The modern business traveler needs to be both organized and super tech savvy for maximum productivity and efficiency gains. From choosing the right place to stay to packing smartly and being switched on at the airport, the most experienced business travelers never miss a trick. 

Booking.com for Business suggests some of the best travel hacks to help you travel smarter and enjoy stays in the simplest and most rewarding way.

 1. Be an accommodation guru

The last thing you need on a business trip is to arrive at an apartment, villa or hotel without Wi-Fi, or be stuck in the middle of a hectic hen-do when you’re trying to prepare for an important presentation. That’s why it's worth finding a destination that has been recommended by other business travelers. Booking.com for Business provides access to more than 700,000 properties with verified reviews from millions of business travelers, with 10% off selected properties for account holders.

As business travel evolves beyond the one-size-fits-all approach of the past, you can find a different, unexpected place to stay on your next business trip. Booking.com for Business also has a range of diverse properties from apartments and homestays to boats and treehouses and more, everywhere from major cities to mountains and coasts. 

2. Get smart with your air miles and airport time

If you travel frequently for business, then it's really worth being loyal to one airline. Not only will you have access to more perks, but it's more likely that you will get an upgrade. You could also consider signing up for a rewards credit card. This will also let you earn points and save miles regardless of which airline you choose.

Arrive at the airport early and make use of the airport lounge, which can be a great place to unwind or get some extra work done for a small sum — which you can claim as a legitimate business expense. 

3. Find the right travel tech apps 

Keeping a record of and claiming expenses, as well as keeping on top of boarding cards and schedules, is one of the main headaches of business travel. Air miles tracking apps can be a lifesaver, such as AwardWallet, a one-stop shop for tracking miles from all of your accounts or TripIt, an invaluable app to keep your entire travel itinerary in one place. 

There are also plenty of apps that can help, letting you track any kind of expense as well as billable time and mileage, too. Wi-Fi app finders are also great and will direct you to the nearest zone and you will avoid paying those expensive roaming charges. 

Don't get caught unaware by currency rates again. XE is the go-to place for currency conversions. It also functions offline by saving the last updated rates, which is great if you’re in a place with limited connectivity or trying to save on data.

Because business trips aren’t always predictable, the Booking app from Booking.com helps you find a room at a moment’s notice. Stand on any street anywhere in the world and the app will use your personal preferences to automatically suggest accommodation choices based on your current location, as well as provide a step-by-step route map to get you there quickly.

4. Be on top of your packing game 

Remember: Frequent fliers never check their luggage.

David Barrett, founder and CEO of Expensify, only carries a bag slightly larger than a tennis racket case. He says: “Aim to travel light enough that you can carry everything with you at all times — to the conference, to dinner, to the meetings, everywhere. It’s a business trip, after all, and to make the most of it you need to be out shaking hands, not ferrying back and forth to your hotel room.”

If you do lots of back-to-back business travel, save time by keeping a partially packed suitcase, suggests Gillian Tans, president of Booking.com. "Replenish toiletries and essentials as soon as you return," she says. "Then, next time you have to pack, you’ve only got to add some business clothes and you’re ready to go."

5. Think about all of the little details

Call your credit or debit card company before heading abroad. This will make sure you’re authorized to spend abroad or even in another city within the country. The last thing you want is to be reported for suspicious activity and not have access to your money.

Also, make sure to have all of your travel documents on email. Scan your passport, ID, and itinerary and email it to yourself so you have a digital copy in the event of loss or theft.

Make sure you charge up all your devices. Having full power will stop panic at the gates when you need to scan your boarding pass. Remember if you forget to bring a suitable plug adapter, you can always charge your devices through the USB slot on a TV in your hotel room, suite, or apartment.

Finally, delays are bound to happen so do take time out to check before you leave. "There’s no point being at the airport longer than needed," says Tans. "But, remember things change so don’t cut it too fine!" 

6. Find time to enjoy yourself

Once the work that originally brought you to the destination is over, extend your stay by a day or two and switch it over to a trip of leisure. In 2016, 49% of business travelers already extend their business trips to further enjoy the destination, while three-quarters (75%) intend to do so the same or more in 2017. (Booking.com collected data from 12,781 respondents aged 18+ across 13 markets in September 2016). If you can’t extend your trip, fit a little leisure into your business trip by sampling some of the local cuisine at area restaurants. Most major cities offer free walking tours, which is another great way to see the city from beyond the windows of an office or convention center and learn about the history and culture of the area.

When next traveling for business or leisure, access more than one million diverse properties at Booking.com.

This post is sponsored by Booking.com for Business. 

Join the conversation about this story »

• Your 20s define your personal and professional life more than any other decade.
• You'll definitely make mistakes in your 20s, but that's a good thing — as long as you learn from them. But there are several ways to make the most out of your first decade of adulthood.
• Here are 30 ideas from Quora users on how to live your best life before you turn 30.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Your 20s are, at least according to one psychologist, the "defining decade," because they play a huge role in who you'll become personally and professionally.

So don't screw them up!

We're only kidding — you'll definitely screw them up in some capacity, and that's OK.

If you can make at least some of the changes we've listed below — like practicing mindfulness and not sticking around in bad relationships — you'll be in good shape.

These ideas are drawn from multiple Quora threads, where users of all ages shared their insights into how to make the most of your 20s.

Find out what you should start (and stop) doing in your 20s to lay the foundation for lifelong success.

SEE ALSO: 10 changes to make in your 30s that will set you up for lifelong success

1. Start writing down your goals

Toward the end of his 20s, Quora user Dirk Hooper started envisioning his ideal lifestyle five, 10, and 20 years down the road.

To ensure that he wasn't just fantasizing, he wrote down what he hoped to achieve and how he might get there.

"The act of writing your goals and dreams do[es] a couple of things for you," Hooper writes. "It forces you to nail down what's really in your mind, and it gives you a tangible record that you can refer to over time."

There's research to back up Hooper's theory. In one study, college students were instructed to write down a path toward achieving their future goals. Unsurprisingly, many of those goals involved finishing their education. Results showed that students who completed the writing exercise were more likely to stay in school than those who didn't do the exercise.

2. Start letting go of your ego

A number of Quora users mentioned some variation on the idea that you shouldn't let pride or vanity get in your way, and you should stay open to alternate viewpoints.

Michael Elijah writes: "Learn how to kill your ego. It blinds and fetters us from possibility and progress. Learn how to burst your bubble with simple questions [such] as, 'What if things aren't what they seem to be?' and vitally, 'What if I am wrong?'"

3. Start reading a lot

After college, Hooper realized there was still a lot he didn't know.

"So, I became a voracious reader," he said. "I engaged in a campaign to educate myself on any subject that inspired me. One book led to another. Over the years I've learned 10 times more than I ever learned in high school or college."

We're not advocating autodidactism over formal education, but reading is a great way to learn more about topics that aren't necessarily covered in class. Get started with this list of 30 books to read before turning 30.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The post We analyzed 25,537 B2B sales conversations using AI — here are the 5 things we discovered appeared first on Sales Hacker.

At the Risk of Repeating Yourself…

Have you noticed something different in your inbox lately? Actually, it’s not so much “different” as “the same.” That is, marketers resending email campaigns that you didn’t open, click or convert on the first time.

Resending email campaigns to boost results is a hot topic now that we have data showing how they perform and what can drive better or worse results.

Email service provider Mailchimp turned up the heat on resending – although with several strong caveats – after studying open, click and complaint rates on resend campaigns sent by its clients.

Survey says …

• Resending email campaigns to people who didn’t open the original message could raise the open rate 8.7 percent, Mailchimp said recently. Its data showed an average 26.7 percent open rate on the first send with the average 8.7 percent lift coming from the resend campaign.
• Resending has a checkered reputation among marketers. Many do it, given how many times a consumer has to see a brand message or ad before being moved to act. Others deride it as lazy marketing or an annoying tactic that just fills up inboxes and generates spam complaints and unsubscribes.

Should you try resending email campaigns?

Resending email campaigns makes sense in today’s fragmented email climate because recipients can read messages on everything from traditional desktop computers to the watch on their wrists but they can’t always act right away.

Some see your messages first thing in the morning but aren’t ready to act until later, when your email is buried under a pile of newer messages. Resends can also prod procrastinators to meet deadlines on choice offers or incentives.

Even if you’ve locked down your campaigns through the rest of the year, resending email campaigns might add some incremental oomph to your bottom line, if you’re careful. Note that emphasis.

Consider these factors:

1.) Who should receive the resend email?

Standard resend campaigns go either to the entire database or to those who didn’t open the first message. This widens your field but also raises the risk that you’ll annoy more regulars, because the open rate doesn’t always reflect all opens.

Marketers who use the tactic regularly say they get their best results when they’re more selective: sending to those who opened but didn’t click or who clicked but didn’t convert. Others send to people who opened on mobile devices but didn’t click or convert.

2.) Should you change the subject line or “from” name?

Common practice says yes, but Mailchimp’s data says no. “People who used a different subject line for their resend campaign saw fewer opens and more abuse complaints than people who kept the same subject line,” the company said.

Leave the “from” name alone, too. “Changing the visible From name does increase opens, but it decreases clicks while massively increasing unsubscribes and abuse complaints,” Mailchimp said. In other words, the risk clearly outweighs the rewards.

3.) What results can you expect?

Mainly an incremental boost in opens, clicks or conversions rather than a big bounce. Your results will vary according to the kind of campaign you resend, how often you use the tactic and whom you choose to receive it. Marketers who resend regularly advise using the tactic sparingly to keep it fresh and reduce potential subscriber backlash.

4.) Should I change the message images and text?

Mailchimp’s report didn’t address this question beyond the subject line and “from” names. So, try a basic A/B test in which you send the original content to one segment and fresh content, perhaps addressing your reason for resending to another.

Other variables could be time of day, timespan between first and second sends, mobile versus desktop, or email activity (openers versus non-openers, clickers versus non-clickers, etc.)

Two more tips:

1. Watch your delivery reports for higher churn, such as higher unsubscribes or spam complaints.
2. Track customer response closely and update to more current emails when you can. Customers who don’t respond to emails, especially resend campaigns, might have gone inactive but also might simply not use those email addresses any longer. In these cases, and Email Change of Address (ECOA) service can come in handy.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday can give you an excellent testing ground for experimenting with resend campaigns or for sharpening up your current resending tactics. But, before you rush off to hit “send” on a campaign that didn’t pan out, study Mailchimp’s data, which shows how different variables, such as changing the subject line or sender name, affected the results.

In one of the most useful workshops I’ve attended, we created a customer-journey map for content planning. Before doing this exercise, I had only a fuzzy notion of what a customer-journey content map might look like, how to make one, and why anyone would bother.

It turns out, this map looks like a spreadsheet. You make one by filling the cells.

Why bother? Because doing so helps you answer the perennial question, “What content shall we create?”

Let me back up to clarify the term “customer journey.” In this exercise, we didn’t talk about the customer journey in the way that marketers typically see it: a journey through a sales funnel’s ever-narrowing phases — awareness, consideration, preference, and (kerplunk!) purchase — as helpful as mapping content to those phases may be. We talked instead about customer journeys as things that people want to accomplish as they interact with a brand. We mapped content to customers’ goals.

The exercise I share here was part of a full-day workshop at the Information Development World conference in San Jose. The session — The Next Generation of Content Strategy: Building a Performance-Driven Model — was led by independent content strategists Paula Land and Kevin Nichols. They covered a lot of related topics; I wish I could cram all of them into this post. The content-mapping exercise alone had such value, though, that I focus on it to give you a tool you can use right away.

How we created our customer-journey maps

Paula and Kevin kicked off this exercise by breaking us into teams. They asked each team to imagine itself in charge of deciding what content Starbucks should create for two personas: Faye Weaver and Lila Chan.

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In addition, each team received a customer-journey map template.

Click image to download

Let’s say you’ve just received those three handouts. What would you do?

Choose your key personas (Column 1)

In our exercise, the first column, Persona, was completed: Business Traveler in one row, Student in another row. Starting with the customer may seem obvious, but content decisions don’t always happen that way. Have you ever created content because your boss had a pet idea or because you found a certain topic fascinating? I confess that I have.

Column 1 is column 1 for a reason.

Kevin and Paula noted that when we do this exercise for real — when we choose our own personas — we would prioritize in keeping with the 80/20 rule, choosing personas that account for most of our anticipated business.

Takeaway: When deciding what content to create, start by selecting the personas (or typical customers or segments) on which you want to focus for your business goals.

Identify possibilities for personalization and data gathering (Column 2)

The second column, User State, was completed with Anonymous for both personas. In some cases, users are logged in (for example, when they’re using certain apps), so the system knows information about them, including who and where they are.

The user state determines the potential for personalizing (adapting) the content as it’s delivered. The user state also might determine the potential for gathering data that could help the organization learn about user preferences and needs.

For the purposes of our exercise, having the user states provided simplified our assignment; since our customers were anonymous, we knew that we wouldn’t have to plan for customized content experiences.

If you were using this worksheet in real life, you’d probably want to bump the User State column further to the right, maybe following Channel. After all, how can you think about the user state until you know whether you’d want to put the content in an app or on a poster?

Takeaway: When deciding what content to create, consider how much your system might know about the user and how you might use that information to enhance the user experience.

Choose customer goals that line up with business goals (Column 3)

The third column, Journey, was blank for both personas. As noted in the beginning, Kevin and Paula suggested that we define customer journeys as customer goals — things people want to accomplish as they interact with a brand.

In the context of this exercise, a customer journey answers this question: What does this persona want to do?

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Customer journeys answer this question: What does this persona want to do? @MarciaRJohnston #contentstrategy
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Of the infinite customer journeys we could have chosen for either persona, we were instructed to choose those that we imagined would support Starbucks’ goals. My teammate and I chose one journey per persona: “Get a cup of coffee” for Faye (business traveler) and “Get a part-time job” for Lila (student). We justified prioritizing these journeys because Starbucks needs to sell coffee and hire people.

