In June, Netflix released a collection of episodes produced by the encouraging, incredibly talented Bob Ross. “Beauty Is Everywhere” catalogues some of Ross’s lively landscapes, memorable phrases like “happy little trees”, and favorite pastimes including cleaning a brush by slapping it against his easel, laughing as he suggested viewers “beat the Devil out of it.”
To summarize: we’ve become obsessed with Bob Ross’s wet-on-wet technique, his iconic personality (and hair), and his marketing style.
“Wait, his marketing style?”
Yes! See, we’ve watched so many episodes in the past two months that we began researching the man himself. We thought, “There’s no way he could possibly have been this content all of the time.”
Spoiler alert: he was just as easy-going in his private life.
But in our research, we found how Bob Ross went from a relatively unknown painter to a mega success. We learned that Bob Ross intentionally used smart marketing decisions to project himself as an authority on painting and proved his credibility to millions of viewers on a weekly basis. His methods are as inspiring as his personal message.
Bob Ross’s Early Shortcomings
After a 20 year service record with the Air Force, Bob Ross decided to try his hand at selling his perfected art technique out of a mobile home.
According to a Mental Floss article from 2015, “success didn’t come easy – or at all – during his time on the road.” Unfortunately, there just weren’t many buyers. Because Ross was virtually unknown, he had no authority for people to trust him or his product. He knew a change was needed to provide the results he had hoped for – so he turned to T.V.
Watching Paint Dry
After his failed mobile classroom Bob didn’t have much money to spend on his TV endeavor, so he scrimped and saved where he could. One of those areas was his hair, which he permed to save money on haircuts.
He hated the look.
However, his image was used for branding on a new collection of paintbrushes. Whether or not Bob Ross wanted, he was stuck with the now iconic haircut.
Gaining Followers and Establishing Authority
Bob Ross saw phenomenal success with his program. “The Joy of Painting” ran for 11 years, with over 400 episodes under its belt. During his time on-air, Ross spoke about encouraging creativity, the ease of which one could paint, and how you could impress yourself by following along with his show.
Those who did often sent in videos of themselves painting along at home. Ross proudly shared these videos with his audience – testimonials to the success of his teachings.
And, of course, Bob Ross’s painting technique was anything but simple. But he made you think it was. Over the course of 11 years Bob Ross secured millions of fans worldwide. Because of his kind-hearted nature, people could tune-in without any sales pitches. These were replaced with footage of Bob and Jane, his wife, nursing wounded wildlife back to health.
Building A Painting Empire
During his time on-air, Bob Ross began rolling-out a series of How-To books, paintbrush sets, videos, and Certified Bob Ross Instructors (with Jane being the first). An already established and treasured source to many, all Bob had to do to sell his product was to keep doing what he loved – painting on air.
Bob Ross’s success grew well beyond his hairline – to the tune of a 15 million dollar empire. Built on art supplies and learning materials he never mentioned on air.
He would eventually retire in 1994 due to health concerns, and pass away on July 4, 1995 at the too-young age of 52.
Making Sense of Ross’s Marketing Techniques
Bob Ross and his team knew what they were doing. Just as he helped many improve their painting skills at home, we’d like to share with you his marketing style so you can grow your happy little followers from footy little hills into big beautiful mountains.
Provide Useful Information
Bob Ross knew he had a skill. He knew he wanted to reach as many people as possible with it – for altruistic reasons. In pre-internet days, this meant producing your own TV show.
But Ross didn’t simply paint on air, he encouraged his viewers to do the same – or anything that brought them with happiness. Bob Ross, in addition to his painting technique, sold happiness. He would often say “if you want to see the bad stuff, watch the news.” This brought viewers back week after week to witness his iconic demeanor and uplifting message.
Viewers were drawn to Bob for many reasons, knowing he had the magic to make them excellent painters and happier people.
When structuring your marketing campaign, consider what you have to offer your audience. What can you teach them? What can they learn from you? How can you make it simple for them to include themselves in your knowledge?
Include Endorsements
For Ross, this meant video of viewer masterpieces. For you, it can mean anything. A kind word, a great comment. A photo or video of your product in use. Real faces tied to your product provides substance to your marketing claim.
It’s likely that someone watch a video of a person painting and think, “I can do that, too!”
Selling When Your Audience Is Warm
With TV as his medium, it was difficult to tell where Ross’s audience was in their buyer’s journey. He had to develop a message that resonated with cold, warm, and hot audience members – all at once.
Every once in a while, Bob would reference his program to become a Bob Ross Certified Instructor. This was a buy-in program, still offered, in which participants can “learn to paint, teach and promote yourself in the spirit of TV’s Number One Art Show The Joy of Painting.”
His passive marketing engagement gave people the freedom to purchase when they wanted. There were no pressures to purchase anything. But for painting viewers, this was an exciting offer to feel included in the peaceful world of Bob Ross.
Keeping Your Audience Coming Back For More
If he were just painting, there’s little chance Bob Ross would have lasted on television for 11 years. It was his charm that kept viewers coming back, his smile at the end of each episode, and his vulnerability to share personal anecdotes.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find much variation in Ross’s work. According to some really intense research performed by FiveThirtyEight, “91% of all Ross paintings included at least 1 tree. 44% featured a cloud.”
This is to say, he knew what worked. He knew what people wanted to see – and he kept doing it. It was a fail-proof plan once he found initial success, and since Ross was only limited to his imagination – his show could have continued for another 20 years with a dedicated viewership and unlimited examples of his passion.
While there’s no one-right-way to market your business or self, Bob Ross embodies the steps business owners should take when approaching a marketing strategy. Provide value to your audience, keep it simple, encourage them, let them buy when they’re ready, and keep giving them information – and great products – to keep coming back for more.
Have you ever been so stuck in the way things are, that the very idea of changing them, even for the better, just seems like too much to overcome? Well, you’re not alone. Today, businesses all over the globe must embrace the fact that the buyer is now in the driver’s seat and perception is everything. Now, I’m not one to say that every traditional marketing tactic no longer works. I also don’t believe that digital marketing is the cure for everything. What I plan to address and advocate in this post is simple, if we want to grow our businesses, we must be ok with change, even if it hurts.
To help make my point, I am going to share a few stories about from one my clients and my own agency. I want to address how by shifting our mindset from the “fear of change” to the “opportunity of change” it has not only helped open new doors of possibility for me but my clients as well. The idea that “what got you here, won’t get you there,” is one that many of us need to embrace. This doesn’t mean to change just for that sake of change. It means having the forethought to see and feel the winds of change and the guts to do something about it. The old way of marketing our companies and selling our products and services to our customers, both in the B2B and B2C world, has completely changed. In order to create a brighter future for ourselves and our businesses, we need to embrace a buyer-driven sales cycle where we as the business owners look to serve, educate and sell ourselves throughout the process.
Breaking the Boundary
“This is how we’ve always done it.” This is the mantra of a business in decline. Just because you’ve always done it one way doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it now. We get so wrapped up and embedded in our past that we lose sight of the opportunities right in front of us. We create barriers to our own success because we are afraid. Fear, or the “Resistance” as Steve Pressfield calls it, is at work inside our own heads every day trying to push us back from the potential we know we have. But instead of recognizing it and addressing it, we look for something or someone else to blame.
“The boundary is in your head – not in the system” – Seth Godin (Poke the Box).
I have been running my agency since 2009. The only reason I started it was to supplement my income and give me and my wife a little extra financial breathing room. I was decent at building websites and learned how to market them, mainly using SEO. Before long I had built up a list of a few clients and my ego felt good. The problem was, I wasn’t pushing myself. Yes, I overworked, overcommitted, and was way underpaid, but I wasn’t pushing myself to grow the right way. I was busy, but I was not productive. While working 2 jobs was providing, I was miserable. Unfortunately, I was also afraid to change. The “Resistance” was telling me that if I changed, I would fail. And I believed it.
Life has a funny way of forcing you into things if you continue to resist. I eventually quit my “main job”, which left my agency as my sole source of income. Oh yeah and my wife was pregnant and we had a 1-year-old. Great timing, right? I had a choice. To push past the boundaries in my head, embrace the situation I was in and leap, or go find another crappy job and end up in the same place. I chose the former. It was time for me to stop trying to be what everyone wanted me to be and finally be who I knew I was. It was time to be a professional.
“The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.” – Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
The way I did things wasn’t going to work if I was to really turn this “side-project” into an agency. Offering “full service” solutions was going to spread me too thin and in all reality, isn’t scalable. I had to change. Boundaries don’t change unless we actually do something to change them. Especially the ones in our own heads. The brain is flexible and can be modeled and shaped. You do have a choice. And after you make that choice, you have to act!
The first thing I did was can the “full-service” gig and selected 3 areas I knew I was good at and those were going to be the only things we did. The main service was Inbound Marketing, which I know in and of itself has a number of moving parts, but I would no longer provide the individual services ‘a la carte’. The second was strategic SEO link-building and the third was website design. This allowed me to focus on and develop scalable systems to grow. By actually limiting my services, I got better at what I did and am now able to charge a premium because of my expertise in these fields. As we continued to grow, I handed off more and more of the pieces until I was mostly doing only what I really wanted to do.
This was not, and is still not easy to do. Saying “no” is hard and letting go of “the way things are” is even harder. But in a world where the economy and the buyer are continually changing, the only way to succeed is to embrace the necessary changes. As a result, we have seen our revenue double year-over-year the past two years and the future is looking even brighter!
From Fear to Opportunity
Change is much easier to make when your company is less than 10 years old. Sure you have habits, but what about a company that’s, say, more than 85 years old? Now, let me just say, you don’t stay in business that long by accident. But, there does come a point where even your legacy can’t carry you any more. So how does a company, with an almost 100-year-old legacy and some of the most technologically advanced products in the world adapt to the changing economy?
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw
Bliley Technologies Inc. was born during the pioneering days of amateur radio in the US. They have a history of innovation that played a role in WWII, The Korean War, The Space Program and more. Today they are still among the worldwide leaders in the manufacturing of low noise frequency control products and play a vital role in a number of industries. While this engineering firm is amazing at what they do, their marketing was stuck in the “good ol’ days.”
With new leadership at the helm, Bliley knew that in order to bring this great company back to industry dominance, change was a must. The way things were, was not going to get them where they wanted to go. As to be expected, the idea of change for many at the company was not one they embraced with open arms. But with lofty new goals in front of them, the leadership team saw the opportunity in front of them and weren’t going to let it pass them by.
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
Change is never easy. We are creatures of habit, mainly because habits make us feel safe. But just ask yourself, when was the last time doing the “safe” thing ever lead to a breakthrough. The team at Bliley understood this and took a leap. We started the engagement with an Inbound GamePlan. This is where our team looks into the client’s business, helps define their personas and creates messaging that we believe will resonate with their target audience. The process takes about 30 days and afterward we create a report on our findings as well as a detailed outlined strategy built specially for our client.
After looking at Bliley, their industry and defining their personas, we uncovered that there was a ton of potential using SEO and building a powerful presence using LinkedIn. Together with their team we set up a new site, on boarded them to Hubspot and started creating persona-centric content. Typically when starting and inbound campaign, we don’t expect to see results right away. But in the case of Bliley, their industry and customers were ready for something new. Leads started coming in from nearly day one and by the time we hit the 3rd month of implementation, they were seeing over 3k in visits and 67% increase in leads month-over-month.
With some things you just get the timing right. In the case of Bliley, there are a few things I think that have lead to this great early success. For one, engineers are hungry for innovation but they also research their decisions. By creating good, relevant content that addresses their needs, we’ve been able to convert at a higher rate. Second, there is no one in this vertical that is creating this level of value. Again, engineers like data. We just made it easier for them to access it. The third and most powerful reason why Bliley has seen so much success is their dedication to the process. Once they decided to change directions, they bought into it. Their team works together alongside our team for a common purpose. We stay the course and put in the work. This dedication has allowed for them to see amazing results, quickly.
So, are you stuck in “the way things are?” If you want to grow your business, now is the time to embrace change. Here’s the kicker, though, you have to choose change. While life’s circumstances will continue to push and pull at you, nothing changes until you decide to change. So instead of getting to a point where the decision is nearly forced upon you, take the initiative and choose change now. The world has already changed and the way businesses connect with their prospects and clients has changed along with it. Inbound helps you start a new conversation. One built on trust and adding value to those you come in contact with. The stories highlighted in this post are just two quick overviews of what is possible. Maybe your company can be the next success story? But it’s your choice!
Read the full Bliley case story by clicking the call to action below:
Hiring sales professionals that not only have talent, but that also fit well into your organization, is more complicated than many sales leaders realize. The right person needs to have the skills and abilities necessary to blend in with your existing team, connect well with prospects and clients, and commit to growth within your organization.
The following are some helpful tips to assist you as you attempt to hire sales reps that are right for your business.
Develop Systematic Hiring and Onboarding Processes
Talent Management is likely on the bottom of the list for most sales managers. When it comes to sourcing a great salesperson or closing an opportunity, the immediate revenue possibility often wins out. If you leave your talent process to chance, you’ll create constant fire drills every time a salesperson quits.
Your sales organization can greatly reduce the time and resources needed for talent management by creating a consistent process to help you recruit, hire, onboard and retain a high-performing sales team. Taking the time to develop the right process for your organization can save you hours and money wasted on the back-end.
Define Sales Roles
The skills required to sell a medical device for example, are likely much different than what’s required to take a prospect from freemium to premium for a SaaS solution. To hire the “right fit”, you need a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities required in the postion.
If you want to drive productivity, you need to align your hires with the sales tasks that they will be required to master, if they’re to be successful in the role.
Use Predictive Talent Analytics
Data strengthens confidence in creating the profile of the ideal new hire for a given position. Analytics provide your organization the ability to hire based on data, rather than gut feel.
In his article, “Most HR Data is Bad Data,” Marcus Buckingham details how many HR rating systems are based on inputs that aren’t backed up by science. He writes,
“It means that all of the data we use to decide who gets promoted is bad data; that all of the performance appraisal data we use to determine people’s bonus pay is imprecise and the links we try to show between our people strategy and our business strategy – expressed in various competency models – are spurious. It means that, when it comes to our people within our organizations, we are all functionally blind.”
Predictive talent analytics combined with a process to manage to the data puts science into your talent management process. When you’re trying to reach aggressive revenue goals, there’s no better way to make sure you’re hiring the right salespeople.
Sales talent management needs to be a consistent priority for sales managers, who want to attract, hire and retain top sales talent. Human resources can help, but they shouldn’t be the lead owner of your recruiting efforts. You, as a sales manager, need to participate in your own rescue by developing an effective strategy for talent management. It’s a crucial component to the success of your team. Here are three steps you can take to own your own talent process.
Conduct three sourcing efforts a week (E.g., a phone call, LinkedIn reach-out)
Get three candidate names from each contact you make
Maintain the contact with your top three candidates
One of the challenges I face as a sales and marketing leader is that sometimes it’s hard to see where marketing ends and sales begins. In an age where people often see sales and marketing alignment as some kind of otherworldly utopia, this is not a terrible challenge to have. I’m also not going to complain about this particular challenge because, well, it’s been orchestrated.
In simple terms, I have some high standards for how marketing and sales at our company are going to not only interact with each other, but actually harmonize with each other and make each other better — it just means my KPIs and status reports are a little less cut and dry than your typical (and separate) sales team and marketing team.
I’ve written before about inbound marketing — how buyers have changed. How authentic thought leadership today is more important than ever before. And, how the potential customer on the end of the phone line has expectations for that salesperson (SDR/BDR and Account Executive, alike) that far exceed anything else we’ve experienced. So when I first began formulating the role my very first business development representative (BDR) would play in my inbound engine, I was obsessed with taking what has been largely employed as a prospecting role and making it work within an inbound marketing environment.
It’s been one very quick month since our brand new BDR joined our team, and in a short period of time we’ve already seen how he has not only supported our inbound marketing efforts, but has helped build a bridge for the customer’s journey from content-consuming prospect to active opportunity.
And it’s been one month.
You see, inbound marketing is great — I’m a huge advocate — but it’s even better when it leads to inbound sales. You might be thinking, they’re the same thing, right? And they are very similar in that you support a prospect through three stages of awareness, consideration and decision. But an inbound sales professional has the responsibility of identifying, connecting, exploring and advising those prospects all throughout their journey.
If this sounds similar to a traditional sales process, it’s because it’s not particularly ground-breaking. However, there are two key areas where you’ll see the greatest difference between a modern inbound sales team and a more legacy sales team:
1) Inbound sales teams base their entire sales strategy on the buyer rather than the seller.
2) Inbound salespeople personalize the entire sales experience to the buyer’s context.
One of the first things I had our new BDR do was study our buyer personas, the semi-fictional representations of the men and women he will be courting and serving for as long as he works at our company. Side note about buyer personas — they’re not just for marketing (or sales). They’re also an important resource for any customer success or product team. After all, they’re representations of the people who become your customers and use your product.
BDRs, Buyer Personas, Marketing… All working together to court MQLs and capitalize on inbound… Click To Tweet
Next, I had him consume nearly every ounce of content we had ever created. Most importantly, I planned for him to connect with our marketing qualified leads (MQLs), many of which had downloaded content from our library of ebooks. And, beyond simply reading those ebooks, I asked him to consider the pains, desires, goals and concerns that each of our buyer personas would have while reading each ebook. He then formulated anywhere from two to five questions for each persona for each ebook.
By this time, not only was he feeling comfortable with our story and the problems we solved for our customers, but he was able to identify and speak to the pains that each buyer persona (we have three) would be bringing to his or her experience reading our content.
What do you think happened when he began calling the MQLs to discuss the ebooks they had read? Rather than the dialogue being generic or unilateral, our new BDR is equipped to personalize those calls to the buyer’s context. Honestly, whenever I overhear his conversations with these leads, it’s a bit reminiscent of a book club. I find myself listening in on an authentic conversation between two people who both seem to understand a problem and are working together to uncover a solution.
Now, this is still sales. At the end of the day, he has a quota to hit — and those are sales qualified appointments. If the MQL he’s working with is ready to move to the next stage of the process, then what usually comes next is either a deeper discovery meeting or perhaps a demo with an account executive (depending on how far the conversation went on this initial call).
What’s most important is that this strategy is based not on the seller (in this case our BDR and AE) but on the buyer. Our inbound BDR has been able to add tremendous value to the journeys of our prospects, beyond the information we can provide them via marketing. The result of this is a more personalized product demo, a shortened sales cycle, and the ability for the account executive to focus on helping serve the unique needs of each of our buyers.
This article gives you the 10 growth hackers with the most impressive track records – people who have found success time and again in different industries and with different companies.
More importantly for our purposes though, these 10 growth hackers are the most active. These are the guys who continue to write, podcast, consult and speak to help other businesses find the same success they have.
These are also the growth hackers who are the most responsive to intelligent, well-formulated and professional outreach. If you play your cards right they’ll answer a question. And with their knowledge, that answer might just change the way you run your business.
I’ll also include their elevator pitch, expertise (so you know what they know), a valuable quote and link my favorite piece of growth hacking content from each growth hacking thought leader.
Sean Ellis is CEO at GrowthHackers.com. Previously CEO at Qualaroo and key early growth/marketing exec at Dropbox, Eventbrite, Lookout, LogMeIn (IPO), and Uproar (IPO).
Sean’s Expertise:
Look to Sean if you’re searching for a well-rounded growth hacking and marketing guy. In particular, he has a lot to say about how marketers can start growth hacking. I’d also recommend Sean’s Twitter as his shares are some of the most genuinely valauble out there. It really feels like he puts time into sharing quality content, rather than just sharing titles or the content of friends.
