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Android/iOS/Web: Microsoft’s IFTTT competitor Flow has been in beta for the better part of 2016 but it wasn’t quite fully-baked yet. Now, the company is ready to release it to the world and it’s starting to look good.

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As we approach Christmas and the craziness of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, we should highlight the importance of upselling products and services to maximise revenue. In this article we explain what upselling is and how email marketing plays a part in connecting with customers who are already engaged.

What is Upselling?

Upselling is a common sales technique used by retailers. The aim is to encourage customers to buy a more expensive product or additional products to compliment the ones they’ve already purchased. For example, recommending printer inks, an extra-long cable and paper for the printer they’re purchasing.

There are many different ways to upsell and you can do it at various points of the buying cycle. The most common way for retailers is at basket stage, with many also upselling on individual product pages of their website. Email shouldn’t be overlooked as it presents an opportunity to re-engage with customers and draw them back in to drive sales. Email can also be used effectively to support and follow up on website activity.

Email Marketing Examples of Upselling Products

Website Behavioural Emails

When targeting customers who have recently visited a product page on your website, include other recommended products you wish to upsell. Showing more choice may entice them to return to your website and complete a purchase.

Basket Abandonment Emails

Use the opportunity to upsell products via your basket abandonment programme. Include other recommended products in your email when reminding customers to complete their purchase. They may take a liking to the more expensive product shown or decided to add a few accessories to their order.

Post-Purchase Emails

Use dynamic content to populate a recommended products section on your post-purchase emails. You can do this via Transactional SMTP emails or triggered emails, which are easy to set up in our own email marketing platform using the data management tools and drag-and-drop email builder.

If your customer hasn’t snapped up the products at basket stage, post-purchase emails are great for promoting them again. For example, you could encourage your customer to take out an insurance package on the item of jewellery they just bought and list the benefits in doing so.

You’ll have to make a judgement call on when these emails are triggered, but purchase review emails also present an opportunity to upsell and gather feedback on their most recent order.

Update the subject line to let them know there’s something else inside worth looking at, such as ‘Review Your Recent Order – Plus an Offer Not to Be Missed’.

Upgrade Campaigns

Have you ever signed up for something and received a series of emails asking if you want to upgrade? This is upselling and a clever way of persuading the customer to sign up to a more expensive plan after they’ve trialled the product.

Renewal Reminders

Triggering emails at a specific point in a product lifecycle can prompt re-purchase, which is also your opportunity to upsell. For example, sending your customers a renewal reminder for annual travel insurance with various options to upgrade the package.

The Benefits of Upselling

Upselling presents many benefits for both the customer and retail. It helps you to develop relationships by pushing products that are relevant and useful to that customer, which means they’ll see value in your service and are more than likely to return.

It’s usually easier to sell to a current customer opposed to a new customer. By upselling you’re letting the customer know that you take notice of what they’re interested in, making it easier for them to find these products and maximising return on investment – what more could you ask for?

Things to Consider

You’ll need to connect real-time data to your email marketing platform in order to trigger campaigns containing relevant content. Speak to your email service provider to see if this is possible and if they can help with setting up your campaigns.

You’ll also need relational data connecting products to each other, which can be done by categorising in datatables. For example, linking insurance packages to electronic products. The other way is to categorise products by the demographic of your customers.

Following on from our recent permission-based email marketing article, if your emails are triggered by a customer action then asking them to opt in isn’t something to worry about. Just don’t be too pushy, you want to keep your customers happy after all.

If you don’t like prospecting, you don’t like selling.

You want to be a value creator and use your business acumen to help solve your client’s challenges and help them capitalize on opportunities. Once the prospect is considering change, you love the meetings, the collaborating, and developing solutions. You love the boardroom presentation and the thinking on your feet.

All of these things are only part of selling. For opportunity starved salespeople and sales organizations, it is not where you need to apply your ideas, your insights, and value creation. Where you create the most value when you are opportunity starved is in the creation of new opportunities.

Prospecting is how you create opportunities. It’s how you create relationships that open the possibility of an opportunity.

If you have deep business acumen and the ability to create value you through the sales process, you have the ability to open new relationships and create opportunities. In fact, you are the best person to do so.

• Who knows more about the industry trends that should be compelling your dream client to change?
• Who has the experiences to know what your prospects would be considering if they want to drive their business towards better results and a better future?
• Who has the greatest ability to become a prospect’s trusted advisor, the person they turn to for counsel when they need to make change?

You’re not too good to prospect. Your talents aren’t wasted on opportunity creation. They’re well invested on prospecting. You can be a rainmaker and a trusted advisor and consultative salesperson at the same time. Having advice and being consultative are what allows you to succeed at prospecting at a higher level than most.

Prospecting is part of selling. Opportunity creation is every bit as important as opportunity pursuit. If you or your company are opportunity starved, it’s because you are not prospecting.

The post If You Don’t Like Prospecting, You Don’t Like Selling appeared first on The Sales Blog.

We get a lot of indie authors coming to us in the fall questioning whether it’s worth starting (or continuing) their book marketing push with the holidays rapidly approaching. Most worry they’ll be flushing money down the toilet because their book isn’t a “typical” holiday product.

But nothing could be further from the truth! I’ve promoted my own books quite successfully around the holidays, using the same strategies we use for our clients. And we also need to keep in mind that once the presidential election is over there will be a huge attention gap that will need to be filled, so media of all types will be anxious for new, unique content.

There are multiple reasons why it’s increasingly better to time book marketing around the holidays, and we’ll cover three big ones, as well as go over tips for making the most of your pre-holiday book marketing efforts!

Books age rapidly

There are over 4,500 books published every day, so the competition is fierce, to say the least. And one of the easiest ways for your competition to get a leg up on you is by having a newer book. Media in general is not interested in older books, so you lose their interest very quickly by holding off on promoting a title that’s already published. But consumers are also known to favor the shiny and new as well, so while you may have a superior read, a sub-par, yet newer title that bursts out of the gate with a solid book marketing plan will still leave you in the dust.

Ideas Alert!

Even though you don’t want to wait to start, keep in mind that book marketing is a marathon and not a sprint. So get out there NOW, but ensure you have a solid plan to hit the ground running after the holidays as well. Most non-fiction topics can play off getting back into the swing of real life, but even fiction can appeal to those who are anxious for some “me” time after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

Market interest is not an exact science.

You may think you have this whole marketing thing figured out, but to be honest, even us professionals get surprised on a regular basis! So you may be inclined to think no one will care about your gory horror novel if you release it around Thanksgiving, but you know what? Your target buyers (those that love horror) don’t change their reading preferences based on holidays.

Ideas Alert!

Consider that your book may be the bit of fresh air your market is begging for. With Christmas decorations popping up with back-to-school these days, the burn out is real! Use this as an opportunity to stand out from everything else that’s trying to conform to the usual Christmas marketing standards. A little tongue-in-cheek can go a long way in making a unique product pitch to potential buyers. And don’t forget that Amazon is still the king of holiday shopping, so plan some Amazon giveaways and promote them with your unique market pitch on social media, your website, newsletter, etc.

Anything can be a gift.

This is another reason you need to ignore the idea of typical. One person’s perfect present could easily end up in another person’s recycle. So get creative. One surefire way to take “just another book” into the gift category is by combining it with other gifts that play off the theme of your book.

Ideas Alert!

Some examples could include pairing a humorous parenting book with a tasty bottle of wine. Or a self-help title with a nice leather-bound journal. This works for fiction too. Think about things that resonate with your main character or the location of your story. Share these ideas everywhere possible, on social media, your website, pitch them to bloggers, see if you can get fellow authors on board and swap promoting each others’ ideas to your respective networks. Shoppers are responsive when you make their job easy for them!

Start your book marketing now, it’s okay! #holidaysales #bookmarketing via @bookgal
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What have we learned about holiday book marketing?

The major takeaway here is that no, you won’t be wasting money by starting a marketing push this close to the holidays. Read more about releasing a book during the holidays here. And if your book is already out, you’re actually wasting opportunities to drum up some exposure and make some sales during a time of year when most people are in the buying mood. I can tell you the media response for our current campaigns is still very strong with no lull in sight! Get creative with your pitch (get tips for pitching holiday gift guides here); embrace the power of giveaways (remember, winners are likely to tell their friends and word of mouth is priceless exposure); set up eBook promotions (learn how to do it the right way here); and see if you can trade features with other authors to maximize on this unique time of year for book promotions!

Are you preparing to launch a new product or pitch an idea to retail buyers without the help of an experienced product broker or wholesale distributor? No matter how many articles you read on perfecting the perfect pitch or nailing your product launch, you won’t be ready unless you understand how retailers choose which products they’re going to carry in their stores. Here’s what retailers take into consideration when making these important decisions:

How consumable is it?

Retailers choose products that consumers will need over and over again, so the quicker your product can be consumed, the better. A lot of these products have a short shelf life because they’re perishable, such as baked goods or dairy products, but if you can introduce a product that is highly consumable with an extended shelf life to retailers, this is ideal. Perishable items have to sell quickly otherwise they must be thrown out, so a non-perishable item is more appealing to retailers because it’s less of a risk.

How well does the product present itself?

Retailers also need to consider how well the product presents itself to customers while sitting on the shelf, which is why it’s important to show the buyers your product’s packaging during a pitch. Unless you’re pitching to a high-end, niche retailer, the store will probably not be staffed with a team that walks around and sells one-on-one to customers. What does this mean for your product? It has to sell itself. Customers must be drawn to it as they walk by it on the shelves, and when they pick it up, the packaging must explain what the product is and how it is used very clearly. If there’s a lot of explanation required, your product may not be fit for a retailer’s shelves.

Where else is this product carried?

Retail buyers are always curious about what other retailers have chosen to carry your product because they want to keep an eye on their competition. If their main competitors are already selling your product, they may feel the need to do so too. But, if your product is not in stores yet, you still have a chance. Many retailers pride themselves on bringing new items to customers, so if you can spin your pitch to focus on how excited customers will be to try something that they’ve never seen before, this may work in your favor.

How will you keep up with demand?

Retailers have to think about what happens if your product doesn’t sell and what happens if it does, and part of the latter is ensuring you are ready to keep up with the demand. Don’t be surprised if the retailer begins to pry into the financial health of your business and ask questions about where your products are being made, how many units you have in stock, and how quickly you can deliver after an order is made.

What do you wish you knew about how retailers choose their inventory before you pitched to them? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Like the middle child, the middle of the demand generation funnel receives far less attention than it deserves.

At the top of the funnel, marketing increases traffic and fills the database with new leads through paid ads, social media, search, referral programs, and a variety of other channels. At the bottom-of-the-funnel, we help close the sale by creating urgency and helping our prospects make the business case for purchasing our product or service.

But in between, we need to nurture and qualify our leads by encouraging them to engage with our content until they’re sales-ready. It’s easy to overlook the middle of the funnel because it involves many different priorities, from quality to quantity to speed to customer experience, and it can be the most difficult to manage.

What is the middle of the funnel?

According to the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, the middle of the funnel is the area where the marketing to sales hand-off happens (MQL to SAL) and where the sales development representative (SDR) to account executive (AE) hand-off happens (SAL to SQL).

The middle of the funnel, or MOFU, is like a valve. It’s where you can expand lead quality definitions to pass a higher volume of leads to your sales team or tighten lead quality definitions to give them a more specific segment of qualified leads.

At Socedo, as well many other B2B organizations, our marketing team focuses on facilitating a successful hand-off to sales. The marketing team develops content to educate leads and identifies the leads who show buying intent by implementing a behavioral lead scoring model. They also spin up campaigns aimed at accelerating leads, such as limited-time offers, product trial campaigns, and case studies.

In the middle of the funnel, marketing aims to help the sales team prioritize their time by providing clear and accurate information on each lead passed to the sales team and concurrently, sales’ focus is on creating as many deal opportunities as possible from the leads they’ve received from marketing.

Why focus on the middle of the funnel?

With so many transitions happening during the hand-off process, the middle of the funnel has the biggest potential for misalignment between marketing and sales, as well as within sales. Below are some common bottlenecks that may arise during this stage.

Misalignment during the marketing to sales hand-off:

• Marketing does not pass enough leads to sales to create a sufficient number of opportunities to meet their revenue target.
• Marketing hands off enough leads to sales, but leads are hard to reach because they are not ready to consider a purchase yet and need more nurturing.
• Marketing sends too many leads to sales, and sales doesn’t have enough information about the leads to prioritize them effectively.

Misalignment during the SDR to AE hand-off:

• SDRs could have a hard time reaching the leads marketing passed to them.
• It can take too long for SDRs to create sales accepted leads to send to AEs.

By creating common definitions and goals, you can help alleviate sales and marketing misalignment. Here are some you’ll want to understand and agree on:

• Lead volume helps determine whether your top-of-the-funnel marketing efforts are sufficient to meet sales’ revenue target.
• Conversions measure lead movement from stage to stage, showing how marketing is performing throughout the entire sales cycle.
• Velocity is the time it takes a lead to move through the funnel, typically measured in days.

