It used to be a joke among a small group of people… The Sales Process Club. I met one of the original members more than a decade ago at an industry conference where we both were speakers. I was sharing some of my early thinking on sales processes and their importance to sales performance, and my newfound friend smiled and said, “Hey, you should join our club.”
Learning ability is probably the most important skill you can have.
Take it from Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel, authors of "Make It Stick: The Science Of Successful Learning."
"We need to keep learning and remembering all our lives," they write. "Getting ahead at work takes mastery of job skills and difficult colleagues. ... If you're good at learning, you have an advantage in life."
And to learn something is to be able to remember it, say the authors, two of whom are psychology professors at Washington University in St. Louis.
Unfortunately, lots of the techniques for learning that we pick up in school don't help with long-term recall — like cramming or highlighting.
To get over these bad habits, we scoured "Make It Stick" for learning tips.
Here are the takeaways:
When you're attempting to recall an idea, method, or technique from memory, you're retrieving. Flash cards are a great example: They force you to recall an idea from memory, unlike a technique like highlighting where you're not burning anything into your brain. The reason retrieval is so effective is that it strengthens the neural pathways associated with a given concept.
Psychologists call it the "testing effect": When you try to recall a piece of information, it becomes easier to remember in the future. The authors explain that academic exams don't have to be just a way to evaluate students — they can also be a learning tool.
When you try to put a new idea into your own words, you're elaborating.
"The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to prior knowledge," the authors write, "the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later."
For instance, if you're in physics class and trying to understand heat transfer, try to tie the concept into your real-life experiences, say, by imagining how a warm cup of coffee disperses heat into your hands.
When you work on a variety of things at once, you're interleaving. If you're trying to understand a subject — from the basics of economics to hitting a pitch — you're going to learn better if you mix up your examples.
A sports case: Batters who do batting practice with a mix of fastballs, change-ups, and curveballs hit for a higher average. The interleaving helps because when you're out there in the wild, you need to first discern what kind of problem you're facing before you can start to find a solution, like a ball coming from a pitcher's hand.
When you try to give an answer before it's given to you, you're generating. "By wading into the unknown first and puzzling through it, you are far more likely to learn and remember the solution than if somebody first sat down to teach it to you," the authors write.
In one study, students who looked at paired words like "foot-shoe" had a harder time remembering the second word later than students who looked at clues like "foot-s——e."
In an academic setting, you could work on finding your own answers before class starts. In a professional setting, you could supply your own ideas when you're stuck before talking with your boss.
When you take a few moments to review what happened with a project or meeting, you're reflecting. You might ask yourself a few questions: What went well? Where can you improve? What does it remind you of?
Harvard Business School researchers have found reflective writing to be super powerful. Just 15 minutes of written reflection at the end of the day increased performance by 23% for one group of employees.
When you're using an acronym or image to recall something, you're using a mnemonic. The hall of fame includes abbreviations — Roy G. Biv for the colors of the spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) — and rhyming, like "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
"Mnemonics are not tools for learning per se," the authors write, "but for creating mental structures that make it easier to retrieve what you have learned."
When you get feedback that reveals your ignorance to you, you're calibrating. "Calibration is simply the act of using an objective instrument to clear away illusions and adjust your judgment to better reflect reality."
This is necessary since we all suffer from "cognitive illusions": We think we understand something when we really don't. So taking a quiz — or gathering feedback from a colleague — helps you to identify those blind spots.
For a deeper dig into the science of learning, make sure to pick up "Make It Stick." It's an illuminating read.
Drake Baer contributed reporting on a previous version of this article.
SEE ALSO: 5 strategies for remembering everything you learn
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Are you using LinkedIn?
If you’re selling to other businesses (B2B) then LinkedIn is the place to be. With over 400 million users it’s like having a huge Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool at your fingertips.
But are you getting the most out of it? Be honest. Are you using it as part of your social media strategy – do you have a plan of attack? Or are you there because everyone else is there and you just want to put a cross in the ‘create LinkedIn profile’ box?
If you’re struggling to use LinkedIn to grow your business then maybe there are just a few simple changes that you need to make to turn things around.
So here are 7 simple tweaks that will make you a LinkedIn expert.
Probably the main reason that people drift when it comes to LinkedIn is that they just don’t have clear objectives. They just seem to be making up the numbers and not really getting much in return.
But setting objectives is going to give you a whole lot of clarity. This is probably the biggest change in mindset that you will have and from here you’ll find that things become a whole lot simpler.
If you think about it, all you need to ask yourself is “what do I want to get out of LinkedIn” and then try to focus on these three areas:
In fact there’s no problem if you want to focus on all three. Great, that’s excellent. It doesn’t matter that each requires a slightly different approach. The point is that you are now setting clear objectives and that is a solid foundation for you to build on.
OK, you’ve got your objectives. Great. You’ve established the end game.
Now you need to match those objectives with the people you need to reach out to and include into your network.
Depending on the objective(s) you’ve set you need to create an Avatar for each one.
If media exposure is what you’re after then these are going to be editors, contributors, bloggers and copywriters. Geographically you’re probably not to worried where they’re located because your objective is to raise your media profile.
If you’re looking for partners that just depends on your type of business. A locally based business is going to have a completely different requirement than an Ecommerce business who can cast a much wider net.
If it’s leads you’re after then depending on the nature of your business this will dictate what your Avatar looks like. If you’re selling big ticket, complex services then you’re looking at senior decision maker whereas lower value services will mean that you can set your sights lower.
But don’t just think this is for B2B. If you’re B2C business then media coverage and partnerships are definitely where you need to be looking rather than lead generation.
Once you’ve identified them, LinkedIn’s advanced search facility allows you to narrow in on your targets. Now you can start to identify the exact people who can help you achieve your objectives.
You know what you want and you know who you need to help you. Great.
Now you need to maintain that discipline with a structured process.
There’s no right or wrong here.
The only thing you need to focus on is documenting a process that takes you from unknown to on the radar to trusted relationship.
Now that’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not going to happen with just one email.
Your process needs to be a multi-step process that focuses on building trust and demonstrating that you are a credible and reliable partner.
Imagine you’re at a business seminar or conference and you have the opportunity to network. Do you just head up to people and start pitching to them?
Of course not.
You engage with them. You understand what they do and you explain what you do. There’s a certain formality to it initially, but you’re just learning about one another. You’re developing trust.
This is exactly what you need to do with LinkedIn. It’s exactly the same situation.
Get to know your contacts. Share ideas with them and look for ways that you can help them before you ask for something in return.
Nowadays, more than ever, content is central to your success.
You need to commit to creating the best content that you can. Content that educates, informs and solves problems.
Content that clearly states: I am an expert – you can trust me.
Whilst your blog will always be the centre of your online universe LinkedIn also allows you to post content.
You can either post regular updates – maybe two or three a day maybe featuring content created by your contacts or post an update on your own content from your blog.
You can also post long form content in LinkedIn. Consider your target audience(s) and create content that will engage them. Sure, creating long form content takes time but it’s worth the effort and you can always repurpose content from your own blog.
You’ll often hear people telling you that your LinkedIn profile page is super important and that’s absolutely true.
But you’re not using LinkedIn to get a job – you’re there to grow your business. So rather than setting up your profile to read like a glorified CV make it solution-oriented. Focus it on how you can help, things that make you stand out. Things that make you unique.
Of course that means filling in all of the options available and using video, slides, graphics and written content to make sure you stand out when your connections check you out.
Whether you run your own group or you participate in groups never forget how powerful a question is.
If you’ve ever participated in LinkedIn groups you’ve probably noticed that they will often end up with very little two way conversation and people just promoting their own content.
But LinkedIn Groups can be an excellent way to network and asking questions to the group is a powerful technique. It allows you to listen and to understand where the pain points exist and this can provide you with a constant flow of ideas for content.
So try to stop promoting yourself and get into the habit of asking questions and stimulating the conversation.
LinkedIn is an extremely powerful tool for growing your business when used with a structured plan.
Start by understanding what objectives you are focused on. Once you know this you can start to identify the people who can help you achieve a successful outcome.
Use a multi-step, structured plan that is focused on building relationships and centres around creating high quality content and presenting you as a solution provider.
I’ll jump to the bottom line, then retrace my steps. “Customer buy holes in walls, not drills.” Actually, they may not be buying holes in walls, they may actually be looking to attach something to the wall…..
Yeah, I know you’ve heard that old maxim or a variant for years, possibly decades. Perhaps the reason the saying is constantly resurrected is we are constantly forgetting it.
Take a moment and reflect on the last dozen prospecting calls or emails you received. What were they about? Probably 80% of the legitimate ones (not those in your SPAM filter) were about a product or solution. Opening my inbox this morning, I was inundated with prospecting emails:
The list goes on, all presenting their products and capabilities, but none tapping into things that might be useful to me.
They focused on what they were interested in, their products/services and their desire to have me hear about them.
They didn’t even present problem or opportunity scenarios that I might be having–which their products addressed.
Customers and prospects don’t care about you, they care about themselves and their businesses. They, like all of us, are drowning in complexity. They struggle to get their jobs done, at the same time want to learn, improve, grow, and address new opportunities. Most of all they want to be successful.
Engaging our customers can be so simple. It’s just a matter of finding out what they want to do, engaging them in conversations about that, and demonstrating how you can help them. But why don’t we do this?
Recently, I’ve been having a number of discussions on account based strategies, major/global account coverage. To be honest, I’m stunned with some of the thinking about growing account based businesses.
Most of the thinking is dominated by retention strategies. Keeping the customer, if you have a subscription type of offering, getting the renewal. Wrapped around this is some notion of upsell/cross sell, “Can we expand the relationship with the current customer (individuals)?”
Speaking with one colleague, he observed that too many organizations are focused on just “protecting” the current base, they are afraid of disrupting the relationship with the customer and it’s impact on the base business. (Imagine being afraid to disrupt the customer, isn’t that our job?)
Much of this thinking drives an “account maintenance” philosophy, as a result, we tend to look towards “farmers” or relationship builders as our account managers.
This thinking causes us to miss huge growth opportunities, and short changes the account of the value we might create with them!
Before I go further, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, my mindset on accounts is that it’s our God-given right to 100% share of customer. It’s the responsibility of the account manager to identify and pursue all opportunities in the account.
This mindset isn’t different from the hunter assigned a geographic or industry oriented territory. Hunters, in this scenario, are aggressively looking to find and qualify new opportunities in the territory. They relentlessly seek out customers in that geography/industry.
Isn’t that what we should be doing in our account programs? Shouldn’t we be aggressively looking beyond the current groups we deal with, expanding our coverage of the account to find new opportunities? Perhaps it’s an expansion of current solutions, finding everyone in the account that can get value from these solutions. Perhaps it’s presenting new solutions to current customers in the account (upsell) or going to parts of the account we haven’t done business with, presenting these new solutions.
I’m hard pressed to understand why we have a different orientation to account based growth than we have in geographic or industry based growth. I’m hard pressed to understand why we don’t put some of our best hunters into these accounts to accelerate the growth of the relationship, the revenue we drive and the value we extend to all parts of the account.
As a young sales person, I was assigned a single account—a major New York money center bank. The IT executives occupied the 11th and 12th floors of 55 Water Street in Manhattan. As I engaged with those executives, they felt they had enough computing capacity to cover their needs for the coming 18 months. There were some minor upgrades, some maintenance contracts, and other things I could sell — but none that would enable me to achieve my quota or goals for the account. Out of desperation, I started thinking, “Where can I find more opportunity to drive greater computing needs in the account? If I couldn’t drive the demand on IT, I couldn’t make my goals.