A Valuable Quote:
Once product market fit [is] validated, I would dig deeply to understand why early users consider it a “must have.” I’d ask things like “what is the main benefit you get from the product, why is that benefit important to you, what would you use if the product weren’t available?” I would then try to develop a relevant/appealing promise statement based on the must have benefit. From there I would start optimizing an onboarding flow. This may require me to spend some money on Google Adwords to generate enough user flow in the short term. I wouldn’t obsess on my ROI from that spend, as the goal is to generate enough traffic to quickly optimize conversions – not to scale marketing. Finally, once I had product/market fit and effective onboarding/sales process, I would start testing customer acquisition channels.
Sean’s Ask-Me-Anything on GrowthHackers has loads of value, as he responds to all the questions you’d think to ask him with lengthy, well-thought-out answers.
Noah Kagan is “Chief Sumo” at SumoMe.com. Previously at Intel, Noah was #30 in at Facebook and #4 in at Mint. He’s now a growth consultant and lifehacker.
Noah’s Expertise:
Noah uses his blog at OkDork in a different way than many of the other growth hackers and marketers on this list. You’ll find book reviews, Seth Godin-esque musings and (arguably most valuably for startup and growth hackers) some of the best resource-posts out there. He also has some incredibly engaged comment sections where he’s an active participant. Check it out!
A Valuable Quote:
I want to collaborate with the WISDOM of DORKS! That’s you, btw. I’m going to share my fav tools […]:
The most comprehensive guide to staying organized I’ve ever read is Noah’s “My Organization System.” For any growth hackers out there in need of a bit of structure, it’s well worth a read.
To get Wishpond’s newest ebook which gives you 100 growth hacking ideas we learned from 5 years as a startup, CLICK HERE.
Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Design School. Since 2003 he’s sold two technology companies and now helps teams design more engaging products.
Nir’s Expertise:
Nir is an expert in “behavioral design” – a topic which encompasses user experience, behavioral economics, and a dash of neuroscience. His articles and thought-leadership for growth center around understanding your prospective customers and designing products and marketing strategies based on that understanding.
A Valuable Quote:
Every start-up hoping to be a big business someday needs growth, engagement, and market potential. All three are necessary but not sufficient. For example, a high-growth startup with poor user engagement is a leaky bucket. Meanwhile, a product with high user engagement but with limited market potential will get stuck serving too small a niche to get big. And finally, a company serving a huge potential market but with no way to capture the opportunity by growing and engaging customers, is just a team in waiting.
Since 2006, Lincoln Murphy has helped 400+ SaaS companies accelerate their growth by optimizing the Customer Lifecycle, from customer acquisition to retention to account expansion and advocacy.
Lincoln’s Expertise:
As his elevator pitch states clearly, Lincoln is all about the customer lifecycle. His articles on onboarding, user experience, driving loyalty and mitigating churn are the best out there.
A Valuable Quote:
The first in-app experience your customer has with your product sets the tone for your relationship, and if it’s confusing, overwhelming, or otherwise puts up barriers to achieving success (or at least recognizing the value potential in your product), you’re in trouble.
As I say all the time, the seeds of churn are planted early, and those seeds are planted deep if your onboarding experience for new customers or your prospects during a free trial is terrible.
[…]Regardless of whether it’s a high-touch or low-touch scenario, 100% of the time, the problem is that the SaaS vendor either doesn’t know what the customer or prospect’s desired outcome is… or forgot that solving for that is the most important thing.
Karol is CEO and founder of Colibri, a social media and growth-tool in San Francisco. With more than 20 years of coding and 12 years of growth hacking experience, Karol brings software development to business growth more than any other growth hacker.
Karol’s Expertise:
Karol’s is another great all-rounder. He isn’t picky about growth strategies and is a proponent of anything which works to grow a business. That said, a lot of his content does have that “dev” flavor for growth. But there’s nothing wrong with that!
A Valuable Quote:
Testing:
You can conduct A/B tests on almost everything. Testing layouts for your landing page, logos, content, headlines and every other part of your online presence. It is indeed a very important part of growth hacking. Although it seems harmless or even effortless, it takes your time and resources. Choose wisely and always give it time to make sure the conclusions are valid. Don’t get easily discouraged. Majority of the tests usually end with no success but this is how you gain expertise and experience.
One of the best resources I’ve found to introduce marketers to growth hacking is Karol’s “Growth Hacking Tips – Improving Your Sales Funnel.” It does an awesome job of communicating complicated ideas succinctly and well.
Andrew Chen works at Uber on their Growth team. He is an advisor/investor for tech startups including AngelList, Barkbox, Dropbox, Tinder, Wanelo, and Gusto.
Previously, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based firm with $2B under management.
He’s the real deal.
Andrew’s Expertise:
Andrew is a Silicon Valley-focused growth hacker so he’s all about building and growing startups. His content revolves around taking something small and with limited budget and making it explode. He doesn’t play favorites though. He knows and champions anything that works – from social networks to advertising, online games and more.
A Valuable Quote:
Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.
One of the first, and most formative, articles on growth hacking is Andrew’s “Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing.” It’s well worth a read if you’re looking for the difference between a growth hacker and a marketer, and the AirBNB case study only makes the definition clearer.
Sujan Patel is the co-founder of Web Profits, a growth marketing agency helping companies leverage the latest and greatest marketing strategy to fuel their businesses. Sujan has over 13 years of internet marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like SalesForce, Mint, Intuit and many other Fortune 500-caliber companies.
Sujan’s Expertise:
Sujan is big on relationships. He has some great thoughts on influencer marketing alongside an impressive breadth of growth hacking know-how.
A Valuable Quote:
One of the biggest reasons businesses struggle with growth is that they get caught up in “glimmer.”
[Imagine] You’re standing at the wheel of a ship out at sea with nothing but an expanse of ocean all around you. Desperate to reach a destination, any destination, you spot a glimmer from land far off in the distance.
So you spin the wheel around, and everyone gets excited.
Not long after that, you (or someone on your crew) spots a glimmer in another direction – maybe it looks closer. Looking between the two, you agree it looks more attainable, so you give the wheel another spin and head that way.
Businesses repeat this process a lot. Trying to jump from one thing to the next in the hopes of gaining ground never really gets you anywhere.
Sujan’s article “Why Your Company Isn’t Growing (And The Key to Finding Sustainable Growth)” is a good example of his style: it’s long form and comprehensive as any other thought-leader. But more than that, and here’s what I like most, he’s extremely confident. His content reads like a definitive guide. Do this. Don’t do that. It’s refreshing and appealing to new businesses looking for concrete guidance.
Hiten Shah is an entrepreneur and startup advisor. He is the cofounder and president of the analytics companies KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg.
Hiten’s Expertise:
Hiten is a SaaS marketer to his core. He’s a quiet marketer (at least compared to his colorful business partner Neil Patel) who casually and confidently goes about building multi-million dollar companies from nothing. His expertise is wide, but his writings focus most frequently on brand building and taking a startup from garage to success.
A Valuable Quote:
In the early days building a brand means that you start getting direct, unattributed visitors coming to your site. These are people who are visiting your site for no reason other than that you’ve carved out a little piece of their brains. They had a thought, and that triggered them to make a beeline to your site.
In the long term, this means that your brand spreads. Because you have space in people’s heads, people are thinking about you, and that means they’ll talk about you and tell their friends.
That’s why building your brand is so important. It’s what gets you off the treadmill of “doing things that don’t scale” and gets you toward real growth.
To build your brand from nothing, you need two things: novelty and repetition…
Hiten’s recent article “Copycat Your Competitors to Take the Market is a good example of his style of writing and his strategies for growth. In the article he analyzes the strategies behind a real-world business maneuver, discusses the strengths of the strategy and then (in a selfless and super valuable maneuver himself) offers relevant content on the subject from other, well-respected thought-leaders.
Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world.
Neil’s Expertise:
Neil Patel has written with authority on every growth hacking-related subject, and doesn’t seem to know the word “sleep.” Check out his hugely valuable content on SEO, CRO, advertising, content marketing and more.
His content often features case studies, well-analyzed data and transparency. Everything he writes is backed up impressively.
Neil is also the master of pushing the limits on site optimization. I often go to NeilPatel.com just to see what’s new in digital monetization.
A Valuable Quote:
Every decision that a growth hacker makes is informed by growth. Every strategy, every tactic, and every initiative, is attempted in the hopes of growing. Growth is the sun that a growth hacker revolves around. Of course, traditional marketers care about growth too, but not to the same extent. Remember, the power of a growth hacker is in their obsessive focus on a singular goal. By ignoring almost everything, they can achieve the one task that matters most early on.
Neil’s “The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking is just one example of the value he gives his readers and fans. It’s an enviable example of interlinked, high SEO, 10x content.
Brian Dean is an internationally-recognized entrepreneur and SEO expert.
Brian specializes in providing marketing professionals and entrepreneurs practical strategies they can use to get more search engine traffic.
Brian’s Expertise:
Brian Dean is the SEO guru we’ve been waiting for. His content revolves around a few central strategies for traffic growth through SEO and each of them is comprehensively broken down with screenshots, step-by-step walkthroughs, tool recommendations and case studies.
He’s also impressively active on his somewhat ridiculous article comments (about 900 comments on average). Check out his content and feel free to ask a question. He’ll get back to you.
Oh, and his strategies work. Seriously work.
A Valuable Quote:
Here are the 3-steps that make up The Skyscraper Technique:
Step 1: Find link-worthy content
Step 2: Make something even better
Step 3: Reach out to the right people
Here’s why this technique works so well (and what it has to do with a skyscraper):
Have you ever walked by a really tall building and said to yourself:
“Wow, that’s amazing! I wonder how big the 8th tallest building in the world is.”
Of course not.
It’s human nature to be attracted to the best.
And what you’re doing here is finding the tallest “skyscraper” in your space…and slapping 20 stories to the top of it.
All of a sudden YOU have the content that everyone wants to talk about (and link to).
Brian’s article, “Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days” is a good place to start with his content. It gives a good all-around idea of how his strategies work and the results you can get with them. And, in true Brian Dean style, there’s a complete step-by-step walkthrough as well.
5 More Awesome and Totally Badass Growth Hackers You Should Follow on Twitter:
A little while back I spoke in Austin at the #FlipMyFunnel conference. It was an Account Based Marketing (ABM) conference.
ABM is hot right now. I see a lot of organization implementing it, including a number of my clients. In spite of the power of ABM, and the tools, methodologies etc, messaging is still a critical part of sales and ABM. Unfortunately, too many people miss the mark on Account Based Marketing messaging and they let their ego get in the way.
Therefore, my presentation was on why our ego’s get in the way and how that hurts our ABM messages.
Enjoy, and I’ve included the transcript as well.
Transcribed:
Keenan:
I am the author of Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century, and I’m the CEO and Founder of A Sales Guy. That’s all you’re going to hear about me today unless you have questions, because truth of the matter is you don’t give a shit and that’s kind of my point in this presentation. You can follow @Keenan. I’ve got a couple of Not Taughts. Just because I can, anybody that tweets something funny, cool about this presentation or the most whatever, I’ll figure it out, I’ll give you a free signed copy at the end. All right, oh snap. Oh, there you go. All right, I’m a fixer, because I’m from Boston. See, now I got to go back. I’m a fixer or a fixer for those of you who aren’t from Boston. I love fixing shit. I was married for a while, and I married the wrong person because she didn’t like a fixer. You know what they say, it’s like “Oh, I had a bad day at work,” or, “The kids are causing this,” or, “I don’t like this,” but okay, let’s try to fix it. She’s like, “Can you just listen to me.”
When I say that I’m a fixer is I love the idea and it’s innate in me to try to fix stuff. You guys ever watch Naked and Afraid? First off, I have no clue why these fools sign up for that shit. I mean, I’m sorry. I have no understanding why these people do this. They got to be crazy, and there’s also a powerful, I didn’t know the words, metaphor, a powerful case study for the overconfidence of people, right? It reminds me of Facebook and that gorilla, “I would have done this and I would have done and I would have done this.” Bullshit, because everyone of these people that gets on this Naked and Afraid and they’re like, “Don’t let me leave. I’m here forever. I’m here for the 21 days.” I saw one the other day the girl literally quit after 24 hours. I was like, “Yeah, okay. You know your business. You got it. Well done.” The idea of a fixer is if I were on Naked and Afraid I’d be the guy like, “Okay, I get up the camp,” I’d be miserable by the way, I wouldn’t do it, but if you force me to I’d go out and get some water and food and I’d come back and I’d work on the house some more and be like, “OH, the house isn’t right,” and I’d come out working on some more.
By the time of Naked and Afraid I’d have a six person hut with heat and electricity in it. I wouldn’t stop because I’d trying to fix something. It’s just how I am. I’m a fixer. One of the keys to being a fixer when it comes to other people is you have to understand other people. You have to understand them and that’s where we’re going to with this in the next 21 minutes and 38 seconds. Nobody gives a shit about you people. Nobody gives a shit about you, your product, your company or any other corny thing that you want to talk about. You know one of my favorite ones is, is usually smaller companies. That stupid frickin ink 5000 fastest growing companies. Anybody on that? All right, can’t offend anybody today, but you guys know what I’m talking about, right? Anybody been sold by one of those companies before? That’s like the first thing they want to tell you. “We’re the 8th fastest growing company.” I don’t give a shit. Why are you talking to me about this? That’s you. I don’t care about you, right? What do you think I care about?
audience:
Yourself. Business. Keenan:
Me, I care about me when you’re selling to me. I care about me. That’s all I care about. I got stuff to do. I got business to take care of. I got bills to pay. If you’re not talking about me, I don’t want to talk about you. When we do things like how long we been in business, what our product does, when we do that stuff what are we doing? We’re assuming these things [inaudible 00:04:23] tell you that it has value in an indirect way, in a self-centered way. In a way that focused on me, right? I don’t care and neither should you. You don’t think enough about your customers. sales and marketing people too many times are spending time on us and not them. How many people have gotten e-mails or requests to meet with a salesperson that’s, “Can I just 10, 15, 20 minutes of your time?” Raise your hands. Half the time they don’t even offer you anything do they? They just say, “Hey, I’m so and so. I’m great and we’re great and can I get 15 minutes of your time to talk about X.” Those are the real bad ones. Sometimes someone makes a half-hearted attempt and says, “Hey, I’m so and so and I can help you increase sales. Can I get 20 minutes of your time?” Okay, increase sales but that’s huge.
“How are you going to help me increase sales? What makes you think I even have a sales problem? Twenty minutes, I don’t have that kind of time for you.” Lesson one, nobody gives a shit about you. Let it sink in. We have one job as sales and marketing people. Anybody know what it is?
Keenan:
I like this buy. Even if his answer is wrong I like this guy. What did you say? audience:
Give a shit about [inaudible 00:05:46] Keenan:
Get people to give a shit about you. He’s pretty much right. I wish I had actually put that up there. That was good. He’s heading in the right direction. As much as I talk trash every once in a while I try to be somewhat profound and this next one’s probably profound, but we think it’s to sell. We think it’s to sell shit but before we can sell shit we have to do something don’t we? What do we have to do? audience:
Find out what they need. Keenan:
Yes, we need to find out what they need but it still requires something else. audience:
Who they are. Keenan:
That still requires something else. Yes, you’re going in the right direction.
audience:
Understanding them. Keenan:
Yes, understanding them but that still requires something else. audience:
Trust. Keenan:
Trust, who said trust? Now we’re heading in the right direction. Watch this, watch this. Ready? It’s to get the prospect to let you help them. Anybody thought of it like that before, because if the prospect is not willing to let you help them they are not going to give you the information you need. They are not going to go on this journey with you. Right? Think about how you buy yourself. Whether you know it or not, whether you’re buying a new car or whether you’re buying something for your organization, somewhere along the line, some sales rep or some marketing organization catches your attention after you let your guard down and you start saying, “Hey, I got this problem. I struggle with this.” You become vulnerable and you do it in hopes that person on the other side can solve your problem and you’re being vulnerable so that solution they come to the table with is a good one. How many of you ever dealt with a buyer who doesn’t let their guard down but takes you through the whole sales process? Anybody gone through that? I can tell you as a salesperson I have. One of the perfect examples, anybody have to respond to a RFP before? Wait a minute, so I asked anybody selling they don’t take you through the sales process and don’t raise their hand but I say [inaudible 00:07:54] and everybody’s like, “That sucks.” That’s what a RFP is.
They sit on this fucking stupid thing this thick as if your time doesn’t matter and they say, “Fill it out and do not [inaudible 00:08:08] to anybody and do not talk to anybody and we’ll let you know.” Is that what an RFP is, right? Is that client or prospect letting you help them? Is that person letting you help them? audience:
No. Keenan:
No. How easy it to sell when they don’t let you help them?
Keenan:
Thank you. It’s exceedingly hard. Why is it hard if they don’t let you help them. audience:
[inaudible 00:08:43] Keenan:
Thank you. You don’t know what they need. You can’t provide a solution that provides value. Here’s lesson number two, that’s our goal is sales. Get the customer or prospect to let you help them. How do we do that? I’m going a little slow today. I need more Redbull. Lead with empathy. Screw your ego for now. Empathy is the most powerful skill when it comes to sales. We can’t connect with people if we don’t have an empathy for their situation. When it comes to marketing, when it comes to sales and our messages we have to start with putting ourselves in their shoes. How empathetic are we of them? How connected to their situation are we becoming? I was talking to someone one day and someone was asking me about sales calls and I have really been an individual contributor in a while but I still sell because my business development guy gets me clients and he sets up meetings for me and part of my company sells consulting. I’ll get on the phone with a CRO or CEO and I didn’t realize it, it’s one of those things that I think I did at the time but I went auto pilot and what my business dead guy does is he gets them buttered up enough that they want to let me help them.
I started having these conversations and I’m thinking nothing of me. I am so deep into their business and my minds going a thousand miles an hour about how they’re building their sales team, what their strategy looks like, how they’re compensating people, how the team’s coaching looks like. I’m in their business kind of like when I was married to my wife, “I got a problem I can fix for you.” I don’t even think about my offering or what I can do until all of a sudden the light switches. All of a sudden I know, “I can help these people,” and that switch then allows me to take all that stuff I learned and start talking about how I can make their world better, but I’m not even thinking about product, I’m not thinking about my service, I’m not thinking about anything but them. They’re the center focus, it’s all I care about and all I want to do and all I want my business [inaudible 00:11:10] guy to do is get these people to be willing to let me help them and the rest takes care of itself. I didn’t make this shit up by the way. Greenburg and Greenburg, Spaulding and Plank, Frank and Park and Moore, you can look any of these cats up, they’ve done research over research, study after study usually in the weirdest spaces so I kind of don’t like it like car dealerships for instance and car salesman.
That car salesmen with more empathy out preform those with less empathy like 10 fold. It’s a joke. What they found is empathy drives trust. Trust drives comfort and when that happens guess what they’re willing to let you do? Oh my goodness. audience:
Help them. Keenan:
Help them. Aye. I was like, “Come on this is a small crowd.” I should come down there and start talking to you guys, get right down in there with you. Come on, we can get some fun, right? Start letting you help them. That was good work baby. They’re not letting you help them. The research supports it. Check out any of these studies. They’re interesting, powerful. Greenburg also did a Harvard business review in 2013, 12 something like that and he showed some of the numbers. The only thing about it bugs me is he kept calling them men. I’m a dude too, you wouldn’t think I’d notice but it’s just, “When salesmen,” and the men and men and men and men, I’m like … I literally he said men so many times I went and I looked at when it was written because like, “This has to be written in the 70s. I swear to God. I’m not kidding you. It as so out of place. I was like, “This fuckers been [inaudible 00:12:47]” 2013 I was blown away. Outside of that it’s an interesting study. I’m actually going to give you some stuff to use now. I’m just not going to pontificate the whole time. How do we do this? How do we start providing that value? How do we bring empathy to the table? We’re going to do a Steven Covey on their ass.
