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Referral marketing doesn’t just happen on its own. Just like other marketing promotions, your referral program needs to be promoted and fed into your various marketing channels. One of the most powerful channels of promotion is social media. And a social referral program is actually easy to promote.

Yes, referrals happen on their own through word of mouth, but how does word of mouth happen today? DING! DING! DING! Social Media! In today’s world of mobile apps and word of mouth marketing, the easiest way for a consumer to communicate with their friends is through social media.

As you can imagine, running a referral program that is social media friendly means you’ll have a higher chance of success. This is especially true if the business already has customers talking about them in these channels, it also makes it incredibly easy to run a social referral program.

Here’s what we will cover in this article…

1. Why it works together
2. Social Media Best Practices
3. Customizing the program experience for social media
4. Promotion Hacks to keep it top of mind?

Why Social Media and Referral Marketing Work Together

You probably understand how important it is for social media and referral marketing to work together. But, here are a few examples to help reiterate the power of that combo.

1. Your customers are already there

Chances are you have a ton of customers already there. You may even have quite a few already following your business page. Because so many people hang out on social media already, you can easily connect with hundreds of people. Use this to your advantage.

2. Social proof will increase

People mimic the actions of others. So, if people see their friends talking about a certain brand then they may be more inclined to check them out too.

Therefore, having the option to share your referral program via social media is a great way for customers to help build up their own social proof. To make your brand even easier to share, make sure you include social media images in content shared by customers. Social proof increase when images are used.

3. Sharing will ensue

Think about how easy it is for something to become viral on a social media site. If you make social media sharing available it will happen. Providing the buttons within the user’s dashboard can prime a share (or referral in this instance) to occur. People retweet, share, copy, and save all sorts of things on social media, and your referral program should be one of them.

4. Program promotion is simplified

To branch off of sharing, promotion becomes easier. You see, customers will be able to easily see what you post. So when you mention your referral program they will see it on their timeline. Plus, when someone mentions you, all of their friends will see. This makes it easy for all sorts of people to see who you are, what you’re all about, and get insight into your program.

5. Birds of a feather

The point of social media is to connect people together. Most people who connect to each other have similar interests and/or demographics. This means that your existing customers are often sharing with your ideal customer. Hard to get much more targeted than that!

Bonus brand impressions

When a customer shares your business on their social profiles, it has the potential to be seen by a large network. This kind of acts as a mini advertisement for you. Even if they don’t buy today, it creates an impression. Oh, and it happens for free.

Social Media Basics / Best Practices

Great, you’ve figured out your promotion strategy. Now you need to figure out how else to best utilize your social media sites. Your social site is a part of your brand, therefore, you need to instill a few of these best practices. By making sure your social media sites are set up properly, you can further boost your referral marketing strategies. Take a look at these top tips.

1. Unfollow those who post toxic material to your profile

This should be a no-brainer. But, just to reiterate, if you have malicious or spammy looking comments all over your profile, your brand trustworthiness will definitely decrease.

2. Use the right social Networks

Where are your customers more often? Chances are Twitter and Facebook are a pretty good bet. But, don’t discount other social sites like Pinterest, Instagram, or even LinkedIn. Set up profiles that make sense. Some businesses may not get much engagement on Instagram, for example, even if a ton of their customers use the app. So focus on what sites work best for you.

3. Keep your profile images up to date

Did you recently change your logo? If so make sure it reflects on any social site you are on. If someone ends up on your page, but everything is outdated, they may think you’re no longer in business. Keep your profile pic and cover photo up to date. It also doesn’t hurt to share fun photos every once in awhile.

4. Stay active

People often look online for information on businesses. How many times have you searched for a local restaurant that only had a Facebook page? That happens pretty often. Unfortunately, if those pages look abandoned, people will assume the business is no longer active either. So post something every once in awhile.

This also means just that you have to work a little bit to stay in the conversation. Whether that means sharing something funny or sharing something useful on a regular basis, you need to provide a reason for people to visit your page.

5. Be responsive

Your customers may reach out to you on your social sites. This is your chance to talk with them. Whether you’re simply having a little conversation or addressing a customer’s concern, your responsiveness will be noticed. People like to be heard, so make sure you’re listening.

6. Share business updates

Many brands get engagement to their website by posting information about updates. Be sure to share newly published blog posts, changes to your software, etc. Just be sure you’re not posting too often (especially on Facebook). Posts can get buried and when you do post too often, people tend to tune you out.

7. Try using ads

You can pay to promote certain posts of yours on social media. If you have a really good content piece, or something worthwhile, try boosting it to get extra engagement.

Customizing The Program Experience For Social Media

You would be surprised by the reasons people don’t join referral programs, a bad social site is one of them. Now that you’ve spruced up your profiles, let’s talk about creating a social referral program. To start off, let’s hone in on your program participants. After all, the program was made for them. Here are some of the top tips for helping your customers use your program via social media.

1. Make sure it’s easy for users to share

Let’s face it people assess how easy something is, and then decide on whether or not it’s worth their time. Sometimes you have to do a little spoonfeeding so that people can easily handle the rest of the process. By offering social share buttons right from the customer’s profile page, you are making it so much easier, and more enticing, to share.

2. Customize the message they send

Make sure the messaging is clear, and marketing isn’t too heavy as it might exhaust trustworthiness in your brand.

3. Shout out top referrers

(Optional, but worth it) If you want people to engage, you must engage with them. Your customers will notice if you are giving shout-outs, and likely they will want to join in. Everyone loves a little good public recognition. This also acts as a way of showing your appreciation, which can prime future referrals to happen.

4. Use imagery

Images are so much more interesting than blocks of text. This may make participants more inclined to share. So be sure that if you do offer social media buttons, the information they are sharing uses some sort of image, like your logo or an image that corresponds to your program. Images make people stop and look, understand the content better, and are more visually appealing. All of which equals a winning combo.

5. Sharing is caring

Make your participants look good by using double sided rewards. This really helps encourage participants to share. Why, well if there is an incentive for both parties involved, it makes the ‘ask’ seem less self-serving for the referrer. It may also increase the likelihood of a referral to turn into a customer. Everyone loves a good deal!

Best Promotion Hacks For Your Referral Marketing on Social Media

Now that you’ve gotten to this point, let’s ramp up your social media to get your program out there and keep it “top of mind”. A successful referral program is based on how well you promote it. By now you realize how important social media is. But to reiterate, your customers are likely already flocking to these channels… meaning program promotion is easy!

1. Make sure you use your bio

Okay, you can let a customer know a lot about you just from using your social profiles. One tiny, but effective, area is your bio. Facebook allows you ample room to write what you want, but Twitter likes you to keep it short and sweet. Fortunately, all you need is a link and three little words… “refer a friend”. By providing easy access to the link, you are also making it easy for people to come back to it at a later time to refer.

2. Communication is key

If you’re putting regularly checking your social media profiles, then you probably already respond to customer feedback. Use these moments as reasons to ask for referrals. If someone mentions how much they like your service or if they are always contributing to your page, they are probably open to referring people to you.

Communication isn’t just about responding though, it’s about keeping your name in the conversation. So make sure you are share-worthy and that your program is ready to be shared.

3. Share information about your program regularly

This means if you’re not talking about it, how are people going to know? This bleeds into communication. No, you don’t want to talk about your referral program too often, but you should occasionally bring it up.

A good reason to continually post about your program is that people who meant to sign up but didn’t have the chance to right at that moment will be able to easily find a link to your program at another time.

We’re not saying you need to make one post weekly about the program. But, bring it up every few weeks can definitely keep it fresh in people’s mind.

4. Discuss exclusivity

People want to be the ‘cool’ ones in their groups. So give them the chance. Okay, maybe your program isn’t as exclusive as you lead on. But, if you make it feel like a club then people may get excited. You can get people interested by mentioning your referral program is by invite only.

Example: You post on Facebook that you are starting a referral program. You don’t provide the link, instead, you talk it up and wait for people to bite.

Someone comments or likes your post, and then you reach out to them personally and give them the link.

You can spin this a few different ways. As long as you are pushing that not everyone gets the benefits of a program member, you should be golden.

Social Media Can Be Your Referral Program’s Secret Weapon

Before you go implementing these best practices it’s important to remember that building a solid networking foundation comes first. A referral program will really only work if customers believe in your business and/or like your product, to begin with.

Though social media is one of the easiest ways to get your program out there, it shouldn’t be the only channel you use. Customers may respond better by sharing via private email for example. This is particularly pertinent if your business is something most people consider a ‘secret’. For example, people may not want everyone on their friend’s list to know that they have had a procedure done, or bought a particular item.

With that being said, if you have customers who are online, and follow your brand. Or if you have an influx of people who talk about you on their social sites, it’s a pretty good indicator that social media is a great channel for your referral program. Social media and referral programs are just like pb&j – they work really well together.

Are you a small business owner or entrepreneur and aren’t happy with your website’s performance?

This eTip is all about making the most of your website for your business. If you want to see more of a return from your website, then I’ve got 6 must-haves that are just for you!

So what are these 6 things you must have in order to have a high performing website? Keep watching!

6 Essentials For a High Performing Business Website

1. Consistent & Professional Branding

   When people see your website, does it look consistent with your social media? Your website and social media should have consistent branding across all platforms.

   Consistency is the key here but it needs to look professional. An amateur looking website will not attract the right kinds of clients.

   First impressions are extremely important so it doesn’t matter how great you are if the way it’s presented looks cheap or unprofessional.

   Make sure you don’t design something that’s just for you. You might be a huge fan of a colour or design but if it’s not something that would appeal to your clients, then it shouldn’t be on your website.

   We use purple a lot ourselves but we know it’s good for our business so keep in mind you may be putting people off if you’re the only one who is a fan of a colour or design element.

2. White Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

   Don’t underestimate the power of good SEO.

   With SEO you are making sure your website is not only something search engines will index and (hopefully) display to users but that it’s done right.

   You are competing with other websites for the same key phrases users enter and your goal is to be at the top of those results when searched by your target market.

   Many people lack understanding of SEO even though it’s extremely important. You’re competing with many other websites. If you don’t have good white hat SEO, then no matter how good your website is, users won’t be able to find it.

   Look at essentials in onsite SEO like having your keyphase targets in things like the title tags, meta data and the url.

   A great example is if you’re selling a book. Many people will list the url pertaining to their book as www.example.com/book
   What you should do is have a url like this: www.example.com/title-of-book

   The title will likely be intuitively connected to your content with good keyphrases in it and Google will be able to read that.

   You can even add the keywords you want to rank for to elements like image naming and alt tags too.

   Make sure you have your desired key phases set and then include them in the onsite copy. All of this is the set up for SEO so Google knows what you want to rank for.

   This part of the industry is daunting so don’t be afraid to reach out for help from someone who does professional search engine optimization. But watch out for overseas scams, do your due diligence first, and only proceed once you’re comfortable.

   Look for someone who will understand your business and work with the branding, website development, and SEO together since these all work best when they are working together.

3. Responsive Website

   A responsive website means your site will display well on phones and all smaller screens.

   Years ago websites only had to display well on desktop computers. Now that smart phones are common, it’s important to have a website that can display well on one.

   With responsive design your website will change its display while maintaining the same information, making it easily usable on a cell phone.

   Designers sometimes opted to have two separate websites that would be detected by the device and would display the appropriate one. With this though, there were two websites to maintain and update.

   With responsive design the template changes so you remove the redundancy of having to do everything twice. Google places a lot of importance on mobile usability so it’s a really good idea to get a responsive website if you don’t have one already.

   If you don’t know if your website is responsive or you need help making it that way please get in touch and our website developers will make sure your site displays properly and performs well on mobile devices.

   If you don’t think your potential clients use smart phones then think again. Over 50% of people are on smart phones when they’re searching online so please be sure yours is optimized for mobile devices.

4. List Building and Follow Up

   List building is in place because if a user comes to your website for the first time, there is a small chance they’ll convert right away. The odds are slightly better if you offer something in the way of e-commerce.

   Because users are more likely to convert after their first visit, you want to give them a way to find their way back. An email newsletter subscription is a great way to do that.

   To build your list you can try offering something for free like a download of a free how-to guide that requires the user to enter their email address in order to receive it.

   This could be anything: An audio file, video series, or PDF report. The point is to provide value in exchange for the user committing to giving you their email.

   Then stay in touch with your list to cultivate the know, like and trust factor with this, providing them good reasons to come back.

5. Solid Marketing Message

   A lot of entrepreneurs make their website all about them. ‘I do this’ ‘this is me’ ‘this is what I do’.

   Unfortunately for a user this can leave them asking: what about me?

   A website has to reassure a visitor they’ve arrived in the right place. Your messaging should clearly state what problems you solve and that you are there to help.

   Use terms like “You” and “Your” rather than “Me” or “I”. Hiring a professional copywriter is a great idea because they understand the intentions of the visitor’s needs coming first and can make what you do exciting, which helps convert them into a paying customer.

   Creating excitement isn’t easy to do so a great copywriter is an essential to making sure you get your website visitors excited about you and what you provide.

6. Make It Easy To Reach You

   Make the process of contacting you as easy as possible.

   If you have an online store you need a customer service phone number prominently displayed. It’s normally placed in the top right side of the page.

   Even if you don’t have an online store and you’re providing a service or something else with a “Buy Now” button, the service number reassures the user there is a real person behind the scene in case they need help.

   Establishing trust is key so providing them with ways to contact you if necessary is essential to establishing trust. You will get more site visitors to commit to you and your business once trust is established.

   Many entrepreneurs are worried about having their phone number out there but at the end of the day you need one so whatever you can do to provide one is a must.

   Also have a good contact form. This and a phone number are essential to establishing trust with your potential clients.

   Have a CTA (Call To Action) that leads users towards their destination. If your conversion is qualified by a contact then lead users on each page towards the contact page. Use buttons and text telling them to click and easily get in touch with you.

These are the must-haves for your website.

There are many more things to cover but these 6 are the essentials for success. You may think you have some of these covered but if you’re using a prefabricated template or an all-in-one solution, you may have something too bloated with excessive code to index well and it could actually be working against you.

It’s a sales manager’s job to know whether or not a salesperson is going to make quota or not and part of the process is understanding what deals are real and will close, and which won’t.

Deal reviews are the critical tool for sales managers to determine the probability of a salesperson is going to be successful or not in making quota. Unfortunately, deal reviews can be all over the place. We’ve all sat through our share of deal reviews, have run our share of deal reviews or heard the horror stories of shitty deal reviews and know; deal reviews rarely follow any formal structure or continuity.

Deal reviews are a fail in most sales circles.

Deal reviews are one of those things that seem to get little attention when it comes to sales management and sales organization productivity. Yet, understanding where a deal is, and being able to provide valuable guidance of a deal are critical elements of a successful and productive sales team.

Why are deal reviews such a mess and rarely deliver on their value?

Because sales managers don’t know how to run them and salespeople are generally full of shit and overly optimistic. Let’s just keep it real, you all know I’m right here.

Salespeople have happy ears. They interpret everything and anything they hear as a positive sign the deals gonna close. The client loves us. The prospect said they are going with us. They were excited about our product, etc. These useless, overly optimistic boasts provide ZERO value to a sales manager or to the assessment of the deal and its probability of closing.

To make matters worse, most sales managers don’t know how to run a deal review. They ask high-level questions like; Is the deal going to close?  What’s going on with this deal? When is the deal going to close? How do you know? Are you talking to the decision maker? Is budget approved, etc.?

After about 4 or 5 of these lame questions, combined with the lame salesperson’s answer from above, everybody walks away happy, feeling good the deal is going to close. Rarely, does the manager or the salesperson question the probability of a win.

And this is how most deal reviews play out. Every deal is going to close. No deal is in jeopardy, and everyone is happy.

But then the end of the quarter comes, and the wheels fall off. The deals don’t close. Deals “slip” into the next year or quarter and nothing happened the way things were supposed to happen. Making it worse, everyone acts surprised.

Being surprised a deal isn’t won is a massive failure in most cases. Salespeople and sales managers can and should know, early, if a deal is going to be won and what the probability is of winning.

To make sure sales managers and salespeople get ahead of the sale and can more accurately predict the strength of a deal and it’s probability of closing, every one of these seven questions should be asked in every deal review.

