As the B2B sales landscape becomes more complex, traditional sales processes no longer entice, engage, or win over modern buyers.

In order for sellers to remain competitive in today’s fast-changing business landscape, they must understand and adapt to new buyer behavior and effectively exceed expectations at every turn.

So, what are the traits that make up winning sellers? Let’s take a look at their anatomy and the steps that leaders can take to nurture more successful reps.

Proactive

Top-performing sales reps diligently plan for early-stage buyer interactions, which are key to establishing credibility. Given that 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight, this preparation phase is essential for laying the foundation for success.

Knowledgeable

Top-performing sellers in today’s B2B environment have one thing in common — they understand that modern buyers do their homework, traveling 57% of the buyer’s journey before interacting with a seller. As a result, buyers expect reps to be highly knowledgeable and provide new, insightful information beyond what they have already researched. Proactively preparing for early-stage buyer interactions is imperative to a seller’s success given 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight.

Responsive

Today’s sellers have to move faster than ever to stay ahead of their prospects and competition. Sellers who provide timely, valuable responses have greater success rates with today’s buyers. A survey conducted by Demand Gen Report found that 76% of B2B buyers said that a timely response from a vendor was important to their decision-making process.

Knowledgeable

Sellers can no longer expect that cold calls and trade shows will result in quality interactions with prospects. Instead, they must take an omnichannel approach to sales and meet buyers everywhere they are, wherever they are. Still using email as the primary modes of communication? If so, that’s not enough either. Only 22% of emails that are sent by businesses are opened, and 13% are deleted without ever being opened or read.

Personal

When stakeholders involved in a purchase decision are finally ready to engage with sellers, they expect to receive a personalized response with subject matter expertise. Research by SiriusDecisions reports that not only do buyers receive 22% more content from winning reps, but the types of content they receive are used to demonstrate industry expertise versus vendor expertise.

Winning Sellers Require Great Tools and Training

Content that is rich with value-added guidance and subject matter expertise has become the cornerstone of buyer and seller interactions. As today’s buyers conduct their own research and travel most of the buyer’s journey alone, sellers must be prepared to provide valuable content that maps to their stage in the buyer’s journey, almost immediately. The challenge? Studies have shown that sales reps spend 40% of their time finding or creating content. If sellers are unable to locate the content they need, they will not be adequately prepared to beat out the competition for the modern buyer’s business. As a result, today’s sellers require tools that will allow them to organize and find the content they need when they need it. With the ability to quickly find the right content, sellers can have more engaging conversations with prospects which increases the chances of closing the deal.

Today’s buyers expect sellers to be nimble and knowledgeable enough to immediately send content that is valuable, personalized, and aligned to their journey. To navigate these new set of expectations, sellers need access to guidance that is easy to use, dynamic, digital, and intuitive — such as a digital sales playbook. A study conducted by Aberdeen Group uncovered that 42% of best-in-class companies use sales playbooks, resulting in better attainment of quota, higher rates of customer retention, and higher lead conversion rates.

As modern buyer expectations continue to evolve, ongoing training and development become a necessity. A SiriusDecisions survey found that high-performing organizations were 56% more likely than others to indicate that training delivery and reinforcement methods are highly effective. This reiterates the importance of equipping sellers to learn and evolve with their buyers, allowing them to sharpen their skills while adapting to the business landscape.

If organizations hope to create winning sellers, they must first enable them with the tools and training they need to navigate the increasingly more complex sales process. If they are not equipped, sellers will lose to more nimble and better-prepared competitors, and high-performing sales reps will seek out new opportunities.

Check out the full infographic here for a breakdown of successful sellers and how they win over the modern buyer.

According to CoSchedule, marketers who document strategies are 538% more likely to report success, those who document processes are 466% more likely to be successful, and 88% of marketers who set goals actually achieve them. That is why you need a documented social media strategy. Creating a documented social media strategy focused on processes and goals will improve your results. Below, Julie Neidlinger, Aleh Barysevich, and Ian Heinig give you everything you need to plan your work and work your plan.

What is a social media strategy and what tools do you need?

Neidlinger uses the following definition: a social media strategy documents how a business or organization will plan, execute, and measure all social media marketing activities. She recommends using the following types of tools:

• Social media calendar. Planning and executing your strategy on one central calendar makes it easy to see all your social media posts alongside your other content and projects.
• Curation tools. These make it easy to curate content and fill gaps on your calendar.
• Google Analytics. You will use this to gather data on your social media referral traffic to find where your audience is most active.
• In-app analytics. Each of the top social media networks features robust analytics full of useful audience and performance data.

That is all you need to put this blog post into practice. It is time to get started.

Social media strategy step 1: Choose your social networks

What networks should you be on? Should you have multiple social media accounts for certain networks? Here, you will find your answers.

1. Discover where your audience is

You should be on the same networks as your audience. Throwing content at channels where your audience is inactive is about as effective as shouting your message in a crowded room. Make a list of three to five networks that are clearly popular with your audience. Do not put more on your list. Remember, you are going to have to maintain content on these.

To boost your audience understanding, you need to conduct research and the more data you have the better. You can use focus groups, surveys, and other tools, but the beautiful thing about social media is that you have a rich survey database right at the tip of your fingers.

2. Research your competitors’ social networks to find their largest followings

You and your competitors are after the same audience on social media. Choose five to ten competitors and search for them on all the major social networks. Write down their number of followers on each network to understand on which social networks your own audience may be most active.

3. Analyze what works for your competition

The next step is to monitor your competitor’s social engagement. Figure out which types of content appear to be working best. Look for posts that are grabbing the attention of your competitor’s fans. That could mean:

• Types of media
  Do videos or images appear to do well?
• Voice and tone
  What types of messages appear to perform best?
• Types of messages
  Do questions seem to be working? What about jokes? Branded slogans? Motivational quotes?

Social media listening can come in handy here. If you create an alert with your competitors’ brand name, you will be able to see their activity as well as what people are saying about them as it happens.

4. Experiment with paid promotion to target your audience on all networks

Another way to find your audience is to experiment with paid promotion. All of the major social networks offer advanced targeting in exchange for payment. As a test, you could set up social profiles for every network and use their native paid promotion capabilities to find your audience. Review the results of each networks’ analytics and continue using the channels with the biggest results.

5. Analyze your social media demographics on each channel

Different social networks may attract different demographics who are still part of your target audience. It is important to identify those differences so you can adjust your content based on what your target audience wants to see on each channel.

Find your own preferred networks

Once you know where your audience is, hold those networks up against a list of qualifications to see how high they should be in your list of networks to focus on. For instance, you should find a network that connects with scheduling tools. Isolated networks are only going to add to your workload because you cannot consolidate your efforts with tools. Find at least a few key social networks that connect with the tools you are already using to help reduce workload.

Social media strategy step 2: Plan the content you will share

You do your best to capitalize on your strengths when it comes to setting up your blogging methodology. You should do the same for your social media strategy.

1. What are your topics of expertise?

If you have done your homework right, your content marketing is highly focused on the topics your audience cares about, and the social activity from your own content will reflect that.

Curation of outside content is where some of us go off the rails with on-topic social content. It is easy to forget that your own personal interests outside of your audience niche may not be really relevant for your branded social media properties unless you are a celebrity of some sort.

Write down, in one sentence, what your brand is about. Make it general and then, break it down into sub-topics. This list should look very much like the categories you use on your blog, and all curated content should be held up against this list to see if it fits. If you find content you want to share that does not fit, then put it over on a personal profile.

2. Understand why people follow you on social media

It is important to know why people choose to follow you. Create a survey link and ask your audience why they follow your social media channels. This could be through an email or you could include the link in a social media post. Your social media content should target the intersection of your brand or blog’s purpose and what your audience cares about.

3. Plan your curated content

This is more ongoing than the previous two. You will regularly be sharing outside content and so you need to actively plan where and when you will publish that. Remember to stick to your topic. If you use an RSS reader, consciously collect feeds that fit your categories. Then, plan a content curation schedule.

Social media strategy step 3: Plan the content you will create

1. Find your content creation strengths

If you do not have the equipment for making great videos, YouTube is probably not the place for you. Ask yourself questions that help you discover what you are best at creating. The idea here is to find your natural strengths, both in talent and resources, when it comes to the content you can create for social media.

• What apps and software do you have access to for creating content?
• Are you a better writer or designer? Or could you try your hand at recording video instead?
• Do you have other team members who can help you out with your weak spots, or are you flying solo?
• What social media do you enjoy yourself? Do you find yourself mimicking it easily?
• Do you have a sense of humor? Are you more about being helpful?

2. Establish your writing voice and tone

Think of brand voice as your personality and tone as your emotion.

Consumers want to follow a brand that is authentic and cool. Use storytelling to forge an emotional connection with followers and develop a value-driven relationship. Find a branded voice that resonates with your audience. The challenge is to align your brand’s personality with each platform. To create a seamless cross-channel experience, develop a theme for your content and tweak your tone.

3. Plan your imagery

Social networks are heavily image-driven, so you will need to plan to include some. If you have determined that creating imagery is not your strength or you do not have the expensive tools or access to a professional designer, you can create great images using tools like Canva.

4. Plan your campaigns

Social media, particularly if planned on an editorial calendar with other content, will have campaigns. They might be centered around events, holidays, promotions, Twitter chats or a random whim but you will have campaigns.

Social media strategy step 4: Define your goals

What is it you want to accomplish with social media? Generate leads? Grow sales? Provide customer service? Improve brand awareness? Enhance customer loyalty and retention? Not everyone wants the exact same results from social media and knowing this beforehand matters. Write down what you want in general and then specifically.

This is what you will use to actually measure whether or not you are hitting that big picture goal, and it is also what you will adjust and use for A/B testing, increasing the measurable goal, and so on.

Until you define your goals, you do not have any. Until you understand your ultimate destination, you will end up anywhere. And until you get a specific measurement to use, you will not know what adjustments to make along the way.

Do not focus on vanity metrics though. You may want to reach a thousand followers in two months and get around eighty likes on average. However, for your brand, the most important metric is engagement. The number of people leaving comments or clicking on your links is much more important than the number of likes you receive.

All three steps (defining a goal, painting the big picture, listing the specifics) are necessary.

· Identifying business objectives

The first step in your goal setting process should be to determine your business objectives. These are overarching benefits to your business that social media marketing can help achieve.

· Determine your social media goals

Now that you know what your business objectives are, you need to figure out how the social media goals you are going to set will help affect your business objectives.

· Set KPIs and goals for every social media channel

Social Media KPIs are the most important social media metrics that are closest to your business objectives and Social Media Goals are the specific numbers you want to hit for each KPI.

Social media strategy step 5: Make your social media schedule and promotion plan

Now that you know what networks you will be on and the ways you will be using them, it is time to make the plan. Use an editorial calendar for planning your social media. It is the best way to make sure everything happens when and how you want them to.

· Plan how often you will share every day

As you get started, it is good to understand your commitment and how you will post consistently to grow your following. This data will help you know exactly how often to post to each of your networks:

• Facebook: one post a day, curate one every other day
• Twitter: fifteen tweets a day, curate seven tweets per day
• LinkedIn: one post a day, curate one every other day
• Pinterest: eleven Pins a day, Repin at least five Pins per day
• Google+: two posts a day, curate one every other day
• Tumblr: two posts a day, reblog one every other day
• Instagram: one or two posts a day, curate one a day

· Outline your content sharing plan

Set up a social media publishing plan to help you share a specific piece of content the best way possible, taking into account social network norms for sharing the same piece more than once. Publishing more than once is the best approach, particularly for a network like Twitter. Some news feeds cycle quickly (like Facebook and Twitter), while other networks (like Pinterest) function less like a flowing river and more like a bulletin board where people bring old things to the top again on their own.

· Plan your budget

Successful (and serious) social media strategy must include a budget to promote your posts on social networks. However, going into any expenditure without knowing where the budget line is drawn is a super bad idea.

You might be new to paying for social content and have no real idea what it will cost. That is fine! Simply start with an amount you are able to absorb into your content marketing budget and begin learning. As you figure out what works on each network, you will use your budget better than you do at the start. First, you have to start, though, and set a limit. Once you hit the limit, evaluate. Check what has happened against the goals you set earlier.

Content inspiration

You want to plan digital content efficiently but it is not always an easy task and it can be a very time-consuming process. After all, you want to present your audience with high-quality content on a regular basis. How can you best do this? In How to Plan Digital Content Like a Professional, you will find several steps and tools that can help you.

Finding inspiration for your content creation can be a little tricky and writing may sometimes feel like an obligation. If you are hitting the wall with your content schedule, do not worry too much. Even if you feel uninspired, there are easy ways to get inspired again. How to Find Inspiration for Content Creation When You Are Tired shows you how.

If your ideal customers are already visiting your website: Bravo! Now it’s time to turn them into leads and get them on your email list.

We have a three-step strategy which will help you generate the leads your sales team needs for some quick wins. Combine these tips with our inbound marketing best practices and you’ll be keeping your sales team fed.

1.Create Valuable Low Commitment Content Offers

To start generating leads from your website you need to create a content offer that your ideal buyers will find valuable and thoughtful, and make it as easy as possible for them to download.

According to HubSpot, the best performing offers are:

1. Ebooks or Guides
2. Templates or Presentations
3. Research or Reports

One of our clients, a bulletproof glass manufacturer, has had amazing success with their guide, The 8 Levels of Bullet Resistance.

In the duration of one year their downloadable guide:

• Drove over 1,400 views to their website
• Generated 477 new contacts
• Brought in 10 new customers

You are the expert in your company, take your knowledge and whip out an awesome product guide or industry insider ebook. If your are stuck, talk to your current customers, get feedback from them on what they would have found valuable during their buyer’s journey.

2. Create a Short & Smart Form

Your content offer form is what stands between you and your lead conversion. Your leads don’t want to take the time to fill out a 6 line form – so keep it simple. Stick with the basic need-to-know info, like:

• Name
• Email
• Company

See an example of the form for our Manufacture Website Best Practices Checklist:

Use tools like MailChimp or HubSpot to create your forms and collect your contacts. Then set up an awesome landing Page that was created using inbound best practices and you’re almost there.

3. Put Well-Placed Call-To-Actions On Your Website

A call-to-action (CTA) is the button you hit to download the offer. Having a well-placed CTA is what will get your visitors to your landing page to fill out your form. You should also promote your offer by placing CTAs in relevant blog posts above the fold and at the end.

HubSpot has some great tips (backed by research) on creating successful CTAs:

• Place your CTAs where the eye can see
• Make the copy on your CTAs very clear rather than clever
• Contrast your CTAs against your website so they stand out
• Link Your CTA to your dedicated landing page

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot to create Lead Flows which act like pop-ups on your website so that more of your audience sees your CTAs and content offers. Specify certain pages for specific Lead Flows to capture the right lead at the right time in their buyers journey.

Once you’ve got one offer up on your website, make sure you use analytics tools to measure the data and A/B test the copy and design of your landing page and CTA. The metrics will help you optimize them to convert more leads.

 

To successfully onboard your team and your customers to a digital commerce environment, it’s not just important to acknowledge ways that eCommerce can benefit the roles involved in that B2B buying cycle. It’s mission-critical to understand that increasing the productivity of buyers, researchers, technicians, and others within the buying cycles is a key objective of B2B commerce. When the roles that are required for complex B2B transactions are not supported by technology, frustration, and transactional intensity are the result, and the implementation of digital technologies fail as a result.