Anybody know Steven Covey? Wow, I am old. I was in the workplace when that shit came out. It was the biggest deal. Anybody old enough to remember that? It was in the late 80s, early 90s. Oh my god, everybody and their mother. Big rocks and little rocks, remember that shit? It was great. audience:
Paper. Keenan:
I’m sorry? audience:
I had a giant binder. It was paper. Keenan:
Yes! Yes! It was paper. She’s right, hallelujah. He joined forces with some store, the Franklin Covey store. Yes, yes, yes. Amen. Those of you around, what is habit 5? audience:
[inaudible 00:13:56] Keenan:
Follow the trend. I put a trend out here. I’m talking about empathy. Seek first to understand. Seek first to understand. The more we can understand the workplace we can understand the environment of our customers, of our key target customers or what are they called? ICPS, ideal client profile. All these frickin acronyms. You know what I’m saying, right? The minute we have a better understanding of who they are and how they work and the processes they employ, the better position we are to have empathy for what they are doing. I’m a crazy dude so I’m going to go rogue here for a second but before the gorilla did his crazy stuff all that was all over the internet was this transgender bathroom shit, and I’m in Texas too. I love this. Are you kidding me. It’s Dallas. It’s Austin not Dallas but I can still have some fun with this. It was everywhere, right? What I find interesting with that is the people generally speaking who had the biggest reaction where the people most removed. If you had a son or daughter who was trans-gendered you had an entirely different perspective whether or not you agreed. If you had a friend who was trans-gendered, whether or not you agreed wasn’t the point, you had a very different opinion. You could have empathy for what that must have been like. It’s no different here folks.
The less information you have about your customers, about your clients and their day to day lives and they things that the effect, the less effective you can be because you can’t bring empathy to the table. To put it in perspective one of the things that … I’m going to slightly go rogue again. I see the time, don’t worry, is we talk a lot about what people do and I see this all the time with the people that I consult for. Few organizations teach their sale steams and their marketing teams to be experts in how they do it. We don’t know how important how is and a cheesy, totally cheesy metaphor, I use it all the time but it gets the point so I don’t care how cheesy it is. Let’s say you sell logistics services and there’s a particular client that you’ve been trying to get to forever and you call them up and you start looking for the problem and you say things like, “Hey, how long does it take you to get a package from LA to Boston,” and they say, “We have the most sophisticated system in the world. We get it from LA to Boston in 3 days. No one can get it there faster by truck. Our trucks do this. We have fuel efficient trucks so we get from a cost perspective [inaudible 00:16:58]. Nobody can do that ground better than we can.”
The sales person keeps asking all these questions trying to look for a problem and he’s not getting one so he turns to him and says, “You’re not interested in what we have to offer?” They say, “No, not at all,” and he says, “Have you ever considered flight,” and they go, “Huh? What do you mean flight?” “Aren’t you aware there are now planes and you can put that on a plane, get that shit to Boston in like 6 hours?” “No. What’s flight?” We assume that our customers have all the information so based on our customers perspective, or that prospects perspective they were the best transportation company in the world without the knowledge that you could actually put that shit on a plane. The only way you can find a problem, a really good problem is to understand how. How are people doing it? How do they do it today? How are they building their sales teams? How do they go to market? How do they do their account based management? God, it’s weird coming over here and talking to you guys, like six of you and the whole worlds over here. I wish you could … It really does. It’s almost a shocking feeling when I go like this. I feel bipolar. Now, let’s get to the how. How is powerful. Teach your sales people and your marketing people to understand the how’s.
How are people doing what you sell today different because if you really think about it the true differentiating and everything on the planet is how? Way back in the day when computers were created PC and MAC, they were both computers, they both did computing, but they did it very differently, huh? How’s a powerful one? All right. Know their business problems, not just their technical problems. This is another one that I experience with folks that don’t really understand. Anybody know the difference between a business problem and a technical problem. audience:
I’m thinking business problem is people oriented. It’s around people and their daily processes perhaps. Keenan:
That’s good but no. Business problems and technical problems are like this, technical problems are the things that prohibit you from getting there. If you’re talking about efficiency like I can’t … You got two separate databases and you can’t run certain reports and you can do certain things, that’s a technical problem. They want sales people all the time trying to sell to that technical problem and there’s nothing wrong with that but what’s the busies problem. audience:
[inaudible 00:19:32] Keenan:
Who said that? What? audience:
I just said how does it impact [crosstalk 00:19:35] Keenan:
Yes! The business problem is the impact of the technical problems. Here’s the powerful piece, if you have a technical problem that’s a big technical problem but it really only effects a small business problem what are the chances of selling that shit? [inaudible 00:19:53] I can’t do this. I can’t do that. We got a deal. What’s the impact? What’s the business problem? It’s really not that big well then we just wasted our time. You get really good at understanding the difference between business problems and technical problems. Once you do that be Santa, make a list. Make a list of all the problems that your company can solve. Ironically enough I have a framework on my site, a sales guy [inaudible 00:20:22]. We can a really simple table, word tables. They’re pretty. It’s really simple that walks you through this process and somewhere downloading got back to my business and said it’s garbage and I was like, “What the hell you looking for paper and numbers? It’s just a frickin structure,” but it’s a structure few people go through because I can tell you right now based on my experiences almost none of your sales organizations, marketing organizations have any place in the company a list of the actual business problems your product or service or company solve. Everybody talks about them and if you ask people to tell you what they are some people can give you some, but no one’s actually done a complete inventory.
Here’s the irony in the piece, sales and marketing fuck everything up sometimes right, because and [inaudible 00:21:08] can speak to this, when some smart guys and girls got in a room with a bar napkin and sketched out the company what were they focused on? Some problem or set of business problems that they realized weren’t getting addressed. Am I telling the truth here? No body was talking about the 8 fastest growing companies. No one talking about any of this shit. They were talking, “Oh, look. Here’s a problem, it’s not getting addressed and we can fix it,” but then you start hiring people, you start hiring sales people and you start hiring marketing people and they forget or we move away from the problems we solve. Go back, make a list of all the problems. Once you make that list of problems … Oh boy, now I’m getting in trouble, you got to right down why do they matter. You got all the business problems here on the next call and you want to say … Whoops. It’s all right. [inaudible 00:22:09] hold this. All right. Why do they matter? Why do the business problems matter? I’m going to hold it. That is the outcome. If my business problem is X why does it matter to the organization? What’s the impact? Sorry guys, can I get some help over here? Sorry guys. Technology, oh I got it. I got it. See what I mean?
that was a technical problem. The business problem is it kind of threw me off my game. I got to get my game back. There’s a perfect example. Technical problem, my mike’s not working. Business problem, it’s messing me up a little. I’ve lost my audience. I got to get it back. All right. Once you have the problems I want to know why they matter. What’s the impact to the organization? Think about what happens to that organization when that problem exists. This is powerful exercise guys. Marketing and sales need to get together and do this. It is a powerful exercise because when you understand the impact to an organization when certain problems exist you now are on the front of this curve and your ability to respond to those problems goes up 10 fold, and then, here’s the interesting one, why do the problems exist? Few people touch on this one. If I guess I’m telling you why problems exist what do I start looking like? An expert. When I can look you in the eye and say, “You’re struggling with poor lead generation,” real problem, “Therefore it’s forcing you to have high close rates in order to make your number and you’re struggling to get to your number. Let me tell you why these things exist. Normally we see that when you have low lead generation the problem exists because either marketing is not on target. You’re not using the right mediums.”
I start diagnosing why it happens and what do they do? They get excited because they think I understand the problem. Am I tell the truth? That’s where expertise comes in, right there. When you can start telling people why the problems exist you become the expert. From there build all your marketing messages around that, all your sales messages around that. The business problems they’re having, the impact that those business problems create and why those problems exist in the first place. That’s what you want to do. That’s how your marketing messages do it. That’s how you bring empathy to the table because guess what isn’t in this? Your product, your service, your customer’s history, your culture, none of that’s in it, and we don’t want it to be because no one gives a shit. I like these people. Give shit away. The five-minute favor. Anybody heard the five-minute favor? Adam Grant wrote a great book, great book called “Give and Take” in it [inaudible 00:25:10] should have written this down, but in it he interviewed this guy and he said, “I’ve got this belief system and the belief system is simply this, if I can do a favor that takes five minutes or less I’ll do it for anybody.” I was like that’s pretty good, right? I get hit up all the time on the internet.
If someone asks for something, they want 20 minutes of my time that’s a whole different story, but as a company can we look for ways to give shit away, to give stuff to our customers clients, to give them things to make their world better without asking for anything in return? How do we create a giving sales culture, a giving marketing culture that enables our customers, our prospects to be successful without asking for anything in return? Think about becoming a giving organization because it’s valuable. Don’t think I didn’t see that, Tony. You want some of this Redbull? Be a giving organization. Takers are energy black holes. Again, same book, Give an Take, Adam talks about and did this experiment where they went to an organization and the takers and the givers and they measured the energy that they created, I don’t know they did it. I was pretty interesting, but they found those takers, they suck the life out of an energy, I mean suck the energy out of a company. I believe the same thing happens with non giving sales organizations. They suck the life out of their prospects, and sometimes the prospects don’t have a choice and they just grin and bare it and they hate it. Don’t be an energy sucker. Don’t suck the energy out of your prospects. They’re trying to get stuff done just like you are, so be a giving organization.
To simplify all of this, to be good at selling you simply have to give a shit and if you start with giving a shit everything else takes care of itself. Thank you. Speaker 2:
Wow, I thought I had a lot of energy and passion but you totally tripped me down, man. It’s awesome. It’s great. We got a couple of minutes, you guys have any questions? I’ll start with the first question because I always have many questions but I’ll always start with the first question. What is one thing that marketers can learn from sales? Just one thing. They talk about sales being on one side and marketing being on side. We talk about sales focusing in accounts and all the things, empathy, everything, there’s so much stuff. Is there one thing that you think marketers really need to know just one thing about sales? Keenan:
Yes, the micro experience. The micro experience. Guys, listen, as much as a pain in the ass sales people can be, they’re sitting down talking to the clients everyday, everyday. If you don’t give that credence, if you don’t give the credibility it deserves, you’re smoking crack. Here’s what I find interesting about this and you see it from the leaders as well, I’ve sat in sales organizations where the sales people came back and said, “This price is just too high,” and the sales leader’s like, “Oh, you just can fucking sell. You got to learn to fucking sell.” No, asshole. It’s true. It’s true. The customers don’t like this pricing. Same thing with marketing and other things. They’re out there and the customers are giving their feedback. If you don’t like it I’m sorry you don’t like it but listen to it. Sales people, the micro perspective that no body else has because they have to sit across from that customer client and listen to them express themselves. Speaker 2:
Awesome. Sounds good. All right, go ahead. Can you use one of the microphones because it’s getting recorded so it’s easier to kind of have that. Keenan:
What’s the over under that they bleep? What do you think? audience:
What’s your take on a sales person or a marketer actually experiencing the product or the service sort of on their own as a blind user just to kind of see what the whole process feels like? As a marketer, I like to fill out my own form with my own personal e-mail address to see how I’m addressed, how I’m treated, what I give, the value of it all, but is there room for that in an efficient organization and do we need to make the room for that? Keenan:
Oh my god. Let me ask the question the other way. Is there room not to have it? Oh my god, I think it’s rhetorical. You could probably sell something to me because if you’re not using you’re not using your own shit or you’re at least not testing your own shit I can’t help you and no body can help you. I’m building a self replication right now and I go in there and I use it as if I’m end user, I’m like, “Oh, that’s awful. We got to go fix this.” Yes. The answer is yes times 10. Yes. Do it. He’s right, and if you’re selling something call him. Speaker 2:
All right. Let’s a huge round for [inaudible 00:30:01] Keenan. Thanks..
This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.
Alibaba is becoming increasingly reliant on mobile — mobile now represents a whopping 75% of its total GMV — so its success going forward will hinge on its ability to monetize this dominant channel.
Alibaba has managed to fulfill a claim it made to investors during its IPO Roadshow in 2014 that it could boost its mobile monetization rate — mobile revenue as a share of mobile GMV on China retail marketplaces, also known as the take rate — to reach parity with or even surpass PC monetization rates.
The mobile monetization rate has surpassed that of PC: Alibaba's mobile revenue represented 2.8% of its total mobile GMV in Q2 2016, edging past PC's 2.78% rate.
Mobile has steadily gravitated toward PC: Mobile's take rate was just 1.87% around the time of the Roadshow, when investors were asking Alibaba if it could better monetize mobile. Since then, it has reached as high as 2.88% in Q4 2015. Meanwhile, PC monetization rates have slightly decreased from 3.03% in Q2 2014.
Alibaba has seen robust mobile revenue streams made possible by its high GMV: The retail giant's mobile GMV stood at $94.3 billion in Q2 2016, up 69% YoY. Mobile GMV has been driven in part by increasing conversion rates. Higher mobile conversions and rising GMV are making the mobile channel more valuable, which is encouraging merchants to spend more money on marketing, thereby helping Alibaba to effectively monetize the channel.
The factors behind the increasing mobile take rate appear sustainable, which should give Alibaba longevity as a company. In order for Alibaba to continue to convince merchants to spend money on its mobile platform, it needs to show them that mobile is growing, and that's dependent on conversion rates.
Conversion rates will likely continue to improve as consumers become more comfortable with smartphones, and as purchasing options are simplified. This will further bolster the value of mobile, which will help Alibaba ensure rising monetization rates. This ultimately bodes very well for Alibaba's business because mobile is its main channel.
Financial technology, or “fintech” for short, is threatening to turn traditional financial fields like banking, lending, asset management and insurance upside down.
New firms are using new mobile, social and digital technology to find new customers and offer them new financial products that meet their needs in a fast-changing world.
All this “new” is exciting…but disruptive and disorienting, too. Surprising new opportunities are coming fast and furious. So are crushing disappointments.
For instance, these positive fintech developments were announced in the last few weeks:
Fintech funding is accelerating—it surpassed expectations by growing 96% YOY
Ping An, China’s second largest insurer, has become the first Chinese firm to join the blockchain consortium R3 and partners like Goldman Sachs and Barclays
In just 3 months, mobile app newcomer Revolut has processed over $300 million in foreign exchange transfers
Sallie Krawcheck, former CFO of Citigroup, launched Ellevest, an automated investment platform aimed at women
But in the same time span, we’ve seen surprising negative fintech news:
Alternative funding giant Lending Club is being investigated by the US Department of Justice, the stock cratered and the CEO resigned
The UK financial regulator (FCA) has been asked by a group of MPs to provide more detail on the risks and opportunities presented by peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and "related markets." This inquiry could lead to further and more significant regulation that could potentially stymie the growth of the industry in the short-term.
Number26, a German digital-only bank, closed hundreds of accounts last week because customers were reportedly making too many ATM withdrawals, resulting in rising costs for the bank.
UK marketplace lenders may only originate $0.7 billion in 2025, down from $4 billion in 2015. This forecast from Deloitte is a worst-case scenario, but highlights two key factors of marketplace lending: marketplace lenders need to give investors a better return than other investments to incentivize them to buy loans and banks can easily replicate marketplace lenders' models.
The truth is, we’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.
No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.
This very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.
After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Business Insider Intelligence has put together the definitive briefing on fintech.
It explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:
Retail banking
Lending and Financing
Payments and Transfers
Wealth and Asset Management
Markets and Exchanges
Insurance
Blockchain Transactions
If you work these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will affect your business and your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.
Evan Bakker of BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has written a new report entitled The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry. The big picture insights you’ll get from this new report include:
Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
Traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
Startups have challenges of their own—they are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
The blockchain is a wild card that could completely remake financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.
This exclusive report also:
Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
And much more.
The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.
To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:
BEST VALUE: Join our BI Intelligence INSIGHTS service level and gain immediate access to this report PLUS much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.
But just because they’ve opened the message doesn’t mean they’ll respond -- or even fully read it. If the content isn’t as compelling as the subject line, you'll quickly lose their attention.
How do you make your email more engaging? One strategy is to use “before-and-after” stories.
Not only do these mini narratives help you prove your product’s impact, they’re also far more interesting than a straight list of facts.
Ready to get started? Let’s dig in.
When to Use Before-and-After Stories
These stories come in handy at multiple points of the sales conversation. If you’ve never spoken with a prospect before, including one in your outreach email can help draw them in and open the door for a phone call or meeting.
When you’ve already had a couple interactions, adding a before-and-after story to your email is a great way to reinforce your product’s value, demonstrate a similar use case, and even create some urgency in your prospect (after all, if X company is getting Y results, your prospect want to get those same results as soon as possible.)
Are you sensing skepticism in the buyer? Along with testimonials, before-and-after stories give prospects more confidence in your ability to deliver. Nothing says “results” like, well, results.
Finally, you can use before-and-after stories to spark interest in prospects who have gone quiet. They might have gotten busy or lost interest in speaking -- but after getting another taste of what your product can do, they might be more likely to respond.
The Basic Structure
To write an effective before-and-after story, follow this simple formula.
Before: What was the customer’s initial situation? What challenge were they facing?
Middle: Which solution did they implement?
After: What were the results?
Here’s an example:
Before:Bluefin, a digital agency, was having its employees track their billable hours in Excel spreadsheets. After doing a time audit, they discovered they were under-billing 60% of their clients.
Middle:So, they installed our time-tracking software on each employee’s laptop.
After:Now that their estimates and rates are accurate, they’re making approximately $4,000 per project -- or $200,000 more per year.
The Abbreviated Version
Worried about making your email too lengthy? If you want to cut to the chase, don’t describe the customer’s previous situation. Instead, start with the solution and then describe the results.
To give you an idea, here are two versions of the same before-and-after:
Long version:eDoc’s four-person support team was getting around 300 calls every day. They were only managing to handle 100 of those -- so they were getting tons of angry reviews online. But once they moved our live chat support, they’ve been able to help 400 customers per day. They haven’t gotten a single negative review in the past two months.
Short version:After moving from phone support to our live chat tool, eDoc went from helping 100 customers per day to 400. They’ve also completely stopped getting negative reviews.
Use your best judgment about which length to use. Prospecting emails should generally be as short as possible. However, once you’ve started the sales conversation, you can usually get away with longer messages.
Make the Prospect the Hero
You won’t always have another customer to reference. When that’s the case, create a hypothetical before-and-after with the prospect as the main character. As a bonus, they’ll automatically visualize their success -- which will make your product more compelling.
The same structure and format still apply.
Before: What’s the prospect’s current situation? What need likely isn’t being answered?
Middle: How does your product meet that need?
After: What does the future look like with your product?
Here’s how an imaginary before-and-after might look like in action:
Knowing whether the clothing manufacturers you buy from comply with workplace standards is challenging -- after all, everything probably checks out when you visit the factories, but that doesn’t mean standards when you’re gone.
That’s where my team comes in: We do exhaustive pre-contract research, along with monthly follow-ups, to ensure the workers making your clothing are treated fairly. Not only will you feel more secure, but you’ll be able to show customers your manufacturers have been verified by a credible third party.
Describing a better world for your prospects fills them with hope. And once you’ve gotten them thinking about the future, continuing the sales conversation is a natural next step.
As a sales rep, there’s one objection I know you hear nearly every day. I was recently talking to a sales leader who went as far as to say this objection is so prevalent that it consists of half of all objections.
Yes, it’s the dreaded price objections. Admittedly, 50% sounds a little high if you’re selling big-ticket items B2B, but nonetheless, this is still the number one objection sales reps face.
We’ve all got that email or call before: “I’m interested, but the price is a bit steep. What kind of discount can you offer?”