What problem(s) is the prospect or buyer trying to solve? (Why do they want to buy?) – The purpose of the this question is to make sure the salesperson understands what the intrinsic motivation is for changing or buying something new is. Companies/people don’t buy products or services, they buy things to solve problems, to improve their current state. If your salesperson doesn’t understand what problem the prospect is having, then they can’t effectively sell them anything.

What’s the impact of those problems on the business? – It’s not enough to know what the problem is, you also have to know the impact of the problem on the business and it MUST be QUANTIFIED. The impact to the business provides insight to urgency, and return, opportunity, etc. If the impact of the problem on the business is small, and the rep is unaware, they could be pushing something that will never be sold, as the value to the buyer doesn’t exist. (I see this a lot).

What happens if they don’t buy or solve the problem? – This question is, in many ways, the inverse of the second question. It ensures the salesperson is zeroed in on the right selling criteria. By understanding what happens to the company/buyer if they choose not to solve the problem, the salesperson understands the cost of sticking with the status quo and can assess if that is a palatable alternative.

What are they trying to accomplish? I call this the future state. The future state is the desired vision buyers have to change. It’s why they want to solve the problem. It’s the carrot.  The problem is the pain or stick; the future vision is the carrot. If a salesperson can’t cleanly and clearly articulate what the prospect wants to achieve by changing and how they will measure success, they have little information to move the deal forward. If absent, it also doesn’t allow you or the salesperson to measure the value of your solution. When you don’t know the value of a solution, you can’t judge the probability of it closing.

How are they doing “it” today? Too many salespeople are content with what is going on in a customers organization. They don’t spend enough time understanding “how” they are doing it. How is a critical differentiator. Everyone drives a car, but not everyone drives a car the same way.  Same in business, your prospects may be using a similar offering, or may have processes that do what you do, but rarely do they do it the same and that’s how you’re able to demonstrate value. By forcing a rep to understand how their prospect is doing what they’re currently doing, you can determine how much value there is in the deal to do it differently.  Less value, less opportunity/desire to change.

What are the decision criteria? It’s critical that the salesperson and the sales manager know what criteria the buyer is going to evaluate and make their decision. By understanding what criteria are being judged and comparing that to your solution, salespeople can understand how well they fit and also have the ability to influence the decision. Again, this is the type of information that allows sales leaders to accurately understand the probability of a deal closing.

What’s the decision process? You have to know how the buyer is going to buy if you expect to know if you’re going to win the deal AND when. Who is involved, what are their expectations on demos and trials, and evaluating the competition, and, and, and . . .   It’s too easy to forget that the buyer has their process for buying and we need to know it, to assess when and if a deal is going to close.

What’s the next yes?  [video on next YES!] This last piece is critical.  This is the part of the deal review that uncovers your salesperson’s deal strategy. The next yes is the sale within the sale, what the salesperson is trying to get from the buyer. It’s the thing that get’s the deal closer to close. A rep should ALWAYS be working towards getting the buyer closer to closing the sale and if they aren’t, they are not selling.  The next yes is the sale within the sale. It’s what the rep needs to get the buyer to commit to that moves the sale along. It could be agreeing to a meeting. It could be getting the client to share their customer records. It could be getting the buyer to introduce you to the CEO. It could be getting the buyer to agree to a proof of concept. Whatever it is, the salesperson NEEDS to be working on getting the client to commit to something that illustrates their interest and desire to move closer to buying. Without it, your salesperson is simply burning time.

Deals close for a few reasons and only a few reasons;

1. The prospect has a big problem they want to fix
2. They want to fix it because it hurts, the pain is too unbearable
3. They want to get to a better place, they know there is a better world out there if they fix it, a better world they can live/work in.
4. The cost (time and money) align with the change and what they’ll get if they change. It’s worth it
5. They believe they the desired future state is achievable

 

That’s it. That’s what is behind a prospects decision to make a change. Therefore, a deal review only needs to ensure those five elements are present at any time and that the salesperson is making sure your solution answers all those questions. Any other questions or set of questions that don’t help you assess where the prospect is with these five areas, you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Start running your deal reviews with an understanding of how your buyer buy. Use the eight questions above to flush out the problem the customer is having, how that problem is affecting them, why they need to change, and how the impact of the problem is being measured.  Once you have this information and can understand what the prospect is going to evaluate and how they are going to decide, the rest is a cake walk.

Deal reviews are that complicated. We just make them that way.  Don’t spend more time on them, just spend smarter time on them. The map is laid out right in front of you. Simply follow it.

 

 

 

The post The 8 Questions Every Sales Manager Needs To Ask In A Deal Review appeared first on A Sales Guy.

If you’re a consumer who stays on top of retail trends, you’ve likely come across a line of products whose presentation might, to some, seem stark and even boring.

As the name of the company suggests, Brandless’ products are packaged and sold simply for what they are. Hungry for a bag of vegetable chips? Brandless offers a bag of “vegetable chips.” Looking for hand cream to help smooth out dry skin? Brandless has a “hand cream.” Further, every Brandless product costs $3, no matter if it’s coffee or toilet bowl cleanser.

Brandless is a powerful illustration of a company that’s using a variety of anticipatory organization strategies—a useful example that shows how leveraging both predictable Hard Trends as well as cycles can lead to innovation and success with much lower risk.

Go Opposite

Brandless incorporates a number of principles of my Anticipatory Organization Model that can offer significant results and competitive advantages. One is what I refer to as the Law of Opposites. Instead of pricing like all other retailers with every item having a different price, Brandless decided to do the opposite and dramatically simplify shopping by having one flat fee for every item in its product line. That’s a good example of retail innovation in an era where redefining the customer experience is an imperative if you want to stand out from everyone else and accelerate growth.

Brandless is also taking advantage of another core component of an anticipatory organization, namely, the Hard Trend that demographics represent. At one end of the spectrum are baby boomers who want to make the most of ever-increasing life expectancy. And, to enjoy those years as much as possible, they’re focused on putting healthy, organic products in and on themselves—the sort of organic items that fill Brandless’ shelves.

Then there are the millennials, a group who spends more than $65 billion each year and influences upward of $1 trillion in total consumer spending, according to a recently released study. At the risk of painting a significant segment of the population in one broad stroke, millennials aren’t always keen on doing the same things and buying the same products that prior generations did. While the lure of organics cuts across generations, millennials are likely less attached to those brand names that their parents and grandparents happily bought year after year. Hence, the lure of the “brandless” packaging and message.

Leveraging Cycles

Brandless is also taking advantage of the predictability of cycles—the fact that millennials are behaving pretty much the same way that every generation in history has behaved by ignoring prior generations tastes and buying preferences.

Automobiles are a prime example. People of a certain age are attached to sleek, stylish lines in automobiles. Not so with younger buyers. Just take a look at the number of squared off, boxy cars that are filling the roadways. Once again, a new generation of buyers simply doesn’t want to replicate what prior generations embraced.

That’s an established, cyclical pattern. And, as the Brandless model shows, recognition and application of the leverage that cycles afford can translate into enormous opportunities.

Brandless and other companies like it demonstrate that, in an era characterized by rapid change, it’s also valuable to watch those cycles and trends that have a history of repeating. Just as one-way, linear/exponential change provides opportunities, so, too, can cycles that have occurred in the past and will continue to do so into the future.

It’s 2018, and by rough count, I’ve sat through a thousand sales presentations. Most of them have blurred together in my mind. What stands out? The exceptionally good ones…or the cringingly bad ones. Your prospect may not have seen quite as many as me, but they likely struggle to recall most of them as well. Why does this matter?

Boring, forgettable presentations are unsuccessful presentations.

Why are today’s presentations so forgettable?

In a day and age where we know so much about our prospects, from their interests and dislikes, to their challenges and goals, it seems surprising that most presentations are still so ineffective. Part of the problem is that most salespeople today are still following a presentation structure that has been around since the seventies (even though many of today’s prospects were not even alive in the seventies!) This dated, ineffective structure includes too many elements that are unnecessary, irrelevant, or simply redundant to your prospect.

It’s time to let go of tired yawn-inducing elements in your presentation. Make 2018 the year you embrace a more contemporary approach that differentiates you from the competition and sets you up for success. Here are 5 ways you can shake up your sales presentation.

5 Ways to Shake up your Sales Presentation in 2018

1. Drop the Company Overview

It’s critical that you get the first few minutes of your presentation right. Buyers are forming first impressions and making major decisions about you and your solution. Yet most presenters choose to start off their presentation by talking about, sigh, their own company. Research proves that today’s buyers don’t care – or, they’re already familiar with – this information. It’s a big disconnect right out of the gate.

Instead: Make the first few minutes of your presentation all about the customer. Review their situation, set objectives and preview a benefit or insight which you will expand on later.

2. Reimagine your Agenda

A boring overview is often followed by a boring agenda. While agendas can provide great value, the typical list of product features or names that serves as most agendas, does nothing but confuse or bore busy prospects. And, presenters often refer to them once, leaving the buyer to wonder where they are in this long, tedious journey.

Instead: Make your agenda customer-focused by using topics that describe your prospect’s issue or business process, not your product. Make sure you refer back to your agenda after completing each section, using that opportunity to reinforce key points.

3. Relocate the Customer’s Situation

Presenters typically address the customer’s situation 5, 10 or even 20 minutes into the presentation! Unfortunately, this is much too late in the game. Your buyer’s attention is at a low point and you’ve already established that you’re no different than any other vendor.

Instead: Place the customer’s situation up front and center. Review it with your customer to remind them why they need to talk to you! Reconfirm their challenges and objectives to make sure that you are on the right track before you launch into your presentation.

4. Stop the Feature Frenzy

The goal of most sales presentations or demos appears to be to show as many features and capabilities as time allows. Unfortunately, the greater goals of clarity and relevance are lost – and so is the prospect.

Instead: Focus on a few key features that directly impact your prospect’s current situation. Avoid getting deep into how a feature or process works. Instead, focus on connecting the dots between a feature and how it will help your customer achieve his goals.

5. Amp up your Close

The close is often the least prepared and most awkward part of every sales presentation. Presenters tend to either abruptly “stop,”, or simply “whimper” to a finish. Both fail to inspire confidence, reinforce key messages, or move the sale forward.

Instead:Use the end of your presentation to recall the objectives you set out at the beginning. Summarize key points you want your prospect to remember. If you’ve delivered a compelling case, don’t let this feel good moment simply fizzle out! Tell your buyer what you want them to do with a clearly defined and measurable next step. Click here for 5 ways to close your presentation on strong note.

While your buyer is likely to suffer through a boring presentation in silence, he will vote with his wallet. Shake up your sales presentation in 2018 by replacing ineffective elements with fresh, new strategies that work with today’s busy buyers!

Keeping your customers and prospects engaged with your emails can be a challenge for any marketer. If you are using email in your marketing mix, you know that click-throughs is extremely important. In fact, in a study by Ascend2, 73% of marketers rated the click-through rate as the most useful metric for tracking email performance.

Average click-through rates vary by industry. To see how your rates stack up, check out this comparison study chart by Constant Contact. If your email performance is not on track, here are 6 strategies to help get your subscriber list engaged and clicking-through.

1) Optimize for Mobile

First and foremost, if you aren’t designing your emails for mobile devices, chances are that your message is not getting the attention it deserves. Mobile-friendly design is the most crucial component for successful mobile email marketing. In fact, 80% of users will delete an email if it does not look good on their mobile devices, according to Blue Hornet.

According to research by MailChimp, responsive email design, which adapts to different devices and screen sizes, gets higher click rates on all devices. They are particularly effective for mobile users, where the increase in unique clicks from 2.7% to 3.1% represents a 15% increase in actual clicks.

2) Complete Email Personalization is Coming Soon

Econsultancy asked marketers: “What do you think the single biggest to change to email marketing will be, when looking ahead 5 years. According to the survey, the top 3 responses of those who strongly agreed or somewhat agreed included:

• 84% – Email will be fully integrated with other marketing channels
• 76% – All email communication will be completely personalized
• 74% – Email will still be one of the highest channels for delivering ROI

Email personalization reduces unsubscribe rates and has a major impact on boosting revenue. A report by Silverpop found that 50% of consumers unsubscribe from an email list due to irrelevant emails. This impact of unsubscribes adds up to a loss of 60% in future lifetime value (LTV) (AgilOne). However, when emails are personalized, the average click-through rate is 2.5 times higher with an average increase of 5.7 in revenue.

3) Use Video

Video marketing has grown tremendously in the past few years. According to an eMarketer report, four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product or service as opposed to reading about it.

Using videos in email can really boost click-throughs. It’s been estimated that videos in email marketing messages increase click-through rates by as much as 3x and can boost a company’s return on investment by 40%.

Before adding videos to all your email campaigns, remember that not all email clients support the ability to play the video right in the inbox. HTML 5 (the newest version of HTML) offers more options where video is concerned, but there are still limitations dependent on your subscriber’s email host. A great way to give the illusion of video in email is to use an animated GIF which links to the full clip.

4) Include a Clear Call To Action (CTA)

Did you know that emails with a single call-to-action increase clicks 371% and sales $1,617? (WordStream). And when you take the time to optimize them, your click-through rates can soar. Check out these stats about the benefits of optimizing CTAs:

• HubSpot found that anchor text CTAs increased conversion rates by 121%. Between 47% and 93% of a post’s leads ONLY come from anchor text CTAs. 83% to 93% of each post’s leads come from anchor text AND internal link CTAs.
• ContentVerve saw a 90% increase in click-through rate by using first-person phrasing: “Start my free 30 day trial” vs. “Start your free 30 day trial.”
• Helzberg Diamonds saw a 26% increase in clicks by adding an arrow icon to their CTA buttons. (Marketing Tech Blog)
• SAP found that orange CTAs boosted their conversion rate over 32.5%. (QuickSprout)
• Performable found that red CTAs boosted their conversion rate by 21%. (QuickSprout)
• Making CTAs look like buttons created a 45% boost in clicks for CreateDebate. (Copyblogger)
• Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors into leads than untargeted CTAs. (HubSpot)
• Neil Patel found that users prefer to learn about the offer before clicking a CTA– placing his CTA above the fold decreased conversions by 17%. (QuickSprout)
• Reducing clutter around their CTA increased Open Mile’s conversion rate by 232%. (VWO)
• FriendBuy increased signups by 34% by adding anxiety-reducing content and explaining key benefits next to their CTA. (Copyblogger)

With all these interesting insights, it may be tempting to give the all a try at once, but remember that perfecting your CTA’s will take time. It’s best to include only one clear call to action per email and in some instances a secondary, lower urgency, CTA in case the subscriber is not ready to engage with the main CTA. Keeping emails short, sweet, and to the point will help prevent your subscribers becoming distracted or overwhelmed.

As for call to action placement, the best position will vary based on your content. Traditional opinion is that it’s best to place your CTA above the fold to reduce the need for scrolling, but as seen in the QuickSprout statistic above, some users need more of an explanation about the offer before following through. An offer for “10% off of your next order” is self-explanatory and would benefit from being above the fold, but “fill out this form” may need some more details to support it. In the end, taking the time to test your CTA’s to see what produces the best results in your email campaigns is the only truly effective way to optimize your campaigns.

5) Drive Results with Triggered Emails

Triggered email marketing, or event driven emails, allows marketers to automatically send messages that are relevant, timely, and personalized to the individual. These emails are different from typical business as usual emails such as a newsletter or product announcement. Rather they are based on a particular action or behavior a consumer has taken, such as clicking on a website link, adding something to a shopping cart, or even a personal message for a birthday.

Triggered email campaigns produce 406% larger click-through rates than typical campaigns. Triggered campaigns, according to a report by Yesmail, generally fall into the following categories:

• Lifecycle triggers:These messages speak to a customer’s current relationship with the brand and are tailored to the particular stage of her lifecycle – from a new subscriber, to regular opener, first-time purchaser, or a lapsed buyer. Lifecycle triggers include welcome, anniversary, activation, reactivation, birthday, loyalty campaigns, and more.
• Transactional triggers:The primary purpose of these emails is to notify consumers of movement on their accounts. Due to off-the-charts open rates, transactional triggers present a major opportunity for marketers to build brand loyalty. They include purchase/shipping confirmations, account notifications, returns, refunds, backorder notifications, and more.
• Remarketing triggers:These campaigns are designed to grow email revenue exponentially and are largely informed by consumers’ purchase and browse behavior. They include abandoned cart, browse abandon, cross-sell/product recommendation emails and more.
• Real-time triggers:These emails can either fall under another trigger category or stand on their own. They incorporate additional data points like location, weather, or events to make communications relevant. This trigger category is generally not as widely adopted as the other three.