These metrics help marketing understand its impact on the business and where to prioritize their investments. Weakness in any one of these areas will affect revenue, so marketers need to keep a pulse on how the middle of the funnel is performing at any given time.

The middle of the funnel also presents some unique problems. Leads become stagnant or “cold” here. They may stop responding to marketing content and thus aren’t qualified yet for a sales conversation. This can lead to slow velocity and a restricted lead flow for sales. Fortunately, there are four key strategies you can leverage to tackle these problems:

1. Fight Low Lead Quality at the Source

Not all lead sources are created equal. At Socedo, we track four metrics for every lead source:

• Volume of MQLs
• % SQLs (opportunities created)
• % closed won (new customers)
• Average selling price (ASP)

While it’s helpful to dive into ROI goals for specific programs, these metrics help us stay accountable for driving quality leads to sales and identifying problems as quickly as possible. For example, we’ve found that leads whose last action was a trial sign-up tend to move much faster through the funnel and close at a higher rate than leads whose last action was a webinar viewing. For lead sources with lower-than-average conversion rates, such as whitepaper downloads, we require a higher qualification bar before passing the lead to sales.

Additionally, data quality directly affects lead quality. Bad data leads to low contact rates and lower conversions. At Socedo, we use several third-party lead generation programs to help us generate new leads. Sometimes, these leads look like good quality leads at the top of the funnel because they come from companies in our target market, but once we pass them over to sales, we realize that important data such as company size and phone number are incorrect. We use Clearbit data enrichment to clean up as much data as possible, but occassionally, we need to shut down sources completely due to bad data.

2. Accelerate More Leads from Specific Segments

Building a repeatable lead nurturing process is the pride and joy of any demand generation marketer. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t always follow our perfect plans. Sometimes, we need to send a large volume of leads to the sales team quickly, either to meet a strategic goal or make up for lost time.

Rather than going broad and sacrificing quality, marketers can narrow in on a specific segment of leads waiting in the middle of the funnel. For example, a couple of months ago, we needed to send more leads to the sales team. We found that we had a significant number of engaged content marketers (one of our target audiences) in our database, so we ran a campaign with a new offer specifically for content marketers and only targeted leads with content job titles in the “Engaged” stage in our database. While we can’t run this type of campaign every month, it provided a nice bump in volume when we needed it.

3. Improve Lead Velocity with Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a key lever you can pull to improve lead velocity. At Socedo, our demand generation manager performs a regular regression analysis on our database across several different behavioral factors to determine which characteristics make up a “good” lead.

Across several actions, such as email clicks, website visits, whitepaper downloads, webinar registrations, and social media engagements, we measure how many leads who took these actions ultimately led to deals, customers, and revenue. By conducting this research, we can determine which behaviors are the best indicators of buying intent.

Here’s an example of this with dummy data:

From there, we create a weighted score for each action. If a lead who clicked on a link in an email is 50% more likely to become a customer than a lead who visited our blog, we’ll adjust our lead scoring model to reflect email clicks at five points and blog visits at three points. By adjusting our lead scoring model in this manner, we’re able to send leads who are more ready to buy to sales faster, improving our metrics.

Because our content, audience targets, and business goals do shift over time, we make sure to run this analysis every month to make sure our lead scoring model is aligned to serve our goals.

4. Reduce Handoff Friction with Content and Context

When your sales team doesn’t have enough information about each lead to follow up with them in a way that creates urgency, the result is often non-responsive leads and slow velocity. Marketing can alleviate this problem to an extent.

As a first step, marketing can provide the sales team with case studies, whitepapers, and other educational materials that sales can send to leads. As a next step, marketing can create optimized content experiences for leads by linking one piece of content to another (i.e. when a lead watches a webinar, send them a related e-book).

To ensure that our sales team can follow up with each lead, our marketing team created an alert email that gets sent to a sales rep every time a new MQL is assigned to them. This email contains lead record data and contextual information, such as the title of the webinar they just watched and a few details about the webinar. Then, our sales rep can simply reply to the email if something seems inaccurate or they need more information about the lead. A complete marketing automation platform, like Marketo, will have a way to help you communicate with sales and share all the engagement activities and interesting moments in a lead’s history.

To avoid turning the middle of the funnel into a bottleneck, work in tandem with sales to increase conversion rates and velocity for results that spread across the board. Have you experienced any middle-of-funnel bottlenecks in your marketing organization? How did you fix it? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

Recent research from Inc. demonstrates that only 20% of salespeople consistently exceed quota. This data further emphasizes the fact that top performing salespeople are rare. As a result, they are highly sought after by recruiters and world-class employers.

The competitive edge of these top sellers lies within five unique skills. 

The infographic below depicts five unique sales skills only the best salespeople possess and how these skills allow them to standout from the rest:

Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:

The post 5 Skills Only the Best Salespeople Possess [Infographic] appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Trello is a flexible collaboration tool used by over 17 million people in a multitude of ways. Marketers, project managers, software developers, high school teachers, human resources managers, wedding planners, stay-at-home parents, and travel planners, among others, have customized the visual tool to fit their needs. But how does the 100-person team behind Trello put the tool to use itself?

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Nobody knows software better than our friends at Lifehacker, and Humble’s making it easy to augment your PC with a name-your-own-price bundle of some of the site’s favorite Windows apps.

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It’s a given that every business has a social media presence. And it’s no secret that we champion the social media cause.

When used correctly the power of social media is undeniable. It’s a great tool to build relationships and interact with your existing and potential customers on a platform they feel comfortable on. However, while many businesses use social media, not all get it right.

1. You don’t engage your followers

Many businesses understand the need to generate quality and consistent content however fall short of engaging with their audience.

Your social media efforts should establish a two-way connection, so when your audience responds to your content, you should respond too. This can be done by replying to comments, thanking users for sharing or retweeting your content and liking their content in return. The faster you reply and engage, the stronger the relationship with your audience will become.

2. You’re all about the sales

No one wants to be sold to on social media. You can’t post ad after ad, expecting your followers to stick around. If your followers feel that all of your posts are glorified advertisements, they will find unfollow you.

Find what works well for your audience and focus on engagement rather than sales. Sales will come once credibility and interest has been established.

3. You don’t make it easy to contact you

Once you’ve established a connection and your audience do want to buy from you, you need to make it easy for them to do so.

Every social media platform provides a place for important contact information such as website, phone number, email address, subscription forms etc. Despite this, many businesses miss out lead generating opportunities by leaving these fields incomplete. Remember: use direct calls-to-actions where they count the most!

4. You have too many social media channels

There are so many social media platforms that it’s almost impossible to be active on all of them. The biggest social media no no, is creating a social media account and letting it sit dormant. It is far better to have a couple of active, engaged accounts, over multiple mediocre accounts. Identify the platforms best suited to your audience and focus on those

Also, from an operational standpoint, only having a handful of networks makes managing your social media easier.

People are less patient and harder to impress. Constantly bombarded with various marketing messages and promotional offers, attention spans are short.

Although brands can capture attention, it is difficult to maintain. Create a couple of social media accounts most suited to your audience, leverage strong and consistent calls-to-actions, be consistent and proactive and most of all, only share quality, value-led content. When quality and quantity come head to head, quality always wins.

Are you guilty of these social media mistakes?

Before you even think about picking up that phone, prepare yourself for a successful customer interaction.

We’re lucky to live in an age where we can communicate in any number of ways. We can text, email, Snapchat, video conference or – if you’re the vintage sort – dare to speak in person.

Whatever your preferred medium for interaction, customer communication is probably a large part of your business strategy. After all, when it comes to customer service, reaching out is a great way for small businesses to show they care and are truly vested in making clients happy. But before you even think about picking up that phone, you should prepare yourself for the interaction ahead. Consider these four tips before reaching out:

Prepare your pitch

We’re best positioned to serve our customers when we have a true understanding of their needs. Understanding where your client is in the product cycle can prove to be invaluable. And, so, it’s helpful to preempt a phone call by doing a little research on whether their inventory is in the introduction, growth, maturity or decline stage. If a client just upgraded, for instance, your conversation will be much different than your chat with someone whose technology is outdated. There’s always an opportunity to make a sale when you’re presenting the appropriate product or service. Whether they’re due for an upgrade, add on, or different product, you’ll be ready to give yourself the best chance for success with the perfect pitch.

Even if you’re not reaching out to a current customer, it’s still important to learn where they are in the product cycle with your competitor’s product—or if they currently don’t have a solution at all. This can help ensure you’re presenting them with the right products and services to best meet their needs.

Consider previous interactions

Customers love to feel like they’re part of the family. A great way to keep that bond feeling familial is to familiarize yourself with each customer and any previous interactions you’ve had. Consider implementing a small business contact management or customer relationship management tool to keep track of client communications. This will make it easy for you to reference notes or get a refresher on a previous conversation, before making that follow-up call. Customers always appreciate speaking with someone who is familiar with their history, needs and goals. And of course, knowing your company hasn’t forgotten about them makes a customer feel valued. It also demonstrates that you’re committed to your business, organized and genuinely care about customer satisfaction.

Know the challenges

We can’t find a solution to something if we don’t know the problem. Before reaching out to a customer, research the biggest obstacles facing his or her company. Take some time to analyze and assess your database in order to identify those challenges. You can review previous conversation logs, prior business interactions, or even past surveys to gain insight. Learning about a company’s short and long-term needs can have a variety of benefits. First, it demonstrates that you understand and care about their goals and challenges. From a sales perspective, it can also help you deliver a customized pitch on a product that could truly benefit your client. Think about what products could help them next week, next quarter and even next year. If it seems your products or services can’t solve a customer’s problems, that’s okay, there’s still value in connecting to see how you might help in the future.

Know their customer’s needs

By now, you probably have a good handle on the importance of knowing your customers. But it’s not just them you need to familiarize yourself with. After all, in a roundabout sort of way, you’re serving your customer’s customers too. Your product or service is going to directly help your customers assist their own crowd of potential buyers. With this in mind, remember to think about their needs. For example, if you sell retail artwork and you’re selling to a retail clothing boutique, consider the type of customers who might frequent your client’s shop. Are they the jeans and T-shirt type, or looking are they looking for something a little more formal? Based on that knowledge, you’ll know what your customer’s clients are looking for, helping to determine what your own customer seeks.

In short, preparation is key when it comes to customer communication. As a wise woman once said: “Make a customer, not a sale.” This succinct advice from entrepreneur Katherine Barchetti sums it up perfectly. If we effectively and meaningful engage with our customers, the sales will come naturally.

There are a lot of reasons you can be put in a leadership position, and it’s not always something you’re prepared for. I’ve met a lot of reluctant de-facto leaders who have painstakingly grown to become outstanding leaders. Although most of them braved the crucible of trial and error to get to that level, you don’t have to.

You can build specific competencies and practices early on that will help short-circuit that process, and get you to a place of confident and impactful leadership way sooner than you would otherwise.

Here are some examples of things you can use to make your first leadership position a great experience from day one:

Know yourself and your organization

Perhaps one of the most important things you can focus on early in the process is zooming out, and taking stock of your own personal assets: your core competencies, the way you like to get things done, and your current limitations.

It’s absolutely possible to push past those initial limitations, but pushing too far without the necessary tools is a recipe for disaster.

Next, identify the assets your organization and your team can provide you with. The better you know your organization — its goals, its values, its mechanics, its strengths, and its people — the better you’ll be able to implement strategies that push it forward.

A thorough assessment of your available assets can make all the difference.

Once you’ve got a good sense of what you have available to you, it will be easier to answer more challenging questions, and solve tougher problems.

Make sure you’re aware of which members of your team are subject matter experts in which areas so that they can help you to make better decisions and push the organization forward more effectively.

Sharlyn Lauby published a great list of tips for first-time supervisors, and many of her examples apply here as well:

“Often we put additional pressure on ourselves by assuming incorrectly that being a supervisor means we need to have all the answers. Being a supervisor means we should be able to find all the answers, not that all the answers are located in our heads. “

The true test of an effective leader is how well they can apply their own unique skills and knowledge along with those of their team and their organization to produce work that is greater than the sum of those parts.

Share your assets

Once you have a good sense of what your assets are, it’s just as important to learn how to leverage and share them effectively in a leadership capacity.

Mentorship and skill sharing are massively powerfuls tool for any leader.

It’s crucial to know your strengths, not only because you need to know what you can personally bring to the table, but also because you need to know what you can share with others.

Even if it’s something you might consider trivial, it might not be to others. That skill could be influential in the advancement to a colleague’s career, so share your knowledge freely and frequently.

It’s equally important to find out how your additional leverage as a leader can help your team do their jobs more effectively.

There might be a redundant process standing in their way that you now have the authority to eliminate. There could be a bottleneck on a much larger initiative that you can relieve by eliminating or fast-tracking a smaller project.