For many sales reps, it can tempting to quickly respond with a reasonable discount in an effort to wrap up the sale. But this isn’t always the best response. In fact, more often than not, it’s a pathetic response. After all, if your product provides real value, the prospect will benefit – even when paying full price.
Although offering a discount or negotiating on price could be acceptable at the appropriate time, it’s isn’t where you should start. Instead, consider clarifying the value of your service and re-emphasizing the time, money, and energy that the prospect will save by working with you.
Finding the Real Reason They’re Not Ready to Buy
Asking the price is part of the buying process for not only consumers but businesses as well. A smart buyer will ask about price because a) they need to know how much budget to reserve, b) it’s a natural instinct, c) they’re price-shopping for the lowest cost, or d) they’ve learned the first quoted price can be talked down.
If you get the price objection, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not going to buy. How you learn to handle a prospect when you get the price objection will determine your success as a sales rep. So, the first thing you must do is discover and establish the real reason the prospect is asking about price.
First, listen to the entire objection and don’t cut you prospect off early with a sly objection-handling technique. After they’ve put everything on the table, only then can you start to read between the lines and begin to determine the real objection.
Next, get permission to explore the objection further. This communicates to the prospect that you understand him, respect him, and genuinely want to help. If you don’t get consent to explore the subject further, you may be met with a brick wall, causing your deal to stall completely.
After that, you can begin to ask questions and get clarification. Here, you want to restate his reasoning to make sure you fully understand so you can address the issue correctly and to assure your prospect that you fully understand so they feel heard.
Finally, show the buyer the real value of what you have to offer. That’s what the rest of this post is going to cover.
Transitioning the Conversation Away From Price
When it comes to a 30-second ad placement, what’s a reasonable price to pay? Is it $5, $500, $50,000, or $5 million?
Obviously, you need more information before answering this question. For a recently launched podcast, $5 might not even be a worthwhile investment. Meanwhile, there were plenty of businesses willing to pay the $5 million price tag for a 30-second commercial placement in the 2016 Super Bowl.
The deciding factor isn’t the price, but the value for the price.
When talking about your product, the discussion shouldn’t revolve around the cost, but rather on the ROI. However, sometimes, the prospects don’t understand the full value, so you must translate the value for then.
Here’s the truth: your product is only as valuable as your prospect perceives.
If you want the prospect to pay the list price, you must translate the value so that the return on the investment is obviously, without question, more than the cost. It’s also important to note that the return they’re getting doesn’t always come in the form of money — it could mean things like time saves, peace of mind, pride gained, etc.
If you’re charging $100 for your product or service, you better be able to show how NOT spending that $100 is costing substantially more because of what your prospect could lose.
How will using your product or service impact not only the prospects key business metrics but also their most important values – and to what degree?
Focus on the Impact of Your Product to the Prospect’s Bottom-Line
The sooner you can put a dollar amount on the value of your product to the prospect, the faster you’ll be able to close the sale.
If your service saves a business $1000/month, then any amount up to $999/month makes it a worthwhile investment (within reason). And the same goes for added income. If you help a client make an additional $10,000 on a sale, then the client benefits from your service as long as it costs them under $10,000.
The next time a prospect objects on price, don’t become defensive or resort to discounting. Instead, ask questions and listen. Explore, with the prospect, how your product or service will impact their business economics.
Depending on your offerings, ask the prospect variations of the questions to guide the client to an understanding of the true value of your product or service:
How are you currently managing this process/activity?
How much time would using our service save you and your team?
What is the monetary value of the saved time?
Are there any other costs that would be reduced by using our service?
How else is not having this issues handles impacting your team?
What would it take for our product to pay for itself (how many saved hours, added clients, etc.)?
What is the realistic likelihood that our service will meet your needs in a cost effective manner? (A question more for the sales team than the prospect).
By walking the prospect through questions like these, both of you are able to calculate the true value of your service. If it obviously pays for itself, then the client should have no objection paying the full price. Meanwhile, if the clarity is blurred around the true value of your product, then discounting or readjusting your price structure may be necessary.
To help us and our clients understand the value of our service, we gather case studies of past clients. These case studies reveal that sales reps save anywhere from an hour a day to a full work day every week after implementing our tool! This makes it very easy for a prospect to calculate the value of our service. After all, if we can save a day a week for 10 reps earning $50k a year, we are worth $100k to that client.
When you are able to directly tie the value of your service to the client’s bottom line, you create an anchor for measuring the true cost and ROI for the prospect.
Are They Still Unconvinced of Your Value?
Particularly when making big-ticket purchases, entrepreneurs and managers are rightfully cautious. There are far too many stories of brands investing substantially in a strategy that fails to meet expectations – or even cover costs.
Therefore, even if it appears that your product could benefit their bottom line, the decision maker may need additional convincing. But remember, the issue is never around cost, but around value. Don’t focus on the price of your service, but rather on the benefit and savings it will provide to the prospect.
Why shouldn’t you jump straight into negotiating a better price? Here are a few reason Mark Hunter echoes throughout his blog the Sales Hunger Blog:
Negotiating may cause the client to expect additional discounts in the future.
Negotiating could impact current client relationships.
Negotiating may hurt the perceived price-value of your product.
From my experience in selling, consulting and building teams, I would add one last thing that is probably the most detrimental of all: negotiation sets the precedent for negotiating in other deals. You then become reliant on negotiating to close a deal. Just like a drug, you get hooked and immediately fall back to reducing the price every time.
Ultimately, if your service offers substantial value to clients, then there is no need to negotiate.
When exceptions arise, and you absolutely must negotiate a deal (for example, you’re trying to close a cache client) always make sure you’re getting something in return. Use the reciprocity principle of persuasion from Robert Cialdini’s bestselling book Influence.
This idea states that, by human nature, people feel indebted to others if they’re received favors. Cialdini says: “The implication is you have to go first. Give something: give information, give free samples, give a positive experience to people and they will want to give you something in return.”
Whenever you have to negotiate, it’s also important to get their commitment first. Don’t say, “I can give you X% discount, can you give me Y?” Instead, say, “If I can get the price of X dollars, do you think you can give me Y?” Make them commit first even if you’ve already had the discount approved. Also, notice I didn’t say “I’ll ask my boss.” It’s much easier to argue that you couldn’t get something approved by the board on your end because of company policies than it is to argue that your boss didn’t allow it.
Here are some things that you might consider asking for in return during for a price discount:
Contract terms (length, scope, number of users, etc.)
Introductions to other influencers (other departments, other connections in the industry, etc.)
Discounts for using their product or services.
Case studies, testimonials, endorsements, etc.
This all goes without saying if you have no other choice than to negotiate, make 100% sure you’re speaking with the decision maker. The last thing that you want is having to negotiate twice. Chances are you’ve already laid your cards out on the table, and you don’t have any more bargaining chips.
The Alternative to a Permanent Discount
When you have a value-add SaaS application, ideally clients should become dependent on your service and the benefit that it provides. Once they invest time into integrating and learning how to use it, chances are they will want to continue to use it.
If a client is nervous about the cost of your service, the best way to overcome their price objection is to help them discover the value of your product by using it.
Therefore, rather than offering a permanent discount, provide the prospect with the opportunity to trial your product to confirm it’s value for their business model.
How do you do this? Through free or guaranteed trial periods.
If a 30-day trial period doesn’t seem to be enough for a client to validate the usefulness of your product and they ask for an additional discount – consider offering another 30 days free or a 3-month trial at a 50% discount.
By offering a free/discounted trial period your product maintains its price integrity – while giving the prospect the opportunity to become invested in the benefits that your service offers. The prospect recognizes that your service is worth what you’re charging, but still receives the “bonus” they were looking for.
If you opt for this approach, you must make track conversions through the funnel and make sure the business economics work. Here’s what I mean. If you know that 90% of your free trials convert to paying customers, the hurdle is lowered for people to try your product or service, and you can afford to allow more people and justify the cost (for SaaS businesses, free trials can be expensive for your business. It takes away time from your support team, it may costs money for service your business uses, etc.). On the other hand, if you only convert 10% of your free trials to paying customers, this lowering of the hurdle and influx of non-paying users can cost your business substantially.
Conclusion
Trying to win on price is never a winning strategy. Jeffrey Gitomer states that “Being the least expensive won’t get you anywhere if the prospect has no confidence to buy.”
The best way to overcome price objections is to evaluate and confirm the value of your service to the prospect. Once they are confident in the ROI that they will receive from working with you, the discussion no longer revolves around price, but how to maximize the effective use of your product.
To do this, first listen to the prospect’s needs and discuss the time and money savings/benefits of implementing your product. Next, offer an extended (or discounted) trial period that gives the prospect an opportunity to become fully invested and knowledgeable regarding your application.
However, if you’ve done this with a qualified prospect, be prepared to walk away. Matt Heinz states, “If you know that the prospect needs what you’re selling and is convinced that your company can provide the best solution, then walking away isn’t going to lose you the deal. It’s going to call their bluff. And if it doesn’t, if they don’t have a sense of urgency to solve a problem or capture an opportunity, then your deal may not have been well-qualified to begin with.”
By integrating these strategies and tactics into your conversations, you can expect to close more deals at full-price.
What have you done to overcome the price objection? If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments, feel free to share them below.
The workplace revolves around email, and knowing how to end an email professionally is essential for any role. Putting thought into your email closing line can make the difference between receiving a prompt response or being left on read.
Whether you’re in a job search or emailing prospects, here are examples of powerful email closing lines for any professional situation.
Let’s go over the standard email sign-offs you can use before your signature. The sign-off you choose will depend on the scenario and whether the conversation is casual or formal. Here is a list of email sign-off options:
Thanks!
Best
Thank you
Regards
Have a great day!
Talk soon
Let me know!
Thank you in advance
Now that you have your sign-off squared away, here are several statements and questions you can use to end your emails for a range of professional scenarios.
When Applying for a Job
If you want to get your sales meeting request accepted, you must end your email with a strong call to action. Closing your email with a question effectively increases the chance that the receiver will respond.
1. Thank you for considering me for this position. I look forward to hearing from you about next steps.
2. I’ve attached my resume and cover letter for your review. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can share at this time. Thanks!
3. I’ve attached my portfolio. Do you know when you’re looking to fill this position?
After a Phone Screen or Interview
Once you’ve moved past the application process and landed an interview, your job isn’t done. The next step is to send an email follow-up after your phone screen or interview. Here are a few examples of email closing lines you can use.
4. I’ve attached my portfolio per our discussion. Please let me know if there’s anything else you need.
5. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing back about next steps!
6. I enjoyed speaking with you. As discussed, I’m available for the next interview on the following dates.
When Requesting a Meeting
If you want to get your sales meeting request accepted, you must end your email with a strong call to action. Closing your email with a question is an effective way to increase the chance that the receiver will respond.
7. “Are you ready to discuss pricing, or would you like me to hop on the phone with your legal team?”
8. “Looking forward to walking you through our POS tool. Are you available on Wednesday at 3 p.m. or Thursday at noon?”
After a Meeting
As soon as your meeting ends, send a follow-up email with a recap of what was discussed and a clear next step. This ensures the conversation stays fresh in the receiver’s mind and gives them an easy way to respond.
9. “Please let me know by [date] if you are ready to [next step].”
10. Email me by [date] to confirm [next step]
11. “I’ll send you a calendar invite/reminder about finalizing that paperwork on [date]. Sound good?”
When Accepting a Job
Perhaps one of the most exciting scenarios, there are a few different ways to end an email when you’re accepting a job.
12. I’m excited about the opportunity and look forward to discussing next steps.
13. I look forward to joining the team! Is there anything else I need to complete before my start date?
14. Thank you for the opportunity! I am available to start on [start date].
When Asking for a Referral
If you’ve experienced the job search process before, then you know that referrals can help you stand out among a sea of applicants. Customer referrals can also help boost your social proof when shared online. Here are a few examples of how to end your email when asking for a referral.
15. Thank you in advance for your referral! I appreciate your time.
16. Please let me know if there’s any additional information I can provide to help you with your referral. Thank you!
17. I appreciate your help and would love to return the favor. Let me know!
18. As a thank you for your referral, we’d love to offer you a discount on your next service.
After Meeting Someone
Meeting people in your industry is essential for building a strong network. You may organically connect with people in online communities or even meet other professionals at a networking event.
Either way, after you connect with someone, it’s important to maintain that relationship with occasional check-ins. Here are a few email closing lines to use after you send a check-in email after meeting someone.
19. “Congratulations on being chosen to speak at INBOUND! What was the application process like?”
20. “I saw your tweet about hiking the Appalachian Trail — that’s impressive. How long have you been into backpacking?”
21. “I saw your tweet about skiing last weekend. Do you have any tips for a beginner?”
When Warming Up to a Lead
When you’re trying to educate the prospect on your product’s value, consider ending with thought-provoking questions and statements. Try saying, “Did you know [surprising fact about product]?” Here are some ideas:
22. “Did you know many lawyers will purposely insert invalid clauses in business contracts?”
23. “Did you know most senior managers have never undergone leadership training?”
24. “Did you know most of your competitors already have a solution like this in place?”
25. “Food for thought: Half of [insert type of business] don't comply with new regulations.”
26. “According to this Deloitte report, smartphone shoppers are 14% more likely than non-smartphone shoppers to convert in-store.”
27. “By the way, the art program they designed with our help ended up winning two national awards.”
28. “Two years later, that company was acquired for $30 million.”
When Following Up With a Prospect
A well-chosen question can turn a one-way exchange into a dialogue — and talking with your prospect is always better than talking at them.
To kickstart an initial exchange or engage a prospect that’s gone silent, extend an offer they won’t be able to refuse. You’ll simultaneously add value and incentivize them to answer. Here are a few closing lines you can use to end an email when talking to a prospect.
29. “I've got a great checklist on [insert topic]. Want me to send it your way?”
30. “Did the ebook you downloaded change the way you think about [insert topic]?”
31. “Is it currently a priority to improve [insert business goal]?”
32. “How did you maintain hiring quality as you scaled? Did you ever try an employee referral program or social recruiting strategy?”
Knowing how to end an email professionally will ensure you’re prepared for any situation that comes up throughout your career. Keep these email closing lines in your back pocket and customize them for your own scenario.
You warm up before a race. A good movie gives you the warm fuzzies. You host a house warming party to fill your new home with friends and family. The word warm is constantly associated with positive feelings — so why would you continue to cold call?
A cold call isn’t just uncomfortable over the phone. A cold email can be just as brutal, to both you and the prospect, because there’s no rapport built up to establish trust on either side. And with the sales tools available at the fingertips of any modern sales professional, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take a few steps on the front-end to warm up that cold call.
Kenny Traber, one of our veteran Sales Development Reps and current team lead, knows exactly how to put that warm up into action. In the video below, learn how Kenny takes a normal cold call or cold email, and turns it into a warm interaction with his prospects:
Here’s How Kenny Warms Up a Cold Call:
Hey y’all, Kenny Traber here at SalesLoft. I’m an SDR team lead and I’m here to talk to you today about creative communication with your prospects.
Sales leaders are getting a ton of emails and phone calls, and everyone’s trying to sell them something. So rather than flooding someone’s email inbox or calling them multiple times, I try to get creative with how I’m communicating with them to stand out from the crowd.
As you can tell, this is a creative approach that I’ve used recently: I’m on your computer screen, and I’ve actually used Twitter recently to connect with my prospects. Just yesterday I got a call back from someone, who a few minutes earlier, I had been on their Twitter feed looking to do some research on them.
I favorited one of their tweets, so when they called me back, instead of me saying, “Hey, this is Kenny, we haven’t spoken before,” I was able to say, “Hey, this is Kenny, you might recognize my name because I just favorited one of your tweets.” That automatically turns what would have been a cold call, into a little bit more of a warm dialogue. We were able to have a good discussion around the reason for my call.
As you can tell, I’m on a LinkedIn page here. This is another creative way that I try to communicate with my prospects.
I do a lot of research before I make a phone call, and I’m not just talking about roles and responsibilities, I’m talking about where the person is located, maybe where they went to school. That way I can communicate with someone — have a little bit of connection — make it more personalized.
Just this morning, I connected with a prospect of mine from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I know that we don’t have that many prospects in our industry that are in Chattanooga, so that really stuck out to me. I was able to chat with them about the fact that I was just in Chattanooga, and reference a restaurant that I had stopped at. He’d been there (goes there all the time!) so instead of it being a cold call, we were able to have kind of a warm intro and have some positive dialogue from that call.
Another way that I’ve communicated creatively with my prospects recently is Slack.
What I have done is I’ve joined a couple different Slack channels that are around sales communication, sales process, things of that nature, and then when someone asks, “what does account planning look like for your organization?”
Rather than just answering the question, I send them a direct message — ask them why they’re interested in that, give them some advice about what we do here at SalesLoft, what we see is working for us. Then, I’m able to engage in some open dialogue around their sales process and ask them things that are more specific, and show them that I really care because I’ve already added value to the conversation.
So we talked about using creative communication to engage with your prospects. We talked about Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack. If you’re using something else to communicate with your prospects, I’d love to hear about it, as those three have worked for me, I’m always looking to improve and would love to hear about some more!
LinkedIn has become the world’s standard professional network. That’s why it’s a mystery to me that folks are still confused how to leverage this tremendously useful platform. I’m particularly bemused by sales professionals who fail to put their best foot forward in their profiles because the platform should be one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal.
So, I’m here to help clear some things up so that sales pros can get the most out of this killer resource.
Profile Mistake #1: Confusing LinkedIn With Pokemon Go
For some reason, sales pros seem to think they need to ‘catch ’em all’ on LinkedIn. Let’s clarify something…you don’t need to connect with people on LinkedIn to use it as a prospecting tool.
Connecting with random strangers is a good way to get yourself banned on LinkedIn. You now what happens when you send a connection request? LinkedIn conveniently offers the recipient an option to say, “I don’t know this creeper.” And guess what? Lots of folks will take LinkedIn up on their offer to out you as a random connection hoarder. Only connect with people that you know professionally or risk having your account shut down. Use InMail if prospecting is a core part of your job or use LinkedIn as a research tool, followed up by outbound emails.
Profile Mistake #2: Posting Memes and/or Political Propaganda
Here’s the rule of thumb for content: sharing it must provide value to the audience.
That means you have to know your audience.
On LinkedIn, your audience is made up of professionals. They’re likely to be your colleagues, superiors, subordinates, clients, prospects, industry peers, etc. Now, consider whether you would send them an email (from your work address) with whatever content it is that you’re about to share on LinkedIn.
Memes related to your industry or role might be humorous. Some people might find value in that work-related humor. But, you run the risk of looking like a goofball who doesn’t know how to present themselves as a serious professional.
Political content is a big no-no due to its controversiality. Even if you’re commenting on someone else’s article, it’s possible for your comment to show up in your connections’ news feeds as a news item. If you want to see the lowest common denominator, check out the comments section on any political article posted on LinkedIn. Don’t associate yourself with that type of crowd because you’ll likely alienate yourself from your connections.
Profile Mistake #3: Messing Up The Headline
This one is especially detrimental to sales professionals, or anyone in a sales-related function. The headline is how you present your professional identity to the world.
For some reason, there’s been a trend toward listing all of your alleged skills or functions: BIZ DEV | SALES OPS | CRM | COACHING | PROSPECTING | NEGOTIATIONS. Doesn’t that look strange? We know with 99% certainty that you are not an expert in all of those things…so why are you just listing off sales-related skills?
Also, avoid the overuse of nonstandard characters:
☐☐※※※※ ☑☑☑ SALES EXEC WITH 10YRS OF EXPERIENCE ☑☑☑ ※※※※☐☐
Yikes…so spammy! Write your headline with proper grammar, spelling, and formatting.
