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I regularly sign up for email newsletters so I can learn from brilliant companies and individuals who gather up their best material and send it right to my inbox. In fact, over the past few years, I’ve probably signed up for 350+.

But there’s a particular piece of the getting-started process for email newsletters I’ve been fascinated by lately: the welcome email. You know: the automated email that gets sent after you confirm your subscription.

I wondered: If I signed up for a slew of different newsletters right now, what patterns would I find in the welcome emails I received?

Rather than scouring the internet for the latest article/summary, I wanted to get a bit hands-on and draw my own conclusions. So I got to work.

I signed up for 30 newsletters across six different verticals and started looking for the common trends and tactics that were being used in the welcome email environment.

The verticals included brands in these six categories:

• Publishing/News
• Restaurants
• Home Goods
• Online Courses/Membership Communities
• Non-profit
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

What I discovered was unexpected.

The One Welcome Email Tactic That Stood Out

When I looked back through my inbox after a week, I noticed there was one tactic that stood out within the welcome emails I received: Many were simply text-based.

They looked like real, one-to-one messages written just for me. No flashy design elements – just words.

I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting to see lots of highly-designed templates. Some professional graphics. Animations and/or gifs, maybe. And yes, there were some of those in the mix, but more than half went with the stripped-down, traditional email look.

Of the 30 newsletters I signed up for, 18 were either plain text or extremely lightweight (meaning they included only minimal design elements like a logo or a single image).

That means more than half – 60%, to be exact – were using the plain text approach for their automated welcome emails to newsletter subscribers.

Why Plain Text, Though?

At a high level, my first question around the prevailing plain text trend was…why?

I did some research and found some pretty solid reasoning for this approach.

First, we have to understand that welcome emails are some of the most opened and clicked emails. Experian research shows that welcome emails enjoy high open and click rates – averaging around a 58% open rate and 14% click-through rate, compared to an average 14% open rate and 3% click-through rate for other promotional emails.

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Additional data indicates that welcome emails are actually read much more often than the average email, too. These introductory messages have around a 34% average read rate, which is 42% higher than the average.

Knowing these stats, we can see that the welcome email is a rare moment of opportunity.

So how are marketers leveraging it?

Plain Text Formatting and Welcome Email Optimization

Plain text formatting is a good starting place to optimize an organization’s welcome emails.

Findings make a strong case for plain text (or at least very limited design elements) over HTML-ridden templates. In many cases, text-only can help create a stronger dialogue with subscribers, increase deliverability, boost click-through rates, and more.

Let’s look at the trend in more detail.

1. Journalistic Emails Are on the Rise

ContentStandard recently spotlighted a new type of email that’s on the rise: The journalistic style. These are narrative-driven messages written specifically for the inbox environment that often take a deeper dive into specific interest areas. This semi-exclusive content is built with the email subscriber in mind and lets the written material speak for itself without the aid of flashy design.

One example I found following this approach came within the Farnam Street newsletter. The welcome email I received from creator Shane Parrish was text-only and included a basic introduction to the content, which clearly follows the journalistic approach.

What I liked about this approach was that it felt personal – and right off the bat, it established a connection with Shane and his material.

2. Plain Text Emails Sometimes Have Better Deliverability.

Another reason I saw more text only emails right now may have to do with deliverability.

Because inboxes like Gmail automatically filter out emails they deem commercial to the ‘Promotions’ tab, some writers have ditched their templates for a more stripped-down, text-only format.

Research from HubSpot shows that emails with many different HTML design elements (like image tags included in templates for gifs and images) are more frequently filtered than emails without.

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Even though many marketers send both an HTML and plain-text version to subscribers to help ensure they stay out of the SPAM folder, it doesn’t always make a major impact. Filtering mechanisms of inboxes are becoming increasingly effective at detecting marketing/promotional material, so more and more welcome emails are being relegated to secondary tabs where they don’t get opened, read, or clicked on.

As a result, some organizations are working to strip down their templates to either minimal design elements or none at all. Feeding America was one non-profit organization I saw working within the lightweight design context:

The good news was that it worked: This welcome email landed in my ‘Primary’ tab of Gmail.

3. Plain Text Emails Are Opened and Clicked on More Than HTML Emails on Average

We also have to think about how readers interact with different types of emails.

In one instance, HubSpot research found via A/B tests that emails coded with HTML were opened 25% less than plain text emails on average.

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The reason, according to SmartInsights, is that subscribers, like the inbox filtering mechanisms we just discussed, are good at detecting marketing, and glossy HTML templates are a red flag.

The email inbox is primarily used and valued as a space for direct, one-on-one interaction. And that’s what plain text emails look like – a real email from one person to another, not a marketing piece or advertisement.

Online instructor Paul Jarvis used this approach in his newsletter welcome email, and it helped establish the person behind the brand:

So, Is Text-Only the New ‘Must’ for Welcome Emails?

At this point, you might be wondering: “Okay, so does this mean I need to ditch my email templates and switch to plain text?”

The answer to that is nuanced. The short answer is: It depends.

Each newsletter audience is unique, just like the businesses and individuals who write them. The only way to know for sure which produces better results is to conduct multiple A/B tests.

But let’s not stop the conversation there.

Now that we’ve noted the trend and explored some of the potential driving forces behind it, let’s look at some of the other interesting tactics used within these text-based emails that you can work into those A/B tests.

3 Other Notable tactics in Text-Based Welcome Emails

From asking to be whitelisted to using a real person’s name and photo, there were three additional tactics used in these text-based welcome emails that I think are worth calling out:

1. Leveraging the Writer’s Name, Signature, or Photo

When a real person (the CEO or person writing the welcome email) was the one signing off in the signature line, I felt like it instantly added a human element. The reason: You can now associate this email (and future emails) with a name and face at the company. It’s not just “The team at X Company”, for example.

Buffer, a social media SaaS company, did this well – and they even added a photo, which I liked.

2. Asking to Be Whitelisted

As we discussed, making it into a new subscribers primary inbox can be tricky business.

However, asking to be whitelisted (AKA getting the newsletter added to the subscriber’s saved contacts) helps increase the likelihood your email will end up in the recipients primary email folder (instead of a SPAM or Promotions tab).

I noticed that the New York Times asked new subscribers to take this action within their welcome email – which is a smart way to boost the chances future emails get opened.

3. Onboarding and Introductions

Other brands used the welcome email to encourage efficient onboarding. Support software company Groove automatically sent me a welcome email with simple steps for getting started (and they too used the CEO’s name and photo.)

I liked that there was no lag time during which I had to wait for further instructions – the welcome email came right away. I could jump in with both feet without fumbling around and trying to figure things out on my own.

Final Thoughts

While what I learned seems to make a strong case for a plain text future (or at least its popularity in the moment), my findings were drawn from fairly limited sample size. I looked at 30 different welcome letters within a relatively small set of industry verticals – so it’s important to remember that the outcome here very well may look different when examining a different set of companies and niches.

Should you take my results as hard and fast proof that text-only formatting is the future of newsletter welcome emails? No. You should, however, take it as food for thought in regard to future A/B testing. As you experiment with plain text vs. HTML templates, look to your results and hard data when making any final decisions.

Every business is built on a foundation of sales. If you often look at your salespeople and wonder why one or a few consistently outsell the rest of your sales staff, it might be because they have tapped into the tips and tricks that take selling to the next level.

Just like that infamous Glen Garry Glenross speech, selling is a closer’s game. The people that do it well are skilled, yes, and likely naturally talented. However, that doesn’t mean that hiring top sellers needs to be a guessing game.

The difference is the habits of highly effective salespeople. These habits appear to span across top sellers in every industry.

There are tricks anyone can learn from the top-performing salespeople and apply to their own sales process. These habits are universal and can apply to any sales situation (most of these habits could apply to anyone, actually!).

So without further ado, here are 7 habits of highly effective salespeople.

7 habits of highly effective salespeople

Habit #1: They get enough sleep.

Tired brains are slow brains. Your salespeople need at least 8 hours of solid shuteye a night or they’re not working to their highest potential. Working in sales means you need to be on your toes every second of a meeting or a phone call. That’s just not possible when you’re tired and working at half capacity.

Sleep is magical – it gives your brain a rest while also integrating ideas and thoughts that happened during the day. In addition to a bunch of good benefits of getting enough sleep, on the flip-side, a sleep debt leads to irritation and impatience in the short term and some scary health effects in the long term. So the first of 7 habits of highly effective salespeople is consistently catching that Zzzs.

Habit #2: They plan ahead.

A great salesperson knows that the next sale is never guaranteed. Even when they’ve met their quota, they’re planning ahead and scheduling meetings and calls to work on the next client. Laying the foundation for the next week and the next month is the key to meeting and exceeding quotas. In the same vein, they’re organized.

Closers don’t waltz into a meeting without a plan. They know the prospect and have prepared a sales pitch to speak to their unique needs.

Habit #3: They use the product themselves.

Highly effective salespeople not only know the product inside and out, but they use and love it. The best salespeople are also product ambassadors. They can sell the product because they would buy it and can translate that enthusiasm to their prospects. Plus inside-out knowledge of a product goes a long way to earning a prospect’s trust.

Let’s be honest – we live in the age of the Internet where we have access to thousands of reviews. Authenticity is a key habit for highly effective salespeople.

Habit #4: They meet people on a personal level.

Everyone has probably eye rolled at that hardcore networker that walks around parties with a business card seemingly always in their hand. Meeting people might be the first step, but connecting with people is the step that separates good salespeople from great salespeople.

It’s not just about connecting on LinkedIn, but having a genuine conversation. This habit of highly effective salespeople makes a prospect want to talk to them again (and often gives them an excuse! – “How did your kid’s softball game go?”)

Habit #5: They choose prospects carefully.

This habit is twofold: they keep a “perfect buyer” image in mind and evaluating whether a prospect is likely to move forward. Great salespeople not only know when someone might want to buy, but they also know when someone won’t.

Wasting time handholding someone who has no intention to ever make a purchase is a time spent that will never produce a return on investment (time they could be spending with prospects that will buy).

Habit #6: They listen well (especially to complaints).

A complaining prospect or customer is a great sign – it means they care enough to look for changes because they want to continue using your product. Great salespeople know this. What’s more – only about 1 in 26 unhappy people will take the time to complain.

Each complaint is a knowledge that empowers an organization to improve. Customer retention and improving services all hinges on the response. Great salespeople will not only take complaints in stride but go above and beyond to resolve the problem.

Habit #7: They are consistent.

The final habit of highly effective salespeople is that they’re consistent. Once they find a technique that works, they use it until it doesn’t work anymore.

Think about it this way: every experiment is a potential ‘no’, that could have been a ‘yes’ with a proven technique. If they have to experiment, they learn quickly and apply what works so they can reduce the number of casualties in the testing phase.

Overall, these aren’t just habits of highly effective salespeople, but habits of highly effective people. Period. Taking care of your body, being prepared, and genuinely connecting with those around you are good habits to take into any life situation whether it’s professional or personal.

The bonus is that the people that have figured out these secrets can use these ‘sales hacks’ to increase their performance at work and deliver outstanding results.

Some of these habits might manifest differently in different people or situations. Planning ahead might mean setting meetings or it could mean researching prospects before a meeting. Maybe it even just means picking out an outfit the night before so you reduce ‘decision fatigue’ the next day.

These habits can be applied in so many ways that they should be taken more as guidelines than specific examples that work in every situation. Ask yourself, “Can I be more consistent in the work I’m doing? How? Am I pouring effort into a situation that isn’t offering a return?” Then go from there.

Did we forget one? Do you have a favorite habit that you see your highly effective salespeople implementing? Let us know in the comments.

Until about a year ago, the established doctrine in sales was pretty clear. It was all about “hustle”. More emails, more voicemails, more cold outreach. At first, when buyers didn’t know that it was all automated, it worked. However as buyers quickly realized that the “did you get my email”, “just wanted to check in” and “are you being chased by zombies” emails were just more automation, the effectiveness dropped dramatically.

To keep overall meeting counts where they needed to be, only one option was left: even more volume. That meant even longer sequences, and even more people being mass-targeted.

If you assume that your market is essentially infinite, this approach might work. There will always be thousands more buyers to add to the hopper, so there are no ramifications to burning more and more buyers with the process. ABM, however, does not and cannot make that assumption.

The Flight to Quality

ABM is the opposite of this “hustle” approach. Rather than mass-sending undifferentiated outreach and crappy cold emails, the best practitioners of ABM send highly customized, precise communications. Instead of driving success by increasing volume, ABM leaders drive success through quality and relevance. Rather than measure raw outreach activity, best-in-class ABM strategies measure the number and strength of relationships created.

The Wrong Tool For The Job

Are the tools of the “hustle” paradigm – automated sequences of scripted emails, auto-dialers, and management dashboards of raw activity – ineffective or actually harmful? Here’s a common argument: “there’s no harm in trying”.

Nothing could be further from the truth when executing an ABM strategy.

Automation tools work by finding one buyer ready for a conversation and turning a blind eye to the damage done to the thousands of other buyers pushed through the same process. Increasingly, this blindness to collateral damage is being challenged. Spam filters and unsubscribes increasingly decimate an organization’s ability to communicate with any prospective buyers. The more a sales team is given free reign to unleash waves of automation on thousands of buyers, the larger the impact.

In parallel, the brand impact to buyers who receive this treatment also leads to a significant negative impression of the company. In an ABM approach, a broad and deep set of relationships will be needed to get a deal done, and even one executive soured by being relentlessly pursued by an automated sales effort can scuttle a deal.

Building a Foundation of Relationships

Sales teams in support of an ABM strategy have a crucial role to play. The challenge winning large deals at select accounts is that the required relationships must be built meticulously, over time. Often the buying organization will be an ideal fit but might not be ready to prioritize the initiative just yet, so the relationships must be maintained for a lengthy period of time.

Relationships are well known for being hard to create but easy to destroy. Thoughtful, conversational, and value-creating interactions are needed to stay top-of-mind during a long process. Slowly building broader and deeper relationships in a target organization when the opportunity arises is a better strategy than an aggressive upfront strategy that either generates a meeting or leaves the buyer unsubscribed or with a tainted perception of your brand.

To enable a account-based team to build relationships, the first thing to consider is what you measure as management. As the adage says, “what gets measured gets managed.”

If you’re measuring activity you will get activity, if you’re measuring relationships, you will get relationships.

Levelling Up ABM Relationship Intelligence

Relationship intelligence provides the foundation of this shift by changing the core measurement of account-based teams to a measurement of relationships. Metrics of relationships created, strengthened, and maintained replace measurements of emails sent and voicemails left. Measurements of relationship depth and breadth with the right buyers in the buying committee give an indication of pipeline quality. Alerting on deals that are “single-threaded”, with only one strong relationship, highlight risk for committed deals in the forecast.

Account-based teams target bigger deals with more precision than mass-market sales and marketing teams. To do so, they need to be much more cognisant of the damage that can be done by undifferentiated “hustle” tactics. A core foundation of the best teams is how they measure performance. You must shift to measuring relationships over activity is a shift that drives the right behavior across the entire organization.

More businesses today are moving to SaaS. Implementation is fast, systems are agile, and updates are less burdensome. Therefore, it’s no surprise that “SaaS is expected to grow sharply to nearly one-quarter (23%) of all enterprise workloads by mid-2018,” according to 451 Research. Effective SaaS sales professionals are learning to adjust to these changes.

They’re refocusing their efforts on becoming more consultative than transactional because buyers can change providers at any time. Buyer expectations now extend beyond the initial purchase. The strongest sales professionals are creating relationships.

In our last post, we offered five best practices for selling the cloud. Here, we look at another five. Sales professionals need modern skills to position modern solutions.

Focus on Customer Success Management

A “closed” deal never truly closes. Sales professionals are expected to be an ongoing resource for the customer. This level of engagement is critical to generating renewals that maintain cash flow while limiting customer churn.

Just as the sale never closes, the competition never ceases. Other sales professionals will not slow their pursuit simply because a customer has started a relationship with a provider. Successful sales professionals never let their guards down.