This desperation drove me to wandering around the bank. I visited Wire Transfer/Foreign Trade, Check Processing, Retail Operations, Trust, Credit Card Operations, Commercial Lending…….any group I could find. I agressively looked for opportunities that could drive new sales and growth within the IT organization. I found opportunities for new credit card processing systems, new point of sale applications at the retail branches, over the years I kept expanding my search, building the business we had from this account significantly.
It’s not any different from what we expect of our hunters, except the concept of the “territory” has changed. Rather than a geographic or industry orientation, it was a single account. Like any hunter, my job was to wander around the account, prospecting and finding new opportunities. It wasn’t just to maintain the relationship and retain the current business.
Our goal in every territory is to maximize our penetration of the territory. It is our God-given right to 100% share of territory–but it’s our jobs as sales people to hunt and find that opportunity–whether the territory is defined by geography, an industry segment, or a single corporate logo.
Are you assigning hunters to all of your territories, are they maximizing your growth and penetration in those territories?
Halfway through our first cup of coffee, we cut to the chase. She’d asked to meet for a specific reason.
“I’m going to change careers and I want your advice. I want to get out of sales completely.”
She caught me off guard. I understood changing companies. After all, 43 percent of salespeople are actively looking for a new job right now. That wasn’t big news. But, wanting to get out of sales completely? I couldn’t get my mind around it. This was this coming from one of the best sales professionals I knew.
She went on to explain the current abysmal state of affairs inside her organization. They were losing market share, facing new, disruptive competition and struggling to keep up with a massive shift in customer expectations. The organization was aggressively removing “cost” from the business — which meant not investing in the future and not responding to reality fast enough. She was starting to succumb to a very challenging, uncertain situation.
The unfortunate outcome was her shaken self-confidence. She was going to miss her performance target for the first time ever. Her conclusion? Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for the future of professional selling.
She was wrong. I let her know it.
“This has nothing to do with you. The organization and leadership are failing you. You aren’t failing. They aren’t putting you in a position to compete and win. You don’t have the leadership, strategy or resources you need. That isn’t on you. This has nothing to do with your ability to sell and everything to do with what and where you are selling.”
Selling is a game of confidence. Producers need to believe they can win.
She eventually opted to change companies but stay in the game. Good call. She is crushing it today. Her story is a common one I see playing out inside many sales organizations. After studying the relationship between engagement and sales performance for the last couple of years, we learned something pretty startling:
More than 80 percent of salespeople would consider leaving sales altogether if they could make the same amount of money in another role. That sentiment eventually has an impact on performance.
According to an August 2016 survey by Aon, Anaplan and The Sales Management Association,
just 60 percent of front-line sellers hit their goal in the last full fiscal year.
To help sales leaders respond, we published the results of our research in a new ebook, Adapt & Thrive: How Sales Leaders Can Prepare to Win in a 2020 World.
Here are a few more stats you might find surprising:
17% of salespeople are fully engaged. 46% are disengaged or under-engaged.
13% of non-sales employees are fully engaged. 57% are disengaged or under-engaged.
43% of salespeople are actively looking for a new job, compared to just 26% of non-sales employees.
When salespeople are compensated based on their performance (through commissions or bonuses), they are much more engaged.
63% of commission-based salespeople are fully or moderately engaged, versus 43% of noncommission salespeople.
Salespeople who receive the training they need to do their job well are 10 times more likely to be fully engaged.
How should leadership respond? I share the most important thing sales leaders can do right now and a few ideas from my best boss in this short video on leadership:
VIDEO: Leadership Lessons from my Best Boss
In 2020, the sales organizations that win will be the ones that are the most prepared.
1. Go first. Before you ask your team to commit to performance goals, tell them what they can expect from you. Get specific! Tell them what you’ll do to help them meet their goals. Set high expectations for yourself and deliver on your promises consistently.
2. Promote continuous learning. Build a culture of continuing education. Assign teaching topics that challenge reps to stretch and grow. Share case studies from outside the organization. Champion mentoring and encourage self-development.
3. Leverage the power of storytelling. Include customer case studies in every sales meeting. Focus on customer outcomes and reinforce your compelling value proposition and opportunity to create customer success. Find ways to share customer testimonials (through customer panels, Q&As or recorded customer interviews). Elevate belief and commitment by encouraging everyone to own these success stories.
4. Check in. Provide feedback and have future-directed conversations every 30 days. Annual performance reviews are dead. Today’s top producer requires a more consistent feedback loop and expects the opportunity to contribute thinking and feedback to help the business improve. Leaders are listeners. Master the art of effective, two-way communication.
5. Drive performance. Maintain an obsessive focus on performance targets and customer outcomes. Constantly recruit and develop the best sales talent. Remove barriers and provide the resources and coaching that reps need to compete and win. Create an environment of clearly defined expectations and accountability. Continue to adapt and make forward progress as market conditions and customers evolve.
Keep reading. Get five more tips, plus sales leader insights and ideas from six of the world’s leading sales organizations.
The smart city space is basking in interest from global governments and companies looking to invest where environment and technology intersect. This intersection was formerly considered the domain of cleantech, and under the smart city mantle it may be so again.
A recent Bloomberg article raised the notion that many cleantech startups are rebranding as smart city companies to ride the wave of investor interest in the sector.
After years of cleantech being seen as a venture capital pariah, these companies are finding opportunity in attracting fresh capital under the guise of smart city startups.
Jenny Fielding of incubator Techstars says her group is busy pitching their latest cohort of startups to venture capitalists (VCs) as smart city companies.
“We’re not packaging this as cleantech; we’re saying these are smart cities,” says Fielding. “That’s a very popular term right now, and people are throwing a lot of money toward that proposition. I’ve seen that what’s old becomes new again, and it just has a different name and a different business model.”
And indeed, smart cities are where the smart money is at… at least for the near future. According to report by research firm Frost & Sullivan the smart city market is anticipated to grow to $1.57 trillion by 2020.
Companies branded as cleantech suffered serious reputational damage a few years ago after several major hardware investments tanked and VCs began to sour on the segment.
Notable black eyes to the cleantech sector included Nanosolar Inc. which ended up having to auction off its assets in 2013 after drawing in hundreds of millions of dollars from venture investors.
Another lemon was solar firm Solyndra which collapsed in 2011 after attracting over $1.5 billion in funding.
Amid rampant smart city enthusiasm, local governments are propelling the rehabilitation of companies working in fields formerly considered cleantech. Cities are working with venture capitalists to fund innovations where clean infrastructure, Internet of Things technology and big data intersect.
And this funding renaissance is translating into a flood of financial incentives from cities including tax benefits, subsidized offices and funds for incubators.
Fielding says that cities are an ideal launch pad for newly renamed cleantech startups, because of the huge fonts of data that can be collected on energy, air quality and infrastructure.
“Cleantech, in a way, was the 1.0 version, and now if you wrap connectivity, internet and artificial intelligence and all those things that can make cleantech smart, I think there’s a value proposition that investors and the market can get their head around,” said Fielding
The post Are smart city startups the 2.0 version of cleantech firms? appeared first on ReadWrite.
The insights and experience that come from interactive, interpersonal exchange — be it a salon, forum, conference, or a virtual roundtable — offer a unique experience that simply can’t be replicated in other formats and channels.
Getting the right people in the room is key to your event’s success, and no audience is more challenging than the C-suite. The group is highly desired by marketers, but also frustratingly tough to convene. Top executives won’t take time away from the office unless they are convinced they’ll get significant value, and they will readily punt an invitation to their team if the case is not persuasive.
In my work helping companies bring executive clients to the table, I have found three core elements to boost C-suite attendance and participation. The principles hold true whether the event is in-person or virtual.
Content — or your event’s agenda — is the primary hook and it needs to be tailored specifically to your C-suite audience. Executives seek intriguing, surprising, or useful ideas that address their greatest business challenges. They also crave solutions that push beyond common wisdom. Outcomes and impact matter; benefits and features don’t. Executives often shy away from events — particularly those held by vendors — because they fear the sales pitch. Keep the content focused on the two or three things they need to do to create value now, shared in the form of a story, and you will get their attention.
Co-creation is the most effective tool for creating a compelling executive event. What does it involve? Co-creation requires that you invest time and resources up front to collaborate with key, high-value participants; together you test, shape, and vet the topic agenda, content focus, speakers, and experts. Their advice will help you uncover the most timely and critical issues, and even develop a shared sense of ownership of the event. Co-creation also uncovers useful feedback to help shape the speakers’ presentations for maximum value. And participants who contribute to the program tend to promote and advocate for the event to their peers and colleagues, enhancing its appeal.
Co-creation is the most effective tool for creating a compelling executive event via @RoanneNeuwirth.
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Connection to peers and experts makes the case for relevance. Executives value insights from those they consider their true peers, and they appreciate the opportunity to listen to and learn from the source. Craft the speaker roster with peer leaders who can share their case studies and lessons learned, and take the opportunity to engage your own executive clients as presenters. Also consider external experts who participants identify as thought-provoking and inspirational. Keep in mind that this is not the time to parade your product managers across the stage; their messages likely won’t resonate with the audience and could detract from the strategic nature of the conversation.
These three elements are requisite for attracting the C-suite to your events, but they are not necessarily sufficient. It’s also important to take stock of why you want to engage executives through an event, and where you are starting from in making the ask. If you don’t have a relationship or some connection in your business to your target executives, getting them to care about your event will be a stretch without a hook or context of some kind. If you are relying on a third party to make cold calls to fill the seats, chances are you will find it a challenge to extend the conversation beyond the meeting, which won’t help your business.
Consider these approaches in shaping your plans and helping boost attendance for your next executive event.
Ask yourself why you want to convene that particular set of executives. Do you know what issues they care about? Do you have credible knowledge to share to help them? Who in your own organization has a relationship to them? What do you want to come out of the event — and is the conversation sustainable by your sales teams and client executives beyond the event? The value proposition should be clear on both sides, or you may want to reconsider your target. For example, if you sell marketing technology, while chief marketing officers are on every vendor’s “must-engage” list, their deputy or peer responsible for marketing technology may be more interested in your message and better able to engage in a valuable dialogue.
One way we establish relevance with a targeted audience is to (a) create a steering committee of peer executives to advise on the program, or (b) connect the program to a customer advisory board or council composed of those peers. Obtaining early input and guidance on what makes a compelling event agenda is critical to turn would-be attendees into co-creators and peer evangelists.
Obtaining early input & guidance on what makes a compelling event agenda is critical via @RoanneNeuwirth.
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Enlisting your own C-suite to help host a peer conversation is a great tool to draw in others and build credibility. If you are hoping to convene CIOs at your next event, for example, get your CIO to serve as the draw by sharing his or her story as part of the program. Commitment from your own executive team reinforces your focus on value-added exchange.
Given their interest in connecting with peers and exchanging ideas, one way to court executives and demonstrate your value as a convener is by hosting small events, such as dinners or forums. Seeded with the right content and attendee mix, these types of sessions create the kind of focused environments executives value, away from the throngs of attendees who flood larger events. If you’re trying to attract the C-suite to the large events you run, consider creating a special executive track or pre-event forum. As you build credibility over time, you will find it easier to bring in a larger C-level audience.
I often hear from marketers that even when they can get executives to come to one event, the executives won’t come back to the next one. This makes it more difficult to use events to build relationships and create an exchange of value over time. With an executive audience, this tends to happen when the meeting team is more focused on filling a seat quota rather than creating the right dialogue, or when the content is salesy, tactical, and unconnected to a broader, more strategic exchange of ideas. Executives want to do things that bring them value, and will stick with you if you overcome these pitfalls. Viewing your events as one element of your more comprehensive engagement strategy will help refocus on what it takes to get traction with this audience.
