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The post What You Can Learn from HubSpot’s Iterative Approach to Pricing [Podcast] appeared first on OpenView Labs.

A/B testing is the best practice for many parts of marketing these days. Most of the best SaaS companies use some form of A/B or multivariate testing in their marketing. Testing companies like Unbounce, in Vancouver BC, or Optimizely, in San Francisco, are growing rapidly. Web marketing automation platforms like Hubspot and Marketo include A/B testing modules, and popular content management systems like Wordpress have A/B testing plugins. 

In a recent conversation with Chris Herbert at SVPricing, a recruiting company in Silicon Valley, Chris commented that most people who are trained in pricing analysis are not trained in modern marketing approaches, and he called out A/B and multivariate testing as an explicit gap.

This opens the question, how should we be A/B testing our pricing?

One approach would be to test the price itself, and directly probe willingness to pay and price elasticity. This is problematic on many levels. In many jurisdictions, there will be legal issues around offering different buyers different prices based on an algorithm. Even if you can get away with this legally, assume that your buyers will discover this, usually at the worst time for you, and that there will be a public clamour about the lack of fairness and transparency of your pricing. In all likelihood, you will end up resetting everyone to the lowest price you tested and vowing never to do this again. A/B testing will not give you reliable insight into willingness to pay because willingness to pay is determined by many factors other than price.

Does this mean that A/B testing has no role in pricing? Not at all. 

There are three things you will want to A/B test: framing, messaging and packaging.

Framing

Framing effects are one of the obsessions of behavioral pricing. Basically, this is your expectation. If you think a bicycle should cost $200 (I was in Japan recently and this is the typical price for a standard bike there) then $700 sounds expensive. If you are a weekend warrior and expect to pay $2,000 for an entry level bike, then $700 for a bike leads you to think it is either a bargain, or more likely, that it won't meet your needs.

The order of presentation also has a big impact on framing. In the above example, I started with the less expensive example. This framing made the road bike seem relatively more expensive. Most of us would have had a different reaction if I had begun with the road bike and then given the example of the Mama Chari. Which is better will depend on the positioning one wants to establish in the marketplace. There is a restaurant chain in Vancouver called Cactus Club. In fact, it is quite expensive but it has positioned itself to appear to be mid market. There are other restaurants such as those run by the Top Table Group that are positioned up market. In fact, one can spend more at Cactus Club if one is not careful, and people often do. How you want to frame yourself relative to the alternatives is a critical part of your pricing strategy where framing has a big impact.

There is also internal framing. Many SaaS companies today have a three-tier structure of low, medium and high. Which offer should one present first and does it matter? The convention today is to present the lowest price first and thus frame using the lowest price (which makes the medium and high tiers seem more expensive). This is a great place to apply A/B testing. Four possibilities are shown below, vertical or horizontal presentation and low-to-high or high-to-low presentation.

Rather than defaulting to horizontal and low-to-high presentation, which is what almost everyone does, it is worth A/B testing (or even multivariate testing if you have enough traffic) different presentations to see how these impact distribution across the three tiers (the desired distribution is another topic that we will discuss in the future).

Messaging

Messaging is the most common thing that people A/B test. The critical thing to A/B test here are the value message and the buyer persona. The two should be closely aligned. Before you introduce a pricing tier, you should make it clear who the tier is for and the key value proposition. There is not a lot of space to do this, a couple of lines at most. The value messages introducing each tier are a critical thing to A/B test. This can get complicated as one wants to measure both (i) absolute conversions and (ii) distribution across the offers. Focus on one or the other depending on your current optimization goals. You will just confuse yourself if you try to optimize both at the same time. Most companies will want to optimize for conversions first and then work on the distribution.

Packaging

The main way to optimize for distribution across the tiers is by packaging (and pricing if necessary, but one does not want to be A/B testing the actual prices for the reasons given above).

Each tier will probably have a set of functionality attached to this. In most cases, this will take the form of basic for the lowest tier, everything in the lowest tier plus A, B, C for the middle tier, and everything but the kitchen sink for the highest tier. Getting the right set of functions in each tier, also referred to as packaging, is critical and can impact conversion and especially distribution. It is impossible to know what the optimum packaging is without A/B testing. The interactions are too subtle for most of us to work out. A/B testing is the best way to explore this. This will take a good underlying configuration management system, one that makes it easy to turn functions on and off, and a good user management system, one that makes it easy to track and compare different cohorts. It is hard to imagine how one would optimize packaging without A/B testing different configurations and tracking the results over time.

So is Chris Herbert right, is A/B testing part of the skill set of a pricing expert? I think the answer is yes. This will also feed into the long-term trend towards using more and more big data and machine learning in pricing. Over time, with enough A/B tests carried out in a systematic manner, machine learning may improve to the point that prediction is possible. The only way to get to this utopia is to begin a systematic A/B testing program of the factors that shape conversion rates and distributions.

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Is there such a thing as a “perfect sale”? A sale in which we got the highest possible price in the shortest possible sales cycle with the least possible effort, and in which our customer got far more than they hoped for whilst spending far less than they feared?

Complex B2B sales are complicated. They involve multiple stakeholders, some of whom may have conflicting objectives. They often involve multiple solution options, some of which might have completely different approaches. They are rarely if ever friction-free. They typically include “do nothing” as a common potential outcome.

Under these circumstances, seeking perfection might seem like an impossible dream, and maybe it is. Maybe perfection is better seen as a journey, rather than as a destination. But what if we saw the challenge instead as reducing imperfection, or eliminating avoidable error?

If we adopt the latter thought process, then maybe - just maybe - we can turn an impossible dream into an achievable goal…

I’ve written and talked before on the subject of art vs. science vs. engineering in complex B2B sales. I see them as necessarily complementary skills. If artists seek perfection, if scientists seek the truth, then I see engineers as seeking the avoidance of predictable errors, and I believe that adopting an engineering mindset is a critical foundation for anyone and any organisation seeking to systematically improve sales performance.

It’s impossible to remove every possible source of error from complex systems like the typical B2B high-value buying decision journey. But it’s entirely possible to progressively eliminate the most common predictable, repeatable errors that often seem to bedevil the B2B sales process.

We can start by identifying the most common sources of high-impact error. In his excellent book “The Checklist Manifesto”, the Harvard Medical School professor Atul Gawande talks about errors of ignorance and errors of ineptitude.

errors of ignorance

Errors of ignorance are facts that we did not know or failed to acknowledge that turn out to have a significant impact on the outcome of the project. These are typically caused by a failure to do sufficiently deep discovery and compounded when sales people cannot resist the “itch to pitch” their solution before they have managed to truly understand the full nature of the prospective customer’s problems and their implications.

We can eliminate many of these potential errors of ignorance simply by asking the right questions of the right people at the right time during the sales process - and by listening carefully to the answers.

errors of ineptitude

Errors of ineptitude are different but no less damaging and just as frustrating. Errors of ineptitude involve knowledge that existed somewhere in the system, but which was not applied to the particular situation. This is a common problem whenever sales people are left to their own devices to work out how to deal with complex or unfamiliar circumstances.

In a sales organisation of any size, it’s likely that the situation has been seen and maybe has been mastered by another member of their sales organisation - but this knowledge was never internalised, and the lesson was never recognised nor shared.

As a result the often-painful experience is wasted and the error is likely to be repeated, again and again. The gap between the top sales performers (who are typically much more adept at deriving and applying personal learning from these situations) and the rest continues to rise. New hires struggle to cope with situations they have never experienced or been taught about before. The overall performance of the team is less - often far less - than it could and should be.

systematically eliminating avoidable error

Dealing with this requires a continuous organisation-wide error avoidance initiative. It starts with identifying and honestly acknowledging when, where and why mistakes have been made in an environment of learning rather than punishment.

It requires that we cultivate self-awareness and self-honesty in our sales people. It requires that we bring problems to the surface rather than sweeping them under the carpet, and it requires that we build and implement systems that guide our sales people in making the right choices at the right points in their sales campaigns.

It requires that we implement a defined sales process that reflects the accumulated lessons learned from both successful and unsuccessful sales campaigns without turning our sales people into automatons or doing anything to diminish their curiosity or initiative.

This typically involves identifying the handful of critical things that experience tells us our most successful sales people have learned that they need to know, to do and to avoid at each key stage in the sales cycle and making these experiences part of every sales person’s regular routine.

This involves capturing the most common sales scenarios (discovery being typically the most significant) and sharing best practice guidelines in the form of simple checklists that help our sales people to avoid behaviours that are likely to rest in errors of ignorance.

It involves creating a framework that shares collective learning and shows how the accumulated lessons learned can be applied to help eliminate the most common errors of ineptitude. And it involves creating regular opportunities for sales people to share war stories and learn from each other.

There is no excuse for not implementing this sort of collective learning framework, and many reasons why it is an essential investment for any sales organisation that wishes to systematically improve sales performance.

Maybe perfection is an impossible dream - but the progressive elimination of avoidable errors certainly isn’t. So, what are the most common errors in your sales environment? And what’s stopping you from dealing with them?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now works with a growing client base of tech-based B2B-focused high-growth businesses, equipping them to Sell in the Breakthrough Zone by systematically creating, capturing and confirming their unique value in every customer interaction.

Let’s face it – nobody likes to be “sold.” And being on the receiving end of a sales pitch is made worse when the receiver sees no benefit to being subjected to the pitch. If things aren’t bad enough, this kind of valueless outreach then creates a negative perception of your firm in the eyes of the unhappy prospect.

Fortunately, there’s a marketing methodology designed to make the marketing and sales experience a better, more valuable one for both parties involved. Called “inbound marketing and Inbound Sales,” the strategy delivers value to your target audience at every stage of the sales journey and personalizes each engagement to make prospects feel valued and creates the perception that your firm truly does care about them.

Make your marketing and sales outreach more “Human”

Critical to making this method work is the need to align marketing and sales efforts so that both teams are in lockstep with how they approach and engage prospects. That’s because marketing and sales are often famously at odds with each other – marketing will implement one strategy while sales use an entirely different one. This lack of shared goals and inadequate inter-team communications usually results in wasted effort, lost opportunities, and poor sales.

But when marketing and sales align perfectly, magic happens. In fact, inbound marketing consultant Hubspot reports that firms that closely ally marketing and sales efforts realize 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth. They also enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates, and 38% higher sales win rates.

All of this is made possible through quality content that aligns with prospects’ priorities, addressing the issues and challenges they face. Because this content is of real interest to them, they’re more receptive to engaging in a dialog with your sales and marketing teams.

Great things happen when sales and marketing are working toward the same goals

Part of the disconnect between sales and marketing is that much of the content created is never used. Marketing works hard to develop appropriate materials for each stage of the customer journey—data sheets for awareness, white papers for consideration and presentations for the decision stage. Unfortunately, though, many of the content pieces created never get used by sales. Integrating input from both marketing and sales will help minimize irrelevant content and focus resources on pieces that have greater usefulness in advancing the sales process.

Personalization is the foundation of this new, valuable content. As Forbes magazine reports, personalization drive results. Marketers who deliver personalized web experiences report getting double-digit returns in marketing performance and response. Customer experience personalization is becoming so important that chief marketing officers are working toward the goal of achieving personalization of content and messaging in over ten media, marketing, and sales touch points including social media, websites, email, and e-commerce channels.

Personalization is the “Silver Bullet” to creating engagement with prospects

However, to personalize your marketing and sales efforts, you need to know who you’re trying to reach. That would be individuals who are most likely to want and need the products or services you have to offer and would be predisposed to purchasing them. But before you can create specialized marketing content to attract that ideal individual, you must know what individual you wish to address, what matters most to them, and how they make buying decisions. It’s not enough to just narrow your market segment down to a particular segment of an industry or demographic. You need to know the PERSON within that segment responsible for making the actual purchase. You can glean this person’s identity by using aggregated data to construct a composite virtual personality, or “buyer persona.”

The information used to build your buyer persona is widely available from a variety of sources. Much is voluntarily handed over by prospects or revealed through online visits. There may be a wealth of information stored in your current databases or lurking invisibly on the Web. A cutting-edge technique known as predictive marketing analytics or lead scoring can help you get at that information and use it in your company’s B2B sales lead generation.

It works by searching for key terms and indications of interest within emails, TCP/IP log files, buying patterns recorded in public databases, and other resources touched by prospects in their daily interaction with the internet. Advanced data science methods can then interpret all this information to predict buyer behavior.

Analytics enables sales and marketers understand which outreach tactics work

This information can be leveraged by your sales and marketing teams to gain insight into prospect behavior and inform the creation of more effective sales and marketing content. This content can then be used as a highly efficient tool to optimize your outreach and begin the process of building a relationship that benefits both the customer and your firm. A variety of sales and marketing automation solutions are available to ensure that your content and messages are disseminated and regularly monitored to ensure optimum effectiveness.

An investment in inbound marketing puts in place the content, technology, and online presence that can automate interactions with prospects and nurture them until they are ready to engage with sales. The content serves as a baseline for the content tools and information that sales teams need to engage meaningfully with prospects. What’s more, sales outreach tools empower sales to handle more outreach than they would otherwise have been able to manage manually.

Learn how to step up your game with Inbound

Learn more about the inbound marketing methodology and then learn about a new approach to sales called Inbound Sales and the sales tools that make teams much more effective. For a downloadable overview of Inbound Sales, Download the eBook “A Guide to Inbound Sales, Transforming the way you sell to the modern buyer.”

Image copyright: 123RF Stock Photo

Let’s just get this out of the way. Direct sales is not easy. If it were, everyone would be successful at it. And, the fact is, most people are not.

Most people think that if they start a direct sales business, whether it’s selling cookware, essential oils, or skin care, their friends and family will love it as much as they do and they’ll have an instant network of customers that will keep them in business. Or, they get super excited about their business because they love the product. Then they have to get out of their comfort zone and actually talk to other people about it. That’s when their business quickly becomes a hobby.

Here are three harsh realities:

• Your friends and family love you. They don’t necessarily love your product or want to buy it.
• Business from your friends and family isn’t going to sustain, much less grow, your business.
• You are going to have to promote your business outside of your direct circle of friends.

Ok, now that we are clear on that. Let’s talk about what IS possible, and what does work in direct sales.

Direct sales is about selling products directly to consumers and building a network of customers and sales representatives. At the heart of direct sales is the power of storytelling, leading with value and building relationships. The direct sales industry has evolved over the last ten years, but those principles have remained constant.

What has evolved, though, is how the direct sales industry has embraced the power of the internet and social media to give direct sales representatives the opportunity to expand their networks further than ever before.

Technology has made it easier to reach customers outside our local market. However, the basics of direct sales have remained the same for over a century. Effective direct selling requires finding a target market and meeting their needs, building relationships, and using stories to sell. Those things haven’t gone out of fashion, as any successful direct sales leader will tell you. The vehicle we use may have changed, but the message is still the same.

So, how do you find your target market, develop relationships, and tell stories to market your direct sales business online? You use the power of inbound marketing.

What is Inbound Marketing and How Does it Work for Direct Sales

Inbound marketing is using the internet to attract your ideal buyers. It involves using the following to attract customers who are looking for a solution to their problem.

• content (answering people’s questions)
• search engine optimization (helping that content get found in search engines)
• promotion of content (using social media and advertising)

Think of it this way; you are drawing targeted customers in rather than sending a message out to the masses.

Maybe you’ve been doing part of inbound marketing a while but didn’t even know it had a name. My guess is that if you found this article you have been using social media, and maybe blogging, to build your direct sales business. You have been using parts of inbound marketing. But, you may not be using it to its fullest potential, in an organized way that will yield the best results.

So, if you’re ready to grow beyond your current network of customers and expand your direct sales business, I’ll take you through the elements of inbound marketing that you can use today to see real results.