6) Be Relevant, Concise, and Clear

Make sure you are giving your subscribers a reason to open your email and engage. By sticking to one clear message, you are more likely to encourage your readers to read your email and ultimately, click through.

Keep copy to a minimum – your readers are bombarded with emails and simply don’t have time to read long emails. Also include plenty of white space and use pictures sparingly.

It’s important to resist the urge to add more in the hopes that at least something will get your readers to click through. Consider the objective of the email, write copy around that objective, and then highlight your CTA.

Like every marketing channel, email must be tested regularly and continually optimized to boost engagement rates. These tips will help you get started to higher click throughs, increased conversions, and an email marketing strategy that get results.

In today’s talent market, voluntary turnover rates are at an all time high. With the average turnover rate across all sales industries being 11.5 percent – software sales holding the top spot at 15.3 percent turnover – it’s more crucial than ever to create a work environment your sales team doesn’t want to leave.  

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The post 5 Sales Team Building Activities That Reduce Turnover Rates appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Diversity in the workplace has been an issue since the civil war. Fast forward to 2017 and a lack of diversity in the workplace remains an issue. In fact, a recent survey by Career Builder found that only 35 percent of women feel confident that compensation is dispensed equitably between the genders. As U.S. demographics continue to change alongside a

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The post 4 Reasons a Diverse Sales Team Will Boost Revenue [Video] appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

What’s your sales team’s current RFP close rate? Whether or not it’s as high as you’d like, you may be surprised to hear that Ganesh Shankar of RFPIO states that “the common win rate for RFPs is less than 5%.” Following these numbers, for every 20 proposals the average vendor sends, only one will be

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The post How to Improve Your Sales Team’s RFP Close Rate appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Top-performing salespeople have one thing in common – they consistently achieve their sales goals. To recruit these talented and rare salespeople, employers need to take a hard look at what they are offering prospective candidates, and if they are doing what it really takes to attract ‘A’ players. Hiring managers fail to acquire top performers

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The post What it Takes to Really Attract Top Sales Talent appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

A critical factor in the maintenance of a high performance sales force is an organization’s talent management system. This includes the people, tools, systems and processes that give it the ability to attract, hire, develop, reward, and retain talent. Responsible for this is today’s human resource leader who faces challenges and increased pressure as the

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The post How HR Can Build an Integrated Approach to Sales Talent Management appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

In many companies, it’s typical to see the most successful salespeople be promoted into a managerial role. Who better to take on more responsibility in the sales organization than someone who consistently meets their number? However, research shows that more than 75% of those people will not last 2 years before returning to an individual contributor position. Given

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The post 5 Reasons Not to Promote Your Best Salespeople [Video] appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

In the hypercompetitive industry of sales, a motivated sales force can mean the difference between hitting targets and missing them by a mile. In fact, a recent Gallup study found that an unmotivated workforce costs companies 300 billion dollars in lost productivity each year. Even the best sellers, with self-motivation and resiliency built into their

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The post 10 Ways to Motivate Your Sales Team to Crush Their Numbers [Infographic] appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

When it comes to customer renewals, are you taking a chance by rolling the dice on your customers’ experiences? Games are fun but customer retention isn’t a game. Your customers are relying on you to provide a consistent experience, a sure thing. When you create a strategy that guarantees the delivery of a consistent and superior customer experience, you stop gambling and start ensuring customer renewals and bolstering loyalty. The results are exponential increases in your Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

So how do you get there, to a place of exponential growth in ARR? Answer: you must remove the guesswork from caring for your customers. In this piece, I’ll demonstrate the financial implications of removing the risk from customer experience and consistently delivering on your brand promise – aka: establishing a basis for customer loyalty.

In the competitive SaaS landscape, we all recognize the high value of existing customers. With high stakes on the table, some organizations are simply gambling by hoping current customer success best practices will keep customers from churning without any true strategy behind them. This is a risk you cannot afford to take. In fact, the chart below explains the potential financial loss from a single unhappy customer.

Consider one negative customer costing you nearly $3 million. How does this happen? When a customer is unhappy and socializes that unhappiness, losing you any potential referrals and maybe even some other existing customers. Perhaps you thought the customer was happy because you were surveying customers about their satisfaction. You would think that would be the right move, but it’s not an accurate reflection of customer happiness or loyalty. Surveys are a lagging indicator that, if done incorrectly, only result in variable data from different times in a customer lifecycle that cannot be properly compared and contrasted.

You can’t draw an inference or conclusion about a customer unless you have a repeatable process with measurable indicators. When we use ad hoc measurement for customer satisfaction that isn’t standardized across the organization, we’re essentially trying to measure the health of customers using too many variables, which makes those measurements and insights less valuable. We also can’t hold a specific methodology or person accountable, (know what or who works), if we don’t have a system of best practices to tell what’s working. We don’t know what we should consider a win and what is considered a gamble.

Now, consider the financial implications of a loyal customer.

The overall difference between an unhappy customer and a loyal customer over the customer’s life cycle is more than $5 million. If consistency is emphasized from day one, the customer experience – and, ultimately success – with your product becomes a sure thing instead of a gamble.

Repeatability plays a huge role in gleaning consistent customer data, helping you gather accurate information which will ensure customer success and create loyal customers. To do so, follow these four steps:

1. Understand and document your current state
2. Determine pain points your customers are having
3. Determine risks (root causes) throughout the lifecycle
4. Understand the gaps that need to be addressed

It’s time for you to stop gambling with your greatest asset – your existing loyal customers. Here are some simple suggestions:

• Segment your customers. Identify what works for each segment and standardize that.
• Understand your desired customer lifecycle(s) and make sure your entire company embraces them, using them as their model for customer interaction.
• Define repeatable processes and activities around your customer lifecycles and train your entire company on them.
• Rely upon clean, integrated customer data to inform you of your customer status and health.
• Remain agile. Understand that even the best laid plans need to be revisited when things shift in accounts. To do this, you’ll need a transparent and comprehensive resource for understanding the current and historic state of your customers at all times.
• And, in a perfect world, have a 360 degree view of your customers so that everyone from delivery, to research and development, to accounting knows what’s happening with your greatest asset – your customer!

As you can see, the financial implication of one unhappy customer is far-reaching, making each interaction with any customer extremely important. Your customers’ experiences and ultimate success with your product is nothing to gambling on. By taking into account the strategies I’ve outlined above, you’ll ensure customer success and retention by consistently delivering on your brand promise.

So, you didn’t meet your key performance indicators (KPIs) for Demand Generation success last quarter. Or maybe you did, but your revenue targets for next quarter are much steeper.

It’s no secret that demand marketers at B2B organizations are facing significant challenges in 2018. A B2B International survey of North American and European marketing professionals revealed communicating the value of products or services to target customers was the top challenge for 48% of marketing organizations. 45% of B2B marketing teams anticipate no increase in their marketing budget for the year to come, according to the same survey.

Understanding the right demand generation strategies to reach your target customers (with a stagnant budget) has lead many B2B marketing pros to wonder, “what’s next?”

Hiring a consultant may seem like a possible solution, especially if you’re having trouble navigating common demand marketing challenges like scaling, gaining efficiency, or low-quality marketing leads.

But is it the right choice?

Does My Brand Need a Demand Generation Consultant

Sometimes a consultant can level up your team and provide game-changing recommendations. Other times, a consultant is a waste of time and money – not because the consultant isn’t knowledgeable, but because your team doesn’t need a consultant in the first place.

To be clear, Integrate is not a demand marketing consultancy. We’re not selling anything in this blog since we don’t offer consulting services. However, we can offer a neutral, outside perspective on whether a demand generation consultant is the right step for your organization.

4 Signs You Need a Demand Marketing Consultant

Outsourcing is common at B2B marketing organizations, though there’s little industry data to reveal how commonly demand marketers outsource strategy to a consultant. A 2017 Fronetics survey found 92% of B2B marketers were outsourcing some of their marketing activities, though most were outsourcing to services firms for help with assets, content or design.

What is clear, however, is the fact many demand marketing strategies will become more complex in the year to come. The 2017 Benchmark Survey by Demand Gen Report asked demand marketers to identify all of the new tactics they will deploy or test.

• 59% plan to test ABM
• 50% will try multi-channel lead nurturing
• 31% will use multi-channel attribution

With many B2B marketing programs expanding and including sophisticated new tactics, consultants may offer value to some firms.

Here are some signs your organization could benefit from third-party expertise:

1. Your Team Needs Training

If your B2B team doesn’t have any talent gaps, count yourself lucky.

The HubSpot 2017 State of Inbound report revealed that 54% of marketing organizations will be hiring new team members in 2018. Many organizations are facing severe talent shortages for marketing analytics, user experience design and other hard-to-fill seats, and it’s hard to hit your KPIs if you’re short on talent.

While this is definitely a very real barrier to success, it’s not a sign you need a consultant.

A demand generation consultant may be the right solution if you’re facing the challenge of knowledge gaps, which are not the same as talent gaps.

Maybe you’ve got people who know how to use your marketing automation platform and create stellar multi-channel content, but you’ve recently shifted to a full-funnel approach and need knowledge on how to better align your goals with sales, increase your top-funnel program efficiency or measure full-funnel performance.

Some demand generation consultants specialize in training. Others can assess your existing team’s strengths and identify areas where additional knowledge would boost your results.

If you’re staffed up with great, talented people but still struggle to move forward, you may need to consider hiring a consultant.

2. You’ve Stopped Hitting Your KPIs

What if your demand generation team hit your revenue goals for the first two quarters of 2017, but failed to meet KPIs in the second half of the year?

If you’ve succeeded in the past but are struggling to drive results with demand generation tactics that used to work, you may be wondering which new tactics to add to your strategy and how to adjust your budget.

In this case, you may able to benefit from third-party expertise.

A demand marketing expert could help assess your marketing performance data, and recommend new activities or cutting-edge campaign concepts. An individual who has industry-specific knowledge of your market or niche could be the best way to get value.

3. You’re Out of New Ideas

If you need to elevate your demand generation strategy and maintain your competitive edge but you’re officially out of fresh ideas, a third-party expert could possibly bring much-needed insight and innovation to your team.

Most of the time, a few short sessions with a consultant can get the creative wheels spinning and motivate your team to innovate again.

The B2B marketing landscape is evolving quickly. Today’s most game-changing demand marketers are using many different tools, tactics and ideas to drive results. For some organizations, a demand generation consultant can be a powerful resource to infuse next quarter’s strategy with fresh ideas.

4. You Have a MarTech Problem

The MarTech landscape is complex, to say the least. Maybe your organization has invested in dozens of demand generation software solutions and they’re not delivering the results you want.

Perhaps your team is resistant to adopting the system you spent months implementing. Even worse, maybe you know your marketing program has fallen well behind your competitors in technology sophistication, but you don’t know what’s next.

Some organizations may find value in a third-party expert if their MarTech stack has become more of an obstacle than a benefit.

4 Signs You Don’t Need a Consultant

Even the most skilled and knowledgeable demand marketing consultant won’t be the right solution if your organization’s challenges fall outside of their expertise.

B2B marketing programs can struggle for a number of reasons. Some common challenges that may not be solved by third-party expertise include issues like the following four examples.

1. You Have Talent Gaps

If you’re facing a shortage of skilled staff, you’re not alone.

John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co recently wrote on Marketing Agency Insider that there are up to three posted jobs for every qualified applicant in some marketing specializations.

While it’s very difficult to reach aggressive demand generation goals if you don’t have the right talent, it’s not an issue a consultant can solve.

Consultants can’t create new talent, or remove the need for that talent. While they can offer training, they can’t convert a content creator into a Ruby on Rails developer.

The right consultant could possibly assist in identifying your team’s talent gaps and sourcing high-potential candidates. However, in the vast majority of cases, consultants aren’t the right answer if you’re short on talent.

2. Your Strategy Is Not the Problem

If execution is the problem rather than knowledge and strategy, a marketing consultant may not be much help. A lot of underperforming marketing teams aren’t struggling because they lack knowledge and skill. A team facing issues turning strategy into action may be struggling because of many different reasons, including poor processes, or an inability to prioritize the highest-return activities.

In these cases, bringing in an expert on knowledge and skill could end up frustrating the situation more. However, a consultant on execution and leadership may be useful.

3. You Lack Cultural Support

Change management is highly complex.

Making the shift from traditional marketing to a full-funnel, demand generation mindset usually requires cultural change. Before you can effectively align your team with sales and marketing, you need support and buy-in from upper management.

Some executives are flat-out resistant to new tactics and methods of demand generation. Others voice support, but aren’t willing to allocate budget, authorize new hires or help your team educate sales.

Kirk Sievert, a Master Change Management Instructor and President at Prosci recommends patiently pursuing change by educating your leaders on the business case for the best demand generation software and talent and the specifics of what you need to succeed.

While a lack of executive buy-in can definitely result in demand generation struggles, it’s usually one that’s not easily solved with a consultant’s help.

4. You’re Drowning at the Top-of-the-Funnel

It’s common for demand marketers to feel like they’re drowning in lead files and spending far too much time managing owned and paid lead sources manually. Maybe you’re too busy manually entering leads into your marketing automation and/or CRM systems to measure performance effectively. Perhaps you know the value of sophisticated attribution, but you lack oversight into the entire customer journey across each of your touch points.

This is another common – and complex – challenge that’s not going to be solved most effectively with a consultant’s help. Spending your days suffering away on spreadsheets reveals a need for smarter technology and processes; or tools that can introduce automation at the top of your funnel.

It’s virtually impossible to run an effective marketing program without the right marketing technology to unify your campaigns, channels, lead sources and full-funnel results.

No One Ever Said Demand Marketing was Easy

Demand marketing is incredibly complex, and it’s only getting more challenging to scale up your efforts to meet your KPIs. B2B marketers in demand generation environments are no longer just responsible for lead generation. Instead, their success is measured through multi-channel engagement, sales pipeline contribution and the adoption of new demand generation strategies such as account-based marketing.

Regardless of where your team’s performance fell against targets last quarter, it’s wise to consider high-return ways to improve your results next quarter. However, understanding the root causes of your challenges is smart before you invest marketing budget into a demand generation consultant’s services. While some programs are remarkably well-served with consulting services, others may need to invest in software to manage complex campaigns or consider outsourcing marketing asset creation to an agency.

If you’re not sure how your demand generation program stacks up against the most effective B2B marketing programs, the B2B Demand Marketing Assessment Guide & Orchestration Workbook can help you identify whether your needs are best served by a consultant, technology or other solutions. With 12 customizable worksheets, this comprehensive resource is designed to help B2B marketers measure their efforts against benchmarks in every area of demand generation.

Customer journey mapping has emerged as one of the most powerful tools in the service design toolkit. Service design is an approach to the design of a product or service where all of the customer and user touchpoints are considered. Beyond this, the experience of the people managing and delivering the service is also taken into account.

Source: Burchberger, O (2016), Customer Journey - why it's so complicated and still worth it, Om Kantine, accessed 17 January 2018, http://www.omkantine.de/customer-journey-warum-sie-so-kompliziert-ist-und-sich-trotzdem-lohnt/

For a good detailed presentation on the customer journey see The Customer Journey Mapping Guide to Getting Started by Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré on the Wootric blog.

Ibbaka approaches pricing challenges by integrating design thinking into pricing best practices. The customer pathway is a key part of this work. So how does pricing fit into the customer pathway?

Please click here to take the survey on B2B Pricing Excellence

Let's look at the typical stages in the pathway. Note that the early stages are similar to those in the typical customer buying process.

• Awareness of Pain
• Awareness of Solution
• Consideration
• Evaluation
• Decision
• Adoption
• Useage

Basically, consideration will occur when Awareness of Pain and Awareness of Solution occur in the same brain at the same time. It is marketing's job to make sure this happens.

To position pricing in this journey we have to unpack a few of these steps. The most important of these are Consideration, Evaluation and Decision. Pricing is at play in each of these steps.

