The history of mankind has shown us that we as humans are constantly on the lookout for finding ways to make our life easier. This started a long time ago, when man had the need to stay warm and not suffer during cold nights and colder winters, thus man learned how to create fire, and create clothing to stay warm.

Today, the same concept is alive as we’re constantly looking for ways to make our life easier. For example, trying to get places faster (Uber), avoid things we dislike to eat (Checking Yelp), connecting more often with the people we like (Social Media), getting the best value for our money (Amazon, Walmart), and the list goes on.

When it comes down to business, we’re also trying to make our businesses run smoother, more efficient, hiring the correct team members, etc. Yet, many things come down to finding ways to save time and money, because time = money.

I’m always looking for ways to save time, and work more efficiently. So here’s a few ways that you can save time on your daily marketing and sales business tasks.

How to save time on your sales and marketing tasks

The first thing you should know is being more efficient relies on having the right tools, managing your time wisely and following an organized process.

When it comes to sales and marketing, there are plenty of online tools to help you save time. This may include complete CRM and automation software like HubSpot, InfusionSoft, and AgileCRM, as well as web-based sync tools such as Zapier for 1-to-1 data transfers between two apps.

Contacts Management

1. Saving your Gmail contacts into your CRM

If you’re like millions of people who use Gmail as their main e-mail client, you’re in luck! By choosing to use a web-based software to check your e-mail, you’re pre-qualified to easily share your Gmail contacts with hundreds of other web-based apps.

Long gone are the days where you had to export your contacts into an Excel CSV file, to then have to import that list into your sales software, such as a CRM. Today, you can automatically sync your Gmail contacts directly into a web-based CRM. Depending on your software of choice, the sync can happen both ways (Gmail to CRM, and CRM Gmail), and can happen as quickly as every 5 minutes, to maybe once a day.

I interact with all my contacts through Gmail, which conveniently also syncs with my Android phone. Thus, as soon as I save a new contact on my phone it will be on my Gmail list of contacts, and then once I have my sync setup, those contacts are automatically copied into my CRM, so that I can write notes about that contact, create follow-up tasks, and much more.

Below is a screenshot of how AgileCRM syncs my Gmail contacts through a 2-way sync

2. Connecting with your e-mail contacts on LinkedIn

Ever wonder if that person whom you’ve been e-mailing back and forth really is? Have you created a picture in your head of what they might look like in real life, but don’t have the time to look them up online?

Recently, I was introduced to a great Google chrome extension that searches on LinkedIn for the profile of the contact I’m e-mailing with based on their e-mail address, and conveniently shows me their profile’s basic information such as photo, title, and company they work for. It also lets me send them an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, which saves me lots of time in trying to figure out who this contact is, what their title might be, etc. Of course, if I want to dig deeper, I can press the link to view the contact’s full profile, which opens up his/her LinkedIn profile on a new tab on my browser.

This extension is called Rapportive, and this is how it looks inside Gmail.

3. Saving new online store customers to your CRM

For most small businesses, their online store is an isolated web system that works on its own, and it’s not connected to their contacts’ database, CRM, E-mail software or accounting system. This means that every time they want to save their online customer’s information into another system, they usually need to export their customer’s list into an Excel CSV, and then manually import it back into another system.

Frustrating right? Having to waste so much time doing this manually is boring and time-consuming. Yet, thanks to Zapier.com, you no longer have to worry about that! Zapier is a web-based tool that lets you sync data from over 500 web-based apps with each other, it’s the Holy Grail of data synchronization between different systems.

Zapier facilities the transfer of data/information from 25+ E-commerce platforms into many of its 700 other apps that it connects with. For example, this means that anyone could easily setup a sync (called “Zaps” in Zapier) to transfer their BigCommerce store customers information into their MailChimp e-mail campaign. Then, every time you have a new online store order, that new customer is not only saved on your store’s database, but can also be stored in the other system you use.

4. Saving new clients into your accounting system

The next place where you can send your online store’s customers’ information is into your accounting system. If you’re an early adopter of web-based tools, you might be using Quickbooks Online, Freshbooks or Xero to manage your company’s accounting.

If that is the case, you can also use Zapier to create a sync to transfer your store’s customers’ information directly into your accounting software so that you can quickly create new invoices and avoid having to re-type your client’s information on a new Invoice.

In the following screenshot, you can see how our company sync data from our AgileCRM account into our Quickbooks online account, just another example of how a “Zap” you can help you save time.

Now let’s switch topics a bit and talk about how you can save time on sales related tasks.

Sales

5. Creating follow-up tasks and reminders

One of the greatest advantages of using a CRM system is the ability to keep track of all the tasks you have as part of your sales process. If you work in sales, you know that there are many repetitive tasks that you do every day, so imagine the potential of saving a few minutes or seconds off each task. Sounds great, right?

Automating the creation of follow-up tasks through the use of a CRM, is a great way for you to save time on each task that you have to create for each potential client you’re in touch with. Some CRM systems let you create triggers and workflows that help you automate the creation of these tasks, so you don’t have to worry about reminding yourself to contact that person in the near future. The CRM will remind you.
At our company, we automate this process in the following way:
When anyone fills out our online contact form on our website, their information and notes are automatically saved into our CRM. Additionally, we created a sync process that also adds a new “Follow-up” task for that new contact, and automatically assigns that task to one of our sales team members, with a due date that’s 7 days from the day the contact fills out the form online.

Here’s how the follow-up task shows up on our AgileCRM system

6. Sending follow-up e-mails to your leads

Tired of having to write the same e-mails, or very similar ones to your contacts sales prospects every day? If you’re like me, you frustrating just thinking about all the time it takes to write e-mails to so many people, and wonder if there’s a better way to do so.

There is a better way, and you can, in fact, save lots of time performing these repetitive daily tasks. A simple solution would be to pre-write a bunch of e-mails and save them on a Word document. You could then have the word document open all day on your computer, and be ready to easily find, copy and paste the e-mail you needed.

The other solution, a much more efficient one, is to save each of these e-mail templates into your CRM. Then, anytime you want to e-mail someone that “Same e-mail,” you can easily select an e-mail from your templates list, which loads it into your e-mail editor. Once loaded, you can customize your e-mail to your specific contact and then send it. This tip alone will save you lots of time in your life, so thank me later :-)

7. Making sure people received and read your e-mails

Ever wonder if that e-mail you send a few days ago was actually received by the person you sent it to? How about if they opened it, and how many times they opened it?

Many sales people spend lots of timing following up with people to verify whether they received an e-mail or not, and whether they viewed it or click on any of the links.

To save you the hassle, you could use a CRM or Gmail extension that will track all of your e-mails and tell you when the e-mail was opened (or not), when it was opened, how many times it was opened, and whether or not the reader clicked on any links.

Our AgileCRM system tracks all of this, just like many other CRM and marketing automation software. Yet, if you don’t want to invest on a fancy CRM and want to keep things simple, try using Hubspot’s Sales Chrome extension for Gmail (formerly known as SideKick), which will track all of your e-mails on their platform.

This is how the Hubspot’s e-mail tracking dashboard looks like

8. Scheduling meetings with people

Me: Hey how about we meet on Tuesday or Thursday at 10am?
You: No, I can’t at that time, how about Wednesday at 5pm?
Me: That doesn’t work for me either, let’s discuss other options.

Sound familiar? Are you spending too much time trying to schedule meetings? If you’re like most people, you either schedule your own meetings or have an assistant to do it for you. Want a third option? Well, in today’s world, there are plenty of online tools that will facilitate this process, so people can book an appointment with you easier, faster, and without you having to spend so much time on back and forth conversations.

Doodle, Assistant.to and Calendly are some of the most popular tools for these, and I encourage you to look into them to see which one will best fit your needs. At our agency, we use our built-in meetings scheduler via AgileCRM. This is how it looks:

Want to meet with me to discuss your company’s marketing challenges?
If you’re in San Diego, I invite you to book a meeting with me right now! Check out the meeting scheduler, which is synched with my real-time calendar.

9. Sending proposals to your prospects

Writing proposals takes a lot of my time, and I don’t think any sales person ever loved spending lots of time doing so. Before I tell you how you can save time on this process, let me be clear that we’re talking about writing a multi-page proposal, not a one-page quote. Quotes are easy to write and send, and there’s many tools for doing that already.

When it comes to proposals, most people I know write them in Microsoft Word. Yet Word isn’t really the best tool to customize, reuse and build proposals. For that, there are now web-based solutions specifically built to help sales and small business owners with this time-consuming task.

At our company we recently started using Proposify, and we love it. Proposify lets our sales team create as many templates as we want that can be easily customize later for each new client proposal. It also allows us to save sections or pages into a “Content Library”, so that when we want to create a new proposal template, we can easily reuse some sections (without having to waste time copying and pasting text, as we used to do when using Word). It even allows you to save specific paragraphs or text sections called “Snippets”, so that you can reuse those as well.

This is how our existing list of templates looks like inside Proposify

Marketing

10. Saving new website leads into your CRM

Another great way to save time in your daily sales and marketing tasks, is to save your new website leads directly into your contacts or e-mail system database.

Believe it or not, many small business owners who receive new leads or inquiries through their website, still get a simple e-mail with the contact’s information. They must then retype that person’s information manually into whatever other system they use, such as their accounting system, their e-mail software, or their CRM.

Instead, you can save time on this repetitive and time-consuming task, by automating this workflow. To do so, you must be create and use an online form in your website that can capture and save your contact’s information into a database (not just capture it and send you an e-mail). Once it’s saved on a database, you can then transfer or sync this information to some of your other system automatically, using tools such as Zapier.com

At our company, we create all of our online forms using JotForm.com and integrate the form’s data with our CRM system. So anytime anyone fills out a form on our website, the following automatic workflow is triggered:

1. The contact’s information is saved on JotForm’s database
2. An automatic e-mail is sent to me via JotForm, notifying me of a new website contact, while another is sent to the contact to confirm that we got his message.
3. Then, though a multi-step Zap that we created on Zapier we sync the new contact’s info information into a new contact on our CRM, and add it’s notes/comments/questions into the “notes” section of the CRM.

11. Adding new leads to your newsletter e-mail list

Once your new website or phone leads are saved into your CRM, you’ll probably want to add them to your e-mail newsletter list. Instead of manually exporting and importing an Excel CSV file with your contact’s info, you can create another Zap on Zapier to automatically add all new leads into your main e-mail newsletter list.

1. To set up such a sync on Zapier, you must choose a trigger that will start the set of tasks that should be completed in order to sync the data from your CRM into your e-mail system. At our company, we achieved this task in the following ways:
2. When a new contact is tagged as “lead” in our CRM, the Zapier sync task is triggered.
3. Once the Zapier task is triggered, Zapier connect to our CRM, checks to see which new contacts have been tagged with the “lead” tag.
   It then copies the information of those new contacts’ name and e-mail into new contacts on our Mailchimp newsletter list.

12. Promoting your new blog posts on social media

Finally, you can also save lots of time on the time-consuming task of posting and engaging on social media. There are lots of tools out there that let you manage, schedule and monitor all your social media accounts from a single platform.

I highly recommend that if you’re serious about using social media as a marketing and sales tool, that you start using a professional social media platform to manage your activity. Such systems include HootSuite, Sprout Social, Sendible, Buffer and MeetEdgar

At our company we use Sendible, a UK-based company, which allows us not only to schedule posts and get reports, but also to set up auto reply tweets, monitor any keyword or phrase on social media, and much more.

Have any other ideas of how to save time on your sales and marketing? I’d love to hear your feedback, and invite you to leave comments below.

With all the great articles out there, it can sometimes be hard to catch up on every single one of them.

So imagine being able to go through a 2,000-word article in a minute or two. Or even faster.

Enter: SlideShare!

With SlideShare, great ideas and strategies are condensed into a couple dozen concise slides. For marketers, it’s a powerful content network: Over 70 million people visit SlideShare, and we had several Buffer SlideShares that got over 100,000 views apiece. For those eager to learn, the visual element of SlideShare also helps us absorb the information faster and remember it for a longer period of time, compared to reading texts.

So, here’re 10 of the best social media SlideShares of 2016 to enhance your social media marketing in 2017. I’d love to hear if you have a favorite in this list or a favorite you’d want to add.

10 Best Social Media SlideShares to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing in 2017

1. Facebook is completely changing viral videos – Take advantage of it

(via 500 Startups)

Video marketing seems to be rising to its peak — 83 percent of marketers said they’d like to create more video content if they didn’t have restraints such as time and resources. This is the slide deck that viral video creator Karen Cheng used at her Weapon of Mass Distribution 2016 talk on making viral videos. There’s a 30-minute recording of her talk if you are curious to learn more.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

If you want to spread an online video — or even a blog post or an idea— write the news headline first. Think about what makes a compelling news headline. Then, let it inform the creative decisions you make during the video-making process.

For reporters to want to cover news about your business, they need an attractive headline for the news. Karen’s first viral video took off because the idea “Microsoft employee quits with a song” makes a great headline. That attracted reporters to write about it.

2. How to wow! with a presentation

(via Canva)

While this SlideShare deck is on creating stunning presentations, I think it’s great for designing awesome social media images, too. The design experts at Canva share how you can create engaging graphics using the right play of text and design.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

When you are creating your social media images, use relevant photos and less text to effectively convey your message.

If you can use self-explanatory images — images that can completely explain a concept without someone having to read any additional text — that would be even better. They are easy to understand and highly shareable.

3. 24 Awesome Infographic Ideas to Inspire Your Next Beautiful Creation

(via Piktochart)

Just like SlideShares, infographics are a great way to present information in a concise, easy-to-understand manner. They are not only great for blog posts but also shareable on social media. In this SlideShare deck, the team at Piktochart shares twenty-four cool ideas for your next infographic.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

Creating an infographic is very similar to writing a blog post. One way to look at it is that an infographic is just another method of presenting the information in a blog post. Content ideas you have for blog posts can most likely be used to create infographics, too.

At Buffer, we like to use infographics in blog posts directly (such as this) or to update our best-performing blog posts with infographics (such as this).

4. How to Create and Use Snapchat’s New Custom Geofilters

(via Gary Vaynerchuk)

We have written about Snapchat and its custom Geofilters before. But I thought it’d be great to hear from one of the top Snapchat influencers himself — Gary Vaynerchuck. In this SlideShare deck, Gary shares why you should use Snapchat’s geofilters and how to create effective geofilters.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

Snapchat geofilters are currently an undervalued way to reach your audience. For example, Chris Hall, the co-founder of a sneaker app, Kickster, was able to get $0.001 cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) for his Snapchat filter and generated over 10.5 million views of his filter in just seven hours.

From our State of Social 2016 report, we found that only 12 percent of marketers and brands are on Snapchat and only 5 percent are spending on Snapchat filters at the moment. If you want to stand out, Snapchat could be the platform to do so as the audience there isn’t saturated with ads and sponsored filters just yet. By the end of 2017, that could be different.

5. 125 Clickass Copywriting Tips

(via Barry Feldman)

Barry Feldman has more than 25 years of experience in copywriting, and in this slide deck, he shares 125 copywriting quick tips. These tips are organized into 14 chapters such as headlines, content, style, credibility, and more.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

Write more than one headline. For each of our blog posts, we sometimes write between 20 to 30 headlines. This not only helps us find the headline that feels best, it also gives us headline ideas for our social media posts.

6. The Science Behind Effective Facebook Ad Campaigns

(via unfunnel)

HubSpot and AdEspresso teamed up to analyze more than 100,000 Facebook ads. Through the study, they found 9 best practices for Facebook advertising such as most popular headline length, most popular Call-To-Action (CTA), and more. In this SlideShare deck, they also shared their analyses of several great Facebook ads.

My favorite slide:

(Click to view a larger version.)

A key takeaway for marketers:

While targeting the right audience for your Facebook ads is important, don’t neglect the design of your Facebook ads. There are 6 key design components for a typical Facebook ad: headline, text, description, caption, CTA button, and image.