The bottom line is that you can attract the C-suite to your events, and even make them look forward to coming again and again. But there are no shortcuts; convening worthy peers and valuable ideas is paramount. With the right strategy, setting, and audience, you will find your events C-suite worthy.
This article originally appeared in the October issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly print magazine.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post How to Attract the C-Suite to Your Events appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
CALGARY – Farmer Tony Nichols says he has mixed feelings about news that oil and gas companies in Alberta are accelerating voluntary reclamation of old well sites and pipelines.
The handful of wells on his east central Alberta farm make navigation challenging for his farm equipment, but they’ve also been valuable contributors to farm income, paying between $2,000 and $3,000 each per year.
“Yeah, they’re a nuisance,” says the 75-year-old. “You have to go around them. But you get something for it.”
Energy companies are obligated to eventually restore land and return subsurface Crown leases to the province, though many find it’s a difficult decision to spend money to take an asset off the books.
That’s now changing, industry observers say, in part because legacy wells are depleted and commodity prices are low. But it’s also thanks to new rules imposed last spring by the Alberta Energy Regulator to prevent financially shaky companies from running up reclamation liabilities to unaffordable levels.
The AER rules, in short, say that if a proposed oil and gas transaction results in the estimated value of a company’s assets falling to less than twice its future reclamation liabilities the province may require payment of a deposit to ensure cleanup. If the deposit isn’t made, the province can refuse to transfer the Crown licence to the new owner, essentially scuttling the deal.
To determine if a company will be required to pay a deposit, the AER calculates its licensee liability rating or LLR — and the higher the rating, the better the chance of being free to buy and sell oil and gas properties.
Previously, companies were allowed to have an LLR as low as 1.0 before being restricted. Now companies must have an LLR of at least 2.0.
“Regulations have become a lot more stringent with respect to the LLR … and specifically the amount of unfunded liability the companies are carrying,” said Dave Humphreys, vice-president of operations at Calgary-based intermediate producer Birchcliff Energy (TSX:BIR), which boasts a high LLR of about 12.0.
“Companies are going to have to get with the program or not be able to do deals.”
Humphreys said it can take two to five years to obtain a provincial reclamation certificate after the company decides to abandon a well, depending on the cleanup work required. Birchcliff expects to receive six certificates this year and nine next year after receiving none in 2015 and six in 2014.
According to the AER, the average LLR among 775 licensed companies as of Oct. 1 was 4.36. It says 349 licensees — 45 per cent — had LLRs below 1.0, which will make it difficult for them to buy assets.
The LLR for Canadian Natural Resources (TSX:CNQ), Canada’s largest natural gas producer, is listed as 3.13. The drive to increase that LLR rating is part of the reason it, too, is accelerating its reclamations, said spokeswoman Julie Woo.
“Our 2016 year-to-date number of reclamation certificates submitted to the regulator has increased 37 per cent compared to the total submitted in 2015,” she said in an email, adding that translates into about 490 reclamation applications so far this year, versus 357 in all of 2015.
RBC Dominion Securities oil and gas analyst Shailender Randhawa said in a recent research note he believes producers are budgeting to spend more on reclamations.
RBC estimates there are more than 93,000 oil and gas wells in Western Canada that have been inactive for six months or more as producers turn off the taps rather than sell at current low prices.
About half of the 60,000 active conventional oil wells produce less than 10 barrels per day, accounting for 11 per cent of oil production, says the RBC report.
Nichols, meanwhile, said one well on his farmland has been producing cheques for 23 years despite never actually producing commercial volumes of oil or gas for its owner, Apache Canada.
“We’re not pushing them. That one there, we farm right over it,” he said. “Right now there’s swathed barley on top of it.”
Apache spokesman Paul Wyke said three of the company’s five wells on the Nichols land have been scheduled for reclamation over the next two years, including the one drilled in 1993 that has failed testing and therefore never been produced.
According to the AER, only 24 per cent of the nearly 450,000 provincially regulated oil and gas wells in Alberta have been certified reclaimed, which means the well has been cleaned and capped, the land has been restored to original condition and the lease given back to the government.
Follow @HealingSlowly on Twitter.
The post Tougher Alberta rules convince oil and gas producers to accelerate well cleanups appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.
It's a slow afternoon on the sales floor. Your calendar is so open you're worried someone might try to throw a pass to it.
After refreshing your inbox five times in five minutes, it hits you: "Whatever happened to Alex from Acme Corp.? They were a perfect fit, but then they ghosted me after our initial meeting."
Suddenly you have a purpose again. Opening up your inbox, you search for your last email thread. Staring at their response from two months ago, you are now faced with the following dilemma -- what can you do to create momentum again?
Prospects going dark is a fact of life. How you bring them back into your pipeline is what separates average salespeople from great ones. In this post, I outline the root causes behind prospects going dark, and share strategies you can use to help your dead deals channel their inner Jon Snow.
No matter how well you think your call or meeting went, if the prospect is unwilling to commit to a rock-solid next step, you're wrong -- this behavior should be a huge red flag.
If someone is willing and able to make a purchase, then surely they can commit to a meeting to complete the purchase, or loop in the additional stakeholders necessary to get it done.
Root cause:
Whenever I bring a deal to my manager I think is going to close, one of the first things he asks me is, "Why are they buying?"
It is a simple, but powerful question. If I have a hard time providing a specific, convincing answer, then I know the deal is not as strong as I thought.
The question itself highlights an important criteria for a qualified prospect: Need. If you can't even tell yourself why the prospect needs the software -- and you are the one selling it -- what are the odds they understand it themselves?
Root cause:
You need to go back and make sure you fully understand their business and goals, and where your product or service fits into that landscape.
Ever have a prospect who seems way too relaxed going through a purchasing decision making process?
This is a huge red flag. If the prospect is this lackadasical when it comes to seeking out potential issues, how likely are they really to have spent time figuring out the value the product/service will offer them?
I like to call this one the "too good to be true" sign.
Root cause:
At the end of the day, you can only do so much to prevent prospects from going dark.
A lot of things are out of your control: Internal politics, staffing changes, economic restrictions, and so on can all impact deals regardless of how helpful and hardworking you are. That being said, these three strategies will help you uncover whether a prospect is going dark before it becomes too late to do anything about it.
It's simple, but worth stating: Make sure you stay on your prospect's radar by following up when you say you will. They won't be proactive about reaching out to you unless they're really feeling the business pain, so this goes a long way.
To avoid checking in for the sake of checking in, include relevant information in each touchpoint.
Instead of writing "Hey Phil, Did you get a chance to talk to your CTO about the proposal?", try this instead: "Hey Phil, I wanted to send over a resource I thought would be relevant to your CTO given the questions someone in her role usually has about our product. Let me know if she has any questions?"
If the prospect truly has a need for what you're selling, you are doing them a disservice by not effectively communicating how they would benefit by acting sooner rather than later.
Be sure to really dig in during discovery so you understand the value your offering would provide them, and make sure they understand the repercussions of not moving forward.
Most of the time when a prospect goes dark on you for preventable reasons, it's because they've inaccurately represented their decision making process to you, intentionally or not. The best way to get prospects to take off the costume and show their true intentions? Trying to disqualify them.
It can feel a little scary at first, but try calling the prospect out.
They're not willing to agree to a next step? Ask them why. Don't think they understand the need they have for the software? Ask them to articulate to you the need they have for it. They don't seem to be doing their due diligence in choosing a product? Tell them you are concerned about it.
This way you can face objections head on, instead of having them surface when it is already too late. At best, you'll get to the root cause of their hesitation and be able to address it. At worst, you'll go your seperate ways knowing exactly why the deal did not go forward, instead of your prospect ghosting on you.
Even when you do everything right, prospects will inevitably go dark on you. So, what can you do as a salesperson to help them return like Lazarus to your pipeline? If you don't have a strategic approach to targeting prospects that have gone dark, you'll waste a lot of time digging up graves that have long decomposed. You can use the three techniques below to target and reach out to the prospects that actually are worth your time:
Have a prospect that was ready to buy, but just needed that one feature to make it a worthwhile purchase for them?
Leave a note on them and other similar prospects, and if the feature or service ever becomes part of your offering, you can reach out in a way that is timely and relevant with a an email template. Set up a 'Closed Lost Reason' field on the CRM record for your opportunities, so you know exactly why the deal did not go through. Here's a sample template I use:
Hi [Prospect],
When we last spoke, you mentioned that ______ was a key feature for your team because ________.
Good news! Our product team recently put this exact feature into beta this week -- do you have 15 minutes to walk through the update and catch up?
Trigger events -- like a recent round of funding or a key hire -- are great for identifying new prospects, but they are also a powerful tool for creating new momentum in stalled deals.
Maybe your internal champion was a manager, and they recently got promoted to director. This is a perfect trigger to reach out and see if they have the clout to get the necessary buy in from leadership.
Budget was an issue when you last spoke? An announcement for a new round of funding could be a perfect opportunity to pick up the conversation again.
At many companies management will approve temporary incentives for slower times of year, or just to help kick start some action.
Some common examples are:
These can be a great reason to get in touch with prospects who you know are on the verge of signing up, but just need a tiny little nudge to get them over the edge.
When it comes down to it, you will never be able to prevent prospects from going dark on you. However, oftentimes you can at least determine why they disappear, then use that information to bring salvagable opportunities back to life.
How you ask for something at work depends on your company and your boss.
Maybe you chat in the elevator about the possibility of hiring someone. Maybe you Slack a request for vacation days among a sea of links and cat GIFs. Maybe you make a conference request in person while waiting for the crush around the coffee machine to ease.
Or maybe you email.
Jocelyn Glei, author of "Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done," writes that an effective emailed request frames the question in terms of the value provided to your boss rather than the value it provides you. You also want to convey in that initial note that you've been thoughtful about "any eventualities stemming from the request and have them covered," Glei says.
"If you're asking a question, propose a solution," she wrote. "Email is not a good venue for debate. Thus, messages that offer nothing but a question like — What do you think about X? — are generally ineffectual. Busy people don't want to figure out your problems for you, and they don't want to write you a lengthy response."
For that reason, she says, you'll want to provide all the information your boss requires to make a decision up front. Sure, you can take the discussion offline — for instance, a single email probably won't be the only mention of hiring a new team member — but your boss will be equipped with the basic info needed to give the matter some thought before speaking further.
Glei provides the below scripts for three common requests:
For a new hire:
"Hi Karen — I know you're about to set budgets for the coming year, and I wanted to ask if we could discuss the possibility of hiring a new salesperson? I've looked at the numbers, and adding someone should allow us to double the new accounts we bring in each year, which means it should only take about three months for the for the new hire to pay for his salary in value added to the company."
For time off:
"Hi Karen — I wanted to request your approval on taking some vacation in October: Mon 10/6 thru Mon 10/13. We'll have just wrapped the big web relaunch, so it'll be a slow period and Mark has agreed to step in and handle all my clients during my absence. Then I can come back rested and refreshed for the big holiday sales push!"
To attend a conference:
"Hi Tina — I've been thinking about ways to enrich my work skill set, and it looks like there are some speakers and workshops at SXSW next year that would be very helpful. I can also put together a report to share what I've learned with the team after I return. I've estimated the cost, and it looks like a ticket, hotel, and airfare would run the company about $2,500. Do you think the company could sponsor me to attend?"
SEE ALSO: Here's the exact email to send a new connection without seeming annoying or needy
Join the conversation about this story »
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Many clean technology (cleantech) start-ups are pivoting into the smart city market, reports Bloomberg.