Consideration-Make an emotional connection

Frame your offer - provide an 'order of magnitude' positioning on price

In the Consideration phase of the customer journey the potential buyer is trying to understand if the solution will actually address their pain. From a pricing perspective, this is where framing takes place. The potential customer wants to know what kind of solution this is, and have a general idea of what their commitment will have to be. This commitment includes an 'order of magnitude' understanding of price. If the buyer is looking for a consulting service that costs six figures and you are going to solve their problem with a SaaS solution that costs a few thousand dollars a month but that requires a multi-year commitment there is a serious mismatch. This kind of basic framing should be addressed in the Consideration phase. Connecting on emotional value drivers tends to be more important than economic value drivers at this phase. It is during the Consideration phase that you begin to build trust with your customer. Without trust, you will struggle to get the information you need to succeed in the Evaluation phase.

Evaluation-demonstrate value

Connect on Emotional and Economic Value Drivers and Provide Evidence

In the evaluation phase your offer has become part of the consideration set. The buyer has decided the kind of solution that fits their need and is now comparing alternatives. Do not lead with price. During this phase spend time establishing your economic value relative to the alternative. This means getting a good understanding of your customer's business and how you can improve it. Value drivers come in six main buckets. 

• Increase revenue
• Decrease operating expenses
• Decrease operating capital
• Decrease or defer capital investments
• Reduce risk
• Provide options

You should only focus on a few of these. Choose those where you have the most differentiated value compared to the alternative and where there is the most emotional resonance. If you find yourself negotiating price during the Evaluation phase you have done a poor job in framing your solution and in communicating value. This is not the time to get into a pricing negotiation.

Decision

Connect value to price

By the Decision phase your customer is ready to buy. Now is the time to introduce price. Do this by connecting value and price in the customer's mind, so that they understand intellectually (as economic actors) and emotionally (as human decision makers) the value and why the price is fair compensation for the value.

In many cases you will have to negotiate the final price with the procurement department. Here it is critical that the business buyer be able to make your case for you to procurement. If procurement refuses to acknowledge the value of a certain component, be prepared to remove it from the offer (procurement will often back down) . You should also be willing to negotiate a small discount or some other concessions with procurement that will make them look good (procurement people have emotions too and they need to believe they are adding value to their organization, so help them add value).

After the sale

Deliver Value and Build Trust

Pricing work continues after the sale. There will usually be up sell and cross sell opportunities. Winning renewal is key (SaaS business models tend not to work well with high churn). The best way to do all of these things is to deliver the value you have promised and to continue to build trust. If usage or engagement numbers suggest that the customer is not getting the proposed value, step in, understand why, and if necessary make adjustments to the price. If you do this proactively you will build trust and in many cases have an opportunity to build the account back up. If you wait until the customer comes to you it will be too late. The customer will already be ready to consider other solutions.

Pricing excellence is based on an understanding of how you create differentiated value. Value communication and delivery has to be woven through the entire marketing and sales process. In this way you build trust. Trust is a requirement for a successful value-based pricing program.

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“If in doubt, do it like Amazon. They test everything so they know what they’re doing.”

Have you heard this one before? Have you said it? Have you believed it? It sure sounds like good common sense. Too bad it’s a horrible idea.

Amazon is the pack leader when it comes to ecommerce. We all want what they have, an Alexa global rank of 11, US rank of 5, over 2.6 billion visits per year, an average six-plus minute visit duration, an average bounce rate of only 36.22%, and over 8 million organic keywords.

Amazon is doing a ton of things right, probably most things, but they are human. Where there are humans, there are mistakes. When you put lots of humans into a large group, they’re prone to make even more mistakes.

For example, you’d expect Amazon to have the best checkout process online. It’s the one user action every customer uses. In a recent study, Baymard selected 100 of the top US etailers and put them head to head in a UX study. Amazon’s checkout process ranked a dismal 74 out of 100.

That means, if you copied Amazon’s checkout process, you copied a sub-par checkout. Ouch.

Here are five more reasons why you should avoid copying Amazon.

You don’t know what is passing or failing the test

Amazon does seem to test everything. Meaning, they do and will have low-performing features on their site. It’s the nature of testing. Not everything tested is going to be a home run.

This presents a huge problem for anyone planning to copy from Amazon. You don’t know what is undergoing a test. Furthermore, you don’t know what’s passing the test, what’s failing the test, or what a test is even testing.

A common assumption is if an Amazon feature has been around forever, it must work. That’s fair. Yet, a feature working in the past doesn’t mean it will always work. You could very well copy a feature Amazon is discovering no longer works or is effective. You could copy a feature Amazon has slated for removal.

It’s impossible to know what Amazon is doing at any given time. Assuming you do know could be a costly mistake for your business.

They Play A Different Game

Amazon’s sheer size should give anyone pause before trying to do it the Amazon way. Amazon is able to generate revenue in ways that are impossible for the majority of businesses. Their distribution network alone puts them in an exclusive group of global players.

You can’t afford to look at a feature in isolation. You shouldn’t assume the said feature is hitting it’s KPI’s. You shouldn’t even assume what KPI’s are being measured. Depending on the feature, Amazon could be “losing” with any single feature but satisfying any number of KPIs.

Amazon has a unique competitive advantage that puts them in a prestigious class. They can afford to lose money in one area if it makes them more in another.

For example, if you were comparing Amazon’s shipping methods vs. yours, you might assume doing it the Amazon way is the best way. Their distribution network alone makes it unwise for you to assume their way would work for you. It’s most likely impossible for you to implement at all.

Trust, Expectations, & Forgiveness

There’s a long history and reputation with Amazon. They’ve been at it since the beginning. Through all that time, Amazon has maintained a high level of customer confidence. They’ve spent billions to cultivate their reputation.

In return, shoppers know what to expect from Amazon. Shoppers know they can find just about anything on Amazon. They know Amazon has a diverse and trustworthy review system. They know they can get their purchase delivered within 2 business days. They know if it doesn’t work out they have recourse and return options.

Shoppers know what to expect. This buys a tremendous amount of grace when it comes underperforming features. Any single feature can be subpar when the totality of the experience and trust overrides any isolated dissatisfaction.

You have a harder road in front of you. Establishing trust the majority of shoppers grant to Amazon doesn’t come easy. There isn’t much room for error.

Before you copy, you need to realize Amazon can afford a failed test. That same failed test on your end could send your shoppers packing, never to return again.

It’s not fair, but when you upset your shoppers, they know they can always go and find it on Amazon.

Market Differences

You’re building based on of Amazon’s data and insights, not your own. You’re ignoring your customers, your data, your industry and your market in favor of Amazon’s data – without ever seeing their data.

Amazon is a behemoth. They compete on a global scale against other international multi-billion dollar marketplaces. They’re playing a multi-billion dollar game. They service millions of customers a day with an even larger product catalog.

The feature you’re about to copy is built for those business models. They could be targeting a tiny subset of a unique customer base. Or, they could be building said feature for their entire global user base?

It’s impossible to know, and even if you could get insight into who it’s for, you’d need to know why. What metric or user-behavior are they trying to capture or influence? What outcome or goal is that feature being measured against? What determines if that feature is meeting, exceeding or failing its objective?

It’s safe to say your needs and customer base is different than Amazon’s.

Even If You Get Lucky, You Lose

Let’s say you luck out and copy a successful feature. How would you know? How would you recognize your newly implemented feature being a success or failure?

If you can’t test now and implement based on your current data, how are you going to test a concept that was built off of Amazon’s data and insights?

The very fact you’re copying now, proves you don’t know how to audit and optimize off your own data. The simple act of copying throws all your relevant data in the trash.

Own it, you’re being lazy. You’re looking for a quick fix, and you don’t value your own insights. Copying a feature is not going to change that outcome.

Own your data. Value it.

What to do instead

Just because you shouldn’t copy Amazon, that doesn’t mean you should ignore Amazon. You should look to them for inspiration.

When you find that feature you’re positive works, then analyze it. Know the technique of what it is, how it’s implemented. Know why it works, where it works, and where it wouldn’t. Take your inspirations and create something better. Build something tailored for your store, custom made for your shoppers.

Being inspired is a good thing. Being able to take those ideas is ideal. Your goal should be to build on them further with your own twist. Adding your perspective will produce great results that are unique to you and your shoppers.

As T.S Eliot said:

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

The transition to clean energy is now here, and it’s giving B.C.’s key mining and minerals sector a lift. Vancouver has always been a hotbed for exploration, investment and fundraising in minerals such as gold, silver and copper and a source of global mining expertise. But now we are seeing more and more activity around cobalt, lithium and nickel: essential ingredients powering the clean energy transition.

This is not a short-term blip in the market. The momentum behind the clean energy revolution continues to build. Electric vehicle sales hit more than 770,000 units in 2016, a 42 per cent jump over 2015, and the pace is expected to intensify in the next 24 months. In a bold move to decrease air pollution, China, home to the world’s largest auto market, recently announced that automakers must amass credits for ‘new-energy’ vehicles equivalent to 10 per cent of annual sales by 2019 and 12 per cent by 2020.

Meanwhile, Volvo announced in September that all its car models launched after 2019 will be electric or hybrids, making it the first major traditional automaker to set a date for phasing out new passenger models that are powered solely by the internal combustion engine. Others are likely to quickly follow suit.

It is not just targets and regulations, but widespread consumer acceptance of the electric car that industry insiders are calling the truly transformative event now underway. This will not just affect the technology, clean energy and auto industries, but others such as mining as well.

The recent World Bank report, The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low-Carbon Future, predicts that as the world works towards commitments to keep the global average temperature rise at or below 2°C over the period from 2013 to 2050, the growth in demand for the components in electric storage batteries will quickly exceed 1,000 per cent.

Demand, reflected by rising values, is already brisk. Over the past two years, battery-grade lithium has nearly tripled in price, while the value of cobalt has doubled in that same time frame.

Growth in clean energy is also driving significant demand for the metals and mineral products used to manufacture technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and LED lighting, as well as sparking renewed interest in uranium as a clean power source.

Miners are aiming to disrupt the sector with technology to make these minerals cheaper and easier to extract. With each passing day, research and development departments are working feverishly to bring these technologies closer to market.

And where are many of these mining companies headquartered? Right here in Vancouver. In fact, of the 988 resource companies listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, 626 call Vancouver home.

With an almost universal consensus that the world is moving quickly toward embracing green technologies and clean energy, investor interest in minerals and metals supporting the economy of the future is driving the industry forward.

We see the demand first hand at Cambridge House International as we approach our flagship event, the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. In order to keep pace with demand from both investors and companies, we have expanded the show by 30 per cent since last year, and our trade show floor space is sold out for the first time in seven years — largely fuelled by growth from the energy metals.

What we are witnessing today is a sea change in the mining industry, driven by new technologies, innovations and ideas that simply cannot be stopped. We expect change to bring about a new era of investment, exploration and mining for minerals that have been on the map for decades but under-utilized until now. Technology and mining are inextricably linked going forward, with advancement in either sector driving change in the other.

These are exciting times for the industry, and for B.C.

 

Jay Martin is the Vancouver-based CEO of Cambridge House International, producer of the 2018 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, taking place at the Vancouver Convention Centre West on Jan. 21 and 22.

“Wow! Check out what technology is making possible!”

If Intel’s digital magazine iQ could speak, that’s what it would say. One article, for example, describes an emergency button that outdoor adventurers can attach to their clothing. Another describes a tiny drone that may someday help pollinate plants.

iQ by Intel may not sell those emergency buttons, the bee-like drones, or any of the other tech-driven creations it covers. And it doesn’t directly promote Intel; the only place you see the tech giant’s name is in a logo so small you can’t read it, and in quotes from the company’s experts. iQ simply tells fascinating story after fascinating story of technology in the world.

I discovered iQ while writing this post. It didn’t take long for me to sign up. And that, I realized, is how the media model – the very thing discussed here – works.

Today’s savvy content marketers are at least eyeing if not yet adopting the business model established by media organizations. In this model, content has one main job: to build a loyal audience of subscribers. We hear about it all the time.

But how do traditional marketers make the switch? How do we evolve from seeing content as sales collateral to acting like publishers?

Start by studying iQ’s five-year evolution as the iQ team replaced its marketing mindset with a publishing one.

iQ’s head of publishing Luke Kintigh and iQ’s managing editor Deb Landau shared the lessons learned in their Content Marketing World talk How Intel Evolved From Blogging to Running a Full-Fledged Media Property. 

The evolution of iQ by Intel

Since its 2012 launch, iQ has become a full-fledged media property. Without building a loyal audience, iQ’s editorial team couldn’t hope to achieve what they’ve set out to do. And what have they set out to do? Nothing short of spreading an understanding of Intel’s view of “technology’s role in all parts of the world, not just in a tech category.”

“Content allows us to build that influence,” says Luke.

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#Content allows us to build influence, says @lukekintigh @intel.
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This diagram from Luke and Deb’s presentation shows how the iQ team’s focus has evolved.

Intel launched iQ as an “employee-driven curation engine,” a blog that mostly sent readers from the Intel site to other people’s content sites. In other words, iQ at first was “not intended to be a destination.”

Over time, the team made choices that advanced its practices. It moved from outsourcing to insourcing, from reaching audiences to retaining them, from single posts to series, and from a traditional marketing model to a publishing model.

Luke and Deb identify five ways iQ operates as a media property:

1. The team owns the audiences and data.
2. It insources the content.
3. It seeks to retain and influence unique audiences.
4. It plays the long game.
5. It treats their content as a product.

For more on each of these traits, see the sections below.

1. Own your audiences and data

Whereas marketers often rent audiences and data on someone else’s platform, media companies own audiences and data on their own platform.

Like many companies, Intel learned the hard way that third-party platforms “are a place to harvest an audience, not build it,” as Luke puts it. Intel “invested a lot of money to build up our fan base to 25 or 30 million,” only to discover that its organic reach was a puny portion of that total: 2,500 or so.

“Mark Zuckerberg is your landlord,” Luke says, referring to Facebook’s control of its audience. “He will change your rental agreement when he wants, and you can’t do much about it.”

Originally, the iQ team measured content success in terms of social engagement: the number of shares, comments, “likes,” and retweets. Intel focused on how well iQ content traveled through social feeds.

Today, the iQ team follows a push-pull distribution model. “Just because you build it doesn’t mean that people will come,” Deb says.

Luke advises, “Push content to where people are discovering it, where they are. But don’t stop there. Pull them in to your own sites and your own infrastructure, and then convert them into email subscribers, harvest more data, get smarter about what kind of content they want to consume.”

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Push #content to where people discover it. Then pull them to your sites, says @lukekintigh.
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The focus for iQ has shifted from reaching audiences to retaining audiences. “Traffic isn’t enough,” Deb says.

Luke adds, “We figured out that instead of dropping a bunch of one-time traffic, we want to pull people back in to the site, create those repeat readers, email subscribers, and brand loyalists.”

2. Insource your content

Whereas marketers typically outsource publishing to agencies and consultants, media companies hire and cultivate in-house journalists and content creators.

You may still want to hire an agency for help with certain things – analytics, for example. “But think about The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal,” Luke says. “Their content is compelling because they invest in their own people. They don’t outsource their front-page news and editorial content. They have amazing people writing and creating content.”

If your company’s leaders are reluctant to hire because they’re looking for a cheap way to produce content, Deb has news for them: “Creating content is expensive.”

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Creating #content is expensive, says @debword. Read more >>
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The iQ team spends a lot of time editing and working with writers to get the right stories, the right interviews, the right voices. Deb says, “Before we go and spend a bunch of money promoting the stories, we make sure that they’re worth promoting. We don’t want to put out something that clutters up the ecosystem.”

3. Seek to retain and influence unique audiences

Whereas marketers typically strive to boost reach and eyeballs, media companies seek to influence – and retain – unique audiences.

In its early days, when iQ published mostly curated content, the magazine was all about “posting, posting, posting,” Deb says. “It looked good, but nobody was reading it. Nobody. Not even people inside Intel.”

As they moved toward a media model, they differentiated their content for a niche audience. “Unless you break through the noise and tell stories that only your brand can tell,” Luke says, “you’re never going to make an impact.”

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You’re never going to make an impact unless you tell stories that only your brand can tell, says @lukekintigh.
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The iQ team discovered one way to appeal to a unique audience is to go in depth with the stories and create serialized content. It used to publish 60 or so posts every month, “a ton of content that wasn’t necessarily connected,” Luke says. Over the years, it cut to half that many – 30 or so stories every month.