From our State of Social 2016 report, we also found that 91 percent of marketers are spending on Facebook ads. This might indicate the effectiveness of Facebook ads to deal with the decline in organic reach on Facebook.

7. 13 Tips for Creating Facebook Ads that Convert

(via HubSpot)

HubSpot and AdEspresso asked five world-class experts in Facebook advertising for their top tips and insider tricks for creating successful, effective Facebook ad campaigns. This SlideShare deck features 13 short, digestible, and actionable tips for creating Facebook ads that convert.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

Explore all the features that Facebook’s advertising platform has to offer. Advanced features such as the Power Editor, Unpublished Posts, Lookalike Audiences, and Custom Audiences give you the ability to be very specific with your ad targeting.

If you want to learn more about these features, Facebook has a comprehensive Advertiser Help Center with guides for beginner, intermediate, and advanced advertisers.

8. Top 10 Social Media Advertising Hacks of All Time

(via WordStream)

WordStream founder Larry Kim reveals his 10 strategies for getting the most value out of your social media advertising efforts. They include tips to drive more traffic to your content and increase your conversion rates.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

Promote only your best content — or “unicorns” as Larry calls them. Such content tends to have a higher engagement level, which can lead to more ad impressions and lower cost per engagement.

An easy way to find such content is to look for top performing content that you post to Twitter organically. Then, you can pay to boost these tweets, share the content organically on Facebook, and pay to promote them, too. Since this content did well on Twitter, it is likely to do well on Facebook too.

9. Search Content vs. Social Content

(via SEMrush)

Ever published a piece of quality content and received no engagement on social media? Or it doesn’t rank on Google? “It’s not your content. It’s your content marketing strategy,” says Daniel Hochuli, Head of Strategy at King Content. In this SlideShare deck, Daniel breaks down the differences between search content and social content and explains how to create them.

My favorite slide:

(Click to view a larger version.)

A key takeaway for marketers:

Not all content is meant to rank highly on Google and take off on social media — though, it’s great if it does! When you are creating content, a framework you could use is that of Search Content vs Social Content. The idea is to optimize content for search and for social media separately.

There are also other ways to categorize your content such as the Brand Content vs Direct Response Content approach or the Customer Awareness Lifecycle framework.

10. Why Social Media Chat Bots Are the Future of Communication

(via Jan Rezab)

Here’s one for the future! According to Jan Rezab, founder and chairman of Socialbakers, social media chat bots will be the next big trend. While chat bots are mainly used for e-commerce at the moment, they are also being used for entertainment, Internet of Things, community, and more.

My favorite slide:

A key takeaway for marketers:

It’s worth looking into social media chat bots. For instance, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ Facebook Messenger bot was used more than 115,000 times in the first month!

Social media seems to be moving from a one-to-many channel to a one-to-few or even one-to-one channel in several aspects. This can be seen from the rise of chat bots and one-to-one messaging features such as Instagram’s newest feature, disappearing photos, and videos in Instagram Direct.

If you want to be at the front of the next big social media trend, chat bots might be a good bet.

Over to you

Did any of the SlideShare decks stand out for you?

Did I miss your favorite social media SlideShare deck? Feel free to share it with me in the comments below. It’d be great to hear from you!

The healthy lifestyle industry is booming as more and more people are beginning to care proactively about their physical and emotional well-being. In particular, sports apparel sales have jumped 42% to $270 billion from 2008 to 2015. But although there’s a higher demand for health-related products, some retailers seem to have difficulties.

Sports businesses not only satisfied this hunger, but it seems to have over-compensated for it. The market is saturated and competition is high. On top of this, fast fashion apparel companies, like H&M and New Yorker, have also carved a space for themselves on the scene with their own athleisure collections. Even illustrious sporting goods retailers like Sports Authority fell victim to the competitive market.

In situations like this one, customer loyalty is worth that much more. Having loyal customers, who are proven to buy 90% more often and spend 60% more than other customers, is crucial to succeed in this industry. Let’s see how you, as a sporting goods retailer, can tailor your loyalty program to fulfill the needs of your active, sporty customers and make them stay with you.

1. Help your customers set and achieve goals

Whether your customers do sports just for fun, passion or out of necessity to lose weight or stay healthy, you constantly need to motivate them to stay keep working out and choosing your products in the long run.

a. Introduce a mobile sport tracker in your loyalty program

There are plenty of sport tracker apps to set goals for our current fitness level and motivate us to stay on track to achieve the desired condition. Of course, you can contribute to their success through the accessories and sportswear you provide, but you can also provide additional motivation by partnering with a sport tracker developer just like NewBalance did with Strava.

What you need to do is reward customers’ daily tracked exercise with loyalty points. As customers won’t spend money in your store for these points, you might be asking why that is beneficial for you. Directly, it’s not beneficial at all. But take a look at these points of interest:

• Engage everywhere: This is a new opportunity to be a part of their workouts outside of providing the products they have purchased in your store.
• Become a partner in crime: Your customers will think of you as a partner in achieving their goals.
• Drive purchases: The discount that they can get through the points they earn will incentivize them to make a purchase.
• Drive even more purchases: Last but by no means least, the more they work out, the more accessories they’ll need and buy from your store.

NewBalance gives 25 NB points for each activity tracked by Strava in their MyNB rewards program. In this way, it’s not only the condition of their customers that will improve, but also the extra benefits they can earn by accumulating their loyalty points.

b. Give them the know-how

Sports activities are a science. Even at the beginner’s stage, people need information about how they can improve, grow and succeed. They need to know how much they should exercise a week, what kind of activities they need to do to achieve their own goal, how they can avoid injuries, and even what food intake heightens the impact of their workout. One cannot succeed without an understanding of how their body works. What I suggest is to use this opportunity to provide your loyalty members this necessary content.

Rebel’s Rebel Active loyalty program lets their members access exclusive articles about how they can improve their performance.

What Rebel could do to make sure their customers consume their content, is to give additional points for reading their articles.

c. Provide goals within the loyalty program

You can support your customers in achieving ever more if your loyalty program reflects the same routine. There are plenty of potential achievements in a loyalty program that customers can target:

• Get higher up on the ranking: create a leaderboard on the homepage of your loyalty program and let your customers compete in earing the most points. It will incentivize them to stay active in your program and rouse their competitive spirit at the same time.
• Offer coupons: There are two ways you can provide customers’ discounts through points. One is to redeem their points for the discount they are worth, and the second is to let them buy a coupon for a specific amount of points. If you choose the latter, customers will aim to reach that number of points and won’t stop until they get their reward.

Columbia’s Greater Rewards makes clear how many points customers need to collect to achieve a coupon rewards. I need to hurry, I’m just 250 points away!’

• Introduce levels: the higher a customer’s level is, the more they can benefit from your loyalty program. What else could motivate them as well?

You can elevate their journey to the next level or to a valuable reward by offering multiple points events. In addition, the extra benefit will encourage customers to act and purchase right away, which helps you reduce cart abandonment.

In Eastern Mountain Sports’ rewards program, customers can double their benefit during double points periods.

2. Let them reach the top

Doing sports creates a growth mindset in people with the effect that they will constantly want to improve themselves and achieve more. This is why they are particularly appreciative of well-deserved advantages that they feel value their efforts. Here are some examples of such extra benefits that you can provide your customers:

a. Special treatment

Comfort is really important when it comes to sports apparel and accessories. Don’t miss the chance to boost your customers’ shopping experience with some cozy treats, like:

• Extended guarantee
• Refund and guarantee without a receipt
• First to learn about new product releases and offers
• Chance to test products before they are released
• Express shipping
• Gift wrapping
• Invites to special events
• Worldwide use of loyalty cards
• 24-hour customer support

Decathlon’s loyalty program offers a wide range of extra advantages to its loyalty card owners, like extended warranty without a receipt or invites to family events.

b. Exclusive competitions

Customers love members-only competitions and contests. The most important thing you need to keep in mind while designing a competition is to offer a reward that your customers will go crazy for. Off the top of my head, a chance to meet a favourite athlete or a limited edition training set would definitely blow their mind!

The lucky winner of Rebel’s competition has the chance to participate in the Nike + Run Club Women’s Half Marathon.

c. Personalized offers

The majority of customers expect some kind of personalization in their relationship with a brand and in fact, this is high-priority in driving loyalty. With the development of marketing automation systems, personalization is much less problematic than before. The key to it is collecting the necessary information from your customers. A loyalty program is a perfect platform to get to know your customers.

When signing up to their loyalty program, Dunham’s asks for their customers’ favorite sports so that they can send them personalized offers via email.

There are customers who don’t like to provide information about themselves and their shopping habit. Encourage them by rewarding them with extra loyalty points for their answers!

3. Rouse team spirit

Working out triggers brain chemicals, specifically endorphins, that make us feel happier, and help to reduce stress and depression. This is especially true, if we get fit together with a community, spending time with our friends and making new ones. People love to build sports communities, so don’t forget about this while you’re planning your loyalty program.

a. Loyalty offers for teams

Usually, loyalty programs are for individual members who can create individual accounts and collect points on their own. But why couldn’t a team participate in a loyalty program as one unit? The needs and preferences of sports communities are different from individuals, so your sporting goods loyalty offer should reflect that. (could be click to tweet?)

Reserve a space in your loyalty program for communities where they can create a team account like AriesApparel does, theirs is called Team Loyalty Club (TLC). Aries rewards team purchases (of at least 10 products) with loyalty points at a higher rate than the checkouts of customers one by one. Later the points can be converted to spendable coupons for further team purchases.

b. Reward those who participate in community events and donations

Even if you don’t have a team loyalty offering, you should make sure you reward the customers who join and help the growth of sporting communities. Let your customers collect points for making donations, or checking in from their mobile device while attending local community sport events.

Road Runner Sports loves collective sport experiences. They introduced Good Samaritan Instant Rewards for customers who do a lot for sport communities.

You can also offer rewards that helps communities grow. Special team accessories, point donations, and sporting event tickets as rewards will encourage people to do sports together.

c. Friend referral program for mutual benefits

Social referrals are precious. Since it was revealed that a vast majority of people seek and accept friend recommendations when considering a purchase, marketers do their best to make the most of word-of-mouth marketing and social referrals. In sports, recommendations might be worth even more, as people with the same interests and needs gather at regular occasions over shared experiences.

Introducing some kind of social mechanism into your loyalty program is a must. Sophisticated loyalty programs, like New Balance’s or Gongshow’s rewards social shares and referrals resulting in registration or purchases. This way they make sure that recommendations really drive value for them.

You can help your customers to make referrals by giving an instant discount coupon for the referred friend, encouraging them to accept the invitation.

Rewarding only the first or all further purchases of a referred friend? Gongshow introduced both mechanisms.

Conclusion

After said and done, keep in mind that one size doesn’t fit all. As different sports requires different accessories and personal qualities, so do sports communities require unique features in each loyalty program. But there are some approaches that you can stick to when you are designing a loyalty program, like how to involve sport communities, and how to incorporate the sport spirit in your communication.

If you want to see how Antavo can help you create a loyalty program for your sporting goods store, sign up for a VIP demo here.

Four Marketing Tools That Will Improve Your Sales

Today I have some marketing resources to help you improve your bottom line. Here’s four links with tips and tricks to kick start your Monday.

Building a solid marketing strategy involves finding the tools that will enable you to attract more interested buyers. Whether you have a large or small business you need to have a plan in place. Make a it easier to increase your productivity as well as your ROI. Do you need to improve your online sales, but don’t know where to start? Take advantage of these resources, and let me know how these work for you!

1) Track important SEO and social data – Agency Analytics

Gather SEO and social media insights for your business and your clients. Agency Analytics is an all-in-one SEO, PPC, social and analytics tool that operates from an simple dashboard. Gather data on your backlinks, social networks, Google Adwords campaigns, and more. This powerful resource is tailored to be affordable yet as comprehensive as what an expensive firm would offer.

2) Simple password management – RoboForm

If you are looking for better way to track all of your passwords then you will love this resource. RoboForm is a free tool you can use to instantly remember multiple accounts with just one click. Access it from a computer or mobile device with top rated security features. Never forget a password again with this great tool!

3) Improve task management and save time – Producteev

Get your important projects done efficiently and in a timely manner. Producteev is a great tool for businesses on the go with its computer and mobile interface. Easily access your clients’ work for you and/or your team with a task tracker and colored labels for easy viewing. You can collaborate with any number of members with privacy options and comments.

4) Convert website visitor into customers – HelloBar

If you want to improve the effectiveness of your website, but don’t know where to start then this simple tool can help. HelloBar allows you to create the right message for your target market at the right time. Send messages to your email subscribers as well as promote your content on social media. This smart resource will help grow your following and includes A/B testing to track your results.

Hopefully you will find these marketing tools useful to your brand or business. Are there any that you would like to add as well?

It’s Q4 for most salespeople and often the biggest quarter of the year. It can be the difference between lots of money and a great end of year season with the family, or in the worst cases, hunting for a new role at the start of the new year for missing a target.

The secret to a great Q4 sales period relies largely on how well the prior quarters have played out and the quality of the leads that the salesperson has been given. So the question becomes: how do generate great lead pipeline (at scale) for your all your sales people?

Alarmingly only 13% of businesses describe their lead generation as very successful. Clearly whatever the majority of marketing teams are doing to help sales teams is not working.

However, there is a new way of marketing that is transforming the volume, the quality, and the speed of leads going from an acquisition campaign right to a salesperson’s phone.

When you see results that produce a 50%+ lower cost per lead, a 2-3x increase in lead volume, all combined with the ability to reach people who share similar attributes to your existing best customers, then you are beginning to deliver on the promise of effective marketing that truly employers your sales team to succeed.

Here’s how this works

1. It all starts with the data

The best way to find your next best customer is using what you know about your existing customers. Using platforms like Facebook and Google, you can securely sync segments of your customers (i.e. highest lifetime value or all customers closed in last 6 months) and then use the power of their data to build lookalikes to tailor specific messaging too.

2. Run campaigns that are mobile friendly

We spend more hours of our day on our phone than any other screen and 90% of that time is spent in apps according to Yahoo. Additionally with 44% of researchers use mobile devices when making business purchasing decisions and 50% of those professionals doing the research being under 35 according to Google, a business product or service that is not visible across mobile may not even make the first cut. With ad formats like Facebook Lead Ads, not only can we reach that ideal lookalike audience, we can capture multiple fields of information quickly with a couple of taps.

3. Get the lead info to your sales teams ASAP

So often the problem with lead generation is the disconnect between marketing technology and the CRM system meaning delays in response times and ultimately close rates. According to Inside Sales, 35-50% of sales goes to the vendor that responds first and if you follow up a digital lead in the first 5 minutes, you are 9x more likely to convert. That is why it is crucial that for your always on the go, uber busy sales professionals, that you have a way of getting that lead from your acquisition campaign immediately into their CRM lead queue. Ideally, of course, with an alert on their phone.

4. Close the loop

This step is often forgotten, however your customer acquisition campaigns should constantly be informed by data from the performance of current leads. According to Forbes, 69% of CEOs believe they are wasting money on marketing by not ‘closing the loop’ between marketing and sales so this challenge is recognized right at the top of the organization. In other words, campaigns should continue to reach people similar to those whom salespeople are actually closing. Then people who have actually bought the service and those deemed unqualified should stop see acquisition messaging to prevent both a bad user experience and waste of advertising investment. Ultimately this is the advanced strategy to truly align your brand, your customers, and your marketing and sales teams for optimal performance.

Talk to an executive at Salesforce to learn more about how you can make this work for your business today.

The internet has helped to make inbound lead generation a much easier task, but in other ways, it’s also complicated the process of closing deals. For example, you don’t have as much time with an opportunity as you had in the past, because your competitors are always waiting around the corner to scoop up any potential clients who get impatient or who fall through your fingers.