On the flip side, however, when B2B companies understand the enormous value in both increasing efficiencies by automating low-value tasks, and decreasing the cost of sales as full-service scenarios become more strategic, implementing eCommerce often means extraordinary results. Sure, it’s highly desirable to drive more sales and raise share-of-wallet from an online system. Those results only arrive from implementing digital strategies that are relevant and helpful to the people fulfilling the roles within B2B. In this, like so many other areas of digital transformation, success relies on supporting the human beings intimately involved every step of the way.

The Need for a Hybrid eCommerce Solution

Because B2B commerce can never be entirely self-service, each person involved in the buying process must have a personalized, real-time view of customer activity. This means viewing B2B commerce from a hybrid perspective, one in which customers can be supported whether they’re online or requiring some kind of “full service” help. A successful hybrid commerce strategy is the key to achieving digital transformation that adds value to the bottom line in terms of efficiency, productivity and yes, more sales. But as I’ve stated earlier, to achieve those gains, the system must meet the needs of every role in the complex B2B commerce system.

For that reason, it’s critical to understand the needs of those I’ve classified as The People of B2B. Any experienced B2B commerce professional knows that unlike a B2C transaction, B2B eCommerce interactions involve many different people doing many different tasks. The first goal of B2B online commerce should be to boost productivity and to do that we’ve got to understand how digital transformation should support each role involved with every transaction.

The People of B2B

Typically, there are at many different roles involved within each B2B buying transaction. B2B commerce, particularly for the manufacturers and distributors I work with, involves complex contracts, huge catalogs, and unique configurations. Roles and responsibilities differ not only by organization and by customer, but also sometimes vary by size of the deal, the location served and even the time of year. Knowing how eCommerce can support each role, and make it stronger, based on what may seem like infinite variables is the path to better results, sooner.

Here is a brief outline of the primary roles involved within B2B commerce, and how I believe digital solutions can support, not burden, those people:

The Researcher

The way B2B researchers are conducting their work is changing from a variety of perspectives. Online search has changed the manner in which most researchers work in perhaps the most dramatic fashion. Google’s study B2B Path to Purchase surveyed more than 3,000 B2B researchers and found they typically conduct 12 searches on average before going to a specific brand’s site.

For digital transformation to lead to strong increases in productivity, the commerce environment must be easy to navigate. Data, both requested and generated by the work of the B2B researcher, must be incorporated into the enterprise. Custom catalogs, list management, and other ways to segregate only the information that is relevant to that specific researcher is vital to helping them do their job more effectively.

Additionally, generational shifts are changing the manner in which B2B researchers work. According to the latest research, these People of B2B not only regularly use their mobile devices for search, but over a third of them download information via smartphone or tablet as well, and this trend is rapidly accelerating. The ecommerce system has to have a fully functional mobile app to satisfy this growing need.

The Customer Service Representative

Customer service is the hub of the buyer’s journey, but at the same time, it’s a position that can be tough to retain. Fortunately, this role is one area in which digital transformation via a strong B2B commerce environment can even more dramatically improve task efficiency, boost productivity, and increase job satisfaction.

Before eCommerce entered the picture, CSRs were already dealing with multiple channels including email, phone and fax. With eCommerce solutions, there are even more channels including custom portals for channel partners, promotional landing pages, and online chat. CSRs typically have to manage all of these points of entry while also dealing with the challenges of a hybrid commerce solution.

When the commerce system is fully unified, systems are integrated so that data is shared in a real time, synchronous fashion. Just like any role within the B2B buying cycle, CSRs need one point of entry from which to view each unique customer’s transactional history, contracts, and every important interaction with sales, both online and in person. Strong B2B eCommerce solutions can present that information readily and accurately through a single sign on.

The Field Service Representative

Field service technicians often experience losses to productivity in the course of doing their jobs. The amount of time it takes to diagnose and fix a problem is often multiplied exponentially by the effort to identify, locate and order the necessary materials. In addition, pricing contracts and procurement processes often need to be validated before moving forward to resolve a ticket.

Because the tech works mainly onsite at a customer location, it’s important to have a robust mobile experience that can handle complex information and ordering needs. Unfortunately, many eCommerce initiatives view mobile as just an extension of a responsive website. When the mobile strategy stops here, it is often the field service technician who is left with a cumbersome website, multiple portals, and often an ordering process that fails to recognize their unique needs.

A strong hybrid B2B commerce solution should deliver a fully functional native mobile app that provides these and other services: user-specific product catalog, pricing and product searches and recommendations, re-ordering capabilities and barcode scanning.

Field service techs can be empowered by a mobile experience by eliminating phone calls to the office, finding parts information with robust search mechanisms and ordering with just one click. When techs are empowered, it leads to more satisfied customers. When they have information about renewable warranties and suggested service tasks, it can also result in more revenue.

The Buyer

We’ve examined how the roles that support the buying journey can benefit from digital transformation. The role of the buyer is at the heart of the customer experience. A B2B buying scenario often involves multiple buyers. You may have a buyer who can initiate an order, but does not have the ability to approve purchases. Another buyer may approve the purchases, but is not involved in the actual buying transaction. Different buyers may purchase different items, and may even use different channels to initiate that order, from sending an email to using an app on their mobile device.

For that reason, buyers need to see information that is specific to them, from their approval authority to the business divisions or groups they buy for. B2B commerce differs widely from B2C eCommerce in this area, as buyers need to see custom catalogs that include only the products that are relevant to them, at customer-specific prices.

The best user experience in the world will hold little value if the B2B eCommerce solution doesn’t provide a buying environment that is customized for that specific buyers’ needs, from products to pricing, and all the tools that support the order process.

The Accounts Payable Representative

Accounts payable is often at the intersection of eCommerce and the entire supply chain mechanism, particularly for distributors. Returns, shipping and handling, and multiple delivery locations can all add another layer of detail to an already complex payment scenario.

For that reason, B2B solutions that can handle customization by customer, and don’t need to be modified substantially to accommodate unique processes, are particularly helpful in reducing task times and increasing efficiency for accounts payable representatives.

Accounts payable reps must have synchronous communication between the ERP, multiple accounting systems, customer portals and the eCommerce solution. This may include the need for real time calls to validate pricing, terms, and logistics like delivery. The ability to have this information updated and available within the system at any time without checking multiple contracts (or spreadsheets) is an enormous boost to productivity.

The Salesperson

In 2015, analyst firm Forrester caused a stir by predicting the “death of the B2B salesperson.” Although a new report two years later tempered that prediction, B2B salespeople sometimes still view eCommerce as their competition. This is usually due to a disconnect between eCommerce systems, and companies’ overall digital transformation strategies.

The sales team is usually tasked with introducing and inviting customers into the new digital buying experience. When they feel that eCommerce is the “competition” or that “their” customers will have a bad experience, sales may be reluctant to encourage adoption of the new online paradigm. B2B sales does not become irrelevant when eCommerce is introduced.

Successful eCommerce initiatives will transform the sales role in ways which include freeing sales people from low-value tasks like order taking, empowering sales people to provide consultative expertise to customers and providing a holistic view of customer details due to a fully unified commerce environment.

In this environment, the role of sales doesn’t disappear at all. In fact, in an ideal world this role is elevated to that of a consultative business advisor. Manufacturers and distributors need to be ready for this change not only by including sales in the planning process, but with a commerce environment that keeps them apprised of all the activity occurring within the customer buying cycle, whether it’s happening directly or within a digital transaction.

Rewarding the People of B2B

When implemented poorly, a new B2B eCommerce solution adds simply another channel to manage, particularly when it comes to sales and CSR’s. This additional burden is one of the primary obstacles to successfully onboarding customers onto a new online system, and it’s a primary reason so many new B2B commerce systems fail.

From the field service technician to the B2B buyer, every role in the complex B2B buying cycle has to be positively impacted by eCommerce. Without the buy-in from the internal team, you’ll never gain more “buying” from an external customer.

A version of this post was originally published here.

Amazon’s annual Prime Day took the world by storm on July 16th, and as always it offered a mix of excitement, frustration, and seven figures in sales. But one thing is certain: there is a lot we can learn from Amazon’s Prime Day success. We may even be able to apply some of what we learn in our business endeavors. Let’s dive in and take a look at five key takeaways from this year’s event and what we can learn from Amazon’s big annual sales extravaganza.

Make sure your servers can keep up

Prime Day started at 3:00 pm Eastern, Noon Pacific this year. Within moments, Amazon’s servers buckled under a load of millions of people shopping at the same time. While some technical difficulties can be expected, Amazon’s error pages became a joking point on Twitter as users mused that they got more dogs from Amazon (dogs are featured on the error pages) than products.

Lightning deals are the biggest frustration point, as those are limited time deals for a limited sales quantity. Lightning Deals happen all the time, but when your servers are down on Prime Day, one of your biggest shopping days of the year, you might need to fire your IT department. It is surprising the issues were so widespread, as Amazon’s AWS is perhaps the most prominent online infrastructure provider in the world.

Building hype works

I read an article early on Prime Day that explained how Jeff Bezos keeps checking items off of his bucket list, the latest being creation of an annual holiday. Prime Day got coverage on virtually all major media outlets, and people were paying attention. The server problems stemmed from a massive Prime Day success. Millions of customers beating down your virtual doors to get in is a good problem to have.

While the sales take place during a one day period, the process of promoting Prime Day happens year round. We can all be certain that on Prime Day, Amazon leaders were in a war room meeting making sure it all ran smoothly. But ahead of the big day, they spent countless hours preparing ahead of time. If you prepare right, market right, and build up customer demand, you will have a much bigger success on your big launch day.

Upsells work best on your most loyal customers

Turning a good customer into a great customer is a time-tested strategy. While you can’t turn every existing customer into a repeat customer, when you can bring customers back, again and again, you have more significant opportunities to sell a broader range of products and services. With Amazon Prime, Amazon knows just who to target.

You may be able to build similar membership, frequent customer, or repeat customer rewards into your business model. While we are not all large retail stores, we can often apply some of the same strategies in other sales experiences.

Cross promote. Cross promote. Cross promote.

Upselling and cross-promotion go hand in hand, and Amazon is expert at both. Every time you open a Prime Day deal, you’re greeted with similar products, alternate products, sponsored products, and products based on your browsing history. Amazon puts virtually every square inch of real estate to good use selling other services shoppers may want.

And when you check out more exciting products based on your recent purchase history, or related products you may want after this purchase. If you have ever shopped at Amazon, you get the point.

Offer something people really get excited about

Prime Day only works because Amazon offers products people want in an exciting way. Discount Instant Pots, low priced AmazonBasics kitchen wear, and home automation tools were just a small selection of Prime Day’s biggest sales. But if you do a quick Google search, you may find that people love products in those categories. By selling what people love at a low price, Amazon can build year-round brand loyalty.

You might see this in your grocery store every time you buy milk or bread. Some products sell on a very low margin, or even a small loss, to bring you in to buy other products. When you offer something people get excited about and upsell and cross promote well, you have a formula for big-time success.

Find your inner Bezos

Jeff Bezos turned a little garage-based business into one that propelled him to the wealthiest person on earth. If you can capture just a sliver of his success, you too can build a business that earns big sales. You might not make as many billions as Bezos, but if you can even get 1% of his success, you won’t have anything to complain about.

According to Statista, global e-commerce sales are likely to reach $4.5 trillion by 2021 from 1.3 trillion in 2014, registering a growth of 246.15 percent.

How many other industries are eyeing towards such a bright future? Not many! It makes one curious about the disruptive trends that are helping e-commerce shape up towards these growth figures.

The e-commerce industry is booming. And, with rapid growth comes frequent changes. Today, you can’t expect your e-commerce website to get enough visitors by just posting product images and details. You need to adopt some revolutionary steps to kickstart your growth.

Let’s find out the top seven trends that are being adopted by major online retailers and start-ups alike to transform the way people buy from them.

#1 Asia Positions Firmly in the International Arena

The idea that Asia has a few truly global brands is a thing of the past. Today, Asia represents a strong passion for gadgets and growing technologies. With China becoming an economic powerhouse, and recent changes happening in trade structures and free trade agreements, Asia has positioned itself firmly in the international arena.

At the same time, Asian consumers are spending big time on lifestyle products, gadgets, and apparels as an expression of their new lifestyle.

In the luxury goods segment, Chinese consumers account for 75 percent of all sales.

Asian consumers are no longer being side-lined by international brands. The ecommerce explosion has put Asia in a position where it’s driving international brands to up their investment game in this part of the world.

Consequently, Amazon is eyeing India as one of the fastest booming countries for ecommerce. It has reportedly invested $2 billion in the Indian market recently.

#2 Mobile Commerce Is Expanding

According to Shopify, Black Friday ’17 witnessed sales of $1.1 million per minute, which is almost double of the last year’s figure of $555,716.

Mobile is not just revolutionizing e-commerce but commerce as a whole. People are increasingly relying on smartphones as their shopping assistant. Not just when they are shopping online but also in retail stores, customers use their smartphones to choose, compare and buy anything under the sun. At the same time, it an essential tool for retailers to increase conversions and my customer data for targeted marketing.

The ease of e-transactions along with the increased bandwidth has made smartphones the major internet access channel.

#3 Digital Realities are Steaming Up

Recently, in March 2018, Loreal acquired the make-up AR company ModiFace to reinvent the beauty experience of its customers with 3D virtual make-up features.

Augmented realities (AR) and virtual realities (VR) have emerged over the years and are creating big waves now. Not just popular fashion and beauty brands, but even the e-commerce giant, Alibaba is inviting its customers to shop using VR technology.

Now, think of what the Danish toy-making company LEGO did. It allowed the customers to scan through unassembled kits and get a picture of the fully assembled kit. And then, they came up with the LEGO AR Studio app where you can play with digital versions of LEGO sets in a real-world scenario.

These immersive technologies are enhancing the shopping experience manifold and are bound to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming days!

#4 Conversational AI is the New Norm

Andy Budd, CEO of Clearleft, recently said to a magazine that the conversational e-commerce is going to be one of the biggest trends for the industry in 2018. Shopping-related assistant chatbots are helping businesses manage billions of daily customer conversations every day. Chatbots and voice assistants have changed the way customers shop for products.

These technologies act as personal style assistants and make customized recommendations to boost sales and nurture customer relationships. Automated one-on-one conversations are a reality now, strengthening the communication and branding strategy of e-commerce players.

#5 Making the Most of Big Data

Predictive analysis is already practiced at retail stores for forecasting demand and the number of visits. However, when you are competing with thriving e-commerce brands like Amazon, this isn’t enough. You can optimize profit margins only when you know your customers well – Their buying behaviour and personas.

With big data analytics becoming smarter than ever, now it’s possible to turn every action of a visitor on the website into data. This is enabling e-commerce sites to have an in-depth understanding of its target base and offer an outstanding customer experience.

#6 Messaging Apps are Here to Dominate

Did you know, messaging apps have 20 percent more monthly users than social media apps. Messaging apps are no longer confined to conversations in informal settings. It has emerged into a multimedia platform that can be tailored to every customer’s needs. Today’s text-savvy customers prefer texting for service and spend most of their time on messaging apps. In fact, 80 percent of adults are on messaging apps every day.

