I wrote, The Number Are, Well, Just Numbers. It stirred up a lot of discussion and one observation from Gordon Hogg, was both amusing and illuminating:
“It’s the Cobra Effect! India’s colonial governor put a bounty on cobras to stop snake bites. Dead cobras came in but snake bites persisted. People started breeding cobras to kill for the bounty.”
I don’t know it it’s a true story, but it points out the unintended consequences of some of the metrics we put in place. We have to think about, “What behaviors are we driving–are those the behaviors we really want to drive?”
Too often, we blindly put in place numbers, without understanding how our people will achieve the numbers. Any sales person will try to figure these out–often gaming the system.
For example, a client thought: “If we do more proposals, we’ll close more deals.” He put in place a metric for the number of proposals the sales people needed to do. In could make sense, the logic being, the more opportunities we compete in, the more deals we have the opportunity to win, even if we win the same share (It’s the more times at bat argument.)
The problem was, sales people couldn’t find enough qualified deals to make their proposal goal. But under pressure to make the goal, they started sending out unsolicited proposals to prospects. Pretty soon, all the sales people were making the weekly proposal goal, but the business results weren’t improving.
The answer was, the manager thought, “More proposals…..” You know what happened.
Or the weekly/daily telephone calls goal. Another client had a goal in place. Over time, the people started achieving the daily call goal, but the results (booking more meetings) weren’t being achieved. Again, management, wasn’t looking at the underlying issues—what behaviors were they driving, were those the behaviors they wanted to drive, would they produce the outcomes necessary, if not, why not, was there another metric that would be more effective to drive the outcomes needed…..
Or the pipeline coverage model—We know if the win rate is 33%, our pipelines have to have 3 times the number of opportunities necessary to make the number. When people are struggling to make their numbers, often, managers react—“You need more in the pipeline, you need 4X, 5X, 6X…. coverage!” But the results don’t improve. What happens is sales people driven to get the coverage, cast wider nets, they get more into their pipelines, but the quality is poorer, as a result the win rates decline, pipeline coverage demands increase, ….. and the organization is in a death spiral because managers are fixated on a metric but not understanding the behaviors the metric drives, or whether it’s even the right metric in the first place.
Number and metrics are important. But we can’t implement them blindly. We have to assess the behaviors they will drive, the outcomes they create, whether we are measuring the right things, or the “what’s, why’s, how’s” of what we are measuring.
In reality, if we really understand the things that drive results, how to consistently achieve the results we want, the critical metrics/numbers needed to track attainment, and the behaviors those metrics drive, we end up not having to measure very many things at all.
Many people complain about a lack of time. After all, time is finite rather than infinite.
But obviously the clock ticks at the same speed for all of us. Yet, some people seem to get so much done while others struggle.
Therefore, the problem isn’t necessarily that we don’t have enough time. The problem is that some of us don’t manage it the way we should.
One of the things we do that is a misuse of time is to let others steal our time. Although we shouldn’t, there are reasons we let other people disrespect our time.
1. Spending Time with the Wrong People
One of the reasons we let other people disrespect our time is because we’re hanging out with the wrong people. There are a couple of different ways this can happen.
When we find ourselves being blown off by someone more than once it’s time to move on. Whether in our personal lives or professional, this tells us they do not value us or our time.
Another scenario is when we spend time with someone who wants to control every minute of the time we’re together. Then again, some people want to control the time when we’re apart also.
Neither one of these situations is respectful of our time. In the first it is clear that the other person is all about themselves. But in the second, the other person is too controlling which can suffocate us.
What to Do About It: Make Different Choices
When considering what to do about it, the answer actually seams rather simple. We should just make different choices about who we want to spend our time with.
Of course, that is easier said than done sometimes. If the other person is a family member we may be forced to spend time with them occasionally.
But that doesn’t mean we have to seek them out on our own. Instead, we should move on with our own lives and spend our time with others who clearly want to be with us.
2. Wanting to Be Team Players
There are additional ways we let other people disrespect our time. For instance, we want to be seen as team players in our work and otherwise.
Because of this trait, others may disrespect our time by asking even more of us. They recognize that we want to be a part of the team and they take advantage of it.
But the end problem with this is that we have more to do than we can handle. This leads us to being stressed out and unable to accomplish everything we are tasked with.
Others then view us as not being productive. We may even get passed over for raises and promotions all because we want to do our best.
It’s much the same in our personal lives. When we take on too much because we want to gain the approval of others, we may end up disappointing them instead.
What to Do About It: Recognize Limitations
Wanting to be a team player in and of itself is not a bad thing. However, it is a bad thing when it holds us back or has negative consequences.
Instead of trying to do more than we can just to fit in and be a team player, we should recognize our limitations. We must respect our own time and know when to ask for help.
How do we do that? By keeping an organized schedule of what we must accomplish each day. This way we know how much time we have available for added projects.
Additionally, it’s perfectly alright to let others know when we have too much on our plates already. Yes, that means risking letting them down. But that is far better than complete failure by being unable to finish projects we take on.
3. Genuinely Trying to Help Others
Some of us truly love to help other people. This is actually a great problem to have in today’s world. There are too many people who prefer not to get involved and help others who need it.
Unfortunately, at times it causes other people to take advantage of our giving natures and disrespect our time. When they recognize that we enjoy working hard they oblige by piling on more work than we can possibly do.
What to Do About It: Offer Alternatives
To combat this problem we must take our time back. Wanting to help others is great, but not at the expense of ourselves. So, rather than taking on the priorities of other people, we must put our own first at times.
If we must tell someone we are unable to help them out with a request, we should offer alternatives. This softens the blow while respecting our own time limitations.
Still, there will be instances when no alternative exists. We must remember that to help others some of the time we must help ourselves first.
4. Not Wanting to Say “No”
Not wanting to say “no” is a big way we let other people disrespect our time. As soon as some people recognize this characteristic in us, they use it to their advantage.
Without remorse of any kind they take our time from us and use it for themselves. Of course, we help them do this by not wanting to say “no” even when we should.
What to Do About It: Stick to a Calendar
There is a way to absolve ourselves of guilt when we must deny other people. Rather than feeling guilty about saying “no”, simply tell them when our calendars are too full.
But the only way to know when it actually is full is to use our calendars to their full potential. That means understand what it can and can’t do. It also means putting all entries in our calendars that should be there.
5. Trying to Be Available at All Times
A huge reason we let other people disrespect our time is through trying to be available at all times. Upon examining this reason we would see that this has at least two issues.
One is that there is just no physical way to be available at all times. The human body needs a break in the form of food, sleep, and other activities to function optimally.
Another problem is that being available at all times leads to work burnout. We begin to put off chores, neglect ourselves, or lose interest in social activities. On top of that we are constantly exhausted.
What to Do About It: Make Clear Boundaries
The good news is that there are ways to put a stop to constant availability. The first thing we can do is to make clear boundaries and enforce them.
Other people will disrespect our time if we don’t put a stop to it. We must not allow work to overtake our personal lives. Otherwise, what are we working for? Are we working just to live and living to work?
There must be some personal enjoyment in life. This is why boundaries need to be set and, at least most of the time, followed.
We all have the same amount of time in a day. But if we let other people disrespect our time then we are partially to blame. We must value ourselves enough to do something about it.
There are two fundamentals to maximizing your ability to win a deal–unfortunately, both tend to be executed very poorly. The first is Qualification, or as I like to call it, Disqualification. This focuses us on pursuing the right deals with customers that are committed to changing.
The second is the Discovery Process.
Too often, sales people skip right over this, going straight to pitching their products/solutions. We see day in sales people’s clumsy outreach to us. Whether in an email or a bad prospecting call, most skip over qualifying and understanding what our needs/interests might be–immediately pitching their products.
The other mistake, more “sophisticated” sales people do is “selective discovery.” They ask questions about problems, goals, needs, but selectively–only looking for something that enables them to immediately jump to presenting their product. It goes something like:
Salesperson: “What are your needs? (Actually a terrible question, demonstrating no knowledge of the customer, the potential areas they might be interested in, but not surprisingly the first need identification question sales people ask?)”
Customer: “We want a robust system that all our people can use and will support our growth for the forseeable future.”
Salesperson: “Let me tell you about our product…….”
In their needs identification the sales person is listening to that cue that enables him to launch into talking what he wants to talk about, rather than trying to understand the customer.
Each area we identify with the customer enables us to dive deeply into a more complete understanding. Taking the example, from above, the customer wanting a robust system, an astute sales person might ask:
What do you mean by a “robust system?”
How is your current system failing you?
What is the impact of that on your business?
How will you know you have chosen a robust system?
What do your expect to achieve with that robust system?
How would you measure your ability to achieve those goals?
One could go on an on in probing the customer to understand what they are trying to achieve, why it is a problem, why it is important to them, and what the impact might be.
Discovery helps you understand people’s attitudes, opinions, hopes, dreams, fears, goals, what’s important to them, and why.
Discovery helps you understand what they know, how well they may understand the area they are looking at, how well they may understand alternative solutions.
Discovery helps you understand how they will buy, who will be involved, the criteria they will use in selecting a solution, their priorities, the process they will use to buy.
Discovery helps you understand what they don’t know but need to learn and understand to achieve what they are trying to do.
Discovery helps you understand where they are at currently, what/why they need to change, how committed they are to change, what they want to achieve and when.
Discovery helps you understand what they need to do on their side to get approval for the change, how they will get support, how they will actually implement the solution and drive the change.
Properly done, in the discovery process, the customer will tell you everything you need to do to earn their business. All you have to do is respond!
But there’s another important aspect to Discovery.
The customer is going through their own Discovery process.
This is our opportunity to teach them, to help them learn.
Maybe they don’t understand the problems at a deep enough level. Or they don’t understand what they can achieve.
Perhaps they don’t know what they should be looking for and why. Or they have overlooked some critical things, or they are missing some opportunities.
Perhaps they don’t know how to organize themselves and make a decision, or critical activities they should consider in buying. How should the evaluate the alternatives? Should they do a POC? What could they learn from people that are already implementing solutions? How can they more effectively justify the investment to their management, getting approval? What’s it take to implement the solution, where are the risks, how do they avoid/mitigate them?
Often customers through the normal pressure of day to day business or through lack of experience in buying rush through their own discovery process missing critical things.
The customers’ discovery processes are our opportunity to teach them how to buy and how to achieve their goals most effectively.
Imagine taking the time to do this well yourself and helping the customer take the time so they can do this well.
This process, in itself, enables you to create tremendous value with the customer. It enables you to differentiate your self from your competition–remember all of them are rushing to the pitch.
Once you have a properly qualified opportunity–the Discovery Process is where you win or lose the deal.
Webinars are a dime a dozen. As a marketer, how do you make your Webinar invitations stand out from the crowd, a challenge made bigger when you’re presenting on a topic (say, GDPR) that is so commonplace as to be completely generic?
The key to Webinar success, I would argue, isn’t about wild and wacky creative, though good creative never hurts. When Webinars succeed, it’s generally because a) the topic is compelling, and b) the hosts make a successful case for why that event is worth the reader’s time.
Take the invitation below from the folks at eMarketer. Visually, it doesn’t jump off the page, and copy-wise, it’s not perfect. And yet, I believe it makes a compelling case for why their GDPR Webinar is worth the investment. Here’s what works:
1. Sell the Event
Before I’ve read a word of body copy, I know what the event is, the basic value proposition (7 Things), and when it’s being held. The only thing missing? A registration button that prevents me having to scroll further down the page.
Incidentally, the second sub-head (“GDPR is Here …”) below the header might seem redundant since it’s a repeat of the headline, but here it serves a purpose: if the reader’s email client has images turned off, the title of the Webinar is still front and center.
2. What I’ll Learn
The body copy immediately identifies the speaker and what that speaker will cover during the event. There’s no wading through an introductory lecture on the importance of GDPR and why I should care. Just one suggestion: the copy would be more effective in second person (“you’ll learn”, “you’ll hear”) vs. third person (“she’ll break down”, “she’ll offer up.”)
3. Specific, Concrete Benefits
The three bullets offer specific, tangible reasons to attend: a data-packed discussion, seven must-know best practices, an opportunity to interact. All concrete reasons why this particular GDPR Webinar is worth my time.
4. Multiple Calls to Action
The body copy includes two text links to the registration page – both of which use action-oriented language (“Register here”, “Reserve your seat …”) There’s also a registration button below the body copy, a critical element if the email is being read on a mobile device.
What would I change? Well, a more engaging header image wouldn’t hurt. I’d have the subhead read: “7 Things” rather than “Seven Things” because, in most tests, digits tend to outperform numbers as words. I’d include a headshot and a brief bio, even below the body copy, to make the event more “real” and to reinforce the authority and expertise of the speaker. And I wouldn’t tell the reader that if he fails to show up, he’ll get a link to the recording anyway, unless the hosts really don’t care if people attend the live event.
Contact us to find a world-class marketing executive today
You’re now in a world where innovation and change is no longer an option. Frankly, your organization needs an incredibly capable marketing leader, and you need one fast. Choosing a top marketing leader with the right skills can completely transform your organization and drive ROI in ways that weren’t possible before.
If you’re a marketing leader, you most likely know the kind of executive you need to bring in to push enterprise-wide change. But if you’re a CEO or other senior-level executive who has not previously worked in a marketing leadership, it can be quite difficult to truly understand what’s needed in a promising marketing leader.
Digital Marketing Executive Search – How Do You Know You Found the Right Leader?
According to experts, CMOs are in the C-suite for an average of 4 years – half of the tenure of CEOs. There’s a reason why the tenure of CMOs is the shortest in the C-suite. Through years of our own experience in marketing, we inherently know what it takes for marketing executives to succeed. Organizations who hire a marketing leader who fails to meet expectations and drive results can take years to recover.
As marketing executive recruiters, one of the most common challenges our clients need help with is how to strategically vet for candidates when choosing the right marketing executive. If you’re not a marketing expert yourself, doing so can seem somewhat of a daunting task. Without knowing how marketing has truly evolved over the past few years and the type of impact a strong marketing team has on your business, it’s challenging to conduct a successful marketing executive search to find the right person.
Fortunately, business leaders can use the support of a marketing executive search firm to minimize the risk of hiring a subpar marketing leader. If you work with recruiters who have a critical perspective and specialized marketing experience themselves, you’ll find that you are in the best position to recruit the right marketing leader for your business.
Here are some common mistakes we see non-marketing leaders make far too often when vetting and recruiting for marketers to lead their organizations:
Leaving Digital on the Back Burner
Your HR team may be excellent at hiring top talent but when it comes to digital, are they up to speed? Marketing has changed more within the past five years than it has in the past decade. This makes it extremely challenging for top marketing experts to keep up; much less those who aren’t even in the marketing space.
Non-marketing executives are working hard to be current in their field, which makes it virtually impossible for them to also understand what it takes for a candidate to succeed in areas of digital marketing, innovation or e-commerce. So while it might be possible for them to vet candidates at a high level for traditional marketing skills, the new world of digital is out of their comfort zone. Therefore, they don’t end up asking the necessary questions that accurately gauge the digital aptitude in candidates. This can lead to a major mis-hire.