However, no matter how the art of making a deal changes, forming a good relationship with your prospects will never go out of style. Want to know the three things that will help any salesperson close more leads – and one major caveat? Keep reading.

1. Establishing a Strong Professional Dynamic

You don’t have to be best friends with your prospects, but you should try to positively impact the underlying dynamic of your relationship. Your potential clients should look at you not as a salesperson per se, but rather a partner in this venture, someone who is helping them solve a problem.

Just as Batman has his butler Alfred to help take care of him and manage the problems that he solves, you should try to assume an “Alfred-like” role for your prospects, advising and consulting them on the best way to solve their problems.

2. Commanding Authority

Do your prospects trust you as the person to help solve their problems? To some extent, this sense of trust has already been established (or has failed to be established) before they interact with you. When people interact with your website and your marketing materials, are they attractive, well-formed, easy to understand and up-to-date?

You can affect this sense of authority (positively or negatively) during your interactions with your prospects. Provide prompt, yet complete and accurate, responses to your prospects’ messages and questions. Make sure that you’ve done your homework and that you understand them and their business.

The importance of establishing that part of the relationship really early in the process can’t be overstated.

3. Being Honest

As a corollary to the previous two points, it’s important that you’re able to have the difficult conversations upfront with your prospects. If you’re just telling them what they want to hear and trying to get to the deal, you’re not really helping them, and you’re making it less likely that they’ll be satisfied with their purchase and refer other customers to you.

Instead, approach the closing process from the perspective of a consultant. You’re helping your customers solve a problem, and over the course of that, you may have to say some tough things and tell it like it is. That ability to speak honestly and frankly, yet always with respect, is underrated, yet very much appreciated and very valuable in closing an opportunity.

Final Thought

If you’re a sales manager, finding salespeople who can fulfill the above traits is often a matter of getting the right people in the door in the first place. You either need to coach and manage them so that they get to where you need them to be or find the people who are already performing at that level.

Unfortunately, most sales managers spend a lot of time on sales training and development, but spend very little time on learning how to be a good sales manager — and absolutely no time on learning how to recruit properly and bring in the right salespeople.

If you’re really looking to build a sales team that does what you need them to and sells at a high level, focus on how you bring people on board. Get a hiring process in place, learn how to interview properly, and learn what to look for and the questions to ask.

While this takes more time and effort, you’ll ultimately find yourself in a much better position.

Are webinars part of your inbound marketing plan? If they aren’t, they should be. Webinars can effectively showcase your company’s expertise, offer real-time interaction with prospects and offer advanced content once they are completed. Consider the following reasons to include webinars in your inbound marketing strategy.

MOFU Leads

Webinars offer a good option to Middle of the Funnel leads. These are leads who are past the awareness stage and may be in the process of trying to solve a key business problem. A webinar offers MOFU leads good exposure to your employees in a non-sales environment. In a sense, webinars allow you to audition to your prospects. You become more than a website or a download to them.

A Content Trove

You can create a ton of content from a webinar. Firstly, you’ll need to decide on your webinar topic. What’s hot in your industry that is affecting your customers? Is new legislation affecting their business? Are there upcoming trends they need to be aware that you can educate them on? Is there a successful case study you can walk them through to highlight your offering? Can you offer continuing education credits through a webinar?

Once you decide on a topic, you’ll need to create a presentation. Figure about 45 minutes for slides and 15 minutes for Q & A. Realistically, you’ll start a few minutes after the hour since you’ll want to make sure everyone is logged in and ready to listen. A start time of 1 or 2 PM EST is accessible across all US time zones.

If you have presenters in multiple locations be sure to have a practice session a day or two before the webinar so you can handle pacing, transition and any technical glitches. GotoWebinar is widely-used webinar software. Your presenter may not be technically savvy and you’ll want them to focus on presenting content not making sure slides are advancing or whether or not their audio is OK. Use a moderator to introduce the webinar expert and take questions after the presentation. It will formalize the webinar rather than having the presenter do everything. Consider live-tweeting the webinar and using a specific hashtag for so that other Twitter users can participate. Be sure to record the webinar so that you can use it as advanced content afterwards.

After the Webinar

Send all participants a copy of the presentation that was used and tell them how to receive their continuing education credits if they were offered. Consider sending a recording of the webinar to registrants that did not attend. If there were questions that you didn’t have time to answer after the presentation, write a blog that answers those questions. Use the recorded webinar as a piece of advanced content that can be downloaded from your website.

If this is your first webinar, think small. Don’t expect a huge number of participants. Be sure to promote it to your contacts database and even on Facebook or LinkedIn for additional exposure. Pick a topic with broad appeal in your ecosystem – cast a wide net. Commit to at least one webinar a quarter. That’s only four webinars a year. You’ll have enough time to prepare and pick out the hottest topics.

Webinars are a powerful way to audition for your prospects and let them see and hear the experts in your company.

While all the major banks have pretty good online facilities, there's a whole breed of nimble startups using mobile apps and bank account data to create new, more personalised money management services. Hoping to learn some new tricks, HSBC announced...

Sales motivation can feel like an uphill battle this time of year. It’s down to the wire for closing deals, and you barely know what you’re doing for the holiday break, let alone the entire year of 2017. But one of my favoritesales motivation and productivity hacks is to use time between those deal-closing tasks to make some moves on the planning side of things and set myself up for future success.

Whatever your role, this last month hustle can get you in a tizzy, but the best way to break that grind into more digestible pieces is to switch up your tasks throughout the day. I’m not just talking cleaning out your inbox for 15 minutes (which, let’s face it, you need to do that, too), but actual career-boosting activities that will put you in a good mindset going into 2017. Here are just a few ideas for things you can do to manufacture sales motivation during the toughest month of the year and start the new year off on the right foot:

1. Pay it forward. Send a handwritten note to a manager or mentor who helped you this year. Congratulate someone on their career success, like a colleague or a customer. By recognizing others for their inspiration, or celebrating the success of others, you’ll reinforce positive karma that’s certain to come your way in the new year.

2. Prepare your workspace for a fresh start. Reorganize, remove clutter, add things that bring you joy or inspiration. Pin your goals or Standards of Performance somewhere in plain sight. Order a standing desk to help with those upcoming New Year’s Resolutions, or if you work from home, boost your focus by making your dedicated work space calmer and quieter.

3. Revamp your professional presence, on and offline. Put yourself in a recruiter, prospect, or customer’s’ shoes and make sure your online footprint (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc) makes a good impression. Order new business cards and redesign your resume. You never know when you’re going to need to hand one of those to someone, and you want to be as up to date and prepared for success as possible in the new year.

4. Create a personal tech stack for phone. Evernote is great because you can use it on your phone, computer, or tablet to keep track of your notes and personal journaling. Doo makes task tracking flawless. And Streaks is a solid way to hold yourself accountable to daily goals, professional and personal.

5. Set aside time for learning and growing. In between the hustle and bustle of the holidays, read a few career-boosting classics, like Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or anything by Patrick Lencioni. Choose three skills that you plan to improve upon in 2017 and create a game plan for how you’re going to develop those skills. In fact, go ahead and block out the time on your calendar, now, so you’ll have no excuses when the time actually rolls around.

6. Reflect on 2016. Write down your biggest wins — and your biggest losses — from the past 12 months. Read both lists out loud to yourself a few times. The ability to describe those big wins with confidence, and your losses with grace, will help you tremendously in your future.

The new year will be here before you know it, so taking the time to break up your every day tasks will not only prepare you for success in the new year, but increase your sales motivation during one of the busiest months of the year. Let these six ideas be the jumping off point for your fresh start — and leave a comment below if you have any ideas of your own!

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While you’re planning for 2017, why not learn more about the sales strategy yielding better results for modern sales organizations? Download your free copy of The Essential Guide To Account-Based Sales Development to learn more about the sales model today.

 

The post Sales Motivation Monday: 6 Career-Boosting Moves for 2017 appeared first on SalesLoft.

Agile selling isn’t optional. With ever-changing business environments, sellers often find themselves needing to learn new skills quickly.

Sales guru and author Jill Konrath discusses her newest book, “Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World” with our host and sales coach, Deb Calvert. On this archived episode of CONNECT! Online Radio for Selling Professionals^®, Konrath offers a plan for rapidly absorbing new information and mastering new skills with an agile selling approach.

Excerpts from Deb Calvert’s talk with Jill Konrath on Agile Selling and Its Importance.

Deb: “What do you mean by agile selling?”

Jill: “Agile selling… I think sales has become  a thinking-intensive profession. I don’t think anybody can be successful in sales today unless their brains are actively engaged in learning and selling and thinking about a whole lot of different things. To me, an agile seller is someone who can detect changes, who is able to be nimble, mentally nimble, and turn on a dime and see what’s happening on new things so that they can be more of value into their customers and can adjust the marketing conditions on all the new products that they are coming out with successfully. So nimble is about fleetness, it’s about being able to respond quickly; agile is also about learning. It’s about being able to get there fast and get up the speed fast. And whatever it is, you have to know, because I don’t think you can get by without that today.”

There’s so much more here to learn! Tune in to find out more on Agile Selling directly from Jill Konrath!

This is just the start! Listen to the rest of this in-depth interview with Jill Konrath to get familiar with agile selling. There’s no better way to maximize your windshield time than by listening to CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals^®. We’ll help you cut out continuances, put an end to pending and stop stalling out in sales.

The post Agile Selling: An Interview with Jill Konrath about Getting Up to Speed appeared first on People First.

Being your own boss is great.

You have final say in decision making; you get to choose your team, have the potential to earn limitless revenue, and in general, have more freedom than a typical nine-to-five job.

It’s no surprise, self-employment has become a way of life for millions of people, with more than 14.7 million self-employed individuals in the US alone.

But self-employment has its own downsides.

After all, a lot of responsibility (and risk) come with being your own boss.

Unlike a typical corporate job, you don’t have your workweeks laid out for you — and there’s no manager breathing down your neck to make sure you meet deadlines. Instead, there's only you.

For this reason, it becomes absolutely essential that you master the art of self-discipline and accountability, to make sure you're getting work done.

So, how do you maintain productivity when you don't have a boss?

Well, there's no secret hack or technique that'll solve all your problems. After all, productivity isn't a quick fix. It takes creating a system based on your strengths (and weaknesses) and further optimizing it for entropy.

Below, I shed light on the downsides of being self-employed, according to the latest studies, and share my three-step system to improving productivity.

Problems With Self-Employment

Problem 1: No social life

Financial constraints don’t allow self-employed individuals to have huge teams. They've usually had to take over many different business roles (e.g., sales, marketing, operations, and public relations).

So it's quite normal for self-employed workers to end up working longer hours than usual. What's more, self-employed folks work with few to no teammates which can lead to isolation and loneliness.

It’s no surprise, 18% of self-employed people have problems making time for a social life, as they’re always working on their business.

After all, when you're working tirelessly on building a company, you have very little time and energy to go out and socialize.

Source

Problem 2: No guaranteed income

Many people want to start their own business because of the potential to make limitless revenue.

Yes, you can get rich by working for yourself, but there's also the probability you won't make as much or worse, suffer a loss.

According to a recent study on entrepreneurs, two-thirds of the respondents felt "moderately" or "extremely" financially insecure. It’s no surprise, 48% of small businesses tend to be less prepared for the crisis than larger companies.

This financial distress makes it difficult for the self-employed to work efficiently. It also builds stress which can reduce productivity.

Problem 3: Intense workweeks

As mentioned, self-employed individuals don’t have big teams and do most of the legwork themselves which can lead to problems like lack of focus.

What’s more, in their earnest desire to multitask, self-employed individuals lose sight of what's essential, lower their efficiency by focusing on too many tasks at once, and eventually experience burnout.

Source

In fact, a two-year Stanford study found that self-employed folks’ working time has increased by 15% while leisure time has decreased by 33%.

A staggering statistic strongly hinting at the intense workweeks self-employed workers have, which can lead to problems like overworking, burnout, and, of course, affect productivity.

Problem 4: Bad work-life balance

Due to the intense nature of the business, self-employed individuals have problems balancing their work and life.

The thing is, when you're running a business, there are always problems that need your attention — and this makes it hard to unplug and take a break. Moreover, this work-focused lifestyle leads to deteriorated mental health in terms of isolation, depression, and anxiety.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking: It sucks to work for yourself.

There are serious problems with self-employment, but the freedom and opportunities afforded you can make it worthwhile. And once your business gains traction, things can get a little easier.

Also, you need to understand that none of these problems are terminal. They can all be fixed provided you’re conscious about them and make it a priority to address them, which brings me to my next point:

Self-Employment Productivity Guide

As mentioned, improving productivity is not an overnight process. There's no single solution. First identify what your problems are and work towards improving (and optimizing) them.

Here’s a simple 3-step process you can implement:

1. Scrutinize current work performance to identify where you lack.
2. Follow relevant strategies to achieve measurable goals.
3. Analyze progress to readjust strategies if required.

Let’s break each of these steps down below.

1. Scrutinize current work performance to identify where you lack.

You can only improve productivity when you know what to improve.

After all, there are so many areas of improvement that can be targeted (e.g., financial management, time management, and organizational management), you can’t just expect to solve all of these at once.

The best practice is to adopt the "fine-tuning" strategy to identify the processes that specifically need optimization. That'll help you answer the following questions:

• "Is it the long working hours that need to be reduced?"
• "Am I unable to meet deadlines because of bad organization?"
• "Does my inefficient financial management scenario need improvement?"
• "Is my working environment too dull for me to function?"

And the million-dollar question: "How do I extract the specific areas of improvement?"

This is where auditing work performance helps identify areas for improvement.

Below is a simple process I’ve used:

Integrate Trackers Into Your Work Week

The first step is to track key performance metrics (work time, downtime, etc … ) when going about your work day. I recommend using the following trackers:

• Use project management software to manage and keep track of all your projects in one place.
• Use task management tools like Todoist to organize and prioritize your daily tasks. It helps break down complex projects into achievable goals with to-do lists, subtasks, and even color coded priorities.
• Use time trackers like Clockify to track duration.

Measure Your Progress

After integrating required trackers, accumulate your work performance date for a period of time — at least one month — and export your data into a spreadsheet for a final performance audit.

Here, you’ll measure and evaluate based on benchmarks or set smart goals (more on this in a bit).

Step 2. Follow appropriate strategies to achieve measurable goals.

Once you’ve identified the areas needing improvement, adopt relevant strategies. However, for these strategies to be effective, you’ll require direction and focus, especially as it's quite difficult to measure the growth of a business.

For this reason, it's important to set measurable goals to drive action.

For instance, if you want to reduce your work time. You can't just implement a strategy and expect to improve.

Yes, you may see an improvement, but by how much? How do you measure how successful you were?

Don't break your head. You can't improve unless you set the right goals and objectives:

• The amount of time you want to reduce

• The strategy you’ll be using to achieve your goal

• Or the exact date by which you plan on achieving your goal

One way of setting trackable goals is by using the S.M.A.R.T framework. Not only does it help to set measurable goals, but it also helps to break down a work performance goal into a clearly defined plan of action as compared to an inexact statement.

Source

Here’s what a S.M.A.R.T framework looks like:

S.M.A.R.T

• Specific: What exact task to accomplish and which specific strategies to use?
• Measurable: What data to track for the goal?
• Achievable: Do you have the skills and resources to achieve the goal?
• Relevant: How does the goal help you achieve your overall professional goals?
• Time-based: What’s the deadline by which the goal has to be achieved?

For example, if I wanted to improve my content writing time, I can't just set a goal to improve it and expect it to happen magically. I need to have an (actionable) plan.

This is where I’d apply the S.M.A.R.T framework and turn this vague goal into a smart one:

Specific: Use a structured Pomodoro technique to bring down the time spent on writing one blog article to three from five hours.