If you make a committed effort to use the approach that I outline below, you will stand out from your competition. Most direct sellers don’t use all of these practices. They pick the easy one, social media, and think that blasting promotional images on their Facebook page will bring in the sales. After reading this, you’ll know better and do better. Here we go!

How to Attract New Customers to Your Direct Sales Business Using Inbound Marketing

Determine Your Ideal Buyer

The focus of your marketing should always be on your customer. Not on your product. Focus on serving their needs and adding value to their experience, and you will set yourself apart from the crowd.

The first thing you want to do is create a buyer persona profile. Your buyer persona will determine everything in your inbound marketing strategy. This semi-fictional generalized representation of your ideal customer is your north star in determining the content and promotion strategy of your direct sales business. Getting crystal clear on your persona is crucial.

Ask yourself:

• Who is my ideal customer?
• Where are they online?
• What do they need?
• Why do they need it?

To help you figure out who your ideal customer is, it’s helpful to think about their daily life, their problems, and their desires. Think about obstacles they face in their lives and how your product makes their lives easier.

People are motivated by love and status. How do your product and business opportunity specifically solve those needs? If you use that in your messaging, people will be compelled to use your products and join your team. Here are some examples:

My ideal buyer hates to cook. But she loves her family. Her family needs to eat. If she has an easier way to prepare nutritious, tasty meals, then she will be showing her family that she loves them.

My ideal buyer hates to shop for clothes in stores. But she needs to look good when she has video conferences with clients. Looking professional helps elevate her status as a virtual assistant. If she purchases my clothing online, she will have professional attire that is comfortable yet stylish.

My ideal team member is a work from home mom who had a professional career before having children. She loves staying home with her family but misses the feeling of accomplishment, confidence, and status that she enjoyed when she worked outside the home. If she starts her own direct sales business, she will put her skills to use and once again have that feeling of accomplishment that she craves.

You can see that once you are clear on who you are speaking to, it becomes easier to craft a message that resonates with your ideal buyer.

Brand Yourself

You’re clear on your buyer persona. Now it’s time to get clear on who you are and how you can set yourself apart from others in your company and your industry.

Answer these questions to create your brand:

• Who does your target buyer aspire to be?
• Who influences you and what draws you to them?
• What do you want people to feel when they read your content or view your images online?
• What are three objects that you love that you can use in your images that people will come to associate with you?
• What colors create the mood you want people to feel when they see your brand?
• How can you create brand imagery that works with your corporate brand’s imagery?

Website/Blog

Your direct sales company will provide you with a replicated website from which customers can make purchases. It’s the same as every other representative’s corporate site. What we’re suggesting here is that you start your own website and include a blog. Put the power of content marketing to work for your direct sales business.

When you have a blog, you have a vehicle to answer potential customers’ and team members’ questions. It gives you content to share on social media and a platform that you can use to differentiate yourself from others in your company. You become a trusted authority on your product line and a helpful friend who offers advice and value, taking the sale further and building a relationship.

Another reason to have a blog is that it helps you show up in search engine results. A blog is great for SEO because it provides content that can be found when your potential customers search for either your brand or solutions that your product provides.

SEO

Once you have your blog set up, you’ll want to optimize it for search engines. When someone does a search for your product, you want to come up on the first page of Google. How do you do that? You need to optimize your website and follow SEO best practices.

You’ll start by doing keyword research around your product and the problems it solves. Come up with a list of questions your customers are asking before they buy your product. Then write blog articles on those topics and add an FAQ section to your website.

You’ll also want to install Google Analytics on your website and track how your website is performing in search. You can use Google Analytics to track keyword performance and the behavior of users on your website. These metrics will help you adjust your content strategy to improve how your website performs in search.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, we also recommend that you install a plugin such as Yoast SEO or WP Meta SEO and use them to guide you in optimizing your blog for search engines.

A word here about Pinterest. Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media platform. So, be sure to optimize your blog post images for Pinterest and enable rich pins. Set up a Pinterest account for your business. Then learn how to use it for your direct sales business. That’s a whole other blog post, so I’m not going to go in depth about that here. But, a quick Google search will bring up tons of posts on how to use Pinterest for your business.

Attraction Marketing

In social selling, which is what direct sales is, we attract people who want to socialize with us, be it online or in person. We attract people who aspire to be like us, who trust us and agree with our opinions, and those who enjoy our personality. Use the power of attraction in your branding and social media presence.

Here are a few ways to use attraction marketing in your direct sales business:

• Make sure your social media profiles are optimized and completed fully, and that they are consistent across all platforms.
• Make it easy for your audience to connect with you and follow you on all platforms.
• Use attractive and visually compelling imagery in your social media profiles and posts.
• Be authentic, yet professional.
• Give inside glimpses into your business and private life so your audience can learn to trust you.
• Let your personality show so people feel like they know you through the screen.
• Use storytelling in your social media and blog posts to draw your followers and readers in.
• In your writing, speak directly to the reader like they are a friend.

Your goal is to quickly establish a relationship with your readers and social media followers. They should get an idea of who you are, your personality, your values, and your mission within a few posts.

Social Media

More than any other aspect of marketing, social media has revolutionized the way direct sellers have built their businesses over the past ten years. Social media has allowed direct sales consultants to reach a wider audience than ever before while building relationships and spreading their message quickly.

However, along with the good, there has come some bad. Social media is very powerful, yes, but using social media improperly can turn off your friends and customers. Have you ever been added to a direct sales consultant’s Facebook group without your permission? Have your friends blasted their business posts daily, clogging up your newsfeed? Have you received unsolicited messages from friends about their business? That’s the kind of stuff that gives direct sales a bad name.

The better way to do it is to lead with relationship and value. Be a friend first. Attract people to your business by showing how fun it is, how useful the products are and how your business is making you happy and fulfilling your family’s needs.

Two effective ways to build your following on social media are through the power of community and the power of storytelling.

Community

A highly effective way to build your customer base, establish a relationship with them, and keep them coming back for more is to bring your followers into your tribe. Using a Facebook group as your home base, engage your community with helpful posts, entertain them with your personality, and treat them like they are part of an exclusive clan. The most successful direct sales Facebook groups are not the ones that constantly promote products; they are the ones that people look forward to checking every day because there is always something fun going on in the group.

Make your group special by posting exclusive content there. Don’t cross-post the same things on your other social accounts. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to engage with your group.

Be sure you’re helping build relationships among your group members, as well. People want to hang out with people they know. Use engaging posts to get members to reveal things about themselves so they can get to know each other.

Storytelling

Words tell, and stories sell. Use storytelling to draw your followers in and allow them to get to know you and your product line in an authentic way. It’s tempting to want to post about products by telling what they do. Focus instead on how they change your life for the better. Tell stories about how you use your products in everyday life. Include images and video that grab your followers’ attention and pull them into the scene.

Invite your followers and customers to be a part of the story. Ask them to tell you how they use the products and what their experience has been since they started using them. This provides social proof that the products work and make people’s lives better.

Don’t forget that social media is meant to be social. Follow the 80/20 rule on all of your social channels. 80% of your posts should be offer value and be engaging while 20% of your posts should be directly about your business. Cinchshare offers some great ideas about what to post 80% of the time to keep your followers engaged.

Reviews and Testimonials

Before I make a purchase, I like to know what other people think of the product. Don’t you? The same applies in direct sales. That’s one of the reasons home parties work so well in direct sales. We like to hear from others who have used the product. If the party hostess loves the product enough to invite people into her home to buy it, that’s the first step in knowing it’s worth checking out.

In online marketing, reviews and testimonials are even more important. If we’re purchasing something sight unseen, we want to know that others use it and love it. Testimonials are also powerful because we want to have things that other people have and love. We often purchase so that we can be “on trend.”

Include reviews and testimonials on your website, social media accounts, and your Facebook group. Give people an easy way to review your product. Then highlight customers who have given you glowing testimonials. It provides social proof that the products are amazing which will lead to more sales.

Customers love to get a shout-out on social media. If you make customer spotlights a regular part of your social media strategy, you will get even more reviews and testimonials because your customers will want to be the next one to be in the spotlight.

The same strategy works for team building. Highlight your team members as they grow their business. People love praise recognition and will often work harder for it than for money. Be their biggest cheerleader and make sure they know you are grateful for them.

Video

Use video in your direct sales business. It’s so easy, and nothing can help you build a relationship with your customers as fast. All you need is your computer or cell phone, and you can go live on your social channels. It gives your customers a way to put a face and a voice to the name and really humanizes your business.

Use video to build your business in the following ways:

• Use Facebook Live in your group and on your business page.
• Repurpose those videos on your blog and in your email marketing.
• Set up a YouTube channel and post helpful how-to videos about your product and about how to build your business.

Sales Funnels and Lead Generation

Having a large social media following and email list is one thing. Converting those people into customers is another. Set up lead generation funnels so that your followers have ways consume your content and then purchase from you. Always point them in the direction you want them to go with clear calls to action.

Places you want to funnel people to are: your Facebook group, your blog, your email list, and your replicated website. If you are adding value and building relationships at all of these touchpoints, they will purchase from you when the time is right for them to order.

Local Networking

Let’s not forget the power of in-person networking in building your business. When you meet people at events, home parties, and in daily life, be sure to send them to your website and social channels. Lead with value and give them a reason to follow you. Then start to build the relationship with them online.

One effective way to do this is to take a selfie with the person you meet (with their permission of course) and tell them you want to post it on your Facebook or Instagram page. Tell them to like your page (right then and there) and then tag them in the post. Make it fun, and they will want to join your community. Then send them invites to your email list, your Facebook group, and your blog.

Using Inbound Marketing to Build Your Direct Sales Business

The internet has changed the way direct sales businesses are built. Using effective inbound marketing practices to attract customers to your direct sales business provides limitless ways to grow your reach online. Never forget the founding principles of direct sales – use the power of storytelling, lead with value and build relationships – and your business will no doubt grow as you learn to master inbound marketing in your direct sales business.

Now that you see how to attract new customers to your direct sales business using inbound marketing, we’d love to know how you are you using inbound marketing in your direct sales business. We want to hear what’s working and what’s challenging you. Send us a message or comment below!

B2B buyers are conditioned to view vendor-provided information with a healthy dose of skepticism, and this makes lack of trust an elephant-in-the-room issue for B2B marketers. Lack of trust produces a major drag on marketing performance. If buyers don’t trust what you say, they won’t give you credit for understanding their needs or providing relevant, personalized, and engaging content and experiences. Trust can’t be manufactured, but the right approach to marketing can make trust more likely to develop.

According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in government, business, non-governmental organizations, and media fell significantly in 2017. Just over half (52%) of Edelman’s survey respondents said they trust business organizations, but even this modest level of trust is tenuous. In 13 of the 28 countries represented in the Edelman study, less than 50% of the survey respondents said they trust business.

Recent research regarding trust in advertising and marketing has produced mixed results, but many studies show that trust is a major issue for marketers. For example, in a 2017 survey by TrustRadius, technology buyers ranked vendor or product websites and vendor collateral (ebooks, case studies, webinars, etc.) as the least helpful and trustworthy sources of information used to support buying decisions.

Lack of trust weakens the impact of all marketing efforts. In recent years, many marketers have been using insights from data to better understand the interests and needs of their buyers. And many have implemented personalization technologies in order to provide content and messaging that are more relevant and engaging for potential buyers. But without buyer trust, these efforts won’t produce the improved performance that marketers are hoping to see.

Trust lies at the heart of every business relationship. Trust can’t be manufactured; it must be earned from potential buyers. But while marketers (or sales professionals for that matter) cannot unilaterally create buyer trust, they can take steps to create an environment that makes potential buyers more likely to extend their trust. The starting point is to understand the factors that lead to trust, and the process by which trust develops.

In a business context, the decision to trust a prospective vendor depends on the buyer’s perceptions about three factors:

• Ability – Does the company possess the requisite knowledge, skill, and competence to perform in a way that will meet my expectations?
• Integrity – Will the company fulfill its promises? Will the company’s actions match its words and claims? Does the company adhere to principles that I find acceptable?
• Benevolence – Will the company be sufficiently concerned about my (and my organization’s) welfare to put our interests above (or at least on par with) its own?

For SaaS and subscription companies, winning a customer is only the first step of the journey to customer lifetime value (LTV). This is why it’s imperative for B2B tech marketers to shift their focus from buying journey funnels to full-on customer lifecycle management. However, customer acquisition is where most marketing strategies stop. The traditional funnel is focused on net-new customer acquisition as the means to drive growth. This singular focus is a double-edged sword in recurring revenue and subscription business models.

For example, if you lose five customers this month, you’d need to acquire six new customers in the same month to create growth. This may seem doable when a company is small, but as customer volume grows, so do those requirements just to maintain a consistency in monthly recurring revenues (MRR).

In this blog, I’ll cover best practices for B2B marketers to make the shift from funnel marketing to lifecycle marketing to increase ROI and help your customers stick with you for the long run.

Develop a Clear Customer Engagement Strategy

Opportunities for churn arise throughout the customer experience. The more engaged and invested your customers become, the “stickier” the relationship. Marketers must seamlessly extend the experience that engaged and converted customers on the front end to one that will engage and grow their loyalty and satisfaction on the back end. This is your opportunity to ensure that you’ve developed customer experiences that result in happy and productive customers.

Answering questions such as these can help you determine how to best engage your customers:

• What do new customers need to implement and become proficient at using our solution?
• Who are the new roles/people you need to engage?
• Are they achieving their desired outcome?
• How can you help them get more value?
• How easy is it to do business with you over time?

Onboarding is a critical stage for new customers. Buying a new product or solution is about change management. Sending a welcome email is great, but nowhere near enough. Implementing the product is one thing, driving user adoption is quite another.

What content, tools, or resources can you provide to generate excitement and anticipation for using your solution? Do you have programs to help power users bring along those that are more reluctant to embrace new ways of doing things? Your customers won’t continue to pay for shelfware. Marketers who proactively work to engage new customers by helping them facilitate change and see added value will help to increase retention.

Gaining the outcome promised during the buying process is the minimal viable return your customers will expect and demand. If the value your solution provides is not easily quantifiable, marketing can help to make it more tangible by showing customers how to validate it for other internal stakeholders. And, once that’s achieved, show them how they can gain even more value. This leads to expansion opportunities via cross- and upsell potential. Creating a strong customer retention strategy doesn’t always mean focusing on getting more money, but can be just as effective when focused on getting more time. The longer a customer chooses to stay with you and use your products, the higher their lifetime value and the more profits for your company.

Expand Customer Relationships

It’s common that there’s a champion who has worked tirelessly to help their company buy your solution. Unfortunately, one of the most common reasons for churn in SaaS or subscription customers is the loss of that champion—whether through resignation or role reassignment.

Once a customer is acquired, the smartest thing marketers can do is to expand relationships within the account. This has become a driving principle for account-based marketing, but it’s an imperative for building customer relationships, as well. Similarly, if only one person at the company knows how to use your solution and he or she leaves, you’re left with an orphaned solution destined to become shelfware, which leads to a lost customer.

Expanding your reach within the account should be a component of your customer engagement strategy. You’ll need to work closely with your account managers or customer success teams to create this program, but the longevity of relationships that can be created by increasing the number of people who use and have knowledge of your product will pay off in longer-term, more profitable, and satisfied customers.

Expanding and deepening customer relationships also pays off in referrals and advocacy—two things that deliver big benefits for company growth.

Avoid Unpleasant Surprises at Renewal Time

When marketers focus on keeping customers for life, they are engaged with their customers continuously. Interactive content and personalization are two tactics that are high on marketers’ goals lists. Think about how customer retention programs that employ those tactics can also inform your customer acquisition strategies.