How do you know if this person is going to take your organization through a transformation that takes your efforts to a new digital level? You don’t necessarily need digital eyes to assess how digitally-adept someone is, but there are certain questions that must be asked that reflect the changes that have occurred in marketing over the past years.
You must ask them about previous digital programs they’ve implemented and managed, the ROI they saw from those efforts, and other benefits their organization gained. Ask how they’ve utilized technology to move businesses forward, and the changes they’d make to your website within the first 30, 60 and 90 days based on what they’ve seen. This will help you understand the type of changes they see are important in digital, and how to make integrate such changes into your business.
Leadership is more important now than ever in marketing. No matter how good of a marketer someone is, if they’re not a good leader – they’re going to fail. Not only will they fail to drive change in your marketing department, but cross-functionally across the organization.
Leadership that’s effective across the entire business is what you should expect from a top marketing executive. However, effective leadership doesn’t just come with the title. It is learned and crafted through extensive experience, and is demonstrated through those who are inherently capable of leading people toward success.
You must evaluate if candidates are able to build a vision for marketing, integrate digital and traditional marketing, and sequentially manage the organization through necessary changes. This will likely involve having to change the current org structure and the people who are working on the team (unless it’s been done in the past six months), and explaining all of these changes across the organization all while keeping morale up.
Asking your potential marketing executive hire questions around leadership and change management isn’t as difficult as vetting for their digital intelligence. However, figuring out the type of leadership challenges they’ve had and how they have pushed digital transformation with changes to the org structure in the past is just as important.
Underestimating Their Value
Even with the changes in digital and rise of demand for talent in the marketplace, we’re finding more and more organizations underestimate the cost of a great marketing executive. Many organizations are hiring for a position they’ve never hired before, particularly when it comes to hiring for digital roles like the Chief Experience Officer and VP of Digital. As a result, they undervalue the true cost of finding top talent to fill these roles.
Non-marketing leaders who are aware of the value of critical positions know the competition is high for A-level marketers and that the supply and demand curve is significantly disproportionate. However, we still see many business leaders fail to allocate enough spend toward finding the exact marketing leader they need.
Tying compensation to the results and value a cutting-edge marketing leader can add to your bottom-line is more important than restricting your talent pool with a strict budget. If you’re having trouble determining your budget on your next marketing leader, marketing executive recruiters can help you establish a logical cost that will ensure you get the exact talent your business needs.
Often, organizations don’t intuitively vet for culture fit themselves. However, with any marketing executive search, we prioritize a huge focus on making sure candidates truly fit in with the culture of the organization. The culture of your company significantly determines the success of a leader, no matter how skilled of a marketer they are.
You must understand what your culture is, where you’ve been successful at it and where you’ve failed. When vetting for the right marketing leader, it’s crucial to ask questions that ensure their personality and values are aligned with the culture.
Failing to do so will result in a leader who isn’t able to drive company-wide change, much less take your marketing to a new level.
What to Look for in an Executive Search Partner
Closing Words
If you’re not a marketer and you want to hire top of the line leaders who will take your organization to its full potential, you must be aware of what it truly takes to succeed in marketing. You may not know much about what’s going on at the forefront of marketing, which is fine because it’s simply not your responsibility.
However, it is up to you to find the right marketing leader who can push digital transformation and take your marketing to new heights. Doing so (successfully) may require using the resource of an experienced marketing executive search firm who has a practiced eye in spotting top marketing talent to specifically meet your organization’s needs.
The jewelry business may be easy to penetrate, but success is a difficult feat. With the intensity of the competition and the changing market demands, it is challenging to craft your own success story. To make things easier, keep in mind these tips.
Be in the Know
It is important that you are knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the business. If you are a novice, it will help to first work on obtaining a certification. The latter is offered by various reputable organizations, such as the International Gem Society. They have courses that are designed for both beginners and experienced jewelers. From the identification of the gemstone to the appraisal of its market value, you are sure to learn a lot of things.
Mind your Voice
Your voice is important when conveying a sales message. If you are selling jewelry face-to-face, you need to pay attention to the tone of your voice to close a sale. It must convey a positive emotion and enthusiasm. Speak in such a way that you will be seen as someone who knows what he or she is talking about. If you seem robotic–meaning, it seems like you have memorized your pitch word by word–you might just instantly kill the sale.
Establish a Unique Brand
Competition can kill your business, but only if you do not know how to be ahead of everyone else. With this, pay attention to the creation of a unique brand. If you have a physical shop, create a welcoming environment that puts customers at ease instead of being intimidated. If you have an online presence, use your website to establish a unique personality.
Educate your Buyers
It is also important that you educate your clients about the things that they need to know. For instance, in your website, it is not enough that you publish a gemstones list. Provide a brief background of each gemstone. Publish buying guides and informative articles that will help clients to reach a well-informed decision. If you have salespeople, make sure that they can provide valuable insights to the customers.
Say Nothing
This is a good tip in case you have an actual store where people can see and try the jewelries that you are selling. At times, the best technique to close a sale is to say nothing. Give the customers the opportunity to decide on their own. Let them try the jewelries and do not be too obtrusive. They will appreciate it when you do not try too hard to sell.
Use Direct Mail Marketing
Even in the age of digital marketing, it is undeniable that direct mail is still effective, especially when it comes to selling jewelry. Even Forbes supports the assertion that direct mail marketing is far from dead. It is a cost-effective strategy that can yield significant returns. There is a high response rate and the perceived value is also strong.
Take your business above the competition with the tips that have been mentioned above. Dominate the market and watch your sales skyrocket!
For what it’s worth, telemarketing is still relevant to businesses today and for very good reasons.
B2B marketing, after all, entails listening to your audience and asking about the issues they wanted to be resolved right away. Telemarketing does not falter in this respect it’s all about urgent and intimate communication. Making a cold call to a lead opens you up to better sales opportunities better than any other marketing channel could.
In fact, research by DMA Contact Centres and Telemarketing Council showed telemarketing as the top channel, with an effectiveness rate of over 90%.
With the advent of digital marketing today, businesses are afforded newer and more effective means of reaching out to their target audience, positioning their brand front and center, and hit record revenues. The trend right now is integration, and marketers know better than to allow only one marketing channel to do all the handy work in lead generation and appointment setting.
For a fact, having a diversified marketing campaign can be beneficial to a business. Not only does it work to cover larger prospect populations, it also functions to boost ROI significantly. In the same paper, DMA showed that integrated telemarketing can deliver a thousand times the ROI for B2B companies. This proves once and for all that telemarketing isn’t dead; it continues to thrive as long as businesses are seeking to increase their qualified leads and come up with hard-hitting results.
As a marketer, you might as well ask yourself, “Where to start?”
For that, you only need to identify the channels you pair your cold-calling campaign with. For DMA, email continues to be the most reliable of these channels among B2C and B2B companies. Although company websites and social media remain as two of the most effective ways to scout for leads, email does a lot more when it complements the urgent and straightforward engagements that only telemarketing can secure.
One thing’s for sure, email can further add to telemarketing’s effectiveness in terms of generating leads by following up on where the initial conversation last took place. At the end of a cold call, marketers can initiate an email blast and provide content and information that had been left out.
But aside from email, marketers can also integrate their telemarketing with other effective channels. You can maximize your telemarketing by using the following tips:
#1. Interact with your audience via social media.
We all know that social media is overrated, but hear us out on this one: You can use social channels in order to gather important information about your prospect’s expectations and needs. That way, you can come up with the right talking points that will guide you even before you pick up the phone and start calling.
#2. Establish your brand via social.
Most of the time, your prospects don’t even know who you are. If they are not that aware of your brand, then why should they even bother answering a cold call from you? It makes a whole lot of sense if you have a telemarketing campaign without an effective social media presence to back it up.
#3. Set appointments using email.
Want to maximize your integrated telemarketing and email marketing efforts? Check this out. While your telemarketing does the hatchet job of scouting for qualified leads, email allows you to set appointments with ease. For one, when an appointment is set via cold call, you can then send an email to confirm the date and other details. This allows you to reintroduce yourself and provide a summary of the things you discussed over the phone.
#4. Use email to verify contacts.
There are some things you just can’t do with telemarketing alone, and one of them is data cleansing. To know for sure if the contacts on your list are active, you only need to send an email to the address and follow up with an outbound call to confirm the contact. Here’s how to Declare Your Independence from Bad Data: A 5-Step Plan.
According to dma.org.uk, telemarketing is mainly used for the following purposes:
The best conclusion about telemarketing integration was also quoted by DMA so here it goes:
The marriage of telemarketing and email remains the most effective combination. Yes, telemarketing requires a greater investment than some channels but with ROI gures of between 500% to 1,100% it offers a return for every £1 spent – and that return will increase if it’s combined with other marketing channels.
But businesses need to be more creative in how they use telemarketing – it can be used for more than just selling. Think beyond immediate sales or lead generation and consider incorporating other elements into your call, such as obtaining opt-in for further marketing contact.
Our digital lives mean alternative products and services are just a click away, but the human interaction of telemarketing can improve customer loyalty and trust when it’s done right.
The way Google Analytics reports bounce rate and time on page leave a lot to be desired. Contributor Marcus Miller outlines two easy ways to get better data on single-page visits so marketers understand how users engage with their content.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Whenever we attempt to break down the key success factors in managing complex B2B sales opportunities, it soon becomes apparent that there are a number of critical activities that need to be mastered between the first contact with a potential customer and the conclusion of a successful sale.
And when we go on to compare the differences between our top salespeople and their less-effective colleagues, it is usually equally obvious that the competence and skill with which they perform these critical activities has a profound impact on their outcomes.
Over many years, and following dozens of sales effectiveness assignments, I’ve identified 14 critical factors that seem to have a consistently important impact on sales success. I wonder how my experiences compare with yours?
Now, 14 factors might seem like a lot to master – and it probably would be for simple low-value transactional sales. But don’t forget that these observations are in the context of complex, lengthy, high-value B2B sales.
With that in mind, let’s also acknowledge that the amount of resource – not just the sales person’s time – required to win these complex deals is substantial, as are the rewards of winning and the costs of losing. Mistakes tend to be expensive!
These complex B2B deals suffer from multiple potential points of failure, and they rarely give salespeople the opportunity to pull off one of those mythical heroic last-gasp maneuvers that transforms a failing deal into a success. The foundations of failure are often too deep and have usually been laid much earlier.
Consistently successful salespeople (and their managers) have learned that making the right choices and doing the right things from the very start of the sales cycle is a much more reliable and ultimately far less nerve-wracking way of winning.
And that’s really what the following 14 critical activities are about: distilling the accumulated experience of the most effective sales performers into a framework that guides every competent salesperson in what they need to know and do during key moments in the sales cycle:
Critical activity #1: prospecting
Effective prospective involves targeting the right issues (the ones you are best positioned to solve) and engaging the right contacts within the right organizations (the ones you have the best chance of doing business with) at the right time (when the prospect is motivated to act). Are you confident that all your salespeople are currently doing an equally competent job of this?
Critical activity #2: first conversation
It is said that we never get a second opportunity to make good first impression, and that is certainly true in the opening remarks of any sales interaction. What we say in these first few moments influences what happens throughout the rest of the sale. Are all your salespeople currently saying the right things during these pivotal moments?
Critical activity #3: assessing our prime contact
Whether we’re responding to an inbound inquiry or reaching out to a potential target, we need to judge whether our initial prime contact has the potential to be a mobilizer and change agent sooner rather than later. Top sales performers have learned to assess this early. Their weaker colleagues often behave as if they are grateful to be talking to anyone. Where do your salespeople sit along this scale?
Critical activity #4: discovery process
The discovery process is another pivotal period in the sale. Top salespeople have learned to resist the temptation to pitch their solution until they have fully understood the prospect’s situation, challenges and implications. Less effective salespeople tend to turn the conversation towards their solution the moment the prospect acknowledges a need (and sometimes without even waiting for this stimulus). How many of your salespeople are suffering from a hair trigger?
Critical activity #5: initial qualification
It’s important that we start to qualify the opportunity from an early stage – but that we also recognize that we may not be able to find out everything we need to know until we have progressed our dialogue with the customer.
At this early stage, the traditional BANT approach is as much of a hindrance as it is a help. Here’s what we need to find out early on:
Is the prospect’s key problem clear, and is it one we are really good at solving?
Does our prospect have a compelling business reason to act?
Is the organization the sort of company we can do successful business with?
Is our prime contact a proven mobilizer and change agent (see #3)?
Is it obvious how the project is going to be funded?
Urgency: Is there a clear reason why this project needs to happen now, rather than later?
At first, our potential opportunity might not have perfect scores against all of these: but an honest assessment of these factors will allow us to judge whether we might need to proceed with caution.
Critical activity #6: advanced qualification
As we learn more about the prospect, we can complete our advanced qualification. Here’s the additional information we should expect to know by this stage:
Have we fully engaged the decision group, are where do we stand with them (see #7)?
Do we understand our customer’s detailed functional requirements, and can we satisfy them?
Do we understand the prospect’s decision criteria (formal and informal), and are they favorable to us?
Do we understand the prospect’s decision process and timeframe, and is it realistic?
Have we identified all the prospect’s alternative options, and where do we stand against them?
Do we understand the relative priority of this project compared to all their other current investment options?
If we’ve still got blind spots in any of these areas at a late stage in the sales cycle, these need to be recognized as key risk factors.
Critical activity #7: decision group engagement
Top salespeople realise the importance of identify and engaging as many members of the customer’s decision-making group as possible but place particular emphasis on working with and through powerful sponsors who are also proven mobilisers and change agents. Less effective salespeople often find themselves overly dependent on a single point of contact who ultimately proves unable to drive their organisation’s change agenda. How many of your sales team’s current opportunities are single-threaded through one insufficiently influential individual?
Critical activity #8: conceptual sell
I’ve written before about the downsides – in complex sales environments – of delivering a premature “product demonstration”. Before we go into the detail of our solution, it’s often best to lay the foundation by explaining our high-level approach to solving their problem and why we’ve chosen to do what we do. Top salespeople use conceptual sales strategies to trigger memorable “ah-ah!” moments that persist throughout the rest of the sale. How often are your average salespeople able to create these “ah-ah!” moments?
Critical activity #9: solution sell
Once we have laid the conceptual foundation, we can then explain how our proposed solution meets their detailed functional requirements – but rather than doing a generic and often confusingly wide-ranging “product” demonstration, we can focus our attention on the handful of memorable capabilities that are particularly connected with the prospect’s most important criteria and priorities. How many of your salespeople are selling a customized solution rather than a generic product?
Critical activity #10: establishing value
Most significant purchase decisions require some form of business case, and yet the majority of sales proposals lack a compelling financial justification. Top sales performers have learned that this isn’t just about building a Return on Investment (ROI) projection – it’s also about showing the customer the impact of inaction that would result from a decision to stick with the status quo. How many of your salespeople are able to consistently articulate this sort of value?
Critical activity #11: proposing
Submitting a proposal is often regarded as a pivotal moment in a sales campaign. But in truth, what happens before and after the formal submission is far more important. We must always ensure that the proposal reflects a series of already tested agreements. We need to ensure that the executive summary sells the need for change just as strongly as it sells the benefits of our solution. And we should always arrange a post-proposal review meeting before we submit our document. How often is this happening in your current sales proposals?