The key takeaway for marketers and retailers is that they get to spend more time with customers through messaging apps. And those who don’t want to lose the battlefield to competitors are making the most of messaging apps in 2018.

Based on messaging technologies provided by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, many e-commerce brands like H & M, and Sephora are achieving personalized interactions with customers.

Wrapping Up

The end goal for any marketer should be to foster a positive relationship with customers. By keeping these e-commerce trends in mind, their brand is likely to evolve in the competitive e-commerce world.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Customer can breath a huge sigh of relief.  The data is in, it shows sales people ask far too many questions, boring or even angering executives for wasting their time.  But research now shows the optimal number of discovery questions to ask is 4.

Both, as a victim of too many meaningless discussions where someone is trying to sell something to me, and as an observer on thousands of sales calls, I know I can breathe a huge sigh of relief that “death by questioning,” will come to an end, as sales enablement professionals and sales managers recognize that “4 questions” is the magic number, and scripts will be re-written to include no more than 4 questions—-Though I do wonder if, “When can we schedule a demo,” counts.

I’m taking some liberties with some intriguing research from Gong.io.  Chris Orlob wrote an intriguing article, “The Sobering Truth:  Why You Can’t Sell To C-Suite Executives.”  The research is intriguing and important, and Chris has been very kind in engaging me in discussions about the topic.  So I don’t mean to dispute the importance of what Gong is saying, but I think there is more  (Chris thanks so much for your patience with me!)

In short, the research says sales people ask way too many discovery questions, boring or angering executives.  My initial reaction was, “Well, duugghhh, isn’t that obvious?”  And the conclusion is the ideal number of questions to ask is 4.  QED, end of story, rewrite all of your scripts.  4 questions is the golden number that allows us to achieve success.

But, clearly, the observations from the research isn’t that obvious.  We’ve all been subjected or witnessed sales people, with their lists of questions intended to discover pain, elicit need, identify requirements.  At times, these discovery calls seem to be a giant run-on-question.

But I’m not certain the issue is the volume of questions, but the quality of the questions and the ensuing conversations and shared learning that should result from great discovery calls.

First, we misunderstand the discovery process.  It’s not just about sales people learning customer needs/requirements/priorities.  It’s a collaborative learning process, a journey of exploration we and the customer take to learn more about their business, their goals, how to more effectively achieve their goals, consequence/threats that might arise from inaction.  As important, we and the customer learn about each other, and our ability to work together to help them achieve their goals in the most effective way possible.

Discovery is less about the questions, and more about the conversations the questions evoke.  It’s these conversations that drive the shared learning process, it’s these conversations that enable us to create value with the customer.

It is here, that too many discovery calls break down.   Too many sales people don’t have the ability to engage in a conversation.  They don’t have the ability to drill down into the issues that might be evoked in the answer to a question.  They miss the opportunity to help the customer learn and discover, to be engaged, as well as to learn more from the customer.

Perhaps they don’t have the knowledge of the problems and issues they are trying to uncover.  Perhaps they don’t have the understanding of the business issues the customer is trying to address, perhaps they don’t understand the customer and their business well enough to engage in a conversation.

Perhaps they haven’t done their homework, they are wasting the customers’ time asking questions for which they should have already discovered or known the answers.

Perhaps, they haven’t prepared themselves or the customer, as a result the conversation wanders, there is no outcome other than sharing information, the customer is frustrated with the lack of progress.

Perhaps it’s the self-centeredness of sales people.  We are asking questions with an agenda, we don’t want to learn, we really don’t want to engage, we are searching for the trigger responses that enable us to go into pitch mode.

Perhaps we don’t know how to listen, great listening provokes insightful questions and high impact conversations.  Or, like questions with an agenda, we listen with an agenda.

Perhaps it’s our internal biases and the customers’ that preclude us from listening learning, probing.

Perhaps, as sales enablement or management professionals, we have so formularized, and dumbed down the process, that sales people don’t really understand why they are asking the questions, what they need to discover, and what it means.  We’ve trained them to ask the questions, to record the answers, and in the process to guide the customer to an outcome, “And when would it be reasonable for us to schedule that demo…….”    We’ve done our obligatory discovery call, but our real objective is to get to the demo, where, again, we can talk about ourselves, rather than what the customer cares about.

I think the real issue is not the volume of questions, but the inability of sales people to leverage questions to engage customers in meaningful, high impact, relevant, learning conversations.  While I don’t have research to support my premise, I’ve seen great sales people leverage great questioning to engage the customer—and they never worry about the number of questions, they are concerned about the quality of the conversation.  They design calls and meetings that drive shared learning, share discovery, and progress to achieving the customer goals.

I’ve never experienced a high performing sales person that says, “I’ve hit 4 questions, I’ve got to stop because the data says I’ll turn you off on the 5th question…..”  (One of my questioning “heroes,” is “Columbo,” he had endless questions, each of which created great insight into the situation.)

We’re told we have to engage customers with insight, rather than questions.  I don’t disagree, but there are problems with this.

Sometimes great questions drive great insight.  Insight is not always delivered as data, proof points, provocative statements, but by asking the single most important question the customer should be considering.

And then, many of the current approaches to “delivering insight,” run into the same problems we have with questions.  The sales person is incapable of using the insight to drive the conversation, to engage the customer in shared discovery and learning.

Too often, insight has become part of the “script.”  “If I say these words, in this way, the customer will succumb and agree to the demo…..”

It turns out effectively leveraging insight requires the same skills as effectively asking great questions.  If our people can’t do one, it’s unlikely they can do the other.

But I fear, too many won’t understand these issues.  Rather than probing the real issues behind effective questioning, they will blindly accept the research—4 questions it is!

As a prospect, I’m relieved.

As a person passionate about the professional practice of sales, we’ve missed an opportunity.

 

Afterword:  I do believe the intent behind this research is to improve the quality of questioning, and not just focus on the volume of questions.  As a result, I think it’s important to study Chris’s work and probe it.  They have a lot of good stuff to say.

 

 

Being in business can be tough. You may be doing work that excites you and fulfills your passion, but income fluctuates, markets change, and your customers’ and clients’ needs may evolve as well. One of the most unmotivating circumstances for an entrepreneur owner to be in is when they feel like their business isn’t generating enough income.

If you feel like you’re not making enough money or if you’ve been stuck at a particular income level for a few years, there could be several reasons

1. You Don’t Have a Specific Income Goal

Going into business without a goal is like going to college for 5 years without a major. Not much is going to get accomplished. It’s best to take your business idea and create structure and a strategy before carrying it out.

You want to set goals for your services, products, growth, and also for your income. Setting income goals is fun because it challenges you to get results and make your business profitable.

It’s also a great way to stay accountable especially when you tell people what your goal is. For example, if you’re a business owner who wants to break the six-figure threshold, you can break down your goal into quarters or months.

If you want to break 6 figures this year, that means you need to earn at least $8,333.33 per month on average. From there, you can figure out how to earn that money and what type of dedication and work ethic you’ll need.

2. You’re Not Tracking Income and Expenses Properly

It’s common to think about serving your audience and making money but a responsible business owner does admin and organizational tasks as well.

It’s so important to track your income and expenses regularly so you can have a record of your progress and highlight any areas you may need to change.

For example, if income is fluctuating quite a bit and you’re experiencing a slow season, you’ll want to determine when that is each year and what you can do to increase your income around that time.

3. Your Expenses Are Too High

Tracking your income and expenses should also expose whether your expenses are too high. As entrepreneurs, we often welcome the idea of investing in our business.

I know people who are eager and willing to through money on courses, tools and programs, software, coaches and consultants, assistants etc.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in your business. But you have to watch your return. If your investment isn’t providing you with a solid return, you want to ditch it ASAP.

Every course, assistant, tool, you invest in, should be providing you with a value that matches or exceeds your investment. If you let expenses take over your business budget, you won’t have much profit left for yourself at the end of the day.

4. You’re Not Pricing For Profit

This is probably the most common reason why your business may not be making enough money. I’ve talked about pricing for profit before, and it’s one of the best things you can do to ensure you don’t become a broke business owner.

Sometimes when you’re self-employed you forget the fact that there’s no one available to give you a raise. In turn, you must create your own raises and charge what you’re worth.

If your business isn’t making enough money, start by assessing your prices to determine if you’re charging enough. Also, find a way to add more value to your products and services to justify the price increase.

Summary

Business owners tend to give up as a result of dwindling profits due to some of the reasons mentioned above. You don’t want to settle for low earnings if you’re an entrepreneur.

Start getting organized, tracking your expenses and income, and pricing for profit.

Offers. Even in the world of B2B, they hold incredible power in the world of marketing and sales. While offers are nearly ubiquitous in all worlds, the types of offers that work well in B2B are going to be slightly different than those in B2C. Here are some different offers to consider when planning your marketing activities this year! If one doesn’t work, consider trying an alternative offer or offering the same thing to a different audience.

THE TIME-BASED OFFER

The time-based offer is basically QVC’s mainstay. If something is only available for a limited time or a certain price is only available for a limited time, the likelihood of people wanting to purchase it or “lock in” a certain price is higher. It acts on the very natural sense of urgency we all have. Whether the time is an hour or day-long flash deal (think Amazon Prime Days) or a month-long special (like Honda’s annual sales), time-based offers are very useful in both B2B and B2C. Some examples:

• Time-based: Act now to lock in 2018 pricing
• Urgency: The first 50 people receive a free month
• Limited time offer: 10% off your first service when you buy before your demo ends

THE DISCOUNTED OFFER

Everyone loves to feel like they are getting a deal. While the Discounted Offer is usually combined with the time-based offer, there are many kinds of discounted offers available to those selling software, products or services in the B2B arena. For products or services with a lower CPA (cost per acquisition) and revenue to client ratio, you may want to set a specific dollar amount off or cap to avoid combining offers.

Unlike retail offers where clearance can be made up in volume, B2B marketers must be aware of what they are selling (and in some cases) who before determining the appropriate discount. Be careful not to offer a discount that is too low-value for your market. For example, $700 off may appeal to a frontline worker, but seem paltry to the executive who actually has buying power. Examples of the discounted offer:

• Percentage: perceived value of % off
• $ amount: Can backfire if your product is very expensive or your buyer is sophisticated
• Fixed lower amount or flat fee offer

THE VALUE-ADD OFFER

Perhaps there is no wiggle room in your budget to offer discounts and you don’t have the marketing automation or service staff in place to offer a time-based offer. In this case, you might want to consider the value-added offering. A value-add is attractive to many marketers, especially in the B2B space, because it both pleases the potential client (by creating a perception of additional value) and the company offering the deal (because while they must offer more service, they are guaranteed the sale in the first place in order for that to take place).

Whether you offer the prospect more product (enterprise value at an SMB price), a quantity of “extra” (multiple seats for the price of one) or added or higher level service (free implementation or a dedicated account manager), the prospect must believe the value add has enough value to get them to sign up. Don’t use value-add with things like e-books or white papers if your price point is high.

• Value-add: get enterprise level for SMB pricing
• Feature enhancement: get Video Interviewing included for the first 3 months.
• Get an extra 1000 interviews to use your first year
• Service add: white glove implementation/integration/support/dedicated account manager

THE LOYALTY OFFER

Loyal customers are the best customers. And the same goes for partners and affiliates. When you can reward loyalty, do so. Not only is it likely to bring in more business, it’s likely to assist with building your brand, establishing your company as a connection point (thus raising your business above the noise) and locking clients in for a longer period of time.

Whether you offer a discount for a referral, a small freebie for a review or recommendation, an extra bonus for a social share, or create a larger network of affiliate partners (like a marketplace), loyalty offers of almost universally useful in both B2B and B2C capacities (think grocery loyalty cards, store credit cards with discounts, box clubs and more). Examples of loyalty discounts include:

• Referral: friends of so and so receiving such and such (discount code)
• Referral: If you refer a friend and they sign up for a demo, we will give you X% / $X off your next month
• Affiliate: If we sell xx amount, we kick back a % to the affiliate
• Partner company deal
• Loyalty (BOGO): Buy a year, get a month free etc or a discount off the entirety

Businesses are coming to recognize the benefits of integrating public relations, marketing and other communications functions. Silos for PR, social media marketing, advertising and digital marketing are crumbling as their roles merge.

A Weber Shandwick survey reveals that executives believe integrated communications leads to consistent message and voice across all channels of communication, more efficient allocation of resources, more nimble organizations capable of quicker reactions as well as other benefits. The Conference Board report Unlocking the Value of Integrated Corporate Communications and Marketing finds that combining marketing and PR helps create a customer-centric culture, infuse the business with purpose, and align company goals, metrics and budgets.

The convergence of PR and marketing has led to new titles: chief marketing and communications officer; vice president of global branding, corporate communications and creative services, and vice president of strategic marketing and corporate communications.

A Clear Trend to Merging of Communications Roles

An overwhelming majority of PR professionals – 90 percent of PR agency professionals and 82 percent of in-house PR pros — predict PR will become more integrated with marketing over the next five years, according to the 2018 Global Communications Report from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

“Although marketing has traditionally been responsible for the customer and communications responsible for other stakeholders such as media, government and investors, this dual-structure may be losing its relevance and efficiency in today’s marketplace,” says Micho Spring, chairman of the Global Corporate Practice at Weber Shandwick.

Integrated communications functions call for integrated communications dashboard that report all earned, owned and paid metrics within a single view. That 360-degree viewpoint can reveal the most effective strategies and prove how PR and marketing help the organization meet business goals.

While integrating communications functions offers clear advantages, integrating the metrics for all your communications teams is even more far-reaching, says PR measurement expert Katie Paine, CEO of Paine Publishing. “Integrating the measurement process for all your comms functions will change your life. Not to mention make it a lot easier to show your value to senior leadership,” Paine says.

Benefits of an Integrated Dashboard

Integrated analytics for PR, marketing, social media and other communications provide the following specific advantages:

An integrated dashboard displays the bigger picture that keeps key stakeholders top of mind. During day-to-day communications projects, communications professional often focus on pressing activities and groups that demand immediate attention at the expense of customers and external stakeholders. An integrated dashboard helps show communications impact on key target audiences and stakeholders you’re trying to reach.

The integrated dashboard shows everyone the same over-arching goals. One dashboard with everything on it ensures that there is clarity and consistency among all departments, teams and contributors about how the individual campaigns, initiatives and projects are measured.

The single communications dashboard provides consistency no matter who’s in charge. Management in corporate communications can change. “But with a single source of truth in the form of consistent goals, objectives, and metrics, everyone can stay on track no matter what chaos ensues among the top ranks,” Paine says.

It improves internal communications and teamwork. A well-designed dashboard tracks all the marketing and PR activities, stories, case studies and team efforts for the month or quarter. It provides a reason for the communications professionals to sit down and review with each other about what worked and what didn’t. The media analytics provide an opportunity to collectively brainstorm about how to improve their processes.

The integrated dashboard hastens the collapse of silos. Too often people don’t share goals or messages, and each person or department works towards individual goals. Later, everyone claims attribution for success without considering the influence of other disciplines. Integrating all the efforts into a single dashboard requires sharing data and, ultimately, learning how different disciplines contribute to your communication goals.

This article was originally published on the Glean.info blog.

Schedule a Free Online Demo of the Glean.info Media Monitoring & Measurement Dashboard.