One of the biggest challenges marketers face is understanding their prospects and buyers and breaking through the noise to engage them. Getting proactively involved in customer retention and working collaboratively with sales and customer success teams will help to remove that blindness and replace it with relevance that enables even better marketing strategies for customer acquisition. This is truly the time for fearless marketers to go boldly beyond funnels to focus customer lifecycle management.

Have you adopted a lifecycle marketing strategy? Tell me about your tactics in the comments so we can keep the discussion going. You can also attend my session at the annual Marketing Nation Summit in San Francisco April 29-May 2.

The post B2B Tech Marketers Make the Shift From Funnels to Lifecycles appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Some business decisions just aren’t easy, like which markets to go after and which customers to say no to. But they can become easier when made in context.

Context matters. In this case, the context I’m referring to is strategy. Many businesses believe they can operate without a clear strategy. While it’s possible, in many cases it doesn’t drive the sales you need. Your strategy is a critical filter for the constant barrage of decisions your sales and marketing teams need to make every day.

How does that work? You have to have the critical components of your strategy clearly defined.

The critical components of strategies that drive sales are:

• Vision
• Values
• Mission
• Goals
• Ideal Customer
• Positioning

Vision

Your vision is your story about what you are building and why. It is a detailed description of the product, service or technology. It includes the size; including the number of people, locations, units, revenue or anything else that will define your size. It details what it will look like including the product, the packaging, and the locations.

• Is it Apple slick or Google fun?
• Does it include your long-term plan including your exit strategy?
• Are you selling a company, a product or a license?
• Who uses what you are buying?
• What is their world like when they have what you are selling?

Without this clear vision, it becomes difficult to drive sales.

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Without clear vision, it becomes difficult to drive sales @LizRHeiman
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Values

Values are built, in part, on your “why”. If you understand why you are doing something, you can figure out how you want to do it. I think about values as your “how”.

• Will we do things in ways that are environmentally friendly?
• Will we do things with integrity?
• Will we have fun while we are doing it?
• Will we be changing the world?
• Will we be helping people?

It also helps us understand what kinds of people we want to hire and what kinds of people we want our clients to be. If integrity is our highest value, then we don’t hire someone who talks big and changes their story during an interview. If customer service is our first priority, then we need to hire people who care about other people more than they care about being cutting edge or fun.

When we have problems, our values help us decide how to solve them. Do we fire staff to cut costs or do we focus on revenue generation?

When you know why you are doing things and how you want your company to work, decisions become easier. Decisions like firing a customer or changing your market focus.

Mission

Mission is the simple sentence that tells us what we do and who we do it for. It may include the why we do it.

If our mission is clear, it is easy to see when we have gone off mission. If our mission is to provide better fencing to pig farmers, then we will quickly know when we are off mission. Sometimes, we decide that our mission needs to change or expand and so too, may our vision. At least we can explain that and bring the whole team along with us. Salespeople need to be clear on the mission. This guides them to bring in the right types of customers.

Goals

Once we know where we are going, why we are doing it and how we want to do things, we can think about the specific path we want to take to get there. Our goals become our benchmarks for our journey. Like when you see the sign that says 500 miles to Cincinnati. Goals let you know you are making progress in the right direction. A good strategy includes goals around:

• Revenue
• Market position
• Operations
• Product

These goals help you establish priorities in a world where we are constantly inundated with external demands. It’s difficult to set reasonable sales goals when the larger company-wide goals are not clear.

Ideal Customer

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The clearer we are about who we are selling to, the better our results will be @LizRHeiman
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The clearer we are about who we are selling to, the better our results will be. Your product is a good fit for certain people. Your company culture and values narrow that definition. By looking at our products and who will get the most benefit from them, can afford to pay for them, will close without too many hurdles, will be a satisfied customer and will buy from us again in the future, we can narrow down who we should be targeting. Both marketing and sales need to be clear on what the ideal customer looks like so they can target them.

Positioning

Positioning is about how we want to be perceived in the market.

• Are we the low-price leader?
• The environmental option?
• The latest technology?
• User-friendly?

It’s the story we tell about our company. Our values will help us think about what story we tell about ourselves and our solutions. That story or positioning will help us attract the buyers most likely to be interested in our offer.

Your Filter

Now that we understand the critical pieces of your strategy, I hope you can begin to see how they can be a filter. If your team doesn’t understand your strategy, they may not be able to make good decisions about resource investment, partnerships, product development or even sales strategy.

Values become a filter for solving problems every day. Goals become a filter for resource allocation. Ideal customer helps us focus our marketing and sales teams on the clients we want most. Positioning determines the story we are telling and impact decision making from marketing to ops. All of these things affect decision making in every part of your organization, including sales.

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Schedule a time to chat with us and we’ll help you drive sales by using your strategy as a filter. 

The post How to Use Strategy as a Filter to Drive Sales appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

What separates us from other savage beasts is our ability to plan for the future.

(That being said, a staggering number of humans have consumed Tide pods; whether or not you think our species is special is kind of up to you.)

The problem with planning is that we live in a world where gratification is instantly attainable. You scroll through endless feeds until your dopamine receptors light up like a Christmas tree. You enter a search query and any question you could possibly have is answered in seconds.

When you take that same approach towards things in life that require strategy, planning, and purposeful execution—like digital marketing, for instance—$h#t hits the fan.

Without the proper infrastructure behind ANY marketing efforts, including Google AdWords or Facebook ads, scaling will put your wallet and your psyche in jeopardy.

Whether you plan on hiring an agency or managing your paid media personally, make sure your house is in order. In this post I’ll run through the four essential items you must complete prior to scaling your paid advertising efforts.

#1: Have a Functional Website That Encourages Action(s)

For the most novice among us, my first nugget of advice is to actually have a website.

It seems like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised at the number of folks who are so eager to get their brand in front of the masses that they try to do so without having a web domain to begin with. You have to crawl before you can run, friends.

Even if you want to advertise your business page on Facebook, once users realize you don’t have a website they’ll be skeptical of your legitimacy. If you’re brick & mortar or use other third-party platforms to sell your services, you are absolutely going to need to have a website to go anywhere on Facebook or Google (or any other ad platform for that matter).

Luckily, creating a simple and attractive website has never been easier with (relatively) inexpensive services like Squarespace and Wix. For more long-term integration capabilities I would suggest using something like WordPress. The only problem with that route is the more complex your website, the more difficult it will be to create and maintain. You may find yourself needing a web developer; it may in your best interest to invest in these simple options initially and migrate over time.

In the roaring 2010’s having a website is not difficult. Having that website make people want your product or service is another obstacle all together.

Sometimes people know their business to such a technical degree that conveying its value in an aesthetically pleasing and simple manner doesn’t come easy. Others are just reluctant to admit that something isn’t driving results because it’s ugly or confusing. Either way, you’re going to run into trouble running ads and scaling effectively if either of those scenarios is true.

Having the self-awareness to know when your website is ugly can be difficult, especially if you’ve poured a considerable amount of time into it. What do I actually mean by ugly? In a word, “ineffective.”

Here’s what an ineffective website might look like:

No mobile optimization

One of the quickest ways to ensure that your advertising dollars aren’t blown is to make your site mobile-friendly. The good news is that most web hosting services have either fully mobile optimized templates or allow users to have alternative versions based on device.

A way to test this, aesthetically, is to either go on your website on your phone or resize your desktop window. If you are resizing the window and the site does not scale with the reduction, that means your site is only going to look reasonable on a larger screen. After all, users spend on average 69% of their media time on smartphones.

You’ll also want to check load time on mobile devices to ensure that, even if your site scales effectively on smaller screens, it does so fast enough. People lose interest quickly, and a few extra seconds can mean the difference between a sale and losing a prospect forever. Luckily, Google has some free tools that can help you determine whether you’ve got the site speed blues.

Too much text

If your website looks like a chapter from the unabridged versions of The Count of Monte Cristo, you may have trouble keeping guests there. If you’re going to have less than a few seconds to convince someone to click on a paid ad, then they should be able to digest the following information as concisely as possible.

The layout and copy of your site should facilitate the action that you want prospects to take.

A common misstep is to try to say everything on the home page, with subsequent pages being afterthoughts. If your website was a tourist attraction, you would want to direct people to the spots that they came to see in the most concise way possible.

Do that.

Your site looks like it’s from 1993

If you have any of those 3D spinning gifs or anything that resembles Word Art or Mario Paint I’m going to assume that 16-bit masterpiece isn’t going to be mobile-optimized.

Although I’m a fan of the 90’s, your skip-its will look a lot better on a 21st century device without the reminiscence of dial-up. Unless you’re targeting Nokia burners of course…

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My reasoning for being so hard on the website side of things is because when it comes to running paid ads, the page that users land on is arguably the largest factor in whether they leave with your product or services.

#2: Set up Google Analytics and Track Conversion Goals

Traffic and the actions completed because of it matter. Like, kind of a lot.

The best solution for tracking everything from site visits to obscure conversion goals is to integrate your website with Google Analytics.

Whether you have started advertising online or plan to, you’re going to want to be able to tie every dollar back from action to source. To most seasoned marketers this may also seem like a no-brainer, but a vast number of businesses out there are eager to start advertising with the belief that Facebook and Google are going to identify conversions and web traffic down to the individual within each platform. They won’t.

Your life will be a lot easier if you have an infrastructure in place that says people came in through “X” page and converted through “Y” offer. Setting this up can appear to be a daunting task at first but it’s a lot like waking up and going to the gym. You’ll thank yourself later for it.

Setting up Google Analytics

This video gives a brief overview of getting started in Analytics, and is a heck of a lot more helpful than I ever could be in explaining how to do so.

If that wasn’t helpful, this Google support page should do the trick.

Creating conversion goals (that mean something)

The key to measurement is to define what actions are most important to your business. You achieve this in Google Analytics by setting up goals. For the sake of not going too far down the rabbit hole in this post, here is a walkthrough on how to set up goals in Google Analytics, as well as the different goal types and what they mean.

The objective of all of this is to be able to get visibility into how many users are visiting each page of your site and of that percentage how many are completing goals. The more effective your website and targeting, the higher volume of goal completes you will receive. When someone converts from AdWords or Facebook, you should be able to see those conversions as goals within Google Analytics. This will make clear any reporting issues between the platforms in addition to allowing you to create remarketing audiences which is a key component to scale.

The most important relationship between the paid advertising platforms and your Google Analytics structure pertains to your ability to tie costs back to results (or lack thereof). Additionally, setting up Google Analytics allows you to get into the habit of placing pixel codes throughout your site, which will come in handy once you start advertising on multiple platforms that require their own code to be placed.

#3: Ensure that Your “Back-End” Makes Sense for Your Business

“Everyone has a back-end, Brett.”

Niiiiiice.

To reduce any confusion about what I’m talking about here, we’ll refer to anything happening in Facebook, Google, etc. as the “Front-end” and any processes that involve your website and sales cycle as the “Back-end.”

Another common issue that businesses have is that they begin to drive leads and sales through their paid advertising activities but don’t have the back-end to support that volume or lack systems and processes to effectively organize and clean leads (eliminate spam without pushing it to your sales team). Google Analytics is the first step to building an internal foundation but the road between tracking results and actually having a system to process them is a long one.

Depending on the nature of your business, you may accept anyone who visits a page and converts as long as their credit card works (i.e. ecommerce). However, if you are a business that needs to groom the leads you drive for sales, the need for a system to help you do so becomes exponentially greater. There are a variety of SAAS companies to assist you in this and they all have variations in quality, complexity, and cost (not mutually exclusive). Some of the most popular include:

Hubspot

With a robust offering of marketing products HubSpot has become well-known for being the prototype for SAAS success and phenomenal showering facilities. The disparity between popularity and quality should be noted, however, as well as HubSpot’s “jack of all trades; master of none” approach to their product line.

With HubSpot you get a CRM that works, and landing page templates that work (kind of) but none of which will blow you away regarding usability, aesthetics, or customization. I will say, however, it has the shortest learning curve.

Marketo / Eloqua

I grouped these together because they are similar in nature, with some arguing that Marketo is more focused on the mid-sized business with Eloqua being more enterprise level.

Whichever you choose, they both have a fairly steep learning curve and certainly aren’t cheap. If your operation becomes increasingly complex with multiple lead flows and customer acquisition paths, hiring someone to be your CRM architect within one of these platforms is your best bet to continued scalability.

Salesforce

Most popular CRM, and for good reason.

Salesforce integrates with almost everything and allows you to coordinate marketing and sales efforts.

Drift

Drift created the category of conversational marketing, an approach to lead generation and nurturing that’s taking many marketing and sales orgs by storm.

The fact of the matter is they have an effective product. Having chatbots on your site can allow you to easily convert visitors in real-time and depending on the nature of your business you may have to build your sales systems around them.

Just make sure that you know how to track them in Analytics.

#4: Build a Consistent Brand

When a business first embarks on its marketing journey, its brand identity may not be fully developed. It may take some time for an adolescent company to grow into the manifestation that achieves success at scale.

The problem occurs when businesses spend so much time being marketing chameleons that their brand identity becomes muddied and ambiguous by the time they are in fact ready to scale operations. I could write an entire post separately on branding in the digital realm, but for now I’ll list out the basic necessities for the consistency and strength you’ll need behind your ads.

Have a consistent tone & visual identity

You not only need one, you should work hard at getting the best one possible. Whether you have artistic skills or need to hire a designer, there’s no way you’re going to build a strong brand without a great logo, bold colors, and legible typefaces.

Your brand is going to be broadcasted everywhere. Make sure your logo isn’t low resolution and doesn’t seem dated. The idea is to limit the discrepancy between the brand perception and the brand reality (or ideal). Books will always be judged by their covers, especially ones that haven’t been read.

I have seen several cases where businesses have multiple tones based on their specific promotion. This is a short-sighted tactic and will only serve to dilute and weaken your brand over time. Pick a specific messaging tone and stick to it, unless you have tried one and it doesn’t work. Then it’s time to re-brand.

The idea is that your brand can be thought of as a part of your infrastructure. The stronger that infrastructure, the easier it will be to grow efficiently, across paid channels and otherwise.

Have a clearly defined value proposition

Your web copy, tangential promotions, and sales collateral should all share the common ancestor that is the value proposition of your business.

Understandably, some businesses are complex and can have multiple products with multiple selling points. The point is to consolidate all of those into a unified concept that is the brand, the umbrella from which your products live under both physically and within the minds of your target audience. The more synonymous the brand becomes with the value it delivers, the easier it will become to scale within paid advertising. Like a snowball rolling down a hill.

Final Thoughts

There are a number of failing businesses out there who believe that running paid ads will save them (most of which have screwed up on points 2-4 above). I hate to break hearts, but they won’t. There are also very successful businesses who believe they are too good for paid advertising or have distorted beliefs for what AdWords, Facebook, and other paid channels can deliver.

Both attitudes are incorrect and of course they manifest for opposite reasons. If you’re somewhere in the middle then it’s important to understand that paid advertising isn’t going to help you scale by default; you need to take time and be strategic. You also need to take responsibility when the results aren’t what you hoped for and understand that “scale” is only achievable upon the foundation of success.

What good is having a sales process if you don’t use it?   Not using your sales process is just as bad as not having a sales process at all.

How can we expect to be successful as sales professionals if we don’t have a process we follow and believe in?

Could you imagine getting on a plane and the pilot saying he or she does not have a plan to fly the plane?  How about going into surgery and the last words you hear is the surgeon saying they’ve never done this before?

There’s no way you’d get on that plane or allow that surgery, yet that’s what our prospects are subjected to when we don’t have a sales process.