Critical activity #12: negotiating
Most high-value contracts go through some form of negotiation – and it is often detailed and intensive. But the foundations need to be laid far earlier by establishing our unique solution value (see #9 and #10) in ways any other competitor would find hard to replicate. And then when they are engaged in the negotiation, top salespeople can be confident of their value and know where their give/get boundaries are. Less confident sales people often imagine they can discount their way to a sale.
Critical activity #13: final approval
Even after we’ve negotiated a win-win agreement and have been told that we have been selected and that our sponsor would like to proceed, they will often have to navigate a formal approval process, in which the project will be competing for attention and funding against a range of often completely different potential investment priorities. Unfortunately, many apparently promising projects get derailed or delayed at this late stage. Recognising this, top performers collaborate with the project sponsor to put together the strongest possible project justification. Weaker salespeople often just trust in the process and stand aside and wait for the outcome.
Critical activity #14: order confirmation
It should be obvious that we can’t call the sale closed without a legitimate order from the customer – but it’s dangerous to assume this will happen automatically. Many less experienced salespeople have found that a promised order is delayed because a signature was missing or because the new vendor onboarding process has not yet been completed. Top sales performers are maniacally focused on making sure nothing falls between the cracks
In summary
So, there you have it – 14 critical sales activities. Miss any one of these – or fail to perform them to the required standard, and the opportunity may be put at risk. Ignore any significant number of them, and your sales people’s chances of success will plummet.
You might be in an environment that excludes a few of these factors. You might be in an environment where other critical activities have proven to be consistently important. But whatever your circumstances, it’s a fair bet that your top sales performers – whether consciously or unconsciously – are covering off these critical activities.
And it’s a similarly fair bet that your weaker salespeople will be ignoring some of these critical activities or performing them in a half-assed fashion.
But if they are unaware of these factors or have not been properly trained, guided and coached in their application, it’s an equally fair bet that your organization will be missing forecasts and revenue targets as a consequence.
One of the unhealthier things we do in sales is to believe that our loss was due to the competitor having a better product or solution. The truth of the matter is that the loss is always due to being outsold.
The competitor has a better product or solution than we do.
There are people every day who buy inferior products and solutions. If only the superior product or solution was capable of resulting in new business, the evidence would be that the company producing them would eventually earn a monopoly. If you are honest, you know that you have won deals against better-financed competitors with better and more complete solutions than yours.
The competitor has a lower price for a product very similar to ours.
Every day, salespeople help their prospective clients understand the value they create that makes their product or solution worth paying more to obtain. If the lowest price is responsible for a win, then one would expect more people to always choose the lowest price. The truth of the matter is that a very small percentage of your dream clients make the decision to buy from one group over the other based on price alone.
There is nothing you can do about your competitor’s product or solution. They are not going to change what they are doing to make it easier for you to sell against them, no matter how nicely you ask. They are competing to win, just like you, and their product or solution is some part of that equation—even if it isn’t often the deciding factor itself.
There is nothing you can do about your competitor’s pricing. It’s likely that they are intentionally using a lower price to increase the consideration for their similar product or solution. Your competitor is not going to change their pricing structure to level the playing field for you. The reason their price is lower is often to make up for something lacking, mostly the lack of investment in producing results.
Here is the truth as I see it, and a belief system that will better serve you: A great salesperson will beat a competitor with a better product or a lower price through their excellent salesmanship. They will create greater value for the client through the process and their interactions, they will tailor the product or solution to the client specifically, collaborating with the client to build something they can easily support, and they will develop the relationship that creates a preference.
How Thought Leadership Differs From Being an Influencer
Would you like to grow your brand reach, but don’t know what to focus on first?
Does your audience really understand the value of what you have to offer them?
There are several ways in which you can build a brand reputation of authority in today’s ever-changing online arena. As trends and technology have changed so have titles. The term influencer has become too widely used and doesn’t project what your brand is truly about. For example, you could be seen as an expert on a particular topic, subject or niche in your target market. This may have come from a demonstration of your knowledge through remarkable content, publishing, and personal interactions on your social networks. This category has now become known as being a thought leader in your industry. An influencer is one that is visibly scene — making their mark through video, visual content, and live interactions with an audience.
If you’re after brand sponsorship and high level connections then influencer marketing is the direction to go in. On the other hand, if you are a company who wants to sell a product or service then the goal is to move towards Thought Leadership which can become the go-source of reliable and trusted information.
The process still begins with the basics of establishing a loyal brand audience through fresh and original content, frequent activity online through your blog and social media, and building authentic relationships with customers and other influencers.
When you consistently focus on these initial steps you will begin to move closer to your goal. The key to success is to start with a plan that will work best for your business model and to be authentic in your approach.
One of my clients began the process of building their brand through my services in 2015. The first step was to create a professional website that included a blog and updates on his books and travel as a solo pilot. Today he’s well established as an author and speaker who is spreading the word on making aviation possible through his writing and flight. This all became possible through regular content posted to places like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Focused and relevant posts and tweets have both helped build an active and engaged audience who is truly interested in the topic of aviation. Using the right hashtags has also attracted the right followers on social media, including industry contacts. Here are a few key strategies I used to build visibility:
Cross promotion to both email and social media
Re-purposing content into video
Engaging in relevant professional niche groups on Facebook and LinkedIn
Regular email updates to subscribers
A clear call-to-action on blog posts and social media
Communication with Fans and followers
Paid advertisements on Facebook
In order to grow a great network you need to be engaging with specific niche communities and share their content as well. Here’s how you can boost your influence online and move toward thought leadership if that is your goal:
1 – Articles highlighting your book/product/service
Your blog is the main hub to share your expert knowledge on a regular basis. As you build content over time you can attract news media outlets and guest blogging opportunities. This will help improve your subscriber rate as well and help move your website up the rank up on Google as you include helpful information that can be featured in their snippets section. As your content is shared on social media any audience reactions will also have an impact on your visibility through social signals.
2 – Publish a book or video series
A book and/or video channel is your calling card to brand recognition and establishing authority in your niche. You can pull information right from your existing blog posts or from ideas you have already gathered for an upcoming publication. Becoming an author or establishing a podcast video program will help establish an interested audience within your niche. Leverage live video to spark an interest and build this strategy into your overall digital marketing plan.
3 – Attend offline and webinar events
You can create the opportunity to be invited to a speaking event, which can either be online, at a specific venue, or though a television or radio interview by becoming involved in conferences, webinars, and special events. Speaking is a good way to boost your authority and connect with your community on a personal level. The more people you meet at these places the more doors that can be opened for you to become a key speaker or presenter.
4 – YouTube is still the premier network for video
It is reported by Clutch and Smart Insights that YouTube is in the top three most effective social networks for brands today. You can build your visibility here by sharing the videos you already have on a branded channel. While an occasional live event is good in attracting a larger audience quickly it is equally important to put together something that is professional with the help of an outside source. This is especially important to do if you have an upcoming book, product launch or speaking event.
5 – Join targeted groups on social media
It’s important to be making new connections daily and one way to accomplish this is through specific niche groups that have a active and engaged members. The key is to be both helpful and supportive by answering questions, feedback on discussions, and sharing valuable information that applies to the group. As you demonstrate your authority by your answers others will soon want to connect with you. The best places to start are on Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and in specific Twitter Chats. Remember it’s all about building relationships, and not sales.
6 – Get busy on mobile platforms
Mobile marketing has become a large part of reaching an audience on social media. Places like Instagram and Snapchat allow you to show a behind the scenes look and post content that your audience can relate to. Live videos and stories are becoming increasingly popular as your followers get to track your journey with you and interact.
7 – Don’t completely leave out advertising
Organic reach has dropped significantly over the last couple of years — set aside a budget that allows you to fill in the gaps and reach people through targeted ads. The key to success is to target a narrow audience with specific keywords on a particular topic with eye-catching headlines and graphics that let your audience know right away what your ad is about.
Whether you decide to move beyond influence and into thought leadership this all begins with careful research and reaching out to your community in a way that shows you not only care about what they are interested in, but can solve their problems. Always keep the end goal in mind whether this is to become an author, speaker, full-time blogger, or successful eCommerce business. This will enable you to better focus on what you want your audience will look like and which leaders in your industry are best to connect with.
Customer data is the key to relevant marketing, and intelligent content is making personalization more accessible than it’s ever been. And while customers generally love to see content that’s tailored to them, there can be a huge disconnect is that content isn’t executed correctly. People don’t always realize that their taps, clicks, and cookies are creating a rich profile of data and are prone to freak out when things go a step too far. Can you even blame them? So, what’s a savvy marketer to do?
Tread carefully. You need to find a way to personalize without being a creep, and we know how you can pull it off.
Build a relationship
Take off your marketing hat and just think about it for a moment. You wouldn’t show up to a first date, order some coffee, then mention a vacation photo your date posted on Instagram over a year ago. Despite having the best of intentions, you’ve landed yourself in stalker territory. Everyone knows that kind of information is easily accessible, but that doesn’t make it any more of an appropriate reference to use before you actually know someone. We know better than to get too personal too soon.
Your personalized content should work in a fairly similar way, gradually incorporating more information over time as your audience learns to trust you. First names, purchase history, and rewards points aren’t particularly wild, but tie in details like location and demographics and you start to hit much closer to home. It takes time to build that kind of relationship, and it’s best to avoid using personal data without context. That scares the normal folk.
The Minnesota Lynx got it right:
Their email features image personalization that pulls in each ticket holder’s seat location to give them a customized time to be at their seats, along with a live countdown to the event’s start. I’d hardly call this light personalization, but when you just bought tickets to an event, it isn’t surprising to see that the seller knows your seat number. They met their subscribers where they were and relied on data that was relevant and appropriate. Which brings us to the next point.
Contextualize it
People are generally more comfortable with sharing data when they feel like they’re getting value in return. The best way to build that trust over time is to make sure you serve up content that’s relevant, valuable, and engaging. That means saying no to personalizing for personalization’s sake. It should be more than just a party trick.
When you’re ready to incorporate personalization into your content, you need to keep the value add at the front of your mind. The line between creepy and relevant is context. So if your data use makes sense for your brand while keeping the customer’s journey and needs in consideration, that location targeting will come across as delightful instead of jarring. It’s about ramping up personalization based on the number and quality of interactions you’ve had with a customer.
Let’s take a look at this great email from Virgin Holidays:
To promote a 10% discount, Virgin Holidays used image personalization and location targeting to show subscribers that the sale would get them 10% closer to a vacation hotspot. The context makes complete sense, both because of the relevant context and because location is such a vital part of Virgin Holidays’ business.
It all comes down to this
At the end of the day, customers just don’t anticipate hundreds of data points about them to be readily accessible…even when they are. So, here’s a question to ask yourself when you’re not sure if you’ve strayed into creepy data territory: “Does my audience know I have this information, and will they freak out if they realized I used it?”
Let’s check out a great relationship-based example of personalization:
The Wall Street Journal created a personalized year-in-review campaign to engage subscribers and showcase how they interacted with the publication. This intelligent content swapped out based on engagement, using custom logic to make sure that less-engaged readers weren’t greeted by data that would creep them out. As for the loyal followers? They received a highly-personalized email featuring the number of articles they’ve read, their favorite section, and more.
With so many brands competing for customers’ attention, standing out has become more challenging than ever before. But as keen-bean content creators, we know that differentiation is all about giving your audience a reason to care – and we’ve put together three examples that demonstrate exactly how it’s done.
The cliché around B2B marketing needing to be more ‘B2H’ (business to human) is a pretty tired one. Another day, another acronym, another zeitgeist-y term to distract us content marketers from the task at hand.
But while the B2H drum bangs away in the background, let’s take a moment to think about what being ‘human’ in marketing really means. Are we talking about greater transparency over pricing and an absence of jargon and acronyms? Is it about a loosening of tone and a renewed focus on the customer? Or is it simply more people, less product?
All of the above are spot on. But the brands we work with are looking for that emotional connection with their audience. They’re looking for authenticity – for a story their prospects and customers can really believe in. Why? Because 50% of buyers (B2B at least) are more likely to buy from you if they feel an emotional connection with your brand.
To savvy marketers, an increased heart rate, Facebook like or real-life ‘lol’ are signs of something really special: memorability. Provoking a strong reaction means your audience remembers you – and they’re also far more likely to share your video/post/blog on social: as Campaign puts it, visceral content counts.
In our opinion, the best content campaigns out there pull the emotional trigger without fear of consequence; they hit their audience right in the jugular and get people talking. To give you an idea of what this can look like, here are three great examples of emotional storytelling in action – and we’re kicking off with a campaign from our super-talented Spoon colleagues over in Stockholm.
Lump-in-your-throat brilliant: Microsoft’s mini-documentary on virtual care rooms
In rural Sweden, Microsoft’s virtual care rooms – where patients perform their own tests, upload their own results and speak to a doctor over video – have the potential to revolutionise healthcare. Microsoft’s aim with this campaign was to explain what they are and how they’ll impact the lives of people across the country. In doing so, they hoped to attract the interest of influential representatives of global healthcare organisations.
The Spoon team in Stockholm decided to make a mini documentary about Anna Lisa Lirell, a diabetic lady who was visiting the first virtual care room in a small Swedish village called Slussfors. Spoon brings the story to life with sweeping shots of pine trees and a pared-back soundtrack – and of course, at the heart of it all, Anna Lisa. This is about one woman’s experience of a revolutionary approach to healthcare, and it definitely gives you a reason to care.
Indeed, such compelling storytelling resonates with audiences: the video racked up more than 34,000 views on YouTube, and Microsoft has since been asked to present on digital transformation at several Swedish Country Councils. Plus, the solution itself is now being evaluated as a way of providing more advanced healthcare in rural Africa. Now that’s what we call great content marketing.
This Girl Can: Empowerment through an authentic message
For some brands, there comes a time when their purpose becomes less about advertising and more about activism. And Sport England (with the help of MediaCom) reached starry new heights with the brilliant ‘This Girl Can’ campaign back in 2015. Devised to get women exercising and dispel the myth girls must look a certain way to do so, it got people talking, thinking and exercising. Are you noting this, Protein World?
So how did they do it? The campaign was told using real woman and the focus was (unapologetically) female empowerment. The campaign’s main message addresses the reasons why women choose not to exercise. ‘I’m not fit enough’ was countered with the ‘I’m slow but I’m lapping everyone on the couch’ tagline, and ‘I’ll look terrible’ with ‘Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox.’
Stats-wise, the proof was in the pudding: according to Campaign, an estimated 2.8 million women who saw the campaign in 2015 have taken part in sport since watching it. That’s the equivalent of a quarter of all Londoners – impressive stuff.
Pulling on the heart strings: UPS puts the passion into packaging
UPS’ ‘Your wishes delivered’ campaign saw its first festive video going viral and clocking up an astounding 65 million views. Four-year-old Carson, who had been receiving medicine from UPS driver Ernie for a long-standing medical condition, wanted to become a UPS driver when he grew up. Quite simply, UPS made that wish come true.
Again, the focus is on storytelling rather than selling, and the people featured are real people rather than actors – user-generated content at its finest. Plus, by associating themselves with festive good cheer, UPS did something that countless brands only dream of: they became a company known for its keen emotional spirit and a focus on delivering a great experience rather than just a product. So much more, then, than just packaging.