Be clear and accurate in your self-description. Don’t overinflate your role. Don’t use trite buzzwords like ninja, hacker, or guru.
For example, if you are a junior account executive, it’s probably not a great idea for your headline to read: VISIONARY SALES LEADER AND LEAD HACKING GURU. (Yuck.) When your headline is incongruous with your current job title, it says that you’re not living on the same plane of reality that everyone else is. If you become what you aspire to be, you won’t need a LinkedIn headline to tell people that’s who you are. The same logic applies to anyone who describes themselves as a thought leader. Just…no.
Profile Mistake #4: Wearing Your Sunglasses Online
Like it or not, the first impression you make will color people’s perception of you. It’s also true concerning your LinkedIn profile photo, too. It communicates a lot about you without actually saying anything. It’s not the place for your wedding photo (yes, we can tell even if it’s cropped), duck lips selfie or sunglasses-margarita-I’m-on-a-boat vacation photo. Consider your attire, too. Don’t wear something that you wouldn’t wear to a professional event, even if your particular office dress code is totes cool with you showing off your hard-earned guns in a tank top.
For sales reps, LinkedIn is a chance to build a network and your reputation. Be wise in how you present yourself so that you can get the most out of the platform. Err on the side of caution with your behavior and presence on the platform and don’t underestimate the role that your LinkedIn profile will play in how people perceive your professional identity.
Build a reputation by sending better sales proposals that your clients will love. Start your PandaDoc 14-Day trial today!
Penny Oleksiak dips her hand into her red Team Canada backpack and retrieves four wool work-socks. Put aside the question of what kind of person brings winter foot-wrappers to the Summer Olympics, and focus instead on what’s inside them. Grabbing the green and yellow ribbons, she pulls the medals out one-by-one, laying the two bronze on her thighs, then the silver, and finally gold.
She drapes them around her neck. It’s the first time she has worn all four at once. “They’re so heavy!” she exclaims. The Rio baubles weigh 500 grams each. As she walks across the room they clink together, making a sound like wind chimes.
The Maclean’s photographer wants something iconic. He grabs his phone and shows her that picture of the great American champion Mark Spitz, with his cheesy moustache and seven golds from Munich 1972. I ask if she knows who Spitz is. “Not really,” Oleksiak admits with an embarrassed little laugh. “But I think I’ve seen the photo.”
The 16-year-old Torontonian can be forgiven for not knowing swimming history: She’s been too busy making it. Oleksiak finishes her first Olympics, which was also her first major international meet, with the most medals ever won by a Canadian at a single Summer Games. Her gold in the 100-m freestyle was the country’s first in the pool since Mark Tewksbury’s backstroke win at Barcelona ’92. The bronze she won along with her teammates in the 4 x 100-m free relay on the Games’ opening night, is the first swim medal by Canadian women since Atlanta 1996. She and Taylor Ruck, another barely-16-year-old Canadian relay swimmer, became the first Olympic medallists born in the 2000s. With Oleksiak leading the way, adding a silver in the 100-m butterfly and chipping in for another bronze in the 4 x 200 free, Canada’s swim team left Rio with a total of six medals. That’s two more than the country won in the pool over the previous three Summer Games combined.
Still, ask Oleksiak what the biggest highlight of her Olympics was—standing on the top of the podium as “O Canada” played, or getting a shout-out from Drake on Instagram—and she is legitimately torn. “It’s kind of hard to choose. Because Drake reaching out to me means a lot. He’s such a Canadian icon and there’s a lot of kids that look up to him,” she says. “But winning the gold means a lot to me too.”
Oleksiak swam nine times in Rio, setting one Olympic record and five Canadian records in the process. Winning four medals resulted in lots of late victory ceremonies and press conferences, too-wired-to-sleep nights and early-morning media commitments. She stifles a yawn, and admits that she’s looking forward to getting back home, where she hopes to “lay low” and enjoy what’s left of her summer. (Given that she’s the odds-on favourite to carry Canada’s flag in the closing ceremonies Aug. 21, her departure is likely to be delayed.) She wants to start in on some driving lessons, and figures that her mom and dad, Alison and Richard, owe her a dog, since her big brother Jamie, now a member of the Dallas Stars, got one for making the Canadian World Junior hockey team in 2012.
She’s heard that someone is planning a parade for her and the other Olympians from the east end of Toronto, and there’s talk that she might get the key to the entire city, but she’s not sure what else is in store. She has a newly acquired agent, who is working with her mom to sift through whatever endorsement offers come her way. Will her life be different from now on? “I’ve thought about it a little bit, but I don’t think it’s changed too much,” she says. “I’m just going to go home and try to live my life normally, I guess.” Before leaving for Rio, she went shopping at Lululemon and got turned down when she asked for a discount because she was a member of Team Canada. Now there’s a giant billboard with her face on it alongside the Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto.
There is one big obligation in her immediate future—a math exam that she put off in the spring so she could concentrate on training. Her face falls when she’s reminded of it. “I actually talked to my mom about it today. I think we’re going to hold off on it,” she says, hopefully. “I don’t want to study. I just want to chill out. I don’t want to do my exam. I’m just going to try and avoid it.”
Canada’s best-ever Summer Olympian has yet to finish Grade 10.
Penny Oleksiak smiles after winning the gold medal in the women’s 100-meter freestyle. (Lee Jin-man, AP)
The air is pretty thin up in row “U,” the next-to-last seats at Rio’s Olympic pool, but that’s not why the Oleksiak family was having trouble breathing. At the 50-m turn of the women’s 100-m freestyle race, Penny was in seventh place, almost a full second behind the leader and world record holder, Cate Campbell of Australia. Then she surged in the back-half, piston-kicking, arms slicing the water like scythes, reeling in her competitors one by one until she touched the wall. It took a while to establish what had happened—a tie for gold with Simone Manuel of the United States. Penny’s sister, Hayley, 22, dropped to her knees, screaming, and hugged their mother. Jamie, 23, who had paid to bring the family to Brazil after Oleksiak unexpectedly made the team at the Canadian trial in April, claims he slipped into shock, unaware that his little sister was Olympic champion until the others told him. “It was a thousand emotions at once, it was so overwhelming,” he said, a couple of minutes after she climbed the top step of the podium. “Leave it to Penny to make it a roller coaster, you know what I mean?”
Down in lane 5, Oleksiak stared straight ahead at the wall for more than 20 seconds before finally daring to turn around and take a peek at the scoreboard. “I can’t remember the noise. I just remember seeing flags and people clapping,” she says. “Then I turned around and saw the number and everything hit me at once. I heard everyone screaming. It was kind of like a movie.”
Her family moved down to the good seats for the victory ceremony. As she made her way around the pool, gold dangling around her neck and a Canadian flag in hand, she climbed up to them, embracing and crying with her mom, dad and Hayley, and settling for a stiff and awkward hug with her hulking brother. “We don’t hug a lot and whenever we do it’s like my mother saying, ‘Penny, hug your brother, he’s like, leaving for a year,’ ” she explained. “And I go, ‘OK, bye.’ ”
Penny Oleksiak gets a hug from her mom following her gold-medal performance at the women’s 100m freestyle finals. (Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
Richard’s not much of a talker. But Alison, fighting the official Rio Olympic head cold as well as her own emotions, tried to put it all into words. “She’s such a tough nut. Very mentally tough,” she said. “For your children to have a passion about something and be able to do something they love, and then to do something like this—we just feel so blessed. I don’t know what we did. We’re just in shock.”
Oleksiak, the youngest of five kids, comes from a particularly sporty family. Both her mom and her dad were college athletes. Her eldest brother Jake played NCAA hockey, and Hayley is a rower at Northeastern University in Boston. But Penny didn’t really learn to swim until she was nine, splashing around and playing Marco Polo with Hayley and other kids in a neighbour’s pool. That fall, she tried to join three different competitive clubs in Toronto, but failed because she couldn’t complete the requisite two laps of the pool.
Gary Nolden, who finally took her on at the Midland Pool in Scarborough, remembers that she couldn’t breaststroke to save her life. “It was a combination of freestyle with breaststroke pull and a fly kick—it was just a mess.” But there was always plenty of determination. When she was 10, Oleksiak got involved in a contest with a bunch of 14- and 15-year-old boys to see who could do the most push-ups on the edge of the pool deck. She kept going until her arms gave out and she fell face-first into the cement, breaking her front tooth in half. A day later, after a trip to the dentist, she was back in the pool doing her lengths. By the time she was 11, Nolden knew she was special. “Every time she swam she got faster. Every time she showed up at the pool, she was an inch taller,” he says. (Oleksiak, who is currently six foot one, having sprouted three inches in the last year, has been the tallest kid in her class ever since she started school. “I was always in the back row of every class picture,” she says.)
Oleksiak first caught the eye of Canada’s high-performance program that same year. One Wednesday night, she was swimming at the University of Toronto pool with her club, alongside members of the national team, when Ben Titley, the head Olympic coach in Rio, saw something intriguing. “It was her size, her limb length, the way she just moved through the water. I do remember thinking, ‘Whoa, what the hell is going on here?’ ” Titley, an Englishman, had been one of Great Britain’s Olympic coaches in Athens, Beijing and London. It was his first week on the job in Canada. He asked Bob Hayes, a Toronto Swim Club coach, if he could pull Oleksiak out of the water and introduce himself. “I said, ‘Hi I’m Ben,’ and I shook her hand, and I said, ‘Holy s–t! Her hand is the same size as mine!’ ” They talked about her favourite strokes. “I noticed that she has the features of a large person, so I asked, how tall is your dad? And she laughed and pointed to the stands and there’s Richard, this six-foot-nine giant sitting up there,” Titley recalls. “And I said, ‘OK, that’s good. Do you have any brothers or sisters that play sports?’ And she laughs, and says, ‘Yes, my brother’s an NHL defenceman, and he’s like six-foot-seven.’ ”
Eleven-year-old Penny Oleksiak with teammates in 2012. (Gary Nolden, Olympian Swimming)
Titley began working with her, sporadically at first, then once a month, then once a week. As a 14-year-old at the 2014 Canadian Age Group Championships, Oleksiak won 10 individual medals—five gold, three silver and two bronze—setting a personal best in each and every race, and then tacked on three relay golds. At the 2015 FINA World Junior Championships, she won six medals. A year ago, she started training full-time with Titley and the other high-performance athletes at the new Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. In April at the Olympic trials, the still 15-year-old won gold in 100-m butterfly and 100-m freestyle, as well as a silver in the 200 free, punching her ticket to Rio. The principal at her school, Monarch Park Collegiate, offered his congratulations over the PA system first thing on the Monday morning.
For all her raw talent, Oleksiak’s sudden dominance on the world’s biggest stage is something of a shock to both her coaches and competitors. “It might sound strange to people back home who say, ‘Oh, she’s Canada’s best swimmer.’ Well, that’s happened in the last three months,” says Titley. “The nine months prior to that, she was the one chasing Chantal [Van Landeghem], chasing a Sandrine [Mainville], chasing an Audrey Lacroix.” The idea was to make the teenager tap into her competitive instincts and push her limits through a daily dose of humility. “Getting beat was normal,” says Titley.
But it wasn’t just Oleksiak who rose to the occasion in Rio. Kylie Masse of Windsor, Ont., won a 100-m backstroke bronze, setting a new Canadian record. Then Hilary Caldwell came third in the 200-m backstroke, giving Canada its first two medals in the discipline since 1992. When the relay bronzes are factored in—whether you swim the preliminary, or the final, everyone on a winning squad gets a bauble—11 of the 19 women on Team Canada are returning home with Olympic medals.
“It’s made me that much more antsy, seeing all these girls swimming so well. I want my part in it,” the 25-year-old Caldwell said the night before she went out and sealed the deal. “We’ve had all these Canadian girls on the podium, so if they can do it, I can do it.”
John Atkinson, high performance director for Swimming Canada, talks about the multiplier effect of all of those swimmers going back to their clubs and inspiring 11-, 12- and 13 year-olds to strive for Tokyo 2020, or the 2024 Summer Games. Since taking over the Canadian program in March 2013, he’s been preaching three things: improvement of times, progression through heats to finals, and finally, conversion to the podium. All were on abundant display in Rio. He points to the example of the women’s 4 x 200-m freestyle relay team. A year ago at the FINA world championships in Russia, they finished 11th, with a time of 7:57. At the Olympic pool, they timed 7:45 and won bronze. “They actually improved by 11.92 seconds in a year,” he says proudly.
The performance of Canada’s men wasn’t quite so inspiring. The much smaller squad—just nine swimmers qualified—failed to reach the podium, although Santo Condorelli came heartbreakingly close, finishing fourth in the 100-m free by 0.03 seconds. Overall, Canada won the fifth-most medals in Rio’s pool. But the women were second, behind only the mighty United States. Atkinson hopes that swimmers like Condorelli, 21, 18-year-old Javier Acevedo and Markus Thormeyer, also 18, can help the men catch up by 2020.
For the moment, Oleksiak is Canada’s undisputed superstar. She came into her first real senior international competition and not only established that she belonged, but that she counts among the very best in the world. “There’s no fear. She just gets in and races,” says Atkinson.
The original plan was to have Oleksiak come to Rio and get used to the bright lights and media attention. The challenge for next year was to become competitive. Winning medals was supposed to start happening in 2018, two years out from the Tokyo Olympics. “What’s happened is, with her extremely long legs, she’s leaped a couple of steps,” Titley says wryly.
Those who are in charge of Canadian swimming know they have something rare and special. Titley has coached a number of world record holders and admits that there are things this 16-year-old does in the pool that he has never seen before. The challenge is that while Oleksiak is now an Olympic champion in the record books, she is still very much a teenager at heart.
Bronze medalists Katerine Savard, Taylor Ruck, Brittany MacLean and Penny Oleksiak of Canada on August 10, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Clive Rose, Getty Images)
Titley, who is 39, spent a lot of a time at these Games listening to Drake and Chance the Rapper as he endeavoured to connect with Penny and his other young swimmers. “I didn’t even know who those people were. I didn’t know any of that music stuff,” he says. “But I had to get down with it, or whatever. I’ll just stand there and bob my head. And they’ll find it funny that I’m into it. I don’t care, but they do.”
He worries that Oleksiak might start reading all the nice things people are writing about her and believe them. That she’ll develop bad habits, or hang out with the wrong people and become one of those flash-in-the-pan medallists who beat the world once, then never find the magic again. “For me that’s not acceptable,” says Titley. “This kid needs to be getting results for Canada over at least the next two, and maybe three Olympic Games.” Alison and Richard, who seem to be the only ones to call their daughter by her full name, Penelope, are worried about just the opposite: that she’ll become too obsessed and professional and miss out on friends, school and life.
On the first night of the Games, following the 4 x 100-m bronze, all five members of the team stepped out to meet the media. Sandrine Mainville, 24, Chantal Van Landeghem, 22, and the two 16-year-old wonder twins, Ruck and Oleksiak, who had swum the final and got to stand together on the podium for the victory ceremony. And Michelle Williams, who didn’t. The 25-year-old from Toronto cried when she was dropped in favour of Penny after the heats, but came out to cheer on her teammates regardless. As the photographers grouped the women together for a picture, Oleksiak quietly took the bronze from around her own neck and draped it over Williams’s shoulders.
The kid is going to be all right.
Gold medalist Simone Manuel of the United States (L) and gold medalist Penny Oleksiak of Canada celebrate the women’s 100m freestyle final. (Clive Rose, Getty Images)
In the giant tent of a training room, just outside the swim stadium, Team Canada ended up right next to Team USA. Penny Oleksiak, Olympic medallist, was a little too shy to go and introduce herself. “I caught myself looking over and being, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s Nathan Adrian, or Michael Phelps, or Katie Ledecky’,” she says. “Then I’d make eye contact with them and I’d have to walk away. I don’t know why.” Reflecting for a second, she does, actually. “They’re all people I look up to.”
Other swimmers paid attention to her, though. Chad Le Clos, the South African who beat Phelps for gold in the 200-m butterfly in London, and inspired the #Phelpsface memes this time around, introduced himself and they chatted a bit. In fact, the whole world took notice of the Canadian women at this meet. Kierra Smith of Kelowna, B.C., who finished sixth in the 200-m breaststroke finals, shared a story about meeting Missy Franklin, who won four golds for the Americans in 2012 as a precocious 17-year-old. “She sat down with us at dinner the other night and said, ‘You guys are doing so great,’ the 22-year-old Smith told reporters. “I was like, it’s Missy Franklin! I was so excited. She noticed us!”
Oleksiak swears she’s not going to get a swelled head about it all. She’s got her friends back home—the ones she was snapchatting with into the wee hours of the morning after her races, despite promising Titley she wouldn’t touch her phone—to keep her grounded. They call her Pennyroo, like a kangaroo, or Groot. “Have you ever seen Guardians of the Galaxy?” asks Gabe Schnurr, part of her circle at Monarch Park. “Groot is the tree-looking thing. It’s a character made of just roots. She’s pretty awkward.” They tease her about how accident-prone she is: always rolling ankles, breaking a toe by walking into a door in early 2015, and then shattering her elbow when her bike tire got stuck in Toronto streetcar track, just weeks before the world junior championships. “She got really strong with her legs from iso[lation] training after the biking incident, and really strong with her arms from the toe incident,” says Alexis Bragman, a friend from the Toronto Swim Club. Lately, they’ve been sharing all sorts of revealing stories with the media. Like the time her huge appetite and competitive instincts collided in an eating contest with a bunch of male friends at McDonald’s and she devoured seven chicken sandwiches. Or how during a Secret Santa session she once gave another member of the swim club a video of her obliterating his personal best.
On the national team, Oleksiak is the baby, just like at home. (Before the Olympics, her teammates called her “the child,” although the nickname no longer seems appropriate.) Last winter, when she was falling behind at school and Alison was threatening to keep her away from the pool, they rallied around to tutor her. Sandrine Mainville, from Boucherville, Que., helped Penny with her French homework. Rich Funk, a breaststroker from Edmonton, helped her with math and science. She has more than one family.
What makes Oleksiak so dangerous in the pool is her closing speed, that capacity to keep going fast toward the end of a race, when everyone else is getting tired and slowing down. That’s what she’s been practising all these months, going hard for 50 or 150 m, then going even harder from the final turn to the wall. That’s what won the gold. “I just put my head down and go as fast as I can,” she says. It’s an elusive skill, one that is shared by all great swim champions. But that alone isn’t enough to win you four medals at the Olympics. Something else has to sustain you through those endless hours of training, in and out of the pool.
For Oleksiak, it might be as simple as the fact that she hates to be beat. She was that way as a little kid doing bike races with her sister. And still today at the Rio pool, where she emerged scowling and downcast after the 4 x 100 medley relay team set a new Canadian record, but ended up fifth overall, her only non-podium finish of the Games. “It’s just because we had the opportunity to medal and the girls on the team fully deserved a medal and I just kind of feel like I let them down,” she says the next morning, when we sit down to talk. “I think I should have been able to catch up or something.” At 16, she’s already a leader.
Penny Oleksiak loves to swim. “Being underwater is kind of weird. There’s no noise. It’s very quiet. I like just having that silence,” she says. “When you’re racing you can’t hear anyone and you’re just in your head. It’s pretty cool to know that everything is just you and it’s just a mental game.”
Whether she understands it or not, Rio has changed a lot of things. She’s famous, and a champion. No one will underestimate her in the future, they will only want more.
But there will always that be precious alone time in the pool—as Canada watches and cheers, whether she can hear us, or not.
Salespeople are always trying to predict what prospects are thinking. But when was the last time you tried to read your manager’s mind?
They might not impact your immediate ability to close like buyers do, but knowing what’s going through your manager’s head is even more important for your long-term success.