Delivering consistent value for the buyer means staying ahead of company-specific technical challenges and developments in the industry. Sales professionals need to prepare their long game in order to unlock the lifetime value of their buyers.

Measure and Report Customer Business Impact

Customer dissatisfaction doesn’t always make itself heard. It’s important to seek regular feedback and keep all lines of communication open.

Don’t assume that a lack of dialogue signifies contentment. Too often, the customer’s frustrations rise to the surface when it’s too late.

Sales professionals can leverage the platform’s analytic capabilities to prevent this problem. Customer-generated usage and engagement metrics offer insight into solution performance.

This process begins when the sales professional works with the buyer to identify goals and standards for success. This upfront information equips the sales professional to address the issues and correct problems proactively.

Leverage Insights to Address Evolving Needs

Customers need competitive solutions. The problem, however, is that what’s competitive today won’t be tomorrow. The sales professional must offer insights that inform future strategies. They must think ahead on the buyer’s behalf. Simply put: evolve or disappear.

This is one of the most powerful and challenging aspects of selling cloud solutions. Preparation means understanding the nuance of the customer’s business while considering downstream challenges. The sales professional’s competitive advantage is understanding how to spur the buyer’s competitive advantage.

Resolving Service Issues Promptly

SaaS capabilities are becoming important to nearly all aspects of a business. As a result, there are greater opportunities for problems to arise. Effective sales professionals uncover these potential service issues before they become a source of concern for the customer.

The strength of the sales professional stems from their ability to proactively address problems. In many cases, the customer’s perception of the sales professional is only as good as the last interaction. Make each one count with reliable service and resolutions.

Remaining Agile in SaaS Sales

Changes in cloud computing are not only inevitable — they’re accelerating. If the sales professional is going to stay in the game, they must match this rhythm.

They can do so by effectively connecting customer needs to specific solution capabilities. While SaaS solutions boast considerable power, sales professionals must remember that the software is a tool. Therefore, the tool is only as effective as those who use it.

Sellers don’t add value by making SaaS solutions known and available. They add value by helping inform the user how it fits their business and goals. Doing so requires agility as the scope of SaaS broadens.

Today, SaaS adoption is strongest in customer-related categories, including marketing, eCommerce, and customer service. The buyers in these categories understand the importance of their relationships with their customers. Therefore, SaaS sales professionals must be prepared to match this commitment when talking to the buyer.

The post How SaaS Sales Professionals Can Prepare for Success appeared first on Welcome to the Richardson Sales Blog.

Look up “audit” in any dictionary. The first definition should be: “Ugh.” Who on earth would choose to spend time auditing content, let alone teaching others how to do it?

A content strategist like Laura Creekmore, that’s who. Someone who knows that without a deep understanding of your existing content, you’re working in the dark.

In Laura’s Content Marketing World talk, Conducting a Content Audit, she answers the basic questions any marketer might have about this formidable, invaluable task. She starts with these two definitions to ground the conversation:

• A content inventory is a list of content items, just like the kind of list you’d make if you managed The Gap and took inventory of all the clothing in your store.
• A content audit is an analysis of the inventory. It’s a foundational part of a content strategy.

Earlier CMI posts on content audits focus on questions of the what, why, when, and who. Here I focus on the how through the five steps Laura outlines:

1. Identify your main goal.
2. Identify the content to include.
3. Define your inventory/audit facets.
4. Inventory the content to be audited.
5. Audit the content in your inventory.

1. Identify your main goal

What content problems do you most want to address? Choose your audit’s main goal accordingly; your goal determines everything you do in your inventory and audit.

For example, if your goal is to figure out how to organize the content you’ll bring into a new CMS, you may want to spend zero time evaluating messages for consistency.

Other possible goals:

• Get rid of ROT (redundant, outdated, or trivial content).
• Understand the scope of your content of all types.
• Determine SEO effectiveness. (If this is your main goal, Laura encourages you to audit for one of these other goals as well.)
• Compare content quality to a standard (such as accessibility or reading levels).
• Evaluate content for consistent messaging.
• Assess which content you need to migrate to a new platform.
• Figure out how to better organize content for findability.
• Discover whether metadata, such as tags and categories, has been used as intended.
• Support more balanced editorial planning.

Ask yourself: If I were auditing my organization’s content, what goal would I focus on?

2. Identify the content to include

Often, an organization needs a full inventory – a cataloging of every piece of content it owns. Less often, the organization can get by with a partial inventory. “I come down firmly,” Laura says, “on the ‘it-depends’ side of the fence.”

For example, the first web inventory Laura did was for a website with tens of thousands of pages. At first, she didn’t want to do it; her team had put all that content there and knew what it was. She did the inventory anyway and, after delivering it, discovered that the client had not, in fact, known all of what the website included.

“They were delighted to learn about all the work we had done on their behalf,” she says. “The site had gotten so big that they had become disconnected from it.”

In retrospect, Laura was glad that the client had asked for a thorough inventory of the website.

You must also know what content exists in company channels other than the website — in training materials, call-center scripts, social media posts, and point-of-sale materials. A single customer may take a webinar, follow the company on social media, call the 800 number, and show up in a store. Does that customer get the same information and the same messaging everywhere? You can’t answer that question without a comprehensive inventory and audit. You must have an omnichannel perspective; your messages must come through, in every channel, clearly, and accurately.

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Do your messages come through clearly in every channel? Not sure? Do an audit, says @LauraCreekmore.
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In addition to deciding whether to inventory all or part of your content, you must decide whether to list each item or to list summaries. If, for example, your content is in a robust CMS, is well organized, and is consistently tagged with useful metadata, you may, Laura says, be able to simply record summaries, such as “We have this kind of product description. Copy runs from X characters to X characters in length. Tone is technical.”

At the same time, she warns, “I think this situation is rarer than we’d like to hope.”

If you’re tempted to inventory less than everything, evaluate a representative sample. “Do more than you think is enough,” Laura says.

Ask yourself: If I were auditing my organization’s content, what content would I include? If a subset, then what channels, content types, etc., would we exclude? How would we determine that our subset was sufficient to meet our goal?

3. Define your inventory/audit facets

Define the facets – the types of data – to capture in the inventory. These facets become columns in your spreadsheet or whatever tool you’re using to capture your inventory data. (In Laura’s experience, spreadsheets offer the most flexibility.)

To give some of the kind of facets you might want to capture, Laura provides a starter list:

• Index number (you create). Because even web-based content isn’t necessarily tied to a URL, Laura creates an index number for each content item. Several pieces of content may live at a single URL or one piece of content may appear on multiple pages. And, of course, non-web-based content has no URL. Index numbers can also help when you’re discussing your audit with colleagues. As Laura explains: Create a system that makes sense so you can tell key things by glancing at the number: “Oh, this is two levels deep on the website,” or “This piece came from the app,” or “This is a YouTube video because it starts with a three.”
• URL (if applicable). This facet makes sense for static web pages. If your web pages are assembled dynamically, though, you may need to choose another type of ID to indicate the discrete chunks of content to audit. “Often in an audit, we think instinctively about a page or a screen, and we capture our assessments on that basis,” Laura says. “However, depending on the goal, it might make more sense to analyze content chunk by chunk.” For example, she points to the Starbucks web page shown near the end of this post: “In the case of that Starbucks home page, there are multiple content chunks that you could analyze.”
• Headline. Transcribe the title.
• Content summary. Since the headline or title doesn’t always adequately convey the topic covered, summarize the content. If the content is short, consider copying it.
• Identify the intended audience.
• Detail the high-level message the organization wants to convey in this piece of content. (The message is probably not the text on the page.)
• Navigation information (in page-based audit). Document how people find their way to the content.
• List the template this content is based on. Confirm whether the content follows a standard look and feel.
• Supplements (image, audio, video, PDF, etc.) Detail the media files people can download or otherwise experience. You may want to note these as facets or capture this information elsewhere.
• Sharing/other tools available. List the available tools for sharing digital content. Are you enabling people to share? Do you want them to? Could you make sharing easier? What other tools do you give people access to?
• While you may find it helpful to tie in your analytics (for example, the number of page views last month) with your audit, Laura offers a caution: Don’t delete content simply because it doesn’t get much traffic. Don’t assume that a low number of page views means that the content is bad. It could mean that this content is hidden in your system, and nobody can find it. Assume that a low number of views means, “We need to ask more questions before we take action.”

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Don’t delete #content simply because it doesn’t get much traffic, says @LauraCreekmore.
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• Audio or video file (type, length, size, format). Document the characteristics of audio or video files you want to capture.
• Image file (type, dimensions, size). List characteristics of image files you want to capture.
• Identify whether you want to know file size for PDFs. Also question whether PDF is the best format for that content and if people will find that content valuable. “Too many marketers are giving people trash content for email addresses, giving everyone else a bad name,” Laura says.
• List whether access to this content requires login, registration, multiple permission levels.
• You may want to capture information like browser title, keywords that you want to rank for in searches, description text, H1 text. You might also want to note whether an SEO description exists or is coded correctly to show up as a snippet in the search results.
• And more facets. Examples: asset type, content quality. Whatever else you want to know depending on your business goals and the state of your content, Laura says.

TIP: When auditing for content quality, don’t be tempted to capture a binary rating like “keep or delete.” That’s “stark” and unhelpful. Laura encourages you to give more nuance to this question. Create a quality scale, and put words on it (not five stars, because “those shades in the middle are harder unless you put some words on them,” she says).

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Don’t use a “keep or delete” rating for auditing #content quality, says @LauraCreekmore.
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Consider a scale like “exemplary, good, meh, not good, crap.” A word-based scale especially helps (a) when more than one person is doing the evaluation or (b) when one person is doing a lot of evaluation. Provide content examples for each measure on your scale to make it easier to align people’s evaluations.

Don’t be overeager to mark content for deletion. Sometimes deleting content screws up SEO value. Delete only content you’re sure isn’t useful to your audience.

Ask yourself: If I were auditing my organization’s content, what facets would I capture for each item?

4. Inventory the content to be audited

To get an automated start on your inventory of web-based content, you can use a web-scraping tool, such as SiteOrbiter, Screaming Frog, CAT (Content Analysis Tool), or Trim.

In some cases, you can export from your CMS, but beware. Laura says, “I’ve seen exports produce a lot of trash, and I’ve seen them produce something that I could work with … sort of.”

When a site is small enough to justify manual capturing, Laura’s favorite method is to copy the URL and paste it into a spreadsheet. “There’s no better way to see what you have than to do it by hand,” she says.

Ask yourself: If I were auditing my organization’s content, what form would I want the inventory to take? And what capturing tool or method makes the most sense for our content and main goal?

5. Audit the content in your inventory

Laura chooses the example of the Starbucks home page because everyone knows the brand and because she’s a fan of the company. She points out that in a real inventory and audit, she would ideally look at all of the website’s pages, all the videos, all the social media channels where people talk about the brand, all the point-of-sale materials, and so on.

Here’s how that home page looked at the time of her presentation:

To illustrate her audit approach, Laura walks through this template. While she uses a simplified table here, chances are you’ll have more than a dozen columns. There’s no right number or set of columns; simply capture data and observations according to your audit’s goal.

For the Starbucks home page, in the “ID” column, you would capture the URL. Then you would move on through the columns. For example, if your goal is to evaluate how well the content supports the company’s messaging, you might have a “Messaging” column (as shown here), where you would note the messaging you get from that page and how well it lines up with the intended messaging.

After filling in a row, you would move to the next piece of content in a new row.

Ask yourself: If I were auditing my organization’s content, what kind of data and observations would my team and others find most helpful for making strategic decisions about all that content?

Conclusion

A content audit is no trivial effort. It can seem daunting. At the same time, you can’t make strategically sound decisions about your content without a solid sense of the content you already have.

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A #content audit is no trivial effort, says @LauraCreekmore via @marciarjohnston.
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When was the last time your organization audited its content across all departments and all channels for all digital and nondigital content types? What have you learned from doing (or not doing) content inventories and audits? What would you do differently next time?

Here’s an excerpt from Laura’s talk: 

Want to make your content work better for your company? Learn how at the Intelligent Content Conference March 20-22 in Las Vegas. Register today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute 

Please note:  All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team.  No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

The post How to Audit Your Content: 5 Essential Steps appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Building a program for underperforming sales reps is pretty atypical. But that’s exactly what I did in 2017 -- I ran a bootcamp called Project Finish Line (PFL) for reps who had averaged less than 95% quota attainment last quarter. The goal? Get them to reach 100% quota attainment as quickly as possible.

And it went well. On average, the reps improved quota attainment by 31%.

Learn More About Sales Careers at HubSpot

Perhaps more importantly, all but one rep maintained a higher level of performance once the program finished. Three sales reps were later promoted.

The theory behind the program

Last year, I read The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong, by Chris Anderson and David Sally.

The book discusses weak-link and strong-link thinking. To improve overall performance, you either help your weakest players get better (weak-link thinking) or your star players be even more successful (strong-link thinking).

Weak and strong-link thinking apply to any situation with a broad distribution of performance. I thought a sales organization was an ideal environment to test a weak-link program. First, modern sales organizations like HubSpot are extremely data driven -- meaning it’s easy to objectively quantify who the weakest performers are and provide them with support.

Second, weak-link thinking is effective. There’s clear and quantifiable room for improvement.

And third, it’s efficient. There are usually existing playbooks and structures in place that can be repurposed or adapted, rather than created from scratch. A weak-link approach should therefore require fewer resources than a strong-link one.

Many people believe improving top performers is the right approach and favor strong-link programs, but that's not the right strategy every time (although we do also run strong-link initiatives too). Admittedly, at some businesses, trying to improve low performers would be a waste of resources (they either can’t, won’t, or don’t want to improve), but I firmly believe that HubSpot’s high hiring bar shields us from that challenge and makes a weak-link approach worthwhile.

Choosing the participants

We began with a list of reps who’d averaged less than 95% of quota. However, we also gave sales managers the option to remove or add members of their team who they thought would benefit.

One thing I’m keen to reiterate is that PFL wasn’t a punishment. It’s a program designed for sales reps who we believe will hit quota with some support. If you’re thinking of running a similar program, use quota attainment as a starting point -- but build some flexibility in. You want people who can and will improve.

Once our sales managers had signed off on the participants, they held a one-on-one meeting to introduce the program to those sales reps, answer questions, and show how the program is designed to improve performance.

Format

According to the 70:20:10 Model for Learning and Development, 70% of learning is experiential, meaning it happens on the job; 20% of learning is social, meaning it happens with your coworkers and peers; and 10% of learning is formal, meaning it happens during classes, training programs, etc.

PFL straddles the 20 and 10 parts of the model. It provides both social and formal learning aspects, so reps leave ready to apply what they’ve learned to their jobs.

Let’s get down to the execution and content of PFL. It lasted eight weeks and consisted of seven 45-minute training sessions delivered by subject matter experts. I also met individually with sales reps every other week to provide deal support, e.g. discussing deal strategy, setting up customer reference calls, or providing competitive intelligence.

Sales reps typically dislike training that’s one-size-fits-all, overly structured, and slide-heavy. So we wanted to flip the traditional playbook and create a semi-structured program that felt like a coaching or whiteboard session.

But it’s a challenge to make a whiteboarding or coaching session repeatable. To overcome this, and ensure the sessions could be replicated, we created a session plan with each subject matter expert and five slides for them to use.

Having just a few slides forced the subject matter expert to act as a coach and facilitator rather than a lecturer. Subject matter experts used the session plan as an outline but could go “off-script” or zoom in on a specificarea if sales reps found it valuable. Reps also received a handout after each session -- I was the dedicated notetaker and would share notes afterwards (sales reps were asked to keep their laptops closed).

Guiding principles

Before launching the program, we spoke with sales reps to understand their learning preferences and came up with a set of guiding principles based on those discussions. I shared these principles with the subject matter experts two weeks ahead of their session.