“We needed to choose the right stories, not just a bunch of stories,” Deb says. “More is not better. Better is better.”

“You’ll see a lot of four-, five-, six-part series on iQ,” Luke says. “They give our audiences a way to naturally stay engaged in that story line. We’re taking a page out of Netflix instead of chasing that volume game.”

To create content that matters to your unique audience, Deb says, “it has to be for them, not for us. That’s a shift in mindset.”

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To create #content that matters to your unique audience, it has to be for them, says @debword.
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4. Play the long game

Whereas marketers often play it short with brand campaigns, media companies play the long game.

Media companies can achieve this with franchises and series. Luke: “We all love to cite Red Bull as the signature example in content marketing and publishing. We have to realize that they committed to being a media company 15 to 20 years ago and not 15 to 20 months ago. It takes patience to develop an audience.”

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It takes patience to develop an audience, says @lukekintigh.
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Deb adds, “One of the things we’ve learned is that content marketing is hard. It’s hard to do it effectively, and it’s even harder to figure out what effective means.”

Of course, marketers are under pressure from a “giant sea of stakeholders” who want to know: How are you going to add sales? How are you proving ROI?

The iQ team “decided to stop trying to prove ROI and think more like a publisher,” Deb says. “Think about audience cultivation. Circulation. We’re in it for the long game. That’s a different approach.”

5. Treat your content as a product

Whereas marketers use content to sell products, media companies treat their content as a product, something with value in its own right. Eventually, that approach to content drives demand for other products.

Luke’s 4-year-old son has Cars toothbrushes, Cars pull-ups, Cars books, and a lot of Cars toys based on the movie distributed by Disney.

Judging by Luke’s house, you might consider Disney a product company. In reality, Disney is a media company first and foremost. Its “killer content” drives billions of dollars in merchandise sales.

As marketers, Luke says, think big about how to productize content in a way that will “naturally drive interest and demand for the products we sell.” This approach can be a hard sell to upper management, who want to “see the sales, the shopping carts, all those conversions.”

To treat content as a product, you must know the difference between a thing and a story. Deb says, “That difference is huge. People want to read about people.”

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People want to read about people, says @debword.
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For example, a computing group came to iQ because it wanted to show how it supported small businesses. The editorial team created a series called She Owns It.

We profiled four small business owners, women entrepreneurs who were using technology to make their dreams come true. By doing that, we showed that Intel supports small business while showing some ways that people are using technology. These interesting stories about interesting women generated a lot of engagement.

Conclusion

Is your organization’s content so compelling that a writer researching you would get caught up in your material and subscribe? If not, what would it take to lift your content to that level? What benefits would your organization reap from having a growing number of subscribers eager to read everything you publish?

Ask yourself questions like those, and you’re on your way to acting like a publisher.

Here’s an excerpt from Deb and Luke’s talk: 

Discover how to be the single source of content for audiences and much more at the Intelligent Content Conference March 20-22 in Las Vegas. Register today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Stop Acting Like a Marketer and Start Acting Like a Publisher appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Loyalty is one of those rare qualities that cannot be replicated. It is someone’s ability to stay faithful or committed to a person, place, or thing. In business, loyalty means having clients that will only come time and time again to your firm for help – they won’t even think of going elsewhere. You can see how loyal clients are a business asset that you should strive to create.

Knowing this, a lot of firms must be focusing on growing client retention, right? Wrong.

Only 18% of businesses focus on client retention and 44% focus on client acquisition. Unknown to them, this actually hurts their bottom line as client acquisition costs can be five times more expensive than client retention costs. And not only does client retention bring costs down, it also brings profits up. Just a 5% increase in client retention can increase your profit by 25% to 95%, according to a study by Bain & Company and the Harvard Business School.

As evidenced above, client retention is a worthwhile focus for your professional services firm. To help you make client retention a top priority at your firm and improve your bottom line, here are seven best practices and strategies that can help you lock down loyal, faithful clients.

1. Be Responsive

Being unresponsive can leave a bad impression on clients. Without a timely response from you, clients are left waiting and wondering how much you really care about their business. In a service based industry, answering client emails, calls, or texts in a timely fashion are important for improving client satisfaction and impressing them with how much you value their relationship.

Encourage your firm’s sales, business development, or customer service teams to be more responsive with clients by implementing client communication rules. For example, you can create a rule at your firm for all client communications to receive a response in 24 hours or less. Even if a client doesn’t ask for a response, this rule ensures that your clients will never be waiting be waiting on you and left with a reassurance that you’re listening to them and their needs.

2. Customize Communications

Every client you have is a unique individual with different backgrounds, preferences, and needs. But clients don’t always feel unique when they receive a generic spam email or newsletter. In fact, they may feel like just another number, which isn’t necessarily good for business or promoting client retention.

Help clients feel special by taking the extra step to customize your client communications. This means no more mass generalized emails or holiday cards. Instead, personalize your messages with your client’s name and other unique traits. For example, if you are aware that a client recently got back from a vacation, ask how they enjoyed their time away in your next follow up to strengthen your client relationship.

3. Support Clients Proactively

Reactive support only solves problems once they arrive. Proactive support solves a problem before it happens.

Which one would you prefer as a client?

Support clients proactively by closely monitoring and communicating with your client accounts. Keep a watchful eye on their status and communications for any warning signs that may indicate a dip in client satisfaction or a potential service gap. If you want to make proactive support an even easier task, implement relationship analytics into your firm’s CRM. With enhanced algorithms, you can receive automatic alerts when key accounts become at risk, giving your team ample time to step in and mitigate issues before they arise.

4. Reward Loyalty

How can you encourage clients to come back and back again to your firm, creating a habit that’s hard to break? Incentivize them to return to you for help by rewarding their loyalty. As a professional services firm, not an airline or retail store, it can be hard to imaging a loyalty program that fits your business model. After all, it’s not like you can give clients a loyalty credit card or redeemable points. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Create a loyalty program at your firm by giving return clients a small discount that incentivizes them to use your firm. Alternatively, you can try bundling your services together as a but one, get one half-off or something similar. The key to successful loyalty reward is making it relevant for your clients. To accomplish this, make sure that whatever reward you do end up offering is tailored for each client and their needs.

5. Exceed Expectations

Providing good service is a requirement for any firm, but going the extra mile to provide exceptional customer services is becoming a key differentiator for many firms. Not only does this extra mile show clients you value their relationship, but it also helps ensure that they’ll stick with you when competitors knock on their door. If they know you do extra for them, why would they go anywhere else?

Exceed your clients’ expectations by always doing more than what they ask for – within reason, of course. Short of expenditures that are out of scope, give them additional detail, information, or insights than they asked for. These are usually quick and free ways to show clients that you pay close attention to their account, but also that you are willing to spend more time on them. This helps your team develop stronger relationships with clients and establish an elevated level of trust.

6. Become a Trusted Advisor

In our experience, trust is often the gateway to loyalty. Without trust, clients are less likely to return to your firm. Build trust into your client relationships by taking every opportunity to offer up your firm’s expert advice and showcase your team’s expertise. To do this, encourage your team to share their thought-provoking ideas and leading advice over their social media networks or through your firm’s newsletter. If your firm utilizes a company blog, post thought leadership and how-to content from your team’s experts. These strategies and more make it easy for clients to access your trusted resources at any time, making your firm a go-to place for valuable help.

7. Listen to Feedback

If you don’t know how you’re performing, how will you ever improve? Conduct regular client surveys to make sure you are collecting and reviewing your client’s feedback on your performance. To start, try doing an annual or every quarterly survey. Through this survey, you will be able to identify areas at your firm that are underperforming and could be affecting your client satisfaction level. Based on their answers, keep the ball rolling by taking action to address client concerns and improve those areas of your firm.

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Bank of America’s (BofA) investments in its digital offerings are paying off, as shown by ongoing growth in its digital channels in Q4 2017. 

• BofA added about 2 million users to its digital channels, predominantly to mobile. The bank's active digital users jumped from 32.9 million to 34.9 million annually, an increase largely driven by mobile banking users, which increased by 2.6 million users year-over-year (YoY). Although that 12% growth is slower than last year's 16%, the firm's gains are on pace with competitors like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — BofA's total falls squarely between the two banks' totals. 
• Engagement is rising too. Mobile channel usage rose 34% YoY to reach 1.3 billion interactions in the quarter. This demonstrates that customers are making use of the bank's digital offerings and relying on mobile banking tools more than ever before. 

This growth is reflective of the bank’s efforts throughout the last year to meet the shifting needs of its consumers. BofA has been closing branches rapidly, which helps the firm free up cash, as digital deposits are significantly cheaper than over-the-counter transactions.

And the firm has likely been used the savings to invest in digital offerings: BofA consistently updated its digital and mobile offerings throughout 2017, adding contactless ATM functionality, for example, and integrating tools like the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) offering Zelle. These innovations have likely contributed to rising interactions. 

Additionally, the firm enhanced its mobile dashboard to improve usability, which also could have driven engagement. Ongoing growth, both in users and engagement, reflects that BofA's investments have been paying off. And as the firm continues to dabble in innovation, with efforts like its humanless branch tests, it's likely to see further gains. 

 In BI Intelligence's Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study, 83% of respondents said they use mobile banking. And banks are investing in mobile banking capabilities at unprecedented levels: Bank of America tripled its 2015 mobile banking budget in 2016, and maintained it through 2017, for example. Cutting-edge banking services are “table-stakes to attract and retain customers,” according to Michelle Moore, Head of Digital at Bank of America.

BI Intelligence’s first Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Report identifies which mobile banking and emerging features are most important to consumers when choosing a bank. The study ranks the largest 15 banks and credit unions in the US by whether they offer the mobile features that customers say they care most about. The report helps channel strategists choose which features they should focus their attention on, and lets them see how they compare to rival banks in offering those features. 

This study uses exclusive data from the BI Insiders Panel (BIIP), an exclusive online community of 17,000 of our readers from all over the world. Designed to be a leading-edge indicator of what’s next in digital, BIIP members tend to be affluent, tech-savvy early adopters. This means that the BIIP community is an especially sensitive indicator of what consumers will buy and adopt, as well as what behaviors, devices, and platforms will be the winners in digital disruption. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Wells Fargo leads the pack. The bank offers in-demand mobile transfer capabilities, along with competitive features related to security and mobile wallets. USAA follows closely behind in second. Bank of America and Citi are tied for third, and Capital One rounds out the top five.
• Mobile transfers are the most in-demand mobile features. Transfers are the most important category of features to consumers when choosing a bank, according to our study. The most in-demand feature in this study, instant transfers, is in this category. Transfers also include bill pay, international transfers, and peer-to-peer (P2P) payments.
• Post-Equifax, consumer interest in security tools is high. Security and control was the second most popular category in the study. Gen Xers value several features in this category — such as setting travel notifications and mobile access to ATMs — more than millennials.
• Interest in advanced mobile banking account access is poised to jump. The account access section, the third most popular in this study, includes features like biometrics and account aggregation. With Face ID giving customers a new way to log in to banking, interest in the group of features will likely rise.
• In spite of lagging adoption, interest in mobile wallets is still healthy. This category weighs not only whether banks support provisioning their cards in each of the popular wallets, but if they offer their own bank-branded wallets. Our study shows consumers rank support of third-party wallets as much more important than banking solutions.
• Conversational features have the lowest demand in the study. The voice- or chatbot-based banking tools in the category are desired by only a small fraction of consumers. Instead of using the features to attract new customers, banks are exploring offloading costly transitional conversations with live support staff to AI. 

 In full, the report:

• Shows how 32 mobile features stack up according to how important consumers say they are for choosing a new bank.
• Ranks the top 15 banks on whether they offer each of those features.
• Analyzes how demographics effect demand for different mobile features.
• Provides strategies for banks to best attract and retain customers with mobile features.

The full report is available to BI Intelligence enterprise clients. To learn more about this report, email Senior Account Executive Chris Roth (croth@businessinsider.com). BI Intelligence's Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study includes: Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, Chase, Citibank, Fifth Third, HSBC, Key Bank, Navy Federal Credit Union, PNC, SunTrust, TD, US Bank, and USAA.

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In 2018, will you be taking advantage of all the marketing avenues available to you? Experts predict that ephemeral content marketing will reign supreme this year. To help you understand what this content is and how it can help you, I have done the research to help guide you as you create your ephemeral content marketing strategy, including an explanation of what it is and how it’s used successfully.

What Is Ephemeral Content?

As the name suggests, ephemeral content doesn’t last long. You catch it when it happens, or it’s gone. In the 20^th century, prior to tape recorders and video cassette recorders, all content was ephemeral. Recording devices made it possible to capture radio and TV productions, and the technology of the 21^st century made this an everyday part of life.

In the era of DVR, on-demand services, and of software and hardware additions to a computer, capturing content today is so easy people only notice it when it doesn’t work. Ephemeral content has gone from a category that once included everything, to what is now intentionally created to be temporary. Snapchat started this trend, but other social media platforms are jumping on the bandwagon because of Snapchat’s success.

Content on Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or Facebook Messenger Day will vanish after an allotted time or when users have opened them. Such temporary content carries with it a sense of exclusivity, engagement with the creator, and FOMO (fear of missing out). This level of engagement, pushed by regularly added content that entertains or informs, brings more people to the service.

Who’s Doing It Right?

One example of successful ephemeral content use is Main Course record label. During the first week of release, the label offers free copies through Soundcloud. Only people on Soundcloud engaging with the right channel can get these copies, which means the users will stay actively connected with the channel. Main Course engages their attention and capitalizes by directing them to other products they offer.

Paramount, Bad Robot, and Skydance used an ephemeral marketing approach for the movie Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. They offered Snapchat followers missions to complete, like the team in the movie. Their fans came out in force, sending pictures or videos that helped market the film. When it was all done, 65 million impressions proved how successful they were in engaging fans to interact with and invest in the movie.

Full Blast Creative engages their customers by sharing production milestones and other important progress markers, via Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook Live. Samsung hopped on this train in 2014, using Snapchat to share user-generated content to promote an event they sponsored across the internet.

What to Do in 2018

An engaged fan helps create buzz without a brand investing more money in marketing. After all, buzz generated from someone other than the brand goes a lot further than continued efforts by the content maker. Here are some recommended strategies experts predict will prove most effective in 2018:

1. Chatbots

In 2016, Harvard Business Review predicted that machines would generate about 20% of business content. With the rise of chatbots engaging audiences on websites, it’s safe to say that prediction did not miss the mark. Facebook reported in April, 2017, that 100,000 bots actively engage users on Facebook Messenger. Visit a legal blog, and odds are you will see a chat bot trying to engage you. Many banks now employ a bot on their mobile apps to direct you to self-help resources before finally ascertaining which department you may need for assistance.

These bots advance with the technology, but also by way of creators who train the bot with good content. A bot can only create the kind of story for your customer that you enable it to create. For example, a bot could glean enough information from a potential customer to offer them unique and specific aid to them, following that with an offer exclusive to their engagement with the bot. Once they leave, the deal is gone, thus creating ephemeral engagement. At CEM, we believe the potential warrants a close look to see if this means of engagement works for your business.

2. Engage Influencers

Everyone knows about influencer marketing. Heard of a George Foreman Grill? The name has become synonymous with any grill that does the same thing. The manufacturer capitalized on the influencer’s fame to turn his product into a smash success. Despite the fact that this technique has been in use for decades, brands find it hard to work this approach correctly.

The key lies in authenticity. The success of Twitch, an online streaming service, lies in the 2.2 million content creators logging in every day to stream live content to fans who flock to their channel. What these fans love is an authentic presence they can engage with. They keep coming back and stay tuned in because the creator is making content for them to watch live, giving it a sense of uniqueness that watching a video on demand (VOD) lacks. Twitch capitalizes on this by engaging those fans with several ways to generate revenue for Twitch, their sponsors, and the content creator.

When a TV program you are watching suddenly interacts with you personally, you become more engaged. Now imagine that program has a link to a product. At first, you might ignore it. However, six days of viewing time later, when the creator comments on the link, you’re more likely to interact with it because you’ve invested a lot of yourself in this production, all because it interacted with you in a meaningful way. If that influencer took a moment to highlight the limited number available or offered some other kind of engagement with the viewer if they purchased the product before the stream ended, this interaction just became ephemeral: limited opportunity and immediate audience has an advantage on VOD viewers. These days the influencers are experts on products or people experienced in authentic engagement.