Luckily, we’ve done some of the mind-reading for you. Read on for five secrets your sales manager wishes you knew but won’t tell you.
1) They're Usually Micromanaging for a Reason
If you joined sales because you crave autonomy, you might resent a manager who’s always asking for updates, reviewing your pipeline, and giving you specific soundbites.
But most of the time, your manager isn’t at fault: You are. If you’re regularly missing quota or losing deals you should’ve gotten, it’s your manager’s responsibility to step in and figure out what the issue is.
Getting annoyed with them will just make the situation worse; in fact, once they realize you're not coachable, you’ll probably end up looking for a new job. Stay open to your manager’s feedback and implement it into your selling routine. Once they see you following their suggestions and raising your numbers, they’ll give you more freedom.
2) They Miss Being In Your Place
Superstar sales reps are often promoted to managers. But even though they’ve moved up the ladder, many managers actually miss their old role.
After all, selling and managing are incredibly different. Instead of spending all day talking to prospects, your manager is looking at spreadsheets and coaching people. Her job involves a lot of administrative work and strategic planning, which can be less exciting than closing deals. She used to be responsible for one person’s success: Her own. Now, she has to think about the entire team.
Keep this in mind when you’re thinking about your own career path. If your favorite part of the job is directly working with prospects, explore non-management promotion opportunities. If, on the other hand, you love thinking strategically, becoming a sales manager will probably be a great fit.
3) They're Looking For Confidence
Your confidence was probably one of the reasons you were hired. In sales, believing in your abilities is crucial -- because as your manager knows all too well, at a certain point you’re going to fail.
Top sales achievers have a unique ability to cope with difficulty, to negotiate obstacles, to optimize performance in the face of adversity. At the heart of resilience is this fact: Top sales professionals are pros at denying that a lost sale is a failure. They take rejection as a personal challenge to succeed with the next customer."
4) They Know a Lone Wolf Brings Down the Team
You might assume that as long as you’re exceeding quota, your manager will let you run your own show.
However, they don’t want a “lone wolf” on their team. When a salesperson refuses to follow her team's standard operating procedure, she sets a bad example for everyone else. Other team members might assume it’s okay to work outside the system as well.
Reps who do their own thing make it harder for their managers to set and manage expectations, identify what’s working and what’s not, and accurately forecast sales. If you’re not doing data entry, recording your pipeline, or treating deal stages in the same way as the rest of your team, you’ll be forcing your manager to make up the gap for you -- and they won’t be happy about it.
Here’s the TL;DR version: Stick with the process and procedures your manager has laid out. There’s definitely room for personalization -- but not a whole new system.
5) They Can Tell When You’ve Lost Your Sense of Purpose
If you’re signing enough new accounts or moving enough units, your manager won't know your heart’s not in it. Right?
Wrong. Even if you’re not missing quota, it’s obvious when you’ve lost your mojo. Managers can hear your enthusiasm and passion (or lack thereof) when you’re on the phone and in the office. They see how tuned-in you are during meetings and how receptive you are to experimentation.
You can typically skate by for a bit without totally blowing your month or quarter -- but your manager will pick up on the difference immediately.
Rather than waiting for them to approach you, consider proactively asking for help.
For some reason, “older” has become synonymous with “obsolete.” But this is not always the case. For example, did you know today’s LCD screens are based on technology from 1968? It’s true.
You should still use email marketing for these six reasons.
1. Email marketing can help create lasting relationships.
A brand with a strong email marketing strategy can become the local news anchor everyone is excited to see. With useful advice and the latest information, he draws individuals in with his engaging personality and then builds trust so his viewers (or in this case, buyers) look forward to hearing from him. Receiving emails that are consistently appealing helps prospects and customers feel connected to your brand.
PRO TIP: The “local” part of the analogy is crucial here; the stories you tell should matter to your audience. You can’t bombard your subscribers with emails about everything under the sun, ignoring whether or not the topic matters to them, and then expect them to stay hooked.
2. Marketing emails can be hyper-personalized and targeted.
With other marketing channels—for example, social media—targeting can only be so granular. In fact, many channels have audience-size thresholds that marketers must meet before their ads will even be served. On the contrary, marketing emails can be highly targeted and personalized down to an individual user level.
With email marketing software, you can analyze user data, segment your contact lists based on common factors and then send emails addressing the specific needs of recipients. Prospects and customers will appreciate this personal touch and be more inspired to interact with your brand.
Your content should be where your target buyers spend their time. If you have their email addresses, you know they have an inbox they are checking regularly, so be there when they are.
PRO TIP: You don’t want to send emails so frequently that your audience simply begins ignoring them but you also shouldn’t reach out so sporadically they forget about your brand. Using event-triggered emails—automated marketing communications generated by a prospect’s behaviors—can help you find the balance between the two and allow you to match email frequency with the prospect’s level of engagement.
4. Email marketing is (relatively) inexpensive.
Should you decide to purchase marketing automation or customer relationship management software (which we highly recommend), there will be an initial financial investment. However, after that first expenditure, the cost is often less than a penny per message. With email marketing, you won’t have to worry about media buys (like in radio and TV) or postage or print charges (like in direct mail).
On top of that, marketing automation software reduces the time commitment associated with email marketing—scheduling, sending, database maintenance—making these campaigns even more cost-effective.
5. Emails, in general, are action-oriented.
Emails naturally prompt responses—replying, forwarding, clicking through. By including direct calls-to-action (CTAs) with clear benefits in your messages, you can take advantage of this impulse to react and drive traffic to your site or encourage the desired conversion event.
PRO TIP: Don’t be afraid to include multiple CTAs in your emails. A common mistake marketers make is stuffing as much into the message as possible and then using only one call-to-action (CTA) per email. A better tactic is to provide enough information to pique the target’s interest and then include links where he can learn more. But be sure not to use too many CTAs, which can overwhelm the reader—try to keep the total below three.
6. Email marketing is measurable and testable.
One of the great things about email marketing campaigns is the objective metrics—delivery rate, open rate and click-through rate, among others. Marketers can evaluate performance and make data-driven decisions about how and where to optimize. This is a benefit not all marketing avenues have.
Email marketing also lends itself well to A/B testing. Marketers can test several different elements, including subject line, email length and CTAs. And with the data you gather from these tests, you can make confident decisions about which approaches work and which don’t.
While email marketing is a great strategy, it’s important to keep in mind that if your messages aren’t crafted properly, it may be all for naught. Your emails must possess the following characteristics to be effective:
Interesting. Don’t let your messages be more clutter in your recipients’ inbox; make them feel fortunate to have received something informative and entertaining from you.
Valuable. The recipients of your emails should be enthusiastic to consume the content you provide. Ask yourself, “If I received this email, would I find it valuable?” If the answer is no, then it’s likely your subscribers will feel the same.
Relevant. If your email isn’t pertinent to them, prospects and buyers will quickly delete the message. And if the content is consistently irrelevant to them, they’ll probably unsubscribe. Make sure the emails you send speak to the subscriber’s unique pain points.
Timely. A big part of relevancy is timeliness. Consider a prospect’s location in the buyer’s journey to avoid jumping into a sales pitch too early.
Marketing is one of those fields where the latest technology is assumed to be the best, but you shouldn’t ignore the tried-and-true methods. “Newer” doesn’t always “good,” and “older” doesn’t always equate to “bad.” Email marketing may have been around for a while, but it is constantly evolving, and when used correctly, can engender brand loyalty and generate revenue.
Let’s face it direct mail probably seems archaic to most marketers.
In the modern B2B world where the spotlight is on drip campaigns, social media, and other digital channels, direct mail marketing can seem out of place and maybe even irrelevant.
But contrary to popular belief, direct mail campaigns can actually yield response rates 30 times greater than email
Many B2B companies are finding that direct mail consistently outperforms other media when it comes to demand generation. And, in the current marketing landscape plagued by “digital fatigue”, direct mail may be taking the coveted ‘engagement crown’ home by effectively getting in front of busy prospects.
In this previous post, I talked about this growing trend of direct mail adoption and how B2B marketers can follow best practices as they venture into direct mail marketing campaigns. But while keeping up with best practices is crucial, it’s equally important that marketers don’t make easily avoidable mistakes that could jeopardize the performance of their campaigns.
So to help you launch effective direct mail marketing campaigns, we decided to compile a list of common pitfalls that you should look out for.
Common Direct Mail Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid
1) Send mailers to everyone in your database
A pretty common misconception with direct mail is to blindly unleash mailers without first building proper segments or identifying target audiences. As you may quickly realize (or even know from your digital campaigns), in B2B, marketing to everyone is synonymous with marketing to no one.
Similar to digital marketing efforts, the challenge is to sharpen the focus of your marketing campaign to target the right people at the right time.
It’s crucial to take into account your target personas, identify which stage of the buying cycle they’re in, and then align your direct mail offers to prospects in a specific phase of the purchasing cycle.
Tip: Building out segments of your target accounts or audiences using fit, behavioral, and intent data is a great way to ensure higher conversions when executing your direct mail campaigns.
2) Cut corners on printing and design
Sending out sub-par mailers, or mailers that look mediocre and generic, can be detrimental to your direct mail efforts.
Think of it this way: The design and quality of your mailer is equivalent to the subject line of an email; quality printing and design determines whether your mailer ends up in the trash or in the save pile.
Rather than sending your audience a lot of mediocre mailers, send a target selection of really well-crafted mailers. Make sure your mailers are concise, easy to consume, and contain a clear call to action.
Tip: Identify key characteristics about your target audience or segment, and use it to personalize offers for your prospects.
3) Make your call to action (CTA) too complex
Nowadays, buyers are wary of clicking “too much” to access a landing page or content. This extends to direct mail – if your call to action is too difficult, your recipients simply won’t respond.
Don’t ask your prospects to complete more than three tasks. For example, don’t send respondents to a web page that asks them to fill out a form. Make your call to action as simple as possible to complete.
Tip: Find out which stage in the buyer’s journey your prospects are currently in by evaluating behavioral data (which you can find in your marketing automation platform). Create a personalized offer that is relevant to their current stage and make it easily accessible.
4) Forget to follow up
As with most marketing campaigns, try not to think of your direct mail campaigns as a one-off marketing effort, but rather as a single step in the process of acquiring new customers or upselling existing ones.
Put a plan in place to follow up with the recipients of your direct mail campaign via email, display ad, or other digital channel.
Remember: Even if your prospects don’t respond to your mailers, you can still capture their attention with the same message on different channels. Integrate direct mail with other marketing channels to effectively engage your audience.
Tip: Leverage offers on other channels to support your direct mail campaigns. Use similar messaging to tailor the prospect journey across multiple digital and offline touchpoints.
5) Don’t build for scale
It’s important to also build your direct mail campaign for scale. Direct mail campaigns are meant to be an iterative process, so it’s important to establish baseline metrics, test results, measure performance, and refine your approach over time.
Measure the results of your direct mail campaigns and optimize them on an ongoing basis.
Tip: Prospects that engage with your direct mail campaigns or other marketing efforts may have a higher propensity to convert, so tailor future offers to these segments based on their new position in the buyer’s journey.
Wrapping It Up
There is no one-size-fits all approach in marketing, so the key to direct mail success is to personalize campaigns for your prospects and target accounts. Create offers that are tailored to their needs and helps them along the buyer’s journey.
If you’re still evaluating direct mail marketing for your business, or want to learn more about how you can build an effective direct mail campaign, check out this upcoming webinar we’re hosting with Printing for Less.
Acquisitions starting with a “B” are not uncommon in the tech industry in Silicon Valley. Roughly two to four billion-dollar deals have gone down each quarter (on average) over the last few years. The recent purchases of Cruise Automation by General Motors and Dollar Shave Club by Unilever turned heads for another reason — the buyers were as non-techie as you can get. Read More
Millennials want the same thing as every other age group, it's just the channels for delivering it that have changed They have youth, influence, and spending power. They can also spot BS from a mile away, and it’s not easy …..
This article covers the top 10 things you need to do to prepare for your next sales interview. Specifically, it explains why you should:
Come equipped with your selling numbers
Be prepared to speak about specific wins
Articulate ‘why’ and ‘how’ you win business
Like most aspects of business, the interviewing and hiring strategies companies use have evolved – they are now more rigorous and hyper personalized than ever, especially in sales. Because the best sales interview processes are structured to ensure consistency and objectivity in the hiring process, it is now that much more imperative for candidates to be prepared.
For example, at Peak, interview questions used to assess a potential sales representative are more in depth and role specific than simply ticking down a list of standard interview questions such as “tell me about your work experience” or “what interests you about this position?” World-class companies have eliminated these questions and evolved their interviewing and hiring practices to reflect the need to conduct structured interviews that eliminate subjectivity from the hiring process and expose average and below-average sellers.
As a top performer, you actually want to be faced with exacting and challenging questions, because it speaks to the standards and expectations your potential employer has aligned themselves with. If you do find yourself in a generic interview that doesn’t spark any thoughtful discussion or press into your ability to achieve your quotas, consider it a red flag; this is potentially in line with how the rest of the business is run.
Here is a list of the 10 most revealing questions interviewers ask salespeople, with insights into what these questions attempt to uncover about you:
1. Discuss your sales skills. What do you view as an area for improvement, and what are you doing to address the deficiency?
This question is asking about your:
Level of self awareness
Desire to achieve goals
Commitment to improve
Someone who is achievement oriented understands exactly what sales skills they need to improve, and have a strategy in place to achieve the next level of competency in their work.
Think through a specific area of your work (cold call to close ratios, up-selling and cross-selling of existing accounts, requesting referrals) and explain why and how you plan on improving this skill. Employers want salespeople who possess a natural desire to achieve; explaining the skill(s) you want to improve displays both a need for achievement and a self-awareness of your selling strengths and weaknesses.
2. In your current/last role, where did you rank on the team?
This question is asking about your:
Previous work patterns (these will predict future work patterns)
Level of competitiveness
Great salespeople always know where they stand relative to their colleagues. Because they are competitive, they have a constant need to know where they rank in comparison to other reps. While you may not necessarily be the top sales rep every quarter, being able to accurately state where you ranked is an indication that you are cognizant of your standing and are working to improve your performance.
Eliot Burdett, CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting, explains that the most effective predictor of future behavior is to understand past behaviour.
Often, employees’ reasons for leaving a company each time are similar, so the best way to navigate this type of question is to be straightforward and proactive when explaining your work history.
Being evasive or indirect about reasons for leaving past roles comes across as suspicious to employers, and the more they know about your history, the more comfortable they’ll feel about hiring you. Even if your last job exit was due to family or personal needs, explain this in a fact-based way. Proactively addressing any gaps in your work history before they are brought up demonstrates that you have nothing to hide.
3. Tell me about a time you failed or faced adversity.
This question is about:
Understanding how you view and respond to failure
Gaining insight to your self awareness
Often touted as one of the toughest questions to be faced with in an interview, understanding the nature of why this question is asked can help alleviate the anxiety that comes with formulating a response to it. Interviewers want to understand how you define success, failure, and everything in between. This question allows you to open up about your selling activities and behaviors, which illuminates for the interviewer how you measure and take risk.
This question is often used to calibrate whether or not you are risk averse and determines if you learned from the experience (hint: top performing salespeople take risks, they have experienced failure, and they have grown from it).
For example, perhaps you worked for a company that had a poor name in the market and you built relationships and established trust to restore the reputation of your company. Explaining how you repaired the reputation gives the interviewer a concrete example of your willingness to commit to an employer by establishing and building relationships – even when it’s not easy.
4. Why are you a great salesperson / why do you win business?
This question is about:
Gauging your self-awareness
Understanding your selling process
Great salespeople know why people buy from them and what triggers the response. Brent Thompson, CSO of Peak Sales Recruiting, views this question as one of the most useful ways to test a salesperson’s selling ability. He explains, “if you provide a generic response (i.e. ‘people just like me’) it indicates you don’t really know what you are doing and lack a methodology to your selling process.” The best salespeople understand the why of people’s buying behavior and how their selling process influences and guides that behaviour.
5. What have you done in the last thirty days to make yourself a better salesperson?
This question is about:
Gauging how you own your professional development
Understanding your learning style
This is a favoured question from sales management strategist Lee B. Salz, best-selling author of Hire Right Higher Profits. It is designed to provide the interviewer insight into how seriously you take your own professional development and how you go about making your career ambitions a reality.
Whether you’ve read a great sales book recently or engage a sales mentor, competence and desire to learn are essential traits employers are looking for with this question.
To go above and beyond with your answer, describe the book or the mentor meeting. Explain what you implemented into your selling behavior afterward and how it’s made a positive impact. You show not only that you’re tactical, but that you can execute strategy as well.
6. Where do you see yourself in 3 and 5 years?
This question is about:
Understanding your career ambitions
Determining company fit
While this question may seem broad and/or vague, the interviewer is looking to see if you have a plan. Great salespeople always have a plan. Everything is calculated, and if not, you can develop a plan very quickly. This is also a way for companies to determine if your career goals align with the company’s vision for you on a longer term basis. It’s about being an appropriate fit with a company as much as it is about determining your specific career goals. Employers want to see that you have a clear path set out for yourself, and that you are willing to commit to an organization to make those goals a reality.
7. How will you sell our offering?
This question is about:
Your selling approach
Your preparedness
Asking the “how” of getting the offering to the consumer illuminates your communication style and certain components of your drive. Examples of this include:
How many times do you follow up with qualified leads?
What percentage of your business is hunted versus referral based?
What is your preferred selling methodology?
It also examines how well you did your research on the company prior to the interview. Being able to speak to the offering the company sells, key markets, purchasing stakeholders, and buyer groups demonstrates that you are prepared for the interaction and understand what it takes to instill confidence into a sell.
An inability to answer this question tells the employer that you may go into a pitch or a prospect call with the same lack of preparation about the company you are selling to – a major red flag and not something that top performers do.
8. What is your least favorite aspect of the process of sales?
This question is about:
Your personality
Your behavioral competencies
This type of question is telling to the employer because it alludes to your selling personality. If you point to cold calling as your least favorite aspect of the sales process, you likely don’t possess the drive, determination, and resilience required to excel in a true hunter role. If cold calling is one of your preferred activities, it speaks to the fact that you possess high levels of aggression and enjoy the persistence required to close a lead.
9. Who do you enjoy selling to the most and why?
This question is about:
Your selling comfort zone
The length of sales cycle you are most successful with
Your answer will likely include a description of your ideal prospect, and employers will be listening for the type of buyer you are most attracted to: is it a company looking for a complex, enterprise solution that has a long sales cycle and involves multiple stakeholders? Or, is the client you describe a transactional buyer, with minimal lead up to the sale? Depending on the company you are interviewing with, more transactional selling preferences will be a red flag because you don’t have experience with the consultative nature of complex selling.
10. Tell me about yourself.
This question is about your:
Ability to speak confidently and convincingly
Demeanor and how you will culturally fit with the company
Most often, this question is the first one asked by the interviewer: it’s meant to break the ice, get the conversation going, and allow them to have a general picture of who they are speaking to. If you are able to easily and comfortably speak about yourself, both personally and professionally, it indicates that you are comfortable in your skin and will have the same demeanor with clients that you have not necessarily established a rapport with.
In your sales interview, remember to:
Be prepared to answer open-ended questions. The best candidate devotes time thinking about specific instances in response to the questions outlined above and are ready to provide precise figures where necessary. For example, being prepared with a response that includes exact numbers of how much you sold over quota and what percentage of that was net new business versus recurring will distinguish you as someone who is both organized and achievement oriented.
Often, you will be asked proof questions such as “what did you do in the past” instead of theoretical questions such as “what would you do in the future.” Arming yourself with the best of your past numbers and quotas will alleviate the stress of coming up with information on the spot.