Find out what leverage you have, and how it can impact the effectiveness of your team. That will help get more work done in a shorter time, and doing so can often help to eliminate project-based friction or frustration.

Value and practice transparency

One of the most crucial factors in building the trust required to lead a team to success is transparency. Gathering and sharing the crucial information needed to achieve maximum output is nearly impossible in a siloed, opaque organizational structure.

Be transparent about what your goals are, what your organization’s goals are, and how you’re planning to achieve them. This isn’t only useful in building trust, there’s a significant logistical element here as well.

It’s vital that your team knows why their contributions matter, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Transparency isn’t only going to help your team understand why they’re working for you — it also provides a tactical element of “how” you’re trying to get the work done.

As Carolyn O’Hara puts it in her Harvard Business Review article:

“Whether you’re taking over an existing team or starting a new one, it’s critical to devote time and energy to establishing how you want your team to work, not just what you want them to achieve. The first few weeks are critical.”

Giving someone instructions without context might get the job done, but it’s not likely to get that job done to its utmost potential. The more of that context you can share, abd the clearer you can be about how you’re approaching the solution, the better.

You may also find that by supporting and maintaining an atmosphere of transparency in your team, that this information flows both ways. This omni-directional flow of information can provide priceless insights into your team and your organization that you might otherwise miss.

Schedule regular 1:1 meetings

When they’re conducted effectively and regularly, one-on-one meetings are one of the most impactful tools you have at your disposal.

They’ll not only help you stay abreast of what your team is working on, where they’re challenged and where they’re blocked — they’ll help you to understand how you can do your own job beter, how you can make a greater impact on the organization, and how you can help your team achieve their individual goals.

Why do you need to know that?

Your ability to help members of your team achieve their goals will directly impact their motivation, and your ability to achieve yours. 1-on-1 meetings are an excellent forum to learn where your team needs your suppor the most, and the most effective way you can provide it.

They should happen frequently — at least once a week.

If you’re new to conducting one-on-one meetings, and they seem a bit intimidating, don’t worry — you’re not alone.

We recently published a guide to help leaders and their teams get the most from these meetings that you might find helpful. It’s full of tested techniques and important lessons we’ve learned as we continue to develop our own one-on-one strategy.

One-on-one meetings can be challenging to get right, but the payoff is huge.

Recognize great work

Everyone deserves to be recognized for their contributions.

One of the most critical goals you should set as a new leader is to recognize and reward great work wherever it happens across your team. That’s not always as easy as it sounds, so it’s equally important to have a mechanism in place that can help you achieve that goal, even if you’re not able to witness every contributon.

The key is understanding that recognition doesn’t have to come directly from you every time — but it does have to happen if you want to keep your team motivated and engaged.

There are a lot of recognition tools and resources available to help you build a culture of recognition across your team, but here are a few of the most important points to consider.

To be its most effective, employee recognition should be:

• Timely
• Frequent
• Specific
• Visible
• Aligned with organizational goals and values

Focus on team performance

Your success is no longer directly tied to your individual performance. It’s absolutely critical to make that mental shift, and it’s often a huge sticking point.

Although you may have found yourself in a leadership position because of your individual performance in a certain function, that’s no longer going to be the way your impact on the organization is measured.

You’re now responsible for the success of the team, and there’s only so much legwork you can accomplish toward that end on your own.

That means doing less things yourself — because you can often make a bigger impact by effectively delegating work to a talented team than you can by doing the work by yourself — even if you’ve got tremendous skill in the area.

That can be a bit unnerving, especially for those who haven’t been in a leaership position for very long, but it’s crucial to learn to trust in the competency of your team.

Avery Augustine explains this in her recent article on The Muse:

“As a manager, you can’t possibly know and keep up with all the details of each and every project that the members of your team are working on. Trying to do so will turn you into a micromanager—which isn’t beneficial to you or your team.”

It may take a while to adjust to this way of accomplishing goals and getting work done, but that effort pays off.

Learn to Delegate

Delegating effectively is one of the most valuable skills you can bring to your organization, but it’s always important to maintain a healthy level of empathy, and remember what it was like earlier in your career.

Craig Cincotta, SAP’s Senior Director of Marketing Communications explained this in a great article he wrote for Entrepreneur recently:

“You need to create an environment where you are actively relying on others to help carry projects. You will still be informed, but you need to let others lead so they can grow their abilities and perspective.”

It’s not just that you’re pusing work off onto others — you’re orchestrating a body of work that you could not accomplish alone, and you’re handing them the tools they need to expand their own skills and competencies.

With each project you successfully delegate to your team, you push the organization and your skills as a leader forward a little bit faster.

In Conclusion:

Taking on a leadership position for the first time can be an extraordinarily challenging, but equally rewarding experience. By keeping a few key points in mind and developing a few important skills, you can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to gain the trust and esteem of your colleagues as an extraordinary leader.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, check out our latest guide:

One tool often used in making a sales pitch, especially in finals presentations, is a PowerPoint slide deck.

Over the years, PowerPoint has risen to become the standard, but with overuse and misuse, it has the potential to sabotage the presentation.

Here are six tips and cautions when considering the use of PowerPoint in a sales pitch to reinforce your message, and your image, in a positive way.

1. Visibility is essential. If you use slides, make sure they can be seen by everybody in the meeting. Not only do audience members need clear sight lines to the screen, but the wording needs to be legible. This means care and attention must be paid to type size, font, and color. If your slide is too busy, or the writing too small, break the content into two or more sides.
2. Be better than the PowerPoint in a Sales Pitch. If the person using PowerPoint is not a good presenter, the slide deck adds nothing. Good slides don’t make up for lackluster performance. PowerPoint is intended to support and enhance, not carry the full weight of the presentation.
3. Don’t read to the audience. This builds on Tip #2. The presenter should add context and perspective to the few words on the slide. Reading the slides takes energy out of the presentation. Let the audience read on its own, and use your tone, inflection, and enthusiasm to add meaning and perspective.
4. Do you really need it? Consider whether the presentation would be better without a slide deck. If you’re selling a relatively simple solution or you’re meeting with a small group, the most effective presentation tool can be yourself. PowerPoint can take audience members’ attention away from the presenter, distracting them from your delivery. If, however, you’re selling a complex solution, it can be helpful to show something concrete through a visual.
5. Are you entering a no-slide zone? The near ubiquity of PowerPoint in business meetings has led to a backlash in some companies, which now ban its use. Reactions to PowerPoint can depend on the corporate culture, the geographic region, the industry, and the specific people involved in the meeting. Not too long ago, my own team had a meeting with someone who told us specifically not to use a PowerPoint deck. It is best to ask beforehand to understand and align with customer culture and preferences.
6. If and when to bring handouts of slides. The definite answer on whether or not to use handouts is this: it depends. If handouts would make a good leave-behind piece, reinforcing your message, that might be a reason to bring them. If the prospect will just hand it over to a competitor to match, then nix the paper trail. If you do decide handouts would help, think about the timing in handing them out. You don’t want the audience looking down at the paper instead of your presentation, so handing them out at the end might be a good solution. As you can see, there is no right way to handle handouts. Just be sure to think through the implications for your meeting, and base your decision on what seems appropriate in the specific situation.

The bottom line when it comes to PowerPoint in a sales pitch is determining whether a slide deck will support and clarify your message. If you can keep the interest and attention of your audience without slides, then do so. Focus on your delivery and how you can present a clear message about value through what you say and how you say it.

The post 6 Tips for Using PowerPoint in a Sales Pitch appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

In an increasingly noisy marketplace, this old-school approach cuts through the clutter to catch a customer’s attention.

I live (virtually, of course) on LinkedIn.

In fact, I’ve spent the past 48 months studying the world’s largest networking platform for professionals from a distinct perspective: How to use LinkedIn to find (and sell to) the exact people who would benefit from your products or services.

What I’ve discovered is that far too many Business Coaches, Consultants, Small Business Owners, Sales Executives and Business Development professionals are missing a key piece of the puzzle – social proof.

The Big Trap on LinkedIn

Instead, far too many are falling into the hyperbole and hype of wild promises, click-bait type LinkedIn headlines and other approaches popularized by internet marketing gurus who promise to sell your own dream back to you for just 3 easy payments of $997.00.

The crux of the issue is this – Too many people online are claiming authority instead of demonstrating it.

On LinkedIn, especially, hyperbole and hype almost never work.

Instead, simple, straightforward and clear plays best.

The Simple Way to Win New Customers on LinkedIn

Nothing gives more clarity to the value of your product or service than customer success stories and testimonials.

For instance, the #1 objection and/or question potential customers have when evaluating my LinkedIn training program goes something like this: “Well, it works for you – but will it work for someone like me? Has anyone in my industry or line of work actually had success using what you teach?”

When I can share real-life examples of professionals generating as much as five figures a month in new revenue on LinkedIn using my methods, that gets someone’s attention.

Again, anyone can promise a specific result or outcome. To have proof that it works in someone’s specific niche or industry is quite another matter.

Best of all, because LinkedIn is such a highly visible, trusted social network for professionals, when someone puts his or her name and personal brand behind a testimonial on your LinkedIn profile, others have the ability to immediately find that person and verify the story for themselves.

What to Ask For in Testimonials

When you ask a happy client or customer for a testimonial on LinkedIn or anywhere else, it’s critical that you give them guidelines on exactly what you’re looking for. Don’t leave it up to the customer to guess what you want them to say! Instead, tell them what you’re looking for – whatever those key metrics are that impress prospects in your niche. Make it something concrete – amount of revenue, amount of new clients, amount of website visitors – something tangible.

In some cases, of course, people will be reluctant to share exact dollar amounts, number of new clients, etc. In those instances, ask them to share growth numbers or percentages – how revenue increased by a certain percentage or similar.

Also, it is critical that you get people to share their full name, company name, photo and other relevant information. A partial testimonial – one with just a first name, or someone’s job title but not his name, etc. – might as well be made up.

Showcase Your Success

You will also want to display those testimonials prominently on your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn’s current way of displaying testimonials you receive from connections “hides” them at the bottom of your profile’s Experience listings. Instead, copy-and-paste your best testimonials directly into your LinkedIn Summary and Experience sections as text.

You want to make sure people don’t miss them.

Don’t Have Social Proof? Do This Instead

If you’re just starting out, or don’t have a great client success story to share, go get some!

Offer your product or service to someone influential or important in exchange for an honest review of how the experience goes. Then deliver the goods! Make sure you do whatever it takes to ensure the person is beyond thrilled with your efforts, and (most important) that he or she gets measurable ROI from the experience.

I did that when I was first building out my LinkedIn training program, and it not only helped with social proof, but it also opened up huge doors to joint venture opportunities and other platform-building endeavors (Podcast interviews, etc., with happy “customers” that I’d done free LinkedIn profile rewrites for.)

Bottom line – you need social proof and testimonials to sell well on LinkedIn or any other online space.

You can stick with hype, hyperbole and wild promises if you like, but don’t be shocked if that strategy leaves your sales funnel empty.

According to an ITSMA survey, the three most important factors in shortlisting and making a final decision on an enterprise sale are:

1. Knowledge and understanding of unique business issues
2. Knowledge and understanding of industry
3. Fresh ideas to advance business

In other words, the #1 reason an enterprise buyer makes a purchase decision is your proficiency in their market.

Said another way, you have to be perceived as an expert. The best way to achieve expert status in your prospect’s and customer’s eyes is by providing them with insights, which is exactly why this is one of the 6 critical parts of a successful ABE strategy. But how do you grow your insight generation and scale your program without wasting too much time, energy and resources? As your account-based program grows, you’ll need to identify opportunities to automate, where it makes sense.

When it comes to insights for Account Based Everything, there are certainly shortcuts – but as the saying goes, “There’s no substitute for hard work.”

Focus your efforts where they’ll make the most impact. Here’s how:

Set insight goals

Insight can stagnate without goals. You’ve heard it before, and you’ll head it many more times, but it’s worth repeating here: you can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you’ve set up your sales and marketing alignment correctly and you have your teams held to the same business results, each team should also still retain their own activity metrics. These are the leading indicator to your success. Each team has to measure and know which levers to pull to reach their overall business results. Once you set your goal for this critical activity, you can begin to move the needle.

Some targets for your key activity metrics could include:

• Number of new profiles per quarter
• Profile updates per month
• Account updates per month
• Org chart completion percentage
• Relationship map completeness, etc.

Tier your insight program

Not all accounts are created equal. That means you can’t spend the same amount of time chasing a five-figure deal in the SMB or mid-market as you would chasing a seven-figure deal in the enterprise. It just doesn’t make sense. That’s why taking a tiered approach to ABM is so important. This will guide how you spend your time. Remember, we all have the same amount of time in a day. It’s what you do with that time that sets average sales reps aside from the pros.