PFL is ...	PFL is not ...
Whiteboard and discussion led (five-slide limit)	PowerPoint/Google Slides led
Practical -- recordings, call scripts, case studies	Theoretical -- lofty overview of topics
Has Q&A running throughout	Q&A limited to the end of the session
Coaching-based	Lecture-based
Facilitated by subject matter experts	Facilitated by generic trainers
Tailored to cohorts of sales reps	One-size-fits-all
Agile	Heavily structured
Small groups	Whole team

Positioning

For PFL to succeed, we had to position it very thoughtfully. The program wasn’t a punishment or pre-PIP move. Quite the opposite: It showed we were investing in our reps’ success. The message was simple and consistent throughout: We believe that with additional support PFL participants will hit 100% quota attainment.

Choosing which topics to cover

During the first session, we asked sales reps for an all or nothing commitment. They could come to every session or none of them. We also took this time to answer questions, allay fears, and analyze the group’s needs.

The needs analysis was crucial, as sales reps got to decide what sessions they would take. A menu of options was presented based on feedback from sales managers; sales reps could also suggest topics. Once we had a list, the group ranked the topics by importance and value, then agreed on the final sessions.

I firmly believe getting sales reps to co-create the program increased engagement and commitment.

Here was the session schedule:

1. Intro to program and group needs analysis
2. Uncovering a prospect’s true business need with active listening
3. Delivering a high impact inbound growth assessment (IGA) and tie downs
4. Bringing your demo to life with storytelling
5. Delivering a winning demo
6. Negotiating and building tension to drive a deal forward
7. Managing your time

This program required a lot of resources, but as the results show, it was definitely a worthwhile investment. I'm looking forward to running the program again. If you have any thoughts or questions, please reach out via Twitter.

The online landscape is more competitive than ever before. Each day, millions of companies are fighting for attention online. How do you stand out in such a noisy environment and impress online visitors?

The answer is personalization.

Why? It works. New data from Evergage shows that one-fourth of marketers experienced an increase of 11-20% by using personalization. Plus, simply adding personalization to an email subject line can increase open rates by as much as 26%.

Curious about how you can “wow” your visitors with different types of personalization? Here are five tactics you can deploy and test right away.

1. Anticipate the journey

One of the signature elements of stellar personalization is a proactive anticipation of your online visitors’ wants and needs. So, how do you anticipate their journey?

With the help of automation, anticipating where a customer is in their journey is easier than ever before. Customer journeys are a simple way to impress visitors with relevant messages that deliver value at the right time.

Reminder emails, for example, help you regularly stay in touch with customers who are approaching an important milestone in their customer journey. Nissan sends a reminder email to customers approaching their six-month post-purchase date to keep them in the loop about regular maintenance providing value to the customer and an ongoing revenue stream for the company.

2. Leverage data from visitors

In order to properly personalize, it’s important to gather the right customer data so you can leverage it down the road for more targeted, relevant interactions.

Data shows these efforts pay off, as targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. Consider collecting the following types of data about your online visitors:

• Geographic data. Know where your visitors are from. With this data, you can share local or regional offers that may be of interest.
• Demographic data. Knowing demographic data like the age, income level, gender, and occupation of your visitors helps you better personalize based on individual attributes.
• Behavioral data. Once a visitor has converted into a customer, you’ll want to study their behaviors. Group customers based on how they interact with your brand so you can better anticipate their actions. Keep track of data points like user status, buyer readiness, and time of last purchase or interaction so you can capitalize on what you know about specific moments within the customer journey.

With this data, you can better segment your audience so that you’re effectively personalizing for each and every individual.

3. Think about the experience as a whole

It’s also important to think beyond your product or service and about the customer experience (CX) as a whole.

Walker data shows that customer experience will overtake price and product as the primary brand differentiator for sales by as soon as 2020, and 86% of marketing executives say creating a cohesive customer journey is an important marketing approach for landing sales.

Ask yourself: What can you better personalize the customer experience to improve customer interactions with your brand? Think about:

• How you can integrate data across systems for richer customer profiles
• What metrics and analytics you can study to spot trends and patterns from your visitors
• Where you can build greater consistency across touchpoints
• What templates you can create to increase the efficiency of personalization efforts

Taking these steps can improve your bottom line: As you build out a personalization strategy that positively impacts customer experience across the board, you increase your chances of building customer loyalty and reducing churn.

4. Make your messages dynamic

To improve your personalization efforts, it’s a good idea to create dynamic content that’s tailored to demographic and/or geographic user data.

For example: If you’re a clothing company sending out an email campaign, you could use dynamic content to display either men’s or women’s product suggestions based on subscriber data. Adidas does this well:

This adds greater relevance to the material–and it saves you from having to build out an entirely separate campaign. Two tasks, one tool.

5. Regularly gather feedback (and use it)

One of the easiest ways to impress online visitors is to ask them exactly what they want from you–and then deliver on it.

Gathering feedback means building a stronger relationship with your online visitors–and it can drive sales, too. By pairing surveys with a special offer, you get the rich data you need and your visitors get a little something for their time.

With the help of regular, ongoing survey efforts, you can ask questions about product interests, buying behaviors, satisfaction–and always work on improving the customer experience. Bonus: They’ll help you deliver highly relevant and personalized messages time and time again that are spot on for your visitors.

Wrap up

You have five different ways to impress your online visitors via personalization–now it’s time to get to work. Start testing out these tactics with a renewed focus on your customer experience. Your online visitors and customers will thank you for it.

Since ClicData began, our interactions with companies of all sizes and users of all shapes have revealed some curiously common threads among dashboard and business intelligence use cases. So we thought it would make a lot of sense to publish an “FAQs” blog to get some answers and ideas out around BI and dashboard best practices.

Frequently Asked Questions on Dashboards & BI Tools

1. Do you have an on-premise version?

No, we’re 100% cloud based software (SaaS) solution… for a reason. This could be one of the most hotly debated issues in the free world (ok, well, among software vendors, anyway!). It really gets back to a fundamentally philosophical difference in running a business today. We purposely run a SaaS model for a number of key reasons:

• SaaS models offer a much lower cost of entry. Not only do you only pay for what you need, there are no exorbitant upfront implementation, customization or hardware costs. Instead of having to provision internal resources, a simple user interface and online application coupled with robust vendor APIs help you get up and running quickly and connect other systems to your dashboard tool with just a few clicks.With thousands of connectors to industry standard applications (think CRM, social media, marketing automation, HR systems, ERP,, accounting systems, etc.) you can be up and running KPI and dashboard reports in minutes versus hours, days or even months.
• Cloud offers access to ‘anytime, anywhere data.’ News alert: it’s 2018 and the world is on the move, and moving fast. Users need access to the right data at the right time, from anywhere. They don’t need ALL of your data ALL the time, they only need what they need. Besides, it’s costly and time consuming to store and provide all of your data, especially when only certain data is needed at various times.Cloud-based SaaS solutions give users on-demand access to precisely the data they need to make the best decisions and move the business forward faster.
• The SaaS vendor is responsible for uptime, upgrades and security. Check, check and check! It’s likely your core business is not what the cloud-based software provides, so why not let the experts focus on delivering the SaaS solution so you can focus on optimizing and improving your business? Sure, security is an ongoing concern, but again, it’s 2018 and cloud-based security solutions have also come a long way.While some IT people are concerned about security outside of the enterprise walls, it’s more likely the SaaS vendor has a much higher level of security than the enterprise itself would provide. Many cloud-based software providers have redundant instances in very secure data centers in multiple geographies. Their data is usually being automatically backed up as well, providing additional security and peace of mind.
• Higher adoption rates and faster time to ROI. Dashboard and business intelligence tools are useless unless your employees are actually using them. On-premise software solutions are often built for ‘power users’ like data scientists and analytics experts versus being built for the average business user in any department. Anytime access combined with high adoption rates give you a faster time to ROI on your investment via higher productivity and efficiency.

2. Do you connect to [insert application name here]?

A truly useful cloud-based dashboard tool should easily connect to mainstream applications across most of the mission-critical and functional systems used to run businesses today. That means APIs to thousands of applications that serve your company. While the individual applications obviously have a ton of value, that value is exponentially compounded when combined with the data and analytics across tools and departments.

If you’re not sure where to start or what that could mean to your business, don’t get sidetracked. Focus on the KPIs most important to each department, and those that roll-up to the mission-critical KPIs that drive the entire company. It’s likely there are a handful of metrics that all departments and systems track and drive at some level. Start there and work backwards, and be sure not to guess what each team is tracking. Better to take the time to interview them and map out the connection points that are going to impact your dashboard the most.

3. Can I run reports and dashboards for my clients?

Cloud-based SaaS dashboard and business intelligence tools mean you can securely manage multiple clients on a single account. There’s no heavy lifting when it comes to creating dashboards for different users inside or outside of the company, including your clients. As long as the right system(s) are connected, you have the flexibility to slice and dice the data however needed and seamlessly share reports.

Yes, it’s a beautiful thing!

4. Do you have templates?

Dashboard templates might sound appealing at the surface, we totally get it. Start with 3 to 5 common metrics, tweak a few things, and bam, you’re done.

What we’ve found consistently over the years, however, is that a template is really only of value to the guy who created it. Clients end up customizing templates to such a degree that they no longer even remotely resemble the original template. And in fact, starting with just a few KPIs and building from there typically leads to faster actionable reports than starting with pre-built template.

It’s your data and your business, why be boxed in by a template that can artificially skew what metrics you really need to track?

5. Is the tool HIPAA and/or HITECH compliant… even in the cloud?

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) is United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.

The scope of HIPAA was extended with the enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Together, HIPAA and HITECH Act rules include:

• The HIPAA Privacy Rule, which focuses on the right of individuals to control the use of their personal information, and covers the confidentiality of PHI, limiting its use and disclosure.
• The HIPAA Security Rule, which sets the standards for administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect electronic PHI from unauthorized access, use, and disclosure. It also includes such organizational requirements as Business Associate Agreements (BAAs).
• The HITECH Breach Notification Final Rule, which requires giving notice to individuals and the government when a breach of unsecured PHI occurs.

HIPAA compliance is an extensive process of determining where the data is and how it is used and by whom among many other processes and procedures. Mostly it is about training of internal and external employees, subcontractors, partners and suppliers on privacy, security and standards.

While there is no official HIPAA compliance certification program, your SaaS provider should be able to help with your documentation by providing its privacy and security regulations which may be applicable to your individual HIPAA compliance record.

Specific to ClicData: our application and database are hosted by Microsoft in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft holds and is regularly certified in many types of privacy, safety and security programs including ISO27001, SOC1 and SOC2, among many others. For more information read about it here.

In Conclusion

Graphical dashboards and business intelligence tools clearly demonstrate trends and opportunities evident from your data, and make them more actionable than ever before.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on January 25, 2018. 

You know the story. Back in 2011, Netflix restructured their pricing in a big way. They unbundled streaming plans from the traditional DVD-by-mail business, increasing the price of the combined offering from $10 a month to $16 a month. And they rebranded their DVD-by-mail business to Qwikster.

The public reaction was staggeringly negative. Netflix lost a whopping 800,000 subscribers in Q3 2011. Their stock price plummeted immediately following their Q3 2011 earnings release. Over the course of four months, Netflix’s stock price dropped by almost 80% compared to July 2011. In the chart below, you can see the painful progression (courtesy of Yahoo! Finance).

When asked about the 2011 price change, Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings said he wasn’t sure if the company had run customer focus groups before announcing the new plans. And, if they had run focus groups, he wasn’t sure what those focus groups had said. All of this uncertainty didn’t instill much confidence…

Fast forward to present day. In October of 2017, Netflix announced another pricing change. They raised the price of their core Standard plan from $9.99 per month to $10.99 per month. This change crossed a critical threshold in the minds of consumers and create a sizable gap in price between Netflix and Hulu Plus (which rings in at $7.99 a month).

With this new change, Netflix announced that existing customers would be automatically migrated into new plans – a move in stark contrast to a 2014 pricing change that grandfathered in existing customers, allowing them to keep lower prices for two years before being migrated to the newer, more expensive plans.

Given the company’s fraught history with pricing, I could not wait to hear how the 2017 pricing changes are impacting Netflix’s bottom line went. On Monday, January 22, Netflix announced the results in their Q4 2017 earnings.

By all measures, colossal success. Subscriber growth was not hurt by the pricing increase whatsoever. In fact, Netflix added 2 million new streaming subscribers in the US and 6.4 million overseas, 33% more than what Wall Street analysts had forecast. Both new and existing customers happily swallowed the price increase, which lifted Netflix’s revenue by 35% (faster than their 25% growth in average paid streaming memberships).

When asked about the impact of the price increase, CEO Reed Hastings told analysts, “We saw very little effect on sign ups and growth [from the price increase] and thus, the really strong results.” #Humblebrag.

With more subscribers, and with all subscribers now paying 10% more on average, Netflix saw a massive increase in profits. Operating income jumped to $245M, up from $154M the previous year. (Sidenote: Even very small pricing increases can have an outsized impact on a company’s profitability. You can read more about that here.)

You can guess what happened to Netflix’s stock price. It soared.

If it worked once, why not double down?

Netflix could have taken their pricing windfall and called it a day. It would seem prudent to avoid rocking the boat knowing that the competitive landscape was about to get tougher as consumers would now have the choice of new streaming services from Apple, Disney, CBS, YouTube and many others. But if it worked once, why not try again?

The resounding success of their 2017 pricing increase gave Netflix the conviction that they had not yet reached a ceiling on price, the point at which price becomes an impediment to subscriber growth. They still had room to try their luck again. In January 2019 the company announced higher pricing for each of their plans, which represented the largest price increase in the company’s history according to Variety. With these changes, Basic would go up to $8.99 per month (+13%), Standard would jolt to $12.99 (+18%) and Premium would go to $15.99 (+14%). The plans themselves remained exactly the same as they were in 2017 (see below).

This again turned out to be a major win for the streaming giant. The price increase announcement had an immediate positive impact on the stock price (the headline in CNBC was “Netflix raised prices and the stock soared”). In the company’s first quarterly earnings call after the price increase, CFO Spencer Neumann indicated that churn levels were very consistent with the 2017 pricing increase despite the fact that this one was much more significant and even impacted the Basic plan. Furthermore, the company reported that it beat expectations on both domestic and international paid subscriber additions (9.6 million versus a forecast of 8.9 million).

All of this translates to a massive impact on the bottom line. Let’s do some quick math. If we assume the company has 60 million US subscribers who will now pay $1 more per month and that pricing hasn’t impacted churn or subscriber growth, that means a jaw-dropping $720 million increase in annual revenue. All of that extra revenue is pure profit – it doesn’t require new investments in content or hosting or marketing or sales. Given that the company made $1.2 billion in net income in 2018, this 13% increase in revenue per customer actually means a 60% increase in profitability. Not too bad for a dollar meal sized price increase.

What you can learn from Netflix’s pricing strategy

There are a number of lessons SaaS companies should take away from Netflix’s successful 2017 and 2019 pricing changes, as well as from their epic 2011 fail. Here are my top five:

1. Pricing is critically important

How many business decisions can send your stock price spiraling down by 80% one year and then rocketing up another? The Netflix case proves that pricing changes can make or break a business, and therefore it’s important to invest in making the right pricing decisions. It also reinforces that even small changes in pricing can add up to major improvements in a company’s profitability.

2. Don’t let one mistake stop you from touching pricing again

After the Qwikster disaster of 2011, Netflix could have decided that they were never going to touch pricing again. They did, in fact, leave pricing alone until 2014. But over time, Netflix collected evidence that they had an opportunity to revisit pricing in a more thoughtful way. When they were ready to do so in 2014, Netflix took a conservative approach to mitigate the risk of another backlash. The success of their 2014 pricing change gave Netflix the confidence to take a more aggressive approach the next time around and then an even more aggressive approach in 2019.

3. Pricing power comes down to value and customer satisfaction

In their Q4 2017 earnings call, Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings was asked if he had plans for future price increases. His response perfectly summed up a value-based pricing philosophy. With a value-based approach, pricing power is an output that you can measure based on how much value you deliver to customers relative to alternatives on the market. It’s not a best guess, a snap decision, or an input based on a company’s cost structure.