The message for marketers is that great content marketing elicits an emotional response from the audience. If you can make them feel something – and do it with a great dollop of authenticity – you’ll be well on your way to success.
Did you know that according to new data, 57% of B2B companies identify converting qualified leads into paying customers as a top priority? It’s true: Lead conversion is top-of-mind for more than half of all B2B companies.
The problem, however, is there’s often a breakdown in communication between marketing and sales about the quality of a lead. Between these two departments, there’s often confusion around where leads are within the overall sales funnel. Are they just learning about the brand and its offerings, or are they at the bottom of the funnel and ready to buy?
Enter lead scoring. With a sound strategy that helps categorize and prioritize leads, companies can close more deals and convert more would-be customers into long-term buyers.
The next question, then, is: How do you approach lead scoring the right way?
We reached out to 17 expert marketers to get their number one tip into lead scoring so you can get right to the heart of an effective lead scoring program. Here’s what they had to say.
Many marketers (and marketing tools) add behavioral and demographic scores together to form a lead score. This is nonsensical, because a poor fit prospect that reads everything on your website isn’t worth sending to your sales team. Consider behavioral and demographic scores separately, and send over the best leads you can.
I think it’s important to have an understanding of the problem that you’re trying to solve with lead scoring. We have customers who use scoring as a way to route leads to sales; to rank leads for individual reps; and to understand the quality of leads attracted via different campaigns or channels. Creating scoring rules for routing are often different than creating rules to rank leads for reps.
For example, you may care more about firmographic properties like industry or size of a company if making a routing decision; if trying to prioritize all leads for individual sales reps, a marketer may want to emphasize contact properties like job title or the analytics history of that lead. They’re similar but distinct problems, so it can be helpful to consider why your business needs lead scoring before you being.
The goal of lead scoring is to help your marketing team engage with your users. To do so accurately, it’s important that you identify the right user attributes and behaviors to represent the appropriate brand action. This initial approach involves doing the research to understand your target audience. From historical trends to session replays to one-on-one interviews, you can develop a powerful lead scoring system.
Familiarity scoring must be leveraged. Leads who have received our newsletters and emails for more than a year have a much higher conversion rate than those who contact us based on a high-level vanity search term, targeted ad, or finding us on a client’s site footer, for example.
Look at website data. Identify the web pages that, upon visit, indicate the person viewing the content is highly likely to be searching for the best product to solve their pain. Obviously, score those pages higher than any others on your site. Upon visiting a couple/few of those, eject them from any other campaigns and send them super targeted content that helps them understand your product is the only one that solves a specific pain you define for them.
The most powerful lead grading & scoring model I ever built was 100% predictive and proactive. So if you have the resources available and the market you’re targeting warrants it, make it as smart as possible.
For SaaS companies with free trials, I’d say to not underestimate the product qualified lead. You can lead score and grade still based on fit + intent, but you’re looking at product activity and the steps they must take to get to the ‘aha!’ moment to identify the best qualified free trial users. (And eventually converting them to paid!
Lead scoring is an interesting challenge. In my experience, I hear a lot of back and forth about the quality of leads – sales says leads aren’t qualified and marketing says the sales process is ineffective (i.e. lack of follow-up, off brand messaging, can’t close, etc.). A good tip is to be sure you’re not using only one scoring model. Instead, you should create separate scoring models for each of the products or services you offer. By doing so, you will better understand why one product might be more appealing to one customer yet holds no interest to another customer.
The purpose of lead scoring is to qualify the leads before sending them to your sales organization. Therefore the most important part of lead scoring is determining the significance of each activity or behavior you are scoring. For instance, it’s better to give higher scores to form fills or lower funnel content views (customer testimonials), than it is for homepage visits or emails opens. And don’t forget, you can always give negative scores to bad behavior as well!
Lead scoring is never a set it and forget initiative. Every day you’re gathering new insights about your target buyer – use that info, along with the feedback from sales, to continually make scoring adjustments. When you’re creating your criteria, build your scoring so you can make updates and changes as easy as possible. It shouldn’t be overly complicated. Most importantly, don’t forget to document it all down and share with your team and key stakeholders.
The single most important component to Lead Scoring is the analysis beforehand. Look at all your best Customers who converted in the last 12 months. Where did they come from? What are some of the common denominators in their buyer’s journey? Did they hit the pricing page? Did they request a demo?
After you find the high-value touchpoints, content, and channels along the way, now you need to understand HOW to score them — which is dependent on the length of your buying cycle. A long buying cycle should have smaller point values to hit an MQL threshold, since leads need more time to consume and engage before they are sales-ready. Faster buying cycles should be scored and weighted more heavily so they flow through the funnel faster. Get that stuff right in the beginning and you’ll thank yourself a million times over.
If you aren’t using marketing automation to keep track of how many times a prospect engages with your site, salespeople, events and company, you are doing sales a disservice by not gathering that information and automatically rating that prospect so that when sales does reach out, they are loaded up with information. This information can help salespeople understand the prospect’s product interest, influence and authority, readiness to buy and much more.
Score leads by a prospect’s experience with the brand. This includes scoring where they are in the buyer journey, the content they are engaging with and feedback they provide. This is a win-win on so many levels, but this especially helps with your attribution, onboarding and advocacy efforts as these leads convert to customers.
Keep it simple, especially when starting out. Here are two things I’d recommend focusing on: 1) Classification – What one thing can a lead do to classify themselves as a buyer? You will want to segment these personas with different scores because some buyers might have different qualifications for being the best buyers. 2) Qualification – What are the essential qualities they must have to work with you? Focus on what they need to have, then on what you’d like them to have in the prioritization section.
Increasing signup friction can weed out a lot of “just curious/looking” folks. Test having more than just the name/email fields. Add in fields that give you more information about how primed they are for your offering (e.g. read our CEOs book? Are you past product-market fit? Was your most recent funding round series A or higher? etc). For the ones that actually go through the process, it should be relatively simple to identify that if a person has answered affirmatively (and/or within a specific range) for most/all of the qualifying questions then they’re your golden geese.
Don’t start lead scoring too early. The purpose of lead scoring is to be able to manage a large number of leads and to be able to prioritize who to reach out to first or identify their lifecycle stage (where they are in the buying funnel). Working at HubSpot, I saw a lot of clients that would have one or two content offers that would want to implement lead scoring when they were maybe getting 10 leads a month. That’s too early.
Marketers should score leads taking into account timing factors around webinar attendance. Most webinar products give you reports showing attendee statistics. These offer a great deal of analytic power if you are willing to take the time to sort through them.
Look at the entry time. People you’re looking for are those who logged in more than 10-12 minutes before the webinar. It very often indicates interest in your topic, so make sure you give them a high score and have a dedicated follow-up campaign ready.
As with entry times, we expect the majority of the audience to leave near the end of the presentation. Even if it’s up to 10 minutes early, don’t add or subtract points for this. It’s very common that people leave during Q&A session or may have another meeting they need to go to.
Logging out between the 15 and 40 minutes, though, indicates a low scoring. There may be several factors that made them leave earlier, but whatever reason, they haven’t heard your full presentation or saw your CTA. Before you’ll mark them as a sales lead, they certainly need more nurturing that the contacts above.
Essentially, my “lead scoring” comes down to success potential and fit. Success potential, fit and ideal customer criteria all describe the same thing – the ideal customer is the customer who stands to benefit substantially from using your product, and who is willing to pay fairly for those benefits. We can check to see whether someone is an ‘ideal customer’ by cross-checking what we know of them against our best fit criteria:
Technical fit – do they have the right technology to be able to use your product successfully?
Functional fit – does your product offer the features and functions this customer needs to make their ideal outcome happen?
Resource fit – can they pay? Do they have the time and manpower to learn to use your product?
Competence fit – can they learn to be successful with your product?
Cultural fit – can you provide the appropriate experience (ie. customer success, customer service, ‘hand-holding’ etc.) that they need?
Mission fit – do they buy in to your mission and have the same values?
Analytical fit – do they agree on the same key performance indicators you use to evaluate success?
Authority fit – does the person you’re talking to have the authority to make the decision?
Notice that these “fit” criteria are as much about what you offer as what the lead needs. If a lead checks off each one of these boxes, they have a high chance of being successful with your product, paving the way for retention, referrals, and skyrocketing lifetime value.
Use These Insights for Better Lead Scoring Efforts
With these marketer insights on lead scoring, you can start to think about your own strategy and what steps you’ll take to get a better grasp on your leads. Ask yourself:
Are there new tactics I can deploy to improve these efforts?
Are there ways to foster better communication between sales and marketing?
Do I need to rethink our whole approach to lead qualification?
These questions are a great starting point for a larger conversation about sales conversions–so start a brainstorming lesson today.
Over the years, one thing we have consistently seen is how little insight from digital marketers is used at the planning stages of a web development project.
Data from Google Analytics and SEMrush to tools like VWO (Visual Website Optimizer) or Hotjar are all resources that can be used to provide valuable insight ahead of the first line of code being written. Basic SEO elements, such as URL structure and metadata, should also be involved in the decision making of any web design project.
This has been pointed out before, and it’s a sore point for many SEO and content specialists. However, in this article we’re going to focus on the issue in relation to our own preferred methodology, which is effective content research and creation, and how user intent affects the process at every stage.
We’ll then move on through each aspect of the design process, talking about SEO questions along the way, and ending up with a detailed breakdown of a workflow we feel achieves two things: websites which look great, and are fully-realized assets designed to achieve measurable goals.
Intelligent Content Research
A website doesn’t just have to be built. It has to populated with material. The way this material is designed will have a large part in determining a website’s success, i.e. what it brings to a client’s business or organization.
This is why we find it strange that a normal web design process misses out at its earliest stages things like keyword research, and its more developed relative — content strategy. So often a frame is built without enough thought about what it’s going to contain.
Is your pattern library up to date today? Alla Kholmatova has just finished a fully fledged book on Design Systems and how to get them right. With common traps, gotchas and the lessons she learned. Hardcover, eBook. Just sayin'.
All of our projects at some level require keyword research, and this always involves careful attention to user intent. As SmashingMag readers, you’ll most likely understand this concept. For the sake of clarity though, it is worth revisiting this in terms of content strategy and SEO.
Before user intent was a thing, keyword research involved gathering lists of search volumes and “difficulty” numbers and trying to spot what keywords you might rank for, without too much attention paid to whether they were queries actually likely to be used by your ideal users.
While we still have to go through this process, effective research requires more intelligent use of the data we find. We have to focus on discovering target keywords and developing material that satisfies the intent behind the query — while still looking out for some relevant “good opportunity” keywords (i.e. high volume, low competition) along the way.
This means that keyword research is becoming a way of understanding what users mean by their searches in context, what questions they want answering, and what kind of language they use, all serving the purpose of creating content that has the best chance of helping a website meet its owner’s goals.
User Intent And Content Creation
User intent informs keyword research, which in time becomes content strategy, and then creation. The content we create always has a purpose, and in the majority of cases it is to satisfy the intent behind a user query.
As a broad example, let’s take the query “coffee”. Here’s how the results look — notice the different types of content aimed at meeting varying intents:
The results vary hugely according to the audience they are targeting. Some are aimed at people wanting to find somewhere to grab a coffee nearby, others are sites where you can order your joe online. There are also resources looking at coffee’s history and nutritional information.
While we don’t often have to deal with such broad terms, all of this has to be thought about, unpicked and planned according to a website’s purpose. This means content research, when focused on users, has obvious and enormous implications when it comes to site architecture and even aesthetics — i.e. the first things to be worked out in any design process.
When Content Isn’t Considered
One of the most common issues we see with both old and new sites is content that has not designed to fully address user queries, in terms of exact phrases as well as general intent. In some cases, this is easy to fix — for example, a few tweaks to a page’s metadata and copy can often clarify its query and user targeting almost instantly.
In many others though, the problems are much more serious, and a revised architecture or navigation is required as part of an entirely new content strategy — a costly process that could have been avoided if the right professionals had been consulted all along.
Here are some scenarios specific to site content we’ve encountered too many times:
Scenario 1: Shiny New Website, Dull New Content
A client — let’s call him John — is launching a completely new site, with no previous content to refer to.
However, if John isn’t prompted to think about copy, content or SEO until much later down the line — typically after the back-end development phase — then poor decisions can be made, while there is also the risk that he will lose some of his motivation, energy, and patience with the project.
A rush to see it completed means the content isn’t researched or executed well enough to be effective in the long term. Eventually it has to be looked at again during a lengthy and costly second-stage SEO and content creation campaign.
Scenario 2: Same Content, Same Problems
A rebuild of an existing site means there’s existing content to look at and refer to. Sometimes, John is so rushed, or is so intent on keeping costs down at this stage, content is not considered at all.
The same content is used on the old site as on the new site, and John wonders why his site doesn’t shoot immediately to number one for all of his top keywords. Eventually it has to be looked at again during a lengthy and costly second-stage SEO and content creation campaign.
New Content, Or Else!
Sometimes a valuable, authoritative site is rebuilt, as part of a rebrand for example. John insists that everything is new. Without the proper research spelling this out, for example analytics data (explored in more detail below), John isn’t aware of the assets he already has. He gets rid of the old content (or does something even worse like switch to a new domain) that search engines thought was valuable, and rankings mysteriously tank. Eventually it has to be looked at again during a lengthy and costly second-stage SEO and content creation campaign.
Workflow Issues When SEOs Are Called In After The Fact
We have to make do with what we get of course, but it is frustrating for SEOs to work on projects well after problems have set it, and we end up having to suggest that a relatively new site needs to be pulled apart if it has any hope of realizing its value.
When SEO isn’t considered from the beginning, the page layout and semantic markup haven’t considered excerpts, H-tags, metadata or how the CMS can aid SEO in the long term. Many clients will then turn to quick fixes such Wordpress plugins like Yoast. There’s a good chance that these will be ineffective or used incorrectly, perpetuating the problems at hand.
So, guess what? An SEO specialist is brought in after the site has been launched.
Now the client is unhappy with their existing agency and places a high importance on improving SEO. In turn, the SEO specialist has a difficult job trying not to undermine the web agency but still needs to recommend structural and on-page adjustments.
They will also face problems with client expectations, who will unsurprisingly feel ripped-off and begrudge spending more money on their new shiny website.
Does this all sound familiar? The crux of our argument is that by bringing inline processes such as intent-focused keyword research from the beginning, these situations can be avoided and everyone can get along.
At the same time, an integrated approach will mean better UX and conversions alongside a strong SEO performance. Better focused content can also mean lower PPC costs too, as relevancy is a part of Google’s Adword calculation.
Rather than an expensive design phase followed by a second round of expensive SEO work, the whole process can be streamlined, keeping time and costs down, clients happier, and producing a better final product as a result.
A New Design Process
This is all well and good, but how can we put it into practice? With varying degrees of complexity, for many in the industry the design process will look like this:
It’s worth stating that good developers will focus on user experience and the visitor journey in their own workflow. Instead, a typical project may move through these stages:
Over the past year or so, we have put a lot of effort into refining this process in a way that we believe gives the best possible value for our clients. Here it is:
As always, this should be the first step, as it will define the scope of the work ahead. Be realistic and build in room for error, and be very aware that you get what you pay for. Under-budgeting runs the risk of falling short on key areas such as design, functionality, and content. At the same time, if all the project’s budget is swallowed up on design and development, there will be no room for a supporting marketing strategy or ongoing updates and improvements.