Customer-journey maps take a lot of forms. After the workshop, Paula clarified for me that some maps do follow a purchase funnel. Some follow tasks. “The main thing,” she wrote, “is that there isn’t just one way to do it. You do it in the context of your project.”

Takeaway: When deciding what content to create, consider what your key personas want to accomplish as they interact with your brand. Focus on those customer goals that matter most to your organization; content marketers need to keep one eye on customer needs and the other on business needs.

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#Content marketers need to keep one eye on customer needs & the other on business needs. @MarciaRJohnston.
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Break down those customer goals into tasks (Column 3, continued)

After choosing customer journeys (goals), we broke them down into customer tasks that might require discrete pieces of content.

For Faye’s get-a-cup-of-coffee journey, we listed these tasks (she wouldn’t necessarily do them in this order — customer journeys are rarely linear):

• Find the nearest store
• Go to the store
• Choose a coffee
• Pay for the coffee

For Lila’s get-a-part-time-job journey, we listed these tasks:

• Find all nearby stores
• Find out what people say about working at those stores
• Research the benefits for part-time employees
• Research Starbucks’ actions related to social responsibility
• Apply for a job

Each step in the journey was given its own row in the customer-journey content map.

Kevin noted that while the Starbucks example comes from the world of retail, the worksheet also works for B2B purposes by asking the same basic question: What do our customers and prospective customers want to accomplish as they interact with our brand?

Takeaway: When deciding what content to create, break down customer goals into tasks that can be mapped to information needs.

Update:  In a comment on the original version of this post, Noz Urbina notes that when he models adaptive content, Column 3 “quickly bursts the bounds of a single column” because it needs the added dimension of time:

We must immediately add the second-most important question: When is this content required?

In a follow-up comment, Noz adds, “We’re mapping out contextual, personalized content that hopes, eventually, to address what a single individual wants at a certain moment (in a certain state).” To accomplish this, he suggests “using columns to map tasks over time grouped in stages.”

That, he points out, is simple to say but not simple to do. “Today’s content strategies (are) simply not so simple,” Noz says. “I personally find it exciting as heck.”

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Today’s content strategies aren’t simple—but they are exciting. @nozurbina. #contentstrategy
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Identify appropriate channels (Column 4)

In the fourth column, Channel, we considered which communication channels our personas would probably use. Paula and Kevin reminded us that channels include print materials (brochures, coupons, product packaging, posters, etc.) and places where people interact (events, telephone calls, checkout counters). They also reminded us that customers sometimes use multiple channels at once. Who hasn’t consulted a smartphone while watching TV or working on a computer?

In other words, we live in an omnichannel world, a world that Noz says “is about understanding and optimizing for the entire journey across all channels.”

We conjectured that Faye, in seeking her cup of coffee, might use these channels:

• Starbucks.com
• Starbucks store (including employees face to face or over the phone)
• Starbucks app
• Hotel lobbies (flyers, employees)

We imagined that Lila, in seeking her part-time job, might use these channels:

• Starbucks.com
• Starbucks store (including employees face to face or over the phone)
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter)
• Youtube.com
• Glassdoor.com (reviews by employees and ex-employees)
• Campus job fair

All channels in a user-journey step are listed in the same row.

You could come up with more and possibly better choices. In the exercise, we weren’t aiming to get it right. We wanted to become familiar with the framework.

We were learning by doing.

This column got me out of my automatic thinking. When you’ve delivered information in certain ways over and over, it’s easy to go with your default distribution channels (another blog post, print poster, and so on). Standing back and looking at the range of channels from a customer point of view gets you thinking of new possibilities.

Takeaway: When deciding what content to create, consider which channels your key personas are likely to use. Avoid mindless repetition of what you’ve done. Avoid guessing; look at user research. Plan for all relevant channels, including print and venues for human interaction.

Brainstorm content ideas (Column 5)

Finally, after we had filled in the first four columns as a basis for making customer-centric decisions, we were ready to fill in the last column: Content. To keep us from getting stuck thinking in terms of web-based content, Kevin and Paula defined “content” as any information that is recorded. A cave drawing, for example, is content. So is a script.

We jotted down a few of Faye’s possible content needs:

• Store locations, maps, directions
• Coffee choices
• Quick-payment options
• Employee training: Tips for answering questions Faye is likely to ask

Then we brainstormed content needs related to Lila’s customer journey:

• Career info: job openings, policies, etc.
• Stories of corporate social responsibility
• Employee training: tips for answering questions Lila is likely to ask

Given more time, we would have done the actual mapping, assigning channels and content to each task. Then we would have identified gaps between Starbucks’ existing content and the content Faye and Lila needed. Finally, we would have decided which projects to tackle first.

Each piece of content gets its own row.

No worksheet fits every situation. Paula and Kevin noted that we might want to change their column headings or add columns to include other factors, like content types, formats, metrics, or triggers. (Triggers are the motivations — “I’m thirsty” or “I need to pay bills” — that start a customer on the journey.)

Takeaway: Map your content to the tasks in your customer journeys, specifying which channels and formats are likely to work best.

Summary

Next time you’re faced, yet again, with the question of what content to create, try a customer-journey map. It gives you a way — to borrow a phrase from Noz — “to mentally go on a full, rich, and physically detailed ‘virtual reality tour’ of the consumer’s context.” Noz calls this “an essential skill for the modern strategist.” (Yes, when you’re deciding what content to create, you’re playing the role of strategist.)

To make your own customer-journey map using this exercise’s worksheet, follow these steps:

1. Choose your key personas or segments.
2. Identify possibilities for personalization and data gathering.
3. Choose customer goals and tasks that might require information.
4. Identify appropriate channels.
5. Brainstorm content ideas for each task.

After that, you don’t get to put your feet up for long. Paula and Kevin suggest revisiting your customer journeys every six months. People change — who knew?

A content marketer’s job is never done!

How do you map your content to customer journeys? Please let us know in the comments.

Want more on content strategy for marketers? Sign up for our Content Strategy for Marketers weekly email newsletter, which features exclusive insights from CMI Chief Content Adviser Robert Rose. If you’re like many other marketers we meet, you’ll come to look forward to his thoughts every Saturday.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Why – and How – to Map Out Your Customers’ Journeys [Template] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

I paid $24 for a pair of socks. “Are you crazy?” (You may be thinking now.) Prior to making the purchase, I viewed socks as a commodity. I simply wanted the lowest price for these mundane items I needed for my feet. Everything changed in 5 minutes after I encountered this vastly different value-based approach […]

It is safe to say that, traditionally, wealth management hasn’t been a particularly accessible industry for banking customers. To most even the term ‘wealth management’ brings to mind images of bronzed billionaires sipping champagne on lavish yachts rather than the idea of easily accessible financial services products. Yet these are exactly what many fintech firms are helping create in the wealth management space. The shift to towards digital banking has allowed a growing number of technologically-enabled and innovative players to democratise the wealth management space, making access to lucrative returns on savings and investments available to all.

Wealthfront, Lufax, Wealth Migrate, Robinhood, Crowdcube and Motif are 6 companies in the wealth management fintech space helping to make this happen.

1. Wealthfront

One of the players at the forefront of the democratic revolution in wealth management is Wealthfront, a US-based platform whose aim, according to CEO Adam Nash, is to provide all their customers, regardless of assets, with the level of service and customisation formerly reserved for the ultra-wealthy. They provide a broad range of flexible and accessible globally diversified portfolios of index funds, along with tax-loss harvesting advice at rock bottom rates – just a 0.25% annual advisory fee, with the first $10,000 deposited managed for free.

How do they manage to make this service affordable? Wealthfront is a pioneer in the field of robo-advisors and they are able to pass savings straight onto their customers through providing personalised advice via automated and algorithmic means rather than through costly relationship managers. Wealthfront currently has $3 billion under management

2. Lufax

Fintechs from Asia – and China in particular – have recorded astonishing growth in value and customer numbers and their performance in the wealth management space is no different. One of the most prominent of these is Lufax, an investment management and peer-to-peer lending platform focusing on matching borrowers with aspiring investors, and providing them with risk management expertise, financial asset trading information, and related investment consulting services.

Lufax leverages big data to provide this, utilising customer information to build market- leading risk assessment models to pass the advice generated onto customers, delivered through digital channels. Valued at $19 billion following its latest funding round in January, they are currently planning to float on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with an IPO predicted for early 2017.

3. Wealth Migrate

Along with democratising access to wealth management services, fintech has also allowed investors of every level access to investments and assets around the globe, previously the preserve of the super-rich. South Africa’s Wealth Migrate combines both of these trends, providing an online portal and platform to allow its members access to exclusive real estate investment opportunities in prime markets across the world.

Wealth Migrate’s use of tech is based on providing transparency to a previously opaque industry, providing a single hub for real estate investors to manage their portfolios (which can range from multiple properties to just $100 of investment), and leveraging economies of scale, along thousands of investors to buy small pieces of huge property assets, and gain access to returns of up to 20% in the process. Wealth Migrate currently has $65 million in assets under management, and recently begun accepting investors from the UK and China.

4. Robinhood

Another effect of the democratisation of the wealth management space has been the emergence of trading platforms aimed at investors unwilling or unable to pay the large trading charge required by traditional online players. A number of these players have already carved out profitable niches for themselves, from passive investment platform Nutmeg to social trading platform E Toro. Although providing often innovative services to customers at low rates, none of these have yet fundamentally departed from traditional revenue models of charging a percentage on trades or investments.

So step forward Robinhood. A California-based fintech start-up with $66 million in funding; Robinhood is attempting to redefine the wealth management revenue model by allowing their customers to trade stocks with no fees. Although generating revenue is not yet a central part of Robinhood’s business plan (they are attempting to follow the Amazon model of undercutting rivals and forcing them out of the market), they have recently begun to offer paid margin accounts to supplement their funding. There has been huge demand for Robinhood’s services within the US, with a waiting list of 500,000 people as of March 2015. The market Robinhood serves is also overwhelmingly young, with 80% of the firm’s customers being under 30, demonstrating the ability of fintech to broaden the appeal of wealth management to new demographics.

5. Crowdcube

The democratisation of the wealth management space is not only taking the form of increased accessibility to investment products, but also allowing smaller investors greater control over what they invest in. Crowdcube is an investment crowdfunding platform, where investors of any size can handpick the business they want to back and invest in. Companies trade investment for equity, which crowd funders then receive depending on their percentage contribution to achieving the funding target. The average investment sought it around £440,000 and, when successful, the amount is raised by an average of around 250 investors.

Based in the UK, Crowdcube was the first investment crowdfunding platform of its type. Success stories include Camden Town Brewery, which was acquired by AB InBev just 8 months after its raise on crowdcube, and Monzo, which recently raised £1 million in just 96 seconds. Crowdcube has raised £192 million of crowdfunding to date.

6. Motif

Along with crowdfunding platforms, the customisation of investment that has gone hand in hand with the democratisation of the space has also allowed investors to tailor investment in more popular stock and assets, tailored to their own interests, with increasing ease. Motif, an investment platform specialising in creating and offering tracker funds geared towards investment in a certain industry or asset class is a key example of this. Founded in the USA in 2010, Motif has raised $120 million from investors to date.

Along with Motif’s self-built products, ranging from baskets of stocks related to the clean energy and IT industries to more playful products such as their ‘Lots of Likes’ basket, which weights investors money towards the companies with the most total likes on Facebook, Motif also encourages investor customisation. Any investor can create a basket of stocks, or a ‘motif’ and offer it to any other investor on the platform, with 18,000 user created bundles created thus far. Motif also combines this customisation with democratisation, charging only $9.95 to invest in tracker, a fraction of the costs charged by traditional investment management companies.

Seven seconds. That’s how quickly busy executives can form an impression about you and the reason for your call. For you, it’s the difference between a successful B2B sales call and a hang up.

If you’re cold calling and connect with a decision maker, and don’t want to be left listening to the dial tone, you’ll make every second—and every sentence—count. Open your call with a powerful, succinct message designed to intrigue and hint at the value you have to share.

Professional telemarketing agents will tell you, it’s not the slick pitch that closes the deal. And there’s no magical trick or gimmick to opening doors. Whether you’re inviting executives to your next seminar or scheduling a face-to-face meeting, it all comes down to how you present yourself, the way you set the tone for the call and how effectively you capture a prospect’s interest.

This seven-step blueprint will help you open your next B2B sales call on just the right note and build rapport rapidly:

1. Introduce Yourself

   “Good morning, Mr. Wilson, I’m Mary French with __________.”

   As you tell prospects who you are, adopt a tone that sounds friendly and approachable while establishing that you’re speaking as one professional to another.

2. Make a Connection

   “I hope you’re doing well and that your customers were enthusiastic about the introduction of ________ at last month’s annual user’s conference.”

   The success of your call hinges on your ability to make a positive emotional connection. Personalizing your message tells prospects that you’ve taken the time to know something about their business.

3. Connect Personally

   “I’m calling today because your customer ________ is also a good customer of mine. Working with us, she’s increased company-wide productivity by 25% since last year, and she thinks we can do the same for you.”

   Cement your personal rapport by introducing a meaningful connection. Mention by name a mutual contact or customer. If you don’t have that, use a recent newsworthy event that connects your product or service to their business.

4. State Your Purpose

   “________ just named us the New Generation Sales Intelligence Company of the Year for our ability to level the playing field for early-stage businesses. Our clients are growing their customer base at twice the rate of their competition. And we can help you to do the same.”

   In a sentence or two, state the reason for your call and the competitive advantage you offer. You’ll intrigue a prospect by suggesting how your success can become their success.

5. Get a Yes

   “I know you’re busy, but if you can give me just five minutes, I’ll explain how you can use ________ to begin boosting your sales productivity in as little as two weeks.”

   You’ve made your opening pitch. Now give prospects an opportunity to consider what you’ve said and to give you the green light to continue. Their affirmation sends a positive message to the brain and makes it easier to say yes again when you get to the end of your sales call and present the call to action.

6. Verify that You’re Speaking with the Senior Decision Maker

   “I understand that you’re [company’s name] Chief Revenue Officer. Is that right? Do you also authorize purchasing decisions for sales productivity technology?”