• Measurable: Afterward, compare new writing time against the current one by using a time tracker tool.
• Achievable: I have enough experience to enhance my writing speed since writing has been my strong forte for many months now.
• Relevant: Currently, my goal is to reduce work time and spare myself for personal interests like dance, hiking adventures, and ukulele.
• Time-based: I’ll be completing my goal until [insert date].

Ultimately, the S.M.A.R.T goal version of my previously vague one would look something like:

"Bring down writing time to three hours per blog article by implementing a structured Pomodoro technique by [insert date]."

In a nutshell, all you need to do is to set measurable goals for the gaps you've identified as "areas of improvement," and adopt relevant strategies that work best for you.

Now that you have a set of (smart) goals, you're now ready to adopt relevant strategies. So here are a few key strategies to inspire:

1. Keep a check on trackers: Due to the intense nature of the business, it's quite common to overlook tracking. Remember, you can't improve if you don't know what to improve, so keep daily logs (think: Google Drive folder) for future reference.

2. Adopt mind mapping: Use mind mapping software to help with decision making and solve other creative ruts. This helps you tackle projects efficiently by graphically displaying relationships and planning hierarchies.

3. Make personal well-being a priority: Apart from business, prioritize health at your workplace. After all, your productivity is directly linked to your health. For example, block out hours for exercise or meditation. I recommend checking out this guide to maintain health at your work for more information.

4. Adopt relevant time management techniques: Most business owners work beyond regular hours and, in most cases, it’s because they fail to get the most out of their time. This is why it’s important to adopt time management techniques to get better control over your time.

5. Segment your work weeks: Business owners have complex workweeks and this can be overwhelming. For this reason, it's a good idea to de-clutter your workweeks with daily objectives and milestones.

6. Avoid multitasking and adopt unitasking: As business owners manage different tasks, it’s easy to end up overwhelmed by working on different tasks. For this reason, it’s important to adopt monotasking and avoid bad habits like multitasking.

On a similar note, I recommend using a distraction blocking app called Strict Workflow. This app blocks out social media and other distractions for periods of 25 minutes (think: Pomodoro) to promote distraction-free work.

3. Analyze progress to readjust strategies if required.

You’ve set goals and adopted relevant strategies, but don’t stop there. Keep a check on your progress and optimize when required.

With self-employment productivity, you never know what works and what doesn’t. In fact, you might implement a strategy only to find it’s not the right fit for you.

The point is, you need to audit your performance after implementing a development strategy, or you won't know if it actually worked — and this is where a personal performance review comes into play.

While there’s no set framework, one thing is for certain: it doesn’t have to be formal at all. Nevertheless, there are a few best practices to consider:

1. Block out periods to conduct performance reviews. For example, once a month.

2. When displaying tracked data, clean it out to only the most relevant performance metrics (time taken, downtime, etc …).

3. Finally, using your S.M.A.R.T goals to evaluate progress and adopt relevant strategies accordingly.

If the results show considerable improvement, your strategies are on point. All you need to do is set higher goals. And don’t be discouraged, if things don't work. Treat the information as a basis to fine-tune your strategy and focus on the identification of other gaps you might have missed.

Don’t Forget to Take a Break

At the end of the day, we’re all human beings, and yes, this even includes the superhuman entrepreneurs.

You don’t have to peak your productivity every single day. If you reach your limit, stop and take some time off to rejuvenate.

Taking a break is not a weakness. It's a great strategy to rejuvenate your energy for another day. So, designate a day off from work at least once a week to prevent burnouts. This will make focusing on things more accessible and will boost your productivity further.

And remember, regularly keep track of your work performance, because you can’t improve something, if you don’t know what to improve.

“If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.”

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“Words,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her abiding meditation on the magic of real human communication, “transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” But what happens in a cultural ecosystem where the hearer has gone extinct and the speaker gone rampant? Where do transformation and understanding go?

What made, for instance, James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s superb 1970 dialogue about race and identity so powerful and so enduringly insightful is precisely the fact that it was a dialogue — not the ping-pong of opinions and co-reactivity that passes for dialogue today, but a commitment to mutual contemplation of viewpoints and considered response. That commitment is the reason why they were able to address questions we continue to confront with tenfold more depth and nuance than we are capable of today. And the dearth of this commitment in our present culture is the reason why we continue to find ourselves sundered by confrontation and paralyzed by the divisiveness of “us vs. them” narratives. “To bother to engage with problematic culture, and problematic people within that culture, is an act of love,” wrote the poet Elizabeth Alexander in contemplating power and possibility. Krista Tippett calls such engagement generous listening. And yet so much of our communication today is defined by a rather ungenerous unwillingness to listen coupled with a compulsion to speak.

The most perennially insightful and helpful remedy for this warping of communication I’ve ever encountered comes from the legendary physicist David Bohm (December 20, 1917–October 27, 1992) in On Dialogue (public library) — a slim, potent collection of Bohm’s essays and lectures from the 1970s and 1980s, exploring the alchemy of human communication, what is keeping us from listening to one another, and how we can transcend those barriers to mutual understanding.

Decades before the social web as we know it and long before Rebecca Solnit came to lament how our modern noncommunication is changing our experience of solitude and communion, Bohm cautions:

In spite of this worldwide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale… What appears [in the media] is generally at best a collection of trivial and almost unrelated fragments, while at worst, it can often be a really harmful source of confusion and misinformation.

He terms this “the problem of communication” and writes:

Different groups … are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

Suggesting that the difficulty might arise from our “crude and insensitive manner of thinking about communication and talking about it,” Bohm sets out to restore the necessary subtlety by reclaiming the true meaning of communication and its supreme mastery, dialogue:

“Communication” … is based on the Latin commun and the suffix “ie” which is similar to “fie,” in that it means “to make or to do.” So one meaning of “to communicate” is “to make something common,” i.e., to convey information or knowledge from one person to another in as accurate a way as possible.

[…]

Nevertheless, this meaning does not cover all that is signified by communication. For example, consider a dialogue. In such a dialogue, when one person says something, the other person does not in general respond with exactly the same meaning as that seen by the first person. Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the second person replies, the first person sees a difference between what he meant to say and what the other person understood. On considering this difference, he may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to his own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go back and forth, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants. Thus, in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.

But of course such communication can lead to the creation of something new only if people are able freely to listen to each other, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each has to be interested primarily in truth and coherence, so that he is ready to drop his old ideas and intentions, and be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for.

Such communication in the service of creating something new, Bohm argues, takes place not only between people but within people. He illustrates this with an example that calls to mind Alan Lightman’s beautiful reflection on the creative sympathies of art and science, and writes:

Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it properly be said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside of him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

The scientist is engaged in a similar “dialogue” with nature (as well as with his fellow human beings). Thus, when a scientist has an idea, this is tested by observation. When it is found (as generally happens) that what is observed is only similar to what he had in mind and not identical, then from a consideration of the similarities and the differences he gets a new idea which is in turn tested. And so it goes, with the continual emergence of something new that is common to the thought of scientists and what is observed in nature.

In a sentiment that affirms the importance of the uncomfortable luxury of changing one’s mind, Bohm adds:

It is clear that if we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.

He observes that these ideas are rooted in assumptions we hold about various aspects of life — from politics to economics to religion — and those assumptions are what we call our “opinions.” Four centuries after Galileo admonished against the folly of believing one’s preconceptions, Bohm argues that this tendency to cling to our existing opinions is a kind of self-protective “block” we use as a hedge against our fear of uncertainty. But in blocking uncertainty, we also block our ability to listen. Fertile dialogue, he points out, requires that we first become aware of our own “blocks,” then be willing to surmount them. He writes:

When we come together to talk, or otherwise to act in common, can each one of us be aware of the subtle fear and pleasure sensations that “block” his ability to listen freely? Without this awareness, the injunction to listen to the whole of what is said will have little meaning. But if each one of us can give full attention to what is actually “blocking” communication while he is also attending properly to the content of what is communicated, then we may be able to create something new between us, something of very great significance for bringing to an end the at present insoluble problems of the individual and of society.

In a passage of swelling timeliness today, Bohm considers the crucial difference between dialogue and discussion:

“Dialogue” comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means “the word,” or in our case we would think of the “meaning of the word.” And dia means “through” — it doesn’t mean “two.” A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which may emerge some new understanding. It’s something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It’s something creative. And this shared meaning is the “glue” or “cement” that holds people and societies together.

Contrast this with the word “discussion,” which has the same root as “percussion” and “concussion.” It really means to break things up. It emphasizes the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view, and where everybody is presenting a different one — analyzing and breaking up. That obviously has its value, but it is limited, and it will not get us very far beyond our various points of view. Discussion is almost like a ping-pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself…

In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. It’s a situation called win-win, whereas the other game is win-lose — if I win, you lose. But a dialogue is something more of a common participation, in which we are not playing a game against each other, but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.

True dialogue, Bohm argues, not only leads us to question the very assumptions upon which our opinions are built but invites a continual act of self-revision at the level of the thought process itself — the process of which our opinions are a product. This self-revision takes place both on the individual level and on the collective level. He considers the difficulty of rethinking thought itself:

You cannot defend something without first thinking the defense. There are those thoughts which might question the thing you want to defend, and you’ve got to push them aside. That may readily involve self-deception — you will simply push aside a lot of things you would rather not accept by saying they are wrong, by distorting the issue, and so on. Thought defends its basic assumptions against evidence that they may be wrong.

Noting that we engage in two kinds of thought, individual and collective, Bohm points out that most of our individual assumptions are the product of our cultural conditioning and our “collective background.” He writes:

Language is collective. Most of our basic assumptions come from our society, including all our assumptions about how society works, about what sort of person we are supposed to be, and about relationships, institutions, and so on. Therefore we need to pay attention to thought both individually and collectively.

Writing in the same era in which evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme,” Bohm adds:

Assumptions or opinions are like computer programs in people’s minds. Those programs take over against the best of intentions — they produce their own intentions.

Those intentions operate on what Bohm calls the “tacit level” — not the level of our conscious awareness but someplace deeper, more intuitive, and almost automatic, of which we only have a vague conscious sense. He explains:

“Tacit” means that which is unspoken, which cannot be described — like the knowledge required to ride a bicycle. It is the actual knowledge, and it may be coherent or not. I am proposing that thought is actually a subtle tacit process. The concrete process of thinking is very tacit. The meaning is basically tacit. And what we can say explicitly is only a very small part of it. I think we all realize that we do almost everything by this sort of tacit knowledge. Thought is emerging from the tacit ground, and any fundamental change in thought will come from the tacit ground. So if we are communicating at the tacit level, then maybe thought is changing.

The tacit process is common. It is shared. The sharing is not merely the explicit communication and the body language and all that, which are part of it, but there is also a deeper tacit process which is common. I think the whole human race knew this for a million years; and then in five thousand years of civilization we have lost it, because our societies got too big to carry it out. But now we have to get started again, because it has become urgent that we communicate. We have to share our consciousness and to be able to think together, in order to do intelligently whatever is necessary. If we begin to confront what’s going on in a dialogue group, we sort of have the nucleus of what’s going on in all society.

But Bohm’s most crucial point — which is also the point most disquieting to our present customs of communication — is that true dialogue must be aimed not at some immediate or practical solution but at the higher-order objective of meaning. A quarter century before physicist Sean Carroll made his beautiful case for “poetic naturalism” as our supreme source of meaning in a universe otherwise devoid of purpose, Bohm writes:

It is not an arbitrary imposition to state that we have no fixed purpose — no absolute purpose, anyway. We may set up relative purposes for investigation, but we are not wedded to a particular purpose, and are not saying that the whole group must conform to that purpose indefinitely. All of us might want the human race to survive, but even that is not our purpose. Our purpose is really to communicate coherently in truth, if you want to call that a purpose.

[…]

It is necessary to share meaning. A society is a link of relationships among people and institutions, so that we can live together. But it only works if we have a culture — which implies that we share meaning; i.e., significance, purpose, and value. Otherwise it falls apart. Our society is incoherent, and doesn’t do that very well; it hasn’t for a long time, if it ever did. The different assumptions that people have are tacitly affecting the whole meaning of what we are doing.

Echoing his magnificent conversation with philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti about intelligence and love, Bohm adds:

Love will go away if we can’t communicate and share meaning… However, if we can really communicate, then we will have fellowship, participation, friendship, and love, growing and growing. That would be the way…

And perhaps in dialogue, when we have this very high energy of coherence, it might bring us beyond just being a group that could solve social problems. Possibly it could make a new change in the individual and a change in the relation to the cosmic. Such an energy has been called “communion.” It is a kind of participation. The early Christians had a Greek word, koinonia, the root of which means “to participate” — the idea of partaking of the whole and taking part in it; not merely the whole group, but the whole.

On Dialogue remains an illuminating and acutely timely read. Complement it with Einstein on widening our circles of compassion and Carl Sagan on moving beyond “us vs. them,” then revisit Bohm on how our beliefs shape our reality.

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Not every pitch or presentation ends in a signed contract. However you must ask for some next step, otherwise you have just invested a lot of time and energy delivering an informative talk. With so many deals ending in “no decision” today, you can’t afford to waffle when it comes to this critical step in moving your sale forward!

Unfortunately, many salespeople leave money on the table by delivering a vague call-to-action, or too often, no next steps at all. Successful salespeople know precisely want they want their prospect to do at the end of their pitch. It doesn’t pay to be shy in this regard, or to assume the next step is obvious. By applying the following keys to your call-to-action, you will greatly increase your chances of success.

The 6 Keys to a Great Call-to-Action:

1. Keep it simple.

   Many times salespeople offer next steps that are too complicated or as inviting as a visit to the dentist’s office. Don’t overwhelm your prospect at the home stretch with a complex, multi-stage, call-to-action. If possible, make the next step a single, simple action your prospect can easily remember and take.

   For example, “To ensure you get the best rates, I recommend signing this document today so we can move forward.”

1. Be specific.

   Vague requests produce vague results. Be very clear about what you want your prospect to do. For example, instead of the more general, request for a recommendation, ask for “a recommendation to the board to move forward with our proposal by the end of the quarter.”

2. Offer proof.

   If your call to action is vague, such as “we hope you’ll take this under consideration,” how will you know that your prospect has actually taken the action?

   Come up with a call-to-action that can be validated after it’s accomplished. For example, an email recommendation to stakeholders or partners, a response to a calendar invite, making a security deposit, and so forth.

3. Include timing.

   No matter how excited your prospect is about your solution, he may forget all about it tomorrow when the next pressing need arises. Using a defined time frame will increase your prospect’s likelihood of taking action and give you a reason to follow up.

   For example, “I suggest we schedule a deep dive with your support team within the next 30 days.”

1. Make it unique.

   Avoid the cliché’, “We hope you’ll consider us for your business” if at all possible. Not only does this violate points #3 and #4, but it’s a perfectly forgettable statement that lumps you in with every other vendor. You can stand out by making your call-to-action unique to your prospect’s goals or challenges.

   For example, “Based on your concerns, I think the best next step would be to have you visit with one of our value assessment experts to quantify the ROI.”

2. Deliver it with confidence.

   In your pitch you have just laid out how you are going to help your prospect move from a state of pain to an island of relief. Any next step that gets him closer to that goal is a happy occasion. Deliver your call to action with that type of confidence and belief in the value of your solution. Your conviction and enthusiasm will be contagious.

A call-to-action is expected and deserved if you’ve made a compelling case for your solution. Give your proposal the best possible chance at success by making sure it includes these 6 keys to a great call-to-action.

Find out more about how to deliver a successful close in this video!

In our annual State of Pipeline Marketing survey, we asked over 350 marketers which marketing channels they invest their time and budget in.

We tallied their answers and aggregated them down by industry to provide you a snapshot of how different industries find, engage and generate new customers.

If you’re interested in knowing the marketing channels most used by your industry peers, or how marketing budgets may typically get allocated, then keep reading.