Ultimately, employers want to learn the intangibles of your work history, so come ready to provide that to them and the rest will speak for itself. While the evolution of interviewing and hiring practices can make preparing for a sales interview feel daunting, coming equipped with numbers, having specific examples prepared, and understanding the “why’s” of your selling methodology will ultimately be your keys to hiring success.
For a comprehensive checklist of everything you need to know before a sales interview, fill out the form below:
Interested in more industry insights and the most up-to-date sales career resources and tools? Visit the Peak Sales Blog.
With over 433 million users LinkedIn has become a hot favorite of content marketers and bloggers who want to drive targeted traffic to their websites. (source)
Being a professional business social network, LinkedIn is the perfect place to promote your blog. Since it’s demographics is not too diverse as on other social media networks, you can easily get in front of the right people and pitch the idea that clicks.
If you want to taste your share of the LinkedIn pie, here are some best tips to drive massive traffic from LinkedIn.
1) Make your profile optimized for exposure.
No matter you are an author of HubSpot blog, if your profile isn’t optimized for more views, no one will see you on LinkedIn. But once you optimize it, add the elements required to get seen on LinkedIn, you can surely get more visits. This is proven by the experience of HubSpot author Joe Chernov who increased his profile views by 25% with just some minor changes.
Here is what you have to do:
a) Change your headline to increase search visibility.
LinkedIn Offers you a headline where you can place keywords to get more views when people search for related queries. Make sure to add your niche details so that relevant readers can find and connect to you.
If you are a freelance blogger, make sure you write freelance writer on your headline or if you are blogging about conversion optimization, make sure you mention the word “conversion optimization” to get an advantage on searches.
LinkedIn also provides you with what others in your industry are using so you can take an ida from there.
b) Add your posts in the summary sections:
LinkedIn provides you a summary section just below your profile details. Leverage it to place links to your most popular blog posts. This might not have any SEO value, but the summary section is the first thing people see when they visit your profile, and if you have a clickable headline, I am sure you can get some eyeballs on your blog.
2) Leverage LinkedIn Groups to get super targeted traffic to your Website:
LinkedIn groups are like Facebook groups (except there is no spamming in the former) where you have thousands of professional members who are eager to discuss the topics you are blogging.
Here is why you should leverage LinkedIn groups in your promotional strategy.
The members of the groups are highly targeted, and hence you get in front of leads you would pay for using other social networks.
Quality content on LinkedIn can build your brand and help you grow your blog.
LinkedIn groups offer great feedback and advice on your writing and so this is a great place to learn something on the go.
Since you have only 50 groups to join at a time, make sure you find the most active and meaningful ones from the vast directory of groups. Here is how you can get more traffic using LinkedIn Groups.
a) Check and join groups:
As our main aim (as of now) is to drive traffic to our website, you must be careful to find out if a group allows posting links in it. You can do it before joining by clicking on the group list and then checking out the description section regarding their linking policies.
At no cost, you’d want to get banned for dropping links at a group that has zero tolerance towards it.
b) Participate in conversations before promotion:
In any social media platform, the key to real engagement and traffic is to interact with your community. When you are new to LinkedIn groups, try monitoring the activity and voice of the members before posting your links.
Here is a screenshot that shows you where to find these posts to interact.
Some groups have a day reserved for link promotions while others have the rule to share one link per week. Make sure you do not violate them.
c) Promote your links:
After initial interactions you can promote your blog article links to the group members. This can be done in two ways. You either add a relevant link while you are posting your update or directly choose the share to LinkedIn groups option while sharing from your website.
d) Participate in conversations:
Your job does not end after posting links on LinkedIn groups; rather they are the starting point to get more interactions, build genuine connections and drive more traffic through them.
3) LinkedIn Pulse: Your new Guest Posting Arena:
LinkedIn Pulse has been a tremendous success since its launch in 2014. The platform allows you to publish your blog posts on the platform and leverage its 433 million users to bat an eye. You can also syndicate your own (already published) blog posts to give them extra exposure.
Here are a few tips to get more views on LinkedIn Pulse.
a) LinkedIn Pulse readers love visual and long-form content:
Noah Kagan researched over 3000 articles on LinkedIn (these articles got an average of 42.5K views, 567 comments, and 138,841 comments) to find out what elements can get your content seen on LinkedIn pulse.
What he found out is, LinkedIn readers are fans of visual content. Each of the posts contained an average of 8 images in them. This number is really surprising as far as I am concerned, but you can always experiment to see what works out for you.
b) List posts and business or self-development posts are on the popular side:
On LinkedIn Pulse, you can always drive traffic back to your site by writing articles that are in your niche. If you have a list post or a “how-to” style post you can easily get more views.
Similarly, business and self-help posts get more visits on the platform. However, if you are not in that niche, you can easily find a topic (here is a list of channels) based on your website niche and post it. Make sure it is long form content and should have video or other multimedia assets (images are allowed).
c) How to make LinkedIn Pulse work for you:
Though LinkedIn Pulse is in itself a blogging platform, you can easily repost your posts there and get additional viewers. If you have a good number of followers or have written a nice post, you can go viral and drive a lot of traffic back to your site.
For example, this post by Johnson Kee got him over 100k page views just because he wrote something that resonated with the audience.
d) Add links back to your site:
Pageviews on Pulse would actually mean nothing if you cannot funnel them as leads back to your site. Since LinkedIn does not allow you to monetize pulse, you should aim at bringing the traffic back to your site where you can funnel them and convert them into sales/subscribers.
The best way is to add internal links (must be catchy enough to make readers click through them). One other thing you can do is to make your footer section a bit optimized so that it gives a brief introduction of your business.
You can add links to your landing pages in this section or provide them with the glimpse of your product if you have any.
4) What not to do on LinkedIn:
Like every other platform, LinkedIn users have their own pet peeves and doing certain things can turn them off. This will result in less interaction and thus less views of your posts. Here are certain things you should avoid to get more impressions.
a) Avoid posting about political and religious stuff:
We all have right to post whatever we want, but not all platform receive updates with an equal eye. In LinkedIn the conversation is more professional and business-related than talking about politics and religious updates.
You can instead post them on Facebook and other social media platforms.
b) Stop posting very personal stuff:
Like I said, personal stuff like the makeup you are wearing, the bike you recently bought or the cat that died leaving you lonely look good on Facebook and the audience there really loves it.
You can skip posting those stuff there because neither your potential leads nor your business associates are interested in those.
BONUS:
This is a paid method, but I can assure you will get quality leads to your website with this method. Also, this method works in conjunction with Facebook ads.
In this method, you have to use your LinkedIn contacts, by exporting them. Then you can actually segment it into industry based contacts so that you can run different campaigns based on various industries.
Then you can upload them to custom audiences in your Facebook ad manager and run a campaign. This method will not have huge impressions but will surely help you reach some gold audience which would otherwise be impossible to reach.
With LinkedIn emerging as a great content marketing platform it’s also turning a favorite of marketers who are interested in B2B connections. Having genuine presence and posting lots of updates can bring you good amount of traffic.
The traffic that LinkedIn sends is always interested in your business because they are there for business. So you get quality leads and lower bounce rates that platform like StumbleUpon and Facebook.
What are your favorite LinkedIn traffic driving strategies? Share them in the comments below.
“Lead nurturing” is typically defined as a series of emails sent to a person over time. Often in the marketing world, lead nurturing is created for someone who downloads a piece of content on your website, but it can also be used for cold leads, marketing qualified leads who aren’t quite ready for sales, or even lost opportunities.
Here are some keys we’ve picked up on how to create the perfect lead nurturing email(s):
Fundamentals
Remember that lead nurturing should be about building a relationship.
Determine what will trigger the lead nurturing (downloading content, a certain amount of time lapsing since the most recent activity, a salesperson indicating a certain person, etc.).
Don’t use a purchased list and start “nurturing” them. (That’s the opposite of inbound.)
Make sure the sales team can see which emails a person got and if he or she opened or clicked on them (via your customer relationship management).
Contemplate whether or not every offer on your website really needs a lead nurturing path.
Consider a dedicated IP address if you have a large database and/or want complete control over your email sender reputation.
Define the emails that will constitute the lead nurturing path (three to six emails is a common length).
Make sure your lead nurturing path will appeal to your target persona(s).
Consider the goal or action you want the reader to take from each lead nurturing email.
Don’t include more than one action you want the reader to take per email.
Think about taking the reader through the buyer’s journey with each email (awareness > consideration > decision).
Send several emails for each stage of the buyer’s journey; don’t assume a lead is ready to move to the next stage from only one email.
Ask the sales team what content it has found the most useful in moving leads down the funnel.
Offer different types of content: blog posts, ebooks, webinars, checklists, and podcasts in order to reach people with different preferences.
Wait an appropriate amount of time between lead nurturing emails depending on the audience: shorter for B2C, longer for B2B.
Draft different lead nurturing paths (or use smart content or workflows) based on what you know about the lead, including what he or she has downloaded on your website, demographic information he or she has given you (number of employees, role, pain points, etc.), things he or she found interesting on your website, and so forth.
Diagram the lead nurturing path in order to help visualize (if the path requires branches).
Try not to make a lead nurturing path more complicated than it needs to be.
Writing the Emails
Give the reader useful information he or she will actually find value in.
Draft each email with the goal in mind.
Don’t go straight to a product pitch or demo request with the first (or only) lead nurturing email.
Keep emails short and to the point.
Use humor, but don’t be cheesy or non-genuine.
Create a logical link between each email in the copy.
Don’t write about your company; the reader cares about his or her pain and how the content will solve it.
Write subject lines that are short and intriguing.
Use personalization tokens such as first name and company, where appropriate.
Proof your email for spelling and grammar errors.
Have another person proof each email as well.
Enrollment
Coordinate with the sales team on which leads it is following up with and un-enroll individuals from lead nurturing so that they aren’t bombarded by your company.
Make sure that leads aren’t enrolled in multiple lead nurturing paths at once.
Consider reusing emails from a different lead nurturing path only if there’s no possible way a lead could receive the same email twice (how embarrassing!).
Ensure that leads aren’t re-enrolled in the same lead nurturing if they download the offer again.
Don’t enroll customers in lead nurturing that includes a demo request or other language targeted to leads.
Details
Test each email in the lead nurturing path in order to make sure it looks correct. If possible, test it in multiple email clients, including Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
Verify that your emails look good on mobile devices as well.
Don’t wait until every lead nurturing path is perfect until publishing; try something, test, and iterate.
Send the email from a real person, not info@, marketing@, or the dreaded do-not-reply@.
Include social media sharing options.
Include social proof if ending a lead nurturing path with a demo request or product email.
Include an image, if appropriate.
Define ALT text for all images.
Link the image to the offer.
Don’t include too many images, which may impact your email deliverability and send the message into a spam filter.
Include more than one link to the same offer.
Include an option to view the email message on the Web.
Include a signature line or block from a real person.
Always include an unsubscribe option and your corporate address, per CAN-SPAM Act requirements.
Have a way for leads to “down-scribe” if they still want to hear from you, just not as frequently as they currently are.
Test
Test different subject lines.
Test different offers.
Test different wording.
Test email lengths.
Test different amounts of time between emails.
Test the number of images per email.
Test sending from different people at the company.
Test different end goals.
Test using an HTML template versus a text-only email.
Test experimenting with a PS line.
Test text CTAs versus image CTAs.
Feedback and Follow-Up
Integrate lead nurturing email actions into your lead scoring framework.
Monitor the spam and unsubscribe rates. Adjust appropriately.
Monitor the email reputation of your email service provider. Switch if necessary.
Call a customer who successfully completed the lead nurturing (or a power customer) and pick his or her brain about what worked and what could be improved.
Ask the sales team for feedback on the lead nurturing path and improvements.
Personally respond to each person who replies to a lead nurturing email.
Don’t keep bothering people who have no interest in engaging with you. After a certain amount of time (and a re-engagement campaign), let them go.
Analyze the results of each email and the path as a whole against your goals.
Implement “closed loop” reporting on any leads who become customers as a result of lead nurturing.
Review your lead nurturing paths regularly; don’t just let them sit.
Bonus tip: Try asking your lead what he or she thinks of each email in the nurture series and see what happens!
Any “keys” we missed? Let us know in the comments.
In the time that it took me to write this headline, I received 3 work-related emails. My co-founder knocked on my office doors to ask for some advice about a product we’re building. And there were 3 million other things that I could have been doing.
Like everyone else reading this blog post, I don’t have enough time in my day. And I am trying to conserve as many moments as I humanly can: I work with a virtual assistant, I create templates for everything, and I delegate projects related to my biggest weaknesses. I also look for strategic areas of optimization. One of my favorite areas of focus is sales enablement.
If you’re in sales or marketing, you’ve probably felt the time-crunch pain of your everyday role more than anyone. You’ve also probably come to recognize the importance of having the right processes in place. Here are a few ideas to help you get started, nominated by a community of fellow super-smart, busy people:
Try Artificial Intelligence Tech Nominated by: James Gardner, digital strategist & client development leader at Connective DX
I spend a lot of time scheduling phone calls and meetings, often with 5 or more participants. It can be a real headache to identify open windows of time that work for all my required and optional attendees. When the back and forth of emails takes too long, I’ve even had people’s availability change, forcing me to start all over again!
I’ve tried several tools like Doodle that simplify and automate the scheduling process. They all help to a certain degree, but X.ai is currently my favorite. It uses artificial intelligence and basically acts like a personal assistant on your behalf. I think it’s still in beta but it wasn’t hard to get an invitation to try it.
I’m confident it’s saving me 60-90 minutes of wasted time every week. That makes a difference! Plus, it impresses my prospects and clients and avoids aggravating them with unnecessary emails.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel Nominated by: Karl Becker, president of The Carruthers Group
Repurpose the content you already have and save content creation time. If you already send newsletters, parse out this content and turn it into individual LinkedIn posts to stay in front of your contacts and build brand awareness.
You can even use some of this content to keep your blog updated. We’re also fans of collecting content from partners, vendors, and colleagues and using what you found useful in your own post – giving credit to the source of course. As an example, if you have a partner hosting a webinar – share this as content you want your audience to know about. It will create value for you, your partner, and your audience.
Build a Personal Brand Nominated by: Peter Seenan, communications strategist at LeadFeeder
Busy sales leaders know they should be active on social media because more and moreB2B customers are using social for research and the buying process is lengthening. The problem is that being personal, helpful and always genuine is seriously time-consuming.
That’s why it’s important to be using tools that allow for some automation while ensuring personalization. We encourage our teams to use LinkedIn, for instance.
Traffic to our website from LinkedIn has tripled in the last 6 months and LinkedIn represents an important channel for trial sign-ups.
Build Systematic Efficiencies Nominated by: Karl Becker, president of the Carruthers Group
Focus your business development time where you have the highest probability of success. Implement a marketing automation program or newsletter platform that provides lead scorings. Lead scoring is a practice where a leads actions generate a score. For example, the more sections of your newsletter a lead reads the higher their score. You can leverage up your time and business development efforts by contacting the leads with the highest scores and thus the highest probability of interest in your brand.
Repurpose the content you already have and save content creation time. If you already send newsletters, parse out this content and turn it into individual LinkedIn posts to stay in front of your contacts and build brand awareness. You can even use some of this content to keep your blog updated. We’re also fans of collecting content from partners, vendors, and colleagues and using what you found useful in your own post – giving credit to the source of course. As an example, if you have a partner hosting a webinar – share this as content you want your audience to know about. It will create value for you, your partner, and your audience.
Hire a Virtual Assistant Nominated by: Taft Love, director of sales development at PandaDoc
Research is a huge time-suck for sales teams—especially sales development. Manually finding basic contact info (like email addresses and phone numbers) and personal data (like job history and common connections) can take up a significant amount of your reps’ time and give the a great excuse for not focusing on selling activities.
The first step is to stop paying your high-value reps for doing low-value research activity. An intern or freelancer from a marketplace like UpWork, equipped with the right tools, can do a lot of this work for your team.
Here are some great tools that will help you find the contact and personal data necessary to keep your high-value salespeople focused on high-value activities:
ProspectLinked – a simple, accurate, easy-to-use email finder
LinkedIn Premium – great way to find prospects and gather personal data
TryProspect – powerful email finder for LinkedIn profiles
ZoomInfo – the best bang for your buck on direct phone data
Crystal – a “personality platform” that teaches you about prospects’ personalities
Final Thoughts
You have limited hours in the day–so start optimizing them immediately. Your sales team’s time is too valuable to be spent doing grunt work, scheduling meetings, or digging for information. Keep your operations running smoothly with the 5 tips above. The end result will almost feel like magic: what’s better than having more hours in your week?
Entrepreneurs, scaling startups, and enterprise companies are all in business to do one main thing: generate revenue.
Over the last 10 years,
inbound marketing has proven to be a great way to do this. But it’s important to understand that people don’t go from completely unaware of your business to being a brand-loyal customer in one fell swoop.
There are levels to this kind of thing.
Potential customers need to go through a few different stages before they’re ready to entertain a conversation about what you sell: Awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and finally purchase.
The second stage is where you get leads.
Getting people interested in what you have to sell doesn’t have to be difficult thanks to Inbound marketing. This practice is a holistic, data-driven approach where a business leverages content on its website to attract interested buyers and convert them into leads — typically after they've become aware of the products and services online.
It mirrors the way people buy in today's digital environment and works in both B2B and B2C situations.
But what if you don't have a marketing department or your marketing team doesn't practice inbound? What if you have to generate your own sales leads?
Here, we’ll review the online channels that’ll help you generate leads and tactics you apply to fill your pipeline today.
Many sales professionals don't have the marketing support to rely on a steady flow of inbound leads, but still have to hit their quotas. Luckily, the inbound sales methodology provides many ways to fill that need.
Inbound sales is a way to identify and connect with prospects by leveraging the inbound mindset of building relationships way before someone is ready to buy.
Most successful salespeople already practice some version of solution selling. They know sales is about consulting around the prospect's problems, not closing the deal.
It's about letting the prospect define the pace of the process and offering education and advice as a way to build confidence and trust. This makes it easy and safe for a client to buy. Here are a few ways you can make it scalable and efficient on your own.
You might be wondering "What makes a lead ready to speak with sales?" And that can depend on several factors set by your sales team. Perhaps the type of lead generation tactic that brought them into the pipeline determines who becomes a prospect. Or maybe, an SDR reaches out to the lead to qualify them manually by asking a set of layered questions.
Lead qualification should be based on your revenue goals with input from both the marketing and sales teams. But before you set criteria to qualify leads, you need to generate them first.
Let’s take a look at some of the top lead channels that won’t cost you a penny.
1.Use third-party listings.
Websites like Fiverr and Upwork can be a great source of leads for your sales team. If your business sells a service that is in demand on these sites, you can list your services to gain more leads. The best part about using third-party listings to get free leads is that they have the potential to close quickly. When there’s a match between your business and the client, they’ll likely want to get to work right away which is invaluable to your time-to-close KPI and bottom-line revenue.
2. Create content.
We’ll talk about different ways you can do this in the section below, but creating content online helps you get free leads in both the short-term and the long-term. When you use social media to promote your content, you can see a quick spike in traffic to your website and a spike in leads could follow. In the long-term, your content will live on your site and gain authority in the search engines as more people search for queries that your content answers for them. All of this is completely free and only requires time, skill, and consistency.
3. Network online.
Whether you’re on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or using forums like Reddit and Quora, networking online with people in your market can bring your business free leads. This method of acquiring new customers can be time-consuming, but you’ll develop a better understanding of what your customers are looking for and why they buy your products or services. In turn, you’ll develop a sense of empathy and customer knowledge that money can’t buy.