“I think it’s a tricky thing because it really has to be a reflection of the underlying quality of the experience on a relative basis. So, as long as we’re able to continue to improve our content and our whole experience at a remarkable rate…then asking our customers to help us fund that at higher levels is reasonable. But if we weren’t gaining relative value for the customers, then we wouldn’t be changing prices.”

– Reed Hastings

4. Communicate pricing changes at the right time

One reason why Netflix’s pricing change went over so smoothly was the timing. The 2017 price increase coincided with the launch of amazing new original content, including new seasons of popular series like Stranger Things and The Crown (which I both highly recommend) and the debut of a big budget action film starring Will Smith (Bright). Other companies should similarly launch pricing increases when they can tie those increases back to improvements in customer value, for instance through new product launches, increases in NPS, new partnerships, or better analytics.

5. Present your customers with choices

Finally, customers respond better to pricing increases when they have options. And that’s true even if the options aren’t all that great. In Netflix’s case, while they increased the price of their Standard plan, they kept their entry-level Basic plan at $7.99 per month. A budget-conscious customer could by all means downgrade if they could not afford Netflix’s price increase. Doing so would mean giving up a lot – no more HD streaming and only 1 concurrent device. Still, having a choice makes the customer feel in control, and makes it easier for them to swallow a price increase.

What have you learned from Netflix’s pricing strategy? Let us know in the comments or tweet to @poyark or @OpenViewVenture.

The post Netflix Quietly Perfected Their Pricing. Here’s What You Can Learn. appeared first on OpenView.

75% of people don’t scroll past the first page of search results.

Search engine leads have a whopping 14.6% close rate

And

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70% to 80% of people skip straight to organic results, ignoring paid ads completely.

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But you probably already know all of that. You already know how important landing within the first ten results of a Google search is. You know how that can help your business generate passive traffic, leads, and conversions. That’s why you’ve spent the last year trying to either climb your way through the rankings or maintain your current position. 2018, though, is going to be filled with some things you might not know. In particular, video is going to rule content creation, voice search will start to find its footing, and mobile results will take priority.

In this blog, you’ll learn about the most recent changes to SEO and how as a marketer you can implement strategies to get ahead in 2018.

1. Video is Going to Rule the Rankings

Currently, about 55% of all Google search results contain at least one video. In other words, over half of the page results you see when you search on Google have at least one video embedded within their pages. You could argue that’s because people are using video content more often. But, more accurately, I’d argue that Google is actually prioritizing pages with video content. And that’s not a huge surprise.

First of all, Google owns YouTube so it’s in their own interest to promote video content. That’s probably why, as you might have noticed, Google is slowly sneaking video results into the images search tab.

(Image Source)

 

Second, 60% of people prefer video content over basic text.

(Image Source)

Which directly contributes to why video content tends to rank better than regular blog posts. When people spend more time on a page and engage with the content rather than leaving immediately, Google ranks that page better. If video is encouraging engagement, that’s at least partly why it’s winning on the SERP.

How can marketers start to prepare for this video-loving trend? The best way is to start creating video, or in the least, use video. When writing a blog post, for instance, go to YouTube, find a video that accurately describes your topic, and embed it in the blog post you’re writing.

Kind of like I’m about to do.

2. Voice Search Will Start to Find its Footing

Every day, 40% of adults perform at least one voice search. With the rapid adoption of products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, voice searches have increased by 35 times since 2008. According to Google one in five searches comes from a voice query.  Everything from cell phones to home assistants will have voice search technology incorporated, leading comScore to estimate that voice queries will account for 50% of searches by 2020.

Lest you think that all of that attention is just smoke and mirrors, consider that Google hinted in an interview they will soon be introducing better voice search reporting.

 Recently, a Google Analyst stated:

“I don’t know what the exact plans are there, but we have discussed something like that. To kind of make it easier to pull out what people have used to search on voice and what people are using by typing. Similar to how we have desktop and mobile set up separately.”

It’s difficult to predict when voice search will start to completely establish itself, but 2018 will surely be a year of voice search exploration. That trend will affect B2B marketers and B2C marketers alike. To prepare for that, target long-tail keyword phrases that sound more conversational. When people talk instead of type, they tend to use more words.

(Image Source)

 

Additionally, featured snippets will become even more critical as searchers use their voice instead of their thumbs. Voice search tools like the Alexa and Echo and even Siri tend to prioritize these position zero snippets when they respond. Which means that if you target those snippets, you’ll rank more regularly for voice searches in the coming year.

3. Mobile Results Will Take Priority

In 2018, mobile results will likely take SERP priority like they never have before. Over a year ago, Google announced their intention to prioritize mobile-friendly and responsive websites on mobile search. To do this, they are finally starting to roll out their mobile-first indexing to a handful of sites. But, as Search Engine Land predicts, that change probably won’t be in full swing until later this year.

It’s better to prepare for the change before it actually happens than it is to fall behind. Already, a massive portion of results rank differently on mobile than they do on desktop.

(Image Source)

Mobile-first indexing will exaggerate that trend. If you have a mobile-responsive website already, I wouldn’t worry too much about the change. In the words of a Google representative,

“If you have a responsive site, then you’re pretty much good to go. Because the content on your desktop site will be pretty much the same on your responsive site. The structured data on your desktop site will be the same. There is going to be slight differences in how you present the data, but we’re trying to be prepared.”

If you’ve fallen behind the already-common curve of mobile search, then the time to catch up is now. Make sure your website is responsive to different devices, and consider integrating with Google AMP to ensure you’re in line with Google standards of device flexible excellence.

Very few people scroll past the first page of Google results. And, naturally, even fewer people click on page two, three, four, or five. In other words, you need to be on page one.  But, getting there and staying there is easier said than done.

Unfortunately, 2018 is going to bring even more changes to the SEO environment. However, now that you know to use video content in your blog posts, target long-tail keywords for voice search, and create a website that’s mobile responsive, you’ll be prepared for the changes 2018 will bring.

What changes have you already prepared for this year? What SEO changes are still on your list to accomplish? Tell me about your plans in the comments. I’d love to hear about them.

The post 3 Ways SEO and Rankings are Changing in 2018 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Google Alerts is often used for brand monitoring, but have you thought about using it as a sales tool?

Google Alerts have become incredibly popular over the past few years. The increase usage isn’t hard to understand. You can stay up-to-date on news from anywhere in the world, keep an eye on a particular topic, or even find a job that may pay a little better.

What’s not to love?

Even better than the many personal uses of Google Alerts are the potential benefits of using them for your business.

In this post, we’ll focus on using Alerts for lead generation. Some will be more obvious than others. There is more to making revenue than your marketing team and sales reps.

“If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist.” — Jimmy Wales

How to Set Up Google Alerts

Before we can get into the finer points of fishing for leads using this tool, we’ll first have to go over the basics. There is a bit of set-up involved here, but once things are moving, it will be worth it. Until then, stick with it.

First, sign into your Google account and go to the alerts page. It should look something like the screenshot below.

Below that, you’ll see a few dozen ideas for the kinds of things that may warrant alerts. Things like music, sports, politics, etc.

But for your lead generation, you’ll mainly focus on the “create an alert about…” close to the top of the page.

The Main Rule: You have to be specific.

At LeadFuze, we want to help small and medium-sized businesses generate more leads. But if you set up a Google Alert for “lead generation”, you aren’t going to find businesses looking for more prospects. Instead, you’ll see things like…

Generations being led is talked about much more than leads being generated. The “how to set up google alerts” isn’t so much about the technical details. More so, it’s about knowing the terms that actually bring up good leads.

Once you have those, however, you will need some technical search know-how. Here are the ways to input your alerts to get exactly the terms you’re looking to see.

Exact Key Phrase

If you want an alert to find people looking for help using SalesForce and just type in all the phrases you came up with, you’ll get everything about SalesForce without specific terms.

To do an exact key phrase alert, you have to include quotation marks around the entire term. For instance, “SalesForce Expert” will only yield those results with both words in the exact order. Giving you fewer, yet much better results and alerts.

Take a look at the screenshots below (one with and without the exact match “”).

There would be a genuine lead from the results above. Without the quotes, there isn’t.

Other Search Manipulations

While the exact phrase is going to be the most used, there are a few others that can help you pinpoint the types of alerts you get and maximize your results. Here they are:

• Exact Keyword (KW): Most likely will be used for brand reputation/mentions. To search for a single exact KW put a plus sign in front of the word. Example: +LeadFuze, +SalesForce.
• Alternate Keywords: In the instance there are multiple words that mean or represent the same thing, you can put “OR” in-between words. Example: Lead OR Prospect.
• Synonym Search: Some words have synonyms that Google actually knows about. To search for these, you’ll use the ~. Example: Searching for “~Owners” may yield results for CEOs and founders.

Some of these methods may be referenced throughout the rest of the post, but now it’s onto the lead gen methods.

Side Note: Make sure to set up a separate folder (maybe multiple folders) for your alerts. Your inbox could get real hairy, real quick if not.

“I don’t need to Google myself.” — Nicki Minaj

Using Google Alerts to Find Leads

Most of our readers are B2B owners, many of which offer services. We’ve discussed in previous posts about using search tools (i.e. social media, Craigslist, and job boards) to find clients.

Google Alerts is another way to do this, and potentially more powerful. Why?

The majority of businesses don’t post their staffing needs on public forums and job sites. In other words, most people looking for people to do what you do (i.e. web design, SEO, PPC, etc.) post a job opening on their site NOT places like Monster.

So, searching the WWW is going to open up the possibilities for finding leads a bit more. Plus! There are likely to be fewer applicants and other businesses trying to sell their services.

How About An Example?

A PPC expert wants to target companies who are looking to hire a PT/FT Adwords employee. This expert will get companies the results of a dedicated employee at a fraction of the price.

That’s the pitch, the proverbial “win-win”.

Alerts could be set up to include KWs like “careers”, “hiring”, etc. (in addition to “PPC” and such).

Other Ideas

• Question/Answer Sites: Quora and others like it could be tracked specifically on Google Alerts to notify you of specific KW-related questions. You’ll give a great answer and pick up some lead data.
• In the News: Most B2Bs have a range of revenue they’d like to see in their leads. Nowadays, seeing the income of businesses is more common than ever. Looking for businesses that are getting a mention for monthly or annual recurring revenue could mean a great lead.
• Long-Term Tracking: Over a short time, you’ll notice the businesses and their habits. This could help you realize the best time to approach with your outreach.

Using Google Alerts to Nurture Leads

Generating leads via Alerts will likely yield you a handful of quality opportunities every quarter. This likelihood makes it worth it to set up and wait.

That said, only using it to generate new leads would be a tragedy.

Working with small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) gives us, B2B folks, a huge opportunity to flatter and follow up with the leads in our pipeline.

You think Microsoft cares that they were featured in Forbes (again)? Nope. Not a chance. But what about your clients and leads? Do you even know where they’re being featured?

You should. And it’s not hard. Here’s how.

Old (Potentially Big) Leads

Take a look at the leads who have responded in the past, but didn’t buy. Or for the bigger leads that could seriously impact the bottom line. Set up an alert to let you know when their name is mentioned.

If it’s good, let them know you care. Not in a stalker way, but “hey, I was reading X and saw Y” kinda way. If it’s bad, let them know you care. Not in a hearsay way, but in a “your brand is being sullied and I thought you’d want to know” kinda way.

Gather Intel

Taking a look at their website and social profiles tells you about how they want to present themselves at “home”, but getting alerts about them from other places online opens it up to really investigate.

You’ll get how others feel about them, how key players interact with the outside world, and a wealth of information about their growth strategy/marketing.

Current Solutions

You’re not likely to see who’s doing their FB ads or designing their site just off hand. But a simple alert may give you insight into who’s claiming them as their client.

Most sites are looking to build up their social proof with an “Our Clients” section of their website, a blog post announcing a big integration/partnership, or just bragging about their acquaintances online.

Information is power, especially in sales.

“Everyday I don’t Google my name, there’s another beautiful day.” — Bill Callahan

Using Google Alerts to Find Partners

Perhaps the most powerful way to generate leads via Alerts is to look for partnerships.

Every mention of your brand, every positive comment of your product in a blog post is a potential venue to get in front of an audience that isn’t yours.

Example Time

You write a bangerang blog post that gets mentioned by a business blogger with a decent-sized audience. Getting the Google Alerts for these allows you to thank the person quickly and set up a dialogue.

But what else?

If you’re an agency doing some of the cool stuff we mentioned, how about a referral fee? Or, if you’re an app/SaaS you could offer an affiliate partnership.

The possibilities are vast here. If you’re both apps; integrations, JVs, and beyond, you can look for complimentary agencies to partner with and send business toward — or even offer white-labeling (you do the work, their name is on it and vice versa).

All from alerts that can be set up once and left alone. Bangerang.

Google Alerts Housekeeping Notes (and Summary)

It’s important to note that Google Alerts is NOT going to scale your business. Even if you get a client a month (a stretch) and each client is worth a couple grand — it’s not going to pay the bills.

Over time, it will more than pay off the initial couple of hours that it takes to set up. But growth will take a multi-pronged, inbound, and outbound methods.

Not to sound like a kid’s cereal commercial, but Google Alerts should only be a part of a well-balanced sales and marketing strategy.

We, obviously, recommend cold email as one of the most effective ways to grow your business. If you’d like to find out more about using cold email, here’s a great post.

Wondering how live video can help you make money? Looking for ways to increase the return on your investment in live video? In this article, you’ll discover six ways to develop leads and boost sales using live video. #1: Generate Leads via Teasers and Prompts The popularity of live video makes it a great way [...]

This post How to Use Live Video to Generate Leads and Sell first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the alignment of B2B sales and marketing people, processes, systems and technology to identify, engage and close bigger deals more efficiently. ABM is a focused go-to-market strategy that aligns B2B sales and marketing efforts to select the accounts best suited to realize value from the value proposition. ABM focuses all go-to-market resources on a sales and marketing agreed upon set of target accounts assumed to have a high probability of converting to customers.

At its Core, Pragmatic B2B Account Based Marketing (ABM) is Dependent Upon:

• Aligning sales and marketing
• Setting goals and objectives
• Selecting target accounts
• Creating customer journey maps
• Aligning content to the customer journey
• Structuring CRM and marketing automation
• Rolling out integrated ABM campaigns
• Growing customer advocacy

Aligning Sales and Marketing

• Put the right sales and marketing people on the initiative
• Document SMART objectives for all constituents needed to approve the effort
• Create a common language with specific terms and measurements
• Identify owners, contributors, a project manager, timelines and deliverables as well as a communication and action plan

Setting goals and Objectives for ABM

These should all be quantifiable and easily measurable, such as the:

• Percentage of sales pipeline for targeted or named accounts sourced from ABM strategies and tactics
• Close rate of sales pipeline for targeted or named accounts sourced from ABM demand generation
• Percentage of targeted or named accounts penetrated from ABM initiatives
• Percentage of targeted or named accounts expanded from ABM programs
• Velocity of sales pipeline for targeted or named accounts sourced from ABM efforts

Selecting Target Accounts

• The specific names of each company selected in the named or target accounts (including subsidiaries)
• The names and titles of all individuals thought to be involved in the customer buying process
• Full contact information for all individuals thought to be involved in the customer buying process

Creating Customer Journey Maps

A customer journey map is a detailed framework which describes each step a customer takes through the purchase process. It begins with how the concept or idea comes to mind through successful implementation and usage.

This is a process that continuously evolves. A stake is put in the ground as the marketing team works with the sales reps and sales managers with the most traction in selling the solution (or those with a clear idea of what they believe will work.) This premise should be based on specific use cases, differentiation and the value proposition that will resonate with each decision maker, recommender and influencer.

Aligning Content to the Customer Journey

The key here is to get to the right person, at the right time, with the right message and in the right format.

A content message map should be created for strategic, operational, IT and line of business (LOB) individuals. Flow chart the customer journey from content though successful implementation by role and by questions from each individual — and put in the most compelling format. Next, take inventory of the existing information and whether or not it is relevant. Then identify what information is required, who is best to produce it and a time-line for completion.

Structuring CRM and Marketing Automation

While accounts and contacts may be standard entities within one’s CRM system, that doesn’t mean the CRM system can support ABM.