 

As a business owner, time is valuable and — unfortunately — often limited. It can be challenging to deliver emails of consistently high quality, let alone find time to test, optimize and segment. Fortunately, making it easier isn’t an insurmountable feat. A few small changes can produce big results in email engagement, social posts and more:

Killer content

Let’s take a minute to touch on killer content. It will guide your email and keep you on target with the message you want to send readers. If you consistently come to readers with valuable promotions or helpful information, they’ll look forward to hearing what you have to say. Keep in mind that the focus isn’t on what you want to get from them; it’s on the value you can provide. Show early on that you want to help readers, not promote at them. Be timely. Be relevant. Don’t send a Christmas coupon in February. A good idea for building these relationships is giving away useful content for free. It shows people you genuinely want to help, and that you’re not just trying to get a foot in the door to make a sales pitch.

Your first chance: The subject line

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but people can and do judge an email by its subject line. So be direct. The key isn’t to write something vague to capture a nebulous audience or make them curious about the mystery that is your email. The key is to get people to open, look and take action on your emails. This is your first chance to get people interested, so be specific. Say what your email will do for the recipients. Know who your targeted recipients are.

Your second chance: Preheader text

This is the first line of text in your email. The preheader serves as a secondary subject line and gives your readers more motivation to open your email. It’s powerful because it shows up right after the subject line in the inbox — use it to build momentum by previewing what the rest of the email will contain.

A picture’s worth a thousand alt texts

Almost all email browsers “turn of”” images by default; hence, your pretty pictures probably don’t initially render until the reader clicks the “display images” link. When an image isn’t displayed, alt text is the copy that shows up instead of your image. If you don’t actively change your alt text, it’ll use the name of your image. Instead of your alt text reading something like, dogfood.jpg, change it to reflect not only what the image is, but the action you want taken, like: “Save 25% on Dog Food.” This is more action-oriented and will get you more clickthroughs.

Sharing is caring

Including social sharing icons in your email lets readers share your content with their networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. This is a major opportunity to get your content in front of more (and new) people. Beyond the social sharing icons, you can include links in your email that go to your social accounts so that readers can connect with you there. You may find that readers prefer to interact with your business through retweets and pins.

What does it all mean?

What’s the point of the email? What action do you want readers to take? Provide a call to action (CTA) button to make things easy on your reader. Many readers join your mailing list because you promised to provide them with something of value. Besides informative and educational content, people want discounts. Send out coupons, offer special discounts and notify readers of upcoming sales. Give them a good reason to act and an easy way to take the next step.

Test it out

Remember when we briefly brought up testing? Yeah, you need to do that. All of the above are great for getting people to open your email and engage, but it’s important to continuously test out what works well and what could be better. Try creating two subject lines and A/B testing them. Don’t stop with subject lines, though. Test your copy, your CTAs, anything that could affect your customer’s experience.

You have the tools to make big changes to your email game, so get out there and put them to use.

Most traditional sales methodologies stress the importance of asking good questions, and there’s no doubt that the ability to ask relevant and effective questions is a critical sales skill.

Unfortunately, the essential matching skill of actually listening to the customer’s answer, interpreting what they have just said and adjusting what we choose to say and do next gets far less attention than it ought to.

And even training our sales people to be both good questioners and good listeners still isn’t enough, because our customers expect more from us if we are to win the right to continue our conversation with them...

Effective questioning is only one of three key conversational skills that every B2B sales person - particularly those in complex sales environments - needs to master. In addition to having great questioning technique, today’s top sales people also need to be able to share genuinely relevant insights and to have highly developed storytelling skills.

Genuine insights

One of the tests of a successful sales meeting or conversation is whether the customer looks back at the end of the session and thinks something along the lines of “that was a really valuable conversation, and I learned things that will prove highly useful for the future”.

Our customers are much more likely to want to continue the conversation if that is how they feel about the interaction. We can achieve some of this by asking carefully crafted thought-provoking questions that cause the customer to stop, think and reflect before they answer.

Another key way of stimulating really valuable conversations is to share relevant insights with the customer. By insights, I don’t mean facts or statistics that they could and probably already have heard from dozens of other sources. Genuine insights offer the customer an unexpected perspective on an important issue.

We need to not only share relevant facts, but also to interpret them, and to provide a fresh perspective and a distinctive point of view. Our real value lies in helping our customer to recognise the relevance of a given set of facts to their specific situation and environment.

Simply equipping our sales people with a collection of in-house or third-party insights, white papers, etc., is nowhere near enough: it is also our responsibility to coach and equip them to use these insights as the springboard to a properly customised customer conversation.

Storytelling

Our brains have been progressively wired since the dawn of language to learn through stories. Storytelling is another of the essential selling skills that have often been ignored or underplayed as a consequence of over-emphasising questioning technique.

Fortunately, there’s a growing recent recognition of the essential importance and power of storytelling in B2B sales and marketing. Company founders and top sales performers, in my experience at least, have often been particularly effective storytellers.

But it’s a skill that every revenue-responsible individual across the organisation can and must develop, and a growing portfolio of sharable stories is a resource that every sales organisation can and must establish.

Unfortunately, the standard and simplistic case study sequence of “the customer had a problem - we delivered a solution - they achieved the following benefits” is a numbingly bland and ineffective way of telling a compelling story. That over-simplified formula lacks any complications and isn’t reflective of real life.

The most effective stories acknowledge that the world is complex and that solutions can be hard to achieve. They lead the listener through believable twists and turns on the road to resolution. Most important, they allow the listener to see themselves in the hero of the story’s journey.

I find it shocking that most conventional sales methodologies pay little or no attention to this critical sales skill. Compelling and relevant stories are an invaluable lubricant of effective sales conversations, and raising standards in this area can have a dramatic impact.

If you’re looking for guidance, Mike Adams has created an outstanding handbook for developing individual and company-wide storytelling skills in his recently published “Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell” - I thoroughly recommend his book.

Questions, Insights and Stories

I’ve come to believe that questions, insights and stories are the three essential elements of a compelling sales conversation. If any of these elements are missing or if their combination is not well-balanced, the conversation itself is diminished - each element serves to support and reinforce the others.

I encourage you to reflect on how you are currently training and equipping your sales people to have highly effective sales conversations. Does it feel as if any of these three elements might be missing or undervalued? Have you perhaps over-focused on the questioning aspect?

There’s a reason why the minimum number of legs for a free-standing stool is three. If we want our sales people to have properly balanced conversations, we need to ensure that their questions, insights and stories provide equally effective foundations...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales , a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now works with growth-orientated B2B-focused scale-up businesses, equipping them to Sell in the Breakthrough Zone® by systematically creating, capturing and confirming their distinctive value in every customer interaction.

Strong Towns member Joe Cortright runs the think tank and blog, City Observatory. The following essay, about a double standard applied to electric scooters versus cars, is republished from his site with permission.

This is the first of two takes on the rentable e-scooter phenomenon that we're publishing today. For a more personal account of the impact of scooters, and some insights into how they may transform the politics of urban street space, make sure you don't miss Chuck Marohn and Andrew Burleson on this week's Strong Towns Podcast! A link will be provided here as soon as it's available for listening.

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A little bit late to the party, but today the first electric scooters appeared on the streets of Portland. Bird announced that, with the city’s permission, it was scattering hundreds of its electric scooters in and around the downtown. A second company, Skip, is expected shortly, and Lime is also gearing up to enter the market.

One item in the Oregonian’s announcement of the new service caught our eye:  Bird will pay the city $1 per day for each scooter it operates, in order to help support the cost of road infrastructure:

Bird said it commits to: “collecting all of its vehicles each night for charging and necessary maintenance; practicing responsible growth by only adding more vehicles when each Bird averages three or more rides per day; and remitting $1 per vehicle per day to the city to build more bike lanes, promote safe riding, and maintain shared infrastructure.”

Interesting idea. As we’ve maintained at City Observatory, much of our urban transportation problem derives directly from the fact that the price is wrong: we don’t charge road users for the roadway that they use. The city is wisely asking Bird (and presumably other scooter operators) to pay in proportion to how many scooters they place on city streets. The dollar a day charge should keep them from inundating city streets with unused or underused scooters, and will provide money to maintain and improve infrastructure.

That got us thinking. What if the city imposed a similar proportionate charge on cars?  Right now, the city charges almost nothing to car owners living in the city. The city collects some money from those who park at metered downtown street spaces during prime hours, and gets a portion gas taxes (though not enough to cover the cost of building and maintaining roads). Let’s imagine that the city imposed the same kind of fee on cars it charges for scooters, but made it proportional to the number, size, weight, pollution, safety impacts and value of private automobiles.

Start with a simple per vehicle fee. Suppose each car owned by a city household paid a dollar day toward the cost of building and maintaining city streets.  According to the American Community Survey, Portland households own about 380,000 private vehicles.  If they each paid a dollar a day toward the cost of city streets, that would work out to about $365 per year, which is more than triple the amount of money that the State of Oregon (not the city) charges as an annual vehicle registration fee.  (This would provide $140 million annually for city street expenditures).

We should also consider the vehicle’s safety and environmental impacts. Scooters are smaller and cleaner than cars. A scooter occupies only a tiny fraction of the space occupied by a typical automobile. Also, keep in mind that a 25-pound, 20 mile per hour scooter is far less likely to be a lethal menace to pedestrians than a 2-ton, 60 mile per hour car. And the all-electric scooters (especially if charged overnight using renewable power, like wind or hydro), essentially emit no pollution (again, unlike cars). So if scooters are paying a $1 a day each, bigger, dirtier and more dangerous car ought to be paying several times as much.

We could also look at the road user fee relative to the value of the vehicle.  The kind of scooters that Bird is operating retail for about $500. A fee of $1 per day for infrastructure works out to $365 per year or an annual amount that is more than 70 percent of the cost of a vehicle. To be proportionate to value, a $10,000 car (a used, low value one) would pay a fee of $7,000 per year to use the roads.

Finally, we know that road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth-power of axle weight.  So a 25-pound scooter with a 150-pound passenger weighs only about 5 percent as much as a 2-ton car.  So if the car paid proportional to the damage it causes to the roadway, its fee should be something like several hundred times higher than the fee for a scooter.

There’s a profound mythology that we have a “user pays” road system. Car drivers pay only a fraction of the costs that they impose, and there’s almost no relationship between how much infrastructure one uses and how much one pays toward the cost of the system.

We should use pricing to align the costs of the transportation system with the demands that users put on the system. True, scooters will take up some urban curb space, and require road and bike lanes and sidewalks. But they take up so much less space, cause so much less pollution, cause infinitesimally as much road wear, and are so much less of a hazard than private automobiles that they ought to pay far less than cars.  Pricing is a sensible policy, to be sure; but if scooters are paying a dollar a day or so, then cars ought to be asked to pay $10 per day–or more.

(Top photo source: Joe Flood via Flickr. Creative Commons license.)

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By Tibor Shanto

Many of you are familiar with Stu Heinecke,  Author/Host of “How to Get a Meeting with Anyone,” if are not familiar with Stu, you need to be, now.  Stu reached for a discussion on persistence in pursuit of a client, in pursuit of success, and other steps one can and should take in engaging with prospects where you can deliver mutual value.  The conversation is below – enjoy!

 

The post Positional Perseverance appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on the ChartMogul blog here.

It all started with subtle changes — the inclusion of friendly illustrations, new colors in landing pages and tweaks to website copy. Many growth industries — SaaS included — congregate around new trends. These recent subtle shifts in approach to B2B branding have snowballed into a full scale rethink of what it means to produce and sell B2B software.

Pivotal moments in this shift include Dropbox’s 2017 redesign, from a predictable utilitarian experience to something far bolder:

WOW. Does this look like a cloud storage business to you? (source)

More recently, when I read Typeform’s “behind the scenes” account of the company’s rebrand (almost a year in the making!) I realized the extent to which B2B SaaS companies were taking a ground-up approach to designing brand experience and asking fundamental questions like “who are we?”

The new Typeform brand identity.

It’s fascinating to take a look at the companies driving such a movement and how they’re rethinking the way they present themselves to the world — let’s dive in!

Post-consumerization SaaS is here

The consumerization of SaaS is a concept that’s been discussed (perhaps to death) in recent years. It encapsulates a trend in B2B software toward a greater focus on the user experience (UX), often borrowing heavily from design patterns and trends on the consumer side. While this may seem obvious today (many B2B products offer a great UX), business software has historically lacked on this front — carrying the argument that UX is not a valid differentiator for business users who just want to “get their job done.”

“The new era is about mobile and SaaS apps that rewrite the way that work gets done. And while they are at it, the user is delighted with consumer-grade, ‘beautifully simple’ UI.”

– David Skok (source)

I’m calling it now: 2018 is the year when B2B SaaS breaks out of its consumerization shackles.

We no longer need to evaluate products in the light of their consumer equivalents or make guesses as to where certain design features were borrowed from. It’s time for B2B SaaS to stand on its own as a mature category of software with its own thought leadership, unique user experience and branding.

Why now? What’s driving this?

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we build the company of the future here at Drift. And I always come back to these three key ingredients: 1) We need to have the best products. 2) We need to have the best service. 3) We need to have the best brand.”

– David Cancel, Founder of Drift

The market for B2B SaaS is maturing. Venture capitalists are discussing the growing divide between SaaS and VC funding, with the potential for huge returns associated with VC becoming increasingly rare. (See The Rise of Non “VC compatible” SaaS Companies.)

“Founders must increasingly be aware that going the VC way might not be the best solution for them and that bootstrapping 100% or finding alternative ways of financing their company can be healthier.”

– Clement Vouillon, Point Nine Capital (source)

SaaS is a “winner takes most” industry, where the biggest gains and growth are seen in categories where the business can dominate. Today, most categories are ripe with strong competition.

It’s never been easier to build a SaaS business. A wealth of building blocks exist — tools, infrastructure, APIs to code against — making the cost of entry lower than ever. But all of this brings increased competition. With so many similar solutions on the market, it’s difficult to differentiate your product on features alone.

So how else can companies differentiate themselves? Price — yes, but that’s a race to the bottom. Brand differentiation is the answer. A well-designed and established brand is a defensible form of differentiation that can carry a strong influence over users.

What is branding?

It’s easy to think of a brand as something that’s strongly tied to visual design. That’s definitely the case, but it’s also much broader than that. Take Shopify’s definition of branding for example:

“Branding is all of the ways you establish an image of your company in your customers’ eyes.”

Which is to say that it’s more related to the customers’ perception of your company than the visual representation itself. Of course, colors, logos and aesthetics are one of the primary ways we influence our branding — they set the tone for customer perception. But the list of elements that influence branding is huge:

• Company logo
• Color palette
• Web design
• Product user experience (UX)
• Blog content
• Email content
• Public speaking
• Company culture
• Customer support experience

…and much more.

If you want to read more about the relationship with brand and user experience from a content perspective, check out the post Is Your Content Marketing Making Brand Withdrawals?

Characteristics of a modern SaaS brand

On the surface it might seem like one company innovates while the others all copy, but there are a number of businesses in SaaS working hard to build a stand-out brand experience. If you look close enough, they all differ in some way or another. But they do share some commonalities.

This post covers many of the visual elements of branding — the web design, general aesthetic etc. — because these are the most publicly-visible components. However, I would expect that all of the companies mentioned have built a stand-out brand that runs much deeper than this.

Bold, strong visual identity

The days of bland B2B software websites are over. The cutting edge today is punchy, colorful and full of contrast. It’s like B2B SaaS finally drummed up enough confidence to step out of its grey hoodie and show off that technicolor t-shirt underneath.