3. Personalized Ephemeral Content

Millennials, as a rule, distrust traditional marketing. Old ways of creating marketing content just don’t work on them. Today everyone wants content that speaks to them as a person, not just a source of profit. It needs to be relevant, personalized content that feels customized to each person.

At CEM, we recommend you gauge who your audience is and create characters that speak to your audience (this includes age, education level, gender, income, etc.). When you make your content, imagine each of these people. Then determine what you need to say and how best to say it. This video discussed on Vidyard, an online video platform, is a good example of how this works. To employ this approach ephemerally, Vidyard could have offered a limited opportunity deal or created a sense of scarcity with their product, followed by a second, different video that increased the scarcity or altered the offer.

Last week, I shared a presentation with an executive team at a large public SaaS company on everything I’ve learned about pricing. Here’s a summary of the frameworks and theory that I’ve aggregated over a decade of investing in startups.

Why do we set prices? Setting aside the important reasons of generating revenue and maintaining solvency for a business, there are many other reasons to set price. Price reinforces brand because price telegraphs whether a product is a premium product or a value product. Price differentiates products in the market and can be used as a go-to-market strategy. Underprice the competition to gain share. There are many others too.

There are four components to pricing: 1. Strategy: what is the goal of the price? 2. Philosophy: how does the company price relative to costs? 3. Structure: what is the pricing rubric? 4. Positioning: how best to communicate the price?

Strategy
There are only 3 pricing strategies: Skimming, Maximization, and Penetration. Skimming means charging the first to buy a product more than the later buyers. Maximization is charging the most you can extract in each sale. Penetration is under-pricing to gain share.

Philosophy
There are two pricing philosophies: cost-based pricing and value-based pricing. Cost-based pricing is common in commodity markets. To price based on cost, you take the cost of the product and then add a margin. If you’re targeting 50% margins, just double your cost and there you are.

Value based pricing means charging the customer what they are willing to pay. This requires understanding their budget and the value of the product to them.

Structure
In software, we typically see three pricing structures. Linear Pricing (LP) - Each analytics event costs $0.10.

2 Part Tariff (2PT) - The analytics software has a base platform fee of $10,000 and each analytics event processed by the system costs $0.10 more.

3 Part Tariff (3PT) - Again, the software has a base platform fee but the fee is $25,000 because it includes the first 150k events are free. Each marginal event costs $0.15.

In academic research and theory, the 3 part tariff is proven to be best. It provides many different ways for the sales team to negotiate on price and captures the most value.

Position
There are three ways to position pricing: per unit of consumption (message, analytics event, telephony minute), per person and ELA (enterprise license agreement), which is a prenegotiated deal for everyone in a business.

To figure out the right pricing strategy, it’s critical to determine what the buyer cares about. Do they care about cost or value? What is their core unit of their world: people, dollars, gigabytes? How predictable is the pricing plan? And can the buyer clearly articulate the pricing, advocate on your behalf and champion the purchase?

It’s also important to understand the seller’s needs. How does the pricing change the market size? The unit economics and cash flows associated with the sale? The competitive positioning?

All of these disciplines fall under product marketing. Well run product marketing teams develop these perspectives before product launch. By combining market research, interviews with prospective customers, conversations with the sales team, the product marketing team can develop a unified pricing strategy that is consistent with the company strategy and the sales tactics.

The challenge with pricing is that it’s never a constant. As an industry evolves, competitive pressures change, a vendor’s positioning changes and the buyer’s needs change, so must pricing.

Thinking through these 4 core parts of pricing is critical to ensuring internal alignment and maximizing success of developing the right pricing plan for your business.

Retaining customers is a bottom-line must for successful companies—especially SaaS companies where a predictable customer base is a must. An organization’s customers are the greatest asset it can have, and the longer those customers continue to invest in products and services, the more valuable they become.

This is why the concept of churn is so important to both growing and established organizations alike. As a customer success leader, you understand the importance of keeping customers successful along their journey with your organization. But the true cost of churn is rarely considered to its full implications. Not only does churn mean lost revenue, it also means your team has to double down on acquiring new customers for those that are lost. Afterall, it can cost up to 5 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain your current ones.

The True Cost of Churn – First 3 Factors

In this post and in our follow-on “The True Cost of Customer Churn: Part II” post, we’ll explore various aspects of churn that most customer success leaders and company executives don’t consider when calculating retention and churn rates. Let’s explore.

1. Lose Recurring Revenue

The easiest way to clearly understand the true cost of churn is by using hard numbers. Let’s say that, for example, your organization’s average contract value is $50,000. This means that losing even 10 customers a year valued at $50,000 each to churn can cost your organization upwards of $500,000 annually in lost ARR.

2. Lose Expansion Opportunity Revenue

In addition to the cost of recurring revenue each year, there’s also potential for loss of renewal income or upsell deals which are frequently excluded when calculating churn costs.

The probability of upselling to an existing customer is around 65%, compared to the probability to selling to a new prospect which is only around 13%. This means that for every current customer lost to churn, your organization is also missing out on a 65% chance of a new upsell or cross-sell opportunity. If your current customers are your most likely buyers, then the main goal of your entire organization should be to hold on to them as tight as possible.

Let’s say that your company has a expansion revenue goal of 20%. So you if churn $500,000 of recurring revenue (ARR), you are also losing the expansion dollars of $100,000.

3. CAC Cost to Acquire the New Customers

When churn occurs, not only does your marketing team have to dedicate time and resources to bringing in new leads and prospective customers, but now they have to refocus their attention to re-attract customers that have been lost.

Now, consider it costs approximately $30,000 to acquire a new customer (referred to as customer acquisition cost, or CAC). This means that in order to re-acquire all 10 lost customers, it could cost your organization over $300,000 annually. That represents nearly half a million dollars spent trying to recapture business your organization already had, but let slip through the cracks.

So let’s add up the true impact of customer churn:

+ $500,000 loss recurring revenue
+ $100,000 loss of expansion revenue
+ $300,000 CAC cost to acquire the lost customers
_________________________________________

= $900,000 true cost of churn.

At the end of the day, customer churn is unavoidable. There will always be unforeseen circumstances or issues that arise that result in churn. It is important, however, to realize that churn comes at a higher cost than just the absence of a logo on your nascar slide. Departments throughout your organization rely on customer retention to not only pay the bills, but more importantly, to make their time and efficiency count towards your company’s higher mission.

As is often the case, there are ways innovative organizations and customer success teams can proactively combat customer churn while also increasing retention and renewals. Decreasing monthly churn by just 5 customers (at a monthly contract size of $4,166) can save your company upwards of $250,000 a year.

There’s a basic principle of marketing that’s so foundational, that’s taught so early in the the journey to becoming a marketer, that’s something you just have to know if you want to be an awesome marketer, that most marketing blogs skip right over it.

That principle?

Audience segmentation.

Honestly, this is the stuff that separates the professionals from the amateurs.

Though I recently wrote a blog post about audience segmentation, I really didn’t dive into it the way I’m about to.

The truth is, audience segmentation is a fundamental, basic principle of marketing that every young marketer learns from the beginning of their education.

However, if you’re learn this stuff online, if you’re getting your education (as many modern digital marketers do nowadays) by reading marketing blogs (like this one), it’s very possible you’ll skip right past this stuff.

So let’s dive in and talk about audience segmentation, some examples, why it’s so foundational, and how you can put it to work for your business.

Audience Segmentation — A Basic Principle of Marketing

At its most basic, your audience is that large mass of human beings out there in the world who might be interested in what you have to offer.

What you have to offer varies from business to business, so the audience varies as well. Depending on what you sell and the nature of your product, you might have a vastly different audience from the business next door.

At its most basic, your audience is that large mass of human beings out there in the world who might be interested in what you have to offer

Audience segmentation is the process of breaking your audience into pieces so that you can market more personally to each one. For instance, a baker in Boston with a physical store and an online business already has three clear segments based on geography:

• Everyone within their physical delivery area (a 30 mile radius)
• Everyone outside that area but within Massachusetts
• Everyone out of state
• Everyone outside the U.S.

That’s a simple audience segmentation example that’s easy to implement — the deals I market to my international customers are going to be somewhat different than what I market to my out-of-state customers, and my deals for people who actually come into the store are going to be different as well.

That’s basic audience segmentation — you can do this with just about any property of your audience, but these are the more common ways to segment:

• By geographic area
• By demographics (age, sex, ethnicity, education, number of children, income, job)
• AIO (activities, interests, opinions)
• Psychographics (personality, lifestyle, values)
• Behavior

But this is all beginner-level stuff — this is what you need to just get started. To create really targeted segments (and correspondingly more-effective marketing), you need to consider something else.

If You Want to Segment Your Audience Properly, Stop Thinking of People as Stereotypes

One of the most common mistakes I see when it comes to audience segmentation is an incredible focus on demographic information, AIO, psychographics, and the like, at the expense of… basically everything else.

Marketers and business owners spend absurd amounts of time slicing and dicing their audience as though the information gleaned will provide some sort of magic bullet for their marketing.

You’re not selling products or services to stereotypes

Now, don’t get me wrong — demographic information is important. AIO is even more important.

But, when that’s the extent of your segmentation efforts, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Because all you’ve really done here is create 2-dimensional characters to represent your potential customers…

In other words, you’ve turned your customers into stereotypes.

But you’re not selling products or services to stereotypes.

You’re selling to 3-dimensional human beings, and human beings are not defined simply by their race, their interest in skydiving, or their opinion on current and former presidents.

Your Customer’s Success

The only thing that matters to your audience when it comes to your product or service is their success — and how the product or service you sell is going to get them there.

A customer isn’t coming to you to buy a new home because they’re a middle-aged hispanic couple who go kayaking on the weekends and have a little extra money to spend now that the kids are out of the house.

They’re coming to you because they need, want, or are at least thinking about buying, a new house.

They have a problem.

They need you to solve it.

Possibly.

What’s much more important to these folks (and much more important to you) is two-fold:

• Their location on the buyer’s journey
• What success looks like to them

Divide Your Audience by Their Position in the Buyer’s Journey

If those folks come to you while they’re still just considering the mere possibility of buying a house, but you’re only really interested in speaking to people who are ready to buy today, then there’s a serious disconnect that likely won’t be solved with a simple walkthrough of a property.

It also influences how you market to them

If you know that this house is going to be sold within the month to someone, then what good does it do your business to market to, and bring in, leads who aren’t even close to interested in buying?

Whether or not they fit the demographic you’re looking for doesn’t particularly matter if they’re not ready to buy today, in this example.

This doesn’t just influence whether or not you market to someone — it also influences how you market to them.

And this is true in many different industries with many different types of products or services. If you’re selling x-ray machines, for example, the buyer’s journey is going to look very different compared to someone selling yoga pants.

The Buyer’s Journey Should Strongly Define the Segments You Create

How you market to someone in the beginning of the buyer’s journey for an x-ray machine is just going to look different, is going to be weighted differently compared to other portions of the journey, and may be more or less critical compared to how you market to someone in later stages of the journey.

A 25% off coupon emailed to someone who visited my website a week ago to look at yoga pants might be just the thing to entice them into a sale, whereas I might try a different tactic if I notice they’re actively perusing my website, clicking through multiple pages, and checking out a variety of styles.

But even considering the buyer’s journey isn’t going to ensure your marketing is awesome

My x-ray buyers might take years to make a decision, and my ability to get in front of them well before that decision takes place may be the difference between success and failure.

But even considering the buyer’s journey isn’t going to ensure your marketing is awesome and that you’re sending the right message to the right person at the right time.

Here’s the mindset you need to cultivate if you want to create marketing that’s truly impactful.

The Secret to Audience Segmentation, a Basic Principle of Marketing — Defining Your Audience’s Success

Everything I’ve discussed up to this point — demographics, psychographics, the buyer’s journey — all of this adds up to one thing:

Your customer seeks success.

Success over a problem, maybe, or maybe an improvement in daily life, something that brings them joy, something that makes life easier, something that changes how they feel.

Whatever that success looks like, if you can define the variations of it, all the different possible successes that members of your audience can experience, you’re going to be able to clearly define:

• The right marketing message
• The right person to deliver it to
• The right time to deliver it
• The right way to deliver it
• The right method by which to deliver it

It’s a different way to think about things. It turns our usual method of audience segmentation upside down.

Start With Your Customer’s Success and Work Backwards

If you stop thinking from the beginning of the sale (from the product/service I want to sell and how much I want to sell), and instead think from the desired endpoint backwards (a customer who is happy because of your product/service), you’re able to more clearly define those items listed above.

Speak, in a deep, impactful way, directly to the people you are best positioned to help

Stop doing this:

“We have 20 widgets! We need to sell these widgets!”

Start doing this:

“We have 100 potential customers! What can we do to bring them success?”

Thinking from the endpoint backwards looks like this:

• Who are these people?
• What do they look like/act like/think like/talk like?
• What do they care about?
• What is their position on the buyer’s journey?
• What makes them happy?
• What makes them unhappy?
• What, ultimately, does success looks like for them?
• What does success look like for all our potential customers?
• What are the different possible successes that we can deliver?

Suddenly, our marketing isn’t focused on us and what we’re selling, what we need and want.

Instead, our marketing is much more likely to speak, in a deep, impactful way, directly to the people we are best positioned to help.

The Most Basic Principle of Marketing — Satisfy Your Customer

Everything I’ve talked about in this blog post is the foundation of our Ultimate Customer Persona Template. It’s something that’s so important for marketers and business owners to understand that I just felt compelled to share it with you.

When sales fall short the obvious culprits get the blame: the product line is weak, prospects don’t get your value or the price is too high.

But no one blames it on inadequate listening skills. And yet, listening has been the focus of many studies – and these studies all prove something. Effective listening is a powerful tool to winning a big sale, and poor listening skills can blow a big sale.

The stereotypical salesperson likes to talk incessantly about his or her product. However, the selling environment today is much more challenging than merely smooth-talking the customer all the way to a big sale and hefty profit margins.

Winning competitive sales today takes active listening, great concentration, thorough comprehension and the ability to use the information gained to articulate a powerful, relevant value proposition.

The sales professional today needs to be seen as a partner and a resource who works with buyers to find the best solution value. That’s why they must pay close attention in face-to-face and phone dialogue. They must also give careful consideration to what the customer is saying and weigh that information with previous conversations. And they should ask intelligent questions that dig deeper when it’s called for, or use a question to confirm important information from the buyer before taking action.

One barrier to effective listening occurs when a salesperson hears something positive from the customer and rushes to judgment. Listening with happy ears is costly because it leads to making assumptions and failing to ask good follow-up questions. This can have negative consequences on the salesperson’s ability to close big sales.

Effective listening cannot be “turned on” at will like many people assume. I interviewed Dr. Lyman Steil, founder of the International Listening Institute, he believes that a person’s listening ability can only be called upon to the extent that it has been developed and put into practice repeatedly. This points out that effective listening is a learned skill, gained through personal effort and consistent practice.

Listening does offer a number of advantages to the salesperson that is willing to invest the time and effort.

One advantage is that it creates a positive image with customers. People want to do business with someone who makes the effort to understand their business, its unique needs, problems, opportunities and goals.

Listening also helps you interpret what is being said accurately, while also allowing you to pick up on subtlety and any emotion that may be influencing the decision. Another advantage of listening is that it helps you create trust and respect in the relationship faster – an essential stepping stone to being included among the suppliers the customer is seriously considering.

Listening also breaks down the resistance and tension that buyers often feel during the early stages of a relationship. This helps create more open-mindedness for your value proposition and recommendations.

How can you improve your listening skills?

• First of all, stop and think about what’s being said. Ask yourself: “Is this something with greater potential than I had assumed?” Or ask, “Should I clarify their comments first, before taking action?”
• Adapt to your customer’s speaking style, accent and mannerisms. When someone’s style doesn’t match well with your own it’s tempting to lose interest, begin daydreaming, or you might even catch yourself interrupting the customer before they’re finished.
• Resist distractions. The physical space for your meeting or phone call can present several challenges. Minimize the distractions that are in your control, and don’t focus on the one’s you can’t control. Stay focused on your customer and the information they are trying to communicate.