Companies are both rebranding themselves as smart city companies and targeting their existing products for smart city applications; they're doing this to attract investments from venture capital firms that see a large potential for growth in the smart city market.
The rapidly expanding smart city market provides a prime opportunity for cleantech companies to showcase their value to potential investors. They can do this through gathering data that measures energy use, air quality, and infrastructure maintenance.
Jenny Fielding, the managing director at the incubator Techstars, noted that investors are aiming significant amounts of capital in the direction of smart city companies. According to Bloomberg, citing data from PitchBook, around $741 million was invested in cleantech start-ups across 65 deals in Q3 2016, which was the most in a single quarter since 2014.
Cleantech companies will continue to find success in this market as the smart city solutions grow more popular in the coming years. Cities are increasingly connecting city infrastructure to make themselves more environmentally friendly.
For example, the EU’s smart city initiative is attempting to increase energy efficiency 20% by 2020 through smart energy grids and streetlights. As BI Intelligence expects these initiatives to grow worldwide in the coming years, cleantech start-ups would be wise to continue to jump into the smart city market.
Urbanization will force cities around the world to cope with growing populations, traffic congestion, and pollution in the coming years. Faced with these mounting pressures, city governments are turning to IoT technologies to deliver services more efficiently and improve their citizens’ quality of life.
Many cities are already connecting their infrastructure to IoT devices like sensors and smart meters. But few cities are as far along in that effort as Barcelona.
BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on smart cities that examines how other municipalities can learn from Barcelona’s development into a smart city, how cities’ investments in IoT technologies will grow over time, and how those investments will impact urban economies worldwide.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
In this report we will also:
To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of smart cities.
Working with the right distributor can help you build brand awareness, increase sales, and form better relationships with retailers, but first, you have to find a distributor who is willing to work with your product. Distributors may contact you to discuss representing your brand, but most of the time, you will be the one who has to pitch to them. When the time comes, make sure you avoid these mistakes:
Know their business.
Distributors tend to work in specific geographic regions, and most distributors stick to one type of retailer. Some will consider themselves to be specialty store distributors and only service gift shops or outdoors stores, while others will be primarily focused on grocery or convenience stores. Before you begin to contact distributors, it’s imperative that you know which types of stores they service. Pitching to a distributor who only works with stores that are not relevant to your business is a huge waste of time and makes it obvious you’re not quite sure what you’re doing.
Assuming the distributors do all the work.
Distributors are looking for brands that want to partner with them, not companies who expect results without putting in any time or effort. As you are talking to potential distributors, make it clear your brand will fully support their efforts with marketing campaigns, promotional materials, and anything else they need to increase sales.
Being narrow-minded.
If a distributor is interested in your product, he may begin to brainstorm ideas on what could be done to promote the product in-store, how the packaging could be updated, and what retailers you should aim to get into. As the distributor discusses these ideas, don’t immediately shut them down before you’ve had the chance to hear his reasoning behind the thought. Remember, you are hiring a distributor because he is the expert in his field, so it doesn’t hurt to trust his opinion and at the very least, give him a chance to explain why he thinks it will work. Coming off as narrow-minded in the pitch meeting is a big turn off for distributors, because they will not want to work with someone who doesn’t value their opinions formed after years of experience in the industry.
Being cheap.
Money may be tight if you’re just starting out with your company, but that doesn’t mean your distributor should have to take a pay cut to help you stay in business. Some distributors ask for a flat fee for their services, while others will buy products from you at a lower price so they can mark it up and resell it to retailers. If this is the case with your distributor, you have to understand your price must be low enough to allow the distributor to mark it up once, and then the retailer to mark it up again so they can sell it to customers. Everything in business is negotiable, but be fair with your distributor, or you may just ruin the pitch.
Have you ever made a major mistake while pitching to a distributor? Share your stories in the comments below!
Sales people often carry a conscious or sub-conscious fear of rejection. And on the other side, we often find buyers who are fearful of making a (possibly bad) decision. Ultimately, they would be held accountable if things don’t go well, right?
We have repeatedly observed that making buying recommendations or decisions on technology can be daunting for buyers. If they make the wrong decision, they will be held responsible. Not that many people are extremely tech savvy, so decision makers must rely on a sales person to guide them through the process. And it is here where we can shine and build trust.
Sales is a business practice that is very personal. There is no other business discipline where performance is a reflection of who you are, other than sales. Whether it’s selling a product or a service, sales is emotional, personal and involves product and technical knowledge. We sales professionals live by how well we perform. That means our livelihood is in the balance every day, every call, every client interaction.
Where Does This Fear in Sales Originate?
It starts for most of us with the dread of cold calling/prospecting efforts that so many sales people dislike (or are even terrified of). It might be a mindset issue that is keeping us from breaking through to others. Although counter-intuitive, being afraid of success is something fairly common in the business world (or on a personal level). In a sales environment it’s a lot more transparent and easier to detect. The effects are also a lot more drastic, because so many sales people depend on earning commission.
Fear-less Cold-calling/Prospecting? Is there such a thing?
There is various ways to deal with the fear of cold-calling.
The process can be outsourced, because prospecting is a unique skill set, or you can help your sales people overcome the reluctance of cold calling by providing a framework, structure and training, where it’s easier for them to succeed. Structuring the prospecting process with the right kind of research and providing training are two of a number of ways to reduce the fear of cold-calling.
Sales is a process and it’s important to develop a structure within an organization where sales people can succeed.
Fear of Asking for the Sale?
Not everybody is inherently equipped to ask for money and that’s essentially what we need to do in a sales environment. We are asking people to trust us to part with their or their company’s funds. If our prospects end up buying from us and the product/service doesn’t meet their needs, we will be held accountable for that decision. All of those areas are deeply emotional and directly connected to mindset. A good salesperson can be trained on how and when to ask for a sale that is not fear-inducing!
Asking the Right Questions
Some questions are tough to ask. The fear of rejection can be a constant. But without asking those questions, we will dance around “commitment”, not understanding whether this prospect is truly interested and willing to commit or is just shopping around.
Keep in mind that when you operate in a business environment the expectations are that a transaction will take place at some point. Therefore, as a sales person we have every right to ask questions such as “If we can meet all your requirements, can I safely assume that you will approve our agreement and move forward?”
Is Fear Rational Behavior?
In the world of sales, fear is often irrational. Just as we are not afraid of flying because we don’t like to be up in the air, we are afraid because the plane might crash and we have no “control”. Being aware that the fear is present and just doing what we need to do, is one way to overcome.
Personally, I was terrified of flying until I looked at the statistics that helped me understand that it’s still the safest choice. I opted to fly even if I could have driven, just to help me conquer the fear.
In sales, we should make as many calls as possible, asking the tough questions to help us getting used to potential rejection, but also realizing that most of the time the outcome will be positive.
Help Can Be Right There in Your Team!
The most effective way to help sales people be more comfortable in a sales environment is to help them feel more confident. Confidence often stems from having been successful, so when companies establish an environment where sales people are nurtured and trained rather than pushed and reprimanded, success flows more freely.
Also, understand what your sales people are good at and where the weaknesses (or as we prefer to say: the opportunities for growth) lie. That is essential when helping them.
Identify What’s Working and What Can Be Improved
So, in the end, always try to analyze why your sales people are either producing or not producing. Develop their strengths, and nurture their areas of opportunities through training and support. The investment you make can pay off manifold if you choose training that effects real, lasting behavioral change!
And finally, just maybe, some sales people might have talents that are better suited for a different role in your organization other than sales. You might detect that in the way they position your company offering, or in their attitude and/or work habits. You will definitely find out if revenue is lacking.
Whatever changes you decide to make to increase your sales revenues, make sure you know your sales staff well. They are your first and foremost representation. We should all shine as sales people, and we should be supported to do just that. And that will result in a lot more “fearless” salespeople!
Depending on your role and experience, you will have very specific opinions on how to market your products and services. Unfortunately there are a lot of options to choose from and getting the right balance of programs and level-of-spend can be a challenge.
Most will agree that customer acquisition, retention and revenue is the end goal, but every executive (CEO, CRO, CFO) has a different notion of what marketing should do to support these goals.
No matter how big or small your company is, it is critically important to have executive agreement and commitment to a marketing strategy and plan that is aligned to achieve company goals.
Your strategy, plan and spend will be dictated by:
Many technology companies often waste time and money on programs that aren’t aligned with sales, which result in longer sales cycles, higher cost-of-sales and missed revenue opportunities.
The CMO is challenged with balancing the plethora of available marketing options and optimizing the return on every marketing dollar spent. If you haven’t sat in a marketing chair, you probably don’t understand the cost & complexity of executing marketing programs.
To help people better understand the scope of marketing and investment options, I have listed typical deliverables and tactical options that marketing must balance to meet company objectives.
There are five fundamental marketing deliverables required to succeed in a technology business.
Optimizing your marketing mix and associated spend is largely dictated by the definition of your target customer. Your goal is to construct an effective mix of marketing programs that ultimately results in qualified opportunities for sales and high win rates.
In addition to the items mentioned above, a typical B2B marketing plan will consider a balanced program that includes:
Aside from these discretionary programs, you must also take into account the cost of marketing infrastructure/tools (Marketo, Salesforce, Pardot, etc.) and the cost of outsourcing specialty services (graphic design, copywriting). You may also have to allocate resources to support user group meetings/events and annual sales kick-off events.
Finally, set aside a slush fund for unanticipated events, like a product launch, acquisition or push into a new territory
I wish I could offer a formula to optimize your spend and mix, but there are too many factors that influence where and how to invest. At a high level, you should consider the following:
Of course your marketing mix is constrained by available budget. There are rarely enough funds to execute the strategy completely. Determine the boundaries of the discretionary marketing budget, develop a balanced approach and be prepared to adjust your plan on short notice. Build on programs that deliver results and discard those that didn’t meet expectations.
The post How to Optimize Your Marketing Mix & Spend appeared first on OpenView Labs.
Websites are the foundation of any business organization’s online presence. They are an essential asset to companies and they need to be updated and refurbished every couple of years. In most cases, business organizations redesign their websites because they simply don’t look that appealing anymore. Businesses need to maintain their brand presence online and the best way to do this is through a memorable website, meaning that it should be redesigned in regular intervals.
On the other hand, there are businesses that want to change their business strategy and make it comprehensive by taking everything into account, including their websites. They want to adjust their website to their new strategy and this is why they perform a website redesign. By doing these things, businesses expect that they will be able to improve their brand influence online, and improve their bottom line, while making their website more functional overall.
However, if you are to achieve these things, you must learn to perform a redesign properly. If you make any mistakes during a website redesign you could end up with worse results than you had before and fixing this will cost you even more money and downtime. In order to help you do this properly, I have gathered a list of 10 biggest mistakes you should look to avoid if you want to do a redesign with the best results possible.
Naturally, before you start fixing a problem, you need to find out what the problems are and see what is causing them. Without the right analysis and plan you won’t know where to start, what to solve, and how you want your website to end up after you redesigned it. Setting goals is essential towards creating your whole plan of redesign, what measures you will take and to what you will pay the most attention.
If all of these things seem too complicated to you than it’s generally a good idea to find a website that looks something like you would want for your own, and through it, try to explain your web designer/develop what you want to accomplish.
The general attitude you should be having is to redesign your website in a way so that it looks better and works better as well after your redesign has been completed. However, the reality is that these two will sometimes overlap and you will have to choose one or the other. Good looks are simply no substitute for smart layouts and easy navigability.
You should always make sure that your website is functional above everything, that it has good search, and that it is created to make it easy on visitors so that they can easily find what they are looking for.