Example: IntercomIntercom cemented its commitment to design and branding a few years ago when it launched the Intercom Brand Studio. This in-house team seemingly has a lot of freedom to think deeply about the overall brand experience of Intercom and contributes on a wide range of projects — from product design to e-books and even print design. The result is a highly differentiated, forward-thinking SaaS brand experience. No other B2B brands out there really touch Intercom in terms of brand experience, and many design trends are pioneered from within the Intercom Brand Studio.

Example: Dropbox

Dropbox is an interesting case because it’s a business with a large number of both B2C and B2B customers. Perhaps this contributed to its role in influencing branding in the B2B world.

Some years ago, Dropbox ushered in many of the current B2B trends of today — utilitarian, functional design with small hints of character through friendly hand-drawn sketches.

Their 2017 rebrand (which was likely in preparation for their forthcoming IPO) saw a radical departure from the old-style Dropbox. The new brand serves to represent a highly creative aesthetic reflected in its target user base. While it originated as a cloud storage solution, the Dropbox of today is focused on tools for creation and professional productivity.

Real people, original images (stock images are destroying souls)

There’s a real problem with most stock images: they look like stock images.

While they used to be a cost-efficient way to leverage professional-quality imagery on your company’s website, the kinds of stock images used in B2B software have converged on a common aesthetic — there’s not really much differentiation any more.

Secondly, stock images are just too generic. Because they’re designed to fit a large range of clients and uses, they don’t do a good job of accurately conveying your specific brand, and they’re certainly not tailored to your company and its culture.

Finally, with massively popular free stock outlets like Unsplash, commonly used images can even be recognized in multiple places around the internet. What worse way to differentiate your brand than to use a hero image that appears on other sites in the industry?

B2B businesses in 2018 are realizing the true value of using real people in their images — whether that’s real customers (see Typeform below) or employees. This may require a greater upfront production cost than a purchased stock image, but the end result is far more engaging and relevant to the brand.

Example: Typeform

Typeform showcases real customers on their landing page. 

Example: Drift

Friendly, abstract illustrations

There’s no doubt you’ve identified the new trend in illustrations on SaaS websites. This imagery comes across as friendly and approachable, while conveying the product’s values in an abstract way. In many scenarios, these illustrations have replaced the generic looking stock images previously occupying the “hero” slot on the landing page.

Example: Airtable

The fun, whimsical illustrations on Airtable’s landing page suggest creativity and playfulness. 

Example: Atlassian

Atlassian’s landing page illustrations are visually interesting and also reflect the theme of the company – collaboration.

Simple, accessible language

Kiss goodbye to overly colorful, buzzword-filled copy! Simplicity is the flavor of the moment when it comes to the language of B2B businesses. But it runs a little deeper than simplicity alone. The companies pioneering in this area are using copy that’s refreshingly direct — in some cases, surprisingly so.

Complex copy is no longer recognized as a marker of sophistication, perhaps as a result of its overuse in recent years. In 2018, headlines are best served short, punchy and to-the-point.

Example: Basecamp

Basecamp’s landing page copy certainly strikes a chord with professionals suffering from the exact problems they describe – it speaks directly to the user.

Aspirational simplicity is the name of the game with this copy.

Extension of the brand throughout the user experience (including the product)

Engaging people on your company website with a captivating brand is a good step toward B2B success. But businesses are realizing the importance of carrying this experience far beyond the website itself and into the complete product experience.

In SaaS and subscription businesses there’s no one-time purchase. Instead, businesses need to attract customers and keep them subscribed by driving significant ongoing value. This requires a holistic approach to branding that’s inextricably tied to user experience.

Ask yourself this in 2018: Is your website writing checks that your product can’t cash?

Example: Gusto

The character and rich, playful nature of Gusto’s brand really shines throughout the product experience.

Emotive

Example: Typeform

Does emotion really belong in business software? Typeform would argue so. With their recent rebrand (which you can read about here), the team stripped everything back to first principles and faced existential questions like “Who are we?”

“By listening to our customers, we realized that people often refer to Typeform with words like “love, fun, beautiful.” That’s some pretty emotional vocab for a data collection tool, right?”

Alex Antolino, Creative Director at Typeform

After a year-long process, the end result is packed with emotion and personality.

It’s time for B2B branding to stand on its own

The above shifts in B2B companies leading them to leverage great user experience and effective branding has not happened overnight. We’ve seen several phases over a span of multiple years:

Phase one saw the enterprise businesses of yesteryear entirely focused on product utility and feature lists.

In phase two, businesses awoke to the possibility of great user experience and branding in B2B software. Some companies in the space realized they could innovate with a thoughtfully designed, delightful UX. These companies were largely borrowing from ideas and concepts in the consumer space.

Phase three is where we’re at today. Successful B2B brands are no longer chasing the shadows of their more innovative B2C counterparts — these companies now stand on their own and are paving the way for the rest of the industry to follow suit in creating a stand-out brand experience and truly differentiate themselves from competitors.

The post Why B2B is Finally Investing in Brand appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Two simple sentences can cause business owners a lot of anxiety:

• “Your rates are higher than this other person I know.”
• “You charge too much.”

At the beginning of my career, I would always get cold sweats before naming a price.

I was always scared of what the prospect would say. Interestingly enough, I agonized the most over my rates at a point when I was charging hardly anything for the amount of time I was putting into each project.

The response to my price is something I felt fearful of until I had a few realizations.

The first realization is that someone will always charge less than me, and I’m not in business to beat someone else’s price. I’m in business to make enough money to see a profit while providing a quality service to people who need it.

The second realization I had is that clients second guess your price if it makes you uncomfortable. They can tell if you’re uncertain. Be confident and prepare yourself to explain the value of working with you if necessary.

Here are a few other ways to handle the situation courteously when you hear from a prospect that you’re not within their price range.

Keep Referrals Handy

Maybe you know someone who’s at the beginning of their career and offers a lower rate. Keep a few people in your back pocket you can refer if someone is looking for a more affordable option.

I’ll admit, I often have trouble finding people to refer who provide the same quality as my peers and me. But if you know someone, it’s a nice gesture to offer alternatives at a lower price point.

Remove Some Services

I decided for myself that I would no longer negotiate down on my rates (unless it’s a particular circumstance). This is a highly personal choice. I’ve been freelancing for about four years, but I’m still pretty conservative in my pricing. Whenever I negotiate, it impacts the way I feel about a project, and that’s not great for your mindset.

Instead of negotiating on price, another thing you can negotiate on is the number of services you’re giving. For example, if you’re a freelance writer who usually writes four blog posts a month you could take it down to three blog posts and adjust the price.

This way you fit into your client’s budget, but you’re not lowering how much you’re going to be paid for a task. If you reduce a rate for a task, there’s a good chance a request to lower your prices will come up often in your relationship.

Bundle Services

The only circumstances when I consider lowering my standard rates are if I’ll be getting consistent work from a client or the work will be good for my portfolio. Working out bundled prices or a special rate makes business sense because it’s giving you a job you can rely on.

Final Word

Hearing that I charge too much used to throw me for a loop. It always felt like a hit to my ego when someone questioned my rates. Remember, business is business. A client is thinking about their budget when making a deal with you. It’s not personal.

There are many reasons sales training fails. These are the reasons I most often come across.

Lack of Leadership: I have walked into room after room full of salespeople because I was hired by management to train them, only to watch executive leadership and the sales managers walk out of the room. The leadership wasn’t interested in understanding what their salespeople were being taught, nor were they concerned enough about the execution of the new skills being taught to their salespeople. It was beneath them.

Single Event Approach: When sales training is a single event, the expectation is unreasonably high. The trainer is expected to teach five or six concepts, the strategies for employing new skills, and the tactical decisions as to how and when to use them in a way that allows for perfect comprehension. The sales force, for their part, is supposed to grasp all of this information in a single day and exercise perfect recall and flawless execution. This isn’t how people gain new skills.

No Ongoing Reinforcement: Most new skills are acquired over time. We tend to make mistakes, and it helps to have coaching and conversations to help the person learning gain an awareness of what they’re doing and how they might make adjustments. Over time, the distinctions they make allow for new choices and their skills improve.

Lack of Managerial Will: When salespeople are trained, it is up to their individual managers to reinforce the training, and that means ensuring the sales force is taking new actions and producing new results. It also means that they have to observe the sales force in the field to verify for themselves.

No Application: Providing information isn’t enough. Training without a focus on the practical application will not produce the necessary results. The concepts are important, but if the salesperson isn’t taught how and when to apply what they are learning in the context of what they do, they will lack the ability to apply what they have learned.

No Consequences for Reverting Back to Old Habits: If there are no consequences for reverting back to old habits, then there is no accountability. If the change you are enabling with training is critical, then the new skills and behaviors cannot be a suggestion; it has to be non-negotiable. If you allow your people to wait you out, they will.

Giving Up too Soon: Leaders underestimate how much time and energy is going to take to enable their sales force to acquire new skills, new beliefs, and new behaviors. They move on to other priorities when they need to talk about what they need from their sales force in every conversation. They need to point back to the training and the outcomes it was designed to help them produce over and over again until it becomes “the way we do things here.” When the leader gives up, the sales force gives up.

B2C Training for B2B Sales: B2C and B2B are different. The sales approaches are different. The conversations are very different. What is at stake is often very different, as are the implications for the person buying. The approach that one might take when selling cars, where a buyer who walks off the lot is a lost sale, is different from a complex sale, where the buyers are going to need multiple conversations over time to understand what they need, how to change, and to build internal consensus. The tactics used in B2C will ruin your sales in B2B.

Not Really Sales Training: Some of what it being described as sales training is not. It is training around the tools salespeople use, especially technological tools that are designed to help the salesperson with all sorts of tasks. Teaching people to use quoting software (or whatever is this year’s fashion) will help them be more efficient and give leaders more control. It might even help speed the quote to a client. But it isn’t likely to change the conversation between the salesperson and their prospect, nor is it going to create a preference to buy from them and their company.

The post 9 Reasons Sales Training Fails appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Not all prospects are the same. Thinking otherwise hurts your customer acquisition strategies, especially when you send uniform emails that are far from tailored to what your customers need or want. But, email segmentation has the power to personalize the messages you send to your subscribers. This technique has been proven to increase open rates by 39%, a study done by Lyris reports.

As such, it’s important to set parameters and intelligently group your subscribers in their proper segments. There are a few ways to do this, and it could also depend on your industry.

Demographics

Grouping your email subscribers by age, gender, and income bracket can be helpful in pinpointing their needs and motives when making a purchase. As such, you should be able to devise a creative way to collect the relevant information from your subscribers before or after they sign-up. You can accomplish this through surveys or quizzes that produces valuable results.

According to Cobb, below are essential information to collect for personalization and segmentation in the B2B industry:

• First and Last Name
• Company
• Position
• Industry
• Location
• Number of Employees in the Company

Meanwhile, these are the pertinent data to collect for B2C:

• First name
• Location / Postal Code
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Shopping Habits
• Purchase Behavior

Once you have demographic data from your customers, you can break them down into smaller groups for easier targeting. As an example, Strata names four categories that define the audiences of B2B campaigns:

• Sector
• Function
• Seniority
• Size

Email Engagement Rate

Another segmentation tactic is to keep track of your active and dormant subscribers. It will allow you to set the tone of your emails. That means creating two separate campaigns with the intention of engaging both groups.

For one, you can create enticing promos or events in the interest of getting your inactive subscribers to open your email. On the other hand, you can focus on sending sales-driven emails to your loyal subscribers.

Using your email marketing dashboard, take note of your newsletter’s average open rate and click-through rate. Group your subscribers into those that fall below average as non-engaged and those that hit the mark as highly-engaged.

Sales Funnel Stage

Your business has many different types of consumers, all in various stages of your sales funnel. Some could be new subscribers while others may have already been with you for months. Imagine the confusion they’ll encounter if you send them the same kind of email.

OptinMonster points out three subscriber segments and the kind of emails you can send them:

• New subscribers – Nurture this group. You should focus on giving them content with value, and present products or services that are relevant to their lifestyle.
• Warm leads – These are engaged subscribers who have not yet made a purchase. As such, the focus of your emails should be in the realm of discount offers, coupons, or any enticing promo that can push them to the checkout counter.
• Present customers – Don’t neglect customers who have done business with you. The goal is to keep them loyal. Try upselling techniques that can encourage them to purchase again.

Data from present customers may be segmented further depending on their purchase history. You can observe their frequency in purchasing or suggest other things they might be interested in based on what they bought before.

Conclusion

Email has over 3.5 billion users to date and boasts of an estimated 3,800% ROI, proving the effectiveness of email marketing.

While 72% of consumers prefer to receive promos via email instead of social media, sending generic emails won’t do the trick. You have to do it wisely through email segmentation. Try it out and see which techniques you can start doing today to change your email marketing efforts radically.

Here's the recording of today's webinar about how to use data to accelerate your sales process. Tune in below!

In today's webinar, we talked about how some of the world's fastest growing startups are creating and leveraging a data-driven sales process that helps their teams close more deals—faster.

We covered how to gather more accurate and useful data about your leads, strategies for perfecting your prospecting efforts (including which data points are most indicative of purchase-intent), actionable ways to translate data into meaningful insights, the role of website personalization to increase close rates, and much more...

Tune in to watch a full recording of the webinar right here:

A huge thanks to our panelists on today's webinar!

• Brennan Dunn, Co-Founder at RightMessage
• Will Frattini, Senior Manager of New Business Sales at ZoomInfo

RightMessage is the leading website personalization software for startups and SMBs, that helps teams create a better on-site experience for customers (which leads to significant lifts in leads and revenue). With easy access to segmentation and profiling tools like RightBar and RightAsk, their goal is to help turn your website into a powerful selling tool that shows prospects the right offer at exactly the right time. For all webinar viewers, Brennan and the RightAsk team are also offering free early access to their new tool, RightAsk Gather—a free way to gather aggregate data on who your visitors are and what they need most from your business. You can get early access right here.

ZoomInfo is a market intelligence provider, backed by the world’s most comprehensive B2B database—packed with highly accurate & detailed contact information for the prospects you want to reach.

Still have sales process questions?

Ask away in the comments below!

We'll weigh in and get to the many questions that went unanswered during today's webinar.

Thanks for tuning in!

There are plenty of customer service statistics out there that prove how valuable it is. But, without that statistics, it’s easy to understand that happy customers can do a lot of business, and do a lot for your business. Which is why providing customer service should be a key priority.

Just take a second to think about it. A happy customer is more likely to be a repeat buyers/user, they are more likely to refer people to you, and they will gladly write you a good review. You can imagine how providing a good experience for customers is a proven way of building up your business and reputation.

By using certain customer marketing tactics, you’ll be less likely to lose customers. If you are implementing support strategies to keep customers happy, you’ll find that repeat customers can actually spend more money than a new customer.

If you need more convincing, we’ve compiled a list of customer service statics. Let’s go through them now.

Category 1: Good Customer Service, Means Good ROI

You can probably imagine how providing good customer service can lead to success. By providing a good customer experience you know that your business can thrive, as well as your revenue. But, if you need reassurance, here it is.