How The Marketing Channel Data Is Generated

In our survey, marketers selected every marketing channel they used and indicated their industry. We then added the totals, grouped by industry, and calculated the percentages to normalize the numbers due to the different number of marketers per industry who responded to our survey. We can think of these results as how different industries focus their marketing efforts in terms of channels and tactics. We find that different industries spend more time, focus, and effort on certain channels. We can think of the results as the unique marketing strategies inherent to each industry.

You can click the infographic to enlarge it, but below we dive into some of the industries in more detail.

A Close Look At The Most Popular Marketing Channels For The Software, Internet and Technology Industry

The marketing strategy for many technology companies can be described as running the gamut, i.e. doing it all. This is consistent with our findings that show technology companies focusing their efforts relatively equally across numerous channels, from paid media to outbound calling.

Tech companies are investing in almost every channel except for TV ads, print and radio.

Consumer Goods And Services Invest Heavily In Paid Media

For consumer goods and services, i.e B2C, there’s a stark contrast to the shape of the rose chart. This is consistent with our intuition as B2C companies invest heavily in brand advertising with video ads, display ads, retargeting, social media, and paid search.

Also expected is the lack of outbound calling and lower emphasis on trade shows and conferences.

Financial Services Marketers Rely Heavily On Email Marketing

For financial services it’s no surprise that email is a heavy area of focus for marketers. Relationships, trust and communications is important for consumer-finance or commercial banking services. As a result, email marketing is a likely driver for nurturing leads and sending educational content.

We also see an emphasis on SEO. This is likely due to local SEO being important fo financial service firms serving specific cities and regions.

Marketing Agencies Rely On Content, Referrals And Paid Social To Generate Business

The chart for marketing and advertising agencies shows a distinct focus on several channels including content marketing, referrals, email and social.

We expect marketing agencies to prove their expertise through case studies and educational content. Paid social makes a fitting distribution channel for this content, and so too does email marketing.

Working with an agency requires forming a strong partnership. With product launches, campaigns with massive budgets, and often long timelines it’s no wonder word-of-mouth is so important.

Business professionals don’t want to an unvetted agency to fulfill the important job of marketing, so word-of-mouth marketing is a major focus area for agencies.

Conference and Trade Shows Are Essential Channels For Manufacturers

In a previous post we found that the majority of marketers in the manufacturing industry chose trade shows as the channel with the greatest impact on revenue. So it’s no surprise that manufacturers include tradeshows as a heavily used channel.

Email marketing and SEO is also used widely. Seasonal offers, industry news, and new products requires communicating with distributors and wholesalers. So it’s no surprise that email marketing is also widely used by marketers in the manufacturing industry.

Conclusion

It’s been an interesting examination in the diversity of marketing strategies and focus areas. Knowing the marketing channels and activities most used in industries such as technology and consumer goods can help marketers think about how they balance marketing efforts at their own organizations.

Every dollar spent on these marketing channels should deliver business value. When it comes to measuring the outcomes of marketing investments, marketers implement a smart marketing attribution solution.

No matter what industry you’re in we hope you enjoyed this tour across industries and marketing strategies. The data used for this analysis comes from our annual report, The State of Pipeline Marketing. You can download it by clicking the link below.

Metrics are the backbone of all product decision-making. Without looking at how our metrics fluctuate over time, we have no way of knowing whether or not our mobile product is a success outside of educated guessing—and with the endless amounts of data product managers are able to capture, there’s no room for guessing anymore!

However, endless amounts of data may lead to confusion around where to start when selecting metrics to track for your new mobile product. Rather than jumping right into data options you can collect, it’s best to look at the problems your product is attempting to solve and how you’ll use your data learnings over time.

There are four steps to selecting the right metrics for your mobile product dashboard. Let’s dive into each!

First, think about what questions you’re trying to answer.

At the end of the day, your product exists to try to help your company solve a business problem. Business problems typically arise out of questions your company has yet to answer, which is the best place to start when you’re thinking about a new product/feature. Begin this exercise by looking at the BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) your company has set out to solve, and build out the questions your new product/feature is answering on top of it.

You’ll have more success in ensuring your new mobile product stays on-track when you look at how it fits into your greater business. Understanding the acute questions your product will help your company answer will help you cut unnecessary features and minimize scope, which will help your team bring the product to fruition in a timely manner.

Second, brainstorm metrics that will help you find answers to those questions.

Once you know the question(s) your mobile product will help you answer, it’s time to select the metrics that will tell you whether or not you’ve hit your goals. There are many different metrics to choose from, but regardless of what you pick, I urge you to remember one important point about metrics: Success looks different for everyone, and so will the metrics that define it.

Feel free to model your metrics after what other companies have done in the past, but don’t let their experience cloud your judgement. If you feel like a standard metric has no place in the success of your new mobile product, explore your hunch and present your findings accordingly.

To help start your brainstorm, check out the comprehensive list of metrics we put together, or take a look through the list below:

• Downloads
• Monthly Active Users (MAU)
• Daily Active Users (DAU)
• Session length
• Session interval
• Time spent in-app
• Conversion rate
• Churn rate
• Retention (28 day or otherwise)
• In-app revenue
• Customer lifetime value

Third, decide what types of visuals will best display the data from the metrics you track.

Great data matters, but the way you present the data is equally important. Depending on your product, you may even have multiple groups you’re presenting data to who will digest it differently. It’s important for mobile product managers to remember their audience as they put together visuals to help display their data. Data exists to help you tell a story, and the number one rule in storytelling is to read your audience before you begin. Be sure you’re telling the story in the most compelling way to the audience it’s being delivered to. If the audience isn’t hooked by the way the story is presented, you may as well have not given the presentation at all.

For example, this is a bad way to visualize data. If your data visualizations look like this, time to go back to the drawing board.

Source: Gizmodo

There are endless options when it comes to data visualization and presentation, so it’s a good idea to start planning early and to consider all options before you select a delivery method. For example, is your data better shown in a graph, chart, scatter plot, interactive element, snapshot into a deeper dashboard, or something else entirely? Check out this list of 38 tools that help with data visualization for some inspiration before you begin.

Fourth, consider how you’ll instrument new data into your existing process.

Now that you have your data, how can you act on it? The best new products are presented with a plan for instrumenting their data and learnings into a company’s existing process, and this holds as true for mobile as it does for any other type of software. It can be easy to get wrapped up with your products “shiny new object” feel, but it’s imperative that you look at your starting point before you get carried away with the new learnings your product will bring.

Begin by considering how your data flow is currently set up, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Who needs access to this data?
• Is this data presented in a way that is meaningful to all parties?
• Do I need to combine this new data with existing data? If so, what’s the best way? Who needs to be involved?

Once you consider the variables that already exist, it will help you understand where your mobile product dashboard data needs to be linked and who needs access to it.

Wrapping it up

There are tons of metrics and data mobile product managers can gather to help gauge success, but not all deserve a place on your mobile product dashboard. Choose your metrics carefully in the planning phase of your dashboard setup process, and you’ll be on the right track to clear through clutter and understand exactly how your mobile product is performing.

I hope the four tips above will help you on our dashboard setup journey. See you in the app stores!

Setting your pricing structure and agreeing on fees with clients is one thing.

But it doesn’t do you a lick of good if that money doesn’t make it’s way speedily and safely from their account to yours.

Turns out, not all late payments are caused by malice. Or laziness. Usually, there’s confusion – on method, on timing – that’s getting in the way and keeping you anxious about whether or not you’ll have funds on hand to cover your expenses and investments.

Nothing beats doing work that you love and having clients who are raving fans…except actually getting paid for it.

Let’s shine a light on how to make sure that money gets into your hands as smoothly as possible.

TIMING

Define exactly when the client is required to make their payment.

Up front: 100% of the payment is required before a client has a session with you or you ship their product

Instalments: Client pays a deposit up front, and then another payment when the project is finished. You could even have a midpoint instalment to reflect the project hitting an important milestone.

Example:
A web designer can charge 50% as a deposit, and 50% upon the go-live of the new site.

Example:
A video editor can charge 50% as a deposit, 25% when the rough-cut is delivered, and 25% before the final video is sent.

Royalties: Client pays you based on the number of finished goods sold. Consignment sales are similar, with you only receiving payment once the product has been sold to end consumers.

Example:
An author receives a % of each copy of their book sold.

Example:
A jewellery maker receiving payment from a boutique after their necklaces are sold.

Payment After Invoicing: Client pays you a certain number of days after an invoice is sent. 15days, 30days, 60days, etc. For a small business, longer payment terms can mean cash flow struggles, so if you’re asked for 30day+ terms be sure to trade it for something else you value!

METHOD

Make sure you outline how the client should send money your way. There’s nothing worse than receiving a cheque that you can’t cash because it’s in a foreign currency. Or have a wire transfer come through that dings you with massive bank fees.

Cash: If you work with client in person, accepting cash may be the easiest option

PayPal/Electronic Payment Platforms: Clients can send payment either on their own, in response to an invoice you create in the system, or with PayPal hooked up to your scheduling system or e-commerce platform.

Cheque: It may seem like an old fashioned option, but if you’re working with a larger company, higher amounts (where the PayPal fees would add up fast!) or clientele that’s a bit more old-fashioned, accepting cheques can work a charm.

Wire/Bank Transfers: If you’re working internationally, with larger project fees then a wire transfer may be the way to go. There’s a trust factor here, since you’ll be sharing bank account details.

WHAT IF…

“Client shall pay via PayPal to ambitious.entrepreneur@makemoney.com upon receipt of invoice.”

Great. But what if that doesn’t happen?

Include some language in your payment terms that will outline what happens if payment is late. You may want to include:

Late Fees: A percentage of dollar value charged to the client as an administrative fee if payment is not received on time. This should be big enough that it drives the right behaviour, but not so big that it’s punitive. Be careful not to call it a ‘penalty’ though! That may not be enforceable in some States/Countries.

Work Stoppage: If the client hasn’t paid…you stop working. If you provide ongoing services (blog writing, VA support) this is an especially effective way of ensuring payments arrive on time.

Retention of Work Product: No payment of the final invoice? Then no finished designs/files/documents are provided to the client. You hang on to them as a bit of an insurance policy.

Here are some templates to get you started:

Instalments

“Client will pay {Your Name Here} 50% of the agreed fee upon signature of this contract, and the final 50% before delivery of the final design files. Payment will be made via PayPal. {Your Name Here} will send an invoice to Client for each instalment. Work on the Project will not begin until the initial 50% payment is received, and final design files will remain property of {Your Name Here} until the final payment is received in full.”

30 Day Payment

“Client will pay {Your Name Here} within 30 days of the receipt of invoice, by cheque made payable to {Your Name Here}. In the event payment is not received by the 30th day, an administrative fee of 10% of the invoice value will be applied for each delay of 7 calendar days.”

Consignment

“Client will pay {Your Name Here} for Product sold in each 30 day period. On the 1st Monday of each month a statement of sales and payment via PayPal will be due to {Your Name Here}. In the event that a sales statement and/or the required payment is not received on the 1st Monday of the month, {Your Name Here} reserves the right to stop shipment of additional Product to Client, and invoice an administrative fee of $50 for each delay of 5 business days.”

Want to learn more about how to boost your profits? Download your free copy of the More Money Guide now!

Which converts better: an end-of-blog post image CTA, or a HelloBar dropdown from the top of a window?

The short answer, is “who cares.”

Here’s why, along with how you should be setting up a high-converting lead capture strategy instead.

Why 70+% of Your Traffic Doesn’t Buy

AdWords almost lulls you into a false sense of belief. It works – almost too well.

But nowhere else do random people Search > Click > Convert.

Not content marketing. Not social. And especially not Facebook ads.

Instead, you’re faced with a conundrum: The vast majority of your website visitors, conservatively anywhere from 70-90%, are going to leave your site without purchasing a single thing. Probably, never to return.

That’s scary. But it gets even worse.

If you have a complex product or service, like say consulting services or high-priced software, you’re looking at conversion rates of less than a percent.

That’s not to say these tactics don’t work, or that you shouldn’t “waste money” on ads.

You should. You just need to realize what you’re up against so you can plan accordingly.

Instead of deciding which product to purchase, the majority of website visitors you get are just browsing. They’re researching and evaluating.

In other words, they’re each at different steps along the “customer journey”:

This model, though clichéd, is helpful because it gives you a starting point. It provides a standardized system to tie your own promotional and content efforts to each step of the way.

The objective is twofold:

First, you’re trying to open up the funnel to as many potential people as possible. At the end of the day, you can always overcompensate for a poor conversion rate with more volume.

Second, you’re trying to get as many “micro”-conversions as possible at each step. That includes eBook downloads, newsletter opt-ins, webinar registrations, free demonstrations, and more.

Seems like extra work, right? But stats show that only around 3% of your market is buying right now, while 56% aren’t ready and 40% are about to begin. And nurtured leads who go through your entire process (from the very top to the bottom of your funnel) make 47% larger purchases.

Further, people who are already familiar with your brand are much more likely to convert. So those “micro”-converting leads are worth a lot.

Sure…welcome mats, exit offers, and other new-aged, flashy tactics can help squeeze out a few extra leads each month. But in the end, earning conversions comes down to aligning the best offers to the right audience.

Here’s a breakdown of the most important steps, and how you should organize your lead capture strategies accordingly.

Step 1: Turning Browsers with Problems at the Top of the Funnel into Leads

People at the top of the funnel are just beginning to realize they have a problem (or: need awareness) and are starting to look for help.

They’re not typing in specific product or brand names just yet. But they’re beginning to look for information related to the problem causing them acute pain. Many times, these are symptoms.

For example, men are slobs.

Now that it’s Fall/Winter and we have to wear something more than a tank top and sandals… what do we do? What kind of casual boots can be worn at the office? How do you pull off rolling the bottom of your jeans without looking like a total hipster (or Urkel)?

Enter this helpful eBook from Primer:

Top of the funnel offers like reports, guides, eBooks, and whitepapers are the perfect solution for these people researching, troubleshooting, preventing, or improving.

It turns out, this is a good thing for marketers, too. Because it’s 10,000,000,000x easier (*not a real number) to promote a top of the funnel piece of content than a bottom-funnel, commercial one.

Case in point: Try getting a journalist or blogger to willingly link out to your boring product page. Ain’t gonna happen.

But do you have an awesome infographic or free tool? A free excel workbook to help people adapt to changing times? Now we’re talking.

eBooks can work well, however it might require something a little more special in a saturated market. For example, Lowe’s offers a Lawn Care Plan that provides a custom lawn maintenance program for an entire year – you just have to enter your location, style of grass, size of yard, and a few more details in the lead capture form.

They’re not targeting people ready to purchase new sod immediately in this case, but they’re seeding (ha ha) a future audience that they’ll be able to nurture and convert over time.

In these early goings, you’ll notice that many of the offers don’t ask for much: Always an email address. Sometimes a name. Almost never a phone number.

That’s because the level of commitment you’re asking from someone needs to be in proportion to what they’re receiving.

They aren’t yet investigating your pricing, so it doesn’t make sense to force them to give you their Job Title or Address (or social security number).

That information (well, besides their whole identity thing) you can get in this next step instead.

Step 2: Capturing Leads Who Are Researching in the Middle of the Funnel

Middle of the funnel prospects now understand the problem in their life and have moved into looking for opportunities to solve it. They’re researching and evaluating in the critical “Zero Moment of Truth.”

That means they’re searching for solutions, providers, suppliers, tools and devices like the one you offer.

But…

They’re not ready to talk pricing quite yet, either. They’re getting a lay of the land, and so comparisons, demonstrations, or videos can help them see how the possibilities in front of them stack up.

PayScale produces brilliant lead capture offers or magnets, like this free salary report.

At this stage, someone is seeing this lead capture form because they’re specifically looking for hard-to-reach (and therefore, super-valuable) data.