Let’s take a closer look into our three account tiers and how your time should be allocated to each.
Tier 1

• Full account profiles and rich account plans
• Quarterly updates
• Dedicated insight team per account
• Internal Slack or Chatter group per account
• Weekly snapshot alerts per account
• Supplement as needed via data partners
• Every touch is personal, thoughtful and relevant
• We recommending having between 5-50 Tier 1 Accounts

Tier 2

• Basic profiles: 3 facts for selling in under 3 minutes (a tip from Vorsight)
• Annual reviews
• Supplement with lower-cost sources and data enrichment partners
• Personalized touches to key personas
• We recommend having between 50-1000 Tier 2 Accounts

Tier 3

• Map key pains by industry or segment
• Know competitors and their product usage
• Possibly automate insight collection using data partners
• Customized for industry and persona
• We recommend having 1000+ Tier 3 Account

Identify your insight resources

You’re going to have to spend some money to be really good at Account Based Everything. But that’s business 101 – you have to spend some money to make some money. It will be well worth the price because these are your “whale accounts.” Where traditional demand gen feeds you and your family for a few days, hunting whales with ABM feeds your entire village for a year. A whale account could be 50X the size, but I guarantee you that it isn’t 50X harder to close.

Insight generation has to be somebody’s job or it’s nobody’s job. Consider these tips:

• Incentivize your reps–compensate your SDRs on insight collection metrics, or run a SPIF.
• Hire offshore talent–utilize offshore resources to complete and enrich your insight base. Use a resource like Mechanical Turk to assign repetitive tasks.
• Outsource–3rd party vendors specialize in collecting insight on companies and people (from vendors like BAO or Salesify).
• Purchase data– buy whole org charts, company info and persona insights (check out LeadGenius, Datanyze, and DiscoverOrg to name a few), CRUSH reports from Avention (for IT only); Sales triggers and insights (InsideView, Agent3) – see our Clear and Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing for more vendors.

Activate your insights

Generating insight isn’t enough. Insight isn’t anything if itn’s not followed up with action. Get the knowledge into the right hands and get busy. Here are some insight-sharing tips:

• Create an ABM Insight Machine with a dedicated team of researchers. One company we work with has a four-person team that creates Value Hypothesis documents for each of their 1,400 target accounts, including: What they think the account should be worried about; Examples of similar companies that they’ve helped; Content they’ve researched about them (e.g. quotes from their CEO); Entrypoints–contentor messages that can be sent directly to start dialogsThese are customized by account but can be based on segment-specific templates.
• Spin up an Insight Base using a web collaboration tool or intranet.
• Issue regular update reports highlighting new insights or developmentsAnd ad hoc alerts for breaking news that can be acted on.
• Integrate insight into your CRM profiles or your ABE management tool.

Deals move when the rep translates the broad insights into value that is specific for that account. When you learn to master this skill, your prospective account decides not only is it worth listening to you, but also investigating the insights and implications with you. By uncovering and delivering the right insights, you maximize your chances of establishing the relevancy required to penetrate your target accounts and develop the relationship required to close deals.

We all know the sequence: Dating, proposing, wedding. The process of selling is not terribly different…with the likely exception of the new business deal fine print not reading: Till death do us part.

Use LinkedIn for ongoing touch points to ENGAGE your prospective clients while you are working towards closing the deal and beyond.

The selling process has many stages of interaction. From initial conversations, scoping out the work, signing the contract, to delivery of services, there are a myriad of ways we communicate throughout the process: phone, email, in-person meetings, webcast, and LinkedIn.

We are on to “PART 3: Engage with LinkedIn Insights,” of my four-part series on using LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index score to benchmark your progress on LinkedIn and improve your engagement to yield more conversations for your business.

In case you missed them or need to reference back:

· PART 1: It’s More Than You Think (includes a “10-Day Profile Facelift”)

· PART 2: The Perks of Stalking (includes sophisticated Boolean searching tips)

Before reading further, it is time to re-calculate your SSI score. Remember LinkedIn is updating this weekly.

STOP. CLICK HERE. CALCULATE YOUR NEW SSI SCORE (and all four quadrants).

Engage with insights: 25 points

· Shares, likes, comments, and re-shares

· Messages sent and response rate

· Groups joined and engagement within Groups

I. Are you providing value to your network?

Part of the data that LinkedIn pulls for your “Engage with insights” SSI quadrant relates to the content you are sharing and your activity around your network’s content (i.e. likes, comments, and re-sharing).

While the majority of my published articles are on the topic of LinkedIn, I am cognizant not to only post content about LinkedIn. Why? Because not everyone in my network cares about LinkedIn as much as I care about it. And that’s okay! The professionals in my network are business owners, salespeople, recruiters, and top executives who manage teams. I focus on finding content that would be of interest to them: leadership, management, sourcing talent, prospecting, process improvement, brand awareness, etc.

Strengthen your connections by sharing relevant articles with them that show you are vested in their success. You will become a trusted source and advisor to them when you take this intentional approach.

Remember that an important aspect to this is engaging with your network’s activity too. Did you read a great article? Share it with your entire network. Like it. Comment on it and ask a question, or thank the author for an insightful post.

All of these, seemingly small, touches can have great impact. Your name and face will pop up on your network’s home page newsfeed when you take these actions; this keeps you top of mind.

BONUS: Not sure how active you are on LinkedIn? Check your recent activity by following these simple steps below:

II. Are you privately reaching out to people on LinkedIn?

Frustrations: Do your sent emails get lost in the digital black hole of someone’s inbox? Do you have unlimited access to someone’s voicemail?

Potential Solution: Is your prospect on LinkedIn? Are you connected with him/her? Do you have a great article you want to send, but fear it will get lost in their email inbox? Try a different avenue: Send the article via a private LinkedIn direct message.

Sent LinkedIn messages and recipients responding to you are another data point taken into consideration on your 25 points of Engage with Insights.

Here is more food for thought, according to LinkedIn:

· 64% of B2B buyers report they appreciate hearing from a salesperson who provides knowledge or insight about their business.

· LinkedIn messages have an 85% open rate of basic email. Why? They stand out in your recipient’s email inbox and they live in two inboxes: email and LinkedIn.

III. Are you joining and participating in Groups?

LinkedIn revamped their Groups last year. Here 9 Updates on LinkedIn Groups and you can now be a member of up to 100 Groups.

Here are four buckets to focus on when considering Groups to join:

· Prospects & clients… Be visible

· Industry… Learn from your peers

· Alumni… Instantly something in common

· Local… Network with your professional neighbors

Being a member of Groups is only part of this equation. Be an active participant in your Groups by sharing educational and insightful articles, like and comment on other member’s discussions, and even direct message other Group members. According to LinkedIn:

“You are 70% more likely to get an appointment or an unexpected sale if you are a member in LinkedIn Groups.”

Next Steps & Accountability

Engaging with insights on LinkedIn, as it relates to your Social Selling Index score, will be impacted by your interaction with content and activity via (1) shares, likes, comments and re-shares, the (2) direct messages you send to people along with response rate, and finally (3) the number of Groups you join and your engagement within those Groups.

Don’t go dark once you have on-boarded your new clients. Stay in front of them online and here is why:

*Image ref: “Rethink the B2B Buyer’s Journey” by LinkedIn

Be visible. Be active. The small touches add up and they help keep you top-of-mind with the people who matter to you the most.

What is your next step? Capture your overall SSI score and four quadrant scores!

This post was originally published on LinkedIn and is part 3 of a 4 part series.

World Bank data shows the value of Chinese exports has almost tripled over the past 10 years. And there is strong evidence the country's export riches will be enjoyed for some time yet.

China exported $2.3 trillion worth of products to 209 trading partners in 2015, according to the World Bank, up from $1.9 trillion just four years earlier.

As the government works to establish more consumer-led growth, this robust export engine is providing valuable support to an economy still expanding at 6.9%.

_{Source: World Bank, World Integrated Trade Solution, as of 2015}

Why the export boom is likely to continue

There are two key reasons China's export boom can be sustained: scale and investment.

China's exports are dominated by manufactured products, which accounted for 94% of all exports in 2015, according to the World Trade Organization. Office machines, telecommunications equipment, clothing, and textiles are the country's top exports.

The sheer scale of the manufacturing sector required to fulfill this demand would be incredibly difficult and costly for competitors to replicate in a short period of time. This affords the country a big competitive advantage.

In addition to this scale and strong demand for Chinese products, the country's manufacturing sector also benefits from significant funding.

China is one of the largest recipients of foreign direct investment in the world, according to the World Trade Organization, receiving US$120 billion in 2014. And the manufacturing sector accounted for 33% of this total.

The advantages of massive scale, strong international demand, and this continued foreign investment are what underpin China's export strength — and are likely to do so for some time yet.

Investors attracted to a robust trade story might consider taking a closer look at this major global player.

If you’re looking to access the Chinese market, consider the iShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI), or broaden your search to other countries.

EXPLORE: Research other countries in the Worldviews series.

MORE: How China's economy is rapidly rebalancing toward services

This post is sponsored by iShares^® by BlackRock^®.

Visit www.iShares.com or www.BlackRock.com to view a prospectus, which includes investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other information that you should read and consider carefully before investing. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

International investing involves risks, including risks related to foreign currency, limited liquidity, less government regulation and the possibility of substantial volatility due to adverse political, economic or other developments. These risks often are heightened for investments in emerging/developing markets and in concentrations of single countries.

The iShares Funds are distributed by BlackRock Investments, LLC (together with its affiliates, “BlackRock”).

This article was sponsored by iShares by BlackRock. BlackRock is not affiliated with Business Insider Inc., or any of their respective affiliates. BlackRock does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of information contained in this article or any content linked to this article; or any third parties which produce and provide such content; and does not endorse the views and opinions they express or the products and/or services they may offer.

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What makes a killer sales kickoff meeting?

• Is the review of numbers?  Sort of…
• Is it the announcement of a new product, service, feature set?  Perhaps…
• Is it the Rah-Rah speech from the CEO?  Maybe…
• Is it the announcement of new marketing initiatives to support lead generation and demand generation efforts?  Getting warmer…

What really sets the best sales kickoff meetings apart from the mediocre ones is making sure you provide your sales team with something more valuable than they had before they walked into the sales kickoff.

Often times people think a review of the numbers, new product announcements and marketing plans are good enough.

Unfortunately that is just a band-aid to the bigger issue at hand. The real issue is how do we help the sales team close more deals?

While product knowledge and marketing plans may align and influence this desired outcome, they don’t actually provide as much impact to the desired outcomes:

• Increased closed ratios
• Improving discovery of opportunities
• Improving and qualification of opportunities
• Improving forecasts

If you do not focus on improving a particular skill set through sales training and coaching while at the sales kickoff, then all you will be doing is accelerating the suck factor by increasing the likelihood of more show-up and throw-up product knowledge all over your leads, prospects, and customers.

So here are a five tips you should follow when planning your Sales Kickoff Meeting:

1. Define the behavior you want to change.
2. Go in-depth and get specific on those behaviors.
3. Role play / create interactive scenarios.
4. Consider a sales trainer.
5. Define who owns coaching.

Tip 1: Define the Behavior You Want to Change

You can do this by filling in the blanks to the following question:

After the SKO, we expect the Sales (SDR, Customer Success) Teams to be better at ____, ____, and ____.

Most of the time VPs of Sales will say something like “We want the sales team them to be better at discovery and closing”  

Now that’s a good start. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

Tip 2: Go In-Depth and Get Specific

When someone says discovery, here’s how you uncover the gold:

“That’s great, but let me ask you something, can you provide me with your definition of discovery as it relates to your organization? Are there specific instances you are seeing over and over in your pipeline review meetings that indicate a skill gap?”

Once you answer this, then you know exactly what you want your SKO training to encompass.

With this level of detail you can now begin to build your agenda in a more targeted way. You can include this in your communications with other department heads so they can help influence training even during their presentations to the sales teams.

But wait, there is more.

Tip 3: Role Play / Create Interactive Scenarios

Today’s sales professionals are eager to learn and do not mind role playing. They crave interactive communications. They crave feedback and thrive on the attention.

This is on contrast to the old guard of sales who often times act like a lone wolf thinking they don’t need it, find it beneath them, and think that SKOs and sales training is all the same.

You have a few options for these folks:

Option #1: Ask them to participate with a good attitude in a leadership capacity for the role playing.

Option #2: Ask them to participate by providing Real Play scenarios.

Real Play is having them describe a complex deal they sold somewhere in their profession and provide real insights on how they moved it forward. 

Option #3: Ask them to help build the role plays so they make sure people are learning something.

Option #4: Ask them to leave. Let’s face it, in many sales organizations there are just folks you cannot help because they cannot get out of their own way for whatever reason. So if they are going to be a distraction to the rest of the sales team let them leave the room with their negative energy. You’d be surprised how many will decide to stay and participate.