It is impossible to determine goals and results you want to achieve without previously analyzing your website for crucial metrics. When you audit your website for analytics data and KPIs you will be able to understand all of your problems, missed opportunities, things that are working and things that aren’t. These things are quite valuable and they must be considered when creating a new design or structure of a website.
You should also make sure to monitor these benchmarks once you’ve relaunched your site so that you immediately caught on and fix any new problems that might appear. With this information you can also see how your redesign has improved your site, so make sure that you ask for these metrics from whoever is redesigning your site.
If you already done a website redesign 4 years ago, you shouldn’t expect that you will get away with the same budget as you did that time. Especially if you are expecting a lot from your redesign. In the past things like online brochures were everything a website needed, but today there so many businesses that compete with each other and all of them try to deliver consumers amazing web applications and websites which have custom and advanced functionality.
With some advanced functions such as content management systems and responsive design which are essential to providing great user experience and exceptional website functionality you simply cannot expect to pay the same amount as you did couple years ago. Modern websites need to be custom in order to be attractive, it’s simply a standard.
It takes time to do a proper website redesign. There are multiple phases you must go through and they are usually: research, wire framing, content creation, changing design, development, and last but not list testing and reviewing your website. This can take up to three months, depending how wide your redesign is and you cannot afford to rush things.
People usually want to speed up the whole process because they are scared that they will lose their current clients. This is a total mistake, as it means you will have to cut corners, which will ultimately lead to subpar results your clients will not appreciate. This brings us to the next mistake.
It is important that you let your customers know that they came to the right place, and that you are simply in the process of redesigning. If not, they might think you moved away somewhere or that your business shut down completely. The first-time visitors that come to your website during your redesign period will probably never come back, even if you notify them about what’s going on. Even after your redesign has finished you must let your visitors know that this is the right place and that you simply made some changes and added new things in order to improve their experience. This is how you will show them that you care.
It’s a simple fact that your brand new website will be as good as the company you partner up with to perform your redesign. Your website is probably one of the most important marketing assets your business can have online and this is why you cannot hire someone who doesn’t have quality technical and design abilities. Your partner needs to have marketing prowess and relevant industry knowledge or you could have a catastrophic end result.
A good design and excellent functionality is only half of the work. There is no use having an appealing website if it gets tossed back at the end of the search results, am I right? If you want to remain high in searches, you will have to enhance your design with a brand new, fresh content strategy that takes into account all of the stages of your customer’s buying process.
With the metrics you previously analyzed, you can recognize patterns based on how people behave on your website, see where they interact with your content, and also determine exactly where they decided to leave. Write valuable and relevant content that will include useful news, industry information, and interviews your customers will like. It is important that people like your content and that it is properly optimized for search engines. Google likes relevant content and with it you will be ranked higher.
If you are planning to perform a website redesign sometime soon, and you haven’t done this for more than 5 years, then one of your top priorities should be to design your new website for mobile users as well. The majority of web searches today come from mobile users, and the number of mobile users is expected to grow even further in the future.
This means that your mobile website visitors are probably going to account for a majority of visits to your website, which is why you must tell your web developers/designers to make sure that your website is also optimized for mobile users. Make sure that they have the same experience as any desktop visitor or they will leave your website as soon as they enter it.
Most people think that they should redesign their website every three years or so. They don’t do anything in between or make small content updates and expect to generate sales, leads and new customers. This is simply impossible. You should employ a periodical redesign after you’ve launched your site.
This means that you should adjust all of the same things on a smaller level in order to seize all the opportunities for sales, engagement and improving conversion rates. This is a growth-driven design and it is powered by relevant data that can show you the direction in which you should move to improve your site.
A website redesign can be a great investment in terms of both time and money, and this is why it must be done with caution and with a plan. If you avoid making these mistakes, I guarantee you that your website will become an important force that drives your business growth. There are other mistakes people make, but I chose these because I think that they are the most costly ones and that they carry the most significance.
| “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.”— The Success System That Never Fails (1962) by W. Clement Stone |
We hear it often: sales reps complain that the leads from marketing are poor quality, and marketing complains that sales reps fail to follow up on most of the leads. Conversely 46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads, according to Forrester Research.
So how do you know if your current lead management process is working well or needs a tune-up? Ask yourself the following questions:
If your answers weren’t all “Yes” then it might be time to review the formula for effective lead management and do some fine tuning of your lead management process, defined roles, lead scoring formulae, funnel reporting and Service Level Agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing.
In a nutshell the formula for lead management success is:
Did you know that 50-70% of leads sent from marketing to sales never receive a sales follow-up? Proven Success Formula for Lead Management, written by Debbie Qaqish provides a template to establish an effective Lead Management practice at your organization.
Creating content where any general search in Google produces over 51 million results in less than 0.5 seconds can be challenging. Writers are constantly brainstorming how to ensure their content is meaningful, discoverable, and educating readers. How then as a marketer can you ensure you’re creating relevant content that’s going to be discovered, read, and is making an impact in your marketing strategy?
Content uniquely attracts people to your business. Content should create natural interest in your brand, problem space, and company to eventually warm convert your readers into leads. Content helps people grow, identify a need they may have but not be aware of, and help them realize that you’re the right solution.
As a writer, one way to get started during the content creation process is to think to your own habits. When you want to learn about something new, what do you do? For example, you might have stumbled upon this by searching, “how do I write lead generating blog posts?” Your readers and customers have similar questions that lead them to reach you.
Content marketing is full of people pitching that you have to sell a solution, fix a need, tackle a challenge… but the reality is that you have a target goal to sell a product, a service, or an offering. Depending on your industry you could simply be educating a community; however, it’s important to realize that it’s also okay to tie your solution to your product.
People care about what features and workflows will help them get to their end goals. Leverage the power of your tangible resources, product, features, etc. when discussing your solution. Just because your solution can solve their business challenge, it doesn’t mean you have the only solution that’s available. It’s important to be forthcoming about what exactly you offer that helps. Content marketing helps engage and inform, not just engage or inform.
You need to be able to position yourself against your competitors. Highlight what workflows within your offerings solve the need your audience is engaging you for. Convince the prospect that your solution is the best one. Be sure to highlight how you can help and be specific. Don’t use overused statements like “best in the market” “the first of it’s kind.” These statements are over-stated and subjective without getting to the point of what it is that makes you the right fit.
Recall the last time a mysterious number called your phone and you had that cock-eyed skepticism as you read the unknown number questioning, “Ugh, who’s trying to sell me something…”?
You download content all the time, you subscribe to blogs to learn more, or signup for trials to see what’s right for you. But then you get calls at the weirdest time.. lunch, end of the day when you’re ready to head home, within 5 minutes of requesting a resource before you’ve even received the follow-up download. You hate it, so what would make things any different for your own readers?
Content created only by you can sometimes come across as too sales-oriented, one-sided, or repetitive. People care what others who have invested time into your brand have to say about their experience. Testimonials provide peace of mind that a regular person will be supported along their journey with you.
Simply adding a stock image isn’t what’s going to resonate. Your customers can speak to your audience in words and ways that are less “pitched.” Where your brand tone might be to say “eliminate the headache of lost drafts and hours in emails” your customers might say “a whole mess of content transformed to something manageable.”
Testimonials and real-life examples speak to different ways of thinking within the same audience. This increases the likelihood that more readers will care what you have to say.
Quality before quantity. Having a 600 page how-to article that isn’t in-depth can serve to generate quick buzz on social media and is great to link your readers to others’ content… but it doesn’t keep them engaged for long periods of time on your blog.
Make your brand and content keep your readers around, not send them away. This type of content is actually helpful, so it’s worth sharing more than just a list of other products that may or may not get the job done. You chance sending your target audience away to a product or solution that doesn’t help them, making their perceived reliability in you as the referring source, drop.
The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has. (QuickSprout)
If a post is greater than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes than a post that is under 1,500 words. (QuickSprout)
Create a cadence and rhythm that works not only with how your audience consumes content, but with what is sustainable with your resources and internal operations.
82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly — which, by itself, is still an impressive result. (HubSpot State of Inbound, 2013)
While monthly may work with certain content deliverables like Webinars or eBooks, your audience may expect weekly educational pieces on how to improve their operations and workflows before jumping into your solution. Staying top-of-mind is important for any great content marketing effort, but you can’t do it at the expense of producing boring, or meaningless content.
Creating stellar content, delivering it to your audience at the right time, and providing meaningful educational pieces that convert readers into buyers is one small piece of creating a content marketing strategy. To put this knowledge into practice, it’s important that you also define your content marketing goals. Here’s a few to get you started:
With each of these goals comes different approaches to communicating and reaching your target audience. However, regardless of the approach you take there’s a few fundamental content creation steps that can be leveraged to get you started.
It’s important to add structure to your content marketing efforts to ensure you are not leaving out opportunities to speak to your audience or concentrating efforts too much in one area, leaving gaps in another. An easy way to get started is by adding structure to the creative brief. Creative briefs help focus a wild idea into an actionable, audience-specific content plan. It also ensures each content created is tied to an overlapping marketing goal.
We’ve made it easy for you to get started enacting your content marketing strategy: access our free content brief template here to help get started creating structured, meaningful content.
Whether it’s perpetually running late, using outdated software, or biting your nails, old habits die hard. Change is challenging, but it can be healthier, more productive and in your organization’s best interest. Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win, refers to change as “disruptive innovation,” and notes that if organizations don’t change as fast as the world around them, they’ll be left in the dust of the competition.
To kick a bad habit, you must first address it head on. After you recognize what’s holding you back, you can prepare your business to catch the next wave and sell effectively.
Here are 10 bad sales and customer service habits identified by Geoffrey Moore and Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth, and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. After reading this, learn how to kick these habits to the curb in the brand new Leading Edge webcast on November 8 at 11am PT. (Register here).
After spending significant time with multiple SaaS organizations and their sales departments, Moore made a clear discovery: “What looks like one sales cycle that can be managed by one end-to-end pipeline model, is diverging into two separate ones.” Traditionally, there is the sales funnel, including top, middle, and bottom progress. However, there is the opportunity to modernize your prospect’s current operations with the latest technology, which involves technology partners, IT, and a different approach to the funnel-based model. “This sort of sales motion does not begin with conventional bottom-up lead generation,” notes Moore.
Closing a deal — especially bigger deals — is a team effort. From the marketing materials to the IT support, the more collaboration and teamwork involved, the more likely you’ll succeed. “Closing is a matter of getting everyone’s fingerprints on that proposal, both on the line of business and the IT side, including whatever partners and allies are needed to deliver on the total promise. This is an act of orchestration that requires open communication, collaborative spirit, and trust—hence the claim that collaborators win,” says Moore.
Reflecting on habits #1 and #2, one sales template for the Lead-to-Close stage will not fly, according to Moore. “What sales executive do not acknowledge is that there are two distinct sales pipelines at work here requiring two distinct Lead-to-Close stage templates. Instead, everyone is expected to pour their opportunities into a single, standard template,” shares Moore. “Enough is enough…AEs make the call as to which play they are running in each of their sales opportunities.”
“Nothing is more dreaded by most sales reps than having to generate new sales leads by cold calling,” states Moore. He focuses on “Prospecting 2.0” which explores a more effective way to find qualified sales opportunities and engage with those prospects. “This new approach is a godsend to sales reps. Customers are pretty happy about it, too. It respects both the customer and the sales rep’s time by focusing the sales organization on contacts who are most likely to be interested in receiving a phone call or e-mail from them.”