1. Various sources estimate that it is anywhere from 3 to 30 times as expensive to attract a new customer as it is to retain an existing one.
2. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits anywhere from 25% to 95%. Bain & Company
3. U.S. consumers are willing to spend 17% more to do business with companies that deliver excellent service, up from 14% in 2014. American Express 2017
4. Customer Experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the year 2020. Walker

Category 2: What Bad Customer Service Means

You probably realize that bad customer service can be detrimental to any business. In fact, you’ll see time and time again people ranting about a horrible experience they endured. Watch out, because a customer who experiences bad service is likely to share it with friends. Feeling undervalued, wronged, or mistreated, are grounds for viral social media content. Here’s the proof.

1. Top two reasons for customer loss: 1)Customers feel poorly treated 2)The failure to solve a problem in a timely manner. Customer Experience Impact Report by Harris Interactive/RightNow, 2010
2. Americans tell an average of 9 people about good experiences and tell 16 (nearly two times more) people about poor experiences. American Express Survey, 2011
3. 33% of Americans say they’ll consider switching companies after just a single instance of poor service. American Express 2017
4. 50% of Gen Xers and 52% of baby boomers stopped doing business because of poor customer service. Conversion
5. It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for on unresolved negative experience. “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner

Category 3: Customer Opinions Matter

Obviously, customer opinions matter. They are the ones that help keep your business afloat. But, to put things into perspective, here are a few customer service statistics to really prove the point.

1. 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. Touch Agency
2. 58% of Americans perform online research about the products and services that they are considering purchasing. Source: Jim Jansen, Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, 2010
3. When it comes to making a purchase, 64% of people find customer experience more important than price. Gartner
4. Answering a social media complaint increases customer advocacy by as much as 25%. Convince and Convert
5. 40% of customers switch brands or services because a competitor offers better customer support. Zendesk

Category 4: The Power Of Customer Relationships

As you work on your customer service skills, you may realize that it’s a lot easier to build and maintain good customer relationships as well. So keep building those relationships, consistency is key.

1. Consumers do not buy just products or services — more and more, their purchase decisions revolve around buying into an idea and an experience. McKinsey
2. 69% of U.S. online adults shop more with retailers that offer consistent customer service both online and offline. Forrester
3. Feeling unappreciated is the #1 reason customers switch away from products and services. New Voice Media
4. 83% of complaints that received a reply on social media liked or loved the fact that the company responded. Bain & Co
5. It costs 6-7 times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Bain & Co

Category 5: The Best Ways To Provide Customer Service

One size does not fit all. Even though people look for excellent customer service, the way they want to receive it is changing. These customer service statistics shine a light that customer service doesn’t just mean good face to face interaction anymore.

1. Out of all self-service channels, customers most frequently use knowledge bases. Forrester
2. Millennials prefer chat support channels over others. Comm100
3. 86% of B2B executives prefer using self-service tools for reordering, over talking to a sales representative. McKinsey
4. Customer service interactions over Twitter have increased 250% in the last two years. Twitter
5. The Most Frustrating Customer Service Channel is Phone/Voice. Aspect Research
6. 46% of online customers expect brands to provide customer service on Facebook. Oracle Retail

Summary

It may come as no surprise, but customer satisfaction plays a huge role in customer service statistics. In fact, it’s customer opinions that help businesses evolve.

If you’ve learned anything from these stats, it should be that it takes some seriously good customer support to stand out from the crowd. It’s good to remember that today’s customers have a lot of power in whether or not your business does well. Plus, they have more options than ever.

Want your sales team to love you? Contributor Janet Miller recommends adding gate pages to indexed PDFs as a way to generate more leads and avoid lost lead and SEO opportunities.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Many professional services websites aren’t as good as the firms they represent. Successful B2B and professional services firms navigate complex business needs and extended sales cycles. Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to translate their hard-earned expertise into an engaging and productive website.

A website should be a powerful and silent partner in a firm’s business development process, their recruiting program and even their service or solution delivery. In this post, we’ll cut through all the fluff and explore practical website design trends that can help you stand out from the pack. Let’s get started.

A Professional Services Website that Works

In the professional services, expertise is your product and experience is validation. So website visitors who are looking for services like yours want to learn about your firms’ experts and understand the projects they’ve worked on. Without much difficulty, visitors should be able to get a sense of how your firm can help them solve the specific challenges they are grappling with (even if your firm offers hundreds of services across many markets). Consumer-facing businesses deal with a different set of issues, so they build their websites with those in mind. Naturally, an effective B2B website design strategy needs to address the unique needs of the professional services firm and its buyers. But there are still lessons to be learned from B2C websites that can apply to your next redesign. Here are a few ways professional serves websites are different.

• The importance of offline events – While the biggest changes in professional services marketing have come in the digital arena, some of the most impactful techniques used by the fastest growing firms are traditional offline tactics, such as public speaking and writing books. The best performing firms use their digital marketing assets to promote their offline activities.
• Connecting experts to experience – Both business prospects and potential recruits are looking for clues that suggest the firm they are considering is a cultural and organizational fit. Beyond the information on a firm’s bio-pages, these audiences want to understand how your teams work.
• Visible Experts® – The more you can make your firm’s experts visible and accessible, the more valuable they will become — and the more you firm as a whole will benefit by association with them. Your website should facilitate both of these goals.
• Longer sales cycle – The professional services website must be designed for the long sale. That means building in features that address every point of the sales funnel, from first-time, casual visitors to companies that are ready to buy. As a result, it needs to address awareness building, nurturing and conversion over an extended period of time. Of course, speed and responsiveness are crucial, too, lest an interested party lose interest and move on to a competitor.

Compelling content, positioning and a clear differentiation strategy is universally important, but getting it right can take some digging for professional services firms. It pays to commit to a strong foundation before breaking ground on a new website.

Relevant Professional Services Trends Online

As you approach your website redesign, it is useful to understand what other firms are doing today. That way, as you plan the features and goals for your site, you have a full toolbox to choose from. Below are some of the trends we are seeing on recent professional services websites.

• Professional services firms are adding more self-service products – In addition to the continued trend toward more integrated online and offline buying behavior, many professional services buyers are becoming accustomed to purchasing services directly online. While adapting to increased competitive pressures and the evolution of cloud-based systems, some firms have begun to deliver supplemental services and paid access to proprietary data directly through their websites, apps and other connected portals. In fact, Forrester predicts that over 13% of all B2B revenue will be direct through websites by 2021. Whether or not your firm has productized any of its services, these changes in buying behavior — and corresponding expectations for immediate delivery — will have an impact on the professional services industry.

• A new generation of leadership will drive significant change – A younger generation of leaders is entering the C-suite and board rooms. This new generation grew up online and with social media, so they search for expertise, validate referrals and use technology differently than their predecessors. Social media integration and higher expectations for user experience and engagement are the new normal. Gen-Xers and Millennials are the deepest part of today’s pool of professionals, and their motivations and validation methods can differ significantly from the baby boomers trying to hire them.

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning will improve professional services marketing efforts online – With so much buzz and hype around these technologies, it’s hard to tell fact from slick marketing spin. Machine learning and AI will have a dramatic impact on account-based marketing. Artificial-intelligence-infused platforms promises to gauge buyers’ intent and adjust priorities dynamically. The professional services website will serve a crucial role in this process by gathering information on relevant intent as visitors move through content and interact with the site. Ideally, this has the net effect of increasing a return on effort and producing higher-quality leads. At the same time, this process will have to be counterbalanced with adequate privacy protections.

• Natural-language search behavior is mainstream – AI and machine learning are also impacting the way professional services work and find information. Whether queries are typed or spoken, natural-language interaction is becoming more mainstream (and effective). As audiences become comfortable with natural language platforms like Siri and Alexa for common tasks, they will expect to have the same “discussion” with online search engines and websites. Professional services brands will need to adapt to this emerging opportunity.

• The talent shortage is real – Finding and keeping top talent is a top challenge for professional services firms. As the economy has improved, competition for the best recruits has become fiercer. Firms need to respond by upping their online recruiting experience and employer brands.

• Mergers and acquisitions are changing competitive forces and challenging brand identities -Consolidation continues to drive growth and change the competitive dynamics across the globe. Mergers and acquisitions are fueling increased competition from above and below as organizations vie for position. Our own primary industry research identified increased growth momentum at mid-large size firms. In fact, firms’ top concern in the next 3-5 years is increased competition from large competitors and new firms. In this rapidly shifting environment, many websites must contend with increasingly complicated brand identities (and corporate structures).

Strategies for professional services website design

Help your visitors experience your expertise
Just like many professional services engagements in in the real world, a visitor wants to know about you as much as you want to know about them. To help them find answers, think about how to use your site’s design, structure and integrated technology to make your content easy to find and consume. The more visitors can sample your expertise, the more quickly they will come to admire and trust you. Many b2b and professional services websites lean on industry jargon or buzz words in an attempt to sound authoritative and impressive. This is a mistake. Keep your language simple and conversational. The true mark of expertise is a person’s ability to translate complex issues into simple words and concepts. Your website should facilitate this process.

The best B2B websites deliver content that leads to productive conversations (and conversions) between a firms’ experts and its target audiences.

Be bold and plan to take chances

One of the biggest factors holding back professional services websites from standing out from the pack — and applying the lessons learned in other industries — is cost and risk aversion.

It’s easy to see why many professional services firms shy away from taking chances. Their products and services are complicated, and they are priced to cover the high costs of their development and delivery. Most firms believe they can’t afford to take risks if it might mean losing a few sales. But in a fast-moving economy fueled by disruption, you really can’t afford not to take some risks. If you don’t want to be left behind, it’s the only path forward. Your website is an ideal place to take some risks because it is relatively easy to monitor the effects of your “experiments” and make adjustments along the way.

The website design process for a groundbreaking website can be time consuming, resource intensive and expensive. Many firms fall back on an approach they use in their own work to get the highest quality with the lowest investment — they seek out “best practices.” The problem with best practices in web design, however, is that most professional services websites end up looking incredibly similar. It becomes a self-defeating game of imitation rather than innovation.

To break this mold, you need to think of a website as a dynamic and flexible tool. It is important to plan beyond launch day, especially if you deploy a design, feature or strategy that has a chance to be extraordinary.

To mitigate undue risk, adventurous teams define success, but also plan for… not–quite-success. What if the content you worked so hard on doesn’t show the engagement gains your team was planning on? Plans B, C and D should already be in the wings. Of course, that means you need to launch with a way to measure success when the website goes live. Sure, you can test features and designs with focus groups, but we find this sort of pre-testing can produce misleading results. The only true laboratory is in the wild. So it’s important to have a plan in place to monitor your results and adjust your approach post-launch.

Bold website design decisions also begin with the right team. Successful teams are usually small but carefully selected. Choose an internal team of trusted experts who understand your organization’s market strategies, audience behavior and information systems. It’s important for a firm’s leadership to carefully consider internal teams and external consultants before ceding control to the project team. But once you select a core team, empower them to make decisions. Nothing is less satisfying and effective than a website designed by committee.

Design to drive engagement
A number of B2B website design strategies translate well to the professional services. But they should never lose sight of two critical principles: 1) keep things simple; and 2) drive visitors toward engagement and conversion. Here are some great examples of elements small and large that can make a difference:

• Sticky menus add value as an element of responsive design. Use this technique to keep important navigation elements in sight at all times. Some sites are even pinning secondary navigation or filtering options to the bottom of the screen to provide access to important features when browsing websites on a mobile device. When they appear only in certain situations (such as when a site is viewed on a phone) elements like these can add welcome convenience and improve the user experience.

 

• Location awareness is becoming pervasive in other industries and it’s time that professional services website caught up. Have you ever noticed that Google magically shares the best local sandwich shops when you’re looking for lunch? There are sophisticated systems at work across the web to identify the location of desktop and mobile users. This has become a cornerstone of many consumer website SEO strategies, but it can be valuable to professional services firms, too. For instance, what if you could present the most geographically relevant expertise, talent and events to a website visitor? The value to firms with multiple offices is clear, but it can deliver more engagement and business to single-locations firms, as well. The technology is not without its caveats, but marketers and business developers are finding great opportunity to increase relevancy and improve brand experiences by making use of this maturing capability.
• Dynamic content for returning visitors. A well-planned offer strategy can nurture returning visitors and increase conversions. But the evolution of marketing automation tools can make these interactions far more relevant and flexible. If you deploy a marketing automation tool like Pardot or Marketo, you can implement sophisticated dynamic content triggers, contextual drip campaigns and powerful engagement tools into your website platform. By giving your website the power to serve more relevant content to your visitors, you can dramatically improve the way people experience and think about your brand. GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act require more explicit “permission-to-track” interactions, but this is another opportunity to be transparent about your website’s desire to strike up a relevant conversation (and frankly, something brands should be doing without the threat of regulatory oversight).
• Advanced conversational search features. AI technologies such as Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri are on the brink of changing the way people interact with the web. Audiences are being trained to “speak naturally” to computers and mobile devices in their everyday interactions. It won’t be long before that these tools will be used to search for and work with professional services firms. Contextual searching, natural language processing and adaptive search algorithms will be another powerful technique to provide visitors with relevant content and engagement options. These tools are not ready for prime time today, but they are coming soon. Stay tuned!
• Chat features and supporting business processes. With all of the interest in deepening visitor engagement and interaction, it is amazing to see the relative scarcity of chat options on professional services websites! Chat features are often dismissed as being too “salesy” or demanding too much support from business development teams. But the data speaks for itself when it comes to engagement and results. Visitors who use live chat are 20% more likely to buy. At Hinge, we recently tested live chat and found it profoundly useful — and relatively inexpensive and painless to deliver. We have now made it a permanent part of our web experience. As visitors’ buying behavior evolves, they become more likely to take a first step through chat. To a time-constrained audience, firing up a chat is less commitment than scheduling a call – but more immediate and engaging than filling out a contact form. Applied strategically, an option to chat can open a direct conversation that may have otherwise been missed.

• Video and animations can help you tell a richer story. It’s no secret that video has become a more attractive medium for websites and online promotion as streaming technologies have improved. YouTube is ranked second only to Google in its reach, and visitors flock to the platform for easy-to-consume “how-to” information. And B2B firms are catching on. The main obstacle is video’s high production costs. while accessible hardware and software tools continue to evolve and reduce the learning curve, creating high-quality video content still requires technical and story-telling skills — a challenge that technology is unlikely to solve any time soon. Using animation in video can engage audiences and improve understanding. And with advances in HTML 5 techniques, SVG graphics and compression algorithms, it is easier to build crisp animations that look great on high resolution monitors and mobile devices without affecting download speed. Like any other form of content, video and animation is only as strong as the strategy behind it. Whatever approach you take to video, the strength of its story and clarity of its message will be the true measure of its success.

Amplify and measure real-world marketing and business development efforts
Whether your teams are speaking at an industry event or working a recruiting booth, websites present an opportunity to support traditional, boots-on-the-ground marketing tactics and measure immediate results. Offline techniques are an important component of a successful professional services marketing plan, and high-growth firms know it.

By employing some of the engagement-driving features outlined in this post, a website can present tailored content to event attendees and provide relevant content to deepen and extend audience engagement. Using analytics and marketing automation tools in conjunction with these techniques provides an additional layer of intelligence and can trigger follow up actions that further deepen engagement.

Easy social sharing for educational content
Investing the resources needed to build and sustain a compelling website is no small feat, so make sure it’s easy to share the educational content you produce. Social sharing tools make it easy for your team and your readers to share content with their networks. After all, people are always looking for high quality content to help solve their business problems — your job is to deliver it to them.