Tip 4: Consider A Sales Trainer

Many companies love to shake it up with a sales leader to come in and assist with the sales training portion of your SKO. Many sales trainers will actually come to a SKO and deliver something very solid that will work. Imagine how much better the training would be if you shared your insights from this exercise with your sales consultant?  Their material may not change a lot, but we can assure you the deliver and the execution will be stronger, provide more value, and allow for greater coaching after the sales kickoff.

Tip 5: Define Who Owns Coaching

Here is your final tip on delivering quality sales training and your sales kickoff meeting.  

Whatever sales skills you want your sales team to learn and improve upon, someone in the organization needs to own the coaching aspect post-SKO.

You need to build in real call coaching, call debriefing, and feedback into your routine as a sales leader or sales manager. There is no report, document, white paper, or book that can do more for the success of your sales team than real live coaching.

It can be management coaching, it can be peer-to-peer coaching. There are some amazing tools that can help you with coaching and feedback. They won’t do it for you, but they can help.

Failure to define sales coaching in a specific plan after any sales kickoff or sales training is the single biggest cause for the training to become useless in the minds of your sales team.

We’d love to hear from you, what are some of your best and worst experiences with SKOs?  

The post How To Have A Sales Kickoff That Doesn’t Suck appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Liz Wessel knows a thing or two about the job interview process.

Not only does she work with college students applying for jobs every day — but she also regularly interviews job candidates applying for roles at her own company, WayUp.

After working at Google for two years, the now 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate left to cofound WayUp, a site used by hundreds of thousands of college students to find jobs at places like Microsoft, Uber, The New York Times, Disney, and Google. She's currently the company's CEO.

Wessel says the one question she thinks every job candidate should ask their interviewer is: "If you think about the people who stick out as all-stars at your company, what makes them all-stars?"

"This question is great for so many reasons," Wessel tells Business Insider. "It's impressive because it shows your potential employer that you're already eager to find out how you can provide the most value to their organization.

"It's important for you because it's a quick way to find out what a company is really all about and whether you think you could be an all-star at the company."

Another great thing about this question, she says, "is that the answer may reveal traits and characteristics that you can play up later in conversation or in your second interview."

She says at WayUp, the all-stars are people who go "above and beyond for our users and our clients, and who think outside of the box as often as possible."

"I think all employees who last at WayUp are good people and genuinely embody our company values, so when candidates ask me this question about all-stars, I usually go directly to the quality that sticks out, rather than talk about our values."

She says her other favorite questions to hear from candidates are, "What keeps you up at night?" or "Where do you think the company needs improvement?"

"These questions are awesome because they show that you already care about what challenges the company is facing and how to overcome them," she says. "It also helps you have a better understanding of what you're in for — both the good and the bad — if you get hired."

SEE ALSO: The best advice a CEO and former Googler has for people in their 20s is just 2 words

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NOW WATCH: A résumé expert reveals what a perfect résumé looks like

There isn’t a sales organization out there that isn’t trying to increase revenue, either by selling more complex deals with their current prospects or by expanding their solution-set with current customers. If you are having challenges with your own land and expand strategy, it likely comes down to how you are equipping your reps to expand and how your company is aligned behind the strategy.

Here are two key questions to ask:

1. Are we using land and expand as a default strategy? In other words, we don’t really have a sales process or our reps can’t get high in accounts so we are using land and expand as a default strategy.
2. How is your organization internally able to support the expand? When there are many customer-facing functions in your company (services, product, marketing), they all have to be aligned in order to effectively expand your solution.

When companies often execute a land and expand strategy – they fail to really think through the challenges that it presents. Below are five key challenges that may be crippling your land-and-expand efforts:

1. The Incumbent

If you’re trying to land and expand in an account, it is extremely difficult to edge out an incumbent. Your incumbents have the advantage in the account because they have the relationships and they’re embedded in the account. When you get in with a pilot project or a small roll-out, you’re giving the competitor the chance to block your expansion. It’s extremely difficult to expand to a broader solution.

2. Fast-paced Technology

If you’re selling a technological solution, and you’re relying on a land and expand strategy, you better move quickly because when you’re trying to land – technology is evolving. When you’re a low-cost solution it’s easy for customers to switch to something new and better.

3. False Sense of Security

When we start small in an account, it can give us a false sense of security. We got into X account! We can now say we have this logo! You’re in the account, but you’re likely in an area that has limited power and limited budget. It’s very easy to rest on our laurels when we get into a big company without an identified strategy.

4. Demonstrates Gaps in Your Solution

It also demonstrates a gap in your solution – We sell a smaller solution because our larger solution isn’t adequate enough for the organization.

5. Branded as the “One-off” Initiative

This final challenge may be hurting your sales organization more than you realize. If you land, but don’t expand, you’re branded as a one-off initiative. You become known as the pilot project, or “a proof of concept.” The challenge is that when you get beyond a technical buyer and when CEOs, CFOs or CIOs hear about your solution, they may perceive it as a “rogue” initiative, not tied to the greater business issue.

It’s a hard “brand” to overcome and it makes it extremely difficult to gain cross functional buy-in from other departments because you are perceived as being a one-off and not an integral part of a larger strategy.

So what’s the solution? The key is to enable your reps to (1) target the right people that will aid your expand and (2) give them the tools to have conversations that increase the value for the customer.

As more marketers transition from demand generation to account-based marketing, the question comes up of what to do with content. At its core, content is a demand generation tactic used to fill the top of the funnel with leads. In contrast, account-based marketing is all about an outbound strategy of going after specific accounts you want to close.

So, does the value of content diminish as teams move to an account-based marketing strategy? Not so fast.

Now that teams are focused on engaging specific accounts, content must also evolve to become more personalized. Because of this, content becomes just as, if not more, valuable within an ABM strategy.

Transitioning from Demand Generation to ABM: Content Strategy

With an inbound demand gen strategy, the majority of content is educational and broad so it can apply to a wider audience. The goal is to drive as many leads as possible to your website. To achieve this, content can’t be too deep in the weeds or it will never reach the amount of people needed to fill the pipeline and provide enough leads to the sales team.

As organizations transition to ABM, they begin to target specific personas, industries and job titles. To stay valuable, content needs to do the same.

Define the personas involved in the buying process and create specific content directed at them. For example, if marketing ops is one of the key personas, create content with “marketing operations” in the headline and url. This bodes well for SEO and those clicking through your site searching for relevant content.

To take it one step further, each persona typically corresponds with a funnel stage. Maybe the paid search manager is the researcher at the top of the funnel, the marketing ops manager is the potential user in the middle of the funnel, and the CMO is the persona with the power to sign checks at the bottom of the funnel. If this were the case, you’d create educational, TOFU content directed at paid search; MOFU, benefits and use-case scenario content directed at marketing ops; and BOFU, in-depth content directed at CMOs.

Additionally, as an outbound strategy, content can be used as a way to keep the door open and continue the conversation. Maybe the contact isn’t ready to schedule a demo with you right now. At that point you can send them content relevant to their persona and needs, and follow up in a couple weeks.

As teams make the transition from demand generation to account-based marketing, content remains valuable by continuing to be an educational tool for your target audience.

ABM Content + LinkedIn: The Winning Combination

Now that you’ve defined your key personas and created content specifically for them, how do you make sure it reaches them?

Organic posts only go so far and sometimes a prospect doesn’t know what they’re missing (or what to search for) until it’s right in front of them. That’s where LinkedIn paid media comes in.

LinkedIn is the ideal platform for B2B account-based marketing because its users publicly post their location, company, skills and job title– all valuable identifiers for targeted content.

Using segmented target account lists allows you to deliver valuable content to the right prospects. That marketing ops content I talked about earlier can be displayed to LinkedIn users at X size company, who have marketing operations in their job title and/or skills. Now, instead of paying for clicks from unqualified prospects, every click will be of value.

An ABM on LinkedIn strategy also works well for future content, like webinars and speaking events. Say you’re hosting a webinar on how attribution improves paid media marketing. Use LinkedIn to display the details and registration link to users with “paid media” in their job title or skills, and who work at companies within industries of your target customer base. Now, when you report that you drove 100 registrations, Sales can be confident they will be following up with high-grade leads who are likely to convert.

Defining key personas and then using LinkedIn targeting capabilities to reach those personas with engaging, personalized content is a winning combination that capitalizes on the full power of your content.

The Right Measure of Success

In a strategy centered around demand generation, the primary measure of success tends to be leads and opportunities. However, in an account-based marketing world, since you’re not aiming to drive a bunch of new leads, how do you measure success?

The goal of ABM is to engage with contacts at target accounts, so to measure success, you’d report on touchpoint engagement.

Implementing an attribution solution with ABM capabilities, like lead to account mapping and account engagement scores, will help marketers accurately report on engagement.

When new contacts visit your website, they should be mapped to the company (account) to which they belong. This is the foundation of account-based measurement and reporting.

ABM requires both depth and breadth to be successful and lead to account mapping makes it possible to track both. Key questions to ask are, how many contacts are engaged from a single company and how deep in the funnel are those contacts?

When a piece of content is published, its success can be measure by how many touchpoints it receives from contacts within key accounts, and if those touchpoints are moving the account deeper into the funnel.

For example, two ebooks, both with 1,000 pageviews, are not necessarily of equal success. If one had touchpoints from only 500 key accounts and the other had 900 touchpoints from key accounts, the latter would be deemed more of a success because it reached more of the people you wanted.

Conclusion

Although content is traditionally a demand generation channel, it does not lose its value within an account-based marketing strategy. As the marketing team transitions from inbound to outbound, content adapts to become more personalized and catered to specific personas.

Transitioning to ABM means transitioning to more focused content that creates valuable interactions throughout the entire funnel. Marketers move from pursuing pageviews to pursuing pipeline.

Cold emailing is a practice that a number of companies and individuals adhere to, and it’s easy to see why. You can reach a significant number of people all at once with the click of a button, and do so in a way that very clearly communicates what your company does, and why prospects should care.

In theory, cold emailing can be a fantastic tool for marketers and salespeople alike, but only if they carefully put together their message.

Often times people don’t place the necessary attention on cold emailing that it desperately needs, and in the process, they make a serious misstep. Whether that’s a failure to correctly brand your company or an inability to use templates correctly, there are more than a few ways to ruin your cold emailing outreach before ever sending it to anyone.

As such, below are five common mistakes that people make when cold emailing.

1. You’re emailing the wrong person

If in the process of sending someone a cold email, you happen to contact the wrong person, good luck getting them to pass along the information to the right decision maker. People are constantly inundated with unwarranted emails, and if they receive a message that doesn’t pertain to them, they’ll either ignore it, or send it to the trash.

That’s why it’s vital to have one simple sentence in all of your outreach emails. They don’t have to mirror exactly what’s below, but it should accomplish the same goal.

“If you’re not the right person I should reach out to, could you point me in the right direction of who I should contact?”

This is short, and to the point; and most importantly, what you’re asking isn’t complicated. More often than not, people will forward along your request, or respond with the right point of contact; but even if that doesn’t happen, by inserting that question into your outreach, you’ve built in a reason to follow up.

2. Your cold email is too long

When conducting cold email outreach, it’s essential to remember that what you’re doing is sending someone an unsolicited email; so make sure to get to the point quickly. This is a cold email, not a presentation to the shareholders of the company.

The group that you just messaged likely doesn’t know you or your company, and frankly they don’t want a detailed run-down of all the applications and benefits of your product. Keep your first email short and sweet. It shouldn’t take more than 15-20 seconds to read. Tell them who you are, what your company’s main function is, and why you’re reaching out.

Imagine getting the following message.

Nobody wants to read that email. It looks like an abstract to an incredibly long article rather than a cold email. Instead, it should appear as follows.

The first email (which is terrible), takes nearly one minute to read, whereas the second example takes just more than 15 seconds. Both convey the same overall idea, yet one is drastically better than the other. Make sure to follow the latter template when it comes to cold emails.

3. Your cold email is clearly automated

Cold emails are tricky because the goal is to reach as many people in as little time as possible; which is where email templates come into play. With the click of a button, you can send a slightly customized email to people; but in reality, that customization is nothing more than mentioning their name, their company, and possibly where they’re located.

It’s easy to spot emails like this, and they immediately turn people off; which is why you need to be careful when constructing your templates. One way to make them feel more personal is to keep them short and sweet, as there are fewer opportunities to mention boilerplate topics.

The worst case scenario: Your email automation failed and you just sent a template to hundreds of people

While email template can be a good thing when used correctly, they can also sink your entire outreach efforts with one simple screw-up. Take this for example.

It’s almost shocking how frequently an email like this will wind up in someone’s inbox. It might not be the death knell for your outreach, but it certainly isn’t a good way to start off a relationship. If this happens, turn it into an opportunity and send a follow-up email bemoaning how clumsy you can be with email templates.

4. Failing to follow up

If, at first, your cold email doesn’t succeed, try and try again.

