyer.

This role play is critical as the new sales rep is representing your brand and the quicker they can do this properly, the quicker you will see results. Repeat this role playing daily, if required.

Role plays take time, but they are invaluable to reducing sales rep ramp-up time.

Call Shadow:

Listen in on calls made by new sales reps often during the first week and periodically thereafter. This gives you the opportunity to understand how they present the product to the client. If they find this action threatening or awkward, explain to them that you are using this opportunity to help them be more successful and to provide ample encouragement.

Your feedback is crucial in order for them to improve their weaknesses and exploit their strengths.

To your success!

Liza Sperling from ClearSlide is today’s Madlibs participant. Want to know how I met her? I sent out a tweet before the Sales 2.0 conference joking about my “Hugs with Funnelholic” booth. I get a response from some random person wanting to get a hug. I am like — “Ok this person has chutzpah.” I met her at the conference, she demo’d ClearSlide (of course.) I have gotten to know her since then and she is one of those boundless energy types who is passionate about the changing games in both sales and marketing. Great call for Madlibs.

Liza’s Madlibs:

1. The b2b buyer is evolving. As a result, today’s salespeople will be forced to evolve and develop the skills to adapt to a very different sales process.
2. The biggest innovation in sales is not CRM, but the companies focusing on how to make CRM interfere less with the sales process.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b sales is technology’s realization that salespeople need solutions tailored to their needs that enhance, rather than disrupt, the sales process.
4. My favorite Sales 2.0 technology….Sales 2.0 is dead, so this is a trick question. Much of sales 2.0 technology reduces selling time and increases time spent on administrative tasks. At ClearSlide we are increasing sales productivity, so that sellers can spend more time selling. No surprise that that ClearSlide is my favorite sales technology.
5. My favorite sales book is: The Giving Tree.
6. My favorite social media channel is Twitter. There is a learning curve to optimize Twitter for professional use, but it is worth investing the time to get up to speed.
7. Social selling is in its infancy, but it’s getting exciting thanks to people like Matt Heinz and Jill Rowley and companies like LittleBird. They make social data manageable and actionable to salespeople.
8. I use Linkedin in conjunction with Newsle and Cloze, both of which supercharge LinkedIn and other social networks. They ensure that you don’t miss an article or information about key people and relationships. For anyone is sales, Newsle and Cloze are free, must-have tools.
9. Cold calling ‘s death has been greatly exaggerated. It’s a mandatory sales skill. Call me old fashioned, but I’d also like to see more salespeople sending handwritten letters. I still have a copy of a letter I wrote that immediately resulted in a seven figure win.
10. In B2B, the idea of a funnel is oversimplified.
11. The first thing every salesperson should do: immerse themselves in both the art and science of sales. Today, salespeople need a deep understanding of both.
12. Voicemail is usually deleted. No one enjoys listening to voicemail. Not leaving a voicemail can be more successful than leaving a voicemail.
13. The biggest mistake salespeople make is targeting short-term gains and low hanging fruit, rather than building longer, more profitable relationships.
14. The biggest myth in sales is that salespeople are technophobes.
15. The hardest part of selling is what gets in the way of selling and interferes with customer engagement: logging activities, wrangling collateral, downloading software, etc…
16. The next “hot-thing” in sales will be what Steve Richard calls “naked selling”, specifically 100% transparency and visibility into both sellers’ and buyers’ activities.
17. In 2015, sales will no longer be a dirty word.
18. My favorite sales saying is: There’s no crying in baseball.
19. Over the next couple years in sales, I can’t wait to see salespeople who demand technology that improves the sales process and the customer experience – and requires no data entry.
20. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is ALMOST as much fun as diving into an inbox full of ClearSlide view alerts.

Liza Sperling is the Evangelist at ClearSlide, where she drives thought leadership, industry partnerships and influencer relationships. Prior to ClearSlide, Liza focused on growing market share at three software startups, all of which were acquired. With 15+ years of experience launching, marketing and selling enterprise technology and managing strategic relationships to drive revenue, Liza has a proven track record of driving measurable success both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter