Handling customer issues online might seem like a simple incremental addition to traditional call centers and retail stores, but McKinsey research shows that, done well, it can represent a paradigm shift in customer satisfaction. Digital customer care (“eCare”) responds to consumer demand for easily accessible, highly rewarding multichannel interactions. In one example of many, one [...]

One of the big challenges for video in social media has been that it has failed to be as easily digested. For example, Twitter and Facebook can provide quick updates in the form of a status or tweet, but YouTube videos tend to be a longer time commitment for viewers and sometimes the videos don’t … Continue Reading

How Video Is Becoming More Social by Jayson Duncan - Maximize Social Business - Maximize Social Business - Your Social Media for Business Resource ... Featuring Contributions from Global Thinkers . This copyrighted content was originally published on Maximize Social Business and may not be republished on any other website or in any other format without explicit permission from the publisher.

Since 2003, the role of the Chief Customer Officer has gone from numbering under 30 to numbering in the thousands today. While still new and evolving, this role holds promise for significance in building true customer-centric businesses. An interesting development during the past ten years is counterintuitive. The role sounds logical for large enterprises. According to Curtis Bingham, the Executive Director of the Chief Customer Officer Council, the largest concentration of CCO’s have been in mid-size companies.

Bob Thompson, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink, recently covered Forrester’s report on How Chief Customer Officers Orchestrate Experiences by Forrester Principal Analyst Paul Hagan. One of Paul’s key findings is the primary role of the Chief Customer Officer as the orchestrator of customer experiences. Bob echoed a concern I have also. Despite Paul Hagan’s report noting 85% of CCO’s sit on executive teams, I believe they do not yet have the “necessary clout” as Bob stated.

The Clout

In the new digital age, the Chief Customer Officer can play a central role in two big areas. One, be the organization’s core buyer and customer insight function. Two, be the organization’s principal map builder of the buyer and customer journey. In addition to being the orchestrator of customer experiences, it can create the hub for executive teams to develop the spokes of buyer and customer insight-driven strategies.

The outcome for Chief Customer Officers is they will have the necessary clout in organizations to propel real change. While customer experience should be one of the main elements of this role, I also believe it can evolve to a new level of prominence. How ? By being the key to buyer and customer insight executives hunger for.

A New Charter

Chief Customer Officers can be pivotal in redefining how companies should map the journey buyers and customers can take with their organization. Note I use the word map. This means truly understanding the critical paths to purchase and repurchase which are taken from the buyer and customer’s perspective. Aligning as well as innovating new engagement strategies based on buyer and customer insights.

This represents a new charter for Chief Customer Officers. What can happen often, with good intentions, new customer journeys and touchpoints are established with a focus on experience. They may not be well grounded in deep profound buyer and customer insights. And, they do not represent a hub and spoke connection to strategies. New customer experience programs are announced with trumpets yet after the meeting – everyone goes back to their way of doing business. Yes, there are metrics. But metrics have a funny way of sometimes trying to force compliance. No doubt a continuing source of frustration.

Strategic Mandate

In Bob Thompson’s commentary, he mentions Forrester’s call for a strategic mandate:

Forrester says one precondition for success is a “strategic mandate,” which means “the executive team must define the purpose for appointing a CCO, build customer experience into the company strategy, and adopt companywide customer experience metrics that correlate with key business performance outcomes.”

I agree with Bob, it is a mouthful. It is a focus however on one element of the CCO purpose. Customer experience. This is also the place where I have a different view. This focus is faced with the difficult challenge of “build…into.” What do I mean? It means you have compartmental thinking of various strategies taking place. The CCO struggles with attempting to get inside each of these strategies and implanting customer experience.

My perspective is one of the hub and spoke imagery. The hub of the CCO function informing and offering the connective means for each department to plug their spoke of strategy into. Strategies related to marketing, sales, support, and operations are informed by continual deep buyer and customer insight. Good customer experience is the result. The hub serves as the common insights and communications platform for knowledge about buyers and customers. To me, this is real clout and a real purpose.

Credibility

Credibility is going to be a major issue soon, if not already. Buyers and customers are being bombarded daily with the new fondness of content marketing. I believe for those not doing it effectively, which are many according to several reports, it is chipping away at credibility rapidly. The Chief Customer Officer role and function, as the hub of insights and informing knowledge of customers, can shape insight-driven customer strategies related to marketing, sales, support, and operations. Which the byproduct becomes experiences buyers and customers marvel at. This is what will help companies to restore credibility being lost.

(I am tackling a tough topic here. I welcome further conversations with CCO’s, CMO’s, and CSO’s to offer help and gain further perspectives. Please share this widely – it may offer the perspective a CCO and his/her peers have been seeking.)

These last two weeks have been a bit of a departure from the standard MarketingSherpa fare. We're covering some emerging marketing topics that are so far unproven, but show significant promise. Last week, we provided five ideas to ponder about the business-to-individual (B2i) concept, and this week we're covering the challenge of marketing to digital natives, also known as Millennials, versus digital immigrants -- Generation X and older. Because mobile and social media marketing channels are an increasingly important part of the B2B marketer's toolkit, this particular marketing challenge is something that many marketers may overlook.

To opt-in or double opt-in, that is the question

Should I use single or double opt-in when growing my email list? It’s a question I’m frequently asked.

However I don’t see it as a binary question of one or the other and I advocate using both. Sounds odd? I’ll explain.

The common concern with double opt-in is that it requires the customer to perform the additional step of opening an email and clicking a link to confirm they want to opt-in.

Double opt-in leaks

That means there is leakage, not everyone completes the confirmation step. This could be because they don’t get the double opt-in confirmation email, don’t get around to reading and clicking the link in the email or have a change of mind.

The leakage is significant, 20% is not uncommon and I’ve heard of brands with 40% of people signing-up failing to confirm opt-in. So there is no question that single opt-in will grow a list faster.

The argument for double opt-in is that it builds a higher quality list. If the measure of quality is higher click and open rates then it’s true.

What’s better, more clicks or higher click rate?

However open and click rates are not the best measure. Consider this scenario for two lists, one grown with double opt-in and one with single. The double opt-in list is smaller because of the leakage problem.

	List size	Open rate	Click rate	Opens	Clicks
Double opt-in	750	22%	5%	165	37
Single opt-in	1000	18%	4%	180	40

The single opt-in list drives more clicks, even though the click rate is lower, clicks are 40 versus 37. This makes single opt-in better as more traffic has to be better.

In fact, simple logic is that double opt-in can never beat single opt-in. Since a single opt-in list will contain everyone who would have double opted-in plus more people it’s not possible for a double opt-in list to drive more traffic.

The vast majority of UK brands use single opt-in

94% of the top 100 online UK marketers agree with me, as in a study I undertook only 6% of the top 100 UK online brands used double opt-in for signup from their website.

Right now you might be thinking about the quality aspect and deliverability. If a single opt-in list had such poor quality list to the extent it materially impacted deliverability, then double opt-in could beat single opt-in.

In respect of deliverability the biggest concern with single opt-in is that accidentally or deliberately a wrong but valid email address is given. This wrong address could be a spam trap or another real person who then marks your email as spam. This can damage to your reputation.

When to consider double opt-in

Right at the start I said I advocated both single opt-in and double opt-in. The reason is that you need to consider the source and signup process in order to decide whether single or double opt-in is more appropriate. Then use single opt-in for some data sources and consider use of double opt-in for others.

It doesn’t have to be one size fits all

In short, use the right tool for the right job.