A roadmap for professional services website design

1.) Gather relevant intelligence

You may be disappointed with your current website, but chances are it has at least some value. Your first job is to analyze what you’ve got and determine what’s worth keeping. Next, look around at competitors and try to understand what they are doing. How are they positioned? What technologies are they using on their websites? What, if any, content are they offering to their web visitors? Finally, think about what your prospects are looking for. What opportunities can you think of to satisfy their wants and needs? Document all these findings so you can refer to them during the redesign process.

2.) Assemble your team

The right project team can make the difference between success and failure. While marketing leaders usually assume the role of project champion, it is important to include key strategic and operational perspectives (for example, practice leaders or roles that are involved in strategic hiring decisions). If you don’t have an in-house army of website design experts and developers, choosing a consultant will be a critical decision. You will be working with this firm for a few months, so consider both technical skills and a cultural fit. Do you need a firm that will drive you through the process with a firm hand, or one that takes a softer, more collaborative approach?

3.) Roll up your sleeves

Developing a B2B website is complex process with many moving parts. You will need to be scrupulously organized. Prepare detailed schedules and milestones to communicate progress and keep the teams’ efforts and timing on course. Be aware that the most common bottleneck and schedule buster is your site’s content. In fact, you can’t start on the content too early. Identify what will move to the new site unchanged and what will need to be created new. Assign experts and/or writers to tackle each assignment and provide firm but realistic deadlines. And don’t forget to include time to review and approve any new pages.

4.) Prepare for life beyond launch

Stringent testing and a well-planned launch process are just the beginning of your websites’ journey. Plan to update your content over time, monitor your hosting performance, and track key marketing metrics to see if you are achieving the performance you expected. Though you may not have the traffic of an AECOM or Amazon, search engines like Google continue to reward better user experiences, including loading speed and valuable content. If your budget permits, invest in top-tier hosting or a CDN (Content Distribution Network) to give your website a performance edge.

A Closing Thought

Professional services websites and the online systems connected to them will continue to evolve and borrow techniques from consumer-focused industries. However, the road to success is peppered with challenges and potential pitfalls, so it will take commitment and flexibility to lead the pack. Using the lessons in this post — and a deep understanding of your buyers — you have an opportunity not only to take you next B2B website to a new level of performance, but to reinvent the way people see and experience your firm.

 

Effective employee development and leadership coaching programs are hugely important for today’s organizations. They represent an important investment in human capital that can deliver significant returns. It’s not enough to simply hire the “best” people; without a comprehensive program to nurture them and help them grow, organizations will struggle with engagement and retention. No one would wonder why a company with deteriorating, out of date production facilities struggles to be competitive; why should they think any differently about a company that doesn’t invest in employee training and development?

When asked to list things that give organizations an advantage over their competitors, people might not immediately think about skill development programs and coaching. Although it can be easy to focus on the kind of strategic vision or day-to-day operational efficiencies that make for good headlines, overlooking an organization’s leadership development makes it hard to identify why it’s so good at what it does. Simply pointing out that a company has “good people” fails to consider why it consistently has high quality employees and leaders so vital for success in an increasingly competitive economy.

Value of Coaching Programs

More and more companies are recognizing the value of good leadership coaching. A whopping 77% of organizations had plans to expand their coaching efforts in 2016, and the coaching industry as a whole amounts to a $2 billion dollar business. The rising popularity of coaching is undoubtedly due to its effectiveness. Studies have shown that the median return on investment (ROI) for individual-focused coaching is well over 300%, while the returns on executive coaching can be as high as 5,000%.

For many years, leadership coaching was directed mainly at the executive level, but recent trends have shifted to a model aimed at cascading skills through the organization. The time to build leadership skills is not when people ascend to positions of leadership, but rather before they take on those responsibilities. One-on-one coaching can help candidates identify potential difficulties and better understand the responsibilities of leadership. From a practical skills standpoint, the use of case studies, simulations and role play exercises as part of a coaching intervention make it possible to replicate situations leadership candidates will eventually confront in the future, allowing them to develop the skills they will need for those situations.

For their part, most employees want to be coached. Recent studies have shown that nine out of ten employees want coaching of some kind, but only three out of ten actually receive it. Millennials in particular place a very high value on development and are far more likely than previous generations to leave an organization that isn’t willing to invest in them adequately. Engaging millennial employees early and often with resources that give them control over learning or by partnering them with experienced coaches and mentors is critical to retaining promising leadership candidates. Considering that millennials will occupy half of all leadership positions within a decade, taking active steps to develop their skills and retain them within an organization is critical to building a competitive advantage.

Developing Flexible, Adaptive Leaders

In today’s fast-moving economy, circumstances are always changing. Organizations capable of adapting to new situations and shifting circumstances will find ways to succeed, while those that don’t will careen towards obsolescence. The same holds true for employees. If they’re not developing new skills and learning from successes and failures, they will struggle to overcome new challenges.

While there’s something to be said for consistency, leaders must be able to make quick decisions and learn to embrace change when necessary. Falling back on old patterns for no reason other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is not only ineffective, it can lead to frustration and a sense of powerlessness within an organization, especially when the old patterns are clearly ineffective. Many HR directors are already looking at the ability of candidates to deal with change as major recruiting criteria.

Many of the most effective leadership coaching models today focus on developing flexible leaders. These coaching interventions emphasize skills that help high-potential employees to become more situationally aware, understand how business systems interact and change, and identify ways to motivate employees through greater involvement and empowerment. They also focus on building up self-awareness, helping potential leaders to recognize how their own mental state and attitudes affect their judgment and how they should model their behavior to set a good example for others.

While many factors play a role in an organization’s success, very few companies will remain competitive for very long without an engaged, adaptable, and empowered workforce. By investing in comprehensive training programs and leadership coaching initiatives, organizations can ensure that they’re giving themselves the very best chance to compete in a dynamic economy where even the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure.

When I say “business coach,” you might immediately picture cheesy motivational speakers, a cold hotel conference room, and equally dismal coffee. But business coaching can be the single most significant investment you make in your career or business because it can teach you the ins and outs of the business world firsthand.

Pursuing a business or entrepreneurship coach can act as a great resource for all types of industries. Whether you’re a business professional struggling to earn a promotion or an entrepreneur unsure of your next move, the right business coach can set you on a lucrative path to success.

In this piece, discover what a business coach does, why you should hire one, and how to find one that will help you actualize your goals.

The goal of a business coach is to help business owners emphasize their leadership strengths, mitigate weaknesses, and establish a clear path that will help them make better business decisions and manifest their overall vision.

What is included in business coaching?

• Guidance in defining long and short term business goals
• Strategic planning for the growth and sustainability of your business
• Professional advice designed to help you gain valuable perspective
• Creation and revision of different business operation tasks
• Accountability for goal reaching in your organization

Your business coach will expect you to bring your full self during sessions so that you can work on your business rather than in it. Therefore, a level of self-awareness is required when working with a coach (in addition to the perspective you bring about your organization).

It’s also important to note that the type of coaching you receive can affect the “worth” they bring to your business whether you choose to find one at a local level or digitally.

Local Business Coach vs Online Business Coach

• Local business coaches provide the added benefit of working with someone who understands the market firsthand and uses their knowledge of the community to assist you. They could also potentially help you network and partner with other businesses by referral according to your needs.
• Online business coaches give you the flexibility you may not find locally. You can create a schedule and share documents in a digital format where you won’t have to worry about missing information or a meeting. Online business coaching can also be more cost-effective if you choose to interact less frequently, too.

Now that we’ve made that distinction, let’s discuss why you should hire a business coach in the first place.

For CEOs, founders, and executives, it gets lonely at the top. Without a mentor and accountability partner, many business leaders find themselves hitting the ceiling of what they can achieve. Leaders help develop teams, and business coaches help develop leaders.

In a successful partnership with a business coach, you stand to gain:

1. Greater self-awareness and a positive mindset.

A business coach will help you learn self-awareness in business in the sense that you’ll be able to identify your strengths, as well as areas of weakness that need further development.

The goal is that, through being self-aware, you’ll feel more in control over your processes and develop a positive mindset that is conducive to success.

2. Clarity on what success looks like and the steps needed to achieve.

A business coach is likely in their position because they have achieved success in their ventures. Given this, they have the experience to model for you what success looks like and how they got there.

Of course, success means something different to everyone, so they will help you outline what success looks like for you and your business goals and help you come up with the steps to get there.

3. Development of critical soft skills and decision-making.

As mentioned above, business coaches have significant business experience from which they can help you develop critical soft skills required to achieve business success and teach you how to apply these skills to your business decision-making.

4. Accountability and growth.

A business coach has no personal stake in your venture, so they will give you valuable, unbiased insight into your business at its current state and the processes you practice. In turn, understanding how your business looks to an outsider helps you take accountability for your processes, both good and bad, and understand what needs to change.

Your coach will also hold you accountable to your goals, as you know they’re there to follow along with your progress and watch you hit your milestones.

5. Increased individual performance, productivity, and confidence

You'll increase your performance, productivity, and confidence because business coaching helps you develop:

• Self-awareness and a positive mindset
• Skills needed to make valuable business decisions
• Accountability for your processes and recognize where change is necessary

Now you may be wondering, is business coaching actually worth the investment?

Are business coaches worth the money?

A business coach is worth the knowledge and experience they offer and apply to your business’s specific needs.

With that being said, complete a thorough search for the right coaching service you need. If you’re only trying to improve your marketing, find an experienced marketing coach. If you need a complete overall of your business, find an experienced coaching team and network.

Now that we know the benefits of hiring a business coach, let’s go over where to find one when you’re ready.

Where To Find a Business Coach

1. Business Coach Marketplace Style Website

A marketplace-style website is a valuable resource for finding a business coach in your local area as you’ll be able to browse profiles for specific skills that are relevant to your needs, browse ratings and reviews from customers, and get an overview of costs. With this method, you can easily see if they fit your needs and if past clients are satisfied.

2. Referrals

When looking for a business coach, referrals help you gain an honest endorsement from a previous or current client about how successful a business coach is. In addition, you can ask questions about their coaching model and if the referrer has felt as though they’ve been able to meet their goals with this coach.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is great for finding business coaches because it is filled with business-minded professionals. You can ask for referrals from your connections or simply browse coaches’ profiles to get a sense of their background, skillset and read testimonials and endorsements from past clients.

4. Thought Leadership

Business coaches often share thought leadership content that communicates their business philosophy. If you read their work, you can get a sense of their background, skillset, coaching methodology, and even their personality, giving you a well-rounded look into how they operate and whether they’re the right fit for you.

Regardless of how you go about finding a business coach, it is essential to note that you should have a get-to-know-you session with a coach to explain your goals to them and see if they think they can help you. This will also give you a sneak peek into what your relationship with them would be like if you choose to work together or if you need to keep searching.

Below we’ve compiled a list of a few of the top business coaching services available to help you begin your search for the right type of coaching.

Best Business Coaching Services

1. Noomii

Best for: Everyone

About: Browse the largest directory of life, business, career, and executive coaches on the web. Live outside the United States? No problem. Noomii has resources in 50 other countries.

2. Anthony John Amyx

Best for: Salespeople, managers, business professionals looking to accelerate their careers

About: Feeling stuck, disrespected by clients, or doubtful of your decision-making abilities? Anthony specializes in helping professionals breakthrough earnings caps and take control of their time.

3. CEO of Your Life

Best for: Anyone interested in life coaching

About: Melissa Dawn is an author, speaker, and coach. Whether you’re interested in a personal development online coaching program or her signature “CEO of Your Life and Business” online coaching program, her flexible, popular courses will help you determine your core values, your life purpose, how to meet your captain, and how to create a big picture vision.

4. John Mattone

Best for: Small business owners, entrepreneurs, sales leaders, managers

About: Mattone is the author of “Powerful Executive Coaching: A Roadmap to Unleashing Greatness in Your Current & Future Leaders.” His Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching Process includes four powerful phases and seven game-changing pillars leading to meaningful achievement in your work. Want to become certified as an Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach? You can do that too.

5. Business Success Solution

Best for: Anyone looking to remove roadblocks to their success

About: Coach Loren Fogelman helps you identify and clear the obstacles to your success. A business owner and mental health therapist, Fogelman works with you to understand how to identify your value, understand your impact, lighten your workload, and embrace the messiness of success.

Executive Coaching Services

6. Leadership & Sales Academy

Best for: Sales leaders, managers, executives

About: Find coaching for sales management, leadership coaching, and management consulting. You’ll work with one of their qualified coaches to build the right team, make them more productive, and coach them to exceed their goals.

7. Strategic Coach

Best for: Small business owners, entrepreneurs

About: Choose from either the Strategic Coach® Signature Program or the 10x Ambition Program™ with Dan Sullivan. Both offer the opportunity to strategize about what’s most important to your business at the moment and leave with concrete next steps and action plans to grow your company quickly and sustainably.

8. a)plan coaching

Best for: Organizations Stressing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)

About: a)plan coaching offers an optimized, scalable, and tech-enabled, virtual coaching service that places a strong emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). The program boasts impressive results when it comes to improving organizational elements like collaboration, talent retention, and employee fulfillment. If you're looking for a coaching service that reconciles a commitment to social empowerment with provenly effective tactics, take a look at a)plan.

Small Business Coaching Services

9. Jay Abraham

Best for: Small business owners, marketers

About: Abraham balances a curriculum-based approach with situational coaching. Learn his curriculum first, then chat with Abraham about your unique business situations and receive advice and helpful frameworks in return.

10. Building Champions

Best for: Small business owners, managers, teams

About: Seek personal business coaching from one of their trainers, attend an inspirational event, coordinate a team workshop, or simply conduct a team assessment to powerfully transform how your team functions and communicates.

11. Melinda Emerson

Best for: Female entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: From American Express to Staples and Sam’s Club — Emerson has coached some of the biggest brands around. Today, she’s SMB-focused and offers services including global SMB insights, engagement strategies for women business owners, and marketing execution.

12. ActionCOACH

Best for: Entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: Brad Sugars’ slick site will ask a few questions about you and your business to pair you with the perfect coach. Then, you’ll work through their systematic business coaching methods to overcome the challenges of maintaining a business. Not convinced you’re ready to buy? Get a complimentary coaching session to determine fit.

13. Karl Bryan

Best for: Business coaches

About: If you’d like to grow your business coaching program, Bryan is your man. He specializes in helping you learn to retain clients longer, receive payment for each service you render, and sign more clients quickly. Through strategic sales and marketing efforts, Bryan believes your business will soon be booming.

14. Small Business Coach Associates

Best for: Small business owners, entrepreneurs, managers

About: Get coaching on how to start a business, how to grow it, and how to train your employees. You’ll gain access to coaches who specialize in small business tactics and strategies to overcome day-to-day issues including cash flow, competition, and employee management.

15. Barry Moltz

Best for: Small business owners, family businesses, entrepreneurs

About: Moltz left IMB in the ’90s and has been helping corporations, SMB’s, and family-run businesses ever since. He specializes in identifying the root causes of your businesses’ issues and making recommendations you can implement immediately.

Entrepreneur Coaching Services

16. EMyth

Best for: Entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: From the company that pioneered business coaching and defined true entrepreneurship, the EMyth Coaching Program is a comprehensive system for building a business that gives you more freedom and produces consistent, predictable results. Their program is unique, pairing proven systems with personal mentorship to foster not only the growth of your business but also your growth as its leader.