So PayScale gets away with a detailed opt-in form that allows them to capture additional information about this person’s company role and industry (that they can then use to compare with their own customer persona information).

My favorite lead capture examples at this stage are performance graders, like the WordStream AdWords Grader. With a tool like this, you’re able to drive home a prospect’s problem, while also highlighting the opportunity ahead of them – specifically, the opportunity they’re missing out on or flushing down the toilet.

Another awesome example comes from Impact Branding & Design. They have an ROI calculator to help people understand exactly how inbound marketing delivers results.

Mention inbound marketing to people who aren’t familiar with it, and their eyes glaze over. But visually seeing how a few changes in their traffic or conversion rate can result in a jump in new revenue starts to make sense.

Performance graders like these can help prospects immediately understand the value behind what you do (in comparison to all those other alternatives).

The added bonus of graders in the middle of the funnel is that they help you qualify leads in real time. After all, 61% of B2B marketers say their biggest challenge is generating high-quality leads.

Capturing leads with qualifying questions that dance around sensitive subjects (like budget or expected lead value) can help you automatically sift out the best leads (who stand to gain or lose the most) from those tire kickers who may not be worth passing off to sales.

Step 3: Converting Hot Leads at the Bottom of the Funnel

By the time someone’s reached the bottom of the funnel, they’ve got a few things figured out.

They know the type of solution they want (more or less). They know the time they want it to take to solve (or more or less). And they know how much they want to pay (more… or less).

If you’ve done the hard work up to this point, which was (1) generating their interest long enough to build trust and then (2) proving to them the value of what you offer, this last step should be straightforward.

At this point a customer is looking for benchmarks or testimonials that will back up their final decision. Case studies are critical, as are free trials or demonstrations that provide people with a sense of ownership.

There’s a reason every software company imaginable provides a free trial. Because it reduces the risk or commitment level required of potential customers, allowing them to test drive the service at their own leisure to make sure it’s the right one before committing (thereby making free guarantees largely irrelevant).

When conversion software company Leadpages recently acquired Drip (a lightweight email marketing solution), they took this offer to the next level by offering an introductory plan for $1/month.

Leadpages founder Clay Collins – ever the savvy marketer – even frames it like they’re going to “lose money.” Which, quite frankly, is BS. In fact, this will make them plenty times more.

Because the $1 plan is called a “tripwire” in the biz. It’s an offer that people can’t refuse. And it’s the perfect way to separate real buyers who will put their money where their mouth is, as opposed to the other 70% of free trials that are largely a waste.

Another savvy company, Digital Marketer, employs the same strategy in this Facebook ad; giving away a tremendous amount of value with full access to their product for an insanely low price.

(image source)

The key to this ad though, isn’t the flashy creative or high-octane copy (although those do help) but the audience that it’s being targeted to in the first place.

This is true logically, across all marketing channels. However, it’s especially true on Facebook, where an average ad with great audience targeting will outperform a great ad with average targeting.

We haven’t seen a lot of eCommerce examples so far, largely because the offers at each step are fairly obvious and transactional (like coupons, buy-one-get-one-free, etc).

But the other reason is that in eCommerce, nobody can compete with Amazon. It’s not even a fair fight.

Amazon has a patented one-click purchase option to speed up the sales cycle. They have a “Subscribe & Save” feature that allows consumers to set-and-forget frequently repurchased items.

Forget the boring “free shipping” offer, Amazon Prime has same-day free shipping.

(And don’t even get me started on Amazon Fresh, which will deliver organic groceries to your door within hours too.)

These are features, sure. But add up all of these benefits together and you’ve got one hell of a compelling offer: convenience.

Not only do they make the online competition irrelevant, but they also make visiting a store seem like a hassle, too.

It’s no wonder that Prime customers spend double non-Prime members (up to $1,340 each year now).

Putting It All Together

Website conversions are a dismally low 1-3%. That’s not because people don’t care necessarily, it’s just that most aren’t ready to buy quite yet.

The best lead capture strategy takes a longer approach, splitting up the ultimate decision to purchase into a series of smaller micro-conversions or opt-ins that get people to slowly convert over time.

The tactics, like throwing up a pop-up before someone is about the leave the page, are helpful. But only if the message and offer of that pop-up matches the stage of each individual.

Testing, refining and better aligning offers to groups of people in each stage of the customer’s journey will give you higher lead capture rates.

And you know what that means – more sales.

Listen to this blog post as a podcast:

Marketers typically don’t think of themselves as storytellers. Creatives? Yes. SEO experts? Sometimes. Wordsmiths? You bet. But “master storyteller” doesn’t usually fall under their job description.

Yet that’s exactly what marketers are. They carefully cultivate an audience through engaging content, telling their company’s story along the way. Once members of that audience raise their hands, marketers engage them in a more meaningful way to help them become ideal customers and, ultimately, brand advocates.

B2B marketing guru Ardath Albee has pioneered a strategy that relies on relevance and narrative to do exactly this; she calls it “the continuum approach.” As buyers navigate the customer journey, they receive content as part of a narrative, punctuated by stepping stones that answer their questions and help them discover what comes next.

“Marketers need to create the language for talking about what their products enable their prospects and customers to achieve rather than… the features and functionality,” Albee says.

Your narrative should answer a critical question: “What’s in it for me?” It should also frame your understanding of how customers think about your products and services. Once you have seen your brand through their eyes—not through a prism of features and benefits—a path to relevance becomes apparent. And that path is a continuum of content-driven experiences.

Using Narrative as a Tool

Many B2B companies struggle to use content as the connective tissue between themselves and their customers beyond campaign-based initiatives. That’s why the continuum approach can be a game changer.

Story is the perfect tool for creating a continuum and differentiating your brand. Consumers don’t care about features and benefits as much as they care about buying from companies that inspire emotional connections. Your narrative is what drives that connection.

To showcase the power of narrative, Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought about $129 worth of random objects from a thrift store in 2009 as part of a social experiment. They asked writers to create elaborate backstories for the objects, which they attempted to sell on eBay. They suspected narrative would transform otherwise insignificant objects into significant ones. The result was extraordinary: They grossed more than $3,600, resulting in a net profit of 2,700 percent. Michael Brenner calls this “the best example you will find on the value of storytelling.”

The demand for digital storytelling is on the rise. Content that includes compelling visuals generates up to 94 percent more views than material lacking those elements.

Characters and mascots that match a brand’s persona can be particularly useful for driving social interaction. Content featuring Tony the Tiger, for example, elicits about 279 percent more social shares than Frosted Flakes material that doesn’t include the iconic mascot.

Characters aren’t limited to being the vehicle that delivers a story. They can also help you craft narratives that resonate with your audience. “Using personas as characters and solving the business problem as the structure for a plot, marketers can learn how to develop a business story structure that fuels the continuum approach to digital marketing,” Albee says.

Crafting a Continuum

Business storytelling is a powerful tool for delivering relevance across channels, platforms, and contexts. Here are four ways to begin crafting a continuum of experiences designed to increase the velocity of your buyer’s journey.

1. Know Your Audience

You can’t connect with people if you don’t understand what matters to them. Albee sums it up best: “Content that tries to speak to everyone ends up speaking to no one.” (highlight to tweet)

Learn as much as possible about your ideal customers, and create personas—dynamic, composite sketches of who they are—to ensure you know their chief concerns. Make sure you’re accounting for all of your audience segments. For instance, toy companies must appeal to children as well as their parents.

2. Find Your Baseline

Perform a content audit to determine what you do and don’t have. Assessing your current inventory will tell you which area needs deeper investments, whether that’s audience segments, personas, industries, buying stages, types of content, or another consideration. An audit can reveal blind spots that might prevent you from reaching all of your audience members.

3. Map the Conversation

If you were to have the ideal conversation with your ideal customer, what would it sound like? What questions would he ask? What does he need to know about the problem he’s trying to solve?

Social media can serve as a great starting point for this research, with 42 percent of businesses already using it to evaluate their customers. Run this thought experiment for each person who might be involved in the decision-making process.

4. Implement and Test

Use your content audit to identify which needs your content fills in the conversations you’ve mapped. Work with your team to plan new content to fill any remaining gaps. Determine your most valuable audience—and the easiest to create content for—and start with them. Build from there.

Your initial strategy doesn’t have to be perfect—you can iterate and improve over time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your continuum-based customer journey will take time to perfect. What’s most important is that you start the process.

When you only implement narratives in individual campaigns, you miss an opportunity to forge deeper relationships with your customers. Albee’s approach, on the other hand, embraces the universal desire for storytelling and connection. A continuum-based strategy ensures customers come along for the journey and become characters in your brand’s story.

As This American Life host Ira Glass has said, “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.”

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Sales Pros! Quit complaining about “sales enablement” – Why Customer Success is your Sales BFF!

I’ve built b2b Enterprise Sales & Customer Success teams starting from $0 revenue several times, and this is one of my most valuable wounds when trying to accelerate revenue at any scale of company.

Everytime I hear a sales team complain about there not being sufficient “Sales Enablement” (case studies, blog posts, Gartner reports, etc.), I want to kick them very hard because they are just being lazy. As the sales person, you have a keen understanding of what you specifically need in the sales trenches to compete and win. You also have 100% of the power to solve this.

Sales Rep says, “I keep coming up against objection A, so I really need an example where we solved that specifically.”

Or “Prospects don’t understand our messaging, so I need something that speaks to how we’ve helped a customer succeed and make an X ROI impact.”

Etc etc etc.  The point is that you (as the Sales pro) should have an idea of EXACTLY the spec of the sales enablement that you need. It’s not marketing’s job to magically understand what you need in the sales trenches. They aren’t mind readers.

The solution is literally right in front of you

There is a very simple and highly effective way to arm your sales team with this invaluable context to further develop…  

Social Proof  

CUSTOMER STORIES are by far the most effective method of communication to a prospect because they need to see themselves having success with your solution. If they are in the Travel Vertical, they believe their issues are not only unique to their company, but further unique to their Industry. The faster you can help them envision themselves having success, the faster you will close. A very small % (known as the early adopters) want to be on the bleeding edge and be the first ones. “Social Proof” is a critical component to scaling fast past 50 customers. Up to that point, you are working with Early Adopters, of which there are very few in the world.

DOMAIN EXPERTISE It is also critically important to enable Sales with more domain expertise because you are in a very unique position. You get the advantage of seeing how many teams operate and genuinely develop a “Best Practice” which is massively valuable to the prospect and customer. They are siloed to their specific company and can benefit greatly from broader learnings, best practices and benchmarks by working closely with your Sales and Customer Success teams. F1000 enterprises especially value this access to domain expertise which is one key reason they pay you Enterprise $.

Solution:  Enter your new BFFs: CUSTOMER SUCCESS!

When you’re looking for customer success stories, where should you go?

It’s not the Customer Success Manager’s (CSM) job to remember the important stories that can help sales. It’s the Sales team’s responsibility to engage and listen for the stories that help them learn and sell more effectively. Also by constantly staying in touch and top of mind with CSMs they are reminded of the type of stories Sales might be specifically looking for.

Simple ways to achieve this:  

Sit with CSMs during their weekly sync

Have a representative from Sales attend every Customer Success team sync. This is where you will hear the success stories raw. The representative should be taking notes re: the customer, problem solved, and customer success point person, just to gather the high level. That way when you bring it back to the sales team, if there is a specific story that is critical, you know who to go have a deeper debrief with. The objective here is to be listening for stories the Sales team can use.

Sales <> CSM sync

Specifically have a Sales and CSM sync every week to discuss customer stories. This should be only a few people; have the team leads or a manager level peer sync so the stories can be transferred to Sales.

Identify the Stories

As you find stories that are great examples then have one person be responsible for formally documenting the Story. This isn’t an extensive doc (ie 1 pg) which can then be shared with the team. If it’s a high value story, then you hand that to Marketing and say, “Here’s an amazing story that would really help in the sales trenches. Can you help us get this production ready for prospects?” Now your marketing team will love you because you’ve done the leg work and now they can apply the marketing sizzle they are renowned for. Win Win!

Act!

LAST and most important, USE THEM in your prospect conversations. The ideal pitch is that you just tell customer stories. When objection A comes up, you introduce a customer story. “Well, here’s how we solved a similar problem with a customer in the same vertical….”

You may be thinking, “But isn’t this sensitive info and we can’t use customer’s names without their consent?”  Yes. For important customers you can ask for approval but even if you don’t get it you can refer to them by proxy. Ie. simply by giving context like “a customer of ours that is similar in size and also in the Travel industry had a similar problem and we solved it with them by doing …….” You don’t have to name drop explicitly to be able to tell a genuine story and get a prospect comfortable. It’s the authenticity of the story that comes out in your voice.

Be proactive, start syncing and gleaning these stories from your Customer Success Team because it’s not their job to enable sales. It’s your job to put in the effort and go learn the stories in the CSM trenches that are truly helping customers which is ultimately why your company is in business.

Here at Whalr (b2b enterprise sales intelligence), we have a daily standup sync between Sales + Customer Success at the end of each day. This way you catch stories while they are fresh from the day. Then we have a weekly 30 min sync as the catch-all to review and dive deeper into any specific stories for more context.

Whatever you do (even if you are an individual sales rep), go spend regular, consistent time with Customer Success. This will help you become a genuine domain expert which customers love to buy from. You’ll instantly differentiate yourself from everyone else, as well as the competition.

Spending Time with Customer Success = more deals closed

The post Why Customer Success is your Sales BFF! appeared first on Sales Hacker.

If you’re like me, you woke up yesterday unable (or unwilling) to believe that it was already December. While the holidays are are in full swing, it’s time to start making some concrete plans for your 2017 marketing team. It may seem late in the game, but it’s definitely not too late to create a solid marketing plan for the new year. Here are some guidelines to help you check all the boxes on your marketing plan and knock 2017 out of the park.

1. Evaluate last year’s successes and failures

The best place to start planning for the future is to look at the past. What happened (or didn’t happen) in the last year is a great indicator of what you should try to accomplish in the coming year. Did you make your lead goals? Did your sales team make their sales goals? Did your company make their revenue goals? These questions aren’t going to give you specifics about what your 2017 plan should entail, but it will give you a good grasp on what is attainable, and where your efforts for the coming year should be focused.

Take some time to have conversations with other teams, especially sales, about how the year went. Does your sales team feel like they were light on leads, or that the leads weren’t properly qualified? Did your company experience a high churn rate? The overall health of the company should be marketing’s number one goal, and the only way to plan for that is to take the time to get a pulse on the current health of your company.

2. Clearly define your goals for the upcoming year

Planning for 2017 requires a top-down approach. If your executive team has already created an action plan for the coming year, that’s a great place to start. After all, you always want your marketing team’s goals to align directly with the goals of the organization. If your company is entering into a high-growth initiative or wants to cut back on customer churn, these things should influence what you’re planning as a marketing team as well.

I suggest you make five or so major, overarching marketing goals. Additional goals or tasks can fall underneath your big objectives. These key goals – that align with your company’s initiatives – will give guidance to the rest of the things you’d like to accomplish throughout the year. For example:

Key Goal: Develop deeper relationships with our customers to reduce customer churn and increase customer lifetime value.

Sub goal 1: Develop five pieces of solid content for our customers

Sub goal 2: Create an onboarding nurture campaign using email and product newsletters

Sub goal 3: Create a social campaign around current customers and top users

Sub goal 4: Rank as a leader on G2 Crowd for customer reviews

3. Nail down your messaging

Messaging is the heartbeat of marketing. Creating intelligent, educated content helps you build a solid relationship with your prospects, and can help turn your prospects into happy customers – and is something that should be key to your 2017 marketing plan. But before churning out a bunch of content, take a look at what you already have. By doing a complete audit of your current content inventory, you’ll be able to identify holes and understand what you should aim to create in the new year.