For example, if your telesales team, when talking to prospects and clients, are asking for email permission and then entering the addresses onto your list there is a higher risk of badly input addresses. You can’t be sure they ask clearly for permission and if you are incentivising your sales they might be bending the rules or worse inventing email addresses. In which case a double opt-in would be sensible for this data source – and incentivise the sales team for valid double opted-in addresses!

Perhaps you have a quote process or barrier page to get a download. Here the primary motivation is not to sign-up to your list but to get past your barrier. Again this means a higher risk of a random but valid email address.

Contrast with a signup form on your website, here the only motivation to complete the process is if someone does indeed want to sign up. There should be no problem with single opt-in.

If quality remains a concern, there are also email address verification services such as StrikeIron and BriteVerify that can verify an email address in real time and so improve quality at point of data capture. With one of my clients email addresses are input by a sales team into the CRM and we use StrikeIron to improve quality.

If you still are worried about list quality when using single opt-in, there is a totally different approach. Use single opt-in, let people into your list easily. You’ll hopefully impress and engage them with great offers and content. If after a number of emails since signup they still haven’t engaged at all and you’ve tried your best, then remove them. Whilst a dry request to confirm opt-in may not be very engaging hopefully dangling real content in front of someone will be.

In some countries, such as Germany, double opt-in is very often used. It’s not strictly a legal requirement; however the level of confirmation required makes double opt-in the only practical way of meeting the letter of the law.

Finally my good friend and email guru Mark Brownlow from Email Marketing Reports gave me this good advice about reducing leakage if you must use double opt-in

“Don’t rely on standard system default confirmation mails to keep leakage down. Apply the same rigour to the design and copy you give your marketing mails. Test out different subject lines and on the sign-up confirmation pages let customers know that another step is needed”

Simple ideas to review for more impactful Pinterest, Google+, Facebook and Twitter Posts

We like useful infographics that prompt you to think about the way you do things and change them. Myclever Agency have designed a ‘clever’ (excuse the pun!) practical infographic to showcase how to create the perfect social media post and timings for engagement, across Pinterest, Google+, Facebook and Twitter, gathering insight from sources available on Bitly and Salesforce.

One size doesn’t fit all for different networks, so it’s interesting to see their point-of-view on how you should communicate differently through the different networks. Their infographic addresses key points for layout, content, CTA across the different platforms to leverage engagement and social sharing. We like it as it’s simple and most of all practical.

U.S. military strategies are often cloaked in secrecy, but the American military’s very public plan to use more clean power offers a bright spot for solar companies, from tech startups to project developers. It’s not just on the rooftops of military facilities, but soldiers on the battlefield are interested in clean power technologies as a strategic tool for off-grid, light-weight combat.

In his plan to fight climate change last week, President Obama reiterated how the Department of Defense, the largest energy use in the country, plans to install 3 GW of clean power at its facilities by 2025. At the same time, over in New Mexico, SolarCity recently installed solar panels on 600 military homes as part of its larger, 5-year plan to put solar panels on roughly 120,000 military homes across the country, the California company said Wednesday.

The military also embraces the concept of the microgrid, which involves installing power generation equipment and storage to create a self-sustaining electricity network within a base. The goal is to be able to run the base operation when there is a blackout or other problem with the grid managed by the local utilities. “Every single military base in the U.S. plans to create a microgrid,” said Peter Asmus, an analyst with Navigant Research, explaining, “They don’t want to be at the mercy of utilities, in a war or in a  storm.”

The Army inaugurated its first microgrid at Fort Bliss, Texas, in May this year. The $2.4 million pilot project produces solar power and comes with energy storage to bank the solar electricity when it’s not needed. The project is only powering part of the base.

The military also is supporting solar power projects even if they are not designed to be part of any microgrid. As of early this year, over 130 MW of solar panels had been installed at military bases in at least 31 states, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. So far, the Navy is producing more solar energy than the Army or the Air Force.

The Navy has over 58 MW at or near its bases in 12 states and Washington, D.C. The Army followed with roughly 36 MW.  But the Air Force boasts one of the earlier solar installations in the country: it inaugurated the 14MW project at the Nellis Air Force in Nevada in 2007.

Last summer, then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a memorandum of understanding to encourage renewable energy generation on up to 16 million acres that have been historically restricted to military use. The defense wants to attract private developers and investors to build solar, wind and other renewable energy projects. It plans to buy some or all of the power from these projects for its own use and sell unused power to local utilities.

On the battlefield, supplying fuel to soldiers is both costly and risky. In addition, a soldier’s pack could weight over 100 pounds when the pack includes batteries for communication and safety. That makes any light-weight and portable sources of energy desirable for the military, which also has the budget and willingness to buy high-tech and newly developed gear from startups.

Venture-backed Alta Devices, for example, is targeting the military with battery chargers that feature its highly efficient solar cells. Semprius, another solar cell startup, lined up Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne as a customer to take part in a defense project.

Having the military and defense industry in its corner, is a major boon for the clean power companies and project developers. In a market where clean power can be more expensive than fossil fuel power in some areas, a customer of the size of the military can help bring down the cost of solar by buying and installing it at scale.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• Cleantech: a question of national security

If you’re like many people working in the digital marketing agency business, you’ve probably experienced something called the Social Media ROI Cycle.

Phase I of the Social Media ROI Cycle happened a few years ago when your clients called you and were in a rush to quickly launch Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and other social media campaigns.

Phase II happened shortly after you launched their campaigns, which is when the clients (and you) realized that rushing to execute tactics without first thinking about a strategy wasn’t a very effective approach.

So, during Phase II, you probably stepped back and worked out some strategic guidelines that would help you as you expanded your social media presence across a growing number of platforms (like Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and others).

But today, we’re entering into Phase III. This is where your clients call you up and say, “Our Chief Financial Officer is asking us to prove whether or not our social media campaign is generating a positive ROI. Can you help?”

Good news. Yes, you can help. Calculating the ROI of a social media campaign is actually pretty simple, especially if you’re handy with some basic math. Lucky for you, we’ve created a step-by-step guide on how to do the calculations. If you follow the steps, you’ll be able to start tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns. And that’s a good thing because it means you’ll be able to prove your value to your clients, which is the best way we know to retain and grow an agency.

Okay, ready to get started? Download our free eBook How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign now!

The post How to Calculate the ROI of Social Media [Free eBook] appeared first on Optify.

Last week, I was speaking to a client who was really down in the dumps. He had just found out minutes before our training session that a multi-million dollar engagement had fallen through.  They had been selected months before hand, and now it was T&C’s time, but their prospective buyers’ inner circle was just too indecisive.  Our client was extremely frustrated, as the ROI was there, the discounts in place… but their prospective buyer just couldn’t make up their mind.

After my training, I thought about my conversations with similar “Status Quo” VPs of Sales.  It boggles my mind that a VP of Sales can also be caught in the limbo of indecision.  Imagine saying to someone: “I know exactly how to help your sales team, and you, make more money.  I will guarantee this will provide a great ROI.”  Yet amazingly, there are VPs of Sales that say NO, and are just happier thinking they have all the answers.

Question: Did you not become the VP of Sales because you had been aggressive and drove next steps in your sales career?  Were you not the gun-slinger that got things done?

Those that make decisions will always prevail.  Cowboys thrived because they were willing to ride into uncharted territory and adapt to the harsh environment.  A cowboy is the personification in the book READY, FIRE, AIM, about business leaders taking action, rather than suffering paralysis from analysis.

I pose this question back to you, the CSO of your company – How are you pushing the boundaries of your business?  The world is changing, and there is no reason to swim the new waters alone.  Don’t be stubborn and think you have to do it all alone. Instead, find partners that complement your existing efforts.