Similarly, your goals should be clear from the very start. Are you focused on acquiring email addresses or selling products? What is the one thing that you want your visitors to do above all else? Without clearly understanding this, the chances are that your site will fall short in its aims.
Once this is decided, you can move on to setting broader targets. There are a number of methods here, such as SMART goals (or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound). These will define how a successful project will look on completion. Be realistic here — if your current site has a few hundred visits per month, don’t expect this to reach 10,000 within a few months without some serious effort and investment.
At the same time, we are big fans of the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) approach that is used by Google, LinkedIn et al. This technique can work really well for a web project as well a general business strategy.
Here’s a great video that will give you some background on the OKR system.
Writing effective OKRs is a bit of an art in itself, but there are some good examples here. The main thing to remember though is that your goals are going to define the site’s architecture to some extent.
At its simplest level, people won’t be able to contact you if there is no contact form. Similarly, they will be less likely to get in touch if you remove a bunch of FAQ or blog posts that help explain what it is that your product or service does. This brings us onto our next step.
You may have pages that are already performing well. If that is the case, you’ll need to identify them so you can make sure they are built into your new structure. If you shed pages that bring in traffic at any point of your funnel, this could result in a loss of leads or sales. Along with URL alterations, this can be one of the main causes of drops in traffic after a migration or significant site update. It may seem obvious but it is an issue that we’ve seen time and time again.
The first stage of preventing this is to look in Google Analytics, or whichever analytics platform you use. Find out which pages are bringing in organic visits first of all. These should be built into your new plan as a priority, preferably without changing the URL and keeping a prominent place in your navigation structure.
Another great tool here is Keyword Hero. This is relatively new, but it plugs into Google Analytics and removes the <not provided> tag that was applied to organic keywords a few years ago.
This uses some clever machine learning, and it means that you’ll be able to see which keywords drive traffic to specific pages on your site. This is extremely useful in terms of planning which pages to keep or remove.
Of course, not all pages are important in terms of organic traffic. As mentioned, some could be crucial pre-conversion or sale, such as an FAQ page, but bring in little of the may of inbound visits to the site. Take a look at page views, and user flow here to make sure you are not missing anything.
At the same time, it’s worth bearing in mind that your data may not be perfect. Checking the validity of Google Analytics data is a pretty big subject in itself, but one of the simplest steps you can take is to check that your tracking code is implemented correctly.
Again, we won’t go into the ins-and-outs here. However, there is one trick that we recommend when carrying out content migrations. The web crawler Screaming Frog has a nifty feature that allows you to check for Analytics code on every page. More than once, we’ve uncovered valuable pages that are not being tracked, and would have been lost in a redesign.
Next, it’s time to start looking to see which keywords you are visible for. There are a few tools we use here, but the most useful is SEMrush. This monitors billions of keywords and tracks which sites are ranking for them. By querying its database, you can see which keywords your site is appearing for in Google’s results without manually entering them into a tracker. It’s by no means perfect, so you’ll need to manually check positions for any terms you think it may have missed too.
Once you have this information, you can start drawing it together in a spreadsheet. Here is a sample document, and you can see the initial findings in the first tab.
For both UX and SEO, it is important to understand who you are speaking to. Think about the types of language or phrases your users will know, as well as the tone of voice. Do they respond to images or copy, detail or bullets, flashy designs or more technical pages?
Keyword research is also really useful here, as it defines terms and reveals correct vocabulary — another example of how keyword research eventually filters down and is important to almost every step.
Now that we know who we are talking to, how best can you do it? We have explained the concept behind user-intent focused keyword research earlier in this document, but here’s some insight into how we go about doing it ourselves. Please note, this could be a feature in itself, so for the sake of brevity we’re just focusing on an outline here.
In terms of our toolkit, we tend to use a combination of SEMrush and Moz. We feel that using both, as well as AdWords’ keyword planner, and any others you can get your hands on, is the best way of gathering data, as each tool will have its own strength, and often data for longer-tail keywords will be available in one tool, but not another.
Here are the first steps.
Listing all the relevant keywords we can find along with the data we have for them, volume being the most important.
We’ll also include some measure of how competitive they are, as well an indication if the current is already ranking for them. We usually use Moz data here, which corresponds to this key.
Key
0 - 15%
Non-competitive term, top rankings achievable with well optimized on-page keyword use
16 - 30%
Low competition, top rankings achievable with well optimized on-page keyword use and light link strength
31 - 45%
Slightly competitive, top rankings require well optimized on-page use and moderate link strength
46 - 60%
Competitive, top rankings achievable only with highly optimized on-page content and substantial link strength
61 - 75%
Highly competitive term, top rankings require on-page optimization, well-established history and robust link strength
76 - 90%
Exceptionally competitive term, top rankings only achievable with highly-established site and overwhelming link strength
91%+
Among the most competitive terms on the web, only the most powerful & popular sites can achieve rankings
We gather as much as possible here, so the client can see the research for themselves and so we can see everything at once — of course, most of it won’t end up being used, but long lists look more thorough than a few simple, if well-researched proposals.
It’s what you do with the data you gather that makes the research different and far more valuable than say, five years ago, when user intent wasn’t so important to or understood by search engine algorithms.
From keyword research data the site structure and list of pages needs to emerge, and be thought of as intelligently as possible. To this end:
We look through everything we find and select keywords based on volume, competition, but most importantly of all, whether the site will be able to effectively meet the user intent behind the query. Sometimes the numbers just click together, but mostly you’ll have to compromise — with user intent always being the most important consideration.
We then use the most general or short-tail keywords we select and think of them as intent or topic “nodes” in order to deepen our research and increase our insight into potentially valuable content.
As well as looking at keywords focused on landing pages, needs and wants keywords and exact phrases (for example questions that are also verbatim search queries) are also crucial. AnswerThePublic is a great tool for branching out and seeing what users are wondering about your chosen topics/keywords.
By branching out, you discover new users with new intent, and think of new content to meet them. The site is built catering to more users as a result, it ranks for more queries, it gets more traffic, its authority grows and you end up with a virtuous circle — as opposed to the vicious cycle we had before.
With well-researched content present when it launches, the site is able to realize its value from day one, so the client ends up with more conversions, more revenue. This way, the extra costs involved during the site build are more than offset.
With all this information, it’s time to start planning out the site. Define what goes on what page. Understand where the content is going on the website AND WHY. Make it scalable — adding or removing content should be easy as business goals can rapidly shift.
For this stage, everything needs to make sense. Pages need to be linked because it makes sense semantically. Those that are important for both users and search engines should be high up in your navigation.
E-commerce sites often do this well. Take the example below — the category and sub-category structure means that it is clear keywords should be used for the page.
There are no services pages that could target keyword groups, and no sub-pages off any of the main categories. While “minivation” may well be a great concept, it’s not one that users will search for. Of course, this may not be a priority in this instance, but we see this kind of layout time and time again.
Overall, the danger here can be that without an awareness of SEO at this stage, the client can want to switch from a navigation like our first example to the second. In this case, there is an enormous risk to traffic and therefore revenue, and as web professionals, it is our duty to state this clearly.
While content production usually happens at the end of a project, we feel designing around real content (rather than lorem ipsum) is more cost and time efficient, as it greatly reduces the need for design amendments after a project is complete.
There is also a really strong case here that placeholder text reiterates the idea that content is secondary to design, and that it is something lesser in the hierarchy of the project. This is an idea that again has been covered brilliantly by Kyle Fiedler, so there is no need for us to tread over the same ground.
At the same time, by this point, your research will give you all the information you need to put together an amazing brief for your writers. Believe us, they’ll appreciate it!
It’s time to start bringing it all together. Initial wireframes should be basic boxes and titles defined by the content development and copy generated up until this point, outlining key sections of the website. Again, wireframe with real content wherever possible. Tools like Balsamiq and wireframe.cc are really useful for this.
Once the wireframes are created the designs can start becoming more realized. Add in some brand identity, such as a color pallet, the actual client logo, corporate typography, and fonts. At this point, you should start to see exactly how the website will look. Any changes should be made at this stage — it’s much easier to edit a Photoshop file than change code.
Development
By this stage, the actual development phase should be straightforward. Write the HTML and CSS code for the basic design, then focus on any interactive elements. From an SEO point of view, it is worth stating that Javascript is a pretty hot topic. Google is far from perfect at handling JS, so scripts that control the display of navigations or key content need to be implemented very carefully. More on this topic can be found here.
In our experience, this often is the slowest part of any project. However, with all of the content creation finished early on in the process, this task should just require a copy-and-paste into the CMS, saving considerable time, stress and delays.
Were we right? Have the goals succeeded? A website is never finished. Keep tracking and reporting, always remembering the goals set out at the start of the project.
Although it might seem a lot, only a few extra steps have been added to the whole process. With keyword research and a content strategy the focus at the start of the project, the aims of the site are more clearly defined, and its entire structure mapped out and understood, with everything in its right place. Two costly and complex projects, an SEO/content campaign and web design, become one — and one that is far more manageable, efficient, and ultimately produces a better result.
This is kind of an ideal scenario — most of the time our work involves working on sites that have been built without SEO in mind, and we come to help afterwards. We see our roles shifting as more people realize the logic behind SEOs, developers, and designers working together on projects, rather than in sequence, undermining each other’s efforts along the way.
Congratulations, you have just gotten budget approval to launch a new social media campaign. As a marketer, you’re always looking for ways to impact the bottom line and what better way to do that than by creating a steady stream of potential new customers. So now it’s time to fire up the ads and watch as your leads turn into revenue, right?
Not quite.
While a high quantity of leads can undoubtedly be good, it’s not enough. According to research done by eMarketer, the highest priority of B2B marketers is increasing lead quality, while increasing volume only ranks in third regarding importance.
It’s not sufficient to collect just any leads—even if there are a lot of them—they need to be right for sales outreach.
In this post, I will run through how marketing can create a great paid social ad campaign and work with sales to ensure that both sides are happy with the leads it generates.
Create Ads Worth Clicking On
Let’s face it: if you can’t create worthwhile ads, your campaign is destined to fail, and no amount of budget will change that.
There are several critical factors in this process:
Copy
Regardless of the social network, you’re on, you want your ad copy to drive engagement. Write in an upbeat, conversational manner, remembering that you are speaking to humans on the other end. Make sure to address the needs and pain points of your audience. Lastly, share actionable tips, but try not to be bossy.
Design
Pair your copy with beautiful imagery to make your ads pop. Use relevant video if available, if not, photos will do. Human eyes notice visuals before text, so make it count.
Gated Content
Now that you’ve got their attention, direct prospects to a landing page or ad form to exchange basic contact information for valuable content. Some people might fall at this hurdle, but those who remain will have distinguished themselves as interested, and as potentially great leads.
Find Only the Right People
Now that you’ve created dazzling ads with compelling content, the job is done, right? Wrong. It’s not just what you have to say, but who sees it. If you promote to too wide of an audience, you’ll get low-quality leads and blow your budget in the process.
Know Your Audience
You must know your audience to target them effectively. Location, interests, job title, and other demographics will be important to define and agree on before you start advertising.
Who’s Buying?
In many cases, the end user and the purchaser are different people. If awareness is your goal, end users can be good to target, but if you are looking only for conversions, theirs will be empty clicks.
Timing is Everything
While it involves more effort, monitoring your ad timing is crucial. If your target audience is only online during certain hours, you want your ads showing in that timeframe—any other time is wasted budget. Some ads may be affected by current events, so monitoring their timing to avoid controversy is important as well.
Collaborate to Fine Tune the Process
Getting these leads over to sales is only half the battle. The other half is figuring out what’s working and what isn’t to improve future leads. This requires sales feedback—without it, creating qualified leads is impossible. I once worked on a Facebook ad campaign that generated free trial requests, but my sales team was inconsistent in recording their interactions with prospects. They gave me anecdotes, but I needed lead conversion and engagement data to make the right decisions. Sales kept telling me they wanted qualified leads but were unable to hold up their end of the bargain in making that a reality. Without the right information, I was unable to make the necessary changes to the ad campaign to get sales the leads they wanted.
To avoid this situation, you’ll want to establish clear roles and responsibilities before campaign launch, while emphasizing accountability. If done right, you can create a positive feedback loop in which sales feedback helps shape the parameters for targeting the qualified leads that they crave. By recording and analyzing patterns of both those who convert as well as those who fall off, you will be equipped to optimize both your ads and targeting for future success.
Conclusion
Paid social media campaigns provide a tremendous opportunity to generate new business, but only if done right. Getting leads is easy, but getting the right leads is what generates results.
What do you think about my roadmap? Have you been able to get marketing and sales on the same page in your lead gen efforts? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments.
Generating leads can very often be exhausting, frustrating, and ultimately fruitless. This is because companies often target the wrong people. If your efforts are reaching the wrong companies or employees that aren’t decision-makers, it can tank your conversion rates to nearly zero.
Traditional lead generation ideas are old news. Buyers today have all the power and information of the Internet at their fingertips. They’re informed, educated consumers, which means that they are savvy.
A good philosophy is to work smarter, not harder.
Creating content, adding value, and generating contacts that are worthwhile, targeted, and evergreen will help to make lead generation more effective and profitable. You can be the company educating your consumers.
Create trust throughout the buying process and see where it can take you. Here are our top 7 creative lead generation ideas for today’s savvy consumers.
Produce a product video.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. So it comes as no surprise that YouTube is the second largest search engine and third most visited site (after Google and Facebook). In fact, YouTube logs more hours of video watched per day than Netflix and Facebook videoscombined.
If your company isn’t tapping into the power of the video, then it’s leaving leads on the table. Creating a product video is a powerful way to engage, educate, and entertain prospects. Product videos have been shown to generate leads at a conversion rate of 33%.
Create an evergreen webinar.
Webinars are another great way to connect with leads. The power of a webinar is derived from its flexibility. Not only is it a live video, but it can also then be published on YouTube. Not only can tap into social networks to crowd source questions, but you can show your expertise by answering them. Webinars can be created for anything from a product video to a demonstration to a how-to to thought leadership.
A webinar is a great excuse to market to your email subscribers, ask for shares, and then capture new contact information. Once the webinar is over, the resulting video is still a great piece of evergreen content you can host on your blog, YouTube page, or use as a reward for subscribing to your newsletter. Webinars are one of the most powerful lead generation ideas you’ll find.
Give your ‘About Us’ page a spruce.
Your ‘About Us’ page isn’t just a space to talk about your journey as a company, but a place to generate leads. Prospects that are interested in potentially purchasing your product or service will go to your about page to learn about you.
You can use this space to define your unique value proposition. Why are you different and better than your competitors? You can use this space to include a funny or memorable video that humanizes you while showing what you’re passionate about. You should be using this space as a call to action.
Automate outbound sales.
Let’s face it – no one loves cold emailing or cold calling. The fact of that matter is, most of that list isn’t interested in talking to you or doesn’t have a use for your service. But the problem isn’t outbound sales – it’s the list.