The last several years I’ve been doing a lot of work in this area of helping salespeople build a process that works.  The key is first knowing the outcome or benefit derived from what you sell and the type of customer who needs it. This sounds simple, but it’s one of the big pieces salespeople miss.

The ability to qualify a prospect quickly is essential to avoid having valuable time wasted on someone who doesn’t line up with what you provide.

Second issue is time management and the art of the follow-up.  You all have perfect prospects who want to hear from you.  Don’t kid yourself in thinking they’re not out there.  If you can define your outcomes, then you can find your prospects.  Challenge is following up with them to allow you to break through the noise and get them to focus on how you can help them.

An example I like to use when talking with salespeople is to never forget the one word found on every bottle of shampoo. You’ve seen it time and time again. The word is “repeat.”  Again, pretty simple, yet it’s lost on most salespeople.

Sales is not hard. Yes, I said that correctly. Sales is not hard.  It’s not hard when it’s done with the right plan.   The plan does not need to be complex. I’ll argue far too many salespeople overcomplicate things.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Too many salespeople over complicate things out of a desire to have something to blame when they fall short of their goals.

Next week at OutBound I’ll be sharing the key components that make up a successful sales plan.   If you’re attending, you’ll get the specifics, as this will be the first time I’ve ever shared this information.

A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!

Copyright 2018, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results

Modern marketers understand that quality, engaging and relevant content is at the core of any integrated digital marketing strategy. After all, in a world where consumers are increasingly self-directed in researching their options to make purchasing decisions, that quality, engaging and relevant content aids their journey and decision-making. But let’s face it. While marketers want to inform and engage their audience, they ultimately want to generate viable leads to meet their goals and grow their respective businesses. Oftentimes, that means deciding when, where and how to gate certain content assets. In fact, perhaps one of the most common questions we get from our book of clients is: “Should I gate my content?” The answer? It depends. It depends on your objectives. It depends on your brand or product’s maturity in the marketplace. It depends on your content ecosystem. It depends on the “content of the content.” And it depends on your lead nurturing capabilities. As a result, strategic decision-making is crucial, otherwise your content may never see the light of day. With that said, there are several situations where we believe gated content should be left off the table.

#1 -  When you’re looking to build brand awareness.

Simply put, if you’re hoping to get eyeballs on your content and drive traffic and on-page engagement, give your content away “for free.” If you’re an emerging brand or part of a younger or smaller company, brand awareness is an important step in building your audience. By providing your prospects with great, accessible content throughout the funnel, you can plant seeds and strengthen your perceived value—which can pay off later. For more established brands, you know that just because you have high visibility and a strong reputation doesn’t mean a focus on brand awareness is no longer necessary. Awareness is still key for growing your audience, staying top of mind or gaining share of voice when a new product or service is released into the wild. So, if you’re creating content with the goal of strengthening awareness at the top and middle of the funnel, leave it ungated. [bctt tweet="Simply put, if you’re hoping to get eyeballs on your content and drive traffic and on-page engagement, give your content away “for free.” - @Alexis5484 #DigitalMarketing #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"]

#2 - When your brand, product or service is new to market.

This point is particularly important for startups or rising brands in a competitive marketplace. For those pioneering a new field, you’re likely up against little to no demand for your product or service—meaning you’ve created a solution for a problem your audience doesn’t know they have yet. So, how can you expect someone to “pay” for content if they don’t know anything about your purpose, function or value? For those rising brands in more established sectors, you’re likely competing with well-known or long-standing brands the same share of voice. And while you may be desperate for leads, providing quality, relevant content for “free” is where you should start in order to stand out.

#3 - When you don’t have quality, ungated content to bolster a gated asset.

When you gate a content asset, you’re signaling to your audience that what you’re offering is of premium value; content that requires a bit of payment to be enjoyed. So at the very least, you need to ask yourself if the content is truly valuable and worthy of that payment. In addition, you need to make sure that your “free” content is up to par, too. Think of it this way: Your ungated content serves as an appetizer for your audience, allowing them to gauge whether their entree, a gated ask, may be worth it. So, it’s important to ensure you have a strong ecosystem of ungated content to bolster any gated content. It’s as simple as that. [bctt tweet="It’s important to ensure you have a strong ecosystem of ungated content to bolster any gated content. - @Alexis5484 #DigitalMarketing #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"]

#4 - When you don’t have a thoughtful nurture strategy in place.

We’ve established that all marketers are hungry for leads and gated content helps satisfy that hunger. But once you get those new leads in, do you have a lead nurturing strategy in place to support them? If your plan only involves a standard “thank you” email and then sending the names off to sales, you’re not ready to gate an asset. You need to put together an automated email nurture first, as well as tracking and testing, to make sure you can optimize and personalize the experience for prospects.

#5 - When you’ve co-created content with influencers.

When you co-create a piece of content or asset with influencers, you want them to be proud of the finished product and ultimately share it with their followings. However, in our experience, if that content is behind a wall they’ll be far less likely to promote it. Why? For a couple reasons:

1. If your influencer partnerships were unpaid, some may feel uncomfortable with you “charging” for their content and expertise—especially if it comes as a surprise at launch. Or they may feel like they deserve further compensation, which you probably haven’t budgeted for.
2. Your influencers have more skin in the game if your content is gated. Think about it. If they’re promoting a gated asset to their followings, they’re sending the signal that this content is premium. If at the end of the day they don’t feel it’s worthy of payment, they may not share.

Now, there is a slight caveat to this. If you’ve developed an integrated influencer content campaign with multiple content types, a gated asset may be mixed in there. However, something needs to be left ungated not only to demonstrate value to your target audience, but also to make it easy for influencers to share.

Gate With Care

Gated content absolutely has a place in the digital marketing mix. But you need to be thoughtful and strategic when choosing which assets to gate—otherwise you run the risk of investing time and resources into content that stays mostly hidden. So, as you ponder whether to gate or not to gate, consider your objectives, market position and industry, current content ecosystem, nurture strategy, and influencer partners. This will help you see the bigger picture, while also enabling you to align your objectives and expectations. Looking for a way to build and bolster your content marketing strategy? Check out these seven steps for documenting your strategy. What other factors do you consider when choosing to gate an asset? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The post To Gate, or Not to Gate? Answers to an Age-Old Digital Marketing Question appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Channel partners are an integral part of a business's operations — but maintaining channel partnerships isn't always straightforward. Channel conflicts are almost bound to happen, and every company that leverages this strategy will face unique challenges that warrant equally unique solutions.

Channel conflict can manifest in several different ways. Your resellers could find out about each other, or they could start targeting the same customers. Your strategic partner might also start offering a lower price than you. What a mess.

In this article, I'll explain exactly what channel conflict is, the different ways it manifests, examples of what it might look like, and tactics to solve and avoid these issues altogether.

When manufacturers disrupt their established intermediaries’ ability to sell their products directly to consumers, its affiliated distributors, retailers, agents, and other channel partners lose out on revenue opportunities — and channel conflicts tend to arise as a result.

There's no single, catch-all category of channel conflict. Since distribution channels exist at different levels and cover various types of outlets, there's room for a variety of channel conflicts to occur. Let's take a look at four of the most prominent ones.

Types of Channel Conflict

Vertical Level Conflict

A vertical level conflict occurs when two or more channel members — operating at consecutive levels of a distribution channel — have a dispute. For example, if a wholesaler consistently fails to deliver the proper volume of a manufacturer's product to a retailer, a vertical level conflict between the two parties might arise.

In that case, the manufacturer would need to take a closer look at its output to ensure it's delivering the proper quantity to its wholesaler, the wholesaler's operations to ensure it's sufficiently supplying the retailer, and whether the retailer's agreement with the wholesaler justifies the grievances it's airing.

Horizontal Level Conflict

Horizontal level conflict occurs when two channel members, operating at the same level of a distribution channel, have a dispute or disagreement that impedes the flow of the broader operation.

For instance, let's say your business distributes your product to two wholesalers, covering retailers in separate regions. If one of those wholesalers decided to encroach on the other's territory, you might see a horizontal level conflict arise.

In that case, you would need to intervene to settle the dispute. If you didn't the conflict could compromise every facet of the distribution channel — from your manufacturing operations to the retailers those wholesalers ultimately supply.

Inter-Type Channel Conflict

Inter-type channel is similar to horizontal level conflict in that it occurs when two channel members at a similar level have a disagreement. However, where horizontal level conflict involves two or more similar businesses, inter-type channel conflict occurs when two channel partners of different sizes or nature have a dispute.

For example, a manufacturer might supply a large retailer and a small retailer with different items from its product line. If the large retailer was to expand beyond its typical product range and encroach upon the small retailer's segment of the product line, an inter-type channel conflict might arise.

Multi-Channel Level Conflict

Multi-channel level conflict occurs when channel partners at various levels of the distribution chain compete with one another by selling to the same market. For instance, if a brick and mortar retailer was to sell a brand's products at a lower-price point than an ecommerce outlet, a multi-channel level conflict might arise.

Now that we've established the potential nature of channel conflicts, let's take a look at some more involved examples.

Channel Conflict Examples

Example #1: Discount Conflicts

A vitamin brand distributes products exclusively to an online retailer and affiliate partners. The brand had a surplus of vitamins and sold the products to the retail partner for a discounted rate. The eCommerce partner then sold the vitamins at a lower price, creating a channel conflict with affiliate partners.

Elaborating on this example, the eCommerce partner began targeting individuals who previously purchased the products from affiliate partners through online advertising. Unfortunately, this created a channel conflict because the online retailer and affiliate partners began targeting the same customers, with one partner having an advantage in selling more products at a lower price.

Example Resolution for Discount Conflicts

By empowering the eCommerce partner to sell to consumers at a discounted rate, the retailer can now potentially cut into earnings for their affiliate partners who rely on the ability to sell their products at retail value. There is also the risk of customers being able to stock up on discounted products during the flash sale, which could impact their willingness to buy from affiliate partners for months to come.

Example #2: Excess Retailers and Wholesalers

A shoe brand allows too many retailers or wholesalers in a specific territory to sell their shoes. When this happens, you have an excess of retailers or wholesalers, which hurts sales and promotes negative competition in the channel.

This example showcases a type of channel conflict called vertical channel conflict.

Example Resolutions for Excess Retailers and Wholesalers

Let’s now consider some real-world examples of brands that have navigated this specific channel conflict.

1. Tortuga Backpacks

Tortuga Backpacks is an example of a company that has managed to solve this potential channel conflict. It does this by selling its most expensive items on its eCommerce website while selling cheaper items on Amazon, which targets different demographics.

2. Harry’s

Harry’s takes a different approach to the potential price problem. Instead of selling at different prices, the company sells its products at the same price regardless of the channel. This tactic has helped the company avoid price competition between marketplace retailers.

3. Skinny & Co

While great for the consumer, discounts undercut retailers and can cause channel conflict. One brand that has prevented this conflict is Skinny & Co. The organic cosmetics brand bundles different products into a travel kit. Doing this gives extra value to customers without cannibalizing sales or shortchanging retailers.

4. BeardBrand

BeardBrand identified channel conflict between selling on Amazon and selling on its website. It solved this by moving completely off Amazon and focusing resources on selling through its DTC channel. The result? A 20% increase in sales!

These examples show what channel conflict could look like and how some brands have avoided them. Next, let’s look at some common conflicts your brand might face and how to avoid them.

To avoid channel partner conflict, set clear boundaries on customer targeting. From the beginning, define which customer segments your partners shouldn’t target. It’s also important to be transparent about who you’re working with and why. Create a quarterly review cadence to keep this information top of mind.

Conflict 1: Market saturation

If your product helps your partner sell their existing products more effectively, it’s in their best interest to pursue a market penetration strategy. This means they will target a broad pool of customers and potentially go after your existing prospects. After all, it’s less about the sale of your product and more about starting their relationship with a new customer to sell their whole suite of products.

This leads to your product winding up in the hands of bad customers (wrong market segment) with the potential of cannibalizing existing deals. So, how do you avoid winding up with this issue from an overly aggressive channel partner?

Solution 1: Set clear boundaries on customer targeting.

Are there certain regions or customer types you'd rather your partners not target? Setting clear boundaries in the contract will ensure your internal sales and marketing unit can function without worrying if your partner will swoop in and take over the relationship.

You should also add qualification criteria for when you’ll accept and reject a deal. Bad customers will create problems for your support team and, ultimately, impact you more than your partner with their churn. This is why having the final sign-off before a prospect gets approved for the product makes sense for your team.

Conflict 2: Partners Comparing Pricing

There’s nothing wrong with having multiple resellers for one product. It’s easy to split them up by region or even customer type (mid-market vs. enterprise). It might even stand to reason you get them different splits on revenue depending on what they bring to the table (tier one support, installation services, etc. … ). But, what if they talk about your product and realize someone is getting a better deal?

Solution 1: Create transparency around who you work with today and why.

Horizontal channel conflict is hard to manage, especially with companies considering themselves competitors. The only way to mitigate the risk here is to lay all your cards out on the table during the contracting process.

Tell your potential partner who you are working with, their restrictions (i.e., geography, market segment, etc.), and lay out your typical channel relationship terms. If you make an exception for a partner, make sure you’re getting extra value.

Ask yourself, if another partner found out about their deal and offered the same value, would you provide the same terms? That’s a good sign you’re on solid footing to partner with both companies.

Solution 2: Schedule a quarterly review cadence.

Partnerships need to change as businesses change. Get face time with your partners several times a year to see how they’re doing and if there are ways you can help them be more successful. In turn, this helps you get in front of potential conflicts and accelerates your relationship.

Have a standing quarterly meeting and at least one face-to-face meeting annually to keep the relationship on good terms. Don’t be afraid to ask for an amended contract if things come up. A built-in annual review helps here as well.

Manage Channel Conflict Like a Pro

As true partners, you win and lose together. By establishing clear boundaries, having an open conversation around who you work with, and setting terms for the partnership, you put yourself on the path to success. Reviewing the relationship regularly will also ensure you won’t fall out of it.

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published in 2018 and has been updated for cohesiveness.

Most marketers still say that email delivers better ROI than other marketing channels:

While that statistic speaks for marketers from many industries, B2B marketers report seeing a 47% higher click-through rate than your average B2C business.

And although social media has become an increasingly important part of consumer culture, a lot of business is still done through more formal channels like email. In fact, 86% of professionals still prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.

Right now you’re probably thinking one of two things:

“Yup, my emails are killing it! They convert so well we’re on track for a record year.”

“I wish I knew what all these marketers were doing that I’m not…”

If you’re struggling to convert email leads to customers, I’m going to give you some tactics – including real examples from seven companies – that will improve your email strategy and get you more customers.

But even if you fall into the first category, there’s always room for improvement. Sure $10,000 in sales is great. But wouldn’t $20,000 be better?

I’ll show you how to go above and beyond and use email to increase total customer value and land even bigger deals.

Create Campaigns, Not Emails

This is the most important mental shift you can make to improve your email marketing. While open, click-through, and conversions rates are important, they’re only part of the bigger picture.

The customer journey is often much more complicated:

Yours doesn’t have to be as complicated as the diagram above, but you should have an automated email campaign that serves content based on how the lead behaves.

You should track where they signed up, which links they clicked on, and what actions they took afterward. Using a platform like MailChimp or Pardot can help take care of this for you.

The length and complexity of your email funnel should match your sales cycle. If you offer a self-serve SaaS platform it might be short and simple: a well-written explanation of the business problem, your solution, and a testimonial video before going for the ask after two weeks.

But if your typical sales cycle involves multiple stakeholders over a period of months, you’re probably going to have to put in a bit more work to educate and persuade these customers.

Use individual email metrics to understand what your customers want and how you can move them through the funnel. But never lose sight of the larger picture.