If you’re not creating enough inbound leads, why aren’t you finding a partner to supplement?

If your inside sales reps are unsure about basic sales techniques, or are not grasping your teachings, are you looking for outside help?

The buyer is more social, yet can you help your sales team master LinkedIn and other social tools? Have you looked into training?

The Bottom Line: If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you need to start to take action, like a cowboy. The following dozen blog posts on Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips. Find the topic of Social Selling interesting? Click below to book a time in my calendar to explore further!

According to our benchmark study of 1,400 businesses, one in three of them places alignment between the sales department and the marketing department as the No. 1 priority. Measurement makes a surprising contribution.

read more

The first half of the year just ended.  Sales Manager dashboards have been updated. The numbers could be better.  The end result:  Making the number for the full year is in jeopardy.  “How can I get current SMs to perform and get them involved?" the Sales VP asks.

Download the Sales Manager Execution Guide.  It will:

• Provide you 10 Sales Manager actions you must take immediately to save the year
• Test your Sales Managers to determine if they are involved with making the number
• Tell you if you need to upgrade your manager

Get the Guide here.

Turning your Sales Managers Now

Let’s face the facts.  Only 40-45% of most Sales Managers make their first half of the year quota. You as the Sales VP are relying on 20% of your managers to make it.  You have to get the majority of your current Sales Managers to step up.  Most Sales VPs indicate their SMs have a lack of fundamentals and focus.  They don’t ride in the field with customers.  Don’t coach their sales people to a Sales Process.  But more importantly let internal administration and corporate requests distract them.  Below is a chart highlighting where Top SMs vs.  Average SMs place their focus. Top SMs are those that exceed their quota consistently.

The Sales Manager Execution Guide allows you to establish the non-negotiable activities needed immediately. Let’s look at three of the most important SM activities:

1. Establish Big Deal Strategy Reviews.   Big deals are needed. They make the number.  Set a rule that a big deal is a minimum of 2X the average sales price. They take a team effort to land.  Sales rep isolation can lead to losing these deals. Too often Sales Managers don’t dig into the tactics of these opportunities.  For example, Sales Reps get stuck with influencers.  Sure they are stakeholders but they don’t hold the decision making authority.   These reviews establish who might be the best person to reach out.  Why not have our CIO reach out to their CIO?  Why not have our VP of Operations call theirs?  Use all the resources available in the company.  Establish these weekly reviews now.  What is more important to make this year’s number?
2. Field Coaching Customer Visits twice a week.   Sales Managers blow this off more than any other action.  Yet how can a SM provide the coaching without seeing customers with the rep? This allows a SM to view the Sales Rep in their true state.  All the training and coaching meets the moment of truth with the customer.  Deals are won and lost with these major interactions. It also will allow your SM to push the deal forward.  To get a next step when sometimes a rep won’t ask.  Sales Managers need to be at these meetings frequently.
3. Coaching to your Sales Process.  We participate in coaching sessions between a SM and Sales Rep frequently.  Too often, the coaching turns into deal strategy.  And this deal strategy is based on gut instinct.  The SM is not following a Sales Process.  They are not diagnosing where the buyer is in their journey.  And revealing actions the rep should take based on how they would do it.  As a Sales VP, you should listen in several of these sessions. Pay attention if the conversation is Customer focused or internally focused. The improvement of these coaching sessions leads to immediate sales.

These are 3 of the 10 non-negotiable activities Sales Managers need to do now.  Download the Sales Manager Execution Guide for the other activities.   Assessing your team against these non-negotiable activities will help you prioritize their actions. It can also help you answer if you have the right sales managers.

The front line sales manager is the most important position in the sales force.   It is where your sales strategy meets the daily tactics. They will make or break the number.  With half the year over, can you afford to do nothing?  Know which Sales Managers are good and which ones are great.  Deploy the non-negotiable activities immediately for this year.  And determine the SMs you need to upgrade and begin that process.  Or July 1st will arrive again next year with the same result.  Can you survive another miss?

Author: Dan Perry

Follow @DanPerrySBI

Follow @MakingTheNumber

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Sales Training Article: So Where's All the Buying?

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

As sales organizations enter the third quarter, the economy is slowly improving, the stock market is at or near record highs but customers/prospects remain reluctant to hire new staff or spend on new initiatives. Most companies with strong earnings attribute their results to cost control rather than top line revenue growth. 2013 has been a struggle.

This lack of revenue growth flies in the face of technology-assisted B2B buying activity as people leverage the Internet and social networking to research offerings on their own. Studies show that buyers are anywhere from 50-80% through their buying cycles before contacting sellers. B2B vendors closely monitor website activity and it proceeds at a healthy clip. It begs the question:

With all this buying activity, where's the revenue?

My belief is that companies are confusing activity with progress. A watershed event for sellers is realizing that opportunities must be qualified to determine if buying decisions are likely to be made. Buyers willing to talk with sellers may wind up wasting their time. A survey by Sales Benchmark Index showed 52% of sales cycles driven by sellers result in no decision. Prospects either decided not to move ahead with any of the vendors they talked to or tried to address their issues with internal initiatives.

Navigating through committee decisions (these days most every decision goes to higher levels than ever before) is a challenging process. The best way to qualify opportunities is to gain access to the titles within the organization that will be involved in making buying decisions and learning what business outcomes can be improved through the use of offerings being considered. A top down selling approach will typically result in shorter sales cycles and are more likely to occur when sellers proactively initiate opportunities at Key Player levels.

When sellers are contacted by mid to low levels within organizations, worst case they are being brought in to provide pricing leverage against the vendor that has already been chosen. The other common situation is that mid to level staff within companies have formed self-appointed "buying committees" to evaluate offerings, usually without any business objectives in mind.

In any of these situations, a competent seller plays an important role in qualifying these situations as opportunities by:

• Gaining access to Key Players
• Uncovering the business outcomes these buyers are hoping to achieve
• Summarizing the value to the organization of the offering(s) being considered
• For large opportunities, negotiating a Sequence of Events with the buying committee that shows the necessary steps leading up to a proposal
• Seeing if buyer(s) want to move forward
• Negotiating final pricing, terms and conditions

With this as a backdrop, let's consider what levels are most heavily involved in self-directed "buying." I hope you'd agree most senior executives don't have the time or inclination to research multiple vendors via the Internet and social networking. Furthermore, if they did, how many websites would hold their attention? Most are product, not outcome focused. Few senior executives download brochures or white papers.

Let's assume a "self appointed" buying committee contacts 3-5 sellers. First, do the sellers change their approach because they are talking with buyers that think they know their requirements? The approach of starting by trying to change the requirements will conflict with how buyers that have done research will want to be treated as it will feels as though the seller is trying to manipulate them (the very reason buyers do their own due diligence). Any discussion is likely to be product and feature centric rather than being focused on business outcomes.

If a seller asks for talk with higher levels, isn't it likely these buyers won't want or be able to grant access? Buyers that don't grant access will try to choose the vendor they feel is the best choice. If they feel strongly enough they'll take it to management. As with inept sellers, they will lead with product. As soon as product is mentioned, the manager will ask: "How much does it cost?" Often this starts a death spiral for buying cycles because there is no credible estimate of potential value as to why the company should spend the money. The buying cycle often collapses under its own weight because there was no business case serving as a foundation.

B2C and small B2B decisions are made on a regular basis via the Internet. That said, vendors needing enterprise decisions to be made may want to re-think their strategies with non-executive website visitors. Having these buyers realize early in the process that business outcomes should be established could save you and them from wasting time.