During your prospect outreach, it’s likely that a number of people are going to be interested, but for a number of reasons, will simply fail to respond. You could craft the perfectly engaging email, filled with actionable data that will entice your prospects, but if you catch them at the wrong time of day, or at a particularly busy period of their lives, they might forget to reach out.

This is why it’s vital to send at least one follow-up email, if not more.

Help yourself by scheduling a follow up reminder (with a tool like Yesware) and write quick and short follow ups.

Don’t just repeat your pitch like a robot in your follow up emails. Instead, try to ask for a good alternative time to grab a call, or even give the prospect something of value that builds up your credibility (a free e-book or a link to your newest blog post for example.)

5. Talking down to your prospects

This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Sure, sending an unfinished template is embarrassing, and emailing the wrong person is awkward, but talking to your prospects like a five-year-old could have serious consequences; for you and your company. When trying to make clear and concise points, people will often simplify their language, and ask “easy questions.”

How would you feel getting the following line of questioning in an unsolicited email?

“Do you like increasing revenue? Do you like making more money? Do you like having more freedom at your job?”

Anyone with a brain is going to answer “yes” to all of those questions. Who doesn’t like making more money and having more freedom? There’s no point to asking these because anyone worth talking to is going to have the same answers. It’s condescending and immediately sends the wrong message to your prospects.

Conducting cold email outreach can be a powerful tool, but only if it’s done with great attention to detail. Remember to keep your message clear and concise, and to inject some personality into your email templates. Avoiding the pitfalls mentioned above could very well be the difference between connecting with a prospect and never hearing back.

*This post first ran 9.29.15 via ANNUITAS.com

There are a lot of misguided, well-meaning marketers working on beautifully crafted, useless personas. Now, I’m not joining the persona naysayers (you know who you are). It’s true that there are a lot of less-than-actionable personas being built, but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And, speaking of babies, even though no one likes to hear that theirs is ugly, unlike babies, those buyer personas aren’t going to get any cuter with age. It’s going to take some work.

It’s hard to argue with the concept of trying to understand your customers and prospects to produce demand generation that drives revenue. There are a lot of reasons why personas are valuable:

• Personas build understanding. Not everyone interacts with customers every day, and even those who do may not be able to distill essential elements into something usable. Even if you, personally, know your buyers, can you say the same of every team member who could benefit from that knowledge?
• Personas create focus. You can’t be all things to all people. It’s true that it takes a village now more so than ever to make a purchase, but that buying committee does have a limit, and personas will help you narrow your focus to those audiences.
• Personas drive alignment. If you’ve built solid personas, reviewing their goals and motivations when there is dissension can help to move in the right direction for your buyers. It’s not a question of what you or your boss likes, but what your buyer needs to move along the buyer journey.

So, here’s where execution comes in. If everyone is on board with the concept of buyer personas, the way organizations go about building them varies wildly. There are a few common ways personas often go off the rails.

Window Dressing-
People confuse buyer personas with the document that captures the essential elements of the persona as the same thing. They are not. When more effort goes into the presentation layer than the insights they should be built on, it’s easy to understand why some critics dismiss personas as fluff.

Foregone Conclusions-
Going purely from “your gut” or from exclusively internal research to create personas misses the point. To know what motivates a buyer, ask one. Or better yet, ask 10. Don’t just talk to customers either, unless that’s your exclusive audience. Talk to some prospects and losses if possible. Do some research into what’s going on in their environment to get some context as well.

Too Much Information (TMI)-
Personas should guide action. Would someone three layers removed from you know what decisions to make on content or channels based on your personas? Some personas are valuable from an attitudinal perspective, but don’t have enough of a data component to allow marketers to categorize them or include any information that a prospect could self-identify.

How do you build an actionable, insight-driven persona to guide your demand generation efforts? There are a few key questions to guide your research:

• What are his or her objectives?
• Where are their pain points?
• What would trigger them to enter a buy cycle?
• How long does it take to buy a solution like yours?
• What is their role in the buying process? Are they an influencer or a decision maker? Part of a large committee?
• How do they consume content?

From these foundational questions, you can begin to build a framework that will guide decisions on content strategy, engagement channels and lead management to create a demand generation program that is a growth engine for your organization.

For more tips on building better buyer personas, check out this webinar: The Role of Buyer Personas in Demand Generation Strategy.

Author: Lee Anne Wimbly @lwimberly Director, Strategy for ANNUITAS

The post Dear Marketers, Buyer Personas Still Need A Makeover appeared first on Annuitas.

We’re a little over 2 months til 2017. That’s kind of scary to think about, especially when you realize that you have to start thinking about your marketing campaigns for the upcoming new year.

What trends will you follow – or will you be a trendsetter? Do you want your campaigns to be funny or serious? Will you include holiday themed content or stick to just your branding?

There are SO MANY questions!

One thing I’m working on right now is how to create a better journey for our audience. How can I optimize my webinars and our paid media? How can I make sure that each stage of the funnel is informative and exactly what our buyers need to see?

Why don’t we take a walk through the funnel and learn three ways to optimize each stage of the buyer’s journey?

Awareness Stage:

The first date. The initial meeting of business to business (or business to consumer). This is your chance at a great first impression. It’s a time to showcase your brand and tell your audience what exactly it is you do.

In my webinar emails (and not just to TOFU), I include a “Who Is SnapApp?” section at the bottom. Sure, I’m hoping they join my webinar and learn more about us, but why would someone sign up without knowing what we do and how we can help them? These guys are in research mode so you need to educate them!

Creating a dialogue with your audience during this stage is key. When you have a conversation with your audience, you gain actionable data. When you know what their pain points are, why they need help, and how you can impact their priorities, you provide helpful resources and information. That builds trust and credibility.

What kind of interactive content could you try?

Interactive Infographic:

It’s informative, fun, and powerful. Like I mentioned, this is your first impression and it’s got to make an impact! Interactive infographics allow you to provide content to your audience while getting to know them. This interactive infographic from Total Protect Home Warranty is a great example.

Evaluation Stage:

Alright, this is where you’ve got to start really educating your audience. Yes, you’ve told them who you are, what you do, and opened the door to further conversation, but the evaluation stage is prime for educating your audience further on your industry and product. At this stage, you can start to gain even more useful qualifying data and buyer knowledge than you did in the awareness stage.

Have your audience benchmark themselves against their peers. Quiz them on your industry and what your product does. By helping them get to know you (and vice versa) you’ll both be able to gauge whether or not more information is needed and if your product could be the right fit for them.

What type of interactive content could you try?

Interactive Assessment:

Assessments are a great way to learn more about your audience while delivering customized results based on their answers. You could try a persona test, a benchmark assessment, or even a product readiness assessment. These content types are great because you’re helping your audience self-identify with your options and letting them compare to others who have looked into your product.

One of my favorite examples for assessments is this one by Influitive. They created a “What Marketing Personality Type Are You?” assessment to include in a blog post, and directed users to a customized ebook based on the marketing personality type they fit. The ebook addressed the user’s personality and how to use those skills to advance their career.

Consideration Stage:

The final stage. This is your last chance to learn about your audience and, and it’s their last chance to know exactly how your product is going to fix their problems. When you’re in the process of making a final buying decision what is it you want to see? You want to see examples, use cases, relevant and helpful information.

With interactive content, you can provide exactly that to your audience. You can use all the information gain in prior stages to customize examples that are tailored specifically to them!

Don’t you want your audience to feel special?

What type of interactive content could you try?

Interactive Calculator:

Calculators are a great way to let your audience measure how effective your product will be for them. They’re also great for collecting important information about your leads! Take Blackbaud, for example. They wanted to show the success of their product, so the Blackbaud University division created a Time Savings Calculator to let prospects “try on” their services. In the first five weeks of promotion, the company identified 200 new leads for their sales team!

Want to learn more about how you can customize your buyer’s journey and create engaging experiences? Join us on November 2nd at 2PM ET | 11AM PT for our webinar Optimizing Your Relationships Through The Buyer’s Journey!

Vanessa Porter, Director of Marketing at SnapApp will be showing you how interactive content and marketing automation work together and providing key tips to building strong relationships with your audience based on their position in the funnel.

Author: Adam Hutchinson

Like the middle child, the middle of the demand generation funnel receives far less attention than it deserves.

At the top of the funnel, marketing increases traffic and fills the database with new leads through paid ads, social media, search, referral programs, and a variety of other channels. At the bottom-of-the-funnel, we help close the sale by creating urgency and helping our prospects make the business case for purchasing our product or service.

But in between, we need to nurture and qualify our leads by encouraging them to engage with our content until they’re sales-ready. It’s easy to overlook the middle of the funnel because it involves many different priorities, from quality to quantity to speed to customer experience, and it can be the most difficult to manage.

What is the middle of the funnel?

According to the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, the middle of the funnel is the area where the marketing to sales hand-off happens (MQL to SAL) and where the sales development representative (SDR) to account executive (AE) hand-off happens (SAL to SQL).

The middle of the funnel, or MOFU, is like a valve. It’s where you can expand lead quality definitions to pass a higher volume of leads to your sales team or tighten lead quality definitions to give them a more specific segment of qualified leads.

At Socedo, as well many other B2B organizations, our marketing team focuses on facilitating a successful hand-off to sales. The marketing team develops content to educate leads and identifies the leads who show buying intent by implementing a behavioral lead scoring model. They also spin up campaigns aimed at accelerating leads, such as limited-time offers, product trial campaigns, and case studies.

In the middle of the funnel, marketing aims to help the sales team prioritize their time by providing clear and accurate information on each lead passed to the sales team and concurrently, sales’ focus is on creating as many deal opportunities as possible from the leads they’ve received from marketing.

Why focus on the middle of the funnel?

With so many transitions happening during the hand-off process, the middle of the funnel has the biggest potential for misalignment between marketing and sales, as well as within sales. Below are some common bottlenecks that may arise during this stage.

Misalignment during the marketing to sales hand-off:

• Marketing does not pass enough leads to sales to create a sufficient number of opportunities to meet their revenue target.
• Marketing hands off enough leads to sales, but leads are hard to reach because they are not ready to consider a purchase yet and need more nurturing.
• Marketing sends too many leads to sales, and sales doesn’t have enough information about the leads to prioritize them effectively.

Misalignment during the SDR to AE hand-off:

• SDRs could have a hard time reaching the leads marketing passed to them.
• It can take too long for SDRs to create sales accepted leads to send to AEs.

By creating common definitions and goals, you can help alleviate sales and marketing misalignment. Here are some you’ll want to understand and agree on:

• Lead volume helps determine whether your top-of-the-funnel marketing efforts are sufficient to meet sales’ revenue target.
• Conversions measure lead movement from stage to stage, showing how marketing is performing throughout the entire sales cycle.
• Velocity is the time it takes a lead to move through the funnel, typically measured in days.

These metrics help marketing understand its impact on the business and where to prioritize their investments. Weakness in any one of these areas will affect revenue, so marketers need to keep a pulse on how the middle of the funnel is performing at any given time.

The middle of the funnel also presents some unique problems. Leads become stagnant or “cold” here. They may stop responding to marketing content and thus aren’t qualified yet for a sales conversation. This can lead to slow velocity and a restricted lead flow for sales. Fortunately, there are four key strategies you can leverage to tackle these problems: 

1. Fight Low Lead Quality at the Source

Not all lead sources are created equal. At Socedo, we track four metrics for every lead source:

• Volume of MQLs
• % SQLs (opportunities created)
• % closed won (new customers)
• Average selling price (ASP)

While it’s helpful to dive into ROI goals for specific programs, these metrics help us stay accountable for driving quality leads to sales and identifying problems as quickly as possible. For example, we’ve found that leads whose last action was a trial sign-up tend to move much faster through the funnel and close at a higher rate than leads whose last action was a webinar viewing. For lead sources with lower-than-average conversion rates, such as whitepaper downloads, we require a higher qualification bar before passing the lead to sales.

Additionally, data quality directly affects lead quality. Bad data leads to low contact rates and lower conversions. At Socedo, we use several third-party lead generation programs to help us generate new leads. Sometimes, these leads look like good quality leads at the top of the funnel because they come from companies in our target market, but once we pass them over to sales, we realize that important data such as company size and phone number are incorrect. We use Clearbit data enrichment to clean up as much data as possible, but occassionally, we need to shut down sources completely due to bad data.

2. Accelerate More Leads from Specific Segments

Building a repeatable lead nurturing process is the pride and joy of any demand generation marketer. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t always follow our perfect plans. Sometimes, we need to send a large volume of leads to the sales team quickly, either to meet a strategic goal or make up for lost time.

Rather than going broad and sacrificing quality, marketers can narrow in on a specific segment of leads waiting in the middle of the funnel. For example, a couple of months ago, we needed to send more leads to the sales team. We found that we had a significant number of engaged content marketers (one of our target audiences) in our database, so we ran a campaign with a new offer specifically for content marketers and only targeted leads with content job titles in the “Engaged” stage in our database. While we can’t run this type of campaign every month, it provided a nice bump in volume when we needed it.