   By confirming the prospect’s title and purchasing authority, you’re also setting up another opportunity to get a yes.

7. Transition Your Call into a Dialogue

   “Tell me how you’re handling _______ today.”

   As you transition out of your opener, you’re taking the conversation to a new level by signaling to prospects that their needs are important. You can listen without asking a lot of questions while still maintaining control and setting expectations for the call.

Getting Past the Gatekeeper

When reaching out to senior executives, you’re often faced with talking first to their gatekeepers—the administrative assistants who shield their bosses from unscheduled cold calls. While you often need to think on your feet and assess the conversation as it unfolds, you can prepare yourself with a few techniques:

• Never try to sell the gatekeeper.
• Be friendly but confident—after all you have the solution that the decision maker needs.
• Introduce yourself with authority—as one professional calling to speak to another professional.
• Remember, less is more. You don’t want to give the gatekeeper enough information to make a judgment call on behalf of the boss.
• If you need to engage the gatekeeper and get him or her on your side, verify that you’re calling the right decision maker.

Getting Your Prospects to Yes

When enlisting the services of professional telemarketing agents, you can be confident that they are skilled at making B2B sales calls, presenting a strong opener and getting decision makers to say yes.

That said, even the best agents require your help. You need to provide the raw materials they can use to develop their opening lines and engage your prospects in conversation. In addition to the contact records, you’ll need to arm them with target market and audience insight, product information and the specific call to action/outcome you want.

With the right tools, experienced agents can express themselves naturally while establishing a conversational tone that comes across as genuine and intriguing. And they’ll never have to call a prospect and say, “Hi, I just wanted to call to see if there’s anything you need.” That’s an invitation for your prospect to hang up.

Most sales organisations of any significant size suffer from a significant gap between their best and worst performers. If we exclude recent hires from the analysis, sales people typically fall into one of three clusters:

A minority of the sales organisation – typically between 10-20% – are habitual over-performers. A larger proportion – typically 20-30% – are habitual under-performers, and show little indication that they have the aptitude to improve.

After excluding these outliers, the majority of sales people are somewhere in the middle: there is some indication that they have the potential to do better, but they have so far failed to consistently and reliably over-perform against their targets.

The middle ground represents a huge opportunity for performance improvement – so what can sales leaders do to narrow this gap between the best and the rest?

The actual size of the performance gap between the best and the rest depends on a number of factors, including the relative complexity of the sales environment.

A BIGGER GAP IN COMPLEX SALES

According the CEB, in transactional sales environments the gap between the top-performing group and middle-of-the road performers is around 160%. But in complex high-value sales environments, the gap is much higher – close to 300%.

Now, it’s clear that some of the differences are because these top performers display a set of specific personal attitudes and behaviours that cannot easily be replicated.

But this is never the entire explanation: a significant part of the superior performance of this group is down to the fact that they have learned how to more effectively identify, engage, qualify and persuade more of the right sort of prospects – and have made these best practices a habit.

It’s these learned habits that provide the clue to moving the middle: top-performing sales teams have been able to identify these winning habits and distil them into a structured selling system that equips, encourages and enables otherwise average sales people to emulate the behaviours of their top-performing peers.

We’ve recently published a guide to “Moving the Middle – bridging the gap between your best sales people and the rest” – and I recommend that you download your copy here. But in the meantime, here are my key recommendations:

DEFINE WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE

You’ll want to be clear about where you want to move your average performers to, so you’ll need to be able to define what good looks like. This is best done by carefully evaluating the winning behaviours of your current top performers, and blending this with the best practices of top-performing sales organisations that share a similar market and sales focus.

What is it that these top performers do differently from average sales people? How do they target prospects? How do they qualify opportunities? And what is it that they have learned that they need to know and do at each stage of the sales process to maximise their chances of winning?

ASSESS, ANALYSE AND BENCHMARK

How does the rest of your sales team stack up against this ideal sales person profile? How do you rate their innate capabilities – intellect, values and motivations – and their coachable capabilities – skills and behaviours? Which of your team have the attitude and aptitude to improve? And which are so determinedly stuck in their ways that they will resist any attempts to change?

It’s also incredibly valuable to be able to analyse your historical patterns of sales performance. Which types of opportunity (solution type, lead source, sales person, vertical, etc.) have had the highest win rates – and which the lowest? What are the common characteristics that distinguish the opportunities you usually win from the ones you usually lose?

You may have more information that you think: the latest generation of sales analytics tools from organisations like InsightSquared are capable of extracting historical data you never knew you had – and enabling you to benchmark against the best-in-class.

FOCUS ON COMPELLING ISSUES

Top performing sales people, and top-performing sales organisations, recognise that their prospects are faced with many more issues than they will ever be able to address, and that therefore they have to prioritise.

• INTERESTING ISSUES might attract the prospects attention, and drive an initial investigation
• IMPORTANT ISSUES are significant enough to drive a detailed evaluation – but are still not guaranteed to drive a purchase
• But at the end of the day, it is only the truly COMPELLING ISSUES – the ones that once recognised cannot be ignored – that are guaranteed to drive the prospect to action.

What are the compelling issues that have underpinned your past sales successes – and how can you coach all your sales people to systematically uncover and address more of them?

DEFINING YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMERS

Average sales people, and average sales organisations, tend to have a rather simplistic definition of their target markets, often largely restricted to the classic demographic dimensions of size, sector and location.

Top performing sales people, and top-performing sales organisations, tend to have a far more nuanced perspective on what an “ideal customer” looks like. They recognise that demographics are just the start of the process.

They have worked out what the key structural, behavioural and situational predictors of sales success are in their markets – and they apply them when targeting prospects and qualifying opportunities. You can learn more about Identifying Your Ideal Customers in this guide.

OPPORTUNITY SCORING

But even if the issue appears compelling, and the prospect organisation appears to be in your sweet spot, there are many other factors that can influence your chances of success.

Rather than leaving it to chance, top sales performers and top-performing sales organisations take a far more disciplined approach to qualifying apparently attractive sales opportunities.

Many have concluded that the traditional BANT methodology is an entirely inadequate basis for accurate qualification – and many sales organisations are embracing the ADOPTED acronym as a more effective way of assessing key qualification factors. You can find out more about the ADOPTED approach here.

DECISION TEAM

The days when all you had to do was to get in front of a single all-powerful decision maker and secure the deal are largely in the past, if they ever existed at all. Today’s complex, high-value purchases are invariably team decisions involving multiple stakeholders.

That’s why today’s top sales performers – and today’s top-performing sales organisations – recognise that sales success depends on identifying and engaging with the entire decision making unit, including a number of people that are more likely to sit in the background than the foreground.

It explains why they place so much stress on identifying all the decision team members, and on assessing whether their primary contract is a genuine mobiliser, capable of taking the lead when it comes to influencing their colleagues as to both the need for change and the particular merits of your proposed solution.

BUYING-ALIGNED SALES PROCESS

But all your good work will be wasted if your sales efforts aren’t completely aligned with your prospect’s buying decision process. In complex high-value buying decisions, prospects typically first ask “why do we need to change at all?” followed by “what type of solution do we need to change to?” and only then “why should we choose you?”

Top sales performers, and top-performing sales organisations, have come to recognise that diagnosing where the prospect is in their decision process and implementing the appropriate actions are critical to the success or failure of their sales campaign.

In the early stages, one of the most common causes of failure is sales people rushing to pitch their solution too early, before the prospect has even decided whether the issue is significant enough to drive a consensus for change within their own organisation. It’s critical that your sales people help them build the case for change before you attempt to build the case for your solution.

A NON-TRIVIAL TASK, BUT WORTH IT…

I’ve learned that if you want “moving the middle” initiatives to be effective, you have to take the sort of integrated approach that I’ve suggested above. It’s a non-trivial task, but worth it.

If you have been hoping that a one-off sales training course will achieve lasting change, then I’m afraid that you will be disappointed. It’s well established that 85-90% of everything taught in the typical sales training course has been ignored, forgotten or abandoned in under a month.

On the other hand, several industry studies have demonstrated that a systematic programme targeted at equipping every member of your sales organisation to embrace proven winning habits has a lasting positive impact on revenue production, quota achievement and sales forecast accuracy.

Which approach are you going to take as you prepare for 2017? If you’re determined to move the middle of your sales organisation, I recommend you download this guide.

I spent my entire TV career working with the best sports anchor in the country. Channel 4’s Mark Rosen is unique. When most of the industry was hiring blow-dried announcer types, Mark was focusing on facts. While most other sportscasters were coming up with cute catchphrases, Mark was developing sources and telling stories. He’s a sports journalist who just happens to be on TV. And his approach works so well that he has managed to corner two very different markets.

“Mark Rosen was my mentor at WCCO, and I still use some of his lessons in content marketing.”

While I was at WCCO, we did research that showed he’s not only the thinking fan’s sportscaster, but he’s also (by far) the most popular among casual fans. Why? Because he built his brand on real stories and information. Casual fans think he’s genuine, trustworthy, and when they decide that they do want to know anything about sports, he’s the guy they want to get it from. And isn’t that what brands want to accomplish with content marketing? Don’t they want to be seen as genuine, trustworthy, and a go-to source of information in their field? That’s why the lessons I learned from Mark Rosen work so well for content marketing.

Mark wrote a book about his career called “Best Seat in the House,” and I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat for his success.

If you mention Mark’s name in Minnesota, somebody is guaranteed to yell out “Rosie!” He’s the earnest St. Louis Park native who basically grew up on the air at WCCO, covering his favorite teams, traveling to the biggest events, and even running for Governor as a morning radio show’s write-in candidate. He’s that popular.

Mention his name to another TV type, and they’ll acknowledge that Mark is as good as it gets, but I doubt they understand why. After all, despite all of his success, nobody has really tried to copy Mark Rosen. Nobody tries to report his way or write with his style. They treat it like he got where he is almost by accident.

But they’re wrong. It took a very thoughtful approach and a lot of hard work.

I know, because I was his primary producer and writer for more than two decades. I learned how to write in Mark’s voice — starting when he taught me how to write about sports as a college intern in the early 80s — and learned it well enough that we would often take over and finish the scripts that the other one started. That took a lot of trust on his part, and a lot of “brand awareness” on my part, so I think I qualify as an expert on the secret sauce behind the Mark Rosen “brand.”

More importantly, I now use four of the things that Mark taught me at Channel 4 to improve our clients’ content marketing.

Real information is valuable.

Fans want real information. And Mark gives it to them. In a business with so much style over substance, Mark’s style is all about substance. He built his brand around real information from day one — with intense attention to accuracy and a keen eye for detail. The net result is that viewers value his opinions. If everything else that comes out of his mouth is true, his opinions must be accurate, too. And they usually are.

We push our clients in the same direction, because real information has real value. If a person is searching for an answer to a question, they expect an answer to that question. Like Mark’s information, it accurate, timely and relevant — otherwise, they’ll click away to something else. But if it’s accurate and legitimate, your brand has a chance to earn their trust, their confidence, and maybe their business. That’s the key to content marketing. And if you try to substitute a commercial, a “salesy” marketing message, or try to fool them with “clickbait,” you’ll waste that opportunity.

Tell stories.

This is Mark’s true differentiator. Many sportscasters think they deal in information, since they do show the highlights. But that’s all they do, they show the highlights without context and perspective. Mark does it differently. He tells a story.

When you watch ESPN’s SportsCenter, you’ll get a solid introduction that sets the stage for the drama of the game, and then the highlights play out in chronological order, building to the climax — the final score. It’s a fine format that most sportscasters follow, but it’s not Mark’s kind of information-based storytelling. Instead, Mark’s intro gives you the result and the context, and then he uses the highlights to tell a story about how (and why) it happened. It’s a more sophisticated approach that gives his views more of that valuable information.

The same holds true in content marketing. People relate to stories. They appreciate context. Which would you rather watch, a sales video with a company representative spouting off about their product’s features or a testimonial video with happy customers talking about how the product met their needs? The more “real” your characters and information, the better your stories, and the more you’ll relate to the audience.

Honesty leads to credibility.

Mark tells it like it is. Otherwise, viewers wouldn’t trust him. When the local team stinks, he says so. That’s how he builds credibility — with fans and the teams he covers. He’s earned their respect because they know he tells the truth. And he’s earned the viewers’ respect for the same reason.

I’ve always said that you can tell when you turn on the TV whether the sportscaster, news anchor, or reporter you’re watching is on TV because they always wanted to be a journalist, or because they just wanted to be a TV personality. You can tell who’s genuine in about 30 seconds. And the same holds true for content marketing.

You can’t fake your way to credibility. Content that’s real and genuine stands out. If it’s real information, real facts that help the audience make an informed decision, it’ll work. If it’s just a camouflaged commercial, if you’re only showing the facts that put your product in the best light, the audience will likely see right through it, and again you’ll miss out on the opportunity to connect with them.

Be real.

No matter how much we discuss the ways Mark built his brand, they are simply smart ways to showcase his real personality. At the end of the day, he’s just a smart, honest, likable guy who loves covering sports. You can’t fake his passion, particularly on social media. Nope, instead of Tweeting various versions of “Tune in at 10,” Mark has conversations with fans. He even retweets some of them. And every time he has another genuine interaction he proves to another group of people that he really is the nice guy they expected him to be.

Brands would be wise to follow his lead. Engage with your audience instead of posting press releases. Keep it real. Just like Mark Rosen.

Bad copy kills thousands of online businesses every year.

And you know the saddest part? Most of those business owners never find out the real reason behind their failure.

Copywriting is an underrated art because most people think it’s just about coming up with catchy slogans and witty punch lines.

But it’s much more than that.

Persuasive copy is about understanding the needs of your target audience and carefully crafting a message that triggers the right emotions and convinces them to take action

It directly impacts your conversion rates, marketing goals, and sales numbers.

So how do you create such messages?

One way is to hire a professional (and often expensive) copywriter.

But if you’re short on budget, or like doing this on your own, here are a few key points to keep in mind while creating your website content.

1. Forget the Features, Highlight the Core Benefit of Your Offer

Highlight the benefits of your product, not the features.