A final thought: With sellers involved 52% of sales cycles end in no decision. What % of self-directed buying cycles do you feel will end with revenue for you?

---

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.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

One of the big Canadian banks, we’ll call them the Green bank, has a current radio ad that I believe holds a great lesson for sales people.

In the ad, a customer of a competing bank, is complaining to a competing bank manager that all he got for switching to the bank was a toaster, “I already have a toaster; and it doesn’t even toast bagels.  I am a grown man, I have a toaster”, he proclaims.

At this point I am thinking what a great way for Green to highlight how they focus on your unique needs, how their offerings address the real requirements of Canadians, and how there is greater depth to their banking relationship than a mere utensil.  Surely they are not going to pretend that they can bribe us with a toaster or other kitchen appliance.

Well I was half right.  They were offering a 7” tablet.  I was wrong thinking that they may actually talk to things that are really important in these days of economic woe, helping one save, creative mortgages, proactive retirement options, and more.  But no, given the opportunity they offered up not quite a toaster, but a tablet, how 2013 is that?  And that is the half that I was right about, it wasn’t a kitchen appliance, but one you can use in the living room, bathroom or probably everywhere.

Some sellers fall into to the same trap, getting so focused and blinded by their needs, their agenda, and their world view, that the buyer and their reality are just incidental to the process.  Many of the questions posed, assumptions made, benefits highlighted during the sale, have more relevance to the seller, their marketing department and company, leaving the buyer underwhelmed, disappointed and looking for alternatives.  That was my thought, if this is the best Green can offer as alternative to Blue, Red or Black, what’s the point?  If their response to the old practice of enticing clients with old school utensils, is to offer up a new school utensil, than why would I switch, why would your customer?

As sellers we need fix our lens on the buyers’ objectives and priorities, and work with the buyer towards those ends.  It sounds straight forward, but continues to be a challenge.   I am part of many call plans and reviews, and time after time, sellers commit to the obvious, but then try to retrofit the buyer into their product or solution, rather than helping the buyer understand how their objectives, the buyer’s, can be achieved using our offering.  This requires a bit more effort since you first have to surface the objectives, but it is doable, especially if you have sold similar things to similar buyers.  But despite the modern veneer, sellers often fall into pitch mode, feature benefit, and some form of price concession at the end.  I bet some would just love to have a trunk full of toasters to hand out with each next step or close.

Sadly for Green, I already have a tablet, a 10”, and a mediocre Blue bank, only a few shades darker than Green.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

World class B2B marketing organizations actively engage in Quarterly Business Review (QBR) meetings.  For many marketing leaders the sales team’s QBR is an afterthought. 

Tenured B2B Marketing CMO's look forward to the mid-year QBR like one desires a root canal.  This is because marketing is ‘pulled’ into QBRs.  Marketing typically provides updates to the sales team with a rear-view mirror approach.  The event is often reactive.  

This is in sharp contrast to World Class B2B Marketing engagement.   World Class CMO’s pursue involvement in sales QBRs. The CMO should pursue the QBR with the spirit of a warrior.

Download the World-Class Marketing QBR Engagement Checklist.     

In some cases the sales team uses the QBR as an open forum to ambush marketing.  Marketing becomes the human piñata for all sales complaints. 

Don’t be a Sheep – Marketing’s Approach to QBR Engagement

Sheep get shaved often and mindlessly walk off cliffs.  World Class CMO’s dive into sales QBRs with enthusiasm and active engagement. 

If marketing is going to be ambushed by sales, then dive into the fray.  Stand up and battle constructively with an eye toward solving problems.    

The culture of corporate America today is often focused on getting along to get along.  The desire to avoid conflict at all costs results in mediocrity.  Recently I was filling out a survey for Consulting Magazine.  The survey was seeking nominations for the ‘Best’ consulting firm.  The survey asked more questions about the culture of inclusion than it did questions about client results.  I wanted to barf. 

The best sales and marketing leaders don’t let things fester.  They go head to head and work through disagreements.  The end result is a healthy working relationship based on performance and trust. 

Walk into the next QBR with a great attitude yet with the spirit of a Sparta warrior.  It’s better to be respected than liked.  Sales leaders love engagement from the marketing leader.  Dive into areas of frustration.  Admit any short comings.  Offer solutions.  Come out of the QBR with an action plan for sales and marketing to conquer the competition.   

World Class B2B Marketing Organizations

World Class sales organizations operate their QBR’s in a strategic manner.  The biggest difference between world class and average companies is the practice of benchmarking quarterly.  The QBR is the ideal forum to perform quarterly benchmarking.  Marketing can lead the way with benchmarking of marketing effectiveness.  It’s all about an agile approach with rapid iteration. 

• Is Lead Generation performing, can it be refocused to support ramping reps?
• How does the qualification of leads need to be tweaked?
• What new objections is sales hearing about the latest product?
• Is sales enabled to launch next quarter’s new product?

World Class sales leaders perform the forecast review, yet validate whether their assumptions were on target.  They drive a strategic discussion.  CMO’s must evolve quickly to engaged in the QBR discussion with insight contribution. 

3 Keys to World-Class QBR Marketing Engagement

1. Deliver a Quick Win, Always

Sheep sit around and graze until they become mutton.  Take the fight to the enemy with quick wins. 

Sparta warriors conquered by not fighting alone.  They stood shield to shield protecting each other while devastating their enemy.  Join the shield wall with sales by providing them high impact marketing tools.     

The lowest hanging fruit today is Social Prospecting Tools. 

In today’s buying process, prospects are highly influenced by peer referrals.  Social media is now the top producer of referrals.  World class sales organizations find a direct correlation between social selling and top box quota attainment.  Marketing can provide social selling guidelines and tools. 

• Guideline Toolkit: Training and steps on how to leverage LinkedIn. 
• World Class profile set-up
• Steps to grow referral network
• Process to generate social debt and referrals
• Social Prospecting Tools: Leverage existing content and marketing expertise
• Increase sales prospecting effectiveness
• Enable continuity of brand messaging

2. Contribute Buyer Process Map Insights

The QBR will involve deep discussion of the sales forecast.  Marketing is in a unique position to inform sales leaders with insights into the prospect's process to buy. Imagine a discussion of a crucial deal that is stuck.  Now imagine the scenario of marketing providing insights into the key micro decisions occuring at that stage in the buying process.  Huge value contribution.

World Class marketing teams develop Buying Process Maps (BPM’s).  This tool maps the decision-making process used to purchase a product, a service, or a solution.  Marketing is able to provide insights to the discussion by informing the team of key buyer actions. 

The dialogue goes both ways as the marketing leader also gains insights from sales to update the BPM.    

3. Integration of Marketing into Full QBR Agenda

Marketing’s positive impact to a QBR is reflected in the structure of the agenda.  With increased engagement the role of marketing will no longer be a ‘slot’ update in the sales agenda.  Instead there will be a convergence of marketing’s contribution into the sales-oriented QBR discussion topics. 

 

Summary

Active marketing engagement at the Quarterly Business Review is a short-cut to world class effectiveness.  CMO’s who engage directly with sales leadership are on a path to constructive actions.  These actions are strategic in nature.  They impact the very heart of the sales field's ability to Make the Number. 

Download the World-Class Marketing QBR Engagement Checklist.

Author: Vince Koehler

Vince Koehler on Google+

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Think back to the sales training programs you’ve attended. It’s likely that the great sales training programs had two characteristics in common – the same characteristics that have salespeople excited about sales simulations.