Much like cold calling, flying blind when reaching out to customers will often fall short. Often called lead qualification, there is a person or group dedicated to reaching out to customers in the early phase to discover if there is a fit and if they’re a qualified lead. From there, they can be nurtured and closed. “This Sales Development or Lead Qualification group allows sales reps with quotas to focus on closing qualified buyers without sacrificing the filling of the sales funnel for future quarters,” states Moore. It also helps customer service teams know and understand new and existing customers in order to be proactive and responsive.
Some say we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. It’s important to listen to your customers and learn from their lessons, before we speak. “Your best sales force is your customers advocating on your behalf,” shares Tiffani Bova. Listen to your customers and ensure that you are delivering value during all moments, not just touch points. Join Tiffani at the Sales Acceleration Technology Summit replay with InsideSales (register here).
It might be easy to send those templated emails, and they might work…some of the time. Learn about your customers and spend time crafting a message that appeals to them and their mindset right now. The more work you put in, the more you’ll get out.
Moore once received a message that went something like this: “Since it’s the end of our quarter, I thought you might be interested in (product name), which is now available at a 15% discount until (end of quarter date).” While timely and adding a sense of urgency, according to Moore, this is a commonly-used approach that has everything to do with quota attainment and nothing to do with the customer. “Consider instead a customer-centric, personalized approach,” Moore recommends.
“When I hear CEOs say, ‘We need to get to the future before our customers do and welcome them when they arrive,’ then I know they have started a journey to connect and do business with their customers in a whole new way,” shares Tiffani Bova. Bova recommends proactively servicing customers, adding features from customer insights, and aligning business models and principles based on the success of their customers. “To do this, they will use technology and data to re-invent their businesses. And above all: they know speed matters. Their customers expect these new digital experiences and they are being challenged by new players born in this digital age,” says Bova. Hear more from Bova here.
There is no single journey to purchase. “Leading sales and customer service experiences like these must cover the entire buyer journey, all the way from prospective customers to new customers to customers who are advocates for your products and services,” Tiffani Bova recommends, “Whether your sales teams are mostly hunters or harvesters, the sales experience must work across the board for everyone that you interact with.”
Join us on November 8 at 11 am PST for Geoffrey Moore’s Leading Edge webcast with DigitalGenius, to tackle these habits and learn the new ones leading into 2017.
A company is nothing if it doesn’t have sales. There are plenty of ways to automate and utilize inbound methods, but when all is said and done, there are salespeople who take control of the deal and close the business.
But guess what? Salesmen don’t work for free.
They need to be paid, but how?
The first considerations are if your company is a startup or an established business? What is the length of the sales cycle? The delivery cycle? What is it you’re selling? Who are you selling to, C-level prospects, vendor managers or small, one man shops? What is the pricing model because there’s a difference between selling jumbo jets and a monthly SaaS service.
How are the leads coming in? Are you utilizing inbound and email campaigns? Are sales being initiated through outbound calling?
There are a number of factors to consider when putting a sales compensation plan together. Taking all of those variables into consideration and coming up with a fair and profitable comp plan that motivates and rewards sales reps for their efforts can take many forms. A plan that rewards the best performers will attract quality sales reps and keep turnover low. If you are capping your comp plan and rewarding top and underperforming reps the same, there will be a lot of turnover. That turnover costs money in time and training, so make a winning comp plan from the beginning.
You will need to understand the cost of sales. A simple way to figure it is to take an individual’s salary, plus commissions earned at 100 percent of quota, their potential bonus opportunities and then divide by that salesman’s revenues to figure out the percentage that sales cost.
Here are four different ways to compensate your sales reps:
There are many other ways to tweak each plan, or create additional combinations. Some additional considerations to keep in mind are if the majority of sales are coming from a few long-term steady customers, the sales effort is minimal and the compensation should reflect that lower threshold of effort on the salesman’s part.
Also, inbound and marketing automation create a larger pool of leads for a salesman, so the compensation should differ from that of an outbound new sales hunter who not only generates the lead, but works it and closes it.
In a white paper by David Fritz of Growth Solutions, LLC entitled “Sales Incentive Compensation Best Practices Research” the firm completed a benchmark survey on sales compensation practices. The benchmarking effort was focused around sales compensation administration within sales organizations of 20 – 500 payees. The benchmarking study consisted of approximately 30 confidential, in-depth interviews with participating companies.
The scope of the interview covered the following topics:
The report goes on to detail how organizational complexity reduces sales productivity due to the high likelihood of having complex sales compensation programs – the number of unique plans within an organization with different types of sales forces, incentive/bonus measures and formulas to determine levels of compensation.
The more complex the organization and thus the sales compensation plan, the less productive the sales force is due to the ‘pain’ felt by the different divisions of the company – Executive Management, Finance, IT, Human Resources and Sales Administration.
Sales focus is lost due to an:
The more variables worked into a sales compensation plan, the more the chance of creating uncertainty in the sales force. If salesmen are not given easy tools to accurately predict their take home commission, there can be negative repercussions due to lack of confidence and fairness in the plan. An unsettled sales force is an unpredictable and unproductive sales force.
Crafting a compensation plan can surely be a difficult endeavor, but when you put one together that addresses the delicate balance of complexity vs. simplicity, it will be the kind of plan that drives and rewards performers who want to do well and not just pick up a paycheck every month. It can mean the difference between a high performing and low performing, frustrated sales team. Choose wisely.
This week's tip will be especially helpful for business owners, company leaders, sales executives, and marketing professionals—and it includes an invitation and a great free resource you don't want to miss.
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At noon CT on November 16th, I will be presenting Sales Acceleration Playbook Using LinkedIn & Inbound Marketing, a free webinar with my friends from Stream Creative (a Hubspot Platinum Certified Partner). At it you'll learn how easy it is to use LinkedIn and inbound marketing to drive more leads and appointments.
This is brand new content for those of you have seen me before but if you haven't been able to experience one of my LinkedIn training classes due to time, distance or related travel expenses, this is also your chance to get a complimentary front-row seat for this event. Space is limited, so be sure to register soon and bring a friend or coworker, too. Click this link to register: http://bit.ly/SalesAccel
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The majority of my LinkedIn training and consulting business revolves around working with teams of sales professionals from individual companies. During those sessions I emphasize the importance of:
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(Note: To send a customized invitation, you need to either connect using the big blue Connect button on their profile or by clicking the three dots in the upper right-hand corner when viewing a profile on the LinkedIn mobile app. All other Connect buttons might send out the standard invitation, "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." And you know how I feel about the standard invitation—yuck!)
My LinkedIn Communication Templates (below) should help you come up with a customized message that's best for you and a follow-up note designed specifically for the people you're targeting on LinkedIn.
And this template is just one of the resources you'll learn about at the free November 16th webinar. So don't hesitate—register now!
The post Don’t Miss These Incredible LinkedIn Free Resources appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.
In just the last 10 years, we’ve gone from carefully plotting a destination on a map and pulling over to the side of the road to find our next route, to spouting off an address to Siri and receiving real-time turn-by-turn directions. This is just one of the many ways that mobile has changed the way we do almost everything on a daily basis.
But there is one major process that mobile has struggled to enhance: sales. Despite the fact that sales is one of the most travel-intensive, relational professions around, reps and managers alike still find themselves tied to their desks each time they want to access or enter any information in their CRMs. Established long before Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, most legacy CRM vendors have since released read-only versions of their desktop UIs that do little to accommodate field reps’ unique needs.
In contrast, next-generation vendors are taking a mobile-first approach to building their sales platforms, which leads to enhanced productivity, more accurate insights and greater pipeline visibility. Here are a few mobile-first features to look out for to ensure that your mobile sales team is successful whether they’re walking door-to-door or flying across the Atlantic.
Picture this: you’re on your way to an on-site meeting with what could be one of your biggest customers to date. Sure, you reviewed the details of the prospect’s requirements before leaving the office on Friday, but you were really counting on having some additional time to prep during your 3-hour flight Monday morning. Now that the airline just announced that its WiFi is down, you’ll have to enter your meeting feeling less confident and prepared than you would like.
This is a risk that companies run without the ability to access information housed within their CRMs offline. To compound this issue, think of all the additional data that is lost when reps cannot enter information into their CRM in real-time. The chances that they will enter it completely and accurately – or even at all – once they are within reach of a computer are slim. Offline access ensures that all data entered offline is saved once the CRM is reconnected.
Have you ever attempted to use Excel on your smartphone? What about filling out a lengthy registration form on your tablet? If so, then you understand the pain that outside sales teams go through when trying to track their sales performance on the go. Trying to make out miniscule tables and scrolling through fields of disorganized data is a frustrating waste of time, but the need to measure and track progress in real-time is imperative in today’s data-driven world.
That’s why leading companies like Night Lion Security are turning to mobile-first sales platforms that provide access to visual reports on any device. To accommodate his busy travel schedule, Night Lion CEO Vinny Troia chose a CRM that displays reports not as tables or lists, but as clear, colorful charts that can be drilled into with a single tap. “I love that I get the same level of functionality as I have in my office at my desk as I do on the road from my phone,” says Vinny of his solution of choice.
We’ve all been there – it’s time to visit the customer, you know their general location, but was it 1107 Main Street or 1017 Main Street? You search through your emails, pull up the company website, whatever it takes to find the exact address. Eventually you arrive flustered and, even worse, late.
Perhaps the epitome of mobile-first design, geolocation is a feature that is specifically built to enhance the productivity and performance of outside sales teams. Geolocation plots prospects on a visual map to help reps plan the most efficient travel and routes. It even provides one-touch driving directions so you can spend more time preparing for your meetings and less time looking for them.
As a field sales rep it can be challenging to track canvassing outcomes and progress on the go. Because of this, outside sales managers often suffer from lack of visibility when it comes to their teams’ activities. Visits solves this by enabling mobile reps to easily view and track the status of their most recent lead visit, like “not interested” or “come back later,” from their mobile devices.
Visits can also be filtered by status; for example, a field rep might choose to view her territory by only those leads that have been marked as “Come Back Later” so that she can focus her efforts on visiting these potential customers. Customers and current contacts are also noted on the map to prevent duplicate or unnecessary visits. If a current customer is located next to or close by your next visit, you can use that relationship as a reference and/or conversation starter.
With hundreds of prospects in your funnel at any given time, reacting in real-time is a pipe dream – not to mention watching and waiting for prospects to make a move is a major waste of time. But given that the instantaneous nature of social networks and Google search has accustomed consumers to receiving real-time answers and attention, the thought of missing something important while on the go can cause reps and managers alike major anxiety.
With the right platform, outside sales teams can go about their daily business and receive real-time alerts on their tablets and smartphones for occurrences that they have defined as warranting immediate action. Examples of highly effective notifications might include when a new lead is assigned to you, when a prospect opens an email or when a deal closes.
Have you ever received an email with something along the lines of “Sent using my iPhone, please excuse all errors” in the footer? While mobile devices have undoubtedly made communication more instantaneous than ever before, we are now suffering from a typo epidemic. Not a huge deal when texting with your friends, but definitely a problem when negotiating with prospects. What’s a fast-moving field rep to do?
Thankfully, next-generation mobile sales solutions not only provide the ability to send and receive emails directly within their UI, but they also enable teams to save their most successful emails as templates. These templates can be quickly personalized using merge tags like “first name” or “company name” and dispatched in just a few taps. The benefit is two-fold: high quality communication and the ability to track and measure email effectiveness.
In an effort to avoid being left behind, many legacy sales CRMs have launched mobile applications that are included with their standard licensing costs, but are essentially read-only versions of their desktop UIs. Want full mobile functionality? That will cost you. So will offline access and the ability to sync any new data or activities to the CRM once you reconnect. Not to mention the ultimate price of the productivity and data that is lost without reps’ ability to access and enter information in the field.