That’s marketing 101, I know.

But it still needs to be said because most businesses seem to love their products more than their customers.

They’re so obsessed with their own product that they can’t see if the customer even understands how the product features would solve his problem.

Don’t be one of them.

To create persuasive copy, the needs of the customer should always come first.

Here are a few examples of how professional copywriters turn features into benefits.

The core benefit of your product is the reason why people pay for it. Which is why it should always be highlighted first.

Instead of listing down technical features straightaway, translate them into benefits and help your target audience understand how your product features would solve their problem.

2. Convince Buyers With Positive and Conversational Copy

A poker-faced salesman vs. a young, smiling and charming professional – which one would you prefer dealing with?

The latter of course.

Positive and conversational copy is just like that smiling young man.

It’s easy to read, leaves a strong impression and gets the job done.

To be more specific, it speaks directly to the reader using words like “You”, “We”, “I”, “Your” etc., and words that represent energy and positive emotion, like “great”, “awesome”, “wonderful”, “perfect”, “sweet’ etc.

You get the point, right?

When a visitor comes to your website or sales page, he not only needs to be greeted with smiling copy, but also needs to be reassured that your product is indeed the solution he needs.

Which is why your message needs to be clear and free of unnecessary jargon.

3. Boost Conversions With Simple and Engaging Calls To Action

The ultimate objective of any marketing message is to drive a certain action from the prospect.

It’s the final push that your prospect needs to make the purchase or join your list or whatever action you want him to perform.

Despite its importance, though, call to action copy is often neglected, even by professional copywriters.

But I’ll make sure you don’t do that.

The best CTAs have a simple but assertive tone combined with action words.

For example, “Get on board” or “Join the tribe” are much better CTAs than a simple subscribe button

Using your product’s core benefit in CTA’s is also a great way to drive more action. The CTA copy on the homepage of Proven is a great example.

Research shows there are certain CTA words that are more likely to drive action from your website visitors when used in combination with the right marketing message (you can see the complete list here).

Remember, people hesitate in making online purchases for a number of different reasons. A strong and convincing CTA is needed to help them take that final leap of faith and complete the purchase.

4. Use Visual Content to Simplify Complex Topics

Words are powerful.

But they become an irresistible force when combined with the right visuals.

Like it or not, images, videos and graphic representation of your marketing message is becoming more important with every passing day.

Studies suggest that the human mind can understand images 60,000 times faster than words.

This becomes even more important when you’re marketing a technical or slightly more advanced product that needs to be explained in more detail to your audience.

For example, look at this page with simple text.

See how making it more visually appealing makes it easier to understand

This is precisely why infographics have become such a key part of most content marketing strategies. For example, see how this infographic about VPNs, a complex topic for an average internet user, makes it much easier to understand.

Thankfully creating such visuals and infographics does not always require hiring expensive graphic designers. You can find many great infographic creation tools for free on the web.

5. Create Long and In-Depth Content for Your High-Ticket Products

As a general rule, the more complex or expensive your product, the more content you need to create in order to explain its usefulness to your prospects.

Ramit Sethi, a leading marketer, has even used sales 40,000 word sales pages to sell his premium high ticket products.

Longer content also tends to dominate Google’s top search results as apparent from this study by SerpIQ

However, longer content does not mean adding words just for the sake it.

Longer web pages, and even blog posts, are only effective when they’re properly planned and distributed into easily understandable segments and content chunks.

For example, LONITÉ, a Swiss company that turns human cremation ashes into diamonds, uses an in-depth and long-form sales page. Since creating diamonds from human ashes is a very specialized industry not many people understand, the company needed to share as much detail about their processes and practices to win the confidence of their prospects.

But to make it easier to understand, the long page is divided into several segments, with different background colors, and chapters along with a table of contents at the start

Doing so makes the content more digestible for the reader and keeps him engaged till the very end of the page.

Wrapping Up

Effective and persuasive copy is all about aligning your marketing message with the needs of your ideal customer. Modern-day internet users are bombarded with hundreds of thousands of marketing messages every day. The only way to stand out from the crowd and get noticed is by sewing together compelling words that engage your prospects and convince them to take action.

According to HubSpot Sales director Dan Tyre, there’s one question a salesperson should always ask her prospect.

The reply will determine the rep’s strategy throughout the process and can uncover valuable opportunities to educate the buyer.

The question is, “Have you ever made a purchase like this before?”

Salespeople who never explore whether their prospects have previously bought something on behalf of their company are missing out on a goldmine of information.

How to Respond If the Answer Is Yes

If the buyer says, “Yes, I recently bought [product],” this means:

1. They have been involved in or oversaw a purchasing process
2. If the offering they bought is related or complementary to the salesperson’s offering, they have already started addressing a relevant business pain
3. If the product is related to the salesperson’s offering, they should dig into the buyer’s motives, strategy, and use case.

Try asking some of these sample questions:

• “What prompted you to buy that?”
• “Which issue were you hoping to solve?”
• “[X months] down the line, how do you feel about [product]?”
• “Tell me about the implementation process.”
• “How do you see [rep’s product] and [purchased product] complementing each other?” (If the prospect says, “I haven’t thought about that,” or “I don’t know,” the salesperson should develop a couple ideas.)

If the prospect has purchased a product on behalf of their organization before, the salesperson should explore the buyer’s internal buying process. According to CEB, an average of 6.8 stakeholders are now involved in every B2B purchase, which means the salesperson must strategically map out who else has a say, what their individual priorities and motivations are, and how she can get in front of these people or arm her champion with what he needs to persuade them himself.

The rep can also use this line of questioning to learn more about her prospect’s attitude toward cost. Is the prospect price-conscious, or is he willing to spend more for better quality, security, and/or service?

These follow-up questions will help the salesperson gather more information:

• “Who else was involved in that purchase?”
• “How did you decide on a [vendor/product/solution]?”
• “Why did you start looking at products in the [category] space?”
• “What was the decision making process like?”
• “What were your decision criteria?”
• “Did you prioritize any of those criteria more than others?”
• “Roughly how long did the process take?”
• “Did the funding come from your budget?”
• “Did anyone make the final call, or was it a group decision?”
• “Did you run the purchase by legal or procurement?”
• “If you had a do-over, how would you approach the process differently?”
• “I know that [costs around X, is fairly pricey/affordable/middle of the market]. Was [product] the most [expensive, inexpensive] option you evaluated?”

To avoid making prospects wonder why they’re spending time discussing the past, reps shouldn’t ask every single question on this list. They should pick and choose depending on what information they need most.

For instance, if a salesperson is having a hard time understanding why her prospect is looking into solutions at this exact time, she might ask, “Why did you start looking at products in the [category] space?” But if she’s hoping to figure out how the buyer will actually pay for her product, she could pose a question about funding.

How to Respond If the Answer Is No

It’s possible the prospect has never bought a similar product before -- meaning he’s figuring everything out for the first time. A smart salesperson will take this chance to add value and earn trust by guiding her prospect through the various stages of a purchasing decision.

But saying, “You should value X things and follow Y process,” isn’t the best response. Buyers can be skeptical, so telling them to do something without proof won’t be effective. Bringing up similar companies as examples, on the other hand, lets the rep deliver her point in a way prospects trust.

The rep might say, “I’ve helped X clients with this type of purchase. Would you be interested in hearing the criteria most used to evaluate their options?”

Salespeople who help prospects define their decision criteria should strive to be as objective as possible. It’s tempting to model the purchasing framework around your offering, but if the buyer finds out, they’ll lose all faith in you.

Let’s say your company’s onboarding and implementation services aren’t great. You decide to exclude “onboarding and implementation” from the list you send your prospect so this doesn’t play into their decision. Then another rep mentions their excellent onboarding package -- and suddenly, the buyer is wondering why you never mentioned this detail.

Try placing yourself in your prospect’s shoes. What information do you need to know to make the best decision? Even if the buyer ends up going with your competitor (or sticking with the status quo), you’ll have earned their trust. That means you’ll probably be their first choice for referrals or future purchases.

Buyers might also need help navigating their company’s purchasing and approval processes. For instance, if a salesperson knows from experience their product typically requires approval from both Marketing and Sales, she could say, “The marketing managers I work with typically run their top three choices by the director of sales before making a final call. You might consider meeting with [company’s director of sales] to see what he thinks.”

When a salesperson really wants to impress the buyer, she can offer up a “Godfather.” This senior executive from her company will serve as a mentor to the buyer, answering their questions and checking up on them appropriately every six months. Tyre says this suggestion makes prospects feel 10 times more secure about the purchase -- even though most don’t take advantage of it.

“The offer itself is often more valuable than the actual resource,” he explains. “Prospects feel their risk is reduced if they know help is just a phone call away.”

It might feel counterintuitive to ask the buyer about his former purchases when your first instinct is to keep the spotlight on your own product. But there are few questions that do more to close a deal.

Taking sales advice from old-school, conventional sales companies is like taking dating advice from your grandparents at Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, it’s heartwarming to hear how things were done in the “good ole days,” but it’s almost 2017 and we need more modern sales statistics to carry with us into the new year.

In today’s over-emailed, over-stimulated, overwhelmingly social-driven customers’ world, old-school outreach processes are falling flat, and buyers are getting harder and harder to reach. There’s at least one thing about modern sales statistics that grandpa can relate to, and that’s the time it takes to court a prospect in today’s sales environment. Overheard at the Sirius Decisions friendsgiving table, the average sales rep only makes two attempts to contact a prospect, when the sales process takes almost 22% longer than in years past.

That just means that sales professionals need to get a leg up on the new year with a handful of modern sales statistics. The eight shared below are just a few nuggets of insight into what the current state of sales looks like headed into 2017. So, whether it’s just a little insight into your sales emails, follow-up processes, or social selling strategies, take a few moments before tryptophan sets in and get your modern sales statistics fix:

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Rejoin us after the holiday with more content to arm you for the rest of the holiday season! Can’t wait until Monday for more modern sales statistics? Check out our free ebook, “Houston, We Have a Sales Problem“ to see more of the issues we’re battling every day in the modern sales era!

The post Modern Sales Statistics by the Slice [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on SalesLoft.

What is the true mark of a working sales enablement strategy? A sales force that maintains meaningful conversations with prospects and customers.

It doesn’t matter how many documents the sales enablement team puts out. The important thing is to provide the sales team with content that’s relevant and helpful at each stage of the sales process.

What content you need to create depends on the particular needs of your reps. Given the sophisticated B2B sales process, it requires various forms and types of content.

We have moved way past the days where we defend and make a case for sales enablement. The question now is, what do we need to do?

In this post, we put together the different content types to source, create, and provide to give top-notch support to sales.

Persona documents

Successful sales teams need to know your customers deeply to perform well. To prospect and sell with precision, reps must have intimate knowledge of your buyers’ motivations, needs, and pain points.

Supply them with persona documents–a vital part of addressing this need. Prepare everyone by laying out detailed buyer personas. They ensure reps help customers uncover and solve their problems.

Persona documents come in various formats–infographics, spreadsheets, articles, and even videos. The skeleton of a persona document is a breakdown of a semi-fictional character representing a typical customer. Basic information like general background, age, gender, job description, the size of the company they work for, their decision-making power in their company, personal interests, personal aspirations, and any detail that helps form a better understanding of the customer should be in these documents.

Remember, buyers are still people. Their decisions are not purely business-driven. You need to earn their trust, and speak to them in a language they understand.

Having these documents enable sales reps to better grasp your market’s psyche. This allows them to fine tune their calls and give as much value to your prospects as possible.

Product training and mastery documents

Consultative selling is where it’s at today. If your customer-facing reps don’t master the ins and outs of your product, competition will leave you in the dust.

Salespeople should know what they sell–and only sell what they know. A clueless salesperson talking to a decision-maker who has substantial experience in the industry would be easily “outed”. This will cost your team sale after sale. Without familiarity with the industry, it is almost impossible to score high-ticket sales.

Sales enablement plays a key role in developing product and industry mastery on the sales floor. Providing product and industry content to the sales force will help them ask the right questions. This is so they can uncover client pain points. and offer solutions that help solve those challenges. It’s a way to show your company’s superiority over other solutions available in the market.

Examples: Product sheets, pages, manuals, use case demos, live demo recording

Competitor research and analysis

It’s good practice for reps to research competition on their own. Still, sales enablement must give them information that shows your solution’s edge over others. It’s often a neglected component of a successful sales force. There are too many sales guides that only gloss over the competition. These fail to be incisive of the competition.

This blunts your reps’ chances of winning more business. It also hurts the relationship of the sales enablement team with the sales force.

Aligning the efforts of these departments has been a perennial issue for sales organizations. Ensuring that each one is performing to support the productivity and efficiency of the other is key.

For sales enablement, this means creating content the sales force needs to win over the competition. The content they provide must assist in convincing clients to switch. Sales reps must be at the forefront of establishing your solution as the best in the biz.

Examples: Competitor battle cards, Competitor site and content audit, Competitor marketing materials

Scripts

Because of the multi-touch nature of B2B selling, the consistency of messaging along the sales funnel could suffer. If there is no proper support, sales reps could struggle with this as well. Like marketing, sales is a major channel that represents companies. All conversations, content, and communication from sales can either help or hurt the way your company is viewed.

That said, this establishes the need to have consistent messaging throughout your funnel through scripting.

Guided selling gets a lot of flak. Some say it dehumanizes sales and is closer to the old school tradition of robotic salespeople. Yet, scripts are not there for verbatim use. They must complement your sales process to ensure that your reps’ activities are in line with the way the company wants to do business.

Your sales enablement efforts should include content that helps reps use your playbook effectively. Scripts must reflect the collective experience of the sales department.

Answer these questions: What core scripts work to open up the sales process? What scripting works for common objections and inquiries you get?

Examples: Email templates, Voicemail spiels, Call scripts, Product demo scripts and presentation materials

Customer-facing marketing materials

In today’s business landscape, customers are in control. They drive revenue with their choices and decisions. Now more than ever, anybody out in the market for a solution has access to a vast amount of information. With that came the need for inbound marketing. Creating content that sells through direct sales pitches has constantly been proven ineffective.