• Realistic and Relevant. For a sales training program to be great, salespeople must have the opportunity to wrestle with the challenges they face everyday. The program cannot be academic in tone or esoteric in content. That means salespeople must have the opportunity to develop account strategies, call on key decision makers, and handle tough objections. Today’s sales simulations deliver on that mandate better than any other type of program.

• Practice and Feedback. Like most, sales people don’t learn by listening and watching. So, a large file of PowerPoint slides is unlikely to increase sales performance. Learning really happens when the time devoted to practice and feedback is maximized. Ask anyone who has attended a sales simulation lately how the program did on the practice and feedback scale. The answer is almost always – “Terrific.”

When would it be a good idea to use a sales simulation?

During the last several years companies have used sales simulations to address a wide variety of training needs ranging from training new hires in selling fundamentals to advanced programs for National Account Executives. At this point, it is a fair to say that sales simulations represent a viable alternative for addressing the entire spectrum of sales training needs.

In addition to addressing standard sales training needs, some companies have used sales simulations to focus on challenges that sales simulations uniquely are suited to address. For example:

• Aligning the sales training to business goals. In the last several years the degree of change in the business environment has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Because of this change, expectations for sales teams have increased dramatically; yet in a substantial number of cases the sales force has not been able to adapt to the new selling demands.
This presents a classic dilemma. Do you replace your existing training with “better” programs? The downside risk is you end up replacing the existing common language with an alternative and confusion rather than improvement is the end result. 
The other option is – do nothing and hope the performance problem can be addressed by other means such as coaching or replacing staff. This is one of those “bad if you do and worse if you don’t” dilemmas. 
Sales simulations represent a third option between shifting to a new common sales language and doing nothing.

• Decreasing time to mastery. The mastery question can be summarized this way: How can we put in place a set of sales training programs that are “sticky” – where the principles and best practices learned in the classroom are translated into real performance improvement in the field?
 An innovative approach being tried by some companies involves using a “1+1 design” for sales training. Day One addresses all the principles and skill models with initial skill practice exercises and Day Two is a simulation designed to apply those skills to the type of opportunities and challenges they face in their territories.

Summary. More innovation has occurred in the sales training industry in the last five years then the previous ten for good reason. Companies have come to realize that having a superior sales team is more important than ever and that building a superior sales team is more challenging than ever. Sales simulations are one innovation that is quickly developing an impressive track record for achieving that goal.

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

Are you looking for ways to improve you’re the sales conversions of your online business? No matter what business model you’re using, if you don’t have a compelling marketing message or you’re using a scattershot marketing approach, you’ll have a hard time getting the sales result you want.

Follow these 3 proven tips to get better results from your online marketing efforts:

1. Get your message acrossBefore you deliver your marketing message to your target audience, make sure to have a compelling and well-crafted sales copy or message that’ll compel them to take action. People love to hear or read something that inspires them to do something.

   Once you’re ready with your message, it’s time that you start disseminating it using different marketing channels that have worked for you before. You can also use new marketing strategies that you think will be effective.

2. Know your target audienceYou see a lot of marketing campaigns fail and resources go to waste because of one main reason: the message did not reach the right audience. A shotgun approach to marketing will not only waste valuable time and effort it can also lead to a lot of frustrations. To be able to avoid these, make sure that you know who your target audience are.

   You really don’t need a long list of leads. What you need is a short of list of highly qualified leads. This means that before you dive into the marketing phase, you have to do a lot of researching as to who your ideal customers are.  When you figure this out, it’ll be a lot easier to deliver them your message and, in terms of conversion, a lot more effective.

3. Get the right timingTiming is everything. You have to be well aware about your sales cycle. If you think the month of July is the most difficult time to sell your products or services, and then focus your marketing efforts and resources for the month of August when your potential customers are more likely to buy from you.

   How about you? Do you have any marketing tips that would help improve sales conversions? Let us know about them by commenting below.

In the e-commerce world, the lines between B2C and B2B are blurring as retailers and brands begin serving multiple audiences online. Melissa is part of the B2B audience. She embodies the new enterprise purchaser. View our infographic to learn the facts about B2B, and how buyers like Melissa want to shop.

To help suppliers understand the trends in B2B buying, Acquity Group took stats from its recent B2B procurement study and created the following infographic about B2B buyers by generation. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

The following headline from the Sales Benchmark Index blog caught my eye recently: “The Sales Force Thinks Your Marketing Leads Suck.” My first reaction was typical of a marketer: “Great—here we go again! Let’s bash marketing and our ability to drive meaningful leads for the business.”

The power of a good headline sucked me in, but the article’s really about why those leads may not actually be any good. It’s a good read with practical advice on how to score leads better.

But let’s get back to my original visceral reaction, and rephrase the question.

Question: “Why does the sales force think your leads suck?”
Answer: “Because they often do.”

Sorry, marketers, I hate to say it, but often our leads really do suck. And sometimes, they suck so badly your credibility with sales is damaged forever. Look, we marketers love leads. We love showing how total leads are going up (while the cost of leads is stable to decreasing), how leads are converting to revenue, how pipeline is growing, etc. We dutifully report these numbers and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

And yet, talk to any sales person at your company, and you may hear a very different picture. They might say something benign: “I don’t have time to go find the right person.” Or have a more Obi Wan-esque response: “These are not the prospects I am looking for.” Or the reply may go all the way to the extreme: “These leads suck!”

Why? Because of the gap between marketing-qualified leads and sales-accepted leads—or, as I call it, the “Suckiness Quotient.” The more junk your sales team has to wade through to find the good leads, the worse off you are.

That Suckiness Quotient is a killer. If your MQL to SAL ratio is 100% (for a Suckiness Quotient of 0) than read no further, you rock! (I would strongly suggest that your scoring mechanism is TOO finely tuned and you are leaving potential deals stuck in your nurturing flow. Sorry, nobody is THAT good!)

The rest of us have an MQL:SAL ratio far lower than 1:1. The quality of your relationship with sales is likely directly correlated to how well you communicate about that Suckiness Quotient, otherwise you wind up with a big disconnect between sales and marketing teams.

Consider the marketers’ perspective:

Marketers often say that sales people just don’t understand. If sales would only vigorously call everybody we give them, the conversion numbers say that they will hit a certain rate of return. But instead they see the sales people make the obligatory two or three follow-ups to a promising marketing lead and then move on when they get no answer or a light brush-off. Yet that same rep will move mountains to connect with their self-developed targets. (By the way, there are very good reasons for this, but that is a topic for another post.)

And the sales’ perspective.

Sales often says that marketers do not truly understand what their job is like. Most sales people only have a certain tolerance level for gaps in the data and are willing to take only so many “flyers” on contacts of questionable potential. They have a number to meet after all, and I have yet to meet a head of sales who will allow the “I wasted all of my time calling marketing leads” as an acceptable excuse for a miss.

A Solution for the Suckiness Quotient

Not surprisingly, the best way to overcome the curse of the Suckiness Quotient is through better communication. The best relationships I have had, or witnessed, with sales have always stemmed from a regular dialogue about what is working and what is not—on BOTH sides—and at all levels.

For example, my team once ran a webinar campaign that was a huge marketing success. It generated hundreds of leads from people interested in an issue connected to the value our software provided. But in follow-up, we quickly learned from our sales team that this issue was actually just a trigger to begin research, and these prospects were not yet ready to make a buying decision. With this feedback we accelerated the nurturing program to identify those who were further along with their research—saving sales from needlessly following-up with hundreds of prospects.

In another example, when our data indicated that sales may only be connecting with 50% of the marketing leads, we communicated openly that we assumed much of this gap was simply a data-reporting problem. By looking for ways to ease the reporting burden and improve the tracking of lead follow-ups, we brought the coverage ratio closer to the 80% we expected.