Ensure that both the CRM and Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) contain the right fields to enable segmentation, account selection and the ability to fully support your ABM efforts. And make sure the right rules and flows (lead scoring, prioritization, escalation and routing) are bullet proof so that sales and marketing can follow-up in minutes or even seconds.

Rolling-out Integrated ABM Campaigns

Rolling out an ABM campaign takes planning and collaboration between marketing (demand generation, ABM, demand management), sales (SDRs, ISRs, FSRs), and customer success managers.

Best-in-class ABM efforts are omni-channel and encompass both outbound and inbound demand creation and management techniques. In addition, a high / low and technical / business approach is usually most effective as it can connect with all individuals involved in a customer purchase.

The key is a pragmatic, systematic, methodical approach to deliver the right content to multiple channels and engage with the right people at the right time.

Growing customer advocacy

The goal of B2B sales and marketing goes beyond customer acquisition. The real KPI for sales and marketing is the Long Term Value of the customer and the share of a customer’s IT budget spent with your organization. With this goal in mind, the concepts of on-boarding, customer success, churn and expansion become very important. Organizations gravitate to the Net Promoter score — an attempt to align a customer’s success to customer satisfaction, referenceability and revenue optimization.

B2B sales and marketing teams need to nurture customer’s beyond the initial purchase to build customer loyalty. In return, internal customer advocates will become internal champions for your solution — which increases the potential for account retention, penetration, expansion and growth.

Net: Pragmatic Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

When deployed intelligently by truly synchronized B2B sales and marketing teams, ABM will close bigger deals more efficiently and effectively.

There is no better time for companies to embrace ABM. Digital technologies (CRM, MAP, Predictive Sales & Marketing) are mainstream. The promise of higher ROI, greater efficiencies and improved alignment are real and align to the corporate objective of most organizations. Granted, it may take some work, but the potential benefit outweighs “a few broken eggs and a little sweat.”

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The world financial system is as dangerously stretched today as it was at the peak of the last bubble but this time the authorities are caught in a “policy trap” with few defences left, a veteran central banker has warned.

Nine years of emergency money has had a string of perverse effects and lured emerging markets into debt dependency, without addressing the structural causes of the global disorder.

“All the market indicators right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis, but the lesson has somehow been forgotten,” said William White, the Swiss-based head of the OECD’s review board and ex-chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements.

White said disturbing evidence of credit degradation is emerging almost daily. The latest is the disclosure that distressed U.K. construction group Carillion quietly raised 112 million pounds through German Schuldschein bonds. South African retailer Steinhoff also tapped this obscure market, borrowing 730 million euros.

Schuldschein loans were once a feature of rock-solid lending to family Mittelstand companies in Germany. The transformation of this corner of the market into a form of high-risk shadow banking shows how the lending system has been distorted by quantitative easing (QE) and negative interest rates. White said there was an intoxicating optimism at the top of every unstable boom when people convince themselves that risk is fading, but that is when the worst mistakes are made. Stress indicators were equally depressed in 2007 just before the storm broke.

This time central banks are holding a particularly ferocious tiger by the tail. Global debt ratios have surged by a further 51 percentage points of GDP since the Lehman crisis, reaching a record 327 per cent (IIF data).

This is a new phenomenon in economic history and can be tracked to QE liquidity leakage from the West, which flooded East Asia, Latin America, and other emerging markets, with a huge push from China pursuing its own venture. “Central banks have been pouring more fuel on the fire,” he told The Daily Telegraph, speaking before the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Should regulators really be congratulating themselves that the system is now safer? Nobody knows what is going to happen when they unwind QE. The markets had better be very careful because there are a lot of fracture points out there,” he said.

“Pharmaceutical companies are subject to laws forcing them to test for unintended consequences before they launch a drug, but central banks launched the huge social experiment of QE with carelessly little thought about the side-effects,” he said.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is already reversing bond purchases – ignoring warnings by former Fed chair Ben Bernanke – and will ratchet up the pace to US$50 billion a month this year. It will lead to a surge in supply of U.S. Treasury bonds just as the Trump Administration’s tax and spending blitz pushes the U.S. budget deficit toward US$1 trillion, and China and Japan trim Treasury holdings.

It has the makings of a perfect storm. At best, the implication is that yields on 10-year Treasuries – the world’s benchmark price of money – will spike enough to send tremors through credit markets.

The edifice of inflated equity and asset markets is built on the premise that interest rates will remain pinned to the floor. The latest stability report by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research warned that a 100 basis point rate rise would slash $1.2 trillion of value from the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, with further losses once junk bonds, fixed-rate mortgages, and derivatives are included.

The global fall-out could be violent. Credit in dollars beyond U.S. jurisdiction has risen fivefold in 15 years to over $10 trillion. “This is a very big number. As soon as the world gets into trouble, a lot of people are going to have trouble servicing that dollar debt,” said White. Borrowers would suffer the double shock of a rising dollar, and rising rates.

While banks now have high capital buffers, the risk has migrated: to investment funds concentrated in crowded trades. The share of equities traded in “dark pools” outside the exchanges has mushroomed to 33 per cent.

One worry is what will happen to “risk parity” funds when the inflation cycle turns. RBI Capital warned in its investor letter that these funds could lead to a “liquidity crash.” Deutsche Bank has advised clients to take out June 2018 “put” options on the S&P 500 – a hedge against a market slide – arguing that the rally looks stretched and that risk parity funds will amplify any correction.

These funds manage risk by matching bonds and equities through dynamic weighting. The strategy worked during the “Goldilocks” phase of low inflation and rising stock markets. Both wings of the trade did well. The danger is that both could go wrong at the same.

Whether the inflation cycle is really turning, and how fast, is the elemental question of this bull market. What is clear is that the U.S. has closed the output gap and is hitting capacity constraints.

The great disinflation of the last three decades was essentially a global “supply shock.” The opening-up of China and the fall of the Berlin Wall added 800 million workers to the traded economy, depressing wages and unleashing a tsunami of cheap goods. The “Amazon effect” of digital technology capped price rises. The demographics of the baby boom era played its part by boosting the global savings glut.

But there was another feature that is often neglected. Central banks intervened “asymmetrically” with each cycle, letting booms run but stepping in with stimulus to cushion busts. The BIS says one result was to keep insolvent “zombie” companies alive and block the creative destruction that leads to rising productivity.

“Everything could now go into reverse: the baby boomers are gone; China’s working age population is falling; and zombie companies are going to be forced out of business at last as borrowing costs rise,” said White.

While higher inflation is needed in one sense to right the global ship – since it lifts nominal GDP faster, and whittles down debt – the danger is that the shock of higher rates will hit first.

Central banks are now caught in a “debt trap.” They cannot hold rates near zero as inflation pressures build, but they cannot easily raise rates either because it risks blowing up the system. “It is frankly scary,” said White.

The authorities may not yet have reached the end of the road but this strategy is clearly pregnant with danger. Global finance has become so sensitive to monetary policy that central banks risk triggering a downturn long before they have built up the safety buffer of 400 to 500 basis points in interest rate cuts needed to fight recessions.

“We are running out of ammunition. I am afraid that at some point this is going to be resolved with a lot of debt defaults. And what did we do with the demographic dividend? We wasted it,” he said.

Many founders lose confidence when they meet with investors. On the quest for validation, their entrepreneurial courage goes right out the window.

Founders often believe that investors have all the power, so they accept bad advice and make promises they can’t keep. But when external forces are the key to a company’s success, that’s a red flag.

Here’s a simple piece of advice:

Stop worrying about whether investors like you. Instead, decide whether you like investors.

Want to rebuild your confidence? Reclaim some of your power. Investors don’t guarantee success—you do. It’s your responsibility to explore balanced, mutual relationships with investors, and you can’t do that if you’re always worried about impressing them.

Want more actionable advice on getting founders to back your startup? Download our free guide Fundraising Hacks For Founders.

When you meet with investors, you need to...

Understand your goal

You’re meeting to explore the potential for a partnership—you’re not there to convince anyone to invest. Leave your powers of persuasion at the door. This isn’t the time to sell yourself or your company. In fact, don’t sell anything at all. Just ask yourself, “Is there a mutual fit?”

Speak honestly. See if you like each other. You’re simply there to evaluate whether another conversation should take place.

Be yourself

When founders try to impress investors, the opposite tends to happen. Most good investors can see right through your bullshit, so show them the real you. If you’re nervous, that’s fine—own it and move on. It’s also okay to acknowledge your weaknesses, as long as you have a plan to address them in the future. Be confident that you have a solution, even if the solution hasn’t been implemented yet.

Want to know what happens when you’re not genuine?

• You lose the investors who are right for you
• You attract the investors who are wrong for you

And besides, you’ll never be the right investment for every VC firm. That’s just how things go. What matters is that you find the right investor for you.

Ask questions

Investor meetings shouldn’t be one-sided conversations. If you answer all of their questions, you don’t win a prize.

Here are a few questions you should ask early on:

• If we ever run into a problem, how would you interact with us?
• What should we expect from you if we’re not hitting our numbers or the market shifts? What do you expect from us?
• Which of your investments are you most proud of and why?
• If you were in our shoes, what other questions would you have about this partnership?

When investors make suggestions or provide advice, don’t forget to ask follow-up questions. For example, if they say something like, “We think you need AI in this software,” ask, “What do you mean when you say AI? Why do you think it’s a good idea?” Make sure you have as much context as you need to respond with confidence and clarity.

Listen carefully to their answers. Pay attention to how they respond to your questions. What does your gut tell you? Are they being genuine or are they just telling you what they think you want to hear?

Gather as much information as you can. You don’t want to make a decision without knowing everything you can about how investors operate and what their expectations are.

Push back

You’re the only one who can help investors understand your business, so don’t be afraid to push back. When someone makes a suggestion, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t think we should do that for these reasons,” or “We thought of that, but there are some considerations that could prevent us from pursuing this option.”

You’re not being rude or ungrateful—you’re just offering your perspective, which has tons of value since you know your company better than they do.

Be a founder who can push back and be open-minded. Be a founder who looks for feedback and advice, but who can make the company successful with or without investors.

When investors yell, “Jump!” you don’t have to say, “How high?” Just because they send an email doesn’t mean you have to reply right away, especially if you’re working on something more pressing.

Pushing back, when appropriate, allows investors to interact with the real you. For example, in my early days as an entrepreneur, I received an email from a potential investor that read like this:

Hi Steli,

I’m writing to you from X COMPANY, an early-stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco with offices around the world. You might know some of our portfolio companies, which include HUGE STARTUPS RUN BY YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL HEROES.

Travis Goodman (who is a founding partner at the firm) was impressed by YOUR LITTLE COMPANY and asked me to find out more about you and your financing plans.

Can you make time for a brief call in the next couple of days? When would be good for you?

– Stacey

Sounds cool, right? But if you’ve interacted with investors in the past, you know they probably just wanted to schedule a call with a junior associate, who would ask a million questions and have zero decision-making power. Nothing against junior associates but, even back then, I wasn’t in the mood for that conversation. So I said:

Thanks for reaching out, Stacy. I’d be happy to jump on a quick call with Travis sometime this week. Best would be Thursday or Friday.

She replied:

Many thanks for getting back to me. I would like schedule a call with Justin, one of our team members working closely with Travis. Would that work for you?

Nope. So I wrote:

I hear you, but I’d love to talk to Travis. Let me know when he’s free and we’ll schedule a call.

To which she responded:

Understood. Unfortunately, Travis’ schedule is pretty dense so we always gather some data points first. Should that go well, we would certainly appreciate it if you could meet with Travis.

Totally reasonable, but that didn’t work for me. So I said:

I’m happy to jump on a quick call with Travis. I’m cool postponing a discussion until he has time.

She made another attempt to convince me to speak with the associate first, but I didn’t respond. Finally, a few days later, Travis, the senior partner, sent me an email:

Steli -

Looks like you are following your own advice! :) Just read your blog post about not being intimidated by investors.

My assistant is copied on this email. Coordinate a time for us to talk ASAP!

Travis

When you understand that investor meetings are two-way streets, you’ll feel much less anxiety about them. If they can’t meet you halfway, if they’re unable to see things through your eyes, if they get hurt when you push back, they’re probably not the right investors for you anyway.

Investors are people, not gods

You need to dispel the myth that investors can make or break your company. They’re humans. They have pressures, commitments, rationales, and biases just like the rest of us. Their goal is to make money—they have quotas and goals, too.

Ultimately, investors are bankers. They provide cash so that you can run your business more effectively. They expect, if nothing else, a return on their investment. The relationship is fundamentally transactional. Investors aren’t magicians and they can’t guarantee your success.

Success is your responsibility

Investors can accelerate growth, but they’re not the driving force behind it. If you decide that an investor makes sense for you, and you can work together to make your company stronger, go ahead and pursue that partnership. But it’s primarily on you to evaluate their value, not the other way around. The success of your company doesn’t depend on anyone else.

Want to get our best tips on getting the right investors to back your startup? Download our free guide!

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TL;DR: How to Measure Agility of Organizations and Teams

Is every organization suited to become ‘agile?’ If so: How to measure agility? And if not: Wouldn’t it be great figuring that out before embarking on a futile and expensive journey?

Back in October and November 2017, I ran a survey to identify contributing factors to an organization’s or a team’s agile maturity. In total, 86 people participated. Based on their answers, I aggregated a preliminary taxonomy of agility related factors.

This taxonomy was first presented on the Hands-on Agile Berlin meetup on November 30th, 2017.

On February 3rd, 2018, 20-plus people will join a hackathon to build an agility assessment framework based on this taxonomy. The goal of the workshop is to provide the first version of a tool that empowers agile practitioners to measure agility, be it an organization’s suitability for agile practices or a team’s progress on its path to becoming agile.

How to Measure Agility: The Current State

Measuring agility is nothing new. There are plenty of tools and approaches available, starting with Crisp’s Scrum Checklist to James Shore and Diana Larson’s Agile Fluency model. Measuring agility of prospective clients has become a valued presales tool for many consultancies, too.

What is missing today, though, is an open-source and thus widely available framework that any agile practitioner can use to get an understanding of her organization’s or team’s level of agility.

How to Measure Agility: Future Steps

On February 3rd, 2018, 20-plus people will join a hackathon to build an agility assessment framework based on taxonomy described below. The goal of the workshop is to provide the first version of a tool that empowers agile practitioners to measure agility.

‘Agility’ could be an assessment of an organization’s suitability for agile practices, providing an idea of the necessary steps for an organization that decided to become a learning organization. Questions that come to mind are, for example:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to go?
3. What are the necessary steps to get there?
4. Design a plan how to get there

The Berlin hackathon will be an experiment. For example, I wonder if we can apply analytical thinking–such as measuring factors and calculating states—to complex social systems? Or will that approach turn out to be a dead end?

How to Measure Agility: The Original Survey Questions

The 2017 agile maturity survey comprised of four questions:

1. What factors contribute to a team’s growing maturity in agile practices?
2. What maturity levels do you see at a team level?
3. What factors contribute to becoming an ‘agile’ or a learning organization?
4. What maturity levels do you see at an organizational level?

In total, 86 people participated in the survey: 13 from the corporation I am currently supporting and an additional 73 participants from the Age-of Product mailing list.

How to Measure Agility: Preliminary Agile Maturity Indicators

From the answers, I derived the following taxonomy of indicators of agile maturity:

• People and teams: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
• Organizational Excellence
• Technical Excellence
• Communication & Collaboration

The slides of the presentation are available on SlideShare:

Let us dive deeper into the details of measuring agility:

People and teams: Autonomy

Self-organization:

1. Empower teams (Decisions, accountability)
2. Focus on outcome
3. Respect Scrum values (Commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage.)
4. Safety to raise & discuss issues
5. The team handles its own problems (No scrum mom.)
6. Supporting each other as team members (Bonding.)
7. Holding each other accountable (Agile is a team sport.)