With software you can build targeted, streamlined lists of prospects that are your “right people”. You won’t be accidentally contacting employees with no power to say yes. You won’t be reaching out to businesses that don’t have a need for your product. Growbots makes it easy to select target markets, create campaigns, automatically follow up, and analyze the results.
Volunteer or offer pro bono services.
When it comes to lead generation ideas, most companies don’t immediately go to volunteering. It might seem counterintuitive to donate your time and resources for hopes of profit in the future, can community outreach ever repay itself in spades. Volunteering creates good will, helps your community, and helps you make a difference. This is a space where you can put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and demonstrate you are the expert that you position yourself to be.
Whether you want to teach classes, volunteer for panels, speak at schools, offer mentorships, or something else that fits in with your business, volunteering is a great way to create trust that will drive “word of mouth” marketing.
Go to conferences, workshops, and seminars.
Boots-on-the-ground marketing can still be incredibly effective. Just like with volunteering, attending conferences, workshops, and seminars is a space for you to position yourself and company as a leader and expert in your field. If you do this, be sure to capture contact information. Have a book where attendees can write down their information so that you can follow up later.
Ask current happy clients for referrals.
This is another great way to tap into the power of “word of mouth” marketing. People trust their friends and families, but sometimes they don’t think to talk about how great your product or service is. That is, unless you ask them.
A great time to bring this up is in a follow-up contact. Ensure that they’re still satisfied with your product or service. Then ask if they know anyone else who might enjoy your services. It’s a small nudge, but it can make a huge difference.
Lead generation doesn’t need to be a headache. In fact, when you get down to the brass tacks, the best lead generation ideas are just ways for your to show your passion and excitement about your industry. When you find ways to share your excitement, it draws people to you. These lead generation ideas are all about finding ways to reach your “right people” that are going to be excited too.
Once you’ve done that, the sales process is a breeze.
Do you have any lead generation ideas we didn’t mention? We’d love to hear them. Leave them in the comments below.
If you are in marketing, you are used to handing off your leads to the sales team and hearing two complaints back: First, the leads are no good. Second, there aren’t enough of them. It has always reminded me of the old joke where two guys are complaining about the restaurant they are eating in. “The food at this restaurant is lousy,” said the first. The rejoinder from the second? “Yes. And such small portions!”
Such is the relationship between sales and marketing. Every sale is due to the brilliance of the salesperson and every missed quote is due to marketing’s failure to produce qualified leads. Or produce enough of them. Or both. As sales has become more dependent on marketing each year, their frustration with the lack of control basically sends them down the path that marketing is useless.
And, while you will never get away from that basic tension between marketing and sales, the sales team has a (somewhat inarticulate) point. The truth is that marketing sometimes can seem useless. And part of the reason is the two definitions of exactly what a lead is.
Most marketing teams are judged on what are known as “Marketing Qualified Leads” or MQLs, in the jargon. How many MQLs did you send to sales last month. More is better.
But once those leads get sent to sales, the first thing they do is qualify them again–into “Sales Qualified Leads” (yes, SQLs). The gap between MQLs and SQLs are what sales deem to be useless leads. And you might think that the process sales goes through to qualify an SQL truly drives out those inferior MQLs. But, in most companies, you would be wrong.
Many sales teams I know have simple rules for how to move a lead from an MQL to an SQL: “Did the prospect ask to be contacted?” That’s an SQL. But if they have enough SQLs to contact, then every other MQL is tossed in the rubbish. They are by definition useless, because there are other better leads to chase. One client I know sees all of these lesser leads (such as business cards collected at events, webinar signups, and others) completely ignored by their overworked sales force.
If your sales team is busy, it might make sense for you to stop sending those other kinds of MQLs to them, but you don’t want to, because you are judged on the number of MQLs that you send. So the dance continues.
But does that make sense? What if you started measuring your marketing success on the number of SQLs you send? And those lesser MQLs that did not request a contact? Instead of sending them over to face permanent suspended animation, why not act as though they aren’t leads yet? What’s stopping you from continuing to nurture them until the do request to be contacted?
Obviously, this is a situation that is specific to one client I work with, but it is emblematic of so many fraught relationships between sales and marketing. It’s time to stop fighting and for marketing to start being the real partner to sales it needs to be. Yes, even if the sale team doesn’t appreciate you. Yes, even if they are cranky and insulting.
Because your company needs this to get better. Your company needs more sales and maybe it is time to focus on what those outcomes are rather than tossing a few more fuzzy MQLs over the fence.
If the marketing team can’t adjust their internal metrics to make the bottom line better, maybe the sales team is right. Marketing is useless.
If you’ve hit a wall in your job search, and it seems like every potential employer is giving you the cold shoulder, it may be time to take a more critical look at your résumé. Recruiters and hiring managers see scores of them every day, and the buzzwords and resume hacks that may have wowed them in the past are now old hat.
In this data-driven corporate world, employers need to see hard proof of your knowledge and skills — not just anecdotal claims. That’s why certifications are so valuable, and there’s one in particular that marks you as a data expert and an asset to any marketing or product team: Google Analytics. Now is your chance to ace the GA exam with as little as 48 hours of study, by getting some online instruction from the Google Analytics Certification course. And you can start right now for just $9.99. Read more...
Is Slack making your life unruly? Is nonstop collaboration, conversation and over-communication keeping you from actually getting anything done? Us too.
Content marketing is a wonderful way to build credibility, establish thought leadership, educate prospects and clients, and attract new website visitors. However, to be effective, B2B content absolutely must provide value for the reader or viewer. If it doesn’t provide value, they won’t view or read the piece and they definitely won’t be back to consume any other content.
In this post, we are going to look at 4 ways your B2B content marketing can provide value to your target market.
Fill a Need
Create content that fills a need for your prospects or clients. Determine what topics are hot button issues in your industry that your competitors aren’t covering. Also, think about what your prospects need to know to become a client (pricing, specs, statistics, use cases, applications, innovations, etc).
A great way to determine what needs potential prospects have is to do keyword research or to use tools like Answer the Public or Buzzsumo to find potential topics. Keyword research will let you know keyword phrases people are searching for online and help you determine what types of topics they are looking for material on. Additionally, even a quick search in Google or Bing to see the suggested searches can produce one or two possible topics.
Answer a Question
Ask and answer a question that your prospects or clients are interested in. Do research to see what prospects and clients are asking and THINKING about asking. If possible, be one step ahead with your content marketing pieces. By anticipating their needs, you not only provide value, but you are showing them that you truly understand them and are building trust.
When in doubt, turn to your sales team and your service delivery or customer service team. Find out what do clients wish they knew before they started. Are there any questions that could have been answered in the sales process? If possible, put together a list of frequently asked questions. These are valuable for educating prospects early on in the sales process and establishing your firm as a resource.
Make It Easy
Be clear in your content. Technical content can be great, but remember that there people of differing backgrounds, education levels, and leadership levels consuming your content. Don’t be afraid to, as they say, “dumb it down.” Remember everyone has a first day, first job, or first time in the industry – make it easy for them and build yourself as a resource they can turn too. If you aren’t able to make your content accessible to various types of readers or viewers, turn to professional B2B content marketing writers. Experienced content writers are adept at taking technical content and crafting content that speaks to the layperson.
Explain in Plain Language
Let go of the Lingo. It’s easy to get into using acronyms and abbreviations and industry terms. Eradicate all buzzwords and industry jargon from your content. Once you have created a piece of content, take a step back and check it for terminology. Does it use anything that is currently a buzzword? (Like “pivot” or “synergy”) Using obvious buzzwords makes content look dated and stale in the very near future, while too much industry jargon automatically makes your content inaccessible to anyone who isn’t firmly enmeshed in your industry. Remember that CEOs and CFOs or purchasing managers don’t often need to have the industry knowledge to do their jobs well and are often part of the B2B buying process.
Investing money can often feel like a risky proposition. You work hard, and not everyone is comfortable being too aggressive with the types of investments they choose. While some like the high-risk, high-reward strategy, many others prefer an approach that promotes a more safe and guaranteed return on investment.
There are plenty of high yield investments available, and the more you educate yourself about your options, the more secure you will feel about where to put your money.
Let’s take a closer look at some safe investments that provide high yield returns.
10 High Yield Investments for a Safe Return
Investing is all about spending money to make money. Just be sure you’re putting your money in the right places. Read on to learn about 10 high yield investments you can make that will result in a safe return.
1. High-Interest Savings Account
This is one of the most risk-free ways to earn some interest on your money that you will find. With a high interest savings account you will earn a nominal amount of interest for doing nothing other than keeping your money on deposit with your bank. This strategy literally requires nothing more of you than opening an account and depositing money.
You’ll want to choose an account that offers competitive interest rates without charging fees. Always seek out a bank with a stellar reputation for ease of access, good account management, and great customer service.
2. Certificate of Deposit
Investing in a certificate of deposit is a simple matter of going through your investment broker or bank. This type of investment requires only that you leave your money on deposit for a specific amount of time. In exchange for your deposit, you are offered a guaranteed return on your money regardless of changes in interest rates during that time.
3. Money Market Funds
This is basically a mutual fund for people who prefer not to lose any of the principal of their investment. The purpose of a money market fund is less about earning interest as much as achieving the goal of maintaining a Net Asset Value of $1 per share.
Though it’s rare for the Net Asset Value to drop below $1 per share, money market funds are certainly not foolproof, so be sure to only invest in one with a solid reputation for protecting your cash.
4. US Savings Bonds
US Savings Bonds are an extremely stable and low-risk investment because they are backed by the United States Federal government.
Series I bonds consist of a fixed rate return, or an adjustable inflation-linked return. The fixed rate bond will never change, whereas the inflation-linked return rate is adjusted every 6 months.
Series EE bonds have a fixed rate of interest that is automatically added to the bond each month. The appeal of EE bonds is that the Treasury guarantees the bond will double (approximately 3.5% return) in value if held to full maturity, which is typically 20 years.
5. Municipal Bonds
Municipal Bonds are a way for state or local governments to borrow money for developing special projects. These bonds are exempt from Federal income tax, making them a smart investment for anyone wanting to minimize exposure to taxes. They are also attractive to a lot of investors due to the fact that it’s unlikely that the borrower will default on the loan.
6. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities
This is one of the lowest risk bonds offered by the United States Treasury and is one of the best investments to make. You can purchase TIPS individually or by investing in a mutual fund that will then around and invest in a basket of TIPS.
7. Annuities
When you invest in an annuity, you are essentially betting that you will live past your income. This is a tool for retirement. You are investing money with an insurance company that you hope will provide you with income payment over the course for your retirement years. There are several types of annuities, and these can be very complicated products, but overall this is a very safe place to put your money.
8. Credit Card Rewards
Credit card rewards offered by some of the top credit cards can actually be more lucrative than investments like online savings accounts or CDs. This is because cash back credit cards allow you to earn points that translate into real money.
By choosing the right card and using it for your normal living expenses, then paying off the balance at the end of each month, you’ll earn actual cash back that you can redeem in a multitude of ways. It’s like getting free money for doing the things you have to do anyway!
9. Peer-to-Peer Lending
With Peer-to-Peer Lending, you are not investing in a company, but rather lending money to someone you hope will pay back the loan. This can be very risky, but the average return is over 5%, so if you are skilled at screening borrowers and choosing on the best rates, it’s possible to see some very healthy returns on investment.
10. Cash Value Life Insurance
This type of investment is somewhat controversial. With a Cash Value Life Insurance policy, the policyholder can use the cash value for a number of things, such as a source of cash, as a loan, or even to pay premiums on the policy itself.
This type of policy traditionally has higher premiums, but the cash value account earns interest while also deferring taxes on the accumulated earnings.
Though the Cash Value Life Insurance policy will pay out a death benefit to the beneficiaries, the cash value component is only available as a living benefit to the policyholder.
Final Thoughts on High Yield Investing
High yield investments can be an effective way to build wealth and prepare for retirement. Once you’ve done some research, you can determine what types of investments are best for you. Tools like an Investment returns calculator can help you make an informed decision.
There are plenty of safe investments that can still reap great rewards. You just have to have the patience to leave your money alone and let it do the work for you.
Once you have determined whom you are going to target for your mobile app, it’s time to analyze your competition to identify what your product is up against in the app market. Statista records confirm that users currently can choose from close to 6 million apps between Google Play and the App Store. With so many options available, competitive analysis is an essential part of business strategy to stay ahead.
Successful mobile app development delivers a product that adds value to users and solves their pain point. However, your app ultimately won’t be successful if your competition has more to offer. Here are 10 research techniques to help you establish a competitive edge.
1. Know Your Unique Value Proposition
Competitive research is about discovering your competition’s strengths and weaknesses. Building a product that offers the same features as the competition won’t help you win over many users. A unique value proposition (UVP) is the core of your competitive advantage and is arguably one of the most important conversion factors for your product. A UVP is the first step you need to consider to optimize user loyalty and overall business success.
Remember, a UVP is not a slogan, nor is it a positioning statement, rather, a UVP clearly explains how your product solves problems and benefits users. Also, your UVP needs to convince customers to choose your product over other available options. Your UVP should be the first thing customers see when they visit your website or social media pages. When you’re analyzing the competition, look for their UVP to understand the value they’re offering with their product.
Many companies fail to accurately assess their full competitive set. If you don’t understand what your app’s strengths and weaknesses are, you won’t be prepared to market your product successfully. You should be able to identify and communicate your unique value proposition to set your company and product aside from the rest of the market.
No matter how unique you think your product or service is, it’s likely to be very similar to a product or service that already exists. The important thing to remember is how your app will add value in a way that your competition does not. Your UVP will give you a competitive edge, surpassing your direct competition before even launching your app.
2. Who Are Your Competitors?
Once you have your UVP, you must assess who your current or potential competitors are. Make a list of five of your direct competitors to determine their strengths through a general search using keywords. If other companies use the same keywords as your own, you’ll most likely be competing for your users’ attention.
When conducting a general search, look at your competitors’ target audience, revenue, product offerings and features, customer support, and marketing strategy. Researching your competition’s’ products is just as important as how they target, market, and interact with their users.
3. Examine Their Online Presence
Social media offers multiple opportunities for competitive research that go far beyond the number of followers they have. Follow your competitors’ social media accounts, and subscribe to their newsletters and blogs to learn how they brand themselves online. Also, take a look at who follows your competitors. How do they acquire their followers? You should also look into your competitions’ influencers, which will give you an idea of key industry leaders and spark ideas for engagement with these influencers.
4. Examine Their App Store Listings
How are your competitors performing on the App Store? First, you’ll want to look at your competitors’ average rating for the current version of their product, as well as every other version. This data will provide insight into their track record with their users.
User reviews are also excellent resources for competitor research. Often, users will use reviews to alert companies to bugs and usability issues, which will give you an idea of what performance factors are the most important to your prospective users. Users also use reviews to advocate for particular features they want to see in the next release of the app. By monitoring reviews, you can find out what features your users are looking for before your competition has implemented them.
You’ll also want to pay attention to how frequently your competitors update their product. Staying on top of their update cycle will allow you to plan your updates accordingly and strategically.
Another area of interest is your competition’s app store optimization strategy. Again, pay attention to keywords, branding visuals, and product description. Look for areas where you can enhance your own listing to set yourself apart.