Salespeople who are excellent listeners already know how important it is. They have witnessed the power of listening and how it helps them close tough prospects.

Develop excellent listening skills and comprehension and you will experience increased sales. I promise!

Mark Holmes helps companies improve sales management and sales strategy, increase sales and customer loyalty. He delivers sales training, coaching and consulting to companies in over twenty industries. He is the author of the bestseller Wooing Customers Back, and the popular books The 5 Rules of Megavalue Selling and The Sales Diamond. Mark’s ideas on sales force management and increasing sales are widely featured in the media. Reach out to him: mark@salesrevenuecoach.com

© Copyright Mark Holmes

As contemporary inbound marketers, we all realize that buyer personas are incredibly important to a successful content strategy. Often, when working with clients in various industries, I see that the buyer persona concept is readily adapted, but could use some more oomph in execution. There are a few misguided errors we see frequently:

• A persona is used to represent an entire organization, for example “Distributor Danny”.
• Personas are highly quantitative and data-based, loaded up with demographics, but have no actual stories or personality and, thus, don’t help inform any kind of marketing or sales content.
• Personas are highly qualitative, but miss the basic demographics, so you don’t realize that you’re actually trying to sell a sofa to an apartment-dwelling millennial, not a family-oriented Gen X-er.
• Personas are too fractured, so every role or job title that customers have are represented as a persona. There’s CEO Chris and COO Charlie and President Pat … all of whom have the same pain points and buying triggers.

Ultimately, each of the personas above is a good starting point for personas, but doesn’t provide the best distinction between populations. Instead, we propose marrying two elements: the quantitative information that defines the group your persona fits into and the qualitative information that shows what makes a persona tick and, perhaps most importantly, why they will buy your product.

Understanding the Buying Trigger

I’m not going to reinvent or reiterate Adele Revella’s 5 Rings of Buying Insight here. Instead, I recommend that you go read about them at the Buyer Persona Institute and come back.

If you’ve read the 5 Rings of Buying Insight, you probably know where this section is going. If you haven’t, let me spoil it:

If you want to define a great buyer persona, you must capture why that person will buy—and not why they’ll buy a fuzzy blue sweater, but why they will buy your solution. What has triggered them at work or in life to seek information about a company like yours?

In my first job out of college, I was a lone wolf marketer for a small company that produced audio recordings for telephone systems. We didn’t have a sales team, just customer service, which was also responsible for selling. It was an interesting setup, because some of the things that make service reps great are the things that you probably wouldn’t look for when recruiting for a sales role. What we found, though, was that with inbound leads and consultative selling, the customer service team could zero in on one thing that helped them close a deal. A simple question with big impact: What has changed at your organization that led you to look for this?

That question opened the door, and it’s the perfect question to ask when starting a buyer persona interview.

Conducting the Interview

If you haven’t picked up, I (and the rest of the SmartBug team) am a big fan of Revella’s approach to building buyer personas. We’ve shifted away from the super-scripted persona interview and begun allowing a more open-ended and active-listening based approach. Like Revella prescribes (and I won’t recount this entire approach here—go buy her book!), we look for examples of customers who have recently purchased and, if possible, former prospects who recently decided not to purchase, and ask them one simple question to kick off the interview, diving straight into what triggered their recent purchasing decision.

Then, we listen. And we ask follow-up questions. But mostly, we listen.

Now, we still have a question bank that we’ll reference from time to time—it’s a great way to stay on track and keep your headspace right—but it’s more valuable in the next step than when you’re on the phone.

Putting it all together

Once you complete interviews, you should have a good feel for “who’s your who” and be eager and excited to start slicing up the information you’ve collected and defining your personas. In your interviews, you should have collected a lot of qualitative information about your buyers and their purchasing triggers. You should also have some insight into their role, age, ambitions, and beyond. For your persona story, define your persona and buying trigger, plus their role and demographics, trusted resources, and measures of success. Focus on being comprehensive and relating your persona to your solution—and you’ll be in perfect shape.

Leaning on forecasting models is a necessary – sometimes tricky – part of preparing for the upcoming fiscal year, especially for my sales folks.

You see, if you work in sales, you already know that you can't use a crystal ball to predict the future (even if you’re expected to), so you’re left analyzing quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) data to anticipate future leads, revenue, and profitability.

In short, even with forecasting models on your side, sales forecasting is a guessing game that can be a real headache, especially if you’re working with little data. And I get that.

In this article, I’ll break down a few tried and true strategies and tactics you can use in your next sales forecast to not only better predict your successes for next year but also to make well-informed decisions for your sales team.

Table of Contents:

• What is strategic forecasting?
• "What is a forecasting model?"
• Types of Forecasting Models
• How to Improve Your Sales Forecasting
• Forecasting Models and Fate Aren’t The Same

Before I lay ground on how to use forecasting models in sales, it’s important to set the record straight: Sales forecasting is useful, but it’s nothing without a data-informed strategy. Sometimes, the misconception of what sales forecasting actually means (and, therefore, what it actually reveals) creates disappointment among sales teams down the road.

Instead, it’s better to think about sales forecasting in this way: Sales forecasting should be used to identify and exceed realistic targets based on solid data. Otherwise, you’ll be severely disappointed when you’re unable to accurately measure revenue targets, progress, or other important KPIs.

Now that I got the fundamentals out of the way, let’s talk about how you – and most sales professionals – can do all of the things I just mentioned, all by using forecasting models.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Forecasting models are pretty darn handy. However, there is no one-size-fits-all forecasting model, though. When it comes to high-performing sales teams, you'll need to choose the right model (or combination of models) to create a fair and accurate annual goal.

Check out some of these popular forecasting models below. While all of them can't be used for sales on their own, you use the information you gather from them to help inform your sales forecast:

Types of Forecasting Models

1. Length of Sales Cycle Forecasting Model

An important factor for every sales rep (no matter their industry) is the length of the sales cycle. Essentially, this type of forecasting model represents the time it takes for a prospect to pass through every stage in the sales cycle, from lead all the way to repeat buyer.

Understanding the length of your sales cycle, then factoring that into your sales forecast, will help your sales team focus on closing deals rather than rushing prospects through the process in order to beat the clock each month.

Consider the length of your sales cycle as a fixed metric. Unless your sales leadership team has plans in place to speed the cycle up, go ahead and assume that the length of the sales cycle won't change.

2. Time Series Forecasting Model

If you can't tell by now, using historical data to forecast for the future is a theme in many of these forecasting models, but time series forecasting focuses primarily on historical data without the use of other variables.

With this type of forecasting model, your sales will be plotted on a line graph, with each point representing a specific point in time. You can use time series forecasting to predict when future sales might happen based on when sales have happened in the past.

3. Demand Forecasting Model

There are a few different types of demand forecasting models that focus on internal and external factors that affect demand. To keep things simple, I’ll focus on the two most popular types of demand forecasting: passive and active.

Passive demand forecasting looks at past data to predict future sales. This type of model keeps things simple by only accounting for internal factors that your business can control. However, seasonal trends that your business typically experiences are also taken into account.

Active demand forecasting uses data in real-time (or as close to it as you can get) as possible to forecast future sales. With this type of model, you'll include external factors like the state of the market, marketing strategies that are currently in play, and knowledge of the competition if you have it.

There’s a lot more to get into with passive and active demand forecasting that I won’t do here. But if you're looking for a comprehensive guide on demand forecasting models, check out HubSpot’s complete guide.

4. Regression Forecasting Model

[alt text] image listing reasons for when to use a regression forecasting model

It's time to roll up your sleeves and get hands-on in Excel for this model. A regression model is a statistical process for understanding what independent variables are associated with your dependent variable. In sales terms, a regression model helps you understand how sales activities and closed deals are related.

The formula for a regression model is Y = bX + a, where Y is the dependent variable and X is the independent variable. Values a and b are the y-intercept and slope of the regression line, respectively; don't worry, Excel will take care of a and b in the formula automatically when you supply historical data about your sales.

Check out the image below, where X is the number of sales calls and Y is the dependent variable (number of deals closed):

[alt text] example image of a regression analysis that examines the relationship between sales calls and deals closed

Pro Tip: Statistics do not define causation, only correlation. That means you should supplement the information you glean from the regression forecast model with qualitative data from your sales reps about what activities are the best uses of their time.

Now, if you find that the variables – let’s use the “sales calls” and “deals closed” variables from our example above – are positively correlated (as shown in the analysis pictured). Although it might seem like making more sales calls could cause an increase in the number of deals closed, this relationship could also be influenced by an entirely different third variable, such as product demand.

During peak demand periods, sales reps may increase their call volume due to the greater availability of potential customers. Simultaneously, heightened customer interest can lead to a surge in closed deals. In such scenarios, the underlying factor – elevated product demand – influences both the number of calls made and the number of deals closed, resulting in a correlation between the two without one directly causing the other.

The key to running a helpful regression forecasting model is using historical data and running a regression for each activity. Once you‘ve run your regression model, you’ll be able to see a correlation (or lack thereof) between a specific activity like deals closed and sales calls.

Some additional activities that can affect your sales include the number of outbound calls made, inbound calls received, and demos completed. You can run a regression for each of these independent variables to determine which activities to focus on and which don't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

Most businesses experience some seasonality in their sales, so it’s a great practice to account for this in your sales forecasting. A seasonal forecasting model can reveal exactly how much deviation each month has compared to the annual average.

To use data from a seasonal forecasting model, you'll need to compare the seasonal index, a comparison between a specific seasonal time period to the average seasonal time period, to the average annual sales cycle.

For a detailed tutorial on how to use a seasonal forecasting model, take a look at this video.

How to Improve Your Sales Forecasting

Now, let’s take a look at a few simple tactics that sales teams and executives can use to create better forecasting models for their business:

1. Use historical data.

Most large companies have historical data they can use to determine realistic sales forecasts. If your company hasn’t implemented analytics and other forms of tracking methods that can be tied to goals and conversion rates, get to it ASAP. You need to know where you’ve been so you can accurately forecast where you’re going.

It’s true past sales are not always accurate predictors of future performance. This year, you might release new products, expand into new markets, face an increase in competition, and so on and so forth.

However, historical data is a solid foundation on which you can stand as you weigh additional, unpredictable factors that could increase or decrease sales in the upcoming year. These are scenarios you can weave into your presentation of firm numbers for your final forecast.

2. Keep clean records.

If no clear standards are communicated to the team, sales reps may come up with their own definitions and use cases, leading to inconsistent data entry. Or, if they don't know how important a property is, reps may fail to use it altogether.

You can't make good decisions on dirty data, so for any numbers that aren’t as concrete as sales and revenue — like current deals in the pipeline or number of deals per customer segment — make sure your team is on the same page.

You can do this by:

• Providing ongoing training to the team on CRM use
• Continuously referring to the forecast in team meetings
• Checking up on deals during one-on-one meetings
• Performing spot checks on records and deals to note inconsistencies

3. Start with a simple model.

I know it’s tempting to try and incorporate each of the model types we talked about earlier but resist the urge to do this.

If this is your first time using a quantitative forecasting model to predict sales for the next year, don’t be afraid to start small and improve your model over time.

Using something simple like a regression forecasting model for five of the most common sales activities your team performs is a better model than one that combines seasonality, time series, and demand forecasting into one. Why? Because the fewer variables you have to keep track of, the simpler it will be to:

• Achieve your sales goals.
• Explain to your sales reps why the goals were set this way.
• Get approval from leadership on your forecast.

Once you determine how well your forecast model is working for the first year, you can update it the following year with variables from another type of model.

4. Implement a sales pipeline action plan.

For sales leads, quality is more important than quantity. While a lead’s quality can certainly affect its conversion potential, an increased quantity of leads typically increases the number of closed deals.

That’s why you should build an action plan to generate the minimum number of leads necessary. For example, if you know your reps close 25% of their deals from well-qualified leads, you may aim to generate twice as many well-qualified leads next quarter. Ideally, your reps will close 30-50% more deals.

No matter what your numbers need to look like on the closing side, put the same level of focus in forecasting and generating leads. Understand your conversion rates at each stage of your sales funnel, then plan accordingly.

For example, ask your sales team these questions:

1. “What does it take to move a prospect through your sales process from the first inquiry to the final deal closing?”
2. “How many steps are there in your sales process, and what percentage of your leads (approximately) convert at each step of the process?”
3. “What is the definition of a ‘well-qualified’ lead? Is it someone who has gone through an online demo, someone who has filled out an intake questionnaire … ?”
4. “Based on the conversion rates at each stage of your sales process, how many leads do you need to generate in order to achieve an expected number of sales?”

Pro Tip: Do the math by working backward through your sales process. For example, if you want to close 100 deals this year, and your salespeople close 10% of deals with leads who have already watched an online demo of your solution, and 10% of new inbound sales leads agree to sign up for an online demo, you need to generate 10,000 new inbound sales leads to make 100 sales: 10,000 x 10% x 10% = 100 sales.

The conversion rates and correct numbers for your pipeline will differ depending on your business and average deal velocity. This information lets you build an accurate sales forecast based on stage-by-stage conversion rates.

5. Use forecasting tools.

You can save a lot of time (and improve the accuracy of your forecast) by using a tool developed just for forecasting.

If you’re looking for something that’s integrated and user-friendly, HubSpot's forecasting tool might be what you’re looking for. It separates data and pipelines based on quarterly results, monthly results, and even teams. Plus, you’re able to have as much control as you want over what data you see which is great, especially for sales folks working collaboratively.

6. Incorporate “what ifs” and qualitative data.

Many companies fail to plan for new sets of data to track and overlook qualitative data. Instead of constantly looking at the same numbers and making bold predictions, companies should ask “what if” questions that can be answered once more data is collected.

Looking at your business from different angles gives you new insights. For instance, if you’re trying to boost sales for multiple products on your eCommerce site, why not track how many customers purchase a top-selling product from two different categories?

Understanding where customers gravitate to for certain items and which items pair well together could give you inspiration for new product promotions and special offers.

Qualitative questions paired with quantitative tracking can help you better understand your business and make smarter decisions. This is how you can integrate forecasting into other business objectives, such as remodeling a store or testing advertising campaigns.

7. Consider seasonality as a factor.

One type of qualitative piece of information is the answer to this question: “We sell more when…”

If your forecast is linear, treating every month and quarter similarly, you may lose accuracy on account of seasonality or related factors.

Here are a few examples to demonstrate this idea:

“We're a toy company, and our sales go nuts around Christmas.”

This company would consider increasing the forecast in Q4, especially after Thanksgiving leading up to Christmas.

“We sell office equipment to office managers. That means we sell more during the business week when they are on the clock.”

If this company has a month with a lot of holidays (e.g. December), they should factor this in as a lower sales month in the forecast since office managers will not be in the office making purchases. In addition, they should also consider how the months fall and make accommodations for months that have fewer business days than others (e.g. February).

“We’re a roofing company, and we sell best when our customer is experiencing a roof leak.”

Even though roof leaks don‘t have a seasonality, this company’s customer may not realize they have a roof issue until they see physical evidence of it (a leak). That means rainy seasons could result in more business, and they should consider factoring that into their forecast.

8. Encourage collaboration between all departments.

A well-constructed forecast often isn‘t the byproduct of any single department’s contribution. It tends to incorporate input from across the company. Collaboration offers a new perspective to a company's forecasting process.

Forecasting works best as a team effort. Incorporate input from multiple – if not all –departments at your company. Different departments have their own expertise to offer, allowing you to have a more well-rounded forecasting process.

Those contributions will also add a new degree of accountability to your forecasting efforts. If your process is rooted in teamwork and subject to more scrutiny, no individual department will have the space to adjust data to suit its interests and biases.

Additionally, inter-departmental collaboration adds an element of trust to your forecasting process by including diverse perspectives and helping departments feel heard.

9. Incorporate external data where appropriate.

The default when sales forecasting is to rely on internal, historical data that’s easily accessible. While this is an important piece of the puzzle, you'll be able to create more realistic forecasts if you incorporate external factors into your model.

Is your marketing team running a big campaign next year? Did a competitor recently change their product or service? Has the market your serve expanded or contracted? Each of these external factors will have an effect on your business and, consequently, your sales.

You’ll need to carefully go about including these situations into your model. Use data sources like Statista and PEW Research Center to keep this part of your model accurate.