17. Mindshop

Best for: Entrepreneurs, managers

About: Access Mindshop’s pre-built tools, workshops, and coaching solutions. Stay up-to-date with new business trends, get cost-effective online coaching (and learn how to offer it to your clients), and be challenged by a community of like-minded advisors.

18. Prestige Business Coaching

Best for: Entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: Robert Viney has 34 years of experience starting and running his own seven successful businesses. Now focused on sharing his experiences and knowledge with other business owners and entrepreneurs Viney offers comprehensive business coaching and mentoring services.

19. Vanguard Business Coaching

Best for: Entrepreneurs, small business owners, marketers

About: Complete a simple form and coach Andy Turner promises that with one 45-minute conversation he can find a minimum of $10,000 in additional revenue for your business. How will he do it? By focusing on strategically marketing your business.

20. Erin May Henry - Chillpreneur

Best for: Female entrepreneurs

About: Henry is a personal branding strategist passionate about helping women from all walks of life feel empowered to build businesses they love. Sign up for her one-on-one coaching and mentoring sessions and build online influence your clients can’t ignore.

21. The Startup Expert

Best for: Entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: If you’re worried about business revenue, aren’t sure how to market your product/service, need sales help, or struggle to find clients quickly, Tommi Wolfe is here to help. Choose from one of her existing courses or attend a live event and learn how to jumpstart your startup’s success.

22. Sheri Kaye Hoff

Best for: Business professionals, entrepreneurs, small business owners

About: Hoff offers coaching in business growth, leadership skills, mindset mastery, and business growth. Whether you’ve been running your own business for years or are simply a professional looking to take your career to the next level, Hoff can help you discover a clear path to creating the business, career, or lifestyle you want.

23. Mom Biz Coach

Best for: Female entrepreneurs, businesswomen

About: Lara Galloway specializes in helping mom entrepreneurs find success and happiness in the blended role of CEO of their businesses and families. Enjoy one-on-one mentorship from Galloway as you learn how to make powerful decisions, define your priorities and values, and move forward with your business and life with confidence.

Start Creating Your Roadmap to Success

Ready to find the business coach who’s best for you? It’s one of the best small business tools you can select. Contact a few on this list and spend time deciding which one is the right fit for you. This might take some self-discipline, but if you’re starting a business it can be the difference between success and failure.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

“Thank you for understanding” automatically makes me think I’m being let down. Someone could hand me an ice cream cone and say, “Thanks for understanding,” and I’d likely stand there waiting for the boom to be lowered while my cone sadly melted.

Often, this phrase isn’t a bad omen at all — it’s simply one that’s overused and misunderstood.

If you’re in sales, it’s important to be a student of language to ensure your communication is never weighed down by a poor turn of phrase or easy platitude. So, instead of reaching for your trusty “Thanks for understanding,” here are a few alternatives — along with when and how you’d use them.

Better Ways to Say, “Thank You for Understanding”

1. Thanks for your comprehension.

This is actually a helpful phrase when communicating with English speakers for whom English is not their primary language. “Thank you for your comprehension” translates in a cleaner, more coherent way for many non-native English speakers.

Example: “I’ve attached the documents for your review at the bottom of this email. Thank you for your comprehension.”

2. I appreciate your flexibility.

Many times, when we thank someone for understanding, we’re really thanking them for allowing us to extend a deadline, forgiving us for moving a meeting, or explaining why we need to stick with a certain timeline. In these cases, “Thanks for your flexibility” better communicates what you’re really appreciative of.

Example: “I appreciate your flexibility in allowing me to move our meeting to tomorrow.”

3. I appreciate you sticking with me.

You might also use this phrase to thank someone for bearing with you through a long presentation or meaty email thread. Instead of thanking them for understanding how complicated the issue is, thank them for sticking with you.

Example: “Thanks for sticking with me while our lawyers firmed up the details of our contract.”

4. Thanks for listening.

How do we understand? By listening. If someone understands why you’ve made a certain decision or taken a specific action, they’ve likely listened to what you have to say. And that’s worth acknowledging.

Example: “That was a long presentation. I hope you found it valuable and know that I really appreciate you listening.”

5. Thanks for your compassion.

Did you make a mistake and forget to attach a conference number to your most recent meeting invite? Everyone makes mistakes, but when you send an apology email make sure to acknowledge their compassion for your blip of humanity.

Example: “I apologize once more for the technical issues on our call today. We’re working to get those sorted out, and I’d like to thank you for your compassion on this issue.”

6. I’m thankful for your support and understanding.

Understanding doesn’t always equal support — but in some scenarios, it can. If a prospect goes to bat for you in a meeting with their team or superiors, thank them for understanding your product or service’s value.

Example: “There was some doubt in that meeting, but I really appreciated your support for what we do.”

7. I appreciate your dedication to digging into this issue.

Sometimes understanding requires both parties to spend more time and resources digging into an issue. In these cases, it’s best to acknowledge their extra work.

Example: “Thanks for getting your hands dirty and digging into this issue with me. I think it will benefit our project moving forward.”

8. I’m grateful for your commitment to working through this.

It takes time to work through certain issues. And if a client or prospect demonstrates the patience and fortitude to solve challenges with you, don’t just thank them for understanding — thank them for committing to seeing things through.

Example: “I know it wasn’t easy working with your HR team to get that hiring data, and I know we’re not quite to the finish line, but I wanted to thank you for your commitment to working through this with me.”

9. Thanks for your expression of faith in my abilities.

When a client or prospect takes the time to work through a difficulty, that’s a sign they’re committed to your product/service — or your abilities as a salesperson. When they put their faith in you, make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Example: “Thank you for supporting me in that meeting with your executive staff. I appreciate your faith in my abilities.”

10. I value your trust.

Similarly, when a prospect arranges for you to give a presentation in front of their peers or executives, it means they trust you enough to give you that opportunity.

Example: “I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your colleagues about [Company name] and what we offer. I value your trust and will work hard to meet and — hopefully — exceed your expectations.”

11. Thanks for your encouragement.

When mistakes are made, a great client or prospect might tell you they understand. Instead of mirroring their language, thank them for their encouragement. Because it is encouraging to have support when you know you’ve let them down.

Example: “I really dropped the ball when I forgot to invite your technical director to our meeting last week and wanted you to know how much your encouragement meant to me.”

12. Thanks for your collaboration/teamwork here.

Sometimes you’ll develop a collaborative relationship with your prospects/client. In these cases, they’re really going the extra mile and deserve to be recognized.

Example: “I know this project required a lot of your time, and I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you for your collaboration.”

Show Appreciation the Right Way

Truly great business professionals are students of language and always looking for new ways to tweak and test their communication. We hope you’ll try a few of these phrases out on your prospects and see how they humanize your emails.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Feel like it’s time to grow your business? Apart from finances, you need to hire the right team members to help your business grow.

Working with the right team members can catapult the success of your business because you’ll be able to essentially double your workload and your profit by passing off tasks to other people.

You just have to know when and whom to hire. It is also important that you know exactly what to expect from your employees once they start working for you.

While quality team members can help you gain back more of your time and take your business to the next level, incompetent team members can also have a negative effect on your business and processes.

Here is how to know if you are hiring the right team members to grow your business:

Hire Based on Potential AND Experience

As a business owner, knowing the right person to hire is perhaps the biggest considerations you will have to make. While you may want to hire a seasoned individual, experience isn’t always the most important thing although it helps.

Look at an individual’s potential as well along with how they’d fit in with the company culture and your overall mission. When hiring someone who’s very experienced, they may not think they need to learn anything new.

If your business is constantly growing and evolving, you need to work with people who are both skilled and coachable.

Sometimes the person with the least skills may turn out to be the missing link to the future growth of your business. Unlike potential, skills can be acquired on the job.

Hire From Diverse Backgrounds

Although you own the business, don’t be fixated on hiring people from only particular backgrounds. After all, the business world is very dynamic. To ensure you are adaptable to inevitable changes, get employees from as many backgrounds as possible.

As much as where the concerned employee is coming from is important, it is their potential to grow with your business that really matters. In just about five to ten years, your business is going to change. Ask yourself where the concerned employee fits in the whole picture.

Consider References and Previous Work Samples

This is pretty much a no-brainer but could slip your mind if you’re very excited about the hiring process in general. Be sure to ask for references and actually check them.

I know people who don’t do this and are taking a huge risk. You can also ask for previous work samples or a link to their portfolio if it applies. This also shows the potential hire that you’re serious about hiring them and making it a good fit.

As someone who works in the freelance writing industry, sending samples to a prospect is a must.

As someone who also hires freelancers, it’s important to also carefully look these details over and check references to see what other people’s experience has been like working with the person.

Schedule Some Trial Work

If the prospective candidate doesn’t have work samples or references or their experience has been limited so far, you’ll definitely want to consider scheduling some paid trial work for them first.

This will allow you to preview how they work within your business and let you know if they can follow directions. So many entrepreneurs skip this step when hiring team members.

Again, it’s risky to not do a trial unless you know the person has a proven track record. Even if someone referred the prospective candidate to you, it doesn’t hurt to test out how they’d cope with the workload and the tasks.

You can still offer compensation for the trial so it’s a win-win for both parties either way.

Take Time to Make Decisions

Don’t hire employees in a hurry even if you need someone fast. Once you start hiring team members, it can make or break your business. You want it to be a good experience and drive your business forward.

While you may have a lot on your plate, avoid pushing the hiring process too quickly. Take time and consider what it is that you want to see in a good team member. What value would a particular worker add?

If you interview, be sure to ask questions that will give you more insight and help make your decision easier. You may even want to ask other colleagues in your network for their opinion if you’re really stuck on choosing someone. They may be able to share insights that you hadn’t even thought of.

Offer Fair Pay

Finally, you have to offer fair pay if you want team members to stick around long-term and be happy. They should enjoy the work, but you also need to meet their financial expectations depending on your budget.

A good tactic is to ask what their desired rate during the hiring process so you have a good idea. If you know what they expect to get paid and can’t afford it, at least you can be upfront and let them know before you hire them. That way, unrealistic expectations aren’t formed.

Whatever your compensation structure is, it should be fair enough to retain your employees. Consider offering incentives and bonuses for hard workers who are able to hit certain milestones. If you think paying your employees well is expensive, try the cost of replacing them when they leave.

It takes a lot of work and time to run a successful business. With the right team of employees, you can be sure to take your business to the next level.

Have you hired team members yet? What have you done to make sure you hire the right people who will help take your business to the next level?

Most B2B marketers manage channels not campaigns.  They’re focused on the email going out next Tuesday, for example, or the trade show next month.  These are managed as isolated events, and unfortunately are often measured as isolated events.

Did the email generate enough response?  How much pipeline did the lunch and learn generate?

Research has shown definitively that a siloed approach to marketing has a direct correlation to a negative perception of marketing performance and impact.

A campaign mentality is better but still limited.  Let’s say you think through a series of emails, for example.  Or a series of events that make up a roadshow.  This could be characterized as a campaign.

But the same limited measurements often apply.  We look at email vs roadshows to evaluate which worked better, which generated more leads and/or opportunities.

Most B2B selling environments aren’t quite that simple.  Your prospects aren’t solely impacted by a random email any more than they are impacted by email alone as a channel.

The more complex the purchase decision, and the longer the buying journey, the more important it is to manage and measure the full body of work from sales and marketing together.  This is of course vastly more complicated to organize and measure, but it’s the reality of any complex selling environment.

Take a well-executed trade show, for example.  It likely includes numerous touchpoints across a variety of channels across sales, marketing, perhaps even customer success teams.  A sequence of emails before, during and after said trade show might be just one of several channels managed and executed in concert with each other.

So do you attribute success to the trade show?  Or the string of emails?  Or the sales rep who diligently followed up afterward?

The answer may be yes to all.  Still important to try and isolate the variables that worked best, which software or even a good marketing analyst with some regression analysis can do.

B2B marketers need to manage journeys, not campaigns.  Our job is to increase velocity of prospects through stages of discovery, commitment and conversion – not just isolated events and channels.

The post Channels, campaigns and the body of work appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

One might think that lead management for FinTech firms might seem to be a daunting exercise, but in reality, they function the same way as other lead management campaigns for other industries.

In this short article, we’ll show you how you can create opportunities for more leads and how you can nurture the ones that you have right now.

What Type of Lead Management is Effective?

While there are numerous lead management practices out there, not all of them are considered adequate. Among the limitless best practices we observe each day, on the other hand, you can choose those that will best serve your needs as a growing company.

Here are five best practices that you may want to consider for your FinTech business to remain competitive, healthy and sought after in the market.

1. Study, Revisit and Reevaluate Your Systems Constantly

Your target market today may not be the same potential consumers that your product or service will satisfy six months from now. Markets always change, and it is imperative that you continually check whether you are still targeting the right group of people. When you upgrade your product, it is highly likely that you will need to consider either a new set of targets or filter your previous ones and add new individuals to the list.

Being aware of this reality, it is highly recommended that you keep your lead management strategies in check to ensure that you are still following the right database of clients who can keep your business afloat.

Does your lead management effort translate into actual sales? Do they allow you to build lasting professional relationships with your clients? Has your company been benefiting from the data that your lead management activities have generated? These are but a few among the many questions that you need to ask yourself when reevaluating your systems.

2. Make Your Product Relevant

Since you provide the technology that companies need to manage the financial aspect of running their respective businesses, you best serve them when you keep your product highly relevant. This means that constant upgrades to your program or application are in place and initiated on schedule. Being relevant means keeping your clients on top of the game. It also means making them very competitive.

Your product should be so useful that your clients make it their priority to keep it in good shape. This is only possible if your company has a constant presence in their business long after you have installed the product.

3. Invest in Software that Will Fortify Your Lead Management

What better way to keep your FinTech company in fighting form than to invest in the one thing that you believe will generate significant returns for your clients – the best software!

One way to grow your business steadily is to have an efficient and reliable software system that does unquestionably effective lead management for you. Having a software system that provides automation solutions, for instance, allows you to receive data within a short period and little supervision. This means that you will have the capacity to identify the consistent and inconsistent behavior of your target market where it involves your product.

4. Keep a Clean Database

Learn to discard unimportant or irrelevant database to make more room for the ones that will give you good results. Avoid making the mistake of getting too excited about the prospect of making a sale without filtering your target client very well or else you will find yourself troubleshooting debts rather than generating more leads.

Make it a regular habit to clean your database so that you do not have to spend so much on extra storage space. There is also a need to eliminate inactive leads from your list so you can focus more on making new ones. Additionally, watch out for duplicate leads, so they do not end up eating up valuable storage space.

5. Take Care of Your Leads

The whole idea behind generating leads is for you to identify potential clients suited for the product or service that your business is offering. When the leads start to get in touch with you, your company must be equipped to respond to their inquiries and needs immediately. For one, it is necessary to give your potential client a proper reply 48 hours after sending you their inquiry.

Make giving quick responses part of your core competency as a company. When you establish this effectively, this will give you a winning edge over your competitors, and you would not have to worry about losing some of your clients to another provider.

To sum it up, you have to understand that your leads are people, too, and at the end of the day, it is more than just maintaining a business connection, but relationships as well.

This article originally published at The Savvy Marketer.