3. Improve Lead Velocity with Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a key lever you can pull to improve lead velocity. At Socedo, our demand generation manager performs a regular regression analysis on our database across several different behavioral factors to determine which characteristics make up a “good” lead.

Across several actions, such as email clicks, website visits, whitepaper downloads, webinar registrations, and social media engagements, we measure how many leads who took these actions ultimately led to deals, customers, and revenue. By conducting this research, we can determine which behaviors are the best indicators of buying intent.

Here’s an example of this with dummy data:

From there, we create a weighted score for each action. If a lead who clicked on a link in an email is 50% more likely to become a customer than a lead who visited our blog, we’ll adjust our lead scoring model to reflect email clicks at five points and blog visits at three points. By adjusting our lead scoring model in this manner, we’re able to send leads who are more ready to buy to sales faster, improving our metrics.

Because our content, audience targets, and business goals do shift over time, we make sure to run this analysis every month to make sure our lead scoring model is aligned to serve our goals.

4. Reduce Handoff Friction with Content and Context

When your sales team doesn’t have enough information about each lead to follow up with them in a way that creates urgency, the result is often non-responsive leads and slow velocity. Marketing can alleviate this problem to an extent.

As a first step, marketing can provide the sales team with case studies, whitepapers, and other educational materials that sales can send to leads. As a next step, marketing can create optimized content experiences for leads by linking one piece of content to another (i.e. when a lead watches a webinar, send them a related e-book).

To ensure that our sales team can follow up with each lead, our marketing team created an alert email that gets sent to a sales rep every time a new MQL is assigned to them. This email contains lead record data and contextual information, such as the title of the webinar they just watched and a few details about the webinar. Then, our sales rep can simply reply to the email if something seems inaccurate or they need more information about the lead. A complete marketing automation platform, like Marketo, will have a way to help you communicate with sales and share all the engagement activities and interesting moments in a lead’s history.

To avoid turning the middle of the funnel into a bottleneck, work in tandem with sales to increase conversion rates and velocity for results that spread across the board. Have you experienced any middle-of-funnel bottlenecks in your marketing organization? How did you fix it? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

4 Ways to Optimize the Middle of the Funnel was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

The post 4 Ways to Optimize the Middle of the Funnel appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Sales CMOs are driven by revenue. They focus on generating more and bigger deals for the business — not cramming more leads into the funnel. So, how do you drive more revenue in 2017? How can you prioritize next year’s spend to optimize for revenue?

You’ve likely kicked off next year’s budgeting. What are key approaches you can take to drive more revenue — and not more vanity metrics like clicks, likes, and shares? Let’s take a look at 4 tactics that keep the money on the right focus.

Follow the Customer’s Path

The traditional notion of the funnel is gone. Not just because of ABM-led funnel flipping, but also because B2B buyers flow in and out of the funnel due to internal inertia, shifting priorities, and market confusion. Linear progression to closed won is no longer the norm.

Instead, map out the most common paths your customers take to close. Interview customers and your sales colleagues. And revert to your data to identify customer flows. Look for shared points of friction: steps in the journey where deals stall or are ejected.

Then invest in tools, processes, and people that can eliminate these frictions. That not only benefits new ARR, but it also makes for a better buying experience — which translates into higher renewal and upsell rates.

Invest in Sales Enablement

The line between sales and marketing has nearly vanished. Sales CMOs aren’t satisfied for leads to get thrown over the wall and hope for the best. They are invested in (and compensated for) the results of each deal.

At the same time sales teams’ effectiveness is heavily influenced by marketing’s actions. They include:

• Sales assets from content teams;
• Messaging, scripts, templates, and positioning from product marketing;
• Product training and competitive analysis from technical marketing; and
• Events and programs from the field marketing team.

The list of deliverables from marketing that impact sales goes on and on.

Sales people know the value of these resources. They demand them. Yet, if sales can’t access these resources in their workflow, they’ll find a way to fill the void. Don’t waste your team’s efforts or the chance to significantly boost sales effectiveness. Look to how you can support sales’ use of resources you’re already producing.

Spend on Revenue Attribution

You have a range of programs and tools in place to automate the marketing process. If you base effectiveness solely on obtuse metrics like shares or visits, you can’t make good decisions. Impact on revenue should be the ultimate metric for evaluating budget decisions.

Sure there are priorities that are difficult to tie to revenue. Brand awareness and analyst relations come to mind. But a new generation of analytics vendors can justifiably dispute even that.

Filtering your priorities by revenue impact not only helps clarify where you should focus. It also helps within a budget cycle. Clear revenue impact data on a newly discovered initiative (say, a just-announced event that you’d like to sponsor), based on data about similar activities, helps you justify extra budget.

Or at a more strategic level, when you see your market starting to boil and you have a clear view on how much revenue an enlarged marketing budget will yield, then you have a real case to take to the board for stepping on the gas.

Invest in Your People in the Right Way

The best tools and processes are only as good as the marketers that run them. So, invest in your people to make everyone a Sales CMO. That means linking at least part of their variable compensation to revenue itself. Their own daily priorities, ideas, and focus will shift to the overarching goal.

Beyond money, look to encourage professional development in revenue-focused areas. From attending sales conferences to being part of sales calls — including travel. The cross-fertilization lift that comes from this is exceptional.

B2B marketing is the engine of revenue growth. So, your budget should reflect that fact. Identify and invest in initiatives that tie closely to sales results. And critically, once invested ensure that your initiatives are well implemented and monitored for their true revenue impact.

The post 4 Budget Hacks Just for Sales CMOs appeared first on OpenView Labs.

What do Seth Godin, Noah Kagan, Steve Jobs, Malcolm Gladwell, David Ogilvy, Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins & Walt Disney have that we don’t? How do/did they continue to confound critics and create successful products and campaigns over and over again?

While other meticulously planned and extremely well-funded campaigns that are destined to succeed are left out in the dust. Gasping their last sip of air.
They all have access to a formula. A set of defining principles. And if followed, the likelihood of success for any marketing communication goes up significantly. I figured this out through 10 years of research, and more than $150,000 on different projects and campaigns.

Today I’m going to lay it out for you plain an clear.

My Process:

This post is the culmination of 10 years of trial and error,
Over 200+ books, 1000s of articles/blogs/podcasts, and picking the brains of some of the best marketers and advertisers I could reach.
As soon as I came across a new marketing, copywriting, or sales strategy. I tested it. I put it into action in the real world where it matters. Not in fantasy theoretical land where all the charlatans exist.
Research for this post involved:
– Spending $150,000+ on different campaigns and ventures over the years
– Sending 100,000+ emails (1,000 per month), and 10,000+ sales calls
– Testing 100s of different direct response and online marketing campaigns with “experts”
– Door knocking across suburbs with different scripts
– Trying strategies to reach the hardest to reach people in the world
So on and so forth…in summary, I tried EVERYTHING.

And in the process, I’ve been able to field-test the BS from the gems.

There are a set of principles that underlie successful marketing. Methods are many, but principles are few and ever-present. They haven’t changed for hundreds of years and won’t change for hundreds of years still.

Now let’s move on to the meat of this sandwich shall we?

Your Marketing Handbook: The Guiding Principles

The defining guidelines of marketing below will be as relevant today as 400 years from now. There are three core concepts that must align. Get your communication as closely aligned to the principles outlined in each component. And if you want to learn more, there is suggested reading for each principle.

LOOK — how your message should be presented
DIRECTION — how and where your message should be directed
CONTENT — how to optimise the message

Core 1: LOOK – How Your Message Should Be Presented

Tell It As A Story.

Instead of facts, information, benefits, bullet-points, power-points, or whatever else you decide to present. Tell a story instead. A story is more memorable — you don’t forget a great story. A story allows you to get past the resistance and gets people hooked — science proves that storytelling activates our entire brain, evolution has wired us in such a way. A story gets shared — since forever, narratives are how humans have passed on information and knowledge.

Example

I have a client who is a BIG resource player. This client has an extremely scary boss / owner/ founder (she is aggressive, powerful, and will rip you apart if you screw up). She is worth a lot of $$$. We, being their technology provider, got an urgent call that they needed someone on site because she had planned a last minute presentation to some big-shot overseas investors. Flights were booked in a rush, we juggled our team around and everything seemed to be good to go. But an hour before, flying conditions deteriorated. Our flight was cancelled. Panic broke out. Lots of stress amongst all their staff. Taking the initiative, one of our Directors packed the necessary tools in his car and packed his bag, left home after dinner, and drove 12 hours overnight non-stop over 1,000kms to be there first thing in the morning.
Ready before the presentation started. To the shock of our client who’ve never seen someone do that.

Once people hear this story — they never question our service.

Suggested reading: Dan and Chip Heath — Made To Stick

Find a Bigger Purpose

People are excited by, and get behind, big visions and lofty goals. More money is thrown to back moonshots than some 10% improvement on an existing product. So find and proclaim a bigger purpose. A big purpose motivates people. A bigger purpose wakes people up from the noise and demands attention. A bigger purpose instills the perception that you are someone special to be able to tackle it, and hence are more likely to be supported by others.

Example

I ran a direct marketing campaign some time ago, where we were trying to get businesses to install solar panels. I did this by getting the postal addresses and decision makers of virtually all small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in nearby areas and sent them personal sales letters. There were three versions of this letter that I sent. The content of each was 99% the same, the only difference being the headline and sub-headline. First was all about money they could save and profits for their business — financial motivation, The second was about making the business look “more green” — PR spin, The third presented a higher purpose of reversing the trend against global warming, doing it together as a state, and saving money. The third sales letter had nearly 4 times as many responses. Several years on and we are still getting leads from this letter.

Suggested reading: Al Ries & Jack Trout — Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind

Provide an Experience, Not Utility

Yes your expertise, product knowledge, great service, and competitive pricing is wonderful and your product does this thing that no one else does. However, it is the experience and how the user feels that outweighs any utility or logical reasoning you could conjure up.
The experience and feeling is all that marketing is about. The experience and feeling is what people remember and come back for again and again. Those who can’t evoke feelings, struggle with their sales. The experience and feeling is what people share with others — not the utilitarian benefit.

Example

There was a gap in the market. We came across an opportunity to manufacture our own product to fill this gap. Quite a profitable one we thought. So we hustled and bustled to source a manufacturer and spent months developing a solution that was the absolute best it could be — quality, reliability, functionality, and cost-effectiveness. But, even though it cost less, and was an obviously better solution, It didn’t sell. How can a solution which is better and cheaper, not sell? What gives?
We then redesigned the look of the product to be very minimalistic, added a bright logo to the front, used higher grade finish, and personally dropped off the first sample to each new customer along with a hand-written note and a small bag of goodies. The product functionality wise was 100% the same.
We sold 1,500 units in the first year at double the price we originally set for the product. And we continue to get new clients through word of mouth, without much additional marketing required.

Suggested reading: Seth Godin — Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable

Core 2: DIRECTION – How and Where Your Message Should be Directed

Go Where You Will Be First

Being in a place where you have no competition is better than being where you think there is a huge market. Make your consumer perceive there is no competition. Be first in that space that you create for your product, and entrench yourself so deep in your customer’s mind, it’ll be hard to get you out. Being first means no competition. Being first means you typically enjoy the largest share even when others arrive. Being first means easier to capture attention, easier to bring the guard down of the buyer, and harder to get you out when the war begins. Caveat — being first in a space where no one cares and there is no demand is useless, read “testing” below.

Example

A product we manufactured was a powered speaker. It was competing against the millions of other powered speakers already in the market. Why would anyone buy it? Why did we even create it? Well, when we gave it its own category as the “First powered speaker designed specifically for the classroom”, anyone looking for a classroom speaker knew what fit the bill better than anything else. Similarly, a company that I was consulting and later became a partner with, had released a watch that had a patented timer function. Essentially you set a time and it counted down. Every digital watch on the planet, along with phones, have this feature. So what?
Well, because it was designed by having only this feature (aside from telling the time), the category we put it in was the “first productivity watch”. Essentially you set the undisrupted amount of time you want and START. Now anyone that wanted to be productive was reeled in to want to know more.

Suggested reading: Al Ries and Jack Trout — The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

Focus On The Small, Not Big

A product for everyone is a product for no one. There is a tendency to open our wings and think we can fly to all parts of the world. No. A product must be directed at a very small niche of the market. A niche that your product solves a massive problem for. Then this niche needs to do the flying on your behalf. A targeted niche is already looking for a solution when yours comes along. A targeted niche will be so happy their problem is solved, they will tell every human being they cross paths with.
Getting a targeted niche to love you (also referred to as the early adopters) is the only way to ignite a fire quick enough to reach the mass market.