Be Creative With Your Media

Sending a series of emails and tracking their results gives you the opportunity to try different types of media to see what your customers respond to.

For example, if you’re asking your customers to set up a demo account, consider showing them how easy it is with a video. That’s exactly what Shopify does with this email:

The text clearly tells the customer why she should watch the video. But the video shows how to start using Shopify (it’s quick and easy) much better than words ever could express.

That being said, simple text emails can still be effective at any stage of your email funnel, like this example from MuleSoft:

Since they’re more low-key, text emails can come across as more personal and less salesy. They let you open a dialogue with your customer. In this example, there is no CTA button. Instead, he asks the prospect to personally reach out to him:

…“please let me know and I can put you in touch with the appropriate team member.”

Video, images and text are the primary formats for email. But if you want to get even more creative, you can send them to a website with more interactive media, like a quiz:

Here EMyth engages the customer by helping them diagnose their need (and educating them on the problem).

If one stage in your email campaign is underperforming, try coming up with a more creative approach.

Use Data To Form Accurate Buyer Profiles

A second benefit of EMyth’s quiz is that it allows them to learn more about their customer.

In the first section, I talked about creating a dynamic email campaign. Now let’s talk about how you can better segment that campaign using buyer data.

First, you should determine which variables are important to the buyer persona. For example, you may have determined that your average customer for local SEO services is a male, age 30-45, with annual revenue of $1.5-5 million, and 6-10 employees.

You could collect all of that information. But is it necessary for targeted email marketing?

Is your message going to substantially change if they are 25 instead of 35? Or if they are female?

In some industries that’s highly relevant, but if it’s not, drop it and focus on collecting information that is. Pay attention to details that will let you tailor your offer, like how large their business is.

You can send this email when they join your email list:

Or you could use the strategy I use whenever someone subscribes to our digital marketing agency newsletter:

This way I can keep the sign-up form simple on our site, but still collect the information I need to send them more targeted offers.

If you want to get sophisticated, you can move beyond email altogether and start including data from other marketing touchpoints like your website.

With advances in machine learning technology, companies are getting better at tracking the entire customer journey online and creating customer profiles based on algorithmic attribution. This lets you analyze how customers in certain stages of the journey are behaving and optimize each stage for specific customer personas:

And it’s not just quantitative data you should be collecting. If you’re not taking time to hear directly from your customers, you’re making a huge mistake.

That’s why I frequently send out emails like this:

And we actually do read every response.

In some cases, this gives actionable insight that we can use to turn a prospect into a client simply by reaching out and solving their problem. But even when the feedback doesn’t result in a sale, it gives us valuable insight into what challenges our market is facing. This can be used to create better content and email strategies overall.

Don’t Forget Existing Customers

Email isn’t just for prospects. It’s also one of the primary ways you stay in touch with your existing customers.

By making sure that you continue to provide valuable content and support to your customers, you’ll start to turn some of them into advocates – which is critical because 92% of B2B buyers trust personal recommendations (compared to just 58% from branded websites):

But it’s not just about creating advocates either. Every email you send your customer is an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell them on additional services. Of course, you don’t want to annoy them to death with promotions, but you can still market to them.

When you send them new content and guides, include premium features to peak their interest in upgrading their plan:

Or when appropriate, offer them an insider promotion for existing customers to encourage them to buy more services:

A Quick Note About High-Value Leads

I just want to take a quick moment to highlight a key difference between B2C and B2B email marketing.

You may have heard of the 80/20 rule. Applied to sales, it says that 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers.

It’s not an exact science, but the principle gives a key insight into B2B sales: Some customers are worth a lot more.

Even if your core offer is suitable for email sales, you should always keep an eye out for large deals. These deals deserve more individually tailored attention.

Some good signals to watch:

• Many emails from the same domain
• Reporting revenue or sales higher than most of your customers
• Clicking on content targeted at enterprise accounts
• Asking detailed, specific questions most customers wouldn’t know about

When you identify a customer with any of these flags, try to get them on the phone. Discuss their needs and your expertise. Show them that you’re invested in their business and bringing them results.

Conclusion

You might already be sending your prospects emails, but there’s always room for improvement. By creating dynamic campaigns with varied media formats targeted on detailed customer data, you’ll nurture more leads and convert more customers.

And if you remember to maintain that level of quality post-sale, you may find more consistent referrals and higher customer revenue numbers.

So ask yourself today: “How could my emails do more to nurture and sell customers?”

The post How B2B Companies Can Convert More Customers with Email appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Phew! The conference is over. It’s been long, tiring day (or days) on your feet in business clothes, smiling wide to cover up how introverted you are, and speed dating with any CEO who will let you give your elevator pitch. No matter, you proudly took home with you a nice stack of business cards to follow up with. Sitting down at your desk and rolling up your sleeves, you begin entering all your new soon-to-be best friends to your CRM (tip: if you’re using the HubSpot CRM, you can simply scan cards and upload contacts straight from your phone). It’s time to send some sales emails.

Pause. If you’re about to send out a generic sales email that starts with, “Remember me, {your name} from the conference yesterday?” following by some serious hard selling, I’m telling you right now, don’t do it.

Before you begin spamming your new leads with borderline aggressive sales emails, it’s time to do some homework.

Qualifying your conference leads

I hate to break it to you, but there’s a good chance that not every one of your new CRM contacts would be a perfect fit for your business. How do I know? There’s a lot of variables that render a lead an ideal buyer profile (AKA an ideal customer). When hitting the booths and conversations are snappy, it can be difficult to gather all the information necessary to qualify a lead as relevant.

Sitting in the comfort of your own desk, it’s time to do a little research on each company and see how it relates to your Prospect Fit Matrix, or your checklist of what makes a prospect a fit for your business. Characteristics such as business model (B2B/ B2C), sales cycle length, cost of service, funding, and company size can all be factors to consider when researching each company on their website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, or their social channels.

As you begin to measure up each company to your matrix, you’ll start to develop three lists of companies:

1. High leads – these are the winners. We’ll talk about how to approach them in a second.
2. So-so leads – they’re a mixed bag. They may have scored low on characteristics they could grow into or have potential to acquire in the future. For example, if you’re looking for companies with a minimum of Series B funding or companies who are more SMBs than startups, both of these are subject to change over time. For starters, go ahead and send them a quick hello email. By jump starting a relationship now, you’ll have what to build off of when the time is right. To ensure they don’t slip through the cracks, set yourself a reminder to follow up with them next quarter and/or in 6 months. While they’re not a model lead now, they very well might be a stellar fit down the line.
3. Low leads – simply put, if they’re not a good fit for your company (and most likely won’t be in the future), best not to waste your time.

Uncovering pain (if you haven’t already)

Did you talk about a pain point of theirs during your conference chat that your company solves for? Great! Make sure that any of those relevant notes that you made following your 1:1 also make it into your CRM. If you didn’t experience any grand pain revelation, not to worry. If there’s any chance you can uncover a relevant pain by looking at their website, social media, or online tech, be sure to do that. By understanding their pains, you’ll have the best shot of creating strong emails (I know, we’re getting there) that really resonate with them. One more thing: learn who the decision makers are for the company on LinkedIn. If your contact isn’t THE person, make sure your emails are written with their buyer persona in mind, and find the respectful and appropriate way to ask for that introduction. Showing your leads you’ve done your homework is an excellent way to both grab their attention and let them know that to you, they’re not just another business card.

Sending a personalized sequence

We’ve hit that point in this blog post, that if you haven’t ready, I recommend you take a peek at my previous sales enablement post about using personalized sequences to reach out to new leads. The key difference between that post and what we’re talking about now is that those sequences were cold, while these post-conference sequences are a lot warmer. That’s because, (a) on their end, they gave your their contact info and are expecting your follow up and (b) on your end, you’ve qualified them as strong potential client. Now it’s time to plan out your awesome sequence. Here are a few tips on how to make it count:

1. Why sequences? First off, I’m calling this a sequence because you can’t just send one email. According to HubSpot’s VP Sales Vet, Pete Caputa, “Forty-four percent of salespeople give up after one follow up and the average salesperson only makes two attempts to reach a prospect.” You’re going to want to send a number of emails that educate and engage over time, since you may not reel them in on the first or second go at it. But how many parts should you have in your sequence? 10 touches? No more than 5? Is 6-8 the psychological sweet spot? 7 emails over 18 days? The more the merrier? The jury is still out on that golden number so you’ll want to test the waters to see what works best for you.
2. Get started. Your leads probably spoke to dozens of other companies during the conference. Be sure to begin your sequence as soon as possible to ensure you’re face-to-face interaction is still clear in their memory. Wait too long, and they may have forgotten who you are and what you do. Pro tip: Prepare your email sequence templates before you head to the conference. That way when you get back to the office, you won’t be wasting your time starting to write them from scratch.
3. Sign ’em up. This may seem controversial, but during your first email of the sequence, give them the heads up that you’ve taken the liberty to sign them up to your monthly newsletter. It’s a great way to send over a constant drip of valuable content, but be sure to always give them a way out by letting them know that they can change their preference setting at any time.
4. Acknowledging the pain. Remember the research you did on their company pain? Time to gently bring it to light. Get into their shoes and show them that you understand their industry, the competition, and the pain they experience due to the resources they lack. Instead of positioning yourself as the solution right away, offer them your expert advice that you think will help them, help themselves throughout their buyer’s journey. By adding value through your emails, you’ll begin to do something very different than your hard-selling post-conference competitors. Check you out taking the high road!
5. Make it personal. Anything else you talked about at the booths? Make sure to bring those topics up and offer content resources (blog posts, eBooks, webinars, etc.) from your company that you feel they’d find interesting or informative. If you’ve learned something about the contact or company through your research that seems appropriate to mention, speak up. Every personalization token counts in making your follow up about them, and not about you.
6. Long-term follow ups. For those ‘high leads’ and ‘so-so leads’ we mentioned earlier, make sure to create tasks for yourself to follow up the following quarter and in 6 months time. While the time to talk may not be right now, budgets, needs, and resources can change. Be sure to have your alerts on so you’ll be a first responder when they do.
7. Think outside the inbox. Real talk: Four out of five marketers say that their open rates aren’t higher than 20%. Keep in mind then that email isn’t the only way to engage your post-conference leads. Go ahead and follow them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium, and any other platform that may be relevant. By multi-channel lead nurturing you can like, comment, and interact with these leads on platforms they’re looking to engage others on. Start social selling on their turf, and watch them be amazed by how attentive you are.

(Courtesy of SalesStaff)

Conclusion

Returning to the office after a conference, it can be compelling to start picking up the phone and hard selling to your new leads. Instead of assuming they’re ready to buy, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and begin educating them; allowing you to build a relationship based on value and trust. Once your leads realize you’re there to help them as a person(a), with all their company pains, successes, and goals, you can be certain to get their attention and nurture them into a sale when the time is right them.

We all know that email addresses are critical to your company’s success. But, are you doing all you can to capture the highest volume of quality email addresses possible? Here are 8 tips to get you moving in the right direction!

1. Ask for your customer’s email address everywhere!

• On every page of your website
• During every phone call
• On every paper order form
• Don’t forget in-person and point of sale interactions as well!

2. Tell Why

People volunteer their email address in exchange for something. Make sure you clearly explain what value you are offering through email.

3. Reassure

Have an easily accessible and understandable privacy policy. Even a phrase like “[company] respects your privacy and will never disclose your email address” does wonders. Also, be sure to explain the cadence of your mailings.

4. Give An Example

On your website, have a link to a sample email you send so recipients know exactly what to expect.

5. Leave Plenty of Room

Make sure you leave enough space in your input box for long email addresses. Otherwise, you are causing unnecessary typos & frustration. A study by FreshAddress found that:

• The average email address is 21.9 characters long.
• But to accommodate 95% of addresses, you’ll want to design a form field 31 characters long.

6. Have Helpful Error Messages

Think error messages are something for your tech teams to worry about? This is a mistake! Good error messages can increase your accurate email address capture rates and reduce user friction.

7. Catch Typos

On your website, figure out a way to catch the common errors people make when entering email addresses (e.g. “hotmial.com” instead of “hotmail.com”).

• FreshAddress offers an API that can automatically catch and correct typos and other misspellings.
• Even having a second page that displays what the user typed and asks “is everything correct?” helps tremendously.

8. Confirm

Confirm every email address you collect. Ideally, by a promptly deployed email message. Getting an opt-in click on this confirmation email is the holy grail for email marketers.

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As Netflix continues to ramp up its annual content investment, the streamer has effectively changed the paradigm for content producers in a way that both expands and limits opportunities for producers and studios as well as for rival networks competing for the best content and talent, per Digiday.

Netflix CFO David Wells said recently that in 2018, Netflix will spend $8 billion and produce 700 pieces of original content, including 80 full-length original movies and 80 foreign-language original productions from local international territories where Netflix operates.

Thanks to its massive spending, Netflix has created a seller’s market for producers and studios. Here are some of the fundamental ways that the new paradigm initiated under Netflix has benefited content producers:

• There are more opportunities to sell content because Netflix is such a major buyer. In addition to buying more shows than other platforms and networks, Netflix also buys more episodes.
• Netflix pays producers more money upfront than other programmers.
• Netflix is mostly hands-off once it agrees to buy a piece of content, and will largely give producers creative free rein over their projects.
• Netflix shows and movies can still be recognized in traditional modes, for example, with critical acclaim or awards.

Yet the new environment also potentially hurts producers:

• There’s no guarantee that a producer’s content will get discovered. If Netflix doesn’t back a producer’s content with marketing dollars or otherwise centralize it on the platform, the content might not get discovered or watched when there are so many other viewing options. Even though Netflix says it will double its marketing spend this year to $2 billion, it will only spend money on marketing a producer’s content if it knows that the content has high value in terms of its ability to drive and retain subscribers. Netflix’s inability to invest in marketing every original production has opened up opportunities for other premium networks that are committed to investing more in marketing shows.
• Even if producers make more upfront for a piece of content, they lose any potential long-term income that might have resulted from syndication deals or international sales. Netflix has increasingly preferred doing content deals for full ownership, rather than short-term licensing deals. As a result, producers don’t make any additional money after the initial payout.

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I recently caught up with a sales rep for a Fortune 500 company that has rolled out an overly complex comp plan with a complicated series of multipliers and significant number of SPIFFs (Sales Performance Incentives. For Fun!) and exceptions. The most recent revision of the comp plan was pushing a particular product – if you sold module X, your commission for the entire deal would be 20% higher.

It’s an interesting idea in theory, but whoever designed it didn’t think through the practical implementation. This sales rep knew his clients didn’t need that module and wasn’t going to force it on them. Instead, he attached that item to every single order for the 3 months the SPIFF ran, discounted it 100% and took an extra 20% commission on the other items. You can’t blame him – he did what was right for the customer and gamed the system of a poorly designed comp plan.

This is just one of many stories I could share. In fact, the #1 question I’ve received in the last few months from founders and heads of sales is how to build out or update a comp plan for their direct sales team. Writing an effective Sales Incentive Plan (SIP) has become overly complicated and there are just too many options.

On one end of the spectrum I see companies with complete focus on logo acquisition. Direct sales reps get comped on the initial sale and hands the customer off to Account Management on day one. At the other end of the spectrum, I see plans that pay a low rate on all transactions in perpetuity. There are many options in between and it’s difficult to determine what’s right for you.

So what has my own experience in sales and all of these conversations with reps and leaders taught me about building out sales comp plans? Let’s take a look.

DO align to how your buyer buys

This is my #1 rule in sales compensation. If you don’t take anything else away from this article, take the time to inspect your data and understand the natural buying process of your customer. Do your most successful customers start with a POC, land and expand, and add modules/users/etc. over time OR do you have one shot to maximize your sale? If you do have a land and expand model, what drives that expansion – buyer, user or product? Between your data and your team you should be able to come up with a few hypotheses. From there, we recommend talking to your customers and lost prospects to validate.