Final Thoughts

The Suckiness Quotient can be a major roadblock. Consider the following scenario where your lead-to-opportunity ratio is 50:1. Sales rep A makes 10 calls and finds a qualified opp. As a result, sales Rep B would potentially have to make 90 more calls to find another qualified opportunity for the 50:1 ratio to be correct. That kind of effort is unsustainable in many organizations. So, do everything in your power to get that number down into a manageable realm, and benchmark your campaigns. If a future campaign underperforms the benchmark, don’t hesitate to pull the plug—quickly!

Be sure you have regular, informal discussions across your sales and marketing teams. Jointly plan campaign pushes and identify potential stumbling blocks in advance. And physically embed your campaigns team as close to your sales people as possible. The more your marketing team can hear the actual results of those sales calls, the objections, the pain associated with bad data, and the feedback from the message, the better-equipped your team will be to create high-performing future campaigns.

In short, shared experiences go a long way to creating better communication, better campaigns, and to narrowing the Suckiness Quotient forever.

Quite often, sales discounts are used to simply make a sale where you wouldn’t otherwise. That’s bad practice.

Not only does it set a faulty precedent in which discounts become expected, but it completely cuts your profit margin. Unless providing discounts is a specific part of your sales process, it can completely disrupt your revenue goals.

Pardot’s Senior VP of Sales, Derek Grant, shared his ideas with us. His advice is to develop specific reasons for discounts and stick with them. When a customer asks for a discount, be up front and say something like, “Here are the four reasons we discount. Which one applies to you?”

Here they are:

#1. Length of Commitment

When clients agree to a deal over an extended time period, it can validate a discount. If the average deal of your company lasts for one year and a prospect asks for a three year contract, discounting their deal acts as a thank you for their commitment and continued support. Rather than an incentive for the deal, it strengthens your relationship with the customer.

#2. Timing of Cash

There’s something to be said for paying up front. It’s one thing to agree on something, but completely another for money to actually change hands. Instead of net 30 days for payment, if a prospect pays in 5, it may be worth your while to discount their contract.

#3. Buying More Volume (or Higher Edition)

This one goes hand in hand with length of commitment. Instead of buying 100, your customer buys 10,000. They obviously trust you to provide quality, else they wouldn’t take the risk. It’s up to you to show that you appreciate that trust. Reciprocation in the form of a discount will build customer loyalty and may even drive up referrals. The same applies to customers that buy the next tier service. Because it’s more valuable to them, giving them a discount if they upgrade their service makes sense.

#4. Deal Timing

This involves closing the deal quickly. Maybe a client is willing to move forward immediately. or maybe a client is asking for a special deal or unique terms. In those cases, you can respond with something like, “If we agree to those terms, we need you to authorize the deal by Friday?” This may be particularly crucial as you close out your quarter strong.

-

One thing that’s important to note is that these discounts are not mutually exclusive. If a customer commits to pay annually for three years of your best service at quarter’s end, providing multiple discounts or bundled deals is perfectly alright. These are your best customers and should be treated as such.

While sales discounts are often bad, there are some cases in which they’re necessary. Use the above methods to close more deals while maintaining brand and deal value.

It’s time to reveal the secret of sales leaders who are at the top of their game.

They got there because they unlocked the power of opium and they stay there because they continue to use opium daily.

It’s time for you to become an opium user too, if you expect to become a high-performing sales leader.

I better to clarify in case you were thinking I am encouraging something illegal.

I’m not saying to use opium the drug.

What I’m saying is to use OPiuM, which stands for Other People’s Minds.   OPiuM is just an easy way to remember Other People’s Minds.

Great leaders know they don’t have all the answers, and they know they don’t have the ability to do everything themselves. What they do know is how to access other people and to help achieve what otherwise wouldn’t be achievable.

I believe this is one of the biggest differences between a manager and a leader.

A manager feels they have all of the brains and thus are the only ones capable of doing something.   Leaders know they don’t know everything, and they also know by engaging others, the sheer magnitude of additional minds will create better outcomes.

What are you currently challenged with that could be turned over to someone else?

Turning over to someone else doesn’t mean you’re giving up control.  No, you’re still the one ultimately responsible and you’re going to coach and guide as necessary the others involved.

Using OPiuM in your role as a sales leader allows you to move far beyond what would normally be possible.  The ultimate goal of using OPiuM is to achieve outcomes neither you nor anyone else in your organization thought was possible.

What is the significant accomplishment or outcome you currently do not feel is attainable?

Where are the people you need to engage?

How can you engage them?

What would they add to the outcome?

Your objective:  Use more OPiuM.

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

Even the most amazing product won't sell itself. Getting someone to fight for your company is necessary - but not just anyone can be the knight in shining armor.

This is part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too.

This post is about finding your “champion.”

We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA - the overall methodology is described here.

The “P” stands for Pain or the reason your customer needs to implement a new product.

The “U” or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or the unique attributes of your solution to solve their problems better than anybody else they could use..

The first “C” stands for Compelling Event.

This post is about the second “C” or Champion.

No product sells itself no matter what startup companies like to think.

In order for an organization to buy product it takes an individual who has a budget and is willing spent it on you or they have access to a group budget and are willing to fight for the resources to implement your solution.

This is especially true for products that involve more than an individual user.

Every company is inundated with products and technology so inertia takes over. It’s far easier to do nothing than to do something new.

Not everybody who is nice or helpful to you is your “champion.”

In order for somebody to be a champion they need to have both influence (in order to persuade others to take action) and “authority” to either make the decision or to get somebody who holds budget to make the decision.

I shorthand these two things - Influence and Authority - as IA.

I do this to contrast the opposite, which is NINA - no influence, no authority. Otherwise known as a time wasters.

In order for somebody with IA to be your champion he has to be actively helping you through the sales process. If he’s not then he may simply be an IA but he may not be a champion. Or worse - he may be somebody else’s champion.

Of course you have to develop and nurture champions. Obviously they need to be bought into your solution and feel compelled that it will solve a problem in their organization (the PUC).

He or she also need to trust you, personally. In order to spend money or access budgets and especially if other people need to use this product she is going to have to stick her neck out to implement you.

Understanding why an individual would buy something or why she should champion you deserves reflection. Is she managing a P&L and wants to reduce costs or improve sales? Is she a mid-level in an exec and wants to be seen as an innovator by embracing new, exciting technologies?

Most people never try to understand the psychology of the buyer but I think it’s tremendously important.

You need to find your champion and nurture the relationship.

Big deals that involve multiple people deciding seldom go your way without a champion so you need to be in search of yours to win the account and you need to constantly test whether somebody is your champion or not. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

The best kind of champions are what I call “egg breakers” and this again forms part of our sales teams shorthand nomenclature to figure out whether our process is going well as in, “OK, you said Susan is your champion, but is she an egg breaker?”

Egg breakers don’t mind making tough decisions. They’re willing to stick their necks out when others keep silent.

Imagine a room full of people who have convened a meeting to discuss whether to go ahead with your project (or maybe to select a vendor amongst many).

There might be somebody in the room who is most knowledgeable and/or most passionate about which solution to pick. But that person is irrelevant if he’s not willing to defend his position strongly when others advocate harder for a different answer.

Other people are “consensus driven” even if they’re willing to assert their point-of-view in a meeting. They want to wait until everybody is bought in and until every bit of information is considered.

With this kind of person advocating on your behalf you run the risk of your decisions being over-turned and or the decision process to be elongated.

You want IA Egg Breakers as champions.