Now, marketing professionals create content that helps audiences. Content must enrich their knowledge and help prospects overcome their challenges.

Sales enablement is ultimately about optimizing a company’s revenue generation efforts. That said, reps need to know which content attracts and convinces. Not only does this knowledge enrich their conversations, it also provides valuable clues about a prospect. This gives salespeople a solid head start before connecting with a lead.

Examples: Blog posts, case studies, ebooks, infographics, lead magnets, videos, podcasts

Regardless of who owns the sales enablement function in an organization, it’s crucial to create these content types. Use them and continue to foster a better relationship between sales, sales enablement, and marketing.

Sales enablement is vital to all effectiveness and acceleration efforts on the floor. Having a strategy in place is not only an option–it’s a necessity for all sales organizations that want to stay competitive.

Releasing an ebook or selling a service is a great achievement. But a lot of digital entrepreneurs believe that’s all there is to being in business.

Having a business means more than having a single product. It means committing to continuous sales funnel development, and to being thoroughly invested in the success of your consumers over the long haul.

Yes, the risks are huge. The rewards, however, are even greater.

If you don’t have a business – if all you have is a single product – you’re putting your financial future in jeopardy. What will happen if, all of a sudden, demand dries up for your product?

Maybe you’ve saturated your market, or maybe changes in your industry make your product obsolete, but if you’ve staked your claim on a single product, you could lose it all in a day. On the other hand, a fully-fledged business means that, even if interest in one of your products disappears, you’ve still got a stable of great offerings and a diverse group of customers to buy them.

Below, I’ll help you determine if you have a product or a business. If you have a product, I’ll talk about the key steps you need to take in order to change your thinking from a salesperson of a product to an entrepreneur in business.

We’ll also touch on what you can do if you want to function like a business, but don’t want to jump in head first just yet.

Product vs Business

Before we dive in, a little definition magic:

Per Merriam-Webster, a product is “something that is made or grown to be sold or used.”

According to Wikipedia, a business is “an entity involved in the provision of goods and/or services to consumers.”

The difference is subtle but the key is in continuous process. A business provides goods and/or services to consumers. A product is a good and/or service provided to a consumer.

For example, many of the items on Kickstarter and eBay are products. They aim to sell a single thing. A great example of this is the Toasteroid. The makers of the toaster are focused on this one product. Even their website is entirely devoted to just this product.

An Etsy shop, however, can be a fully-fledged business. Wallplays, for example, sells more than 200 different kinds of wallpapers. Their brand isn’t dedicated to only one type of wallpaper, which is important in an industry where design trends can change in a minute. Instead, they diversify their offerings by selling repositionable, colorful, and modern wallpaper to suit all lifestyles and decor preferences.

At this point, you may already have a good idea of whether your endeavors constitute a product or a business. But if you’re still on the fence, consider the following questions:

Do you have a plan for developing, releasing, and promoting new products to capitalize on your previous success?

Carter Wigell, writing for Ideator, shares MP3 players as a great example of an industry where individual products grew into full businesses. Noting that Microsoft’s Zune player preceded the transformative iPod – but failed to ever gain real market share – Wigell suggests that “[Apple’s] delivery, ecosystem, marketing and macro trends of consumer behavior were timed perfectly.”

Not only was Apple able to identify and capitalize on opportunities that Microsoft missed, they were able to leverage the business they built around the iPod to transition into tablets, smart watches and more.

Even if the tech giant’s sales are cooling now, the company still managed astronomical revenue growth from $8 billion in 2004 to more than $230 billion in 2015.

You definitely can’t say that about the Zune.

Do you have lead capture mechanisms in place?

Whether you have a product or a business, you know that sales don’t just happen. Before they hit the “Buy” button, buyers have to first recognize that they have a need, identify alternatives to evaluate, and carry out their evaluation.

Prospective customers naturally drop off during this process, which is why it stands to reason that the more leads you can capture and market to over time, the more sales you’ll ultimately generate.

The data backs this up. According to Forrester Research, “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.”

Yes, a single product can have lead capture mechanisms in place. However, it’s the forward-thinking, long-term kind of investment into developing these systems – not to mention the sales funnels behind them – that suggests a transition from single product supplier to full-on business.

Do you have an established sales funnel?

So, you’re gathering leads. That’s great. But what are you doing for them once you’ve corralled them into your sales funnel?

Neil Patel explains why having a carefully-crafted sales funnel is so important:

“No matter how they get to you, as many as 73% of leads are not even ready to be sold to. Even of the ones that are qualified, half of them aren’t ready to buy. That puts the odds against you right out of the gate.

Companies who properly nurture their leads see a 450% increase in qualified prospects. And those who take the time to nurture and grow those customer relationships, see 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost.”

Investing in creating a sales funnel to nurture the leads you’ve generated suggests that you’re thinking about more than racking up single-product sales. You’re thinking about your customers, how you can support them, and how you can help them make decisions – and that’s the kind of thing a business does.

Certainly, these aren’t the only questions that’ll distinguish between business and product. However, if you look at the underlying thinking found in the answers above, it should ultimately become clear which side of the coin your company falls on.

What to do if: You have a product, but you want a business

Now, let’s say you’ve got a single product, but you want to become a business in order to take advantage of some of the benefits highlighted above.

Here’s what you need to do, following the classic “5 Ws” of traditional journalism:

• Decide on your main overall mission. This will guide every product, process, and service that you provide in the future. Remember that mission statements are declarative of value-propositions. (Who and Why?)
• Identify the business processes that you will put in place to provide the value you propose. (How?)
• Determine and design the best products that can channel this value. (What?)
• Plan out the optimal strategy for continuous delivery of products and services. (When and Where?)

If you’re stuck figuring out what your value proposition is, ask yourself, “What problem am I trying to solve with my product?” Chances are you can extrapolate that single challenge into a broader business model, expanded with different products, channels of distribution, target consumers and more.

What to do if: You’re not ready for a business

If you’re not ready to jump into building a full-blown business, you can still apply some of these foundational business principles to your current product to ensure its success.

Instead of determining an overall mission, just declare the value-proposition of your product. What needs are being met by the product? How is the product alleviating pain points?

Next, make sure the product is designed to optimally provide the value you’ve just defined. If it’s an ebook, is it in the correct format? Can it include supplemental materials? Does it lack any information or insight? Can it be further researched? If it’s a service, does the format help customers? Does it provide a “bookended” benefit (meaning, its main value ends with the service), or does it provide ongoing benefits?

Plan out the optimal strategy for product awareness and delivery. Do you need a lead magnet? Can you utilize paid ads? Can you garner some free publicity? Can you hook into specific communities online? Figure out what you need to do to get your product into the hands of people that need it – then do it!

Wrap

Whether you have a business or a product, never forget that consumers seek real value. Your goal should always be to provide that value. Who knows, if all you have is a product right now, you may eventually be able to transform your offering into a fully-fledged business that protects your financial position by delivering continuous value for your audience.

Where is your current product on this spectrum? If you don’t have a true business backing your single product, what steps will you take to expand its value? Leave me a note below in the comments with your thoughts.

Images: Pat Castaldo, Dean Hochman, Creative Commons

Content mapping is the essential process of matching your content to the appropriate stage of the buyer’s journey. But you’re probably wondering, “How the heck does content mapping help my sales team close more deals?”

Good question.

The whole idea behind inbound – marketing or selling – is that you’re trying to get the right content in the hands of the right people at the right time. That means you need to know what content someone needs and when, which is only possible if you map your content across the buyer’s journey.

Without that map, your sales reps will be flying blind. And instead of disseminating content strategically and with purpose, they’ll be left crossing their fingers, hoping whatever content they are able to toss over the fence will be what their website visitors or prospects need.

This is especially true, when considering how content is leveraged by sales. Because if your reps aren’t using your content as you intended it, leads can be lost and your message can easily get derailed.

So how do you map your content correctly?

Marrying the Persona to the Journey

For every piece of content your company produces, you should have a corresponding target audience persona – which is a fictionalized generalization of your ideal customer.

In addition, you should have a clear idea of where that person would be in the buying process, whether it’s being aware of a particular problem, researching solutions to that problem or making a decision.

(Here’s a quick refresher on the different stages of the buyer’s journey.)

For instance, let’s say you have a case study that outlines the results you produced for a client in a particular vertical or service line of your business. If your personas are broken up by those services or verticals, your job will be easy. If they aren’t, however, you will need to determine which of your personas will find that particular case study to be the most relevant.

Finally, since it’s a case study, you also know that it should map to the consideration stage, when a prospect knows what their problem is and is weighing their options, in terms of how to solve it.

How to Get Started

The easiest way to begin content mapping is to step through the buyer’s journey and identify what content you have available for each stage. This is ideally a collaborative effort between sales and marketing – that way both teams can discuss what works and what doesn’t.

(This is also a great way to identify gaps in your content library.)

But don’t stop there.

For each piece of content, you also need to detail what it’s to be used for, as well as how it will be used. If you sort your content into stages without adding any reasoning behind it, sales representatives can easily get confused about why a particular piece of content is necessary or helpful.

To make life easier for your sales team, you should have detailed descriptions for all of your content about how and when to use that content.

Why Map Your Content?

The obvious advantage of content mapping is the knowledge that you can use your content in the right spot, helping to move sales opportunities forward. At the right time, a well-placed piece of content can make all the difference between clinching the deal or having it fall through.

When done right, content maps are also self-strengthening.

When you get good feedback from your sales team about how their pitches went, you can make adjustments to your content or add content in places that need it.

By clearly defining how your company’s content should be used, you’ll cut back on any miscommunication that keeps you from finding any problems with your content. You’ll also see a drastic reduction in the misuse of content that’s in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

Final Thought

It’s easy sometimes to get overwhelmed with the amount of content that you have and trying to piece it all together. But remember, it’s not a race. Start slow and take your time. Begin with the first stage of the buyer’s journey and identify all the content available to you that belongs there.

Also, keep in mind that the content you’re looking at may not be what your sales representatives are actually using. Some of your sales team’s content may be outdated, created by themselves, taken from external sources or used at a different stage than you expected.

That’s why mapping your content is a valuable opportunity to ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page, by asking them exactly what they’re using, as well as when they’re using it.

Not only will this allow you to find new content opportunities, at the end of the day you’ll be empowering your sales teams to close more deals and be more effective in their roles – which ultimately drives revenue growth for your business.

Talk about a win-win.

Your team probably spends a lot of time in lead generation planning, discussing ways to reach the right types of prospects. However, it is at least as important to consider common mistakes that businesses make that lead to wasted time, inefficiencies and missed targets.

The following is a look at some of the most common appointment setting mistakes, and some strategies and tips for avoiding them.

Engaging the Wrong People

I say this a lot, but only because it’s true: every call you make to an unqualified lead is time taken away from contacting qualified leads.

Too often, sales reps make calls to people that don’t match the traits of the ideal customer for a solution. These calls, especially when taken too far, eat up valuable selling time.

It isn’t just the time spent with the unqualified prospect to consider. During that time, your competitors are making calls on your better targets and getting appointments with them.

To ensure you call on the right people, build a precise buyer persona, and qualify people before calling.

Companies will have different ways of trying to ensure they are targeting the right people. For example, as an expert in lead generation, Internal Results is able to include intent data in its qualification activities that can optimise precise targeting.

Relying on Non-Experts to Land Appointments

It isn’t uncommon for sales organisations to rely on sales reps to complete every step in the buying cycle, including lead generation.

If you’re in sales yourself, you know that that inside sales or appointment setting skills are very different from nurturing, presentation and closing skills. And not everybody has the full range of skills.

Some people are better closers, others are better at nurturing relationships. The age-old Hunter v Farmer comparison.

Internal Results has inside sales experts dedicated to appointment setting for clients. These professionals have expertise and experience in executing calls effectively with qualified prospects.

Your reps are then able to concentrate time and energy on what they do best, which is converting appointments into sales.

Updating CRM Records

Don’t overlook the importance of updating customer relationship management records as you call on prospects.

Sales reps, especially when burdened with managing contacts across the sales pipeline, can forget to add notes to a CRM profile after an appointment setting call.

When you don’t update records, you restrict the ability of a sales rep to optimise preparation for and effectiveness during the initial meeting.

As part of its expert execution, Internal Results staff updates your CRM system to make certain that your leads are handed off to field reps efficiently.

Wrap Up

Knowing some of the common appointment setting mistakes made by other companies allows you to prepare your own strategy to avoid them.

Many organisations waste time calling on the wrong people, or they fail to identify the specialised skills necessary for efficient appointment setting.

Maintaining CRM accuracy is another issue, particularly when there is a lot of movement of people between teams, or a high turnover of staff.

Avoiding these common mistakes can optimise your appointment setting and nurturing activities.

Your drip campaign comes when you want to make your sales growth predictable.

You may think that this is a very specific solution to a broad dilemma faced by companies every day. That may lead you to wonder, “will this work for my company and the situation it is in?”

Of course, an outbound strategy isn’t the only approach you can take. You can read more about the pros and cons of employing an outbound or an inbound strategy. For most companies, a mixture of the two will give you the best result.

So if you are going to use an outbound strategy, why would you choose an email drip campaign over other outbound means of outreach?

Email is effective, easy to scale, and predictable.

• A well-targeted drip campaign can convert 5 percent of all the prospects you send messages to. You can then use them to keep your account executives busy closing deals.
• Manual prospecting and email campaigns can get each individual SDR around 200 prospects a day, providing your sales funnel with a steady stream of qualified prospects. With the right automation tools and extra email accounts, one person can increase their scope to 2000 prospects a day.

Because you are using email, most of the process of prospecting and executing your drip campaign can be automated. There are some good tools out there that can cut down a lot of the time you spend on your campaign. In the most clear-cut cases, we have seen individuals prospect for 200 potential clients and start their drip campaign on a single email account in as little as 5 minutes! By using more than one email account, you can repeat the process in the same amount of time and reach more prospects.