If the most natural path to a successful customer is to land with one area of your product and grow the account over time, you need to ensure that your sales team is incentivized to do that – do not pay them less for an upsell OR tell them they can only upsell for the first 3 months after purchase if you know that will put undue pressure on the buyer. You have to consider the customer experience when writing your SIP.

DO commit to driving certain behaviors

What are the key behaviors you are trying to drive? You need to decide what you are optimizing for – new logo acquisition, deal size, multi-year contracts, payment terms, etc. You can’t incentivize everything at once and the behavior you need may change over time. For example, as an early stage startup, your goal may be coverage – you need to land as many logos as you can to beat out your competitor and grab market share. Or, perhaps your product has a viral aspect and the more people you get using your product the more you can capitalize on network effects. Or, maybe you sit at the opposite end of the spectrum and only want to close a few key customers off of an approved target list to ensure your services team can properly deploy and implement those large customers.

Whatever it is you decide is your priority, your comp plan has to align to the company strategy, BUT you don’t need to rely solely on your SIP to do this. You can also roll out SPIFFs for short periods of time to incentivize new/different behavior. For example, let’s say you want to bump cash flow and minimize deferred revenue – pay a higher percentage or one-time bonus for deals that are closed on annual upfront payment terms. Or maybe you want to get the team rallied around driving new logo acquisition at the end of a quarter – SPIFF it.

DON’T pit your Direct Sales and Account Management/Customer Success teams against each other

Now that you understand how your buyer buys and the behaviors you want to incentivize, you need to make sure you aren’t creating competing incentives between teams internally. Think about how many people touch your customer from the first conversation to first renewal – A BDR likely takes the first call and sets up a demo with an Account Executive and you may or may not pull in executive support or solution consulting during the sales cycle. As you move forward with the implementation you introduce a project manager, consulting team and/or a customer success manager. At some point an Account Manager gets involved to renew and upsell the customer. And how many support tickets did they log during that time? Add the complexity of compensation into the mix and you could very easily engineer a terrible customer experience.

The key is to align comp plans across your customer facing teams to ensure you enhance the customer experience, while maximizing growth potential. For example, you might pay your Direct Sales Reps on the initial sale and any upsells for the first 6 months, but introduce an Account Manager on day 1 post-sale so there is a continuous relationship leading up to the renewal. In this scenario your Direct Sales team is incentivized to stay involved and upsell through initial implementation, while your Account Managers have the opportunity to build a relationship long before they are tasked with renewing the customer.

DON’T make it too complicated

Put yourself in the shoes of your newest sales rep – do you know how to maximize compensation? Sales incentive plans should not have more than 3 components. On any given Tuesday a sales rep should know his or her current quota attainment, what commission they have earned for the period and what they will make if they close the next deal. If you can’t do this “back of the napkin” math, you’ve made it too hard.

(Don’t get me started on the issues that derive from complex comp plans – miscalculations, over/underpayment, clawbacks, etc.)

DO use your comp plan as a recruiting tool

If you design a strong comp plan that benefits both your sales team and company, you have a unique opportunity to highlight it in your recruiting process. Salespeople want to work for a company where they believe in the market, technology and team, enjoy selling to the particular buyer and where they can make money. I’ve fielded too many calls from candidates who tell me they received an offer from a startup where the variable comp structure will be decided later, and worse, where they’ve been working for a company for 2, 3, 4 months and they still don’t know how they will be paid commission – that is unacceptable.

A great sales leader will be transparent, share the details of the plan (highlight the upside!), and be honest about historical ramp time and expected attainment of the team. It’s not always easy to do in early-stage businesses, but if you handle it correctly, you’ll score top talent and ensure your expectations are aligned from the get go.

DON’T penalize your top reps

Why do caps still exist? Sure, in an ideal world you would have an entire team of reps hitting 100% of their quota exactly and your cost basis and revenue stream would be highly predictable, but that’s not reality. You’ve heard of Pareto’s Law? 20% of your salesforce will generate 80% of your revenue – scary. Maybe it’s not quite that drastic for you, but I bet it’s close. You need to keep your top reps motivated – motivated to keep selling when they hit their quotas and, more importantly, motivated to stay with you for the long term (tenure is directly linked to performance for most companies). Eliminate caps and ensure you’ve designed a comp plan where you are incentivizing each and every sales rep to bring in the next dollar.

You should also think about how to incorporate accelerators into your plan and whether they are monthly, quarterly, annual or some combination thereof.

DON’T assume your comp plan is broken

Before you start making adjustments to your current plan, ask yourself…What’s NOT working with our current structure? Don’t throw away a plan that’s mostly working to start from scratch. You can make small tweaks or layer in SPIFFs if you can identify the gaps.

Correctly compensating your sales team is crucial to the success of your reps and ultimately your company. Following these dos and don’ts should have you closing more deals than ever!

The post Designing Effective Sales Comp Plans: The Dos and Don’ts for Every Sales Leader appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Did you take the time to develop a realistic marketing budget?

When it comes to getting the word out about your business, you probably know you need to invest some resources into it, but do you know how much? How do you set a realistic marketing budget for your company? What factors do you need to consider for each tactic your business employs?

Today’s post is the first in a series of three that will answer these questions for you. Ultimately, a successful marketing budget and strategy for your company may be different than another business’, which is why it’s important to walk through the steps of what to consider as you develop plans and set aside funds to make them a reality.

Why Invest in Content Marketing?

When we advise clients in regards to their budget, we recommend content marketing as a fantastic long-term strategy to build your brand, increase your online visibility and establish positive relationships with consumers.

Both B2B and B2C companies are following this trend, too. As this infographic shares:

• 91 percent of B2B marketers are using content marketing
• 86 percent of B2C marketers are using content marketing
• Nearly 80 percent of B2C marketers report they can demonstrate how content marketing has increased audience engagement
• More than 70 percent of B2B marketers report they can demonstrate how content marketing has increased audience engagement and their number of leads
• 60 percent of B2C marketers report their organizations are extremely or very committed to content marketing

Establishing Your Content Marketing Budget: An Overview

How do you divide up your content marketing budget?

When wondering how much of your annual gross revenue should go towards your marketing budget, a good rule of thumb is about 10 percent.

But establishing a realistic budget takes more than just knowing you plan to use about 10 percent of your annual gross revenue. How much of it will you spend on social media, blogging or email marketing? What about advertising – are you factoring in how much the various platforms charge for ads? You might want to consider other content marketing tactics like creating infographics or guest blogging, too.

Popular Content Marketing Tactics

Here are seven popular tactics you may want to consider building into your overall marketing budget:

1. Social Media Advertising
2. Organic Social Media Marketing
3. Blogging for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Email Marketing
5. Infographic Creation and Promotion
6. Guest Blogging
7. Podcasts

As you consider which tactics you want to use and how much of your marketing budget to allocate towards each item, consider your goals and your timeline. How soon do you expect to see results?

For example, blogging is a slow and steady approach that takes time. If you consistently write and publish posts following SEO best practices, you’ll likely start to see your internet traffic increase over the next 18-24 months, but it’s not an overnight strategy.

If you want faster results, on the other hand, you can run a social media advertising campaign. But consider that your visibility will be directly tied to how much you can invest in the ad spend, or the actual ad views. If you decide to spend $100 per day, you’re going to see very different results than if you set the cap at $20 per day.

At Three Girls, we recommend a multi-pronged approach to spending your marketing budget. Even with limited funds, you can see positive results from your marketing efforts by strategically choosing the areas you want to focus on and being consistent with them. For example, if your budget doesn’t allow for all seven tactics above, consider starting with three or four of them. Ideally, over time your company’s revenue will grow, which means your marketing budget will increase as well.

How Will You Spend Your Marketing Budget?

Will you outsource your marketing or have someone manage it in-house?

It’s important to consider logistics when it comes to your marketing budget. Will you put in the time to execute the tactics yourself, hire an employee, outsource the work to a firm, or some combination of the three?

1. Doing It Yourself

If funds are tight, I know there’s a strong pull to take on your company’s marketing yourself. Still, before you put in the time and energy to figure out what you’re doing and how to do it, consider how much your time is worth. Do you realistically have time in your schedule to commit to executing marketing activities and doing it well? Content marketing is an effective strategy, but consistency and quality are two important factors you may not be able to deliver if you’re stretched too thin.

2. Hiring an Employee

A lot of companies want to keep their marketing in-house as it allows for their team to really get to know the business intimately. Depending on internal communication practices, it can be easier to keep everyone informed, too.

While this can produce positive results, if you’re considering the impact it will have on your budget you need to think beyond payroll. How much will it cost to train a team member, and for them to keep up with industry trends and best practices? What about employment benefits, fees and insurance costs? Remember you’d also be responsible to pay out unemployment should their position at your company change.

3. Outsourcing to a Marketing Firm

While working with an external firm can have its challenges, especially in regards to keeping them informed about your business’ initiatives, events and products/services, it comes with its benefits too. They likely have experience working with all sorts of companies, meaning they may have ideas and approaches they’ve seen work time and again that they could apply to your business. Also, many agencies encourage ongoing learning for their staff, which means they’re staying up-to-date regarding content marketing best practices and trends they can apply to your organization.

It’s important you take the time to research a content marketing agency that’s the best fit for your brand. Ask them questions to clarify what exactly they’ll provide, what your responsibilities would be and how your ongoing relationship will work.

4. Combining the Options

It’s not uncommon for companies to develop some sort of hybrid approach based on their marketing budget and available staff.

For example, you may have a marketing manager on-staff at your business, but want to invest in more content marketing then they can manage on their own; by outsourcing some of the work to an outside firm, your manager can oversee progress and answer questions about the brand while still having time to oversee other marketing initiatives.

As you can tell, there are a lot of factors to think about in regards to your marketing budget. When it comes to dividing your overall funds between various tactics, it’s helpful to understand everything that goes into each activity.

Marketing Budget Considerations: Social Media Advertising

Does your marketing budget factor in all these social media advertising variables?

Social media advertising is one of the most popular marketing tactics right now. As various platforms’ algorithms change, many brands see advertising as a reliable way to put your message in front of target consumers.

As you consider your marketing budget, think about the social media channels on which you want to focus your advertising efforts. Of course, the top consideration is: where is your target audience? It’s not worth spending the money advertising on a platform the people you’re trying to reach don’t use.

Marketing Budget Factor: Cost Per Click

It’s also important to consider the cost of running ads on each platform. While all of them allow you to set a budget of how much you want to spend per day, the average cost per click (CPC) varies between the different social media sites.

Some of the platforms have quite a range, with a variety of factors coming into play such as the amount of competition between your ads and another brand’s ads, demographics of whom you’re trying to reach, days of the week, times of day, etc.

• Facebook: $o.45 – $3.77 per click
• Instagram: $0.70 – $2.59 per click
• LinkedIn: $5.67 – $6.50 per click
• Twitter: $0.52 – $0.80 per click

As you can see, just between the four social platforms above, there’s quite a difference between a click on Twitter and a click on LinkedIn. As you think about which networks you plan to advertise on, consider how much you’ll need to set aside for the ad spend itself.

Marketing Budget Factor: Number of Ads

The number and types of social media ads you run can greatly impact your marketing budget.

Once you’ve decided how much of your marketing budget to allocate towards social media advertising, you can break it down by month, week and day to determine how many ads you’re actually going to run.

We like to recommend you run more ads up front at a lower CPC so you can do some A/B testing. Run two nearly identical ads at the same time, with one differing factor. This can give you really valuable information about what resonates with your audience, such as type of image, type of ad, tone of the copy, etc.

Once you do initial testing up front, you can decrease the number of ads and put more money behind more strategic advertisements that are likely to perform well based on your testing. If you have the budget for it, you may also want to consider running retargeting ads, which target users that already responded to your previous advertisements.

In addition to the cost of actually running the ads, remember it takes time and resources to create ads. In addition to developing the actual ad copy (or text), you need to consider visuals you’ll run with it. Will you use an image or video? Are they ones you already have or do you need to invest in stock photos and/or video creation? Some platforms (like Facebook) have a wide range of types of ads you can create, from a single image or video to carousels with multiple images, so keep that in mind too.

Also, where will you direct the consumers you’re trying to target? Is there already an existing page on your website where you want them to go, or will you build a landing page to convert those that click through into sales leads? And will you build multiple landing pages to test out which perform best?

At Three Girls, we always recommend a landing page to provide a strong call to action and encourage your visitors to take the next step, such as giving you their contact information. This, however, is another step in the advertising process that will take time and resources to set up.

Next Steps for Your Marketing Budget

As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into creating a successful plan and marketing budget for your business. In next week’s post I’ll share additional criteria to consider in regards to tactics like organic social media marketing, blogging for SEO and email marketing.

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to communicate with your audience. However, nobody likes their inbox spammed with too many messages that provide no value, so here are some of the biggest email marketing turnoffs any business should keep in mind when approaching new customers.

1. Template Emails

There is nothing worse than making the investment, as a client, into a new product and service and receiving a template email correspondence. Your first email to a new customer should be personal and offering next steps, gratitude for their business and a way to contact you with any questions or issues. Make the customer feel like you personally care about them. – Jennifer Mellon, Trustify

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2. Excessive Emailing

In an effort to better understand your users’ needs and provide an exceptional customer experience, it’s easy to break a cardinal rule when it comes to email marketing: overkill. Excessive emailing frustrates new users and leads to unsubscribes and churn. Be sure to coordinate your engagement outreach, survey gathering and abandoned cart emails so they don’t get in the way of your good intentions. – Matt Bendett, Peerspace

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3. Misleading Emails

Some businesses still send out messages with misleading subject lines, implying that the recipient has won something or that they can get something for free. When they open the email, it turns out they have to buy something. Anything in the subject line or message that’s not completely honest will only ruin your credibility. You can send compelling messages without such tactics. – Shawn Porat, Scorely

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4. An Immediate Sales Pitch

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach an audience and grow a brand. However, subscribers are very smart. If someone is willing to give you their email address, you need to provide them with value and appreciate the relationship. This is where autoresponders can really come into play. If you want to lose a new subscriber right away, try to sell them in your welcome email. – Zac Johnson, Blogger

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5. Poor Format

Most people prefer to skim through content and email is no different. It’s critical to avoid big chunks of text. Instead, use short sentences and lots of line breaks. Make sure your first sentence captures the reader and then get to the point quickly. You only have a few seconds to get your message across. – Ajay Paghdal, OutreachMama

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6. Lack of Substance

The difference between an email that new customers will read versus one that will be filtered into their spam folder is substance. Even if you send emails with pertinent information and exclusive offers, customers will be discouraged to take advantage if it looks like generic promotional spam. Adding some interesting copy will help make a better impact with customers. – Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy

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7. Communication Without Permission

One of the biggest turnoffs to a new customer is to be suddenly bombarded with emails. Instead, initial emails should be informative and set expectations, i.e. we will be sending you an email once a month to let you know about our offers and to share news you might find useful. That way, the customer feels you care about their time and their understanding of how you communicate with them. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design

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8. Inconsistency

Many times, people will dive into email marketing overpromising and underdelivering. They will tell their new customers to expect a weekly newsletter from them, only to deliver a couple of newsletters a year. To make sure you’re keeping your promise, use email service providers to automate the weekly newsletter and keep customers posted on what they want to see from you. – Jared Atchison, WPForms

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9. No Welcome Email

Think about this: you just gave your favorite website your email address to send you relevant news, and you go to your inbox to see if they sent you something yet. Nothing. Not even a welcome email. Welcome emails get viewed the most and they are an opportunity to set the stage and expectations for future emails. – Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

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10. Feeling Taken From Rather Than Given to

New customers are trusting you with their info, and it’s crucial not to break that trust. Lack of email etiquette/boundaries, and communicating without offering something of value, are just a few of the things that turn new customers off. Companies should be mindful of this and always aim at sending communication that their customers (especially new ones) cannot wait to open. – Dalia MacPhee, DALIA MACPHEE

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11. Offering Too Many Products

We receive the best returns on email marketing when the email focuses on a single product. Using a single email as a broad spread of products does not generate nearly as much interest as focusing on the details, benefits, pricing and turnaround of a single product. Each email is targeted to a list of customers who would be most likely to consume the advertised product. – Carmine Silano, CheerSounds Music

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12. A Poorly Written Subject Line

Thanks to Twitter, we all know how to craft a good message with limited characters. A good marketing email should tell who you are and what you want, as well as why the recipient is receiving it. This way, the customer will be able to know what they are about to open and will be more inclined to do so. – Ryan Bradley, Koester & Bradley, LLP

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13. No Clear Ask

Despite the spam potential, I’m generally open to receiving marketing emails, especially for new software products. This helps me stay on top of the new trends. Unfortunately, many of the emails I receive have no clear value or ask. I don’t really know what they are offering and what they want from me. This should be clear for the recipient. – Brian Samson, True North

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14. Tacky Taglines

Nothing turns someone off in an email marketing campaign more than a super pitch as a headline and pure sale copy. Inherently, there is an understanding between a recipient and sender of sales intent. However, the sender needs to offer information useful to the recipient that opens a dialogue. You should start building a relationship through useful content, then transition naturally to a sale. – Matthew Capala, Alphametic

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15. Automation Overkill

I think it’s great to find tools that help you use your time wisely, but when used incorrectly, automation can be detrimental to the customer experience. There’s nothing worse than knowing when the next “just checking in” message will arrive in your inbox, and when it’s clear to the customer that they are on an automated list, automation serves as a waste of everyone’s time. – Kevin Yamazaki, Sidebench

“You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.” — Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra says the secret to hitting a home run is all in the timing. It’s not how hard you swing the bat that counts as much as timing your swings so they connect with the ball.