A champion is somebody rooting for you. They typically are willing to be transparent about the most important factors you need to know in a sales campaign

• Who else is involved in the decision?
• Who makes the ultimate decision or is it made by group vote?
• Who is for you and who is against?
• Who are you competing against?
• Who holds the budget for this project?
• When is a decision likely?

You can often test whether somebody is a champion or not by asking some of these questions and finding out whether they’re willing to be open with you about the process.

Not open = not a champion. Period.

If a person is holding back on you need to go in search of a champion in order to win the campaign. Just because this person isn’t your champion doesn’t mean he’s against you, just that you can’t count on him to push hard for you at the moment of truth.

You need that champion in the decision-making process and in the room when the topic is debated.

And remember that just because a person is friendly with you and shares the information above doesn’t make him a champion. It makes him really useful (for sure!) but not necessarily a champion.

Because a champion has influence and authority.

Even if you’ve identified your champion your work isn’t done.

There are often many players involved in a decision for or against you and you need to meet or speak with all of them to understand the purchasing landscape.

And that is the subject of my next post, “Key Players.”

This story originally appeared on the blog Both Sides of the Table.

Jack Dangermond, co-founder of mapping software maker Esri, talks about how his company maintains steady, stellar growth.

My parents were immigrants who started a nursery as a way to get us kids through school. I learned around the dinner table about customer service and cash flow and paying bills. There's no substitute for growing up around people who actually like doing business.

I went on to Harvard and got very interested in computers and studying the earth's landscape. After school, my wife and I moved back home to Redlands, California, and started working in our own very modest way. Redlands is not a high-tech capital like Silicon Valley. But it allowed us to live cheaply in a $400-a-month apartment. We had $1,100 total when we incorporated Esri.

Today, about 350,000 organizations use our tools. We have 9,000 employees worldwide and $912 million in revenue. In our 43 years, we have never missed a quarter. We've never had any layoffs; we've never had any downsizing. It's just been very conservative, systematic growth.

One thing that has made us so successful is that we've never taken outside investment. That means we can concentrate on what our customers want--not what the stockholders or the VCs want. That's a strategic advantage. Customers notice that we are actually here to support them. And their needs help us innovate. We spend about a quarter of our annual revenue on innovation--about twice what a normal public company spends.

I don't understand why young entrepreneurs feel this pressure to take venture capital or go public. Don't get me wrong: Public companies are A-OK with me. I just think there is another way. Staying private is a lot more sane.

Sure, I have the demands of my customers. But I don't have that investment world breathing down my back constantly. In Redlands, we're out of the Silicon Valley fray, where you can get a better job if you move across the street and venture capitalists are always searching you out.

Being in this so-called backwater, we are not well known, so we don't have investors wanting to get rich out of the good work we are doing. By not, as they say, "monetizing" the company, we can concentrate on the work that needs to get done.

These Tools Enable Sales Operations to Be Successful

Effective sales operations can make the difference between a profitable venture and a failure. Sales operations processes and tools make sure teams and campaigns run efficiently, effectively and meet the organization's business objectives. With the right tools, leadership can keep sales programs on track and in the black.

Some of the most important aspects of a sales operations program include lifecycle management and tracking historical responses, sales training, aligning sales goals with account executives, territory management and managing commissions. Today, we'll take a look at the Top 5 Tools for successfully managing sales operations.

read more

Often a sale is lost even when the solution is a good fit because the sales person fails to make the connection between the solution and the customer needs. The seller gets Step 1 right – they develop a good understanding of the customer’s needs. They also provide a good description of the solution so Step 2 is okay. But they leave it to customer to connect the dots as to how the solution can effectively address the needs.

The remedy? Sales people must take Step 3 by verifying that the customer perceives the connection between what they need and what is being proposed. It is particularly important in major sales where the need structure is multi-layered and the solution has multiple components.

Sometimes there is a more fundamental mistake – all the dots are not there. The seller fails to delineate a comprehensive picture of all the business outcomes the solution can impact.

Even a small improvement can make a huge difference in sales won vs. lost. Perceived value really matters. Let’s take a look at a simple framework salespeople can use to generate a comprehensive picture of the business outcomes for which their solution could bring value to the customer.

The most common benefit is cost reduction. It’s simple … if the client pays x now, but will be paying x-y, the cost savings are simple math. But that’s not the only source of cost savings. Companies can achieve cost savings through cost displacement and cost avoidance. Unfortunately, cost displacement and cost avoidance are less frequently discussed.

• Cost savings arise from cost displacement when current expense items are eliminated because of the proposed solutions. Some common areas of cost displacement are: reducing the number of people needed to perform a task, reducing manufacturing time, reducing processing time, and eliminating capital equipment currently in place.
• A second source of cost savings arise from avoiding future expenses because of the proposed solution. This isn’t the same as cost displacement. Cost avoidance occurs because the proposed solution enables the company to expand their capabilities without adding resources. Like cost displacement, cost avoidance payoffs often come in terms of people, time, or equipment.

An additional set of benefits derives from the other side of the balance sheet – they stem from increasing revenues as a result of gaining operating efficiencies. Some ways in which companies can increase revenues through operating more efficiently are: increasing the number of sales by processing more orders faster, reducing the number of orders lost to the competition by improving customer retention, expediting new pricing announcements, and improving customer service.

This is a story of customer focus and the importance of Value Maximization. Often in major sales there is a misalignment between the value you have proposed and the value perceived by the customer. This is particularly telling because you may lose a sale for a reason that is totally within your control to avoid.

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

Salespeople send email messages that are way too long most of the time.

Sellers also leave long-winded voice mail messages.

To top that off, we rarely leave specific suggested next actions that work.

If you are in sales and have mastered the art of the brief, succinct message, consider yourself a Sales Rockstar or on your way to being one.

Why do we say so much and send so much?

It seems like most of the time, we’re so wrapped up in our own company and how great we are, we forget that others outside of our company have no interest in hearing much from us until there is context and until we are adding value.

I posted about Dave, a veteran seller who decided to take me up on my dare and send himself his own email message – and check it on his smart phone.

Dave said, “when I saw them on my mobile device, I almost deleted them myself they were so long.”

You can read the whole e-mail prospecting scenario along with his results, then try it for yourself.

The words you choose, and the quantity of them directly affect your success in gaining someone’s attention.

Consider the following tips to help you get more and better connections with potential customers:

• Every word you choose counts – language and communication is such an important part of selling. Choose wisely.
• Learn new words and expand your vocabulary.  Look up any word you don’t know and create a list for yourself.
• Be able to speak extemporaneously – this is a valuable skill for when you get someone on the phone.
• Whatever you create for a voice mail message or email message, work to shorten using fewer, more powerful words.
• Ask others who are successful prospectors for honest feedback.
• Send yourself the emails you send to others, and read them on your smartphone. Seem longer than you thought?
• Understand what the insight is that will benefit your prospective customers – and incorporate that into messaging.
• Do A-B testing. See what works, then shift some words and see how THAT works. Continue with whatever is most successful.
• Understand that this is a process. No one has a “killer script” or canned words you can use. Make it work for you.

What tips have you learned about creating shorter, more powerful messaging?

What one new idea will you try?

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

The post Inside Sales Power Tip 121 – Shorten Your Message appeared first on Score More Sales.

Microsoft was hoping its Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets would be so irresistible that enterprises would forget about their iPads.

Things haven't worked out that way. So Microsoft is bringing in experts that know how to get enterprises to buy tech products. 

On Monday, Microsoft said it's now selling Surface Pro and Surface RT through several of its largest reseller partners, which sell products in bulk to enterprises, as opposed to selling directly to consumers. 