A common path that a startup takes, as described in Aaron Ross’ essential work on the subject Predictable Revenue, goes like this:

1. The CEO goes out and drums up business through personal contacts and connections developed at conferences.
2. There is a rocky transition period where the company looks for strategies to scale its marketing and sales funnel.
3. If the company survives the second stage, it goes on to grow in a predictable manner.

An outbound drip campaign is designed to remove the uncertainty of the transitional period and quickly move on to predictable growth in sales.

So what should you think about when you start prospecting for your outbound campaign?

Looking for Prospects

The three primary considerations when looking for clients to benefit from your product are:

• Create ideal customer profile
• Find the correct contact information
• Qualify the prospect based on how valuable a customer they might be

Before you can start generating either inbound or outbound prospects, you need to know who you are targeting. A good way to do this is to look at the people who have already bought your product.

1. Where do they come from?
2. Are they tech entrepreneurs in San Francisco or are they financiers in New York?
3. Where do they fit in their respective organizations?
4. What values do they have?

These are just a few of the questions that can get you closer to understanding your ideal customer profile.

Don’t forget that your ideal customer profile can change as time goes on and you learn more about your customer.

You still need a target customer at the beginning of the process and the ICP provides it. The target that you create will then let you know where you should be searching for information.

Now that you know the kind of person you are searching for, it’s time to get started. There are a few different sources that you can access.

• Lead providers/databases

  There are a plethora of these out there and they run the gamut from cheap bulk lists that have relatively poor accuracy to highly searchable specific databases who provide high-quality leads for at higher cost. I would suggest getting the highest-quality data you can afford. Bulk lists may be cheap but the time and effort it takes to separate the good prospects from the bad often make up for any the savings that you find.

• Social Media

  LinkedIn is a perennial favorite, given the sheer volume of data it has collected about business leaders. It is also one of the most up to date sources but it can be difficult to find all of the information you need to make contact with a prospect. Twitter is also good, particularly in the tech space. If you look through conversations that prospects have with their followers, they will sometimes volunteer their contact details in a bid to talk to their followers.

• The company’s own website

  This might seem like it’s obvious but a lot of prospectors overlook this source. Since you have your ideal customer profile you can look for companies that fit the bill. Theses can be companies that are very similar to clients you have successfully established in the past. A company’s own website can often provide a lot of details that you would not normally expect to be public. That said it should not be relied on completely as the contact information you find may be for a gatekeeper rather than the decision maker you want to talk to.

Now that you have the contact details of the prospects in your hand it is important to start to qualify them. There are some serious questions that you need to consider

• Does this person meet our ICP (industry, geography, etc.)

  Have you had more success in the past with new managers trying to make their mark or with people who are experienced in their position? Do you do well selling to younger or older people? It is all important. You can use this information to create buyer personas.

• Can your product solve a problem this company has?

  You might sell the best product or service in the sector but if there is a cheaper alternative which solves all of the company’s problems, why are they going to change to you?

• Does the prospect already use products like the one you are trying to sell?

  This can be really useful. If you are selling sales automation software and a company already uses marketing automation, this could be a good fit. After all, they are already open to automating their processes.

• Is your prospect a decision maker or somebody who can influence a decision maker?

  Look at their title. Don’t try to sell sales automation software to the HR department. If you aren’t sure, it can be worth it to ask someone higher up the corporate structure to refer you to the decision maker.

Before you start putting your leads into your drip campaign, there are something you need to consider…

How good is the information that I have?

You can expect a high bounce rate from bulk data or a low bounce rate from targeted database. This is important because a high bounce rate can cause you to run afoul of spam filters. If your domain gets on an email blacklist, none of your emails will get to their recipients. You can read more about it in Sales Outreach Emails In Light of Anti-SPAM Laws

Great, you now have your prospects and are ready to set up your drip campaign. You now need to write the first email for your campaign and set up your follow up emails to make the most of your contact

You can do this all on your own. For basic functionality using a free tool, you can set up your email campaign with Streak.

More conversions almost always lead to more sales, while more traffic doesn’t necessarily increase sales. That is why conversion is more important than traffic if you want to increase revenue. Profitworks provides SEO and conversion optimization services and they see time and time again with their clients that increases in conversion lead to an immediate increase in sales.

This is just one of three key reasons why conversion is more important than traffic. Continue reading to learn about the other two.

Look Familiar?

More Traffic Does Not Always Equal More Sales, More Conversions Almost Always Do

More traffic does not always equal more sales. If you are bringing in tons of traffic, but it’s the wrong kind of traffic, then visitors will bounce and it will lead to zero closed deals. Here are some reasons traffic may increase, but conversions decrease:

• The content does not match the intent of the search phrase driving the traffic
• The website content covers a topic that is not directly related to the product or service you are selling
• The website content directly links to what you are selling, but it is TOFU content reviewed during the initial research stage and not during the purchasing stage
• The website content presents a poor image of your company and convinces prospects not to buy from you
• The website content is confusing or hard to understand
• Your lead capture form is broken or ineffective at converting

For an increase in traffic to lead to an increase in conversion, the traffic must consist of highly targeted users (targeted with compelling purchase-intent content) being funneled to high-converting pages. For example, the number one page for traffic on the Profitworks website links to a free accounting software. We offer this because many of our customers are small businesses. Yet, since that page is not at all purchase intent content for what we sell (SEO services), we have never received a lead from that page. It creates a lot of traffic to our website, but no conversions or closed deals.

On the other hand, if we work to increase the conversion rate of our home page and we can get the conversion to go from 10 leads a month or 1% of traffic, to 2% and 20 leads a month, I can guarantee you we will see increased sales.

It Is Easier To Double Conversions Than Double Traffic

In a simple A/B test, we have been able to increase the conversion of web pages by as much as 600% and often have them show improvements of over 50%. The time it takes to build and run the test can often be a few weeks.

On the flip side, to get that kind of an increase in traffic to a web page it will often take a few months and the amount of work that we would put into attaining those results is usually 3-4 times that of the A/B page test.

Here is a great example:

Let’s say that you get 10,000 visitors to your website a month and 100 closed deals from conversions from that traffic. Each customer equals, for the sake of argument, $1,000, so currently your website is bringing in $10,000 dollars in sales.

Now, if you were looking to double your sales, here is what it would look like if you try to achieve your goal through increasing conversion vs increasing traffic:

The other important factor to look at in this scenario, is that often when you increase traffic your conversion rate does not stay flat but actually dips. So there is a lower chance of success in increasing sales by $10,000 a month in the scenario if you double traffic, rather than doubling conversions.

Often, with a significant increase in traffic, conversion will drop 10-20%. Even if it just drops 10%, at the new traffic levels sales would only increase $8,000 per month. To get the full targeted sales increase you would need to increase traffic by 1,222 sessions.

Getting Conversion Right, Before Traffic, Leads To Better Profitability

For the reasons stated above, if you increase traffic but you have a low conversion rate, it does little for your bottom line. Conversely, if you have your conversion optimized first, and then push a bunch of traffic to your website after that, it will create better cash flow for your business.

See below:

The monthly increase amounts that we have experienced tend to be very attainable over the first six month period of working on increasing either conversion or increasing traffic.

Investing in your website can have great rewards. No matter what data you look at, investing in your website is always near the top of the list of the best ROI marketing choices you can make. From our data it on average delivers a 275% ROI, or delivers an additional $2.75 in additional profit for every dollar spent.

For a long time, “lead nurturing” was thought of as something you did with the leads that sales didn’t want. The theory was: leads come in, the sales team gets the hot ones, and the rest go to lead nurturing.

Today, of course, a comprehensive lead nurturing strategy is much more than that. Yes, effective lead nurturing can educate, cultivate, and maintain brand awareness over time with a group of prospects that aren’t quite ready to talk with a rep. But where lead nurturing often has the most impact – on conversion rates, funnel velocity, and demand generation ROI – isn’t mid-funnel, but rather immediately when a lead enters the system.

It’s when a prospect first expresses interest that nurturing can help highlight hot leads, filter out the junk, and increase the rate at leads engage with sales. If nurturing is instead relegated to a “clean up” role – i.e. making the most of those leads rejected by sales, its value will be a fraction of what’s possible.

I was reminded of all this by a recent question from a prospective client:

“Currently our lead management process is designed so that our SDR team have primary responsibility for qualifying leads. In a nutshell, the process is: lead comes in, SDR contacts leads, if no response, he/she moves that lead to the nurture program. Currently we have a bunch of leads sitting in that “contacted” stage. Our SDR manager wants his reps to qualify all the leads rather than put them immediately in the nurture program. However, reading your content it sounds like we should be putting leads in a nurture program before qualifying them. Do you agree?”

My response:

“Without a doubt those leads should NOT be sitting, dormant, in an SDR queue without being nurtured. SDR follow-up and lead nurturing are not mutually exclusive – most of the “new lead” nurture programs we design are intended to run concurrent with, and complementary to, SDR follow-up.

It’s not so much that you should put leads in a nurture program before you qualify them, but rather that the nurture program should launch concurrent with SDR follow-up. The result will almost certainly be a higher engagement rate, and therefore a higher qualification rate, for the SDRs.”

This isn’t the first time that we’ve come across a company that insists on letting SDRs “have a crack” at leads before, in effect, turning them over to marketing in the form of a nurture program. But, in my view, to do so implies that nurturing has no role to play in the lead qualification process. Quite the contrary – lead nurturing can greatly enhance the initial qualification process and increase SDR productivity in a number of key ways:

• Highlight those leads that most merit immediate follow-up
• Filter or flag those leads that are either junk or have less immediate interest
• “Warm up” leads and make them more receptive to sales follow-up

Neither does a lead nurturing program have to equate to a “marketing” email, and everything that implies (HTML design and all). In the context of a “new lead” program (or, as we sometimes call it, a “Welcome Series”) automated emails can be much more informal, and even personalized from the SDR. In that way, nurturing actually relieves SDRs of much of the legwork of lead follow-up, and allows them to focus their time on leads that show themselves to be worthy of the effort.

For a more detailed discussion of this and related topics, see our white paper on “Top 10 Tips for Lead Nurturing Success.”

Messaging affects every aspect of the sales process, from the first communication to negotiation to the close. Problems with sales messaging can lead to bigger problems: negotiating on price rather than value, low productivity, and missed quotas, to name a few.

If your organization is experiencing any of the messaging problems below, it’s time to address them. The longer you wait, the more impact to the bottom line and your revenue growth goals. Don’t start 2017 off without a plan.

1. Marketing and Sales Lack Alignment

More and more, B2B buyers are researching solutions online. This digital behavior demands tight alignment with marketing and sales. When the sales message doesn’t align with what they’re consuming online about the product and company, it creates friction that can slow or even stall the sales process. Consequently, when marketing and sales are articulating the same value message, the customer has a clear understanding of what your solution can do for them.

2. Product Value Not Differentiated

Marketing and sales messages that sound like every other product on the market won’t drive leads or close sales. To be effective, sales messaging must consistently tie your solution to the buyer’s biggest needs and clearly differentiate its value from the competition. If not, you’ll be forced to negotiate on price and see an uptick in lost deals to the other vendors in the marketplace.

3. Emphasis on “New” Products Distracting from Core Focus

New products and opportunities can drive a buzz in a sales organization. However, when that excitement translates to dilution of the core value message, it creates an environment in which salespeople are focused on product features instead of how the new technology drives value for the customer. Consistently tying those new features to business impact for the buyer drives revenue growth.

4. Your Margins are Suffering

Creating value for the prospect throughout the sales process is a key driver to preserving margin in the final stages of the deal. Also, when that value is correlated to a problem with major business impact, garnering a premium for your solution shouldn’t be difficult. A sales messaging initiative gives your salespeople the ability to create value from the first prospect contact to the final procurement negotiations.

5. Constant Influx of New Initiatives Inhibits Execution

When sales leadership jumps from idea to idea, hoping that the “next big thing” will be the driver for change, it hinders your team’s ability to execute. Instead, focus on adoption and reinforcement of the right initiative that will (1) build cross-functional alignment and (2) drive action and results from your sales force.

Any one of these problems can cause stagnant sales growth and they are surprisingly common. High-performing teams, on the contrary, develop strong messaging and support it throughout the sales, marketing, and development teams, to differentiate the product and drive effective sales execution. Here are four key components that successful sales organizations use to drive actions and results from a sales messaging initiative:

1. A practical sales-consumable framework

Integrate the messaging framework across sales, marketing, and product development. Leverage feedback from customers to align messaging and processes across all three areas to differentiate value according to customer needs.

2. Sales-ready messaging and tools

Tools should support the integration of the framework with the sales process. Customer-facing content, prepared discovery questions, and effective technology to support it should all be incorporated.

3. Formalized training and refresher sessions

The methodology should be rolled out in a formal training process and incorporated into new hire onboarding. Refresher sessions also help with adoption and reinforcement. Learn more about reinforcing a sales initiative in our podcasts here

4. Management-specific training

Training, specifically for your front-line managers, should be included to ensure that they can effectively coach the field, and hold them accountable to proper implementation.
Sales messaging problems are frequently at the core of missed quotas, stagnant growth, and waning market share. Effective sales leaders prioritize solving them.

Have you been wondering why most Telecom companies buy their sales leads instead of generating them?

Lead generation is one of the factors that can improve the sales of a company. Telecom companies are focusing more on reaching out to their target audience and eventually increase their leads. Having an outsourced sales and lead generation team of trained and experienced professionals who are experts in their field of work to do a lead generation for you is an advantage. An outsourced team works closely with the company from planning stage to delivering expected results.

Telecom companies who prefer to generate their own sales are still using an outdated process to acquire leads. However, most of the time, the leads are not qualified and are not actually interested. So their sales team wastes their time following through dead-end sales within their contact list.

If you are a telecom company looking for sales leads and would like to make sure that you will genuinely close every appointment, here are some of the benefits why you should outsource to a lead generation company instead of hiring an in-house team to generate leads for you.

#1: You Get Highly Trained and Experienced Sales Reps

Keep the leads coming by outsourcing a company of experienced Sales Reps who are trained to handle different type of calls such as how to get past the gatekeepers as well as how to handle different type of objections. You can rely on these reps to represent your company as they are professionals who knows how to handle different people over the phone.