The same wisdom applies if you want to hit a home run in sales. Perfecting your sales cadence -- the timing and rhythm of your touchpoints with prospective customers -- can turn a so-so sales process into an awesome one. Time your outreach so it connects with and engages your prospects and you’ll increase your sales conversions.

Even if you primarily use phone calls to warm up leads and convert them into customers, you likely add emails and social media to the mix as well. But do you use the right blend of channels? And do you time each touch perfectly?

Without a delineated structure for your sales cadence, it’s likely your sales cadence is out of sync with the needs of your leads and prospects.

How Do You Know Your Sales Call Cadence Is Off?

It’s easy to tell when music is off beat, but how do you know when your sales cadence is off? According to The Sales Cadence Report 2017, there are a few signs:

Hitting just once

A baseball team won’t win the game if they only try to hit the ball once. The same is true for you. If you only call leads once, you’re highly unlikely to make the sale.

Relentless outreach

Equally dangerous to your sales outcomes, is to communicate with contacts nonstop. Such outreach is unlikely to meet your prospective customers’ needs and can also reek of desperation.

Stuck on one track

If you use just one media channel to communicate, you’ll probably be less successful than if you supplement telephone calls as necessary with emails and social media. For instance, make a phone call and suggest a white paper that might answer some of the prospect’s questions, then send the content via email. Alternatively, reach out to an individual via LinkedIn to schedule a call.

Ignoring the buying cycle

Don’t mistake your sales cycle for your customer’s buying cycle. Yes, you can influence the buying cycle by helping a prospect move through it. You first have to know, however, where an individual or buying team is in the buying process and then provide the information they need to move to the next step.

4 Steps to a Powerful Sales Phone Call Cadence

If you see any of the above telltale signs in your organization, use the tips below to correct your sales cadence and generate more revenue.

1. Plan to be persistent

While persistence is necessary, it’s unlikely to happen unless you build it into your program. In the US market, you’ll be most successful when your salespeople contact prospects between eight and 12 times. In other geographic markets, fewer attempts are necessary.

The problem, however, is the average rep only reaches out to prospects twice. Thus, you cannot rely on human intuition and drive to land naturally on the ideal number of touchpoints. Instead, you need to design and systematize a program that includes the right number of calls and other outreach.

2. Go beyond the numbers game

As mentioned, it’s not just about the number of times you reach out to individuals; it’s also the nature of that outreach. Each phone call should answer a question on the buyer’s mind or offer a new insight they might not have considered. As you provide this information, you also build human-to-human relationship and a healthy dose of trust.

The key is to approach your communication plan from the buyers’ point of view. If you take it from that perspective, you’ll not only build your brand but also increase the likelihood of sales conversions.

3. Let your buyer dictate the timing

Because every buyer is different, you can’t set your sales cadence in stone. Instead, monitor prospects’ interests and how they interact with your brand. Downloading a white paper, for instance, is entirely different than a contact request.

Below are a few call cadence examples of initial sales cadences to help achieve the best results from inbound marketing. The goal of each is to have a phone conversation with the lead. One sequence follows a contact request and the other is a response to a content download.

Once the rep has a phone conversation with the contact, the remainder of the sales cadence should be customized based on the outcome of the call and the contact’s needs.

On some days, both a phone call and a voicemail are listed. In these cases, the voicemail is appropriate if the rep is unable to speak directly to the contact.

On the days a phone call is listed without a voicemail, the contact will probably notice the missed call. Regardless of whether they respond to it or not, at least this reminder builds familiarity with your phone number and company.

Call Cadence Example 1: Lead Requests to Be Contacted

Day 1

• Phone Call #1 within five minutes, if possible
• Voicemail #1
• Email #1

Day 2

• Phone Call #2
• Voicemail #2

Day 5

• Phone Call #3

Day 7

• Phone Call #4

Day 10

• Phone Call #5
• Voicemail #3
• Email #2

Call Cadence Example #2: Lead Downloads Content

Day 1:

• Phone Call #1, within 30 minutes (You don’t want to appear like you’re stalking someone)
• Voicemail #1
• Email #1

Day 3:

• Phone Call #2
• Voicemail #2
• Day 5:
• Email #2

Day 7:

• Phone Call #3

Day 10:

• Phone Call #4
• Voicemail #3

Day 15:

• Phone Call #5
• Voicemail #4
• Email #3

As you can see, the schedule for the lead who requests a contact is more compressed. That’s because someone who wants to talk with you is liable to be further along in the buying cycle than an individual who downloads content.

Thus, the cadence in the second example takes longer. Also, it includes more email touches to relay messaging that leverages the initial content.

4. Test and refine

As with everything in marketing and sales, the odds are against you landing on the best sales formula on day one. Luckily, technology today makes it easy to test and refine your sales cadence.

Also, try A/B tests to see how well prospects engage with your messaging. Use the best performing tests as your control until you discover something else that works even better. This process empowers you to improve your sales cadence continuously.

Ask yourself if there are flaws in your current sales phone call cadence. If so, make sure you build persistence into your process. Also, time and tailor your messaging to meet prospects’ needs. Finally, test and refine your program for maximum success.

OTTAWA — The head of one of Canada’s largest banks is urging the federal government to stem the flow of investment capital from this country to the United States — because, he warns, it’s already leaving in “real time.”

RBC president and CEO Dave McKay discussed some of his biggest concerns about Canadian competitiveness, particularly those related to recent U.S. tax reforms, during a recent interview.

Ottawa has come under pressure from corporate Canada to respond to a U.S. tax overhaul that’s expected to lure business investments south of the border.

McKay told The Canadian Press that a “significant” investment exodus to the U.S. is already underway, especially in the energy and clean-technology sectors.

The flight of capital, McKay added, will likely be followed by a loss of talent, which means the next generation of engineers, problem solvers and intellectual property could be created not north of the border, but south of it instead.

“We would certainly encourage the federal government to look at these issues because, in real time, we’re seeing capital flow out of the country,” McKay said.

“We see our government going around the world saying what a great place Canada is to invest — yes, it is a great country, it’s an inclusive country, it’s a diverse country, it’s got great people assets.

“But if we don’t keep the capital here, we can’t keep the people here — and these changes are important to bring human capital and financial capital together in one place.”

Since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, Canada’s investment landscape has been dealing with deep uncertainty related the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But many point to Trump’s recent U.S. tax measures as potentially more dangerous, fearing that dramatic corporate tax cuts in the U.S. will eliminate Canada’s advantage.

Canada’s competitiveness challenges go beyond the high-level, tax-rate changes in the U.S. bill, McKay said.

For instance, he pointed to another important element he said is encouraging capital to flow out of Canada — a change that enables U.S. companies to immediately write off the full cost of new machinery and equipment.

“The acceleration of that in the U.S. completely changes the investment returns that you see on major investments,” said McKay. “I think that alone may shrink competitiveness.”

Tax expert Jack Mintz said the U.S. change allows firms in all sectors to expense the full cost of new equipment. In comparison, he said, Canada has a two-year write-off for equipment for just the manufacturing and the processing sectors.

Mintz, a University of Calgary professor, said he believes the expensing of capital investments is encouraging a lot of companies to shift their investments to the U.S.

Although the business community pressed federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau to take specific steps in his February budget to address the competitiveness concerns, their efforts went unrewarded. Indeed, Morneau has had to defend the budget against complaints it didn’t do enough to protect Canada from the U.S. tax changes.

A spokesman for Morneau did the same, arguing that Canada’s corporate tax rates remain competitive and that the country has led the G7 in growth.

“There will be no knee-jerk reactions from this minister, and we are doing our homework,” Daniel Lauzon wrote in an email. “This includes listening to, and hearing from, the business community on how the competitive environment is evolving.”

John Manley, president of the Business Council of Canada, said the issue of competitiveness was “absent” from the federal budget.

“We’re always in this difficult competition to attract investment and to retain investment — and it’s not to be taken lightly because investment can move quickly,” Manley said.

Regardless of the cause, some experts are seeing signs in the economic data that suggest capital is already flying south.

BMO chief economist Douglas Porter said it’s too early to draw conclusions, but the fact the Canadian equity market and currency have both been on the weak side this year supports the possibility that capital is leaving the country.

The Canadian dollar is one of the few currencies in the world to weaken against the U.S. dollar this year, and for no immediately apparent reason, Porter said.

None of the provincial budgets released so far took steps to improve Canada’s competitiveness, such as tax relief, he added.

The abundance of data generated in recent years — by individuals and businesses — means we no longer have to make haphazard business decisions and ‘hope for the best’. Now, we can employ more systematic and deliberate measures.

At a point, the problem was how to access relevant data. Now, the challenge is what to do with it.

Through people’s social media behavior — their posts, comments, likes, and shares — their search engine and browser history, there’s so much we can learn about them. We can quantify all of this data and then use it to make predictions about future behaviors and tendencies. This is known as Predictive Analytics.

Photo Source

Predictive analytics is the use of present and historical data to forecast behavior, trends, activity and outcomes.

It is a systematic way of foretelling future events. It uses techniques such as predictive modelling, data mining, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to achieve its aims. Predictive models notice patterns in data and use them to identify risks and opportunities that can guide business owners towards better decision making and more predictable results.

Statistical techniques, analytical queries and machine learning algorithms are applied to data sets to create these predictive models. The models then predict the chances of an event happening by producing a numerical value. A good predictive model/software could significantly reduce your time-to-value cycle and project failure rates.

For example, you run a fitness subscription app and you want to find out what the chances that a particular first-time customer will become a repeat customer. The customer has shown the tendency to renew her other subscription services in the past, the customer frequently visits fitness and healthy-living websites, and also follows several accounts of the sort on social media.

If all this data is run through a predictive model, you will find out that the chances of this customer renewing her subscription is high. Say 8/10. You run this on more customers and you can begin to anticipate their behavior and plan better customer acquisition campaigns.

You can also use predictive models to determine the pricing of your monthly subscription rate and which class of people to target with your marketing efforts.

In the financial services industry, predictive analytics is used for credit scoring, to determine an individual’s creditworthiness. Predictive models analyse a person’s credit history, their loan application and customer data, and rank the person based on this. This ranking helps financial institutions determine whether a person will make future credit payments on time and whether or not their loan application should be approved. Insurance companies also use predictive models to determine a customer’s value to their business using data such as their driving record, age, occupation, income level, etc.

Another important way predictive analytics can help your business is through fraud detection.

According to Business Intelligence experts, the prevalence of fraudulent activities is one of the major reasons why predictive analytics will continue to grow.

As this article on TDWI says, “Insurance companies have long used data mining techniques to identify potentially fraudulent claims. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mines tax returns to refine its (non-published) Discriminant Information Function (DIF) system for identifying suspicious tax returns.” Also, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) “can mine stock market trades and personal associations to identify insider trading.”

The use of predictive analytics is boundless, it can be used in almost any industry in the world — marketing, advertising, public relations, insurance, micro-finance, travel, telecommunications, project management, supply chain management, and many more.

We are only just scratching the surface and it is exciting to know how much deeper we can go.

No product will ever meet all of the ideal criteria of a client. Especially when it comes to business software, the key to customer satisfaction and finding the right fit is taking two specific steps: making a list of ideal criteria, and considering which trade-offs you would be willing to make.

In some cases, this could be boosting the budget a bit to ensure you get all the bells and whistles that you need. In other cases, it could mean trading in some of those bells and whistles for a simpler user interface. Either way, the idea remains the same: the goal should never be to create the best objective software possible (since that is generally impossible). Instead, it should be about creating what works well for your customers or business.

These tradeoffs are at the core of a buyer’s decision making process. Because of that, it is important to consider what buyers find important both before and after purchasing software. Will it scale? Will it show measurable results right away? Is there good customer support?

The team at TrustRadius recently assessed their pool of customers to answer this question in specific: what was most important to customers before and after purchasing software? The answers aren’t necessarily surprising, but they are insightful for ensuring both customer acquisition and customer success.

Before & After: Adaptability and Scalability Become More Important

In the TrustRadius study, customers were asked to look at a list of 11 software criteria. From there, they were asked to identify the three most important criteria for software before they actually purchase it. In this case, the top three answers were:

• A product that shows measurable results (39% of customers)
• A product that can adapt to fit your processes (34% of customers)
• A product that will be adopted quickly (33% of customers)

In contrast, the three criteria at the bottom of the list were a robust user community (12%), a category leader (11%), and has “all the bells and whistles” (5%).

TrustRadius then asked customers who had already made a software purchase to rank the same criteria by order of what was most important to them post-purchase. The results were quite different than the pre-purchase results. The top criteria were:

• Can adapt to fit your processes (42% of buyers)
• Will scale as you grow (39% of buyers)
• Shows measurable results (35% of buyers)

In other words, the criteria for showing measurable results dropped to the #3 spot, while adaptability and scalability both increased.

When you think about it, the results aren’t all that surprising. Before making a software purchase, customers are most likely looking for a guaranteed return on their investment (the measurable results). Once that software is purchased and implemented, customers start looking at new uses for the software (adaptability) and how to harness its power as they grow (scalability).

A good example is on how a tool can be easy to use but not necessarily scalable. The study from TrustRadius uses an example from a specific review of Asana:

“When I carried it over to my full-time job at a digital marketing agency, it didn’t scale as well to the needs of a similarly-sized team that was running many concurrent projects (about 20 across the account) at once, each containing multiple steps of concepting and internal/client review. Overall this is still a great tool for relatively small- to medium-sized, fast-paced collaborative projects.”