Accountability (of the individual):

1. Choosing tools & devices (e.g. software)

People and teams: Mastery

Learning:

1. Short feedback loops (User tests, customer development)
2. Use of retrospectives
3. Continuous team coaching (Guilds, code mentors etc.)
4. Stakeholders live up to their responsibilities
5. Hands-on experience over credentialism

Competence:

1. 1. T-shaped people
   2. Active knowledge sharing
      • Continuous learning
      • No withholding of knowledge
      • Knowledge sharing beyond the product and tech realm
   3. Budget to attend conferences
   4. Center of Excellence for Agile

Team building:

1. 1. Cross-functional teams:
      • No dependencies w/ other teams,
      • End-to-end delivery capability
   2. Stable, long-living teams
   3. Support by an experienced scrum master

People and teams: Purpose

Inclusion

1. Product discovery
2. Product roadmap creation
3. Release planning

Organizational Excellence

Culture:

1. 1. Embrace and celebrate failure (Validate hypotheses by running experiments)
   2. Curiosity as a norm
   3. Undogmatic attitude, live Shu-Ha-Ri
      • Transparency:
      • Share information and data at all levels,
      • No more gated information or information brokers

Leadership:

1. Focus on innovation, quality and business value (No more HIPPOism.)
2. Supports of ‘agile’s way of working’ fully
3. Enforces ‘agile’ as the core of the company culture
4. Respect for roles, principles, and processes (The ‘real’ PO.)

Management:

1. Managers to servant leaders
2. Trust in people and teams
3. Provides tools and facilities necessary to become agile
4. Gemba and Kaizen become standard practices.

Organizational Design:

1. Abandon functional silos for cross-functional teams
2. Remove redundant middle management layers (Flatten the hierarchy)
3. No more command & control, compliance driven management
4. HR aligns with requirements of self-organizing teams
5. The organizations morphs into a team of teams

Clear objectives:

1. Shared vision among all actors
2. Clear strategy
3. Clear priorities

Business value focus:

1. Customer centricity mindset
2. Delivering business results
3. Shifting the IT focus business needs
4. From project budgets to product teams.

Technical Excellence

Engineering level:

1. 1. Built-in quality:
      • Code reviews,
      • TDD (Test automation, test coverage)
   2. Pair and mob programming
   3. Practicing Scrum, Kanban, XP.

Process level:

1. 1. DevOps: CI, CD (Deployment at will)
   2. Regular cadence of releases
   3. Identifying suitable metrics:
      • Lead time, cycle time,
      • Number of experiments,
      • Team health
   4. Open sourcing code.

Communication & Collaboration

Trust & respect:

1. Benefit of the doubt for colleagues
2. Safety to disagree
3. Honesty
4. Candid peer feedback.

Conflict resolution:

1. Constructive disagreement (Disgree, but commit approach.)
2. Non-violent communication.

Collaboration:

1. 1. Zero tolerance for political games
   2. No scripted collaboration
   3. No incentives to withhold knowledge (Or information.)
   4. No finger-pointing, no blame-game.

How to Measure Agility of Organizations and Teams—The Conclusion

Measuring elements of agility at an organizational or team level is nothing new. This ‘agility assessment framework’ approach, however, is new as it aims to be the first open-source and thus widely available tool for all agile practitioners. It is unlikely that the first planned workshop will deliver more than a rudimentary prototype of the agility assessment framework.

However, it will be a start to gather more insights by applying the framework to real-life work situations and take it from there. Hopefully, we will be able to establish a community around the ‘agility assessment framework’ in the future.

Do Not Miss Out: Join the 2,300-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team

I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

Imagine you're tasked with planning a trip. Now imagine trying to do that without knowing the trip's starting point... Tough, right? It's the same with a brand-awareness campaign. You won't get far without first knowing your brand's current standing in the market. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Here’s how to make client reporting better!

Earlier in my career, I created market share reports each quarter. My predecessor spent eight weeks a year on this task. I revamped her process—and cut timeline by 80%, from two weeks a quarter to two days each time.

An agency COO recently asked me: “What’s normal for agencies when it comes to client reporting?” Here’s my 6-point philosophy on client reporting for digital agencies like yours.

1. Prove it. Reporting helps your agency show clients that your work is working. It’s a key part of the second half of my “agencies should think like a personal trainer” model. (That is, it’s not enough to get results; they need to understand they’re getting results.)

2. Put “client want” before “agency need.” Lean toward sharing what your clients care about, not what you care about. For instance, you can easily see that unique visitors are up—but your client probably cares more about whether sales are up. You won’t always have this info, but try to get as close to clients’ revenue as possible; it helps client retention (and upsells).

3. Give higher-end clients higher-end reporting. Bigger clients tend to expect more from agencies on reporting, especially because your client contacts have higher pressure to “manage up” to their bosses in a corporate environment. They may also like “heavier” (that is, longer) reports. Longer client reports aren’t necessarily more valuable, but they can feel more valuable to clients in a political environment; you’ll need to decide how you approach that.

4. Get the timing “just right.” Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, your reporting needs to be “just right”—not too often, not too infrequent. This also includes finding the right amount to share with each client. This will vary by client, and may combine an in-person update and a post-call recap (especially if your client contact isn’t a details person). You’ll likely have monthly and/or quarterly reporting to retainer clients—but do weekly status updates in between so your clients don’t get antsy.

5. Automate it. The ideal reporting is at least semi-automated. Manual reporting is a poor use of your team’s time, unless you’re getting paid for it. (There’s likely to be at least some manual commentary, depending on the client relationship.) You can use tools like Databox and Grow.com to get things done faster; they both have Partner programs for agencies. Automation was a key part in my saving 80% in the quarterly market share process.

6. Custom reporting should always cost extra. It has value, so custom client reporting shouldn’t be free. (Unless you choose to call it out as “strategically free” for other reasons.) A client once promised free custom reporting; two months later, he hadn’t figured out how to do it, and couldn’t afford additional resources to do the work.

7. Keep evolving. Debrief with clients on what they do and don’t use. This is especially helpful when a client contact or their boss changes; they may not care about something their predecessor saw as a must-have. (Of course, be sure to frame custom reporting as a special deal—or an upsell—when appropriate.)

Question: Think about your agency’s client reporting. What will you change next?

You probably didn’t enter your career as a consultant, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, accountant, or other professional service provider so you could spend all of your time selling, but the world of professional services has changed considerably. To advance in your career, you have to succeed with business development.

You have to make the transition from professional to rainmaker.

When you find you have to start selling, you’ll fall somewhere on the spectrum of love selling or you’d rather retire penniless than sell. For those who love it, every part of the sales process offers a thrill—finding new opportunities, uncovering potential client needs, crafting solutions, helping clients envision a better future, and so on. But even you lucky folks who are destined to love selling have some learning before you get on the horse.

For those of you who dread the process of promoting yourself and your services, you’d much rather have someone else sell the work while you focus on your clients, delivering the work, and helping them be successful.

Wherever you fall on the spectrum, now is the time to start selling professional services if you want to have greater success finding clients and winning new business.

Where does it all start? With action! And the first action: stop avoiding selling. There are many business development tips for professional services, but it’s crucial to make action a priority.

“The Dog Ate My Rolodex” and Other Great Excuses Not to Sell

There are a handful of excuses that professional service providers give for not selling. Some of the most common are:

• I’m not good at it so what’s the use
• This isn’t a good use of my time. Somebody else should source leads and I should deliver work
• I’m booked for at least six weeks. I couldn’t handle another deal if it landed on my desk
• If I reach out to buyers, I will sound like a used car salesman
• My clients will contact me if they have additional needs I can help them with
• I’m deathly afraid of / hate selling
• My leads only come through referrals. Outbound business development doesn’t work, so why bother
• I have to deliver my work, I don’t have time to sell

Pick Your Poison: You’re too young or too old. You’re too busy. You’re better in the morning and it’s late in the day. You only have 15 minutes before your next meeting. The dog ate your Rolodex. (Ah, the Rolodex…)

The excuses for not selling are plentiful. To be successful, you must make business development a priority. You can start by setting aside some time every day to focus on your sales efforts.

Forget What You’ve Heard About Selling Professional Services

Oily. Smarmy. Phony. Mendacious. Two-Faced…

Right or wrong, these words are often associated with salespeople. So, when it comes time to sell, you fear becoming your own worst nightmare—the overly aggressive, desperately slick, walking sales cliché.

This can cause professional service providers to backtrack from the appearance of selling by making it known to clients that selling them something isn’t what they’re about. As Queen Gertrude said to Prince Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Protest too much, and the prospective client will wonder what’s going on.

While being salesy is ill-advised for almost any sales rep, it is particularly bad when selling professional services.

Buyers of products can say, “I don’t like the sales rep, but I can tune them out for the next few minutes and simply evaluate their product against the competition.”

Buyers of professional services evaluate the sellers. Why? The seller is often the service provider. The relationship does not end when the sale is completed—it’s just beginning. Thus, building trust in the sales process is of paramount importance.

This is why business development training needs to be geared specifically to professional services. The sales strategies and tactics that work for products don’t cut it for high professional services where relationships are important, you’re in a seller/doer role, and it’s often a long sales cycle with high dollar values. The dynamics of the selling professional services is different.

4 Keys to Selling Professional Services

There is nothing wrong with selling. Quite the contrary. The act of selling, when done well, adds a significant amount of value. A well-planned sales conversation can help even sophisticated buyers make smarter decisions.

Here’s the good news: You can and should sell with high integrity and success, and do it without “salesy” tactics.

In fact, you can apply the same skills that make you a great service provider to help you succeed in selling—all you need to do is sharpen those skills and apply them effectively.

Here are a few ways you can apply the skills you already possess to your sales efforts:

1. Sell as You Serve: Great service providers create better futures for their clients that the clients didn’t know were possible.Many accountants, consultants, lawyers, engineers, and others who have never sold think the purpose of selling is to part someone from their money at any cost. They believe that to be successful in selling professional services, they must leave their values and everyday personalities at the door and adopt a sleazy persona and voice, one that would naturally say something like, “What’s it gonna take to get you into this shiny, red, pre-owned sports car today, ma’am?”

Nothing is further from the truth. The best business developers bring in clients because they’re no different when they sell their services than when they deliver their services.

The best business developers meet mutually-set expectations over and over again, building relationships, trust, and confidence. The best business developers are ethical at all times.

The skills that can make you a great service provider can make you great in sales. When you deliver your services to clients you:

• Ask questions
• Provide expert opinions
• Work hard
• Prepare
• Are accessible
• Build creative solutions
• Deliver what you say you’re going to deliver
• Develop relationships
• Solve problems
• Act with your clients’ best interest in mind
• Introduce clients to new ideas, helping them see a better way

That is exactly what you need to do to become successful in business development.

Sales is about helping buyers find solutions that solve their problems and help them succeed.

2. Sell to Need: Great service providers are masters at uncovering their clients’ goals and challenges, and helping them make the changes necessary for success.Great business developers are no different. However, many service providers feel uncomfortable making connections, uncovering needs, and working closely with people they don’t yet know well. Too often the first conversations go awry when they don’t need to.

The same skills you use to get to the root of your clients’ problems and develop solutions to help them meet their goals are the ones you can use to uncover potential client needs and propose winning solutions. You just need to recognize what you need to do and bring these skills out at the right time and in the right way.

Note that it’s not just selling to the client’s current perception of need. They may need outcomes that you can produce with additional services, they just don’t know it yet. If you know their objectives and goals, you can bring forth new ideas to drive additional business.

3. Communicate the Value: Great service providers understand the value they provide to clients. They craft compelling solutions based on their clients’ unique needs, and communicate that value clearly and articulately. In other words, they help clients make change happen when it needs to happen.Selling is no different. In fact, this is the basic premise of consultative selling—the approach you should take in your sales efforts.

You must learn to lead discussions that influence direction and outcomes, and you must advocate your services and communicate your value. Just like when you advocate new ideas to your clients when you work with them, you must be persuasive, confidence inspiring, and empathetic all at the same time when you sell to them.

4. Plan for Success: Great service providers have a clear process that they follow.It’s been said that if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will get you there. Each project has a specific objective, timeframe, budget, and resource allocation.

Business development is no different. Selling professional services requires planning on multiple levels:

• Generating discussions for the first time with prospective clients
• Leading individual conversations and interactions
• Planning outcomes for specific accounts
• Orchestrating the entire business development process—how many clients you need to gain, how often, and for how much revenue and profit
• Planning your sacred selling time

Business development is a process, and it’s waiting for you to master it.

You already have many of the skills you need to be successful in selling professional services. Now it’s time to take action. Make business development a priority and you’ll find the transition from service provider to rainmaker is within your reach.

The typical MQL (marketing qualified lead) approach to measuring KPIs is fading out. What’s the new approach that’s replacing it? An account-based approach that considered the data that shows people’s propensity to buy.

Diana Eadington Reed shares about Propensity To Buy Data for marketing

On this episode, Bernie chats with Diana Eadington Reed, Director of the North America Small & Medium Business (SMB) marketing team for Oracle Cloud. Her team helps high-growth small and medium-sized companies leverage their infrastructure to innovate faster, get to market first, meet customer expectations, and keep costs in line with revenue.

Diana has a front-row seat to the changes that propensity to buy data is enabling in the marketing world. Her lessons-learned, which she shares on this episode, are valuable for any marketing professional to learn from for themselves.

Not all traffic sources are created equal. Therefore not all marketing-qualified leads are created equal

Every business is eager for its marketing department to do its job well – by supplying what we call “marketing qualified leads” (MQL). Diana says that several years ago the sales world would typically look at the volume of MQLs that marketing provided to the sales department as a primary metric of how the marketing department was doing. But that’s all changed.

Diana says her team has come to realize that not all leads are created equal and therefore not all marketing qualified leads are created equal. Some leads are likely coming to you via your website. Those are people who are expressing a greater interest in your solutions and are therefore of greater value as prospects for the sales team. But you may also receive leads through a download of one of your whitepapers from a 3rd party website (for example). Those are qualified leads, to be sure, but are not as ready to buy as the previous example.

In this conversation Diana explains how her team is transitioning from the typical MQL model to a more account-based model based on people’s propensity to buy. It’s a fascinating pivot and a very helpful conversation. Be sure you listen.

Is your marketing team differentiating between core leads and non-core leads? If not, you could be missing some of the most valuable leads

The new approach Diana and the marketing team at Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure Solutions are taking is learning that there’s a big difference between what they call a “core lead” and a “non-core lead.” She says their focus now is to try to increase the volume of core leads because they’ve been proven to be bigger contributors to their business success. It’s not that they abandon the non-core leads – they still need to keep the sales funnel full – but they have discovered that there are only a limited number of prospects in their market at any given time who truly ready for a sales conversation.

Diana says it’s helpful to think of the approach they are taking along the lines of the 80/20 rule. In a best-case scenario, they believe they can drive 20% of their leads through “core” activity and 80% of their leads through the more broad-scale sources. This is just one example of the insights marketing receives by looking at the propensity to buy data now available to marketers. Diana’s experience in this new approach is valuable for anyone in marketing in sales, so do what you can to make time for this episode.

How the Oracle team uses intent to buy data to target and retarget their ideal customers

The advances in data-based technology over the past few years has opened all kinds of doors for marketers that simply didn’t exist even 5 years ago. Marketing professionals can now access intent-based data – also known as predictive data – that enables them to identify certain keyword-based behaviors of people online. Through that data, they can look at the digital behavior of their target market and match themselves with the behaviors that parallel the solutions they are offering.

It goes even further, companies can now use their customer profile, or even company lists that they want to get to know and engage with to identify whether there are people within those lists who are showing digital activity, based on their keyword search behavior, that matches their solution. From that, the marketing department can serve more relevant campaigns to them or do digital retargeting to try to reach those individuals.

Fascinating. And compelling. Take the time to learn how Diana’s team is making it happen – and about the results they are getting.

Salespeople are not interested in MQLs. They want to establish an account. Marketing can now work hand in hand with sales by harnessing propensity to buy data

Diana Eadington Reed says that if you talk to any salesperson, they are not interested in selling a product to an MQL (marketing qualified lead). They’re interested to own an account. So, if they want to win 10 new accounts in the coming half or the fiscal year, they’re going to be looking at it from an account perspective, not at the MQL perspective. That means if marketing pivots to an account-based strategy (as she’s suggesting through the use of propensity to buy data), it requires marketing to align itself with sales in order to understand who’s on that target account list for the year or the upcoming quarter – and who are the most important accounts that sales wants to open the door to. That’s how marketing can work hand-in-hand with sales to build engagement and open that door for a conversation with the sales organization.