Your content should not only attract new buyers, but also nurture current relationships you’ve already created. In order to address your customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s important to identify your audience for every piece of content. Is all of your content top-of-funnel, neglecting those who have already made contact but aren’t yet ready to purchase? Or, are you light on the content that might attract new buyers to your site? Evaluating these things will make it clear what should be on the top of list for content creation next year. If you need some guidance on creating a content plan, check out this 4-step content planning workbook.

4. Have a deep understanding of your target audience

Before you jump full force into the new year, take a moment to evaluate where your company sits in the competitive landscape. Are you the new kid on the block, or are you the industry leader? This should influence your plans for the year heavily. Understanding your market position can help you identify your opportunity. This starts with knowing who your competitors are, what they’re saying, and what makes you different.

Knowing and confirming your differentiators is crucial when you’re creating your 2017 marketing plan. If you know that you’re the best solution for mid-market companies, or that you’re struggling in competition with your competitors, you’ll be able to focus more time and energy around becoming a leader in your industry. If you have the chance, talk with some of your customers about their experience with your company and your product. Getting honest feedback can help you adapt your marketing strategy to target the right audience with the right message.

Additionally, if you haven’t already identified your “ideal customer profile” I strongly suggest you do. Knowing specifics about what makes a great customer for your company is a great place to start when figuring out who your marketing efforts should be targeting. Ideal customer profiles usually include firmographic and demographic information like company size, industry, and common buyer titles. Knowing your customers allows you to communicate better with them, ultimately boosting retention rates and the opportunity for upsell and cross-sell.

5. Make a calendar with important milestones

Creating a strict calendar for the coming year can be a tricky, so it’s best to schedule out what you can, but be ready to roll with the punches. Start with the major things, like new product launches, upcoming announcements, or events you know you’ll be attending this year. Identify all the assets you’ll need such as emails, press releases, or supporting content. From there, you can make a workback plan to facilitate manageable lead times.. If one of your goals is to create a major asset for each quarter, start scheduling out drafts and factor in time for editing and revisions.

Nobody knows what next year might have in store. You might have to change direction or shift your plans significantly, but starting with a plan and schedule will help you achieve the goals you set out to accomplish in the new year.

6. Figure out what it will cost you to be successful (i.e. your budget)

According to WebStrategies, 2017 marketing budgets are expected to remain consistent or increase compared to 2016 levels. This is a good place to start when determining what resources you’ll need to be successful in 2017. If you burned through your budget last year, maybe consider asking for additional budget allocation – but don’t do this without a clear plan for bringing in additional ROI. Make sure your request is validated with real numbers, and strong evidence that more marketing money will equate to a more successful business. On the other hand, if you found yourself spending less than your budget, find a way to maximize that extra money in other areas. Remember that it’s all a numbers game. The ratio that really matters is marketing spend:return.

To nail down which slices of your marketing budget need to be increased or decreased, spend the time to go through each of your marketing activities and determine “Did this help us achieve our clearly defined marketing goals?” If the answer is yes, consider keeping the same amount of budget or increasing. If the answer was no, either decrease the budget or evaluate what you could have done different to make it more successful. With that said, marketing teams should always be evolving. Consider investing in one or two new programs this year that you didn’t do last year. These could be hosting live events or creating a webinar program. Trying a new way to marketing to your prospects and customers might lead to new revenue streams. It’s always good to come to the table with a few fresh ideas in your plan to make sure your team is constantly pushing the envelope.

It’s crunch time for creating your 2017 marketing plan. In general we suggest that you draft your plan, and budget, for the year in November or early December so that you can focus on finishing 2016 strong, and feel confident about sailing into the new year with a targeted plan.

Long B2B sales cycles lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Too often, sales reps spend time with unqualified or underqualified buyers who take a long time to say, “No,” and they miss better opportunities with more highly-qualified prospects.

So what are the most effective ways to shorten the b2b sales cycle and win more high-value opportunities?

Pursue Qualified Leads

The most critical step to a shorter sales cycle is the pursuit of highly-qualified leads.

When you sell to people who have a deep problem and a sense of urgency that your solution resolves, the time-to-decision is normally brief.

Unfortunately, some marketing teams and sales reps rush lead generation to get in front of prospects.

By taking the time to invest in early qualification, you minimise time spent with people that will either never buy, or who won’t commit to a large deal.

Talk to the Right People

In B2B industries, sales reps sometimes talk with an organisation in need, but the interaction isn’t with the right individuals.

The most efficient b2b sales cycle is only possible when you get to the decision makers as soon as possible in the process.

When interacting with a buying committee, find out as much information as you can.

Ask questions such as “Who besides you is involved in the buying process?” or, “How does the buying process work in your organisation?”

Getting this information upfront helps you avoid having to repeat steps or messages unnecessarily.

Address Concerns Assertively

Never avoid or ignore the primary concerns of buyers. To get through challenges, you need to tackle them head on.

If a buying committee ultimately has concerns that you can’t overcome, it is better to figure that out early anyway.

Conduct a thorough sales discovery process to find out everything they need or want from your solution.

Invite them to share primary concerns or fears in selecting a provider.

Articulate Value Clearly

Though not the primary factor, your ability to articulate value clearly and concisely does contribute to a shorter b2b sales cycle.

With thorough need discovery, you are better equipped to highlight and prove the benefits of your solution that matter most to buyers.

Avoid distracting from your message by sticking to a few key points. Focus your demonstration of value on the benefits that your prospects values the most.

Wrap Up

To effectively shorten your sales cycle, you must begin your process as early as possible in the lead generation procedure.

Target and communicate with the most qualified leads you can find.

Talk to the right people inside the firm, conduct a thorough needs analysis, invite concerns and deliver an on-point value proposition.

Quite simply, a marketing funnel (sometimes called a sales funnel or conversion funnel) expresses the stages a customer goes through on his or her way to becoming a customer.

This image shows a typical marketing funnel, showing how consumers move through:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Intention
• Conversion

If you want to learn more about each stage in the marketing funnel, here’s a little something I put up previously.

Bounding the marketing funnel

A few things that aren’t really clear in the marketing funnel.

First, conversion isn’t the end of the process. It’s just a waypoint. Once a consumer becomes a customer, your job is only half over. Now, you need to keep that customer happy by providing extraordinary customer support and great product performance. According to research, it’s 5X harder (and more expensive) to replace an unhappy customer than to keep that customer happy. Add to that the negative word of mouth (which travels much faster than positive word of mouth) and you’re talking about a major problem when you don’t retain customers over time.

IfIf Image courtesy of Coast Digital

Second, it’s imperative that you mind your metrics for each stage in the marketing funnel.

In this image, Coast Digital shows how visitors escape the funnel in droves, leading to a small ROI. Tightening up control at each stage in the funnel generates much higher returns. For instance, increasing flow-through by 1% generates 50% more leads — in this B2B example — or more sales.

Here, we talk about QUALITY, not just quantity. And, if your marketing team tries to baffle you with BS figures, including likes, visits, shares, etc, you need to ignore it.

Sure, quantity matters, but not nearly as much as quality. Bringing the right people to your website is much more important than driving a ton of traffic. So, if your team is busy posting clickbait on Facebook and Twitter in hopes of generating sales, they’re dead wrong — read the link to see how TechCrunch destroys this strategy.

Strategies for optimizing the marketing funnel

Mind top of funnel activities

Bringing visitors into your store (whether brick or click) is critical for optimizing market performance. Unfortunately, firms focused on ROI sometimes resent the spend on top of funnel activities such as content marketing (SEO), social media marketing, influencer outreach, etc, because it’s harder to map these activities to sales (of course, you could say the same thing about traditional advertising, except no one seems to question the importance of broadcast advertising).

Bringing in more visitors, especially the RIGHT type of visitors is critical for success. So, don’t scrimp on these top of funnel activities.

Instead, focus on demonstrating their impact on revenue by using attribution modeling and tracking to your links. That way, you can trace back revenue to your top of funnel activities.

Monitor leakage

Funnel leakage comes from a variety of sources.

Your job is to track down leaks and plug them up. Here are some of the major culprits of leakage:

• Slow page load times
• Too many clicks — Amazon increased revenue substantially by going to 1-click buying options
• Requiring retyping information on multiple screens or requiring entry of both billing and shipping information when they’re the same
• Login problems — don’t offer guest shopping, don’t offer easy password recovery options, don’t use single sign-on (commonly social sign-on), lost password option doesn’t return proper link (you’d be astounded how many times this happens)
• Poor navigational tools
• Poor image quality
• Bad descriptions

You need to plug these leaks, which starts by identifying what’s causing them — and often there are multiple causes.

That means you’re gonna be spending some serious time with Google Analytics or other, paid analytics tools, like KISSmetrics. Set up a funnel in your analytics software then start digging around by looking at how the funnels change based on source, device, country (or other user demographics) …

Remarketing

Remarketing is a term Google uses for marketing to folks who already engaged with your ad, but it also means marketing to folks consistently, over time.

An email marketing program is a great tool for remarketing to folks interested in your brand. Offer periodic sales or special offers to subscribers and use email marketing as a tool to encourage loyalty.

Build social media platforms to engage folks interested in your brand then share posts related to your products and other content these folks might find interesting (80% non-promotional content is recommended).

Content for each stage

Possibly the most critical factor in optimizing your marketing funnel is to provide the right content at the right stage of the conversion process.

For instance, in the awareness stage, I don’t want to get bogged down with a lot of details. Give me the facts, just the facts. Why do I NEED this thing you’re selling. And, give it to me quick, don’t make me read a lot.

That changes at the consideration stage where more information is better.

Once I’ve reached the intention stage, make it easy for me to buy with as few clicks as possible and let me navigate back and forth easily.

Marketing efforts to match each stage

Image courtesy of Occam’s Razor

Avinash Kaushik, he’s the guru over at Google Analytics, has a great way of looking at the marketing funnel that he calls, See, Think, Do. And, here’s his graphic.

Notice, the marketing focus changes as consumers move down the marketing funnel, which means you need activities that fit each of these tactics.

More important, Avinash lists metrics that you should monitor to track your performance at each stage in the funnel.

A holistic image

If a picture paints a thousand words, then this last graphic from Digital Marketing Philippines sums up much of this conversation, including both traditional views of the marketing funnel as well as new ways of constructing it.

The great folks over at Digital Marketing Philippines also offer some strategies for each stage in the marketing funnel as well as metrics you should monitor to help optimize the funnel.

Too many companies keep their marketing and sales separated into two teams. They don’t connect with each other nor do they have access to each other’s data. This silo mentality results in a huge lost opportunity for these businesses — upwards of 10% or more revenue annually, according to IDC as compiled by HubSpot. The curated research also reveals:

• Companies that align their sales and more practices in place generated 208% more revenue from marketing efforts (Marketing Profs).

• Companies with dynamic, adaptable sales and marketing processes report an average 10% more of their salespeople meet their quotas compared to other companies (CSO Insights).

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If marketing and sales work together, revenue could grow upwards of 10% annually via @IDC via @HubSpot.
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If your company wants to see similar benefits from a sales and marketing alignment, it’s time to restructure the two teams to facilitate better workflow between them.

1. Share all data

Don’t ever let one team gather data that the other team can’t access. Sure, some marketing data is irrelevant to sales, but more often than not, it’s not. Don’t put parameters on what either team will share and that includes ensuring marketers access to the CRM. Universal access will lead to better communication and deeper insights, and will prevent duplicate work.

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Universal access to sales & marketing data will lead to better communication & deeper insight. @xaltd
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2. Have unified buyer personas

Analytics and data must be shared across both teams. Using these insights enable more accurate, uniform buyer personas to be developed. In turn, the sales team is more adept at connecting with the target audience. The marketing team is better informed as to who it wants to read or view its content.

3. Define life-cycle movement

A whopping 68% of B2B marketers haven’t identified their marketing-sales funnel. If there is no customer journey process, how can you improve it? Both the marketing and sales teams should have a clear understanding of not only definitions but also of how a lead is pushed down the funnel to become a client. Both teams should have a clear vision of how this works.

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68% of B2B marketers haven’t defined their marketing-sales funnel says @marketingsherpa via @xaltd.
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4. Agree on qualifying criteria

Marketers should know what qualifies someone as a lead, a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), and a sales-qualified lead (SQL). If the two teams are not defining these terms in the same way, the leads are more likely to be scored incorrectly, resulting in a lot of missed opportunities for the business and improper crediting of leads within the company.

5. Create content based on the funnel

Up to 70% of marketing content goes unused. Why? It isn’t aligned with the interests of the target audience often because marketers ignore or are unaware of the sales funnel. The sales team isn’t going to use irrelevant content (and neither are the target buyers). The sales team should make its content needs clear through a detailed sales funnel as well as direct outreach to marketing. Marketers then can create content to inform, inspire, and educate leads, pushing them down the sales funnel.

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The sales team should make its #content needs clear to marketing through a detailed sales funnel says @xaltd.
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6. Use progressive profiling

Sales teams ignore 80% of marketing leads, which means the time and resources to earn those leads is wasted. If marketers offer better quality leads by improving the vetting process, the sales team can take these leads more seriously. Progressive profiling uses automation to gather intel on prospective clients, leading to better conversion rates. Together, sales and marketing can use this technique to produce more qualified leads.

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Sales should explain why leads are not a fit so that marketers can adapt says @xaltd.
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7. Use relevant content in emails and drip campaigns

At times, the sales team will write copy for an email marketing campaign without consulting the marketing team. Plus, 75% of buyers want content that curbs the sales-speak. Given that marketers know how to write copy that can attract clicks and engagement without sounding overly salesy, the sales team should take advantage of this internal resource. If the sales and marketing teams work together to craft the campaigns, the recipients are more likely to be interested.

8. Automate processes

Many sales and marketing processes can be automated which frees team members to work on higher-level tasks. Unfortunately, many employees do not fully understand how to use these technologies. Sales and marketing teams should be fully trained (and retrained, if necessary) to use the available technology properly and efficiently.

9. Don’t just say ‘the leads are bad’

For marketers honing their lead-generation practices, it’s not enough for salespeople to simply label a lead as “bad.” Sales should explain why leads are not a fit so that marketers adapt what they are doing to help produce better qualified leads.

10. Recycle sales leads to marketing

If a lead isn’t ready to buy, it should go back to the marketing team for more nurturing. Remember, 95% of buyers end up choosing a solution provider that “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” So if a lead isn’t quite ready to pull the trigger, maybe valuable content will help them along the sales funnel.

In addition, even if the former sales lead isn’t going down the sales funnel today, that doesn’t mean marketing shouldn’t continue to nurture this contact. At a later date, this former prospect may be ready to buy and it’s invaluable to have your company on its radar.

Conclusion

The benefits are astounding when sales and marketing teams are aligned — they are 67% better at closing deals. Plus, almost 90% of teams that do sync sales and marketing report measurable increases in lead conversion. While it might not be a smooth road to alignment, it’s clear that when these two teams work together, much more can be accomplished.

Want to help your sales team learn more about how to use content marketing to improve their sales? Encourage them to subscribe to the CMI daily newsletter.

Cover image by Helloquence via pixabay.com

The post 10 Ways Content Marketing and Sales Teams Can Work Together appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Creating buyer personas is a marketing strategy that aims to help businesses personalize their products, services, and content to ideal customers.

If properly employed, this method can allow companies to better allocate resources, time, and effort, thereby saving precious dollars. Buyer personas are also a great tool to bring out what customers really want. This helps you develop strong marketing campaigns at each stage of the customer life cycle.

Although this marketing strategy is important to have year round, they become crucial during the Holidays. Not only are customers primed for purchasing, they can be highly nitpicky about small details. But by carefully crafting your buyer personas – along with these five tips – you can leverage them to gain bigger profits before the year ends.

Here’s how.