5. Analyze Their Content Marketing Strategy
Analyzing your competition’s content marketing strategy holds significant value. Every marketing strategy will reveal insights into their targeted sets of users. Analyze their publication frequency, quality, relevance to their product or services, and how they are targeting their users with their content.
6. Ask Prospective Users
Now you need to start digging even deeper by directly asking prospective users what they think of any similar products on the market. Collecting user feedback is a simple yet accurate way to confirm your assumptions about direct competition to improve your product and marketing strategy.
7. Ask The Business Experts
Another beneficial technique when conducting competitive research is to talk with other business experts in the industry. Ask what has worked, what hasn’t, and any future trends that they foresee. At Clearbridge, we have in-house business analysts that will provide you with the information needed to help you make smart product decisions.
8. Keep an Eye on Indirect Competition
This technique may not seem significant, however, it will prove to be beneficial because indirect competition still poses a threat when it comes to targeting the same set of users. While they may not build mobile apps, they are still winning over your users somehow with another product or service. Don’t focus on the products or services they offer your users but instead analyze how they are targeting and retaining their users. What makes them successful in doing so? What areas do they need improvement? Where is there overlap with your company? Will they become a direct competitor in the future? Competitive research should go far beyond the product itself to examine their overall branding strategy and management. Both you and your competition are battling for the attention of your users, whether it’s a marketing strategy or the product itself.
9. Attend Industry Conferences
A great way to learn about who your competitors are and what they offer is by attending professional conferences and trade shows. Here, you’ll be able to see how your competition interacts with customers and how they attract customers.
10. Analyze Industry Reports
Many companies will release trend reports, specifically in the tech industry. Reading about what was popular in the last year may spark new product ideas for the year to come. The tech industry is continuously evolving, so it’s no surprise that companies need to stay ahead of the game to remain in the competitive market. Keeping up-to-date on the newest technologies will help you stay ahead and will reveal key information about competitors such as their latest products and features, which will either propel you in another direction or evoke new ideas for improvement. Leading tech companies can anticipate gaps, problems, and most importantly, competitive threats in the market.
It’s essential to avoid imitating your competition after conducting your research, but instead, you should be able to understand the attitudes and behaviors of how users are interacting with other brands, whether directly, or indirectly. A simple assessment of their online presence is often not enough, which is why these techniques will cover you on all bases so you can enter the app market with a thorough understanding of who you are up against.
Yeah, I know what the immediate reaction to the title of this post will be…..
“But Dave, we’re slaves to our managers and our companies………!”
I get it, I’m talking about something different, but if your managers are treating you like slaves, gently remind them the Emancipation Proclamation was put into effect on January 1, 1863 (for non US readers, I’ll have to do some research).
What I’m focusing on is the application of the principles of Servant Leadership to our how we work with our customers.
Underlying the concept of servant or transformational leadership are roughly 10 principles:
Listening
Empathy
Healing (In a business sense we may think of this more as coaching, mentoring, even problem solving).
Awareness (Both of ourselves and others.)
Persuasion
Conceptualization
Foresight
Stewardship
Commitment to the growth of people
Building community
But what if we examined the principles of servant leadership as applied to selling?
Listening—kind of obvious in engaging customers and understanding their goals, dreams, challenges, problems. Yet too often, we spend the time talking. Or we listen selectively, waiting for cues to go into pitch mode. This is active listening–engaging the customer in deep understanding and conversations in which there is shared learning.
Empathy—if we can’t put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, if we can’t see things from their point of view, we will never be able to connect with them and engage them in meaningful ways.
Healing—in a very real sense, selling is about healing, helping the customer solve problems, helping them learn how to improve. But this occurs at both an organizational and individual level. Too often, we miss the connection at the individual level–we focus on the business goals and return. But we forget how the individual–what do they want to achieve, how are we helping them, how do they see themselves in the situation?
Awareness—there are a couple of perspectives here. The first focuses on our awareness of the customer, their problems, challenges, and opportunities. The second is broadening the customers’ awareness of their own situations, of new methods, ways to improve, and so forth.
Persuasion—we talk a lot about this in selling, usually from the point of view of pitching. I prefer to think of this as a way of helping the customer create and own a compelling need to change.
Conceptualization—this is critical, it’s really about helping the customer create a vision of a new future and how they might get there. It’s important that the customer is involved in creating the vision–it becomes part of them, rather than someone else’s vision.
Foresight—encompasses the wisdom of past experiences, applying them to helping the customer achieve their goals. We leverage not only the customer’s own experience, but the experiences of working with other customers in their attempts to solve similar problems. We leverage these principles in our own process of engaging customers effectively.
Stewardship—this term has fallen out of fashion, but really speaks to personal ownership, accountability, and responsibility. We see from that stewardship helps center us in our role within our own companies, as well as in trying to be genuinely helpful to our customers.
Commitment to the growth of people—this should be self explanatory. It’s a drive for our own personal learning and growth, as well as working with our customers, teaching them, helping them learn, helping them address their problems/opportunities and to grow personally/organizationally. How do we help our customer grow–organizationally and individually. All this is really a core part of the value we create with our customers.
Building community—as sales people working in complex B2B sales, we know we need support from within our own company, our partners, and others. We know our ability to grow our relationships within our enterprise accounts and territories is continually building trust and our relationships.
The Servant Sales Person creates superior value with their customers. The Servant Sales Person creates superior value with their colleagues and within their organization.
The principles of Servant Leadership are also fundamentals to becoming a high performance sales person.
Oh, and by the way, you may want to drop a copy of this on your manager’s desk. Perhaps, they’ll think of their role in being servant leaders to their teams
As the need to be competitive has increased, so have the technologies backing some of the most personalized marketing campaigns around. Imagine this – you’re shopping online, checking out your favorite store, add an item to your cart, then get distracted and venture away from the site. Then, a few minutes later, you receive an email asking you to return to your cart and complete your purchase. Sound familiar? It should – what you just experienced is a classic example of a trigger campaign.
So what is a trigger campaign? Trigger campaigns are event-based campaigns that are launched on the occurrence of some specific activity. They are not only helpful to boosting online sales, but have become vital to the success of online businesses everywhere.
Cart abandonment, such as in the anecdote provided, is one of the many types of on-site triggers available to businesses interested in running campaigns. And while it is among the most common, an abandoned cart isn’t the only means of capturing a lead and boosting conversions. Some other factors that trigger on-site and email marketing campaigns include: time on site, device, geolocation, cart, and on-site behavior.
Time on Site Time is of the essence, and that couldn’t be truer in the world of ecommerce. In today’s climate, businesses have seconds to capture a user’s attention with an alert, incentive, or tactic. Those seconds make all the difference in how successful a business can be. Setting the parameters of a campaign to be triggered by time factors can not only capture, but boost sales depending on how optimized the strategy is.
Idle Time – Setting a campaign to be triggered by idle time on a page or product can remind customers to take an action. Furthermore, it can give customers a timed incentive to buy before their new offer expires.
Time on Page – The more time a user spends on a product page, the more likely they are considering a purchase. Move them along the funnel with a time trigger, capturing their interest with an incentive and giving them an extra push to becoming a customer.
Time on Site – Some users are browsers. They spend time on your site, but never seem to convert. Entice long-time visitors with incentives, create urgency with time-sensitive deals, or simply enable an on-site targeted tactic that shows visitors the benefit of making a purchase.
Device
With shopping capabilities literally at consumer fingertips, device versatility has become crucial; moreover, mobile optimization and cross-device functionality have become the backbone of many marketing and business strategies. Implementing a trigger campaign that caters to this shift in the consumer journey has proven itself to be successful when done correctly.
Mobile Optimization – Optimizing your site, funnel, and strategies to trigger when you have mobile visitors is essential. It allows customers to conveniently shop from their phones or other devices. You can take it one step further and enable click-to-call functions for appointments, reservations, even customer service, making the opportunities to generate business seamless across all devices.
Geolocation Location, location, location! The concept of location is no longer only relevant to real estate. Having valuable information on your consumer’s location makes it possible to market and strategize for the most impact. Setting an on-site trigger to run campaigns based on state, country, region, and even language can take campaign efficiency and conversion rate to the next level.
Cart
As previously mentioned, cart abandonment is among the most (if not the most) popular form of trigger marketing. When a user abandons a cart, an email is triggered to send if the contact information is readily available; however, abandoned carts are not the only means of increasing conversion rates and meeting sales goals. There’s a multitude of cart factors, such as value threshold and items in cart, that can be leveraged to increase sales and AOV (Average Order Value).
Value Threshold – If a customer’s cart value is at a threshold where they could be eligible for a deal, promo, or incentive, a trigger tactic could be used. This trigger tactic would then show customers the value to them when they meet that number. In turn, this could get them to add items to their carts in order to meet or exceed that cart value and increase AOV. It’s a win-win.
Suggested Products – Using items in active cart as a means to trigger product recommendation engines could help lead customers to purchase complementary or supplementary products at various stages of the conversion funnel.
On-Site Behavior The behavior of your potential customers is very telling of their intent, and it can also help with guiding them to purchase if used properly. Having technology to monitor their on-site journey can make a huge impact on how well your conversion strategies perform. Close attention to scroll percentage, button navigation, and visit frequency can dictate what triggers to gear toward your own campaigns.
Scroll Percentage – Above the fold, below the fold, 30% scroll, the list goes on. Defining a scroll percentage helps define the browsing action a user has to take on your site before seeing your campaign. This helps prevent false launches, as well as keeps your ads from inundating users the moment they enter.
Back Button – Hitting the back button doesn’t always mean abandonment. As a matter of fact, the back button has become a means of modern day site navigation. Using back button detection to monitor how many times or how quickly a user is hitting the back button can help determine how quickly (or slowly) to launch your on-site campaigns.
Multiple Visits – If a shopper is on their second or third visit, you can tailor your trigger tactics to monitor these repeat visits and launch. This entices potential customers with loyalty incentives based off frequency on your site.
There are many ways to capture your customers. Which are you willing to try? Considering cart abandonment is among the most popular, it also means customers are becoming less motivated by traditional campaigns. Take your campaigns to the next level with on-site and email trigger technologies.
Today’s consumers are wired—even if on a purely subconscious level—to seek social proof. Before making a purchasing decision, they want to know that other people have made that decision—and been happy with the results.
Indeed, studies show that even a testimonial or recommendation from a total stranger can positively impact a purchasing decision; seven out of 10 consumers are more likely to buy a product or service if it has testimonials attached to it. The question is, how can you get these testimonials, then effectively use them within your marketing materials?
Asking for Reviews
The only way to get testimonials is to ask for them. You can contact your customers at random and ask for reviews, and sometimes that will yield results. A better approach is to be systematic about who, how, and when you ask.
For instance, it can be ideal to ask for a testimonial from someone who has just completed a purchase. Send an email within a day or two of their purchase and ask them to share some feedback. Because the product is still fresh in their minds, they’ll be more likely to oblige.
If you don’t get a response, send a follow-up a couple of weeks later. Sometimes, it may take that long for a customer to form a solid opinion about the product. And if you do get a response, take note of that, and reach out again the next time that customer makes a purchase. When someone proves willing to give you a review, that’s always something you should track and leverage.
One more tip: Consider sending personalized emails to your best, most loyal customers—the ones who you feel are likely to provide you with honest, positive feedback. Simply let them know how much their business means to you, and how helpful a quick testimonial would be.
As you send out testimonial requests, consider asking a few “guiding” questions. For example, ask the customer how much money the product saved them, or how much time it saves them on a daily or weekly basis. You can also ask more open-ended questions, e.g., what’s the biggest benefit this product has given you?
Using Testimonials
As you receive testimonials, don’t be afraid to edit them for grammar, punctuation, or length, making them as punchy and as readable as possible. Note that, for substantive changes, you’ll need to get approval from the customer.
Though it may not always be possible, consider putting an image of the customer beside their testimonial; of course, you’ll need to ask the customer to send that image, and to give their permission for its use, but such effort can really pay off. Remember that testimonials are all about building trust, and an image can make your testimonials far more human and trustworthy.
Product-specific testimonials on the corresponding product pages
In your print brochures
Turned into images and posted to social media (simple resources like Canva can be used here)
In email newsletters
In your email signature
There are a number of creative places where a testimonial can be implemented to offer that social proof that your buyers are looking for—and in the process, to win their trust.
The art and science of sales leadership is clearly complicated, but the fundamental goals of sales leadership - at least from my observations of complex B2B sales environments - seem to be remarkably consistent:
They want to be confident that they are going to consistently achieve their revenue targets
They want to progressively narrow the performance gap between their best sales people and the rest, and
They want to ensure that they hire the right new sales people and make them productive quickly
If any of these goals are important to you, I hope the following experiences might prove relevant to your situation...
Revenue targets
Every sales leader wants to be confident that their sales organisation is going to consistently achieve their sales targets - and yet the end-of-month or end-of-quarter is a stressful time in most sales environments.
It’s worth reflecting on the most common causes:
Their sales teams simply aren’t working on enough well-qualified, highly developed sales opportunities - so they end up having to attempt unnatural acts to close business before it is ready
Their sales teams have failed to make a strong enough connection between the specific business value of their offerings and the specific business issues of their customers
Their sales teams have missed out or rushed through some essential elements that the customer needs to go through in order to advance their own buying decision process
Performance Gap
Every sales leader worries about an over-dependency, quarter-after-quarter, on a handful of top sales performers and wants to narrow the gap between their best sales people and the rest.
This also has a small number of common causes:
They haven’t made enough of an effort to understand exactly what it is that their top performers do differently - sometimes assuming that it is simply down to raw talent and not recognising that much of their success can often be attributed to learned behaviours
As a consequence, they have been unable to incorporate these winning behaviours into simple frameworks and checklists that every sales person can be guided to adopt and apply
They haven’t invested enough effort in the targeted training, coaching and mentoring that is required to move middle-of-the-road sales people with potential into the sustained high-performance zone
New Hires
Every sales leader wants to ensure that they hire the right new sales people and make them productive quickly, and to avoid getting into a desperately unproductive hire-fail-and-fire cycle.
Unsurprisingly, there are a handful of common causes here as well:
They have focused too much on the apparent historical achievements of candidates and not enough to assessing the aptitude, attitude, and their ability to thrive in their new organisation’s culture
They train their new hires in what to sell (product training) but (when hiring experienced sales people) unwisely assume they know how to sell and so fail to train them in how to sell successfully in their new organisation’s specific environment
They fail to invest enough time in coaching these new hires during the critical first few months of their tenure - when the foundations of long-term success or failure are established
What’s holding you back?
These goals - consistently achieving revenue targets, progressively bridging the performance gap, and recruiting and onboarding the best sales talent are close-to-universal objectives for most sales organisations.
But it’s also true that many sales leaders (and their Chief Executives) find themselves frustrated by their inability to reliably achieve these goals. And it should be obvious that the challenges that are holding them back are equally common.
There is, in my experience, an often-untapped opportunity to do better - and working harder clearly isn’t going to be enough to move the dial. Now, more than ever, sales organisations need to work smarter, to encourage winning behaviours and to eliminate bad practices.