As you can see, simply by the nature of this propensity to buy model, marketing is better aligned with sales, which drives a more effective and streamlined process. Near the end of this conversation, Diana gives a real-life example of a vendor who helped the Oracle team put together a successful campaign that proves the power of these intent to buy strategies. Listen to what Diana has to share. It is the future of marketing and sales – and the alignment that has to happen to be truly successful.

 

Featured on This Episode

• Diana Eadington Reed on LinkedIn
• Diana on Twitter
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Solutions

Outline of This Episode

• [0:31] Who is Diana Eadington Reed?
• [2:53] Diana’s role at Oracle: to drive demand for Oracle’s cloud-based solutions
• [4:19] The success Diana has been experiencing with traditional inbound marketing
• [9:21] How the Oracle marketing team came to consider “propensity to buy” data
• [14:37] Adapting this new propensity to buy data model to a high volume environment
• [17:10] The technologies that enable this intent to buy approach
• [19:43] How these new technologies help align sales and marketing on a human level
• [22:04] A campaign example that has been a huge success
• [24:45] Diana’s thoughts about the future of this new account-based strategy
• [34:25] Bernie’s biggest takeaway from this episode: propensity to buy data is a powerful way to discover leads that are truly ready for a sales conversation – and the biggest winner is the customer

LinkedIn recently made a major change that is a SEO dream for Business Coaches, Consultants and others using the platform.

If you’re using LinkedIn to look for leads and clients, it’s mission critical that you are “found” easily. With over a half a billion users and 2 new members joining each second, your ability to set yourself apart on the network matters.

This is why the time and effort you invest into content marketing on the network is paramount to your success.

Now, thanks to a recent change by LinkedIn, your return on that investment just got infinitely better.

Content is King – Especially for Business Coaches and Consultants

Your content is the cost you pay to get in front of your ideal audience, and now every piece of content you publish on LinkedIn is “public” (unless you change your user settings).

Obviously this is a great thing for any business coach, consultant, or relationship-based business.

The fastest, easiest and most effective way to win new business on LinkedIn is by getting your personality in front of potential prospects through your content.

You want to be “found” online, and this adds even more SEO juice to your content efforts on LinkedIn.

Here’s the Most Valuable Content for your Ideal Clients

While the dream is to write the perfect blog post, have it go viral and you end up with thousands of leads, that isn’t always the way things go on LinkedIn or anywhere else online.

The reality is that content marketing is a grind, and you have to stay consistently in front of your audience, making sure you are demonstrating your authority vs. just claiming it.

The best way to demonstrate your expertise is to make sure each piece of content you share truly solves a problem your ideal clients and customers need help with.

If your blog post is a sales pitch or too self-promoting, and hasn’t offered something of value to the reader, it’s not going to be effective.

Also, the more specific you can be the better. Hyper target your topic to a specific audience and promote your content using LinkedIn’s advanced search techniques.

P.S. Don’t Forget Native Video for Content Marketing on LinkedIn

Blog posts and podcasts are old hat on LinkedIn, but the platform’s recent release of native video should definitely be added into your repertoire.

Native video is an ideal way to get your personality out front because it instantly builds the “Know, Like and Trust” factors that become a critical component of any coaching or consulting relationship.

If you’re a business coach or consultant, giving others the ability to see you, hear you and engage with you on the emotional level that audio and video provides is priceless.

Next to meeting face-to-face, nothing bridges that gap to winning the trust (and business!) of prospects more quickly than online video or audio.

Final Thoughts

Remember that each blog post, video or podcast you create is your cost of entry to the massive party of prospects who are already hanging out on LinkedIn.

If you can offer some free expertise or advice that is helpful and relevant without a blatant sales pitch, you’ve then earned the right to stay and talk more.

Customer experience is the new frontier –– while this concept has been shopped around for a few years, it really captured business minds in 2017. Influencers and marketing blogs alike are all over this topic, giving tips on how to enhance Customer Experience and theories on how CX “works”.

Beyond the buzz CX has been generating, studies prove that customers’ experience of your business is indeed worth a closer look. Gartner projects more than 50% of companies will increase investments in CX enhancement in 2018. This makes sense, given Deloitte reports “90% of customers trust peer references.” In today’s culture, consumers place emphasis on the now — they expect reviews, feedback, and results instantaneously. If they hear of a have a bad experience with a brand, they have no reservations in cutting ties with that company.

In short, companies should pursue the goal of incredible CX primarily for customer retention and customer satisfaction. There’s no doubt CX matters, but how should a company set out to conquer CX? And, more importantly, who in the company should be responsible for CX?

Does Marketing Own CX?

CX is all about what a customer does, feels, and thinks during his or her journey, and for most people that sounds like something that the marketing team is responsible for. Marketing also directly impacts CX as a consequence of ‘owning’ the four P’s (Product development, Pricing, Placement (Distribution) and Promotion).

Therefore, most organizations assign oversight of CX to the CMO. Thinking that marketing teams can sufficiently cover all the areas of the customer journey, companies are content to add the responsibility of CX to an already overwhelmed part of the business.

Though Marketing is all about surprising and delighting prospects and customers alike, there are many other stakeholders in the customer journey throughout any company. For instance, a CMO is likely not the best person to define what a salesperson’s relationship with the customer should look like. And isn’t customer service and support another major CX battlefield? Shouldn’t the CS team have a role in CX design as well?

CX Belongs to the Entire Organization

Questions arise because some make the mistake of thinking of CX as a business practice or a campaign. However, that is an oversimplification of the concept. In reality, good CX can transform a business, and should be something that is constantly top-of-mind for leaders. Ultimately, a well defined customer journey translates into greater ROI.

As a result, the effort falls onto the entire organization and permeates every team, process, and decision when working directly with a customer. Having a stronghold from the executive leadership should lead in CX design, implementation, and innovation. The commitment to CX should flow horizontally across the whole organization.

To ensure success as an organization, create a team that is structured and accountable to the company-wide goal of improved CX. Typically, a Chief of Customer Success or a Chief Operations Officer captain this initiative.

Regardless of the title, a leader needs a team filled with experts to drive results. This team should have the following members:

• Content Strategist – The better the content, the better a customer journey. The Content Strategist will should keep customers up to date on the product or service and helps customers trust your brand with the relevant information from your company that impacts them. Remember, the best content should inspire the customer to take action–that is, to continue buying or subscribing.
• Sales Expert – Insights into how sales and selling works is crucial in understanding what generates cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
• Customer Service – A CS teams interacts directly with customers all the time, and gains real time information on customer behavior. They have the longest experience in directly serving customers, which means they have developed an instinct for what the customer likes/dislikes.
• UX Designer – UX design is crucial, especially for businesses based on the web. Having a designer who creates an ergonomic yet beautiful interface(s) for customers to engage and enjoy using.
• Product Manager – A Product Manager may seem simple. Obviously, the Product Manager manages the product, but this role the is about ensuring the product meets the customers’ goals and needs. This means that the Product Manager can also help steer the CX team towards a metrics-based implementation of the CX design, as this person is well-versed and experienced in relating data to real action.

Team Effort for CX

Once the team is identified, it’s time to develop strategies to involve and improve the organization.

As a next best step, focus on the persona or profile of the customer. What’s their position in the company (if you’re in B2B)? What’s their interest in purchasing your service or product? Think of the customers’ characteristics, hobbies, activities, etc. The more detailed the persona, the easier it will be to conjure buyer scenarios.

Second, determine and construct the customer journey and define what each stage of the customer lifecycle will look like. The goal in this activity is to create the organization’s vision of the perfect journey. For each stage, plot out what should happen in the following five stages, which team(s) are involved, and whether or not those teams are customer-facing.

1. Discovery – the prospect is searching for a product or service that can solve a specific problem or need
2. Research – the prospect is learning more about the available products or services available to solve the problem
3. Evaluation – the prospect chooses the best option
4. Purchase – the prospect purchases the chosen product or service, and thus becomes a customer
5. Advocacy – the customer continues using the product or service and recommends the product to others

Next, map out the touchpoints to gain insight into what motivates the target customer. Determine which prospects are receptive as there are many factors in making a purchase. For instance, an online retail store wants to know how its customer behaved while browsing the site, especially on a product page. When the data on buyer behavior during key interactions of the journey available, it allows mapping and gaining insight on the progression to the next touchpoint. It’s vital to recognize who is responsible for the interactions in each phase. When is it Marketing, Sales, or Customer Service? It is important to define the roles of business teams and make sure the transitions from one stage to the next in the journey is seamless for the customer and your organization. CX, which can seem abstract, becomes an attainable thing to create and measure in a business if an organization creates structure around touchpoints along the journey.

If done correctly, focusing on CX in operations will reduce costs and increase revenue. The creation of a transparent and visible feedback loop to generates unbiased and raw insights on CX–straight from the customers themselves.

One of the ways operations can enhance CX is by automating tedious and repetitive processes. Automation allows key stakeholders to focus on customer responses that directly impact the brand. In the past, many companies focusing on CX as a growth strategy were investing in platforms that help capture each stage in the customer journey, such as CRMs and Marketing Automation Platforms. These platforms have addressed the issue of data capture at the point of interaction, but many businesses struggle to marry the data between systems. Integrating these disparate systems allows for easily accessible customer information from different sources to be readily available. Imagine visibility into customer interactions — from marketing, to sales, and all the way to support — all in one place. If that real-time view of the customer is available across an organization, the customer journey is not only easier to map, but it is also easier to optimize.

Optimizing your CX for customer success and business growth is not a simple task; however, with the right leadership and perspective, these goals are attainable. As time goes on, customer experience is only becoming more mission critical to every business’ success. In 2018, companies can embrace this trend by making CX not only a business goal, but part of the intrinsic value they deliver to their customers.

• Healthcare companies are striking deals that are changing the way they look. 
• Pharmacies are becoming insurers, hospitals are becoming drugmakers, and insurers are starting to become healthcare providers. Now Walgreens is reportedly in talks with drug distributor AmerisourceBergen about a potential takeover.
• The changes are part of an effort to lower healthcare costs by having companies assume more responsibility over patients. 
• Two companies to watch in this space are Hospital Corp. of America, and UnitedHealth Group.

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Pharmacies are acquiring insurers. Hospitals are getting into the drug business. And insurers are starting to own doctors offices. And a pharmacy is reportedly looking into acquiring a drug distributor.

The boundaries of the healthcare business are changing. Instead of growing by acquiring other companies in the same business, companies have started to move into new lines of business, with no two combinations looking exactly the same. 

It's part of a push on the part of healthcare companies to do two things: cut costs, and gain more control over the patients in need of healthcare. It's coming at the same time large tech companies are eyeing ways to disrupt the healthcare industry and the industry faces entirely new medications that challenge the existing way we pay for treatments.

Unexpected combinations

CVS's acquisition of Aetna, sent a big shockwave through the healthcare industry. The move combined the largest pharmacy in the US with the third-largest insurer in what was the biggest deal of 2017. 

Together, CVS and Aetna have a health insurance business, retail pharmacies, and a company that negotiates prescription drug prices with drugmakers called a pharmacy benefits manager. This gives CVS a lot more control over how people access and pay for healthcare, with the aim of making pharmacies the "new front doors of healthcare."

It doesn't mean we'll suddenly see a spate of pharmacy-insurer deals, UBS senior healthcare analyst Jerome Brimeyer told Business Insider. 

Instead, the new combinations will be based around the patients a particular organization serves. Humana, for example, purchased home health care operator Kindred Health with the help of private-equity firms. The move helps provide Humana customers with home health options, which is a lower cost way to care for patients than staying in a hospital, something that's more relevant to Medicare populations. 

And should Walgreens choose to pursue AmerisourceBergen, that'd create a company that has both a pharmacy and a drug distributor in one company.  

Similarly in a move in part to lower their costs, in January, a group of hospitals, including Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, Ascension, SSM Health, and Trinity Health, along with the Department of Veterans Affairs health administration (a group that in total represents 450 hospitals) announced their plans to create a nonprofit generic drug company. 

Their rationale? For years, health systems have been on the hook for skyrocketing drug prices for injections or drugs delivered through IV solutions, medications that have also been at the heart of drug shortages. The two challenges have made it harder to treat patients the way doctors want. 

Dr. Marc Harrison, CEO of Intermountain told Business Insider that the plan to form a generic drugmaker has been an idea for a couple of years, but hospitals were hopeful that the shortages and price increases would work themselves out. When they didn't, they took the next step to form a nonprofit company. 

Harrison said he hopes the generic drug company will be temporary but it remains to be seen. He emphasized that the point of the company was not because the health systems are against pharmaceutical companies or even generic drug companies, they're just interested in seeing some change. 

Where this is headed

As more companies look to cut costs and remove some of the pressure they're feeling from the current health system, we may start to see more surprising combinations that challenge our definitions of healthcare companies.

For one thing, tech companies like Apple or Amazon could change things in ways we don't yet expect. For example, Apple's going to start putting medical records onto iPhones, and there's been speculation about how Amazon could deliver prescriptions — a move that would impact retail pharmacies that might see less foot traffic — or potentially just help coordinate healthcare through its voice assistant Alexa. Should major tech companies start shaking up the way consumers interact with their healthcare, it could force existing healthcare companies to adapt in new ways. 

Brimeyer, the UBS analyst, said there are two companies to pay attention to as healthcare starts to get a lot more vertical: Hospital Corporation of America, the largest hospital operator in the US, and UnitedHealth Group the largest insurer in the US.

"Both have similar programs underway trying to do much more vertical integration along the continuum of care," Brimeyer said. 

UnitedHealth, in the past few years, has started amassing a group of businesses that go beyond insuring people. It owns surgery centers, urgent care centers, primary care practices, and a PBM to manage prescription benefits. The addition of a PBM to an insurer, in particular, has garnered a lot of attention, especially after the CVS-Aetna merger, which included two similar businesses. 

But the company's structure goes beyond trying to have more control over the way prescription drugs are paid for. It's about making sure that UnitedHealth's members have access to lower cost healthcare, which in turn saves UnitedHealth money on an unexpected, costly trip to the emergency room.

Similarly, HCA, which operates 177 hospitals and 119 surgery centers in the US and the UK and other facility-based companies might look to pick up more urgent care centers or behavioral health practices to find ways to treat patients that doesn't involve the hospital. 

"By covering more of the healthcare pie, it benefits them, because they can have more opportunities to treat these patients at lower cost centers," Brimeyer said. 

SEE ALSO: Hospital groups and the VA are trying to upend the generic drug business

DON'T MISS: 'We're not going to follow the hype': Biotech VCs are concerned by the staggering size of early-stage startup funding

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NOW WATCH: Here's why the recent stock market sell-off could save us from a repeat of "Black Monday"

Buyers are looking for a BSB sales experience that's different. They’re looking for much more than a transaction. They're looking for an experience that is rich and meaningful and includes an opportunity for them to contribute ... to take from the experience what's going to be useful for them. It needs to be relevant, and it needs to be something that involves an element of the unexpected.

Leveraging your network for sales referrals is technique that prevailed for ages, but it’s not always the easiest thing to do. It can be hard to know when and how to ask in a way that isn’t pushy or uncomfortable. And that’s the reason many reps hold their tongues. But the truth of the matter undeniable – asking for referrals in the right way will introduce you to really valuable contacts.

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In fact, 92% of buyers trust referrals from people they know.