10. Consider market trends and competition.

Wouldn‘t it be awesome if the variables that affected sales were all internal, such as sales team head count and effectiveness? However, there’s a whole host of variables related to market trends that affect sales.

Let‘s say you have one product that is a steady staple and another that’s new, trendy, and receiving a lot of buzz but hasn‘t caught on mainstream yet. These two products would not have the same growth trajectory, so it’s important to factor them in as separate segments.

Another thing to consider is competition. Maybe you have a competitor with the same authority and awareness in the market as your organization. Their offerings are competitive, and they're a great company. Then, they lower their price.

Something as simple as this changes the conversations reps have with prospects ... and the conversations prospects have with themselves.

Continuing to keep a pulse on what the market is doing will help you create more accurate predictions.

11. Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

Few people enjoy thinking about worst-case scenarios, whether you’re talking sales forecasts or sports predictions.

That’s why our sales forecasts should always consider the worst that could happen: What if you lose your top three reps to a competitor, the product you’re selling faces an embarrassing recall, or something goes wrong that forces you to re-evaluate your sales process? You don’t have to spend too much time dreaming up the most horrific events your company could face, but you need to leave some cushion in your forecast that accounts for potential setbacks.

Scrutinize last year’s numbers — what went exceptionally “right” last year that might not happen again? What strokes of good luck did you have that might have made your numbers look better than reality?

Don’t assume every bit of good fortune is going to happen for you every year. The reality of sales numbers often lands somewhere between “the sky’s the limit” and “the sky is falling.”

12. Refer to Your Forecasts Consistently.

It might go without saying, but your forecasts are essentially useless if you don't use them as reference points, so be sure to refer to them on a consistent basis. They’re crucial resources for guiding a wide variety of business decisions, including budgeting and directing marketing efforts.

Here’s the truth: Your forecast is never going to pan out exactly as you planned. There's bound to be some give and take between your projections and your actual figures.

Still, you need it to have some concept of what the future might look like, a perspective on whether your performance is in line with your goals and expectations, and whether you’re allocating your resources effectively. Constantly keeping tabs on your forecasts is one way to ensure you're covering all those bases.

Forecasting Models and Fate Aren’t The Same

Keep in mind that experimenting with a forecasting model is not a one-time “start of the new year” activity. It’s an ongoing process that affects every aspect of your sales pipeline. And sales forecasts are not set in stone. They are “living documents” that help the sales team stay on target throughout each quarter.

With a data-guided process and plenty of open communication and collaboration, you can create more accurate sales forecasts and maximize your sales team’s potential.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Every sales manager wants their team to close bigger deals. How much would revenue go up if your entire team was closing deals like your best sales rep? What if every rep was prospecting as well as the rep generating the most leads? Your team’s success starts with you. Let’s talk about how to become the manager of a sales team where every rep performs at their absolute best.

A great sales team starts with a manager who’s also a great coach. How is a good soccer coach different than a bad soccer coach? A bad soccer coach just tells you what they want and what to do. For example, they might yell at their team for not playing ‘good defense’ or ‘not scoring enough.’ A good soccer coach identifies the specific skills team members should improve to enhance their performance, provides their players with insights into how they can be better, and then creates the drills to help the team achieve their goals.

For example, a good coach may notice that some people on the team are scoring on a low percentage of their penalty kicks. This coach might identify the person who’s the best at penalty kicks on the whole team, and then enable that talented team member to teach everyone else their technique. Then the whole team would drill what they learn together and all improve at their scoring percentage.

I’ve learned some powerful coaching techniques to help sales reps reach their full potential. One of the most important sales management tricks I have come across I learned from a great manager I had when I was a Field Sales Rep at Google, Mark Flessel. I saw him seek and identify when a rep on the team had a particular strength or skill. If a rep on the team did something well, he would ask for details about how exactly they went about doing it. He would watch the numbers, talk to the reps, and keep his fingers on the pulse of what people’s actual activities were so that he could figure out if someone was doing something particularly well or had developed a skill that he could replicate across the team.

Mark might find that one rep on the team was good at generating new leads, another rep was talented at running effective customer meetings, and another was the best at asking for the business and closing the deal. When he found an activity or skill in which one person was particularly talented, he would empower the rep to teach the rest of the team that best practice.

The reps that were teaching their peers appreciated the opportunity to take on a leadership role and be recognized for something they were doing well. It improved every individual on the team when best practices were shared. It was almost like Mark was cloning his top reps – he was taking the skills of the top performers and replicating those skills across the sales team.

Break your sales process down into skills

How can we break down what Mark was doing into a repeatable process that can be replicated to other sales teams? For starters, as a manager, you’ve got a deeper level of insight into your sales team’s performance than anyone else. It’s your job to improve their weaknesses. But before you can improve their weaknesses, you need to recognize their strengths.

The first step is to ask yourself: “Which skills determine whether my team succeeds or fails?” Break your sales process down into those skills. You’ll end up with a few key skills for each stage of your sales cycle.

A few examples of the types of skills that can determine how successful your reps are:

• Prospecting
• Building Rapport
• Qualifying
• Giving Persuasive Sales Presentations
• Timely and Relevant Follow-up
• Overcoming Objections
• Negotiating
• Closing
• Managing the Ongoing Relationship

Remember, it’s easy to get distracted by the deals your reps are closing without considering all of the other skills that lead to a successful win.

Ask yourself: “Who’s the top performing sales rep at each skill?”

Once you’ve identified the key attributes and skills that make your reps succeed or fail, rate each rep on your team on how good they are on a scale from 1 to 10. Measuring this can feel a bit subjective, but the goal is to identify who is really good at a given skill so that they can be the model for the others. Remember, if no one on the team is good at a certain skill, you can always tap your network, an expert, or a consultant to fill in on a certain area.

Use your judgement and historical sales data to rank your reps from 1 to 10 in each category. A 10 is the highest a rep could potentially perform a certain skill. A 10 in ‘Timely and Relevant Follow-up’ means the rep could not do this particular skill any better than they currently are.

It can be informative to ask members of your team and get their feedback on what they think they are good at and what they perceive others on the team to be particularly good at. How do they feel about their performance? What part of the sales process do they like most? The least? Have them score themselves on each skill in your ranking system.

Collect their feedback and put the self-evaluated score next to the ranks you assigned. Self-evaluation is a powerful tool. You might notice that the Reps who are honest and aware about their performance are the most coachable and might improve the fastest.

In those same one-on-one conversations with your reps, you can also ask them to talk about who they feel is great at what on the sales team. Who do they turn to for help when there are questions about the product? Who do they think is the best negotiator? Have them talk about who they think is great at what. Reps tend to notice when their peers are particularly good at something. Leverage their eyes on each other – you only have one set of eyes, but a great leader leverages the knowledge of their team – so be sure to ask their opinions!

You don’t need to show your ranking list to the team, the point is to give you a clear view of who is good at what so that you can have the most talented people share their skills and knowledge. Compare your opinions with what the reps thought about themselves and about their peers.

Now you’ve got a list of your reps in order of ability. Pay special attention to your top performer in each skill set. They’re going to be your go-to resource for improving your sales training and getting the rest of your team up to speed. Now it’s time to put your coaching plan into action.

Dividing your coaching plan by skill set will maximize the ROI of each rep’s training. Most reps don’t need “new hire” sales training all over again, they just have one or two under-trained skills holding them back. Now you know who on the team needs help, and who on the team is in the best position to help them.

Turning your most talented reps into coaches

Now that you have recognized what is important to be successful on your team and who is good at what, its time to turn your best reps into coaches.

First, meet with your top ranking reps and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. No matter how great they are, they aren’t perfect. Coach your best reps first so they know how to train the rest of the team.

Spend a few days shadowing your top reps. You’re looking for opportunities to improve their weaknesses and learn how they utilize their strengths. Analyze their daily schedule, how do they use their time in order to operate at such a high level?

As a manager, your job here is to help your sales reps understand the subtleties in what they are doing on the skills that you have identified are their real strengths. Then you can help them understand why they are good at something, and that will help prepare them to communicate what they are doing with the rest of the team. Even the best reps aren’t naturally great coaches. A lot of their skill is ingrained and they might not be able to explain some of the subtleties of their sales performance.

Also, don’t just look at what they are doing differently, but look at how they are performing the activities that they are especially good at. For example, watch how your top reps:

• Plan their day
• Decide what to do first
• Organize their information
• Prepare for sales calls

Find the details that create champions. You want to find obvious ones, like getting to work early, and less obvious traits, like the body language they use with prospects. Look for situational sales training material too. How does your top performer approach a gatekeeper? What’s their personal qualification process?

Below are some examples and actionable strategies to help your reps become great coaches.

Prospecting and Building Rapport

You want to watch for things like how your top rep:

• Starts a call
• Becomes friendly with the prospect
• Personalizes their offer
• Asks prospects to take the next step

Finding the right opportunities is key to closing higher ROI deals. This depends on a lot of different factors, including the amount of leads the rep is contacting, but proper technique will help everything else fall into place. Tonality plays a big role in how your sales reps are perceived by buyers. If your reps sound annoyed while prospecting they’re setting themselves up for failure. Pay attention to how your rep approaches prospecting and building rapport so you can help them get ready to communicate their approach.

Qualification

Qualifying prospects is an underrated part of the sales process. Qualification ensures your reps aren’t wasting time with people who don’t have the ability to make purchasing decisions.

How does your best rep:

• Decide which leads to approach
• Score the leads they find
• Have a qualification conversation
• Prioritize their prospects and opportunities

Qualifying the right opportunities makes closing them easy. A lot of sales reps ignore the qualification aspect of sales, they chase after the first deal they see so they can get to the next one. But not all deals are created equal. Help your reps who are best at qualifying figure out what is special and what they are doing to effectively qualify their opportunities and prioritize the best ones.

Negotiation

How important is it that your sales team brushes up on their negotiation skills? Learn about what your best negotiator is doing so that you can enable them to share their skills with the team.

Understand the details around how your best rep:

• Prepares for a sales negotiation
• Organizes and interpret the details of the deal
• Draws out and overcomes last minute objections
• Presents the contract

Help your top rep collect everything he or she is doing into a playbook that they can teach to the team. Use your top rep’s situational tips to create scripts, situational checklists, and other resources for your sales team. Negotiation is an art and a science, it’s also highly situational. Having your best reps reveal to your team the list of things to keep in mind (such as never offering discounts on certain size deals, or leading with one offer while having an upsell in mind) will help everyone on the team strengthen their negotiation style. My negotiation course covers this in detail.

Cloning your Top Reps across the team

Now that you’ve identified the skills a sales rep needs to be successful on your team, and you’ve figured out who has the deepest expertise in each of those skills, it’s time to execute and enable your best reps to teach the rest of the sales team how to also master those key skills. It’s time to prepare your top reps to “clone” themselves – it’s time for them to teach class.

Group training sessions are an easy way to get everyone on the same page. Reps can show the rest of the team how to utilize their technique in situational exercises. The rep teaching the class can demonstrate their skill live, or if your sales team is remote you can do it remotely. In general I’ve found that in person training is more engaging and people learn better in person and when they can do exercises that engage them. After your rep has taught the skill, you can try having the other members of the team practice the skill in pairs or groups.

The reps that are learning will probably pay close attention to the lesson because they likely know that their peer who is teaching them is giving them the tips and tricks that they need to be successful. Also, since they are often teachers now too, but of a different skill-set that they happened to be great at, they can better empathize with what it’s like to be a teacher.

You can host these training sessions as a part of a weekly meeting, or at your monthly, quarterly, or annual meetings. I like to have skills taught regularly, and make learning a regular part of the cadence of the job. It’s hard to teach your reps a ton at once, but they can absorb a bit at a time. You’re likely to get better results in terms of knowledge retention and skill development if you teach new skills for one hour a week than you will if you cram 10 hours a day straight for a week at the annual kickoff.

This process can also uncover who on the team needs extra help. Pay attention to the reps who haven’t improved after the group training sessions and have your expert reps mentor these reps personally. They can meet with them and discover their problem areas. Make sure to document the breakthroughs that help them improve in your training material to help anyone who has similar issues in the future. Also, this is creating training materials for the future, and you can continue to update it over time. This all takes time, but the results of improving your team will certainly show up in your sales results.

If your cloning strategy works, your entire team will start closing more deals. By turning your best reps into coaches you set a new standard for the rest of the team. This creates a healthy sales culture focused on self-improvement and performance.

Your Team Needs Regular Coaching

There are two styles of sales leadership in the world – spreadsheet managers and coaches.

Spreadsheet managers aren’t necessarily connected to their team’s activities, they are focused on the results. Coaches are right there on the sideline, ready to jump in and help when the time is right.

Most sales managers are a mixture of both, which is where you want to be. But a lot of great managers slip into a pure spreadsheet style of leadership. There’s so much to do, it can be exhausting staying on top (and connected) to your team and their performance. Don’t allow yourself to lose sight of what matters; the actual people you’re leading.

Smart coaching puts the team in a position to succeed. You’re giving your reps the skills and abilities to win bigger and better deals by focusing on the most important part of their performance: who they are as salespeople.

Managing a person isn’t the same as managing a spreadsheet. Understanding the difference is an essential part of building a high performing team. Just like a great coach names team captains, you can deputize the reps on the team who are the strongest in a particular area to lead, coach, and develop the rest of team. Not only will this spread the skills of your top performers to the rest of the team, it will also develop the next generation of leaders.

The post How to Coach a B2B Sales Team to Win Bigger and Better Deals appeared first on OpenView Labs.

What is essential for running a business effectively? Is it the happiness of employees, its processes, proper investment, marketing, sales, or the profit generated? If we look from a bird’s eye view, each of these creates a chain reaction and carry equal weight. For all businesses, profit and revenue are key targets. But what are the essentials of generating profit? And, more importantly, what can a company do to achieve their objectives in the desired period of time?

According to entrepreneur & investor John Rampton, there are 10 ways to get more profit out of your business. He states that advertising and marketing are crucial for generating sales and profiles. Thomas Jefferson also said, “The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”

The question now, if marketing and advertising are the essential elements to generate sales and profiles, how is the process managed and executed when it comes to large-scale businesses? Is this an idea that works merely on paper or is there really a system to aligning marketing and sales that works?

In today’s technology and data-rich environment, knowledge-based systems are a common solution. These systems ensure smooth organizational processes and provide value for its employees.

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According to a Global Deloitte survey, over 80% of Deloitte Knowledge users indicate that sharing knowledge leads to competitive advantage and adds real client value.

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Deloitte­ states that knowledge-based software increases company benefits in several ways—one of which is increasing client satisfaction by delivering value insights. These systems make sure that all communication and processes run smoothly within the organization.

In this blog, I’ll show you four ways that a knowledge management system can help your company achieve its goals.

1. Intimate Company Knowledge

Consider investing in a knowledge management system to get deeper insights into your business process performance. As the name implies, a knowledge management system can provide actionable, data-driven insights. For example, in human resources, it can track all hires, fires, involvement, and any other process you and your teams might have been through.

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For any marketing strategy to work, it is imperative to know every detail you can about your customers and everything there is to know about the market.

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Consistency in customer experience and the constant ability to improve and document processes are also critical for success.

2. Potential Recognized

A central repository of easily referenceable information can be absolutely invaluable. From operations to human resource, marketing, sales, production, and more, a detailed record of activities can be streamlined and managed. There is no shortage of data, the real question is how to utilize that data to craft predictions and accurately measure potential across the board. For budgeting and scaling purposes, this can cut your workload down dramatically.

3. Marketing and Sales Alignment

Efficient execution needs effective team collaboration. Whatever the task may be, it cannot be executed well without the help of a team. When a project is assigned to a particular group of employees, it is necessary for everyone to have visibility into the process.

When marketing and sales are working together, these systems are an effective way of cross-team communication. Consistent information is necessary for each department within your organization to make data-based decisions. For marketing and sales to align and produce the best results, information sharing can only make things better.

4. Market Research

The most effective strategy is one which has been well researched. A knowledge-based system is a single location containing all of your company’s historical knowledge. This means it contains all research essentials you might require. Everything from customer insights to target audience information, data analytics, and competitive research. Why invent the wheel when exploring a new strategy or campaign you’ve already executed some fantastic research?

Have you used a knowledge management system before? How might you benefit from implementing one? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

The post 4 Ways a Knowledge Management System Helps Align Your Strategy appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.