#2: Have Better Tools and Infrastructure

B2B Companies has the marketing technologies that can help manage every campaign. They are equipped with the latest lead management tools and software to track, manage and nurture leads better. Lead generation companies provide their clients access to these tools for them to monitor and have better results in terms of sales. Outsourcing a company with these tools means, you won’t need extra money to buy and hire additional people to manage and maintain these tools as this is already part of their services.

#3: Be Able to Maximize the Time of your Staff

Running and managing a campaign takes time. Minimize the burden of your staff by letting them focus on their main responsibilities. Leave the hunting of prospective customer part to lead generation companies who are experts for this kind of job.

#4: Drive Sales without Doing Cold Calling

Cold calling and looking for the right person who makes decisions within an organization takes a lot of effort. Hunting for targeted prospects takes time. Let the experts hunt them for you so your sales team can focus on following up on sales-ready leads delivered for you instead. To get a better chance of reaching out to your telecom prospects, use multi-channel marketing approach.

#5: Get High Quality Sales- Ready Leads at a Lower Cost

Lead generation companies understand where your leads are in their buying cycle. They may be able to track, manage and nurture leads better and provide sales-ready leads at the right time.

So, for telecom companies who would like to succeed in this highly competitive market, it is important to streamline your marketing campaign and create better audience engagement strategies by having your staff concentrate on product and service improvement and leave the generating of sales lead to the experts.

 

There’s nothing like a little competition to motivate a sales teams — or anyone, for that matter.

One of my role models, Teach for All co-founder and CEO Wendy Kopp, described in The Wall Street Journal how competition drove innovation during the world’s space race. Would Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have made it to the moon if the U.S. weren’t trying to best Russia? Likely not. Just a decade earlier, the task seemed impossible, but competitive pressures made it happen.

Competition inspires employees to stretch their limits. One person might struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but she’ll persevere when she sees teammates knocking down those same obstacles. Everyone wants to feel strong and capable, and competition makes them abandon their excuses to push through adversity.

This is doubly true for sales professionals, who tend to be competitive by nature, with themselves and others. They’re used to the strain and success that comes with hitting sales targets. Healthy competition helps them do so with passion, stamina, and confidence.

One year, my company rallied everyone around a year-end stretch sales goal. Management set up competitions to reward top performers, but we also gave prizes for team engagement. No one wanted to be the reason we fell short of our goal, so everyone went into overdrive to push us across the finish line. We hit the target, but more important, our achievement created camaraderie and boosted morale.

Creating competition, FDR-style

President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed competition is useful only insofar as it promotes cooperation. That’s as true for businesses as it is for governments.

Unhealthy competition is a cancer. When team members are out for themselves, it causes others to react selfishly, too, and soon nobody views their success within the context of the organization. When colleagues begin picking at each other, tearing each other down, and snatching leads from underneath one another, unhealthy competition has set in.

Salespeople who understand healthy competition will challenge themselves, but not at the expense of others. They know they’ll face highs and lows in their careers, and they put in effort regardless of whether they’re shooting sales bull’s-eyes or woefully missing the target. To encourage positive, competitive climate among your sales representatives:

1. Publicize individual progress.

Let people see one another’s daily and quarterly progress via gamified dashboards. When you’re having a rough day, it’s easy to blame leads for your struggles. But when you see a dashboard showing your colleagues’ successes, you’ll find fresh gusto to dial those extra dozen numbers and hit your next sale.

2. Emphasize self-improvement.

Rather than pitting Jim against Jane, encourage salespeople to beat their own personal bests. When people compete with themselves, they’re more likely to reflect on how they can do better and less likely to blame others. By focusing on outselling themselves, salespeople develop self-reliance and are willing to share sales tips with others.

3. Give everyone a buddy.

My company pairs new hires with tenured sales reps so they can learn to navigate challenging calls and overcome objections. We also highlight big wins through a “Presentation Olympics,” in which everyone submits his best calls and votes on the top three. Not only does this lighthearted event foster a sense of pride among the winners, but it also motivates others to reach higher and creates bonds among co-workers.

4. Reinforce strong performance.

In sales, recognition is essential. By reinforcing behaviors critical to standout performance, you encourage top sales reps to repeat them and motivate others to model them. Our annual Pinnacle Club recognizes the top 30 percent of sales consultants. It’s a fun competition that encourages people to go the extra mile, learn from one another, and enjoy the fruits of success.

Healthy competition inspires individual reps, but it also strengthens teams. When colleagues root for each other and support one another’s growth, everyone wins — especially your company.

How do you encourage healthy competition on your team? Share your tips and tricks below in the comments.

If you are reading this, and have a LinkedIn profile, you may be wondering why you haven’t had an influx of new business. Isn’t that surely the point of LinkedIn? Shouldn’t you be able to generate more leads, new sales, connect with more of the right people, and solve business problems? Yes, you should.

Having trained literally thousands of business people on the use of LinkedIn, I can share two pearls of wisdom. First, LinkedIn can help people achieve very positive business outcomes. Of course, that depends on what your objectives are, but in many cases the results can be six, seven or eight figures in value. Second, while the platform itself is important, the results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort and energy you invest into LinkedIn.

Speaking to Forbes, LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner noted that, “Our professional audience by composition is one of the most affluent, most influential and best educated on the consumer web.” Being an active member of this audience can unlock doors and new opportunities at a level many would be surprised about. But the rewards don’t just present themselves uninvited.
So where might you be going wrong?

Firstly, LinkedIn works best when you connect with the right people (see my blog LinkedIn works best when you connect with the right people).

Secondly, make sure your profile is working for you. Have a clear strategy in place to create and maintain your profile as this will make a huge difference.

Thirdly, don’t forget that LinkedIn has a wide range of rich content providers integrated with the platform that can be beneficial to you, including embedding YouTube videos into your status updates, connecting WordPress blogs (if you use WordPress) directly into your LinkedIn profile, and using SlideShare.

When it comes to attracting new clients on LinkedIn it comes down to the three factors I’ve outlined above. Connecting with the right people, both at first level (people you truly know) and using these to reach second level (people who look like clients!). Investing in getting the core elements of you profile right. And finally, spending time talking to people and integrating in the extras – the “bells and whistles” of LinkedIn for increased impact.

Do these things well, and you are much more likely to get the results you are looking for.

The ROI of Lead Scoring written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than 85% of marketers consider lead generation to be their top priority in 2016 – a telling statistic on the priorities of the modern marketer. However, lead generation neglects a critical element for creating a real return on investment: lead scoring.

As evidenced by the CMI study, many small business owners and marketing practitioners are laser-focused on new lead generation through content creation, digital marketing, conversion rate optimization and the like.  But the unintended consequence of our collective lead generation obsession is that the task of actually determining which of the leads generated are sales-ready is relegated to the back-burner. That ultimately results in sales teams being sent troves of contacts who are either unable or not ready to buy.

Lead quantity vs. lead quality

Regardless of your company’s size or industry, focusing on lead quantity over quality is almost always a mistake for the simple reason that the intermediate result (increased lead generation) isn’t properly aligned with the ultimate business goal (gaining new customers).

Often, this is a product of the “quantity drives quality” line of reasoning – the higher the volume of leads generated, the more likely it is that some of them will be “good.” Of course, this is (1) not necessarily true, (2) sets the stage for a massive waste of sales resources and (3) usually results in the “good” leads being squandered along with the “bad” ones.

Implementing a lead scoring system addresses this issue and bridges the divide while providing tangible, bottom-line benefits to your company. In fact, Marketing Sherpa found that companies using lead scoring mechanisms increased their ROI for lead generation activities by 77%; a later study found that 68% of “highly effective and efficient” marketers attribute their success to lead scoring processes.

What Exactly is Lead Scoring?

At its most basic level, lead scoring is the process of ranking leads based on their perceived value to your company. Traditionally, this is accomplished in one of three ways:

• Profiling = evaluating a lead based on how closely it resembles your ideal buyer persona (company size, role, budget, location, industry, etc.)
• Behavior Scoring = evaluating a lead based on the observed activities and behaviors of the individual across multiple channels (attending a webinar, viewing an RFP, downloading a thought leadership piece, scheduling a call with Sales, etc.)
• Hybrid = uses both Profiling & Behavioral Scoring to assess the viability of each lead

The important thing to note from the definition above is that lead scoring measures that value of a lead to your company. The individual behaviors recorded and data points assessed will differ from company to company and industry to industry – but the result is a consistent, data-driven framework for prioritizing and segmenting all of those leads generated by your content and marketing initiatives.

For your sales team, a well-designed lead scoring program means pre-qualified, high-potential leads on which to focus all of their efforts; your marketing team gains audience segments that can be nurtured through automated programs until they are sales-ready, and an increased understanding of which types of content are effective at driving/nurturing leads (along with which ones are simply ineffective); finally, your company profits from higher close rates, fewer leads lost and increased sales productivity.

How Lead Scoring Increases Marketing ROI & Sales Productivity

The goal of a lead scoring program is to provide a data-driven framework to evaluate leads through the lens of your business – after all, what good is done by having sales call a lead who can’t afford your product or who works in an industry you don’t serve?

Each lead passed onto sales comes with a price tag: not only is the salesperson’s time valuable, but each bad lead has a pair of hidden opportunity costs: (1) it takes away from the time that sales can spend building a relationship with the “good” leads and (2) trying to sell leads before they are ready to buy often alienates them – resulting in the loss of a potential future customer and a sunk lead acquisition cost.

It’s important to note that a lead generation program is not a panacea to bad marketing and lackluster salespeople; it’s a tool to be used as part of a broader new business strategy. When used appropriately, it will help your organization increase revenue, cut unnecessary expenditures and deliver better customer experiences by:

• enabling you to see what content, tactics, and channels are driving qualified leads;
• ensuring that you are appropriately “segmenting” leads generated based on their sales readiness
• focusing your sales team’s time and effort on those leads that are qualified
• creating a personalized user experience for each lead based on their interests, behaviors, and readiness to make a purchase
• providing a mechanism to continuously re-engage those leads who aren’t sales ready in a productive manner

Getting Started: The Next Steps To Implement A Lead Scoring Program

Many companies I’ve worked with have had the same reaction when the topic of lead scoring is discussed: “That sounds complex and expensive.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The first step to creating a successful lead scoring program is bringing together your executive leadership, marketing team and sales staff to sketch your ideal buyer persona(s), behavior(s) and customer journey(s). This need not be an exhaustive, in-depth process (although if you are interested, Marketo provides an excellent guide) – start by reviewing your business offerings and past sales. Some key questions to consider for creating your target buyer profile:

• Who is an ideal customer for us (industry, company size, revenue, etc.)?
• Where are our ideal customers located?
• How long is the sales cycle for an ideal customer (week, month, year, etc.)?
• Who are the decision makers at an ideal customer (CEO, VP, Director, Manager, etc.)?
• Where in the buying cycle is this lead (timeline)?

While that may sound like a lot of information to gather in a simple lead form, the good news is that many companies provide accurate data appending services – so you need only ask a few questions (Name, Title, Company, E-mail) on the form; the rest of the blanks can often be completed by the data appending company. Given that forms with fewer fields tend to result in higher submission rates and more accurate information, it’s usually safe to say that an appending service will pay for itself.

The above questions provide key insights into your ideal buyer – the next critical piece is determining which behaviors indicate that your buyer is “ready to buy.” Assuming you’ve configured your analytics goals, you can often see what behaviors drive goal completions; from your CRM, you should be able to track which goal completions ultimately resulted in sales.

Working backward from converted leads (i.e. leads that became customers), examine the individual goal completion paths. Look for what pages on your website those individuals tended to visit. Did they view a product demonstration, request a free trial, sign up for an account, download a whitepaper, watch a webinar or visit a services page? Identify those pages that frequently appear in the journey of your customers – and assign each a value just as you would for an analytics goal value.

Finally – and this is critical – make sure you assign “negative” values for behaviors and profiles that indicate the prospect is not legitimate or interested. This might include: having a title like “student” or “intern”, unsubscribing from your e-mail newsletter, cancelling a free account, visiting to a “Careers” page or not not opening more than X e-mails – this helps to filter out “false positives” and ensure that you are delivering the best leads to your sales team.

Once you’ve completed the above steps, determine an appropriate threshold value for “profile” scores and “behavior” scores – those above that level are “sales-ready”; those below can be placed into a lead nurturing program. Keep in mind that your lead scoring program can be as complex as you would like it to be – you can have seven different “threshold” values for both profile and behavioral scores, along with a customized path for all 49 different customer types. You can have multiple buyer personas. It’s your lead generation program.

As you are going through this process (and often, it takes companies less than 2 hours to complete once everyone is in the room), remember that the goal is to begin to foster alignment and secure buy-in from everyone involved. This approach works because it aligns everyone’s efforts – and that’s only possible if everyone is bought in and willing to do their part.

Once you’ve outlined your program and how you’d like to score each lead, find a platform that can implement what you want to do – too many companies find a vendor first, then are frustrated that the scores they want simply aren’t possible with the out-of-the-box versions of the software provided.

First understand what you want to measure as part of your lead scoring program, then find a partner with the technology to help you do it. This same approach whether you’re a small family business or a large corporation – and there are solutions out there for any budget. As an example, Saleswings start at just $11 per month and InfusionSoft provides an all-in-one CRM for just $199 per month.

In the end, remember that lead scoring is essential if you want to get the most out of your marketing initiatives and sales team. While it may seem daunting, there are hundreds of web resources to help you through the process.

Sam Ruchlewicz is the resident data expert and Senior Digital Strategist for Warschawski, a Baltimore-based Advertising, Marketing & PR Agency. He’s successfully helped companies across the B2B, B2C & B2G spaces use their data to overcome their marketing and customer acquisition challenges – and is always willing to help. Drop him a note here.

Did you know that 2.5 exabytes of data are created each and every day? To help put that number in perspective, that’s equivalent to 5 million laptops, 90 years worth of HD video or 250,000 Libraries of Congress. Crazy, huh?