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With numbers that high, it’s hard to argue against. Yet the issue that arrises is how and when to ask. Our long time sales rep Kenny Traber has experienced huge success both in strategy and software to help make the referral process both smooth and professional. Let’s take a look at his best tips:

Hey, Kenny Traber, Account Executive here at SalesLoft. Today I want to talk to you about referrals and how you can leverage cadences to get more of them. We genuinely believe that people like to help other people. And that being the case, we believe that referrals can be a great source of new business. People see the value of your product, and this extends to business. If you have prospects and customers that truly believe in your product, they can be a great new source of revenue or new opportunities for you. Here are two ways that I’ve been able to leverage referrals with success, and I’d like to talk to you about them today so that you can get two to three times more yourself. The first rule of getting referrals, and this might sound obvious, is that you have to ask. If you don’t ask for a referral, it’s not as likely that you’ll get one.

The ask for a referral doesn’t have to be too complicated. What I like to say verbatim, and some of you have probably seen this in an email from me, who else in your network could benefit from an evaluation of SalesLoft? It’s that simple. When you get that reply, it’s much easier to have a warm intro to that person rather than your typical cold conversation. When they reply, youmight even be surprised how excited they are to give you your referral because of how great of an experience they’ve had with your product. The second tip is to supplement software into the referral process to make it more simple. A common response the first time you ask for a referral is that they probably know someone, but they just can’t think of them off the top of their head. This response totally makes sense. They’re probably busy, they’re working on other things, they likely weren’t expecting for you to ask for a referral. But don’t let this response discourage you. You can even let the prospect know that you’re going to add them into a SalesLoft cadence, so you’ll follow up with them in a couple days. Send something you know is a value add based on your previous conversations, and then maybe a P.S. line, did you get a chance to think about someone else in your network who could benefit from evaluating SalesLoft? Another piece of software that I’ve been leveraging recently is called Bravado. Bravado makes it incredibly simple to send a link to a prospect, so that they can click that link, spend 20 to 30 seconds typing out who they know in their network, and then it creates a repository of all those referrals for me as a sales rep to leverage. Thanks so much for watching the sales tip video today. Before we end, I have one question for you. Who in your network could benefit from evaluating SalesLoft? Click the link at the end of this video to see Bravado in action and send me a referral. Thanks.

The post How to Generate 2-3X New Business Using Referrals appeared first on SalesLoft.

By Brooke B. Sellas, {grow} Contributing Columnist

So you want to nurture leads with content marketing.

Google it, and you’ll find a million and one posts with brawny frameworks that you’ll need a Ph.D. to execute.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m looking for the easiest or fastest route.

So here it is. This is the simplest, do-it-yourself way to nurture leads with content marketing.

Getting Started

First, you’ll need a little background on the basics.

What you’ll need:

• Social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• A blog post that’s crazy informative (not sales-y!) and a lead magnet
• Advertising know-how OR email marketing software
• Retargeting pixel on your website
• Free app/trial/report/consultation (one of these is your lead magnet)

For this example, let’s use Facebook as our social media channel.

To get set up, you’ll want to install the Facebook Pixel on your website. You’ll need an ads manager account on Facebook to do this.

Essentially, this pixel allows your website to track events or actions that take place on your website (like when someone visits a particular blog post).

There are lots of actions you can track.

Once set up, the pixel will collect insights about how people use your website.

The Two-Part Process

That’s right. Only two parts! I told you this was easy.

PART ONE

You’ll be using your crazy informative blog post and free lead magnet to qualify your prospects (and garner some brand awareness!).

On your blog post, you’ll want to be sure to link your lead magnet. You can do this with a simple link or with a call out.

I love Matthew Barby’s call out call-to-action on his post about chatbot marketing, seen below.

Once a person subscribes to download your free app/trial/report/consultation, you’ll move to part two.

PART TWO

In Part Two of this framework, you’ll use either email marketing or retargeting to sell a complementary product or service once they give their email to obtain their free lead magnet.

I mean complementary because what you’re selling should match the topic of your crazy informative post. For example, you don’t want to give super valuable information away about boarding your pet safely and then try to sell clothing for pets.

A better match would be a post about boarding your dog and then selling your dog boarding services.

Part Two: Email & Remarketing Examples

Email marketing example.

If you use email marketing you will be able to add your subscribers to a highly segmented list. If we’re going off the dog-boarding service example above, the list may be”dog boarding interest.”

You’ll want to send any dog boarding specific reviews, sales, coupons, etc. to this list since you know they’re interested in this service.

An ideal example to get them to close would be a coupon for first-time customers. After they download your lead magnet, send a thank you email with a 20% off coupon that expires in 90 days. (you don’t have to use those terms exactly, but be specific and generous!)

You can continue to send dog-boarding content to this list, just make sure it’s crazy valuable or your subscribers may stop opening your emails.

Retargeting ad on Facebook example.

If you’d rather use remarketing, you can do one of three things …

1. Use the information from your Facebook pixel to send ads to ALL* of the people who landed on your post about dog boarding, even if they didn’t subscribe to the lead magnet. (*users must visit your page and be on Facebook to be “captured”)
2. Upload your list of subscribers to Facebook and create a custom audience. Send ads for your dog-boarding service to them.
3. Create your custom audience, and if it’s large enough, create a “‘lookalike” audience on Facebook to get in front of potential new readers, subscribers, and clients. Lookalike means this audience will have a similar makeup as your custom audience.

Social Media Examiner has four great ways to use lookalike audiences and I highly recommend the read.

Why This Works

To nurture leads with content marketing, you don’t need a workflow with ridiculously complicated steps.

I like that this two-step process is easy. It also adds flexibility if you’re better with email marketing than you are with advertising.

Additionally, this type of process helps familiarize your audience with your brand, products, and services.

AND, if you’re comfortable with both, you can use both emails and retargeting for nurturing your leads — a double whammy!

Other Simple Ways To Nurture Leads With Content Marketing

Here are some other easy ways to nurture leads with content marketing.

1. Personalized emails. Using personalization in your emails can generate up to six times higher revenue per email (Source: Experian Email Marketing Study).
2. Multi-channel lead nurturing. Use several different channels together, like email marketing, social media, retargeting, and direct sales outreach for a multi-pronged approach.
3. Original research, case studies, or reports. This is a great way to hook leads in the discovery phase as well as present yourself as a thought leader. We use our case studies to do just that!

How are you using content marketing to nurture leads on the path to purchase? Let me know in the comments section below!

Brooke B. Sellas is a done-for-you social media manager & owner at B Squared Media, blossoming blogger, and a purveyor of psychographics. Her mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter.

The post The Easiest Way to Nurture Leads with Content Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Pipeline review meetings are notorious for being dreaded by sales professionals and sales leaders alike. While they might not be appreciated in the moment, they do perform a necessary function as they help sales professionals identify problem areas in their pipelines while also providing leaders a better view of weighted probability and an opportunity to coach. However, as InsideSales.com clearly articulates, there are also several challenges (summarized below):

• When asked a question about a specific opportunity, sales professionals have to fumble through spreadsheets, reports, emails and notebooks so they can share basic information about their deals.

• Sales leaders struggle to coach sales professions during the meeting as they have only a limited amount of time and are often blindsided by obstacles the team member is facing.

• Because pipeline reviews are often inefficient, sales leaders end up compiling data points and pulling reports during evenings and on weekends so the reviews can be as productive as possible.

The overarching problem with pipeline reviews is this: they are reactive instead of proactive.

Pipeline reviews often focus on what the sales professional should have done in a specific deal rather than help the sales professional succeed in future situations based on tangible insights and deal data. Fortunately, by adopting an agile sales methodology, tedious pipeline reviews can become productive strategy sessions.

The Problem with Reactive Pipeline Reviews

In one of our previous blogs, we discussed lag time. In our definition, this is the period between when sales leadership makes a change – regardless of how large or small – and when they should expect to see results from the implemented change or initiative. This concept of lag time can come down to something as seemingly small as a 1:1 pipeline review. If a sales leader takes a reactive approach to pipeline reviews and attempts to help a sales professional turn a deal around mid-cycle, then the results of the coaching may not be seen for weeks, if not months.

Pipeline reviews can be equally frustrating for sales professionals. They spend a significant amount of time pulling data points, but the meetings tend to be more qualitative versus quantitative, making it hard for them to prepare – never knowing where the conversation will go. It’s possible that they may walk out of the meeting with a list of 5 action items, but are those tasks part of a repeatable process? Were they based on intuition by the sales leader or on actual findings? Can the results be measured in an adequate amount of time? Chances are, probably not. And therein lies the biggest problem with pipeline reviews.

Turn Pipeline Reviews into Strategy Sessions

When conducted with the endgame in mind – to help each sales professional proactively identify gaps in their sales processes and constantly improve their approach – pipeline reviews can be incredibly beneficial. The best way to ensure that the reviews are strategic is to focus on the right questions. The more focus the sales leader has when going into a review session, the more likely both parties will find it not only helpful, but necessary.

These questions provide a good place to start:

1. What positive (or negative) progression has taken place since the last review?
2. What new opportunities have been added to the pipeline since the last review?
3. Which objections have surfaced most often, when did they occur, and what was the response?
4. What is the level of certainty that the deals are fully qualified to the company’s criteria?
5. What is the probability/likelihood of closing each of the deals?
6. What new leads have entered the pipeline since the last review?
7. How much commitment has been given in relation to each opportunity in the pipeline?
8. Are the proper decision makers engaged in each deal, and has a champion been identified?
9. Has a compelling event been identified for each opportunity?

Asking these questions during pipeline reviews will add a level of predictability for the sales team and will also allow the leader to coach proactively. For example, if a sales professional is struggling with qualification criteria and they’re letting deals slip through to a demo before the right decision maker is involved, the leader can identify why it’s happening by reviewing the individual’s deals and looking through the notes and questions that were asked along with the responses received. Then, the leader and the sales professional can together identify the reasons why decision makers weren’t involved early on and can work together to create an action plan for future deals.

Keep in mind that pipeline reviews shouldn’t be structured around a leader’s personal preferences or mantra of the month, but should center around real conversations, deal facts, and actual gaps that each sales professional can improve upon. Sales leaders can ditch the ad hoc approach of asking aimless questions and instead adopt an agile sales platform.

Implementing these simple changes can help turn stale pipeline reviews into helpful strategy sessions.

The post How Sales Leaders Can Turn Tedious Pipeline Reviews into Productive Strategy Sessions appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Give Your Sales Department More Time

Sales automation, when integrated with a CRM system, can help small businesses do more with less. By eliminating repetitive tasks, business owners can focus on growing their business, instead of just managing it. Here’s what you need to know about sales automation and how it can drive your business forward.

The Marketplace Is More Competitive

In a technology-charged world, the business landscape has become increasingly competitive. The last thing you want to risk is fragmented data, cold leads, and a longer sales cycle. Maybe you feel as if you’re putting more time, money, and effort into your sales department, only to find that your productivity leaves something to be desired.

There is a simpler solution than just slogging through more hours – you can get the same job done in less time. It’s the old adage: “Work smarter, not harder.” Sales automation software eliminates repetitive, time-consuming (but still necessary) tasks that release your sales professionals from behind-the-scenes work. For example, you can shave minutes off sending a proposal, easily locate information about leads and customers, view timelines, and get instant reports on your sales funnel.

Top Reasons to Invest in Sales Automation

There are numerous benefits to sales automation, but some provide a more immediate return on investment than others. Here are the top 5 reasons to consider automation:

1. Save Time

Scheduling sales appointments, sending follow up emails, updating sales opportunities: These are a few tasks that are essential, but tedious. Software allows you do all these things automatically, and more. For example, salespeople can quickly generate estimates, which turn into speedy proposals, quotes, and orders. Additionally, you can send customers automatic updates about tracking or delays.

2. Enhance Customer Service

By automating certain tasks, you can also create a more positive customer experience. Eliminate redundancies that require customers to repeat questions or requests across multiple departments, and create a central client directory that tracks calls to eliminate repeats.

3. Maximize Revenue

“Time is money” became a cliché for a reason – because it’s true. Freeing up your sales people from burdensome tasks allows them to make more calls and spend time doing what they do best – hardcore selling. This leads to more income for the company, which will increase your profits and employee satisfaction.

4. Manage Opportunities More Effectively

Your CRMs produce a lot of data. Sales automation software allows you to leverage this data to maximize your conversions. By assembling your data into timelines and reports on the sales funnel, your salespeople can readily identify promising opportunities and provide timely follow-up.

5. Effective Sales Team Management

Sales managers can similarly become bogged down by sales call sheets and tracking staff activity. Automation allows managers to view each sales team member’s activity, complaints, and other metrics. This can help inform the need for further training or other intervention.

Sales automation can help your company make the most of its time. Consider integration with your CRM to effectively grow your business – instead of just managing it.

Coffee’s for Closers

“Put. That. Coffee. Down! Coffee’s for closers.” Do you remember Alec Baldwin’s iconic scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross? Baldwin’s vicious and searing monologue as the fiercely intense salesmen is without a doubt, one of the most infamous scenes in movie history; and with good reason. We’ve all probably experienced a coach or manager like Alec Baldwin’s character Blake. Some would call it brash and a bit aggressive, but to call it that would take away from the dire and motivating message it was meant to deliver; If you want to be great in anything, you have to be focused and hungry.

Some of the most memorable and meaningful moments in our lives come from the situations we overcome that would either make or break us. Have you ever been in a situation where your very livelihood hung in the balance and you only had a short time to save it? Well, this was certainly the case for the salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross. There are many important sales lessons in this film for business-minded individuals who want to make it to the top. Whether it’s learning how to stay disciplined and motivated, or learning how to control a situation, the film has many key sales lessons that are worth reviewing. So put that coffee down and take notes!

Here are 5 key sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross that will keep you on your toes and close today!

Always Be Helping

A major sales lesson in Glengarry Glenn Ross is knowing how to be there for your prospects. It pays to understand their major problems, their doubts, and any questions they might have. Successful sales representatives have a way of guiding and helping their prospects to make decisions. Try and get into the minds of your prospects. You will land and close more leads.

Know What The Shot Is

In the movie, Ricky Roma (played by Al Pacino) says, “Never open your mouth until you know what the shot is”. It’s important to understand the weight of our decisions and the impact an informed decision has on being a stellar sales representative. Knowing the shot means understanding the context for any deal you close. Getting a good read on your prospects is one of the most important aspects of closing sales.

Have a Clear Goal

You can’t get to where you want to be if you don’t know where you’re going. If you don’t know exactly what you or your prospect wants from a deal than you are not informed.How will you know what you’re working towards? Closing deals mean establishing clear goals and expectations before entering any meeting or agreeing to any deal.

“Coffees for Closers”

Similar to “Never put off for tomorrow that which you can do today,” This is simply a great reminder to push through and finish what you started before taking a break. Challenge yourself and be relentless with the objectives you set for yourself and your team. You will feel better each time you accomplish another one of your goals. Wrapping up any micro-goals you set for yourself can also inspire you to get more work done because of the momentum of success you’ve created. Save the coffee for after you take care of your goals.

A-I-D-A (Attention, Interest, Decision, Action)

Perhaps one of the most iconic and helpful parts of Alec Baldwin’s speech is his AIDA acronym:

• Attention

There are lots of ways to get someone’s attention, but how do you keep it? We are constantly distracted with more things vying for our attention than ever before. Humor works well but can backfire if you can’t read the room. You can’t close if you don’t know how to get the attention of your prospects.

• Interest

Are they interested? If not, then are you wasting your time? This is the part where your passion of the product or service should shine. How will you keep their interest? Don’t lie to close deals. Tell a story, get familiar, and speak with passion.

• Decision

The moment you’ve been working so hard to get to. You’ve gotten them behind the wheel, now it’s time to drive. Will they put the pedal to the metal? This is where the hardest hitting questions and objections rear their head. It takes a lot of confidence to guide a prospect into making a decision. Continue to reiterate how important their decision is and how the value of their choice can impact their future.

• Action

Closing time. This is your moment of glory. Write up and explain the agreement, ask if they have any questions or expectations and close the deal.

Aside from being ridiculously quotable, Glengarry Glenn Ross is filled with countless sales lessons and motivating speeches. They may not all be applicable, but they are surely inspiring and at the very least entertaining. Glengarry Glenn Ross teaches sales teams to sell with confidence, study and learn from their prospects, and to be relentless with their goals. Put these actionable sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross to good use for your own sales career and you will close more deals!