In the US, the list of resellers includes: CDW, CompuCom Systems, En Pointe Technologies, Insight Enterprises, PC Connection, PCM, SHI International, Softchoice, Softmart and Zones.

Microsoft says it'll let resellers in other countries sell Surface in a few months.

By getting resellers involved, Microsoft is essentially scrapping phase one of its experimental marketing plan for Surface, and switching to a plan it knows very well.

Until now, Microsoft has only sold Surface tablets through its retail and online stores, and through third-party retailers like Best Buy and Staples. But sales have been sluggish: In March, sources told Bloomberg that Microsoft had sold just 1 million of the 3 million Surface RT tablets it ordered. 

Microsoft was probably hoping that consumers would buy Surface tablets and be so enamored with them that they'd want to use them at work, which is how the iPad has taken root in many large companies. 

That hasn't happened, in part because enterprises are avoiding Windows 8, and in part because they don't buy tech through consumer outlets. 

Getting resellers involved could be Microsoft's ace in the hole. These firms don't just sell products, they also provide services that enterprises need. For example, they set up tablets with security software, integrate them into a company's back end systems, and provide ongoing support services. 

Microsoft also knows that without apps built for Surface tablets, enterprises are just going to keep using their iPads.

So, Microsoft is providing devices and funding in its new Windows AppsForSurface program, which Microsoft says "addresses the growing demand for Surface enterprise applications." 

Microsoft is having a tough time getting developers interested in building apps for Windows 8 in general, so this could be a tall order. So far, vendors taking part include Citrix Systems, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Airstrip and Sage. 

SEE ALSO: Google Is Looking For Brave (And Strong) Backpackers To Help It Map The World's Hard-To-Reach Places

Join the conversation about this story »

Mike Drapeau How Top Sales VPs Improve Their Talent http://dlvr.it/3bkw4Q #B2bSales

You'll never get rich merely by selling your product's great benefits. Instead, find out where your customers hurt and show how you can fix the pain.

There are three basic ways to sell anything. There’s the unenlightened way, which an awful lot of entrepreneurs adopt instinctively. It’s almost always wrong.

There’s a semi-enlightened way, which I estimate will boost your success rate by a factor of 10. But there’s an even more enlightened strategy, which could boost your conversion rate another ten times over. If I’m doing my math right, that’s a potential hundred-fold increase in your sales efficiency--all from connecting with customers and recognizing what motivates them most.

The rookie error: Sell product features

Most salespeople instinctively talk about product attributes and all the bells and whistles their awesome product affords. Emotional connection? Who needs that? Well, you do: If you can’t connect to your customers heartstrings, your sales pitch is about as exciting as technical spec sheet. To see what I mean, let’s consider product-feature sales pitches for three different hypothetical businesses (all named after yours truly):

“Here at Hair by Josh, you can get 18 different types of conditioning treatments, a cut and blow dry by our 12 different stylists. We can do weddings or other special events too.”

“Here at @JoshApp, our revolutionary new tool will allow your team members to tap into a terabyte of storage with only 4 clicks, and with PCP encryption security.”

“Josh’s tee shirts are 300 thread-count, made from 100% Egyptian cotton and sewn by hand.”

Step one of enlightenment: Sell benefits.

Stop talking about yourself and the attributes of your product. Instead, get inside your customers’ head and figure out why they would want a product or service like yours. Then describe how what you have to offer will deliver that, and more. See how much more persuasive this is:

“Here at Hair by Josh, our conditioning treatments will leave your hair as soft as silk every day, and our special event styles will leave you turning heads as the talk of your next party.”

“The tool we’ve built at @JoshApp will give your employees more storage while they can keep working on their other projects.”

“You’ll look terrific and feel great every time you wear one of Josh’s Tees.”

The enlightened way: Sell pain relief.

Benefits are a great sales hook, but your customers can, if necessary, live without them. (They have so far, after all.) But when you present yourself as a cure for the pain they face in their lives, you’re addressing what matters most. Show clients how you can solve their pain, and they’ll be lining up to buy.

For example, think about the last time you had a throbbing headache in the middle of the night. You’d do just about anything to stop the pain. You’d get in your car, head to the nearest pharmacy and pay top dollar for some high-powered aspirin. Selling benefits, by contrast, is like selling vitamins:. They’d nice to have but you’re not going to get up at 3am to run out and buy some. So ask yourself: Is your company selling aspirin or vitamins?

Let’s try this approach with those same three hypothetical businesses:

“In the summer your hair always looks terrible because of the heat and humidity. And, uh, are you going to your best friend’s wedding with your hair looking like that? Here at Hair by Josh, we’ll make sure that your hair never embarrasses you no matter what.”

“On any given day, your employees are wasting precious time working on file storage and transfer. You’re paying them not to do their jobs! @JoshApp will end that frustrating waste of money..”

“Sure, you can buy cheaper undershirts than Josh’s Tees, but shy would you? They get yellow and rough after only a few washes. Josh’s high-quality tees stay soft and white for years. Why feel uncomfortable and face embarrassment when you could feel confident and clean with Josh’s Tees?”

Listen closely to your customers to find out what really causes them pain. Then, make sure you connect emotionally to that pain and link your product to removing those bad feelings. In other words, find people with headaches, and sell them aspirin. Maybe you won't literally improve your results a hundred fold over the base rate of selling product features. But the improvement will be great enough that you won't really care.

Social media is an integral part of any sales strategy these days, but you can also take social networking lessons and apply them to the sales floor. Tips about connecting with your audience, following through with promises, and being more visible can help drive face-to-face, direct mail, and online sales outside of the social networking spaces.

Social Networking Tips

A recent post from Entrepreneur provides several tips for social networking success. Most of the tips center on audience connection. Experts recommend that individuals associated with a brand make social media posts. People like to connect with other people, not a brand name. You can employ this tip in your sales strategy by training your staff to be personable. Whether you’re interacting with the customer on the phone, in person, or via a Web-based form, make sure you include the human element in the process. Call the customer by name, and make sure you include your own name and contact information in emails. It’s also good to add some small details to the conversation. For example, a customer service rep might ask where the consumer is calling from and how the weather is there. Adding small talk while keying information or researching an order keeps the customer engaged.

Integrating Your Social Networks

Social networking experts push integration. It’s not enough to develop a Facebook presence. Brands need to integrate Facebook with their websites, blogs, or Twitter feeds. The purpose of social networking is to create brand awareness and encourage consumers to visit a website, make a phone call, or buy something. Your sales strategy also needs to be integrated. An excellent sales force is going to fall flat without appropriate backup. Work with vendors, supply networks, warehousing, customer service, and accounting to ensure that consumers receive a seamless experience both before and after a product is purchased. Don’t limit your sales strategy to the sales floor. If your company doesn’t follow through with promises made by your sales staff, your customers aren’t going to come back.

Social Networking for Sales: Visibility and Strategy

Visibility is essential to social networking. Experts talk a lot about search engine optimization, backlinks, and other Internet-based tools. Similarly, your overall sales strategy should also consider visibility. Whether you operate online or through retail storefronts, ask yourself what you can do to draw the attention of targeted customers. All efforts should be linked to sales and marketing. When you receive new product, arrange it in a way to engage the customer. Make sure advertisements and websites offer something interesting for your audience. Talk to your customers to find out what they want to see and how you can help them. If you provide the information and products customers most want, they’re more likely to visit your site or shop.

Social networking is one part of sales strategy, but it offers many valuable lessons that can be applied to your business. Take a look at your Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking pages. You might be able to duplicate social networking success in other areas of your business.