A true mobile-first CRM will provide the features and capabilities listed in this article as part of its original licensing cost, not as extra or hidden fees as shown below!
It’s time for sales to take part in the mobile transformation. With the right tools, your mobile sales teams can experience greater productivity and pipeline visibility than ever before – anywhere, anytime. For more insight into the features and functionality you should be searching for to map your team’s route to sales success, download our free eBook: Choosing the Right CRM for Your Mobile Team.
Colors play a major part in marketing messages. They have strong associations, both culturally and geographically, and evoke specific feelings and moods from people. Knowing how colors impact a viewer helps small businesses market more effectively to their target audience and generate higher sales and ROI.
The top eight colors associated with sales conversions are listed below. Consider using these colors in your marketing materials to boost your bottom line.
Red has many connotations, but it is the ultimate color choice for conveying power. It has the ability to instantly grab people’s attention, when used accordingly. The color red evokes a sense of excitement, love, urgency, and passion. These are all desirable associations when you’re intent is to prompt a purchase.
Interestingly, red also appears closer to the viewer and literally draws them in. Use the color red with discretion, though, as too much can come across as angry or aggressive. It is best used to highlight a promotion or sale. It helps a message stand out against other text or graphics, and thus ultimately translates to higher sales.
Blues of all shades are most commonly associated with trustworthiness. If you have an online store, consider using blue to convey safety and that your site is a secure place to do business.
Alternatively, blue is also known for stimulating the mind. Many offices have blue walls or accents as the color has been known to stimulate the mind and increase concentration. This results in improved productivity, and better results all-around. By incorporating blue into your small business website or promotional emails, it increases your customers’ focus, leading them to better assess your offerings and a greater sales conversion rate.
Purple has long been known as the color of royalty. With the royal connotation, prestige, elegance, dignity, and status are closely linked meanings. Deep shades of purple most often conjure these sentiments.
Conversely, lighter shades of purple are known to be soothing and calming. They’re often utilized in luxury products or services for older customers. Consider these contrasting associations when adding purple to your marketing materials or website.
Gold has similar inferences to purple; it communicates dignity and pedigree. Additionally, the color gold suggests a sense of luxury and positivity. Many luxury brands, such as Lexus, have gold as one of their brand colors. It implies a high standard and quality investment. This color encourages sales because of its implied value, which speaks for itself when used in marketing materials.
image via Shutterstock
Yellow is the color of confidence. It is often used to command attention and its valiant tone infers that you’re an authority. It is a bold choice, but one that subconsciously translates into credibility. Creating trust is essential for translating prospects into long-term customers.
In line with instilling confidence, yellow portrays optimism, confidence, fun, and happiness. They stimulate warm and fuzzy feelings about the business, and when used with discretion, lead to greater purchases. However, yellow is a very powerful color that can cause people anxiety. Carefully select the shade of yellow and quantity of the color in order to evoke the correct sentiments from your viewers.
With green being the most prevalent color in nature, it’s no shock that it is associated with health, the environment, and goodwill. Most shades of green generate warm, inviting, and pleasant feelings. It is easy on the eyes, so using it across your website leads to longer stay times. The longer someone is on your website, the greater the likelihood they’ll make a purchase or start a conversation about employing your services.
Darker shades of green are tied to wealth because of its link to currency. For a brand, this can present the business as aspirational, credible, and financially stable. These are all notable associations, which most businesses want tied to their brand identity.
Orange is a color that holds significant perception power. It is the color of joy and enthusiasm. It is vibrant, positive, and active. When businesses use orange as a brand color, it denotes the company is innovative and forward thinking. This is exciting, and can be a motivational factor for consumers.
If orange isn’t right for a brand color, pairing orange with a specific call to action yields high rates of return. It stands out, energizes the viewer, and moves people to making a purchase or registering for an event.
Think about how orange makes you feel. It likely hits on many of the associations listed above. When you want to boost customer’s action, this is your color of choice.
Black is as versatile as you would imagine. It runs the gamut from making something look modern or traditional, and causing excitement or being a calming force. The most effective marketing use of black is as a contrasting color. It emphasizes the accompanying text or graphic by putting a border around it and subconsciously underscoring the message.
The color black is a favorite choice when a business wants to illustrate power and luxury. Many high-end retailers incorporate black into their branding and their websites. Apple is a perfect example of a business that uses black in a powerful, crisp, and quality way. Its stark contrast with the background allows the viewer to see the message, process it, and not be overwhelmed. It generates significant click through rates, and eventually website sales.
image courtesy of Apple
Now that you know which colors to use for increased sales, get to work! See how your color choice impacts your customer’s behavior and “wow” them by hitting the mark with the best colors for their buying preferences.
“Rocket science is not rocket science if you’re a rocket scientist.”
– Dave Camarillo
Dave Camarillo (@DaveCamarillo) was my long-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) coach (see him kicking my ass repeatedly here). Put simply, he is a machine.
On the Mat once said: “It’s funny that everybody in Judo is scared of David’s ne waza and everybody in Jiu-Jitsu is scared of his stand up. (We) guess people, in general, are just scared of him.”
Dave is a very technical coach and an elite-level Jiu-Jitsu competitor. He dominated the lightweight and open weight classes at the 1998 Rickson Gracie American Jiu-Jitsu Association tournament; the legendary Rickson Gracie himself bestowed the honor of Most Technical American Jiu-Jitsu Fighter upon him.
He has worked not only with people on the ground game, but many recognizable MMA (mixed martial arts) figures as a coach and as a corner man.
We’ll delve into:
Enjoy!
Want to hear another episode with an incredible athlete? — Listen to this interview with Amelia Boone, who has been called the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing (OCR). In this episode, she explores her training, nutrition, rehab, “pre-hab,” and more (stream below or right-click here to download):
This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend:
All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It’ s that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy.
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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
Scroll below for links and show notes…
Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Position Impossible Podcast
If great sales people are anything, they are resourceful. They create unique hacks to do their job better, to get a competitive edge. They’re always looking for something that will allow them to do what everyone else is doing better.
Good sales hacks aren’t cheap shortcuts, but rather creative ways to do the work and improve the results.
I’ve seen all kinds of crazy hacks in my day and when it comes to sales tips and hacks they fall into 3 camps, crappy tips that no one should use, great tips that everyone uses and are very good and killer tips and hacks that work brilliantly because few people are using.
Understanding this, I wanted to know what some of the best sales hacks used today were, so I asked.
I went and asked 22 of the industry’s leading sales influencers what their best hacks were and boy did they deliver. The tips were amazing and unbelievably creative. None of the sales tips or hacks were the same. They were all different, covering many different aspects of the sales process.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
Mining your out of office messages.
Don’t delete them. That’s right, read them first. Do you hate getting out of office messages in your inbox, especially after you send out an email blast? Stop hating them and start mining them. I discovered that there is a lot of information in those out of office messages. Take a minute and read each one. Some of them don’t have anything in them so you can quickly delete them. But take a closer look. Here are some of the great things I have found in out of office messages.
1. The names of other buying influences. Not only their names, but their titles, emails and phone numbers sometimes. They are telling you who to contact while they are gone and many times they are sharing the names of other decision makers, not just an admin (although admins can be very helpful). Get those names and do some research. Start interacting with them on social media (Click like, Comment and Share) then maybe connect and start building a relationship.
2. Something interesting about them. They may be out of the office on business but they may also be on vacation and sometimes they share where. Sometimes they are out for a wedding or birth off a baby and state that. Now it’s time to use that info to send a card in the mail or even a gift if appropriate. You can often check facebook for more details (who says facebook isn’t for B2B sales).
May sound crazy but those Out of Office messages can be a fountain of useful information to help develop a relationship and move a sale forward. — Alice Heiman
When offering a white paper or offer via social, invite them to DM their email vs. clicking on a link. We A/B tested links vs. “just reply” and got a 5X increase in response. We’re currently getting 12-15 leads PER DAY using Socedo on Twitter with this tactic — Matt Heinz
So what did we do with all of these brilliant sales tips and hacks? We put them in an eBook of course.
If you want to get an edge in your selling process, if you’re looking for a way to find more customers, get better email responses, improve your close rate and more, these sales tips will do the trick.
I’m also curious about this communities sales tips and hacks. Is there a cool sales hack you use? Share it in the comments. I’ll take the best ones and add them to a 2nd Edition, updated ebook.
The post 22 Crazy Sales Tips and Hacks That Actually Work appeared first on A Sales Guy.
Does this ever happen to you?
You read something from one of your favorite writers — maybe it’s a blog post, or a scene from a novel, or an essay on Medium.
You’re caught up in the words. The way that writer spins and turns the language, shaping what you see and feel as you read.
And once the reading spell is broken, you think …
Dang, I wish I could do that.
Experienced creative workers — writers, painters, musicians — know how to make it look easy.
But when we try our hand … it’s harder than it looks.
Maybe you want to master the art of creative storytelling for your content. Or you want to start off your content with that satisfying “Bang!” that gets people to keep reading. Or you would just really like some more shares and links.
“Enjoy the process” is fine advice, but it’s even nicer when the process leads to real improvement. When we get better at what we’re doing. When we start to have more impact.
I find this quote by Jeff Olson both intriguing and depressing:
“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.”
My friend and genius dog trainer Susan Garrett has tweaked this to:
“Successful people make a game out of what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.”
For the chronically immature (like me), this is an especially useful insight.
Some things about business are hard.
Some things about content marketing are hard.
If you can make a game out of them, you get to change “hard” into “fun and challenging.” Do that consistently, and there are all kinds of amazing things that can happen.
We love content marketing for many reasons … but we tend to avoid it for one:
It’s intimidating.
There are so many things to learn.
Effective headlines. Audience building. Calls to action. Crafting shareable content. Emotional and logical benefits. Empathy and experience mapping. Strategic content types.
Not to mention techniques for specialty content like podcasts, infographics, or video.
If you’re standing at the foot of Mount Content and looking up, the summit looks uncomfortably far away. And high. And spiky. And probably cold.
Lately, I’ve been counseling people to try a new approach to scaling that mountain … and it starts with realizing that it isn’t a mountain at all.
You can visualize content success as Mount Everest. There’s one defined path up to the summit. It’s very hard to climb. You need equipment, know-how, elite-level conditioning, relatively good weather, a guide, and some luck. Even then, you might die.
Or you can visualize content success as making some soup.
There are a lot of recipes. Some people like spicy soup. Some people like savory soup. Some people like cold soup, or fruit soup. There are a lot of options. Some of them are weird, but that’s fine, because there are plenty of people who adore weird.
Personally, to tell you the truth, I feel a lot better about my ability to make some nice soup than to climb Mount Everest and possibly die.
One thing I like about the soup metaphor is that it recognizes that you can create something worthwhile out of what you happen to have available.
If you have a great writing voice, hardly any money, a few chunks of free time on weekends, and a lot of hilarious stories, you can create an interesting content soup out of that.
If you have a writing voice that isn’t as strong, but you have the budget to hire an editor, you consistently have an hour a day to create content, and you have a whole bunch of interesting people in your contact list, you can create a different content soup out of that.
You don’t have to master every single element of content marketing right away. And hardly anyone no one does.
But the more techniques and tactics you can get good at, the more kinds of soup you can make. And the more effective your content will tend to be.
Anyone who uses Facebook is familiar with these — we decide to adopt some habit or pattern for 30 days, and watch what happens.
There are nutrition challenges, fitness challenges, art challenges, handwriting challenges. One of the best-known, NaNoWriMo — a challenge to write an entire novel in the month of November — kicks off tomorrow.