How To Effectively Employ Buyer Personas for The Holiday Season

1) Add Negative Personas

If you have developed buyer personas that would help your sales team identify hot leads and possible sales, you should also take the time to recognize negative personas. Also known as ‘exclusionary’, these people might never, ever buy. Depending on your industry, they can be spotted thanks to their common identifiers:

• People who usually have high engagement on your social media accounts but never seem to buy anything. This type of interaction could go on for years, with individuals never converting.

• People who are so hesitant to buy, that when they finally do, it’s usually below your average sale price. There’s a likelihood that they may also never buy again.

• People who make calls to your company, touting their own products and/or services.

You should be at least aware of these types of customers because they can a) waste valuable time and effort from your sales team (and still NOT convert), and b) once they finally buy, recoup costs might not meet average sales prices.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take care of them or engage with them. However, by identifying WHO they are and WHAT their habits are, your sales team can effectively handle them without wasting too much time and energy.

2) Use alongside the Customer Life Cycle

Although the traditional customer journey has changed over time, we can still glean some insights from it. From Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, Retention, to Loyalty, they tell us a little bit about the consumer at every step. This knowledge can help us turn hesitant leads into actual sales, and eventually, to loyal customers.

For example: Hectic Hector is a busy business owner who has heard about SEO, but doesn’t have the time to sit down to learn about it. But he found one of the content from your blog and has called to inquire about your free 15-minute consultation. If you have prepared for this scenario through your buyer personas, hooking Henry should pose little problems.

You need to understand how customers make decisions today in order to make it work. By aligning the new customer journey with your buyer personas, you can create flexible strategies to apply at every stage of the process.

3) Tailor Your Product/User Solutions

Even if you’re selling just a single line of merchandise, developing the right buyer personas can aid you in maximizing your profits. Say you have three personas: Picky Polly, Hectic Henry, and Eager Ella. How do you satisfy these different personalities while catering to their varying needs?

Again, go back to your buyer personas and the customer life cycle (tip #2).

• Picky Polly – She’s the senior VP of a large corporation, so she’s more than busy, she’s also hesitant about any strategy that doesn’t yield immediate, tangible results. SEO for her looks like a sketchy investment. However, by highlighting the long-term benefits, you can help her see how this process will keep generating positive results long after the campaign is over.

• Hectic Henry – After sitting down with Henry on the 15-minute consultation, you follow-up on your proposal. But he’s still very busy. As he barely has time to talk, sending him reminders via email newsletters is a good way to remind him of your presence. At the same time, this should help him learn more about SEO at his own pace.

• Eager Ella – Ella not only knows about SEO, she’s done her homework and has seen how this strategy has helped others in her industry. The problem is that, she wants the same method as her friends. After studying her business, you realize that she needs a different approach. Try creating a comparison between other strategies and your own proposal. Continue educating her so she would feel that you really do have her business’ best interests at heart.

By modifying your approach based on buyer personas, you can provide a different value for every customer every time.

4) Don’t Forget Big Data

If you have reports, data sheets, surveys, and analytics about your target market, use them! Don’t just have them sit around languishing at your desk.

Did your recent study reveal how many customers are directed to your site through voice search? What percentage of your audience ends up contacting your customer support after discovering your content? Did customers come in from social media ads?

If you or your team can’t make heads or tails of those numbers, ask an expert. While stats don’t usually provide the bigger picture, it helps you focus your gaze to what really matters.

5) Ask Your Sales Team

Whether you need new data for your buyer personas OR you need to create one, your sales team is the first persons you should go to. After all, no one knows the customers better than they do.

Day in and day out, they deal with people from all walks of life, through all kinds of platforms. Prioritize their feedback and try brainstorming together. You’ll be surprised at the ideas they bring to the table.

How are your buyer personas this season?

It might be the busiest time of the year, but take a moment to customize the experience for your customers. Not only will this leave a lasting impression, it will help distinguish your business from the fierce Holiday competition.

Good luck!

A few weeks ago, I posted a piece titled “No Pain – No Game?”, playing off the old weight exercise motto. In case you didn’t bother rushing to read the piece, it suggests that if you can only sell to buyers who have a self-declared pain or need, you will be in trouble, as 70% of the market, the Status Quo, is immune to the pain argument.

But there is a further reason why reliance on pain for sales success could in fact be painful (in the form of missing quota, not making enough commission to buy your girlfriend or kids the winter solstice gift they really want).

Many successful business people, especially small business owners and entrepreneurs have a different outlook than the average sales person or corporate employee. Because they are not cocooned in the comfort of corporate safety, with a few given responsibilities. They know it will not be easy, it will not be 9 to 5, it will not be a straight line to success, they don’t get a weekly paycheck or a Friday Beer Lunch while they are “waiting to make things work”, like many sales people who fail to deliver quota. They know to succeed they will need to face some challenges and adversities. They are the business living version of “No Pain – No Gain”.

Successful business people are more stoked by the possibilities long term success brings to let a few temporary, often expected setbacks occur. They have heard all the negatives, potential risks, financial ruins, and still decided to push ahead, commit money, time resources, and sweat to realizing their dream and vision. They have planned for roadblocks and detours, you pointing them out is just boring to them. Unless, you can show them how you will help them realize their vision for their business, for them as individuals, you will be chewed up and spit out, all in a very social way. Given their drive, do you really think a little pain is going to stop them? Or do you think they want someone who can help them work past the pain. The business athlete knows how to work through pain to get the results the average person does not. Even senior people within corporate settings have demonstrated characteristics that have allowed them to distinguish themselves from the also-rans.

The people heading up organizations, entrepreneurs and serial small business owners are not your usual breed, they have different filters, they work hard play hard, win hard, they’re not in business to socialize, they do that after they achieve their objectives. So, if you fail to take that difference into account, and fail to adjust for that, because you have been selling to middle management or users, and that will not work when you are dealing with someone who not only has the vision, but more importantly the balls to act, and do things that most others clearly have difficulty doing or lack the will and/or knowhow to do. The pain and headwind that may scare some, is an expectation for many of your buyers, focusing on pain, rather than objectives, and how you specifically can help them achieve them, will lead to more pain for you than these buyers are willing to deal with, because they know what is beyond that, and that’s what they want to talk about.

Serial entrepreneurs are serial sales winners, and winners know that there is an element of fact to

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“No Pain No Gain”, a smart seller focuses on the gain, not the pain.
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The post Pain Leads To No Gain In Prospecting! appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

You have a content strategy. You know your buyer and how to create valuable and helpful content they love. Now, how do you get it in front of your prospects? And more importantly, how do you get them to help you spread the word about your content?

Use the following content distribution checklist to garner more leads and develop brand awareness.

Content Distribution Checklist

The following checklist guides you through many steps to distribute and promote your content. Print it out and pin it to your bulletin board, or save it to Evernote or Google Docs so you and your team can access it and use it at any time.

Social

• Post small quotes or snippets of your content to owned social channels with a link back to the full content piece.
• Make it easy for visitors to share your content by including share buttons within the content piece.
• Research and take advantage of alternative channels where you can share your content (for example, Quora, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Quibb and Reddit).
• Share your content in relevant groups, communities and pages within social channels.
• Add links to your content within the resources section or tab of your owned social media accounts (LinkedIn’s Projects Section or a custom Facebook tab).
• Share and repost your best-performing content more than once, periodically. Use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to manage your posting schedule.

Paid

• Promote your content through paid media
  • Google AdWords
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat
  • Outbrain and Taboola

People

• Reach out to employees, friends and family networks where appropriate and encourage them to share your content through their social channels.
• Find non-competing thought leaders who are relevant to your audience and share their content on your owned channels.
• When you create new content, send it to those same thought leaders and they will likely reciprocate and share your content with their network.
• Send your latest content pieces to relevant thought leaders, giving them a day or more of exclusive access before you share the piece with your own audience.
• Send a message to your sales team, including a drafted email so they can easily share the new content piece with their customers and prospects who they think might be interested.

Website and Blog

• Repurpose existing content, and make it available in many formats (infographic, slide deck, webinar, blog post, PDF, checklist, podcast episode, video).
• Add content to the resources section of your website.
• Include links and CTAs to your content within relevant blog posts and webpages.
• Include embed codes on your infographic blog posts so your readers can easily embed the infographic on their blog.
• When gating content behind a form, keep the number of form fields low and as non-invasive as possible — ideally five questions or less.

Database and Online Communities

• Email your content to your contacts database and send a follow-up email to those who didn’t open the first.
• Search for forums and questions on the web that your content can answer, and post an answer to the question with a link to the relevant content piece.

Syndication

• Syndicate your content. Partner with other blogs that are willing to publish your content, two weeks after it has first gone live. Use Medium, or become a regular contributor on a popular online publication like Huffington Post or Entrepreneur to spread the word about the content on your website.

Content Distribution Best Practices

Keep these few things in mind as you are working to get your content out to your target audience.

Avoid Spamming on Forums and Groups, and Be Respectful

When posting content to unowned and unpaid channels (like forums or social media groups), be respectful and do not spam. It is best to spend time building relationships and trust within each distribution channel/community before sharing your content there.

By asking and answering questions, replying to comments you agree with or have additional input on, or thanking community members when they post something you find valuable, you can build rapport and establish a presence on these platforms.

Create a Publishing Schedule to Orchestrate Your Content Distribution

Maintain a list of distribution channels and websites and spread your publishing schedule across them so you aren’t posting too often to any given channel and overwhelming your audience.

Build Relationships with Brand Advocates and Evangelists

Build relationships online and in the real world to create a list of brand advocates and evangelists who are eager to share your content. When sharing content with anyone you hope will help spread the word, include some suggested blog post copy and social sharing messages to make it easier for them to promote your content.

Focus On Quality, Not Quantity

Even today, many publishers are obsessed with pushing out more and more content instead of taking the time to craft valuable resources. Since Google no longer rewards poor-quality content, there simply is no reason to be fixated on a ruthless and fast-paced publishing schedule. Give yourself time to develop great content and worry less about the volume of content you’re producing.

Get Your Content Seen by Your Audience

You’ve taken the time to develop great content that your audience would love. You know who they are, what words they use (to describe their problem and desired solution) and where they like to hang out online. The only step you need to take now is to deliver it to the people who are eager to consume it.

A checklist is a valuable tool; you can add to it or remove from it as you please. But keep in mind that it’s not about the quantity of actions you take. It’s about having a predictable process that allows you to think about how you can take quality actions on a regular, ongoing basis.

It’s no secret that word of mouth referral sales are one of the most promising channels for earning new business. Most companies, especially early stage startups, depend heavily on a well oiled referral engine to build momentum. But this can be an effective lead gen strategy for enterprise businesses too. 

Other ways companies generate leads early in their sales development are by leveraging speaking engagements, co-marketing, organic search, social media and paid advertising.

From my experience, I can tell you this:

Referrals close at a high rate and are on average worth significantly more in ARR by client.

How To Generate Leads From Existing Clients

It’s simple. I’ll break down the 3 elements you can leverage to get more referral leads right now:

• Testimonials
• Case Studies
• Client Videos

Buyers have become increasingly cynical and no longer care about investigating your product or services like they once did.

Often they need some sort of third party validation; particularly when you’re trying to close the deal in a long, complex sales cycle.

If you are a young organization or scaling quickly, you won’t have enough referrals to base your business on.

However, you can get great testimonials, case studies and customer stories – which is the next best thing. They are in essence, a proxy for referrals.

Why Testimonials Matter

We’d like to believe that potential clients spend their time pouring over every line of the Overview, Goals and Scope we so carefully write.

However, what we now know is, many only peruse those sections.

Instead, on a per page basis, most clients disproportionately spend more time reading the Testimonials section.

Before putting pen to paper (or e-signature in our case), people want an extra piece of reassurance. For that reason, we’ve peppered key pages on our site with testimonials and even have a whole page dedicated to them, which we feature in the top level navigation.

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No one wants to be first; that’s why testimonials and client logos are so important.
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Often we are engaged by potential clients who aren’t in the same city as us and have yet to meet us before they sign off on our first project.

Testimonials provide those potential clients that reassurance that they “aren’t the first” and demonstrate our history of expertise.

The Secret To Getting More Customer Testimonials

Tactic 1 – Work Testimonials Into Your Contract

Some larger clients may redline these sections out, which is fine, but most won’t. At the end of the day, permission for testimonial and logo usage should be included in every proposal you send.

Obviously you still need to wow the client and then ask them to provide a quote – but this covers what’s often your biggest hurdle: legal.

Tactic 2 – Simply ASK!

When we ask most clients why they don’t have more testimonials, the answer is quite simply their customers aren’t providing them.

Meaning, customers aren’t phoning them up and offering amazing quotes.

If you want testimonials (and you should) you need to request them.

Obviously it’s important to be courteous, but if you’ve done a great job, there is no shame in asking for a referral. This should be done on a call or in person, with a follow up email after you make the ask.

In addition to a quote, we also request a high quality version of their logo with a transparent background and a head shot (we often offer to use their LinkedIn head shot – this is what most people end up doing anyways). A quote is powerful.

A quote with a head shot makes a person “more real.” The logo is the icing on the cake.

When requesting a quote and logo, be sure to notify the client where this will appear – ensure they’re never surprised. At a minimum, request permission to use their testimonial and head shot in your proposals, website and printed collateral like product one sheets.

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Approach testimonials like a sale: warm your client, ask at the right time, and be persistent.
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Tactic 3 – Ask At The Right Time

The request needs to be made while the client is still actively engaged with you, but a project has been completed. If you wait too long it seems like an afterthought. Ask too early and you are requesting they provide feedback on something they can’t give context to.

Tactic 4 – Make Them Look Good

Don’t take on project you can’t do an amazing job at. There is a fine line between running an organization at capacity and taking on more work than you can execute on.

There is also a fine line between taking on a stretch client and taking on one that you can’t possibly service properly. Don’t be greedy.

Serve your clients well and they’ll be happy to advocate for you and help grow your business. You’ll know you’ve hit your stride when they start referring new business to you.

Case Studies

How To Ask For Case Studies

Begin by introducing the idea of a case study in terms of how progressive a client they have been, how well their project went, and how perfect that project would be to feature in a case study.

In short, make it about them and make them the hero.

Yes, you are going to benefit from it. But focusing on a use case that demonstrates your client’s success is going to make them happier and produce a story that is more likely to resonate with a potential client.

What To Write About

The most common mistake we see companies make when producing case studies is to make them too broad. Choose opportunities to highlight a very specific success. Explain how it was done and demonstrate quantifiable execution.

Don’t approach a case study as needing to be so broad it applies to every possible prospect you may ever have. Instead show how a very distinct success was accomplished and celebrate your client’s success, not your own.

Case Study Best Practices & Tips

There is a fairly well known structure for case studies and you can find templates to help online. At its heart though, the case study should follow the formula of Problem, Solution, then Results.

• Problem – Be specific about the challenge or goal.
• Solution – Discuss how and why your product/approach worked.
• Results – Specific metrics: time, cost, improve/reduce.

When writing all of this, be specific. Talk about the problem that was solved or the opportunity that was created. Describe how success was achieved and offer metrics and quotes to support your case.

Client Videos

Client videos are a powerful medium and they don’t have to be expensive. In your earliest stages, they can be as simple as someone using a high quality smart phone camera. The key is to make sure you have great lighting and the audio is clear. Most other things can be fixed with some creative editing.

Keep it short and to the point. While you might interview a client for 30 minutes (be sure to provide questions in advance), the finished product might be as short as two minutes. If you are lucky, there are also key quotes that can be highlighted in a composite video outlining multiple clients.

Wrap Up

Videos, testimonials and case studies often get shortchanged because they aren’t seen as lead generation tools. However, when used effectively they are extremely powerful at enabling sales. Once you have a lead convinced they have a problem, you need to start selling them on the fact that  your organization is the credible solution to their problem. Videos, Case Studies and Testimonials are how you do that.

The post This Is How You Skyrocket Sales Referrals – It’s Easier Than You Think appeared first on Sales Hacker.