Flexible Frameworks
But in complex B2B sales, we’re not going to achieve our goals through the application of canned scripts or rigid processes. We can only make progress through the application of flexible frameworks that make the collective wisdom of our top performers accessible to all.
This doesn’t have to be an expensive, complicated or time-consuming exercise. You can start simple and grow. Here are half-a-dozen things I suggest you focus on first:
Taking the time to observe and understand how your top sales performer’s behaviours differ from those of the rest of the sales organisation
Based on these insights, clearly defining your sales pipeline stages and ensuring that every member of the sales organisation understands what best practice indicates they are expected to know and do at each stage, and which milestones need to be completed before they can advance the opportunity to the next stage
Establishing clear and consistent guidelines for opportunity qualification, and insisting that every member of the team regularly re-qualifies their active sales opportunities
Establishing similarly clear expectations for proposal generation, with a particular emphasis on ensuring that every proposal includes a personalised executive summary
Separating forecast meetings from opportunity reviews, and using the latter as a platform for targeted opportunity coaching
Training your managers on how to coach their staff, and insisting on regular skills-based 1:1 coaching sessions
There are, of course, many more initiatives you could and should be taking to give you the best possible chance of achieving your goals, but these represent a pretty good start.
If you’ve got any additional experiences, I’d welcome your comments below. And if you’d like to discuss how you can achieve the above goals in your organisation, please drop me a line or book a call.
The digital era has changed the way we do business, and it’s important for marketers to keep up with the demands of their prospects by building a well-oiled lead generation machine.
Lead generation is broken down into sets of marketing activities that correspond with stages of the buyers journey, starting with generating traffic, then converting visitors into leads, and eventually converting those leads into customers. In fact, according to the 2018 State of Inbound report, a marketer’s number one priority is converting leads to customers.
Yet, lead generation remains a real challenge for most. As data indicates, 88 percent of consumers research their buys online before making a purchase. As marketers, we need to build a digital marketing strategy that provides value to the buyer through that research process, generating not just traffic but qualified leads.
Below we offer four tips that will help you build a well-oiled digital marketing, lead generation machine.
Use Content Marketing to Establish Thought Leadership
If you haven’t started producing content already, this should be one of the first steps in your lead generation strategy. According to a survey by Demand Gen Report, 96 percent of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders and 47 percent of buyers viewed three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
Garner leads by becoming a subject matter expert on topics or pain points that your product or service solves. Regularly post blogs, news, and tips regarding your industry. Also, produce extensive guides that visitors can download on your website. This allows you to collect data from people that download your guides so you can enroll them into lead nurture programs and keep them engaged by sharing more about your product or service. You may even turn them into customers.
Don’t forget to promote the content you create using online marketing methods such as SEO, social, and email. Great content won’t make a difference if people can’t find it. A survey done by FormStack suggests that organic search is the largest source of high-quality leads, so be sure to spend some time optimizing your content for search engines.
Leverage Paid Social
Social media can be a powerful channel for lead generation. In order to be successful at acquiring leads via social media, you must invest time and effort in building an engaged audience so you can convert those individuals into leads. The first challenge is figuring out which tool is right for your business. You can run paid social ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and even Pinterest.
Most internet users are on Facebook, so around 84 percent of marketers choose to use this platform to drive traffic and acquire leads. One of my favorites for lead generation is Facebook Lead Ads. This ad format allows contacts to submit their information without ever leaving Facebook. Strategies for campaigns can include “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” or “Limited Time Offer – 20% Off Your First Purchase.” Lead Ads is also a great outlet for remarketing campaigns because most of the time your website visitors will see the ad and you can use this opportunity to provide an incentive to send them back to your sales funnel.
Facebook removes the friction and lowers acquisition cost, providing a much better user experience and hopefully driving more leads for your business.
Optimize Your Site for Local SEO
Organic search is arguably one of the most valuable long-term lead generation strategies. Yet, with over 200 factors influencing how Google will rank your website within SERPs (search engine results pages), it’s difficult to know where to start. I believe a heavy hitter for lead generation is spending time optimizing local SEO. According to WordStream, 72 percent of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles of their location they searched.
Local SEO will allow your business to tap into the surrounding community and help users find you when you’re needed most. As mobile continues to dominate, local SEO can make a big difference in driving more customers to your front door. Start by ensuring your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) is consistent on your website and within listings such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google My Business. Another good idea is to ask satisfied customers to leave a review or make it very easy for customers to review your business. Reviews on third-party platforms increase your chances of being found by qualified prospects without having to pay a dime! Also, ensure your website Title Tag includes a main key phrase that you want to rank for in addition to your city, state, or neighborhood (e.g., “overnight fly fishing Colorado”). Give it some time, and then test your business by searching your keywords and seeing where you rank.
Segmented Email Marketing
Although it may be one of the older tactics, email marketing can be a very powerful tool when trying to reach prospects or upsell existing customers. It’s important to adapt your email marketing strategy by tailoring your messaging to target specific segments of your customer database. Right now, marketing automation is a popular method to help marketers automatically send highly targeted emails to leads. Synced with your CRM, leads can be placed into a workflow so once they fill out a website form they are nurtured with content that matches their specific interests. This could include follow-up emails with great content and a CTA (call to action) to subscribe to your blog.
As you learn more about each lead, you can tailor your messaging to move them down the funnel. According to Forrester Research, companies that nurture their leads see 50 percent more sales-ready leads than their non-nurturing counterparts at a 33 percent lower cost. Having the ability to capture website visitor data and couple that data with behavioral triggers has allowed marketers to get a lot smarter about the inbox.
Though we’ve only named a handful of lead generation strategies, whichever you choose to experiment with next, be sure you keep testing. This will help you gain an in-depth understanding of how to effectively strategize and implement digital marketing campaigns in order to move the bottom line.
There’s no business without sales. Selling involves a sequence of repeatable steps — from identifying prospects to closing the deal — also known as the sales process. To sell successfully, you need to have an effective sales process. And to implement a sales process, you need to create and manage your sales pipeline.
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of every stage in a sales process so you can easily identify where your qualified leads are in the buying journey. It gives a snapshot of the total number of opportunities across different stages. Freshsales CRM lets you visualize, manage and track the progress of every deal in the pipeline.
select the right deals and activities to focus on every month
determine how close you are to winning each deal
monitor your sales team’s pipeline (as a sales manager)
use pipeline for post selling activities
Let’s see how you can go about doing it.
Creating a sales pipeline
The first step to create a sales pipeline is to clearly identify the sales process that suits your business. In general, any sales process include steps to,
Identify and qualify prospects
Assess their needs and present the solution
Guide and convince them towards buying
Close the sale
Follow up (nurture relationship)
When you break it down further, it is the sequence of steps that each salesperson would repeatedly take for every sale. Make a list of these steps and convert each step (or combine few of them) as a stage in the pipeline.
Creating multiple sales pipelines
Certain business may have multiple sales processes based on geography (North America, Europe), team types (Inside sales, Field sales), size of the company (SMB, Mid Market, Enterprise) that you are after or the different products/service plans you offer (Silver, Gold, Platinum).
Managing all of them in a single pipeline is not feasible. With Freshsales, you can create multiple sales pipelines, with relevant stages for each pipeline. This means you can manage your business more efficiently.
So let’s say your business has a different sales process for the Inside sales and Field sales team. You can create two pipelines as shown below to track and manage deals for each team.
Choosing a default pipeline
The most commonly used pipeline can be selected as a default pipeline. If you’re an admin, and you mark ‘Field Sales’ pipeline as ‘default,’ it’ll be the default pipeline for all your users. This means all sales reps will look at the Field Sales pipeline when they log in. However, if you are a user belonging to the Inside Sales team, you can select a different pipeline to be your personal default pipeline. This will not affect the admin’s choices in any way.
Manage your deal pipeline
Sales pipeline lets you determine how close you are to winning each deal so that you can select the right deals and activities to focus on every month.
Staying on top of your deals requires some sales effort—following up with customers over phone and email, setting appointments, creating tasks, etc.— to successfully win the opportunities. In Freshsales, sales pipeline management works in tandem with time management. The color-coded icons in the pipeline view help you to identify and act on pending and delayed tasks quickly.
Cut out all the noise and focus only on opportunities that matter by filtering deals based on upcoming activities, expected close date, renewal date and more. You can also save these filtered deals as views and access them whenever you want.
Monitor your team’s pipeline
As a sales manager, you’d want to closely monitor your team’s performance.
Use filters to create views based on the territories you manage and track how each salesperson in your team is performing. You can visually track how many new deals are there in each of their pipeline or how many are about to close. Similarly, you can also monitor lost deals, identify the reason and act upon them.
With Reports and Dashboards, you can get a snapshot of your team’s performance or dive deep into the activities of every sales rep. Track revenue metrics and identify top performers with sales velocity and sales cycle reports. Remove bottlenecks by identifying which deal stages your salespeople get stuck in.
You can also see how many days a deal has been in a particular stage. For instance, if a deal has been in negotiation for more than two weeks, you can add a follow-up task for your sales rep to act upon it right away. Create custom dashboards to get a quick glimpse of frequently used reports and also schedule selected reports to be automatically sent to anyone in your company.
Use pipelines even after you seal the deal
Sales pipeline management in Freshsales CRM can also be used for a number of post selling activities such as, project management, annual maintenance contracts, product installation and training, and more. So if you are in the software services industry, your company could be managing projects for the won deals. In this case, create a project management pipeline and simply funnel the won deals to this new pipeline using workflows.
Your account manager will have complete context of all the projects he/she is working on and can manage each one of them right from the CRM. Once the project is complete, and if there is any maintenance activities requested, an AMC can also be initiated right from Freshsales for the same account and managed in a new pipeline.
If you are in the tourism and travel industry, you could maintain a separate pipeline for those won deals which have bought travel packages from you. Create a post-sale pipeline to track if your customers have started using the travel bookings made and get their feedback. You can nurture these customers for repeat purchases and use their feedback to improve your travel packages.
These are just some of the common use cases for sales pipeline management in Freshsales! Try creating multiple pipelines to manage your business more efficiently.
The journey to a sales career can take many different paths. The majority of Account Executives (AEs) start out as Sales Development Reps and climb the ranks. However, customer-facing roles, like Customer Success Managers (CSMs), can also be a good avenue to a successful career in sales.
A CSM’s primary responsibilities are retention and customer satisfaction. It costs five times as much to attract new customers than it does to keep existing ones, so decreasing churn is valuable for organizations. Ensuring customers successfully utilize a solution is a critical retention factor. CSMs are an integral part of this, specializing in solving customer pain points and being advocates for their success.
Rachel Cha recently transitioned from a CSM to an AE role at SalesLoft. Although the two roles differ in responsibility and process, Rachel’s experience as a CSM has helped her find success in a sales role. Rachel shares with us the advantages and differences, as well as the biggest surprises when transitioning from a CSM to an AE role.
Advantages
Deeper Product Knowledge
Understanding the product you sell is crucial. It allows you to address a variety of customer challenges. Working with end users provided Rachel with a deeper knowledge of the SalesLoft platform. This allowed her to address pain points faster, quickly deliver answers to customers, and be viewed as a trusted advisor.
“It makes you more of a trusted advisor when you can get answers to the customer faster. Quickly identifying the solutions to customer pain points leads to meetings.”
Sales engagement platforms increase this ability through account visibility. By having account information readily accessible, AEs can confidently execute tasks and impress prospects with their knowledge and preparation.
Referral Selling
Referral selling should be a chief business development tactic. Leveraging existing customer relationships is one of the most effective, simplest ways to reach new prospects. 92% of buyers trust referrals when making a buying decision, but only 11% of salespeople ask for them. The relationships Rachel developed as a CSM made it easy to incorporate referrals into her sales process from day one.
“It turns cold leads into warm leads when you can get an introduction through a referral.”
How can you start benefiting from referral selling? Ask! Identify customers you have strong relationships with and ask for help. (We put together our top 9 sales tips to get more referrals here.)
Develop Buyer Profiles
Buyer profiles are essential in identifying companies similar to current customers where the platform has been successful. There are common traits among buyers that can make adjusting your communication for specific buying personalities much easier. This infographic explores seven personality types sellers deal with regularly, and tips to seal the deal with each.
Rachel uses this knowledge to her advantage by looking for new opportunities based on previous accounts. Sharing success stories and case studies with prospects is an excellent lead-in for securing an initial meeting.
“It helped me identify new opportunities. I knew if the platform helped one type of customer, it could help similar customers in the same industry.”
Differences
Personal Mindset
Transitioning from customer success to sales requires a mindset adjustment. Rachel describes customer success as reactive. CSMs are charged with solving customer challenges as they arrive. Sales requires a proactive approach where the seller initiates contact and engages the customer first. It’s akin to hunting for your food rather than having it served to the table.
“My day-to-day changed drastically. Instead of reacting to customer challenges, I needed to be proactive in researching leads and contacting prospects.”
Shifting from a reactive to a proactive mindset is one of the first obstacles to overcome. Implementing well-defined sales cadences can help ease the transition. This sales tips video explains how cadences keep AEs in front of opportunities.
Customer Mindset
Customer success focuses on finding solutions within the platform to help customers succeed. In her new sales role, Rachel needed to approach prospecting from a time management standpoint, instead of an account management perspective. Recent TOPO research uncovered that top sales performers can research and qualify leads more quickly than average performers. Identifying disqualifiers early helps to prioritize time and focus on the accounts most likely to close.
“In sales, I’m focused on making sure the prospect is qualified so I know I’m investing my time wisely. In CS, you think about how the platform impacts an existing customer’s success.”
Biggest Surprises
Ups and Downs of Sales
As a CSM, the sales team provides a steady stream of new customers. CSMs work with customers on an ongoing basis, so workflow is consistent. Sales, on the other hand, is known for its ups and downs. An inconsistent pipeline can be a challenge to new reps.
“Sales is less consistent. You have good months and bad months, but it’s your responsibility to remain proactive. There’s some adjusting to the difference in workflow.”
As an AE, Rachel needed to remain proactive to reach her quota. Building and maintaining a pipeline is vital. If you neglect the top of the funnel, there won’t be anything to close in the next sales cycle.
The Process
Learning a new role is always challenging. Training provides a baseline understanding of techniques and overall process, but in sales, the real-world is a different experience. Reinforcing training requires firsthand experience.
“I had never run a sales cycle from start to finish. There’s a lot that goes into it, and I had to learn how the process worked to be successful.”
Rachel understood the basics of the sales process and what happens after a deal closed, but had never run a full sales cycle from the beginning. A combination of training, real-time coaching, and first-hand experience contributed to Rachel’s success in her new AE role.
Customer success experience translates well to sales positions. Each role focuses on building relationships and providing an excellent customer experience. Applying her experience as a CSM benefits Rachel as an AE. Her in-depth product knowledge enables her to identify how the SalesLoft platform can address prospects’ needs and challenges. This expertise and customer-first approach position her as a trusted advisor to customers.
1. Sell the Event
(ra, il)
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F803940%2F1de189dc-b242-441a-b7db-68708578bb8d.jpg)
The art and science of sales leadership is clearly complicated, but the fundamental goals of sales leadership - at least from my observations of complex B2B sales environments - seem to be remarkably consistent:
Bob Apollo