I have to be honest; I’m not necessarily a fan of signing up for other people’s challenges. Too often, they’re inflexible and they’re overly sweeping. They set you up to fail, instead of setting you up to learn. (Every time I’ve tried NaNoWriMo, it’s tanked my writing output for months afterward.)
In other words, the game quits being fun around Day One and a Half.
Instead, try writing your own challenge. And make sure it’s more play than penance.
Here are some guidelines I’ll suggest:
You might notice that you can use this kind of challenge to work on literally anything that’s bugging you. Here are some ideas for your content or business:
Choose one of these to study and practice every day for 30 days:
Or maybe you’d like to take a consistent action every day for 30 days:
I’ve found a lot of power in doing something every day, but if for some reason you really want a free day every week … it’s your game. You set the rules.
Ever done a writing challenge or another type of content challenge? Interested in coming up with a challenge of your own?
Great ideas are even better when they’re shared … so let us know about your challenge ideas in the comments!
The post Want to Sharpen Your Writing Skills? Try This Fun Challenge appeared first on Copyblogger.
When it comes to marketing, the numbers matter. They matter because behind every statistic is a story. A story about what is working and what is not. The hard thing for business owners, marketers and freelancers nowadays is trying to decide which numbers to believe. The internet is full of list after list of marketing stats and facts showing the latest trends and user behaviors. But numbers have more meaning than just counting. In honor of this spooky holiday here are 13 spooky marketing stats you need to pay attention to.
Before we get into the stats, I thought it would be fun to quickly explore why the number 13 is such a scary and unlucky number. While there are many theories as to why the number thirteen became associated with bad luck, here are a few of my favorite.
Ok, now that we have superstition out of the way, let’s check out those stats!
Yep blogging is still a very powerful medium to generate leads and educate your customers. If your site is just static content it’s not working for you. Blogging is still and will continue to be a powerful way to reach your audience.
While Facebook may be king of social, it’s not necessarily a business’s best friend. With the many updates to the Facebook algorithm feed, many posts never get seen by your followers. Banking on Facebook to generate traffic seems to be a risky move.
While many businesses want to generate leads, most fail to build a strategic plan. If you are going to reach your goals you must create a plan that will get you there. If you want to avoid being part of the scary 13% percent of those who don’t succeed, build a strategic plan.
What’s scary about this stat is that it’s about marketers. Business owners who invest their money deserve to get results. In order to know if what you are doing is working you have to track and measure.
For small businesses, making sure you get the best ROI is essential. Sadly, not many are tracking their efforts. Whether you are doing your own marketing or outsourcing it, you need to make sure you know what’s working and what’s not.
Seriously? This is crazy. But I guess it makes sense due to the fact that nearly half of marketers don’t formally evaluate their metrics.
So you thought banner ads were dead did you? Well, thanks to re-marketing and re-targeting banner ads have found new life. While they can be effective, you must segment your audience well.
Content is king, well only if you produce good content. To me, this stat gives me mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s great for our industry. On the other, it means that there we will a lot more crap on the internet.
Native advertising is a great way for brands to get content in front of a very targeted audience. The problem is when marketers and brands use native ads to sell. I’m sure users wouldn’t be as frustrated if the content was actually helpful.
I’ve been preaching it for a while now. People are emotional and if we want to create lasting relationships we have to connect with them emotionally. Business is personal and it’s the smart companies that have figured this out.
Traditional marketing has its benefits, but as far as lead generation goes, content marketing has the best ROI. It makes sense really. Where do you go when you have a question? The answer: Google.
While display ads aren’t dead, they don’t always deliver great ROI. If you choose to use them as your outreach method, be sure to have a ton of money to spend. Or you could invest it with our team. ;)
People don’t just look at one product or service and choose that. They take their time and research the various options available to them. This is why cross-marketing your message over a variety of channels is so important.
While 13 has been seen as unlucky for some, to many 13 is actually a lucky number. Did you know that t he expression fare tredici (“to do 13”) means hit the jackpot? I hope you found these stats both fascinating and inspiring. If you have any questions or comments please add them below. Happy Halloween!
Lead generation is simple. Just find leads and turn them into sales. Now, if the term “easier said than done” has a poster boy, it’s good old lead generation, hands down.
Lead generation may be simple, but surely, it isn’t easy. Especially if only one or two people in an organization are tasked to do it. Realistically, lead generation requires a diverse pool of specialists – be it in analytics, marketing or writing. If you’re generally having a tough time producing leads, then it’s either you’re doing it wrong, or you don’t have a team that does it – which, technically, also falls under the doing-it-wrong category.
It’s not enough to know you’re not doing it right, however. What you need to know are the signs that yell “YOU NEED A LEAD GENERATION TEAM!”. Here they are.
“Sales process” refers to a set of steps your organization takes to move the prospect from “lead” to “customer”. Because it’s a process, it repeats itself perpetually like clockwork. It follows that it also has to be systematic and efficient. The usual sales process is as follows:
It’s a tedious process to say the least, and sluggish when done by people who need to multitask. But done right and with the right system, it becomes simple, fast, and efficient. In order to do it, an organization needs a team of experts on each stage to carry out the task proficiently and for each stage to progress as seamlessly as possible.
The first instance you notice that costs are moving up faster than the price of petroleum when there’s war in the Middle East, your basic instinct tells you it’s time to fire some people. After all, a huge percentage of costs goes to salaries. But before you do that, ask yourself. Which services can’t I live without? Do I really have to fire people, or just make them work like a solid, cohesive group? Understanding this allows companies to focus sales resources where they are needed and to cut waste, not value. The key addressing this issue is to promote efficiency in the sales organization.
Have you heard of this phenomenon called social media? Yes? Cool, right? How about blogging and other marketing channels? Do you take advantage of them like you ought to? Yes? Nice. With optimum use, you can achieve maximum brand visibility using these tools. But let me tell you, if taking advantage of all these means you only have one person doing all the writing and blogging and vlogging and posting on social media, then either you’re extremely lucky to have found a human version of the Swiss Army knife, or you’re setting yourself up for failure.
What do you expect from a one-man army? Chances are, this guy’s spreading himself too thin to get all the bases covered. You can’t blame poor Mr. Smith for prioritizing quantity over quality because, hey, it’s the numbers that matter. Or so you believed. With a team of dedicated and relentless individuals who clearly know what they’re doing. You’re putting your organization in the best position to achieve all its marketing goals.
There are so many proverbs that emphasize the value of team work, but my favorite is (and perhaps the corniest of all), “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. Oftentimes, we marvel at the height of achievement individuals can reach singularly. But more marvelous still are the limits individuals collectively break. That’s the essence of the human spirit – in sports, in marketing, in life.
This post originally appeared at The Savvy Marketer Blog
For many reps, the follow up call turns out to be more challenging than the first contact. Yes, even compared to cold calls. There are a lot of things at stake during follow up calls since they’re usually where the prospect starts really moving along the sales funnel.
Follow up calls are where reps can really flex their muscles when it comes to understanding prospects and adding value. They are where reps can actually start establishing a solid relationship.
Having a battery of follow up strategies and techniques is absolutely vital to a high-performing sales rep.
It all begins with knowing what a good follow up call looks like and what its objectives are. Check out this list.
When dealing with first-time prospects, make sure to do something that will make you hard to forget.
A simple one you can do is send a thank you note. There are services like Handiemail which can send handwritten notes on your behalf. Sending a note saying something simple like “Hi Brenda! Thanks for your time today. I look forward to our conversation on the 20th!”
This gesture lets the client know that you value their time and that you made the effort to do something unique for them. Better than a thank you email, right? Sending something memorable–doesn’t have to be grand, elaborate, or expensive–lets you make an impression and hopefully stay in their memory. Jim Domanski calls this “building equity” with your prospect.
Many reps make the mistake of not asking for a specific date and time for a follow up call toward the end of the initial contact. Prospects saying things like “Let’s touch base in the next few weeks.” just do not cut it. From your side, saying “I’ll send everything within this week.” won’t assure anything. This practice will result in never getting that follow up call, circling around, and making the sales process painfully slow.
The right thing to do? Just ask for their availability for a particular date and time.
“I will send you all the details through email. I’d like to call you on Tuesday, 9:30 am Eastern, to go over the details and determine the next steps if any. Is that a good time?”
Keep on recommending different times until you find an available slot for the call. Specificity and creating urgency are powerful tools in sales. Use them to your advantage.
Many sales reps are caught in the “touching base” and “checking in” cycle. The truth is, if you’re dealing with a decision-maker, they probably get a lot of emails of this nature. But you think, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, your messages can be filtered into the “Pesky Salespeople” tab. No good.
Each time you reach out, make sure you have something to say or send something valuable.
There are a couple of ways to do this:
1. Reference a past conversation and build up on a portion that emphasizes your solution’s business value to them.
Louis, you mention in our last call that you want to get the ball rolling quickly once we establish the savings you’ll make with us this year. Let’s get on a call on Tuesday, 3:00 pm Eastern to discuss this in detail. I attached a simple overview to this email. How does that sound?
2. Business leaders are always interested in looking for ways to improve their operations. In B2B selling, what prospects are looking for are ways to add to their bottom line and improve revenue performance. Show them how your product figures in one of those ways.
Louis, I’ve been spending time thinking of ways we can help you pull your churn rate down. I thought you might be interested in how we helped XCompany improve their when they were in the same spot last year. Do you have a few moments on Tuesday morning for a quick chat?
3. Some prospects like your solution but lack the full view or understanding as to how you could really help them. The shortcoming is from your side–you really can’t stop educating your prospects not only about your product but more importantly about their industry, business challenges, and how solutions like yours are being adopted widely. A good way to do this is to send them content that will help them understand it better.
Louis, I know this is a huge decision to shift from your current setup. We have this piece (ebook, case study, article) you might be interested in. Let’s connect on Tuesday to go over your concerns. Is that fine?
These follow up approaches may sound like a lot of work, but this spells the difference between freezing leads and keeping them moving. Using these tactics, you will also improve yourself as salesperson–you get to know more about your industry, get yourself familiar with the challenges of your targets and prospects, and ultimately build your confidence because you never call them empty handed so to speak.
Remember, in order to be seen as a partner and an expert, you need to stop being seen as a pesky salesperson first. Entirely drop the practice of just checking in and circling back. You need to be a valuable asset and resource in their quest to improve their business. Let that be known.
Automation tools offer various benefits, in addition to increasing productivity and enhancing satisfaction. Nowadays, there are plentiful tools available to automate distinct functions of your big, medium, small and even freelancing firms. Here are some extremely important ones that will help your business to grow faster:
1- Getresponse
It is a marketing service provider, in service since the late 90s. They recently added marketing automation feature to their tool, which is highly cost effective and extremely easy to use. Its notable features are:
2- MailChimp
It is a simple email marketing software which offers various options for designing, sending and managing email and resulting prospects. It is very easy to use and boasts of following features:
3- Quickbooks
A financial accounting software program which provides on-premises finance management as well as cloud based options. It is aimed at SMBs with impressive features to manage accounts and reports:
4- Pipedrive
A powerful and highly acclaimed CRM system which is the best alternative to Salesforce for SMBs, freelancers and work from home based companies. Its features are robust and straightforward:
5- Traackr
A premium influencer marketing and analytics platform. It identifies, qualifies and maintains relationship with people in industry who serve as marketing boosters from content amplification to product feedback and also content co-creation:
6- IFTTT
It has multiples applications and can act as a powerful tool to automate much of your activities. It facilitates creation of recipes based on the principle of “If This Then That” to trigger tailored response for various purposes:
Technological advancements has paved way for you to take total control of your business and undo the need of a huge staff for a successful start up story. Use the above mentioned tools and automate your business for enhanced productivity and increased ROI.