Example

I kept banging my head against the wall trying to introduce a teaching technology that I was confident could change education. I was in charge of all the sales when we set this business up, and this technology (the interactive projector) was a completely new way of teaching that would eliminate Smart Boards (which were firmly entrenched as the industry standard for classrooms worldwide). As the usual story goes, we had an uphill battle, we knew the solution was better yada yada, but no one was listening. Because when you’re speaking to everyone, no one person can hear you. *Cue the dramatic music* So I streamlined our approach to reach ONLY those teachers who had NO technology in their classroom, and weren’t able to afford a solution. They were motivated (much more so than those that already had a Smart Board). So they were highly responsive to our solution. They became evangelists. They ignited the fire and the news spread through to the masses. Today this technology is the most commonly used across the country, and Smart has stopped manufacturing their boards.

Suggested reading: Clayton Christensen — The Innovator’s Dilemma

Test Early And Always Be Testing

We love the idea of creating inside our box, getting so immersed and on a tangent that we pay zero attention to how people will respond outside of that box. The moment it is put out there for everyone to see, the shock of a lifetime faces us. The motto is to test early and never stop testing. Testing saves you heartache — you can maneuver before you’re too deep in. Testing saves you time. And there is nothing that is more precious than time — my post on why you have absolutely no time in your life. Testing is the hard stuff that we avoid, but by avoiding it, we get ourselves into the harder stuff when it is too late.

Example

I spent over 2 years designing a “Coffee Cup That Will Make Coffee Taste Better”. This venture included: hiring someone to do the research (months & months), applying for patents, having a product designer on board,
3D prints being done that are siting in front of me as a I type this. And so much more. So all this while not “getting outside the building” — once I did, I realised no one wanted it — not the way I had created it. What a waste of time, energy, money and effort. But by getting outside the building and getting feedback over a couple of weeks, I now know exactly what is required. Which could have saved me 2 years. Testing continues throughout. Testing continues today. It’ll continue tomorrow. It’ll continue the day after. The only time it stops is when you’re ignoring the hard stuff to do the easy.

Suggested reading: Eric Ries — The Lean Startup

Core 3: CONTENT – How to Optimize Your Message

This is the area where people spend most of their time when working on their marketing, yet if sections 1 and 2 are down pat — this is surprisingly easy. You don’t need to spend days message-tweaking.

The are 8 key rules to follow, treat them as a checklist:

✔ Is your headline catching people’s attention?
Spend as much time on your headline as your story, if you don’t capture interest from your headline, you don’t really have a message.
✔ Have you put your key message right up front?
We meander around too long. As soon as your headline catches someone’s attention they are in that chasm deciding whether to continue reading or fall off.
SMASH THEM right at that point with the key message, the key benefit, the key offering, the thing they really want and will get if they continue reading. Don’t wait until you build up to it, by the time you’ve done building up, everyone is already gone.
✔ Could you make your content shorter?
Is there something you can cut out that wouldn’t change the message? Well, cut it out. Do the hard thing.
✔ Could you make it simpler?
Marketing isn’t about winning the Shakespearean award for the best writer of the century. It is about simplicity, brevity, and 100% comprehension. If there is anything that could be interpreted in another way — change it. If there is anything that could be put in simpler English— do it.
If you can’t say it in one line, maybe it isn’t worth saying?
✔ Can you make it easier to read?
Visually. Big chunky paragraphs, and a strew of words from top to bottom is going to look like an obstacle without a drinks break for the reader.
Breaking up the load of information will make it easier to digest for the reader. There is a reason you are reading up to this point afterall.
✔ Have you shown credibility? (or social proof)
Find ways to display credibility.
If you’ve worked with Richard Branson, why haven’t you mentioned it?
If you’ve done work with a similar company than whom you’re trying to pitch, why haven’t you mentioned it?
If you’ve done neither, express how you are aiming for the stars, in a few years you’ll be the best in whatever you do and X Y Z are who you’re also reaching out to. People love the bigger vision remember? And mentioning those names they are familiar with — it is indirect credibility.
Suggested reading: Robert Cialdini — The Psychology of Influence
✔ Is what you’re offering scarce?
The more scarce your offering, the more motivated someone is to buy it — scarce things are perceived to be more valuable. Without lying, make it scarcer than it is now.

The post Never Read Another Marketing Book Again: This Post Will Make You A World Class Marketer. Guaranteed. appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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Content Marketing as a concept sounds very simple; it is about creating great content that viewers would love to consume and promoting that content, so more users can find your magnificent piece of content. The content marketing process should have an end goal; the goal could be to get more leads, increase in sales or simply spread brand awareness.

Most businesses understand the role content marketing plays with search engines. Users spend more time searching Google for answers than asking a family member or friend. This is where content can help answer the questions posed by the users.

Unfortunately, since it hardly costs any money for anyone to create content online the pollution is very high.

Content marketing is often misunderstood by many beginners to be just promoting the content on social media – it is far from it. To get more mileage out of your content you need to promote in many different sources. That is exactly what this infographic has done; it provides you with more than 50 content marketing ideas. Remember not every channel is great for every piece of content or industry so take the time to evaluate your content’s ROI so you can cut the dead weight in the next round of content promotion.

Infographic source: Social Media Marketo

Some Content Marketing Ideas

• Try Quora and Reddit
• Share Expert’s Content in Your Social Channels to Build Up Reputation and Authority
• Paid Content Promotion with Outbrain, Taboola or StumbleUpon Ads
• Post Your Content on Medium and Find an Appropriate Publication
• Leverage SEO and Keywords
• Spy on Your Competitors to See:
  • Which Influencers have Shared Their Content and
  • Where They have got Links From

Conclusion

We have presented many content marketing ideas in a weekly format so it is easy to understand and it makes a visually compelling story. Each content promotion technique can take longer to master depending on knowledge, experience, team size and budget. The key is to gain experience, learn and be consistent with your content promotional activities.

What if sales enablement stopped being perceived as a cost center? What if, instead of thinking of it as training, or onboarding, or the resting place for an organization’s broken things, we thought of sales enablement as a strategic investment—a proactive function that actually enables sales to sell more, sell higher and sell faster? According to Roderick Jefferson, we may already be there.

“Enablement is no longer about putting butts in seats or how many folks we accredit or certify. We are really here to help drive incremental revenue,” Roderick explained.

As the Head of Global Enablement at Oracle Marketing Cloud, Roderick has had ample experience building enablement programs and actually driving revenue through enablement initiatives, through a number of mergers and acquisitions to boot. His team was even recognized as SiriusDecisions’ Onboarding Program of the Year in 2015, which as Roderick explains, “was like winning an Emmy for sales success.” On the newest episode of the Sales Enablement Shift podcast, Roderick shares what it takes to drive incremental revenue through sales enablement, which as you can imagine doesn’t stop once budget is secured.

“Enablement is really an end-to-end process that spokes out to every other part of the organization,” Roderick shared. Sales enablement should act as a hub that interacts with all parts of the organization, including but not limited to sales, marketing, product marketing, HR, training, and marketing. But some of the most important individuals that enablement must work with and align to are the first line sales managers. At the end of the day, these are the people who will ensure enablement practices, processes, collateral and tools are used by client-facing reps. “I’m sitting in on forecast calls and running needs assessments to really see what’s happening out in the real world and figure out where we can bring the most value” as an enablement team, Roderick explained. “We set ourselves up for failure if we don’t meet the needs of our first line managers.”

And there is no better way to align with these individuals than through metrics. If sales enablement is able to tie its metrics to sales success, it becomes a revenue generator, not a cost center. Roderick cites three major groups of metrics that each enablement team should track:

• Deal size and productivity: These metrics include time to productivity or first close, average deal size (which can and should be broken down by region, team, product, and even individual rep.
• Downstream inside sales activities: These metrics should include all of the activities that lead to qualified leads. This lets you maximize the activities that result in the generation of qualified leads.
• Collateral usage and frequency: These content-focused metrics should include the number of content downloads and views per rep, when reps are using certain content with prospect (by stage in the sales cycle or buyer’s journey). This should allow you to compare low and high performers’ usage of collateral to emulate high performance at lower levels.

At the end of the day, if we are thinking of enablement as a “fixer,” we’re setting ourselves up for failure. Sales is not broken, but it can always be better. Running enablement as a revenue generator and not a cost center starts with shifting the mindset away from training and onboarding, and succeeds by working closely with first line managers and aligning enablement metrics to sales success. You can learn more about Roderick’s award-winning enablement team and tactics in this episode of the Sales Enablement Shift podcast. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Your company is growing, your product is awesome, customers love it and churn is low. You’ve raised some substantial funding and are ready to accelerate your growth. Awesome – let’s dig in.

In the first post of this series we covered the basic tenets of lead generation, including how to forecast the lead volume required to support your sales team as well as an introduction to audience targeting and channel strategy. Now we’ll dive deeper into lead generation channel strategy and how to optimize budget allocation across channels.

Choosing Your Channels

Since you’ve been selling for a while and have a solid base of active and successful customers, you should have a good idea of who your ideal customer is and what audience you need to target to reach that buyer. Now you just need to decide where to deploy your freshly raised capital to most effectively drive leads into your sales pipeline via your company’s website.

Your site is well optimized and you’ve implemented lead capture forms on your key conversion pages to automatically sync new lead info to your CRM software and marketing automation system. So which channels should you use considering your budget? The answer to this all-important question is found in two places: your CRM and web analytics data.

Look to your web analytics data to see which channels are driving the most traffic and leads, and utilize your CRM data to identify the channels with the greatest value potential. Weighing the average cost-per-lead (CPL) for each channel against its average lead yield (revenue generated per lead – you can learn more about that here) will show you where you can drive the most value for each marketing dollar spent.

With this information, along with some channel-specific research, you can build a channel strategy model and see how budget allocation changes will affect forecasted volume and spend efficiency. Let’s dive deeper into this concept by building a simple example model of our own. In this model, we will consider the following criteria:

• Channel: a specific mode or avenue for advertising / lead generation (i.e. Organic Search, Paid Search, Display Ads, Social, etc.)
• Budget: the total spend you have available for a given channel
• Average CPL: the average cost-per-lead in a specific channel; calculated by cohort spend divided by cohort leads
• Expected Leads: the total budget for a channel divided by its average cost-per-lead
• Max Lead Volume: the max number of leads a channel can produce based on constraints such as total traffic / impression volume, projected based on historical or forecasted channel data
• Average Lead Yield: the average revenue generated per converted lead within the measured cohort
• Return On Ad Spend: cohort revenue divided by cohort spend – can also be calculated as average lead yield divided by average cost-per-lead

Digging In

In the table above we can see that in this example we have a strict monthly budget of $100k to distribute across channels. In this scenario, we also have a max lead volume for each channel, which is based either on our historic data or forecasted data for each channel. This model is excluding a few layers of complexity and many confounding factors which also need to be considered to best optimize your channel strategy; however, for the sake of this explanation we will ignore these items as well as traffic performance metrics and focus solely on lead efficiency.

Later in this blog series we’ll discuss channel research in-depth and how to build forecasts for channel traffic, lead volumes and cost. For now, let’s focus on finding the optimal spend per channel given the constraints imposed by the example situation above. In order to find the optimal spend with this model, we plug in our total cohort budget for all channels in the total row, cell B6 (highlighted in orange above – assuming the top left corner cell is A1).

In column G, we calculate our key metric, which is Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). To simplify calculations we will use a decimal number to represent this metric rather than a percentage value. Remember that the formula for ROAS is lead yield (column F) divided by CPL (column C). Sum up these values for all channels in the totals row for this column. This value will be critical to completing this model.

Now to determine the value of each cell in the “Budget” column (column B), use the following formula: channel budget = (total budget / (combined ROAS / individual channel ROAS)).

In the table above, to calculate the budget for Display Advertising, the formula would look like the following: Display Advertising budget = ($B$6/($G$6/G2)). Drag this formula down to get the optimal budget values for each channel given the input values for CPL, Lead Yield, and Total Budget. Based on your calculated budget, you can then project your number of expected leads and expected revenue for each channel.

Goal seek to adjust as necessary to conform to any constraints such as max potential lead volume for a particular channel. In this example we will set the Social Advertising budget cell to a hardcoded value of $35,000 (highlighted in orange – before change above, after change below) given the expected limit of potential leads in this channel. Then we will simply adjust the total budget distributed across the other channels to account for this change, as well as the sum of the ROAS values.

See the updated example table below:

What’s Next

Of course, once you’ve analyzed your CRM data and dug through your Google Analytics account to dissect your full-funnel performance, you’ll need to do some additional research to properly gauge channel growth potential and finalize planning. For example, analyzing your traffic performance metrics, which we skipped over earlier, is a necessary part of finding the optimal budget allocation for your channel strategy.

We’ll look into these metrics further in addition to topics including cohort analysis, leading indicators of lead quality and testing new lead generation channel strategies in my next post on advanced optimization. Until then, check out Kissmetrics’ 10 commandments for a lead gen website as well as Christopher Janz’s guest post on Andrew Chen’s Saas growth blog focusing on cohort analysis — a primer for my next post.