But not all data is created equal. If you’re in sales or marketing, chances are you’ve heard of demographic (statistical information about gender, age, income, etc.), psychographic (interests, opinions, dislikes, etc.) or behavioral data. In our recent blog post, Building Your Sales Data Strategy, we shared that there are 4 categories of data every sales team should capture: contact, demographic, transactional and relationship.

For the purposes of this blog, we’ll be focusing on two extremely different data types that are equally important when it comes to generating actionable sales insights: structured and unstructured data.

Structured vs. Unstructured Data

Structured data refers to information that is highly organized and can be captured in predefined database fields. Think first name, last name, email address, company name, etc. Because this information follows a known data model and exists in a neat and orderly format, it is fairly easy to search and analyze.

In contrast, unstructured data encapsulates all of the data that cannot be neatly packaged in a predefined way. Examples of unstructured data include voice recordings, emails, social media postings and much more. Because this information comes in so many shapes, sizes and formats, it can be difficult to make sense of and transform into meaningful intelligence.

Established before the mobile and social boom that has given way to gobs of today’s unstructured data, most legacy CRMs were built to manage structured data only. However, since the IDC recently estimated that 90% of digital data is unstructured, this is a major problem.

Everyone knows that, at the end of the day, sales is about building relationships. Unfortunately for data-driven sales leaders, relationship data – calls, emails, meetings, etc. – is among the most unstructured data out there. To overcome this challenge, companies must adopt next-generation sales solutions that are able to bring structure to the many valuable customer interactions and rep activities that take place each day.

Extracting Actionable Sales Insights

The first way to do this is to store this information in an organized way that is accessible, centralized and contextual, such as within the activity feeds of leads, contacts and deals. The second way is to measure these interactions in a quantitative manner.

For example, keeping track of the number of calls, emails, visits, etc. that are completed by reps, and displaying this information visually, enables managers to pinpoint correlations between activities and performance.

If Rep A is making more calls but sending fewer emails that Rep B, yet Rep B is converting more leads than Rep A, there are two actionable insights for management to explore:

1) Email is a better-converting channel for the business, and therefore reps should focus less on calls and more on email;
2) Rep A needs some additional coaching and perhaps a prospecting script for cold calling.

Outcome reports like the one below take this exercise a step further by helping teams measure and optimize the efficacy of their communication. For example, if one AE is receiving a larger number of email replies than the rest of the pack, having the team adopt her email cadence and try out her template is a good idea.

Data Discovery

Unstructured data yields highly valuable sales insights if you have the tools and know-how to extract them. For more information about how to get more out of your sales data, download our latest eBook, Shedding Light on Dark Data: How to Unearth Actionable Sales Insights.

Setting up large-scale marketing campaigns takes more than just time—it takes a TON of thought. And not just at the get-go. To be a modern marketer, you can never stop improving.

That means testing, tweaking, experimenting, building and rebuilding. If you want to truly optimize a marketing program to make it as fully functional and effective as possible, you must think strategically every step of the way.

An example of this is the program that recently won SiriusDecisions’ Channel Program of the Year. Without testing, asking questions and repeatedly enhancing the process, achieving this honor would not have been possible. Here are the five steps we used to build an optimization framework for this project. You can thank us later.

1. Determine benchmarks and success.

A number of sources provide standards for email metrics like Silverpop’s annual benchmark study or Eloqua’s Benchmark Dashboard in its Insight tool. These benchmarks often break down by industry, but you don’t always get much insight into the type of audience being reported on.

Keeping your audience in mind is key. Is it a client base, an active audience or an audience mixed with inactive records? All of these could impact the metrics and skew them when comparing your own results. It’s helpful to keep these industry averages in your back pocket but setting some of your own metrics for your audience is ideal.

Review asset performance by audience for the last year. What do email metrics look like on average for different audiences? It’s important to weigh past performance of your own audience into goal setting and expectations of your current asset promotion.

For new assets you create, always make sure to discuss the goal you are looking to accomplish with the piece. Is this an awareness piece? Are you looking to drive more leads to your Sales team? Keep this goal in mind as you move to step 2 and begin creating assets.

1. Create and promote assets.

Before you can optimize, you need something in market to see your audience reaction. It might be a new webpage, a banner ad, an email nurture or another way you reach your audience with the intent to drive engagement.

Once created, promote your asset and allow enough time in market to get a statistically significant audience to review for reporting. You can find free tools on the internet to calculate statistical significance, but HubSpot provides a good breakdown of the math behind the tools to help you understand the process.

Need help getting started with content ideas? Use some of these pointers.

1. Review asset performance and ask questions.

Once your asset has a significant audience, review the metrics. How do they compare to your established benchmarks? How well are you achieving the goal of the promotion? Are you surprised at how few people are opening your emails? Is landing page conversion lower than expected?

If open rate is low, subject line testing is an option, but also consider reviewing your deliverability. Is your audience more likely to receive a text-based email in their inbox?

If conversion is low on your landing page, take a look at your form. Are you asking unnecessary questions? Does the form fall below the fold? Are there additional messages diluting the CTA?

Optimization is not limited to tweaks in the assets. Consider the overall goal of your promotion. If the goal is to get better leads to your Telesales or Sales team, do you have lead prioritization or lead scoring in place? Are you helping them make the most fruitful calls first? Components such as system enhancements and audience segmentation can also help when trying to accomplish goals.

Need help making sense of your metrics? Here are some top KPIs HubSpot recommends. Want a deeper dive? Check out The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics & Analytics from Marketo via this gated page.

1. Develop hypotheses and implement changes.

Once you have a list of questions about the metrics that you’d like to understand better, determine what are the most important changes to make first to help drive you toward your goal. Create hypotheses around what you think will happen based on tweaks you make to the system or your assets.

Here are some examples:

• If we analyze all historical subject lines, then we will be able to write a formula for the ideal subject line.
• If we build lead scoring to create a look-a-like model of contacts who have taken scheduled meetings, then we will be able to send more qualified contacts to the Teleprospecting team.

From these hypotheses, implement one change per asset at a time. If multiple changes occur at the same time, it will be hard to say definitively which change had a positive or negative impact. Promote these updated assets to your audience.

Don’t make assumptions when asking questions or making hypotheses. For example, as email marketers, we have preconceived notions about the best time to send emails. Does that really work for your audience? Test it! Believe it or not, we have some audiences who are most engaged on Saturdays. By relying on our assumptions, we wouldn’t have learned the best sending day for this particular audience.

1. Review the results and repeat.

Optimization is meant to be an ongoing cycle with a constant feedback loop. Look at optimization as a way to learn more about your audience so you can use each tidbit as a building block for optimal performance.

Once your updated assets have been promoted to a large enough audience, review the results. Did your tests get you closer to your goal? Sometimes optimizations don’t work how you expect, but take the findings seriously so you can make more informed hypotheses going forward.

If your goals impact your Sales team, get feedback from them. Are the leads they are receiving a good quality? Their feedback will help to create a more airtight campaign.

Repeat the process until you reach your goal, but keep in mind, some things should constantly be optimized.

Anytime a customer cuts ties, you experience the negative impact of customer churn. While some churn is a normal part of any business, a high churn rate can cripple the growth of any organization.

It’s important for businesses to understand what contributes to churn in order to address those issues—and ultimately drive customer retention.

Here are 40 stats on customer retention and customer satisfaction that reinforce the growing need for customer experience management.

Customer Retention by the Numbers

Churn is closely tied to customer satisfaction, and for obvious reasons. Unhappy customers are more likely to leave, and when they do, they take a piece of your business with them. More and more, companies are recognizing just how much customer happiness impacts revenue, and they’re focusing on transforming their customer experience to meet modern expectations.

In fact, last year businesses ranked “create better customer experiences” as their #2 priority for new technology investments, right behind “grow revenue.” There’s a reason companies are pouring funds into improving their customer experience. It doesn’t just impact customer loyalty, which saves companies money and drives referrals. A great customer experience is a major competitive advantage that drives new sales—and it’s predicted to overtake price and product as the primary brand differentiator for B2B sales by 2020.

Customer experience statistics:

1. 67% of consumers list bad customer experience as one of the primary reasons for churning. (Kolsky)
2. 39% of consumers avoid vendors for over 2 years after having a negative experience. (Zendesk)
3. 95% of consumers have taken action as a result of a bad experience… (Zendesk)
4. … and of those consumers, 85% wanted to warn others about doing business with the company. (Zendesk)
5. 50% of consumers would use a company more frequently after a positive customer experience. (NewVoice)
6. 58% of consumers will never use a company again after a negative experience. (NewVoice)
7. 86% of consumers are willing to pay up to 25% more for a better customer experience. (RightNow)
8. 24% of consumers continue to seek out vendors for 2+ years after a positive experience. (Zendesk)
9. 95% of consumers share bad experiences with other people. (Zendesk)
10. 23% of customers who had a good customer experience told 10+ people. (Harvard Business Review)
11. 30% of customers share positive reviews via social media. (Zendesk)
12. 63% of consumers read negative reviews via social media. (Zendesk)
13. By 2020, customer experience will overtake product and price as the key brand differentiator. (Walker Info)
14. 89% of marketing leaders expect to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience by 2016, compared to just 36% four years ago. (Gartner)
15. 50% of product investment projects will be redirected to customer experience innovations by 2017. (Gartner)

Customer service statistics:

1. 78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction because of a bad service interaction. (American Express)
2. 59% of consumers would try a new brand or company for a better service experience. (American Express)
3. 58% of consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide excellent customer service. (American Express)
4. Following a negative customer interaction, 58% of Americans would never use that company again. (New Voice Media)
5. 82% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company because of bad customer service. (Zendesk)
6. 85% of consumers churn because of poor service that could have been prevented. (Kolsky)
7. 67% of customer churn could be avoided if the business resolved the customer’s issue during their first interaction. (Kolsky)
8. 11% of customer churn could be avoided if the business simply reached out to the customer. (Kolsky)
9. 55% of consumers say easy access to support and information can make them fall in love with a brand. (RightNow)
10. 52% of consumers have purchased more from a company after having a positive customer service experience. (Zendesk)
11. 73% of consumers say friendly customer service representatives can make them fall in love with a brand. (RightNow)
12. 79% of high-income households avoid vendors for 2+ years after having a bad customer service experience. (Zendesk)
13. 45% of women avoid vendors for 2+ years after having a bad customer service experience. (Zendesk)
14. 51% of B2B companies avoid vendors after a poor customer service experience. (Zendesk)
15. 54% of Generation X avoid vendors for 2+ years after a bad customer service experience. (Zendesk)
16. 62% of B2B customers purchased more after a good customer service encounter. (Zendesk)
17. 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good customer service encounter. (Zendesk)
18. 66% of B2B customers stopped buying after a bad customer service experience. (Zendesk)
19. 52% of B2C customers stopped buying after a bad customer service experience. (Zendesk)
20. Only 1% of customers feel their customer service expectations are always met. (RightNow)

Other customer retention statistics:

1. Churn can increase by up to 15% if businesses fail to respond to customers over social media. (Gartner)
2. Providing customers with short tutorials on product features before hanging up can reduce churn by 6%. (Harvard Business Review)
3. A 10% increase in a company’s customer satisfaction score leads to a 12% increase in trust from customers. (Institute of Customer Service)
4. Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering. (Temkin Group)
5. 50% of customers naturally churn every 5 years. However, only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain; the rest simply churn. (Kolsky)

How to combat customer churn & boost customer retention

1. Ask your customers for feedback.

No one understands your customer needs better than your customers. If want to boost customer retention, ask for customer feedback—and take real action with it.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is a reliable way measure customer loyalty. It asks customers how likely they are to refer your business to others. If you allow for open responses, customers can expand on their rating with specific pain points and suggestions that may give you a fresh perspective.

2. Set and measure customer expectations.

When customer expectations are set and met by your sales and service teams, customers are generally happy. If you’re wondering how to measure your success there, remember that 80% of customer service organizations use customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores as their primary customer experience metric. Though CSAT only reflects a slice of the greater customer journey, it’s a good start.

Ideally, you can create a feedback program that sets your CSAT and NPS results alongside your churn rates, so you can draw relationships between the two. This is simple when you integrate survey data with Salesforce. But at the very least, measuring and tracking your CSAT score will encourage the entire company to focus on customer experience and add some visibility to each customer interaction.

3. Always add value with products and services.

Of course, you want your team to have unmatched skills, but you also want your products to walk the talk. If you offer high-quality products and services, you’ll drive customer loyalty. And a big aspect of “quality,” in the customer’s mind, is progress. Make sure your offerings are keeping up with customer expectations. Product surveys can help you do that.

Ask for customer input through product satisfaction surveys and take that feedback to heart. You may find that the majority of their concerns can be addressed with small tweaks. Or maybe customers are asking for a service that’s already on the roadmap. You’ll quickly gain visibility around customer preferences, and you can use that to make future decisions around strategy.

4. Cultivate customer relationships.

Brands are in the business of relationships, not the business of sales. Your customer relationships need to be mutually beneficial. That means customers should feel invested in the future of your organization, just as you do. Encourage customers to surface issues and share feedback on features, functionality, and interactions. And most of all, make it clear that you value their input.

As you involve customers more in your operations, they’ll be more committed to your company’s success. As you succeed, so do they. So the more work you put into understanding and connecting to your customers, the greater your shared success will be.

Wrap-up

The numbers don’t lie. The more energy you devote to your customer relationships, the higher your customer retention. The rationale is simple: keeping a loyal customer is typically much cheaper than acquiring a new customer. Plus, loyal customers help grow your customer base organically by referring friends and colleagues. And lastly, every customer you lose is another negative opinion you’re forced to overcome—another customer you’ll have to replace.

It’s nearly impossible to fake a relationship with your customers. A positive customer experience comes from the top, so as a business leader, you have to create a culture of cultivation by devoting resources and strategy to a better customer experience. Once you figure out how to break down the walls between your customers and your business operations, you’ll quickly see that a lot of the answers you’ve needed have been right in front of you all along—you just had to ask.

Learn more about developing an effective customer experience management program with Salesforce. Download the ebook today.