Another review Hubspot CRM highlights scalability as an important factor in deciding on a CRM (along with integration):

“Does the CRM software help sales find more info about prospects and customers? Can the CRM software easily be scaled to meet growing demands for B2B markets?”

Still another reviewer of AWS focuses in on scalability and reliability:

“AWS has a well known reputation for being reliable for a number of different services. As your company scales, it is known to be the go to in order to provide the reliability needed to grow as a business.”

All of this drives home the same point: after customers actually purchase software, scalability and adaptability become the most important factors in determining customer satisfaction and success.

Determining Adaptability and Scalability in Software

Flexibility and scalability may be the two most important factors for many customers, but they may not end up being the most important factors for you. This is why it’s so important to establish the trade-off approach that we talked about above. Not only that, but if you decide that adaptability and scalability are criteria you’re willing to trade out you should also determine how you will address the limitations when it comes time to make process changes, customize the platform, and retain performance when you scale.

There are a few ways that customers can determine adaptability and scalability before they purchase the software.

• Ask for a Demo: One suggestion for potential buyers is to request a custom trial of the business software in question. Teams providing the software should be ready to provide this so that both parties can assess the needs of the customer, as well as the scalability and adaptability of the software.

• Talk to other Customers: This is a tried and true approach for assessing a product. Asking other customers gives potential buyers a good idea of what the software looks like in practice. Since a large portion of current customers value scalability and flexibility, potential customers are likely to hear about this as well.

• Search for Clues in Customer Reviews: Of course, potential customers can leverage the accessibility of online customer reviews in making their decision. Many software reviews include specific insight as to the adaptability, scalability, and usability of the software.

These are just some of the ways a potential customer could choose to engage with your software before they purchase. It also shows what current customers highlight as the most important criteria. The takeaway here should be this: no matter what features you include in your software, scalability and adaptability should be at the core of your decision.

The post Survey: What Buyers Find Most Important Before and After Purchasing Software appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Stories are a powerful selling tool, but rarely is one story right for every situation or customer. To be successful in a dynamic marketplace, there are 5 types of stories every salesperson should be prepared to tell in a pitch or presentation. Here is a brief description, example and tips on where and when to use each type of story:

1. Your Organization Story

This is your company’s unique origin story, shedding light on the problem you solve and why. A compelling, succinct founding story can humanize your company and offer a fresh perspective into your values and purpose.

Tips: Keep it under a minute. Company stories are inherently less engaging than other types of stories so keep it tight by picking one story line and highlighting a few key details.

Don’t lead with your organization story. Your opening should be focused on your customer (like the other 4 types of stories) and not you. Save your company story for when you are asked or when it helps to support other key points in your presentation.

Example: A company selling secure bike lights was launched because a friend of the founder had his bike light stolen and then was hit by a car coming home. That’s a powerful backstory for why the company is in business and the types of problems they solve.

2. Customer Story

A good case study or customer testimonial is a powerful tool to have in any pitch. After all, a customer who has benefited from your product or service has much more credibility with a prospect, especially initially, than a vendor or salesperson.

Tips: Select a customer who has experienced a similar situation, challenge, or goal. Demonstrate outcomes. This speaks directly to what your prospect can expect from working with you. Hone your story to stand out. As the story most likely to be told by a salesperson, you need to make sure your story is polished and engaging.

3. Business Story

Using a story about a business or industry that is unrelated to your customer’s business can provide surprising insights into problems, solutions or opportunities.

Tips: Look for businesses who have experienced a similar challenge or opportunity. Everyone knows the cautionary tale of Blockbuster and Blackberry – companies who failed to adapt to the future – so try to find something less widely known. Or give a new twist to something familiar.

Example: Fiji water is sold in a unique square shaped bottle. Many people think this was a marketing effort to set them apart from competitors. In fact, this new design proved to be a less expensive way to ship water as more bottles could be packed in a case. A story like this makes sense if you’re selling a creative solution to a prospect who is hesitant to break from the status quo.

4. Analogy or Metaphor

A story that compares something new to something familiar is a quick and effective way to help your customer understand a new technology or capability. Analogies are also useful for softening any beliefs or misconceptions your customer may have.

Tips: To find the right analogy topic, focus on what your key message is (i.e., growth, accuracy, safety, etc.) Make sure your audience will quickly understand your analogy, otherwise you will then have two concepts to explain!

Example: A solution that is convenient and can be used in multiple situations might be compared to a Swiss Army Knife. A product that provides insights and recommendations could be compared to Siri.

5. Personal story

Drawing on your own personal experience to make a point or shed light on a subject can be very powerful and highly memorable. Unlike most business-based stories, personal stories can help form a stronger emotional connection with your customer.

Tips: Know your audience. There may be customers or businesses where a personal story is inappropriate. (Caution: Don’t use this as a general excuse, as there are fewer of these than you think!) People are human and most respond to a tight, well-told, purposeful personal story. Focus on why you’re telling the story. It can be easy to meander in a personal story so be disciplined. Stick to the point and when you’re done, stop.

Example: “I thought I’d save some money by going with a newer real estate agent. After three failed offers, I finally went with a proven agent. He helped me price it correctly and put my house in front of more potential home-buyers. It sold in 3 weeks for $10,000 over the asking price. Like that experienced realtor, we can help you avoid costly mistakes and make sure you get in front of as many potential customers as possible.”

The First Sale is Only the Beginning

When it comes to customer onboarding, it doesn’t matter who the customer (clients, employees, shoppers) is, you only have one opportunity to make a first impression. Top brands like Salesforce, Travel Protection, and Berkshire Hathaway are delighting customers through the onboarding process.

What they are doing isn’t complicated at all. Let me show you how to tap into these uncommon CRM best practices and take your client onboarding to a new level.

Deliver cross-selling recommendations to employees

Client onboarding is the lifeblood of your business. You can’t do without it. According to Team Support, over 60% of support professionals said that client onboarding is in place in their companies.

In a company, everybody is a salesperson. Because everybody is interacting with the customer whether directly or indirectly. Salespeople are people who love to sell. But being blind to the needs of a customer can be the obstacle to a successful sales messaging.

Through the use of a CRM, a salesperson can get vital information about a customer and cross-sell other products to them. This makes your customers satisfied because you’re meeting their needs at the appropriate time.

Amazon is a company that’s good at cross-selling customers who are already in a purchasing mindset. Jeff Bezos once revealed that Amazon made 35% of its sales through cross-sells. For a customer who orders a digital camera, for example, Amazon recommends a memory card and a camera case that goes with it.

In your company, cross-selling will be more effective if the sales department and customer service department are well-informed about the customer.

Unfortunately, if your salespeople are great but your customer support is bad, there will be a bottleneck in the sales process.

Bad customer support could end up undoing the great work your sales agents have done. However, with the use of CRM, customer support and other departments can have access to information about a customer, learn how to treat customers like kings that they are, and inspire them to take the right action.

They can have the knowledge of the usage pattern of customers and recommend products that will be suitable for them.

For example, you can check your contact list on AgileCRM, choose a lead, study their behavior from the time they signed up to your business till date, and use that insight to cross-sell complementary products or services and nurture leads to convert them into customers.

One other way cross-selling can be effective is by asking customers what they want. Through their feedback, you can add more information to each user’s account, cross-sell them, and onboard new clients as well.

Here’s Alex Turnbull, founder of Groove asking a simple question via a welcome email to prospects who signed up.

When and how you ask people questions may be different because your own business model and goals are unique. The bottom line is to give users the opportunity to speak their minds about what they want from your brand.

You may not recommend a product right away (especially when you don’t have a suitable product), but the information, data, and insights from potential customers can help you make smart decisions in the future.

Provide diversified access

Your client’s team have different members who are probably concerned with different parts of your service. When trying to tie a client down, it is important to provide diversified access to different team members. Especially when you’re marketing to a B2B company that has all the structures in place.

For instance, the salespeople in your client’s team would appreciate your service more if they have access to contacts and leads features. Meanwhile, the social marketers will be more concerned with the part of your service that shows social engagement.

No, they don’t have to edit or modify the information, you could simply share it as a read-only link to folders, subfolders, and files, just the same way Dropbox allows users to give access permission to other team members.

Most CRM software out there allows you to add team members to your marketing campaign. If you can, provide complete access to your client’s team members that will assist them in achieving the goals of using your service.

When you do this, you’re leaving a strong impression on all team members that your company is worth doing business with, and this will motivate the client to make quick decisions in your own favor.

If every member of your client’s team finds your service useful, it simply means you have a satisfied client.

Get more conversions out of free trials

For most small businesses that rely on automation, generating sales is the most important goal of the sales process. When they offer free trials for products, they only care about the number of people who make the purchase. They are fascinated with the analytics.

Inasmuch as this is good, looking at the numbers will not do you any good. In fact, if you have been following this strategy, then you have been missing out on many opportunities that will actually result in sales.

According to Intercom, 40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of software will use it once and never come back again. Which means you still have a lot of work to do even though you have signed up thousands of new users through a free trial.

A customer taking a trial could be grouped based on their intent. A customer may just be using your product on trial without any plan to purchase after the trial. Some users have plans to pay for your product after the trial while others want to see if your product or service is really beneficial before they pay for it.

The last two have the biggest potential to be customers. For someone who wants to buy your product, you want to make sure they don’t change their mind after the trial period. And you also want to prove how beneficial your product is to a skeptical user.

You want to show them how their lives can become easier and more effective if they continue to use your product after the trial period.

The best way to exploit the free trial period is to use a CRM system to track how users interact with your product. For instance, if a user visits the video tutorial session or FAQs page regularly, could it be that they have difficulties with your product? You should seek ways to interact with such users to make your product easier to use.

With a robust CRM software, you can have an early warning of a user who will likely stop using your product after the free trial. But during the trial, there is still a chance to turn that around.

Even when you’re happy with the usage pattern of a potential customer, you can still increase satisfaction before they pay for your product. With a successful client-onboarding, you can reduce clients’ churn rate and double revenue.

Stride (now ProsperWorks) sends handwritten notes to users who signed up for a free trial on their platform.

And who says a happy customer has to wait until the end of the free trial to pay for your services? You can offer them the deal now while they’re still happy and turn them into a paying customer — through the use of a customer relationship management software.

Don’t sell features, sell success stories

It is good that you explain the core features of your product on your sales page. But you must consider that your customers are on that page because they want to solve a problem or meet a need. And even if they don’t have the full picture of their problems, your sales page must be able to show them how severe their problem is.

Of course, you don’t want to make them feel bad about themselves. This is to tell them how your product can eliminate all their worries. Now, the many features of your product may be a source of joy to your production team as they go through the numbers and bullets.

The function of your sales page is not to impress your production team. Your sales page should aim to impress your customers.

If you stop at listing the features of your product, you might piss off your customers. This is not good for anybody. Especially your business. If you can show your customers how your product will solve their problems, and if you can convince them enough about this, you will win their hearts.

Is there a better way of convincing your customers than telling them how other customers have used your product to solve the same problems they are battling with? Probably not.

When you back your products with success stories, you’re telling your potential customers that they’re not buying “chance.” They’re buying a proven solution.

According to research, 92% of consumers read online reviews and testimonials when considering a purchase online. Success stories are a vital part of your sales page because it is an indirect recommendation for your product.

For instance, when 161 Driving Academy replaced sticky hero images with the image of a real person driving, they increased conversions by 161%.

When customers are in the consideration stage of your sales funnel, you have to give them a good enough reason to spend their hard-earned money on your product.

What if they have to convince their boss that your product is good enough for their organization? Are you giving them enough reasons to continue using your product?

Conclusion

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. When you onboard a new client, be excited about it but don’t stop there. You have to make sure that your new client continues to use your service for as long as possible.

This is a never-ending process. And this is not the duty of customer support alone. With the adequate use of CRM, every employee in your company can get valuable information that will help you satisfy and keep your customers.

Success: everyone wants it, but not everyone gets it. What distinguishes successful people from everyone else? Maybe they’re better, richer, or braver. Or maybe they know something others don’t. I talked to some successful sales reps and learned a very important lesson. How your day ends up depends on how it started out. Here are some tips on starting a successful day that sales teams can start using right now.

Take Time to Make Time

Each of the reps I spoke with emphasized the importance of routine and preparation. Routines help with efficiency and lessen the need to make decisions. Successful, productive people like routines. “I like routines,” explained one rep, “[because] I do not like to rush. A rushed, hectic morning to get out of the house usually leads to disorganized day. Routines and preparation will help you do and give your best.”

Another rep echoed this sentiment, saying routines streamline the morning process to keep him on track and on time. Your morning sets the tone for your day. When you start the day behind, you never truly catch up (even if you technically do) because the tone of the day is already set at harried, frenzied, and off-kilter. Set a routine to help you maintain efficiency, timeliness, and sanity – all keys to success.

Start Earlier

How early do you start your morning? If it isn’t before you go to bed, it’s not early enough. It turns out you don’t have to be a morning person to have a good morning. Successful sales reps set themselves up for a good morning the night before.

Prepare for your morning routine with a nighttime routine. Use your nighttime routine to both close out the current day and set up your next one. For instance, cleaning out your inbox every night before going to bed makes it easy to peruse new email in the morning. The clean slate also provides a sense of accomplishment and finality that helps calm your mind and welcome sleep after a hectic day.

Gather any materials needed for the next day—papers, brochures, directions, contact information. Lay out clothes appropriate for the day’s meetings. Set up the coffee maker and put it on a timer so it’s already made when you want it. Have your lunch packed and ready to go. A good day starts with a good morning; a good morning starts with a good night.

Make the First Move

A good sales rep knows the importance of preparing for and anticipating their clients’ needs. A great sales rep takes that one step (or more) further by proactively anticipating their own needs. From morning alarms to closing bells, be proactive in all things. Don’t wait for someone or something else to determine your day. Set time aside each morning to evaluate and anticipate your day’s needs before you set foot outside your home. This will be a lot easier if you’ve gathered your important documents and made note of pertinent meetings the night before. Try adding these to your routine:

• -Somewhere between hitting the floor and hitting the door, check your email for a quick refresher and any last minute items.
• -Skim Google Alerts for your company, your competitors, your role, and your industry, as well as any other industry-specific boards you monitor.
• -Reconcile your personal and work calendars so you can physically and mentally map out your day.

Speaking of maps, don’t let lane closures, wrecks and bottlenecks slow you down. A bad morning commute can completely derail your schedule and your success, if you let it. Tune in to morning traffic reports or use apps like Google Maps and Waze to check traffic patterns and determine your best route before you get behind the wheel. Making time to plan your day keeps you in the driver’s seat.

Keep an Open Mind

Now that you have your schedule neatly laid out, crumple it up and throw it away. Okay, not really, but do leave yourself plenty of time and flexibility to be able to navigate any detours along your day. Successful sales reps keep an open mind and are ready to roll with the punches.

One way to stay ahead of any stray one-two combos is to check the rearview. Recap and assess the previous day both on your own and with others. Use general and industry-specific software to monitor personal, company and competitor progress. Go over sales numbers, lead generation, meetings, closures, and other pertinent information before meeting with your team. After completing your own review, open up dialogue with others.

Two-way communication with colleagues and customers is vital in any interpersonal market, and sales is highly interpersonal. Start your morning with a quick huddle in person or virtually around a project management software to keep everyone on the same page. Short, regular check-ins help your team share and receive valuable insight that will help everyone stay on their toes. You never know, what happened yesterday might completely alter today’s priorities.

You Do You

Each rep I spoke with had their own particular routines and rituals, but one commonality stood out: no one needed prompting to remember how they start their day. They all knew instantly what they do each morning. Don’t try to fit into someone else’s niche. You have your own needs; you just have create a routine to accommodate them. Get to know yourself and the routine that’s right for you. Success will be just around the corner.