1. Optimize your social media profiles.
When was the last time you actually updated your LinkedIn or Twitter profile? Keeping your social media profiles fresh and up-to-date is a great way to bring in more leads.
LinkedIn is hands-down the most beneficial social media platform for salespeople. Make your profile stand out (and potentially show up in search queries) by drafting a stellar LinkedIn headline and descriptive summary that tells those who visit your profile exactly what you do and who you serve.
Twitter is another social media platform that salespeople can use to connect with leads and generate interest in their business.
To get the most out of your Twitter profile make sure you have a professional-looking profile photo, tag your company’s account, include a link to your LinkedIn profile, and try including a few hashtags that are relevant to your buyers.
Making these simple changes to your social media profiles puts you in a better position to show up in the search results of potential buyers, making it even easier to connect.
2. Find prospects you can help on relevant social media networks.
Most salespeople are on LinkedIn, but may not be using it effectively for generating top-of-the-funnel activity. It is a salesperson's dream to be able to connect in a high-value, low-effort way to find interested prospects, and social media is a great way to do so.
A few quick recommendations to leverage your social media presence for lead generation:
Try to connect with as many people as you can. The more connections you have, the wider your reach will be. You don't have to be best friends with the people you connect to. Tangential connections can be amongst the best for potential prospects.
Post in the "Share an Update" section you're currently looking to identify and help a specific type of prospect with a specific type of problem by a specific date. For example, "We are looking to work with three new commercial landscaping companies by September 1 that are interested in building their business in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area".
Get three recommendations from current clients demonstrating high-quality work that can vouch for your value, professionalism, and effectiveness.
(Extra credit if you can broaden your professional brand to Facebook for Business, Twitter, and Snapchat, although this does increase the amount of work involved.)
3. Post a blog article on LinkedIn with an offer for a 15-minute consultation.
I speak on behalf of HubSpot 50 times a year, and often when I mention "blogging" to my audience, people's eyes glaze over. They think of blogging as a structured and difficult way of writing a college essay — and writing is up there with public speaking on the list of things that people hate and fear.
But blogging is really just a conversation, and a blog topic can be as simple as answering the standard questions about your product that you do every day, such as "The Beginner's Guide to [Common Business Challenge]" and "X Things You Need to Know About [Business Area]."
4. Ask your current customers for referrals.
Over the course of my work helping digital agencies fill their sales funnel, I frequently ask my clients the last time they pinged their current clients, thanked them for their business, and asked for help in generating more business.
Everyone agrees that a referral collection strategy is effective, but for some reason, it's hard to implement one effectively. You can follow the seven steps below to get started:
Check with your account manager to make sure the customer is happy (and if they're not, set up a call anyway to see how you can make things better).
Ping the client with a phone and an email and ask for a 10-minute conversation.
Thank the client for the business, explain that you value your relationship and you're always interested in making it more valuable to your client.
Ask if there are any other contacts or companies she can think of that would be interested in the same level of service.
Get the name, phone number, and email of the contact, and why your client thinks it is a good fit.
Ask if they can tee you up with a quick introduction email.
Extra credit: If you can, send them a handwritten note or small item like a T-shirt thanking them for the referral. Little touches go a long way.
5. Work with your personal network to identify potential leads.
Working your personal network is another sometimes-overlooked option that is fairly easy to get started with because you have built-in trust. There are certain people you'll meet in a personal context that you wouldn't think of as a lead generation machine but can be incredibly valuable.
In today's busy world, you have yoga friends, work friends, neighbors, and more — but they exist in these separate buckets that don't necessarily intersect. The key is remarkably simple — if you're at the point in your relationship where you can talk business, let potentially useful acquaintances know.
Identify the type of company you're looking for (size, employee number, revenue amount, location, etc.) and send an email they can forward to make the connection.
Of course, mixing the personal and professional like this needs to be effective and respectful — but it is a great way of broadening your reach.
6. Actively engage with new leads at networking events.
When possible, attending these events (in person and online) should be part of your routine because they're a great way to grow your reach and potentially drum up business.
Below are four basics I remind people of before they dive into networking (whether in-person or at a virtual networking event):
It's about mingling and being human and having fun. Don't take things too seriously!
Explaining your "always be helping" philosophy face-to-face is usually a pretty big differentiator.
Bring business cards to hand to your new acquaintances.
Offer to connect on LinkedIn from your phone while you're standing next to someone. I usually respectfully ask — would you like to connect on LinkedIn? If they say "yes," I just hand them my phone and say, "Can you find yourself and connect?", which makes things a lot easier.
7. Revisit closed/lost opportunities.
These are businesses that already know what your company does. They might have seen a product demo or made it through a discovery call and it just wasn't the right time to buy.
Touch base with these prospects every six months. Ask how their priorities have changed, if their business and team goals have shifted, and what their challenges are.
Invest in marketing to these prospects, because they're already more qualified than new, warm leads. Enroll them in appropriate marketing email drips, send them relevant blog posts, and keep communication personalized.
It might not be the right moment the first or third time you follow up, but it could work in your favor the fifth.
And you never know when a prospect will change jobs and finally have the budget or business case to implement your solution. By staying top of mind, you'll be the first vendor they call.
Blond explained that one of Rainforest's most successful email sequences is addressed from their CTO. Rainforest's SDRs send the email to the CTO of a prospect's company, framing the message as if their CTO asked them to reach out.
"It's creative, it grabs attention, and it allows us to cast a wide net over each prospect's company," Blond said.
To send a successful email sequence, have a clear purpose for each one. For example:
Email 1: Address pain points
Email 2: Explain a value message
Email 3: Name drop a big client
Email 4: Qualify your message
Email 5: Include a product message
Email 6: Reach out one last time
Implement a comprehensive, purposeful email sequence and see it work for you.
9. Guest post to other websites and blogs.
Are you writing blogs yet? You should be. Start by writing about what you're an expert in.
It could be sales process optimization, referral marketing, or your product/service — but whatever you do, start writing, and share it on your company's blog, your personal social media channels, and your customers.
It's important for you to be a visible expert in your field. Not only will it display your expertise, but you'll educate your prospects as well. Need some help on your first post? Reach out to your resident marketer or blog editor for a quick lesson. They might even offer to help you write a post or two.
10. Embed a meeting scheduler on your website.
If you're a rep in charge of bringing in your own leads, you don't have the resources to send three back-and-forth emails coordinating schedules with a prospect. It's a waste of your time and a waste of theirs.
Instead, embed an appointment scheduler on your website and your email signature. HubSpot's free Meeting Scheduling Tool syncs with Google and Office 365 calendars, so your prospects always see your updated availability.
Plus, if there's no designated sales rep, you can set a round-robin meeting link, so prospects are able to schedule meetings with the rep who's availability best aligns with their own.
Make it easy for leads to get in touch with you and schedule time to learn more.
11. Use live chat to engage with users on your website.
Another way to vet leads is through an easy-to-use chatbot builder. There are a lot on the market today, but HubSpot Conversations gives you the tools and context you need to have unlimited, personalized conversations at scale.
Customize your widget so that it matches the look and feel of your brand and pops up on your prospect's screen with a welcome message that's actionable and matches their intent. Use your chatbot to qualify leads, book meetings, answer FAQs, and more.
You can respond to chats through the Conversations inbox, Slack, on even on the go with HubSpot's mobile app. Because it's part of your HubSpot CRM, every conversation is saved.
12. Lead an online workshop or webinar.
While sharing articles and blog posts are a great way to share your knowledge, nothing tops getting the opportunity to actually teach. Hosting a webinar or online workshop sharing your expertise on a relevant topic is a great way to generate leads online.
For example, if you sell social media scheduling software for small businesses, you could host an online workshop for entrepreneurs showing them how to build engagement on social media. By sharing your knowledge on a relevant topic in an intimate format such as video, you are building trust with leads quickly.
13. Create blog content to gain visibility in the search engines.
Guest posting to other blogs and websites is a smart way to build brand awareness with new audiences, but by blogging on your own domain, you’ll benefit from long-term SEO gains.
A blog content strategy won’t bring you a ton of leads overnight, but overtime, you’ll find a sweet spot of keywords and off-page promotion strategies that will help you build a loyal following of readers who may eventually become leads.
14. Have a giveaway for a free product or service in exchange for a lead form.
Who doesn’t like free stuff? Drum up interest in a new product offering or service with a giveaway. In exchange for a lead form, you can offer your audience a chance to win a free consultation, product, or service from your business. With the consent of the people who entered the giveaway, you can add them to your email nurture campaigns where they can learn more about your business and become customers in the future.
15. Partner with other businesses online to cross-promote your offerings.
Partnerships are mutually beneficial to both you and the other business. Not only will you both gain exposure in two different audiences, you’ll be more likely to make a good impression on the other audience if your brand aligns with their needs.
When partnering with another business, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind before agreeing to collaborate:
Do a quick audience analysis. Is the majority of their audience in that market for what you sell? If not, it may not be a productive use of your time.
What type of collaboration will you be partnering on? Social media collaborations are popular — will you do video, a series of posts, a social media takeover?
What is your goal for the collaboration? How many new leads do you plan to acquire? How will you follow up with them
16. Join networking communities to chat with professionals in your industry.
The Revenue Collective and Women in Revenue are just a few examples of networking communities that you can join to connect with like-minded professionals.
While soliciting services might be prohibited in these groups, you’re bound to find people who are looking for help with a problem that you can solve. You can also leverage your connections in these groups to help you find leads online.
17. Set up a Google My Business account and solicit reviews from existing or past clients.
Google brings in more than 5 billion searches per day. That’s “billion” with a “B”. Because of the sheer amount of traffic to the search engine, it’s a good idea to enhance your presence there. Google My Business is a free option for any business to use. So long as you have a valid physical address where your company does business, you can see an increase in traffic to your website once your account is activated.
With a Google My Business account, searchers have a better chance of seeing your business appear in the search engine results page (SERP) on a carousel, featured snippet, or in a knowledge graph.
Create a Robust Sales Pipeline with Online Lead Sourcing
No matter how small or large your business is, you can generate quality leads online to increase revenue. Whether you’re more of a writer, networker, or public speaker, the opportunity to connect with people and generate leads online is definitely worth your while. Try these online tactics to close more deals this quarter.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in August, 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
One of the biggest rifts in any business is the one that tends to exist between sales and marketing. Often, when something goes wrong, it’s easy for one branch to point their fingers at another. Likewise, when things go well, it’s easy for one branch to think it deserves the credit over the other.
But, if we’re focusing on solely a matter of brands and sales, it’s clear how much these two really do rely on one another, and the magic that can be done with they work together. After all, good brands do much of what a solid sales team does. A good relationship between the two can be observed by even the newest of customers. Here’s how.
The Visible Relationship
To begin with, a good brand and a good sales team are equally as important. That’s a no-brainer. While a sales team may interact with people directly, a good brand helps a company get noticed in the first place. Both do the job of bringing in leads and eventually, closing in on a sale to help grow the company. Once people discover they love your brand, the rest is pretty easy. And remember, the brand is largely made up of contributions made by marketing. Don’t ever forget that.
Secondly, both a good brand and a good sales team start their initial approach from inside the company. If a company wants to bring in business, it’s imperative that there’s some kind of protocol or “culture” developed around the brand. This happens when there is a strong communication within the business “walls.” Whether those be physical walls or invisible, digital walls, the entire company needs to have a mutual understanding revolving around how this product is going to reach people. At the same time, a sales team develops their approach to customers from within, by figuring out how they should successfully execute a sale.
What Goes On Beneath the Surface
Another thing both a brand and a sales team do the same way is focusing on selling a lot more than just the product. A great brand, therefore, should reveal the benefits people are getting from adapting this product into their lives. It may sound cliche, but if the point of the product is to, say, “Make the world a better place” or something along those lines, then that’s what the aim should be. Similarly, a good sales team should work on their CRM strategy, to reel in customers through trust and eventually, loyalty, to them, and the brand they are representing. Or, in some cases, the brand that represents them.
Beyond that, there are a lot more things brands and sales share in common. It’s the dedication the company has to the customers and what the brand stands for. How they both work to create a sense of value for the customers, and promising that value throughout the lifetime of the brand. Lastly, a great brand can bring in people naturally, as can a confident sales team that has a good inbound marketing approach. (Again, why it’s so important for marketing and sales to work together.)
Some may also argue that good brands, like sales teams, shouldn’t copy old initiatives or go after what’s trending. That they should be innovative, and always find ways to stand on top of the competition. Of course, while all companies should strive to be different, it’s always good to be in tune with what the people want. Though, at the end of the day, always, always, stay true to your brand.
The Bottom Line
If your company believes in its brand as much as the people on the sales floor, a lot of great things can happen. Brands are what creates those relationships and keep them strong while the sales team is asleep at night. At the same time, the sales team works to create that emotional, human interaction, that brands can only do to a certain extent. As long as your company can maintain a positive AND consistent connection with both, the profits will come.
Need some help getting your brand and sales team on the same page? Request a demo with Mission Suite today!
Bill Carmody, Founder and CEO of Trepoint, is passionate about his mission to make all marketing more accountable. He believes in engagement over number of followers and that scale in influencer marketing has changed the game. He particularly encourages marketers to never lose sight of their main goals to drive up sales and track ROI, even for influencer marketing.
Trepoint is a creative marketing agency committed to creating measurable and positive results that deliver on the key performance indicators established together with your brand. They focus on leveraging the power and passion of your communication channels to drive organic engagement and build a more connected customer journey. Bill is also a public speaker and columnist for Inc Magazine.
In This Episode
Why being able to scale up influencer marketing has changed the industry
How to make your marketing campaigns more accountable by properly tracking ROI
Why it’s really the engagement factor that leads to sales, not vanity metrics like followers or number of click-throughs
How to identify the proper influencer for your brand and maximize audience participation
Why being able to measure engagement has revolutionized influencer marketing
Quotes From This Episode
“Everybody wants to get their piece of the pie.” —@BillCarmody (highlight to tweet)
“I’m on a mission to make marketing more accountable.” —@BillCarmody (highlight to tweet)
“I think one of the reasons why over 70% of people who are doing social media campaigns can’t really measure the success of those campaigns is because the industry has trained marketers that the most important thing is impression and clicks. But really, that’s not true. As a marketer, if you’re not driving sales then you’re not doing your job. So, we’ve always looked at marketing accountability as working from the cash register backwards.” —@BillCarmody
“Audience size is less critical to me than the level of engagement with that audience.” —@BillCarmody (highlight to tweet)
“The power of influencer marketing is micro influence.” —@BillCarmody (highlight to tweet)
“You do not need to have celebrities to have specific successful influencer campaigns. You can have very powerful people with highly engaged audiences that are nowhere near being a celebrity, but they’re a subject matter expert. Therefore, they can have a real impact on driving your sales.” —@BillCarmody
Would you rather never leave the country, or leave the country and never come back?
If I had to choose, I would choose the latter. I would rather leave the country and never come back, especially if Trump gets elected. My rationale there is I love to travel. I’m a global traveler.
Would you rather only eat from Taco Bell, or from Kentucky Fried Chicken for a year?
Well, I would choose Taco Bell. Although, I think that’s one of those premises where like yeah…I would probably just opt to not eat if I had those as my only options and I would figure out ways to fast and survive. But the truth is I love Taco Bell.
Would you rather have a head the size of a small grapefruit, or as big as a watermelon?
Well, I don’t like the idea of having a big head. To me, that just sort of connotes egotism and sort of…I guess the size of a grapefruit, I would have to go with that because I would rather be a little more humble and would rather be less assuming.
But life doesn’t have to be a video loop of mistakes. Over time, the wise among us learn how to follow good advice when we hear it — both on what to do, and what not to do.
That’s why we asked a group of sales pros to share their list of the top sales fails – 11 common mistakes you should not make if you want to close the deal. As a teaser, here are a few must-avoid blunders.
You Wing It
Both newbies and veteran sales reps make this mistake: Take a sales call or go into a meeting without a plan of action. If you’re new to sales, you might feel overwhelmed or unsure of how to prep for a call. And if you’re a seasoned sales rep, you might think you don’t need a dress rehearsal. But winging it doesn’t always work.
Thinking through your and your prospect’s desired outcome of the next meeting will help you make a compelling case for why your product meets their needs. Think of several questions that may arise, write them down, and prepare answers (and maybe even a reference sheet) to help the meeting go smoothly. If you’re nervous or just want to be sure you nail it, rehearse your talk track with someone you trust beforehand. Consider preparation and practice your superpowers.
You’re Trying to Solve a Problem Your Prospect Doesn’t Have
Have you ever noticed a prospect seem to lose interest just as you’re getting started on an energetic explanation of the details and functionality of your latest, greatest product offering? That’s probably because you’re trying to offer them a solution without knowing if it solves their particular problem. Focusing your first conversations around general product features and broad business benefits is a common blunder in the initial outreach stage. In today’s info-saturated world, it takes personalization (even in the early stages) to cut through the noise and get a prospect to actually pay attention to what you have to say.
Why my product or service — for this specific customer?
Why my company — for this specific customer?
Why now — for this specific customer?
Without this level of preparation and customization, you’ll appear out of touch with the very people you’re trying to connect with, and risk killing the deal before it even gets started.
So what should you do? Take the time to research and think through the three questions above. Think up genuine, compelling ways in which your product can solve the specific problems the prospect faces. It will earn you future discussions and lay the groundwork for a successful deal.
You Show Up Late to the Party
Sometimes, it’s fashionable to show up late. When it comes to the buyer decision journey, however, it’s a different story. Buyers go through specific stages of decision-making: identifying the problem, evaluating the options, defining a solution, and making the final choice. Most salespeople don’t enter the process until customers are evaluating options, but experts say that’s too late. Research shows that only 16% of leads tagged as “sales-ready opportunities” actually close.
The solution? By engaging the prospect when they’re still working to define the problem, you can reframe how buyers think about their challenges and potential solutions. If a prospect tells you they’re thinking of changing vendors, don’t wait six months to call them back. Get on their calendar in the next three weeks when they’re defining the problem, advises Craig Elias, a sales consultant. “When I do that I am five more times likely to win the business.”
For more good advice and sharp insights, check out our latest e-book to learn what sales reps often say and do (or don’t do) that cause them to lose deals (plus bonus tips on how to avoid these common pitfalls).
That’s the sound of potential customers leaking out of your sales funnel.
Drip, drip…
Another customer gone.
After fighting tooth-and-nail to launch your SaaS business, the last thing you want is a leaky sales funnel to undermine all your hard work. Because even a small leak can snowball into a gushing cascade of leads, leaving your business bone-dry.
If you want your SaaS to thrive, to constantly convert leads into happy customers, and have those customers stay with you – you need a sturdy funnel in place.
A flowing sales funnel is crucial in any business, but even more so with SaaS businesses…
Unlike other business models, revenue is generated over an extended period of time. And when you consider that acquiring each customer has a cost, you can appreciate the importance of an airtight sales funnel that consistently converts.
This article will show you how to conduct a SaaS funnel audit, especially if this is your first time conducting one.
How Healthy Is Your SaaS Right Now?
Everyone and their dad has heard about KPIs: Key Performance Indicators. It’s a common acronym that gets thrown around in the SaaS world that’s basically a “businessy” way of saying “important metrics for tracking your business.”
Before you begin auditing and optimizing your funnel, it’s important to know where your SaaS currently stands. Is it attracting customers but failing to retain business? Is it starved of leads?
There are a ton KPIs you can track, but below are the most important for reviewing the health of your SaaS.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Monthly Recurring Revenue, or MRR, is a measure of the predictable and recurring revenue of your subscription business. This doesn’t include one-time and variable fees.
MRR is probably the most critical metric for any subscription business. It’s what makes the subscription model awesome. However it comes with it’s own set of challenges, like retention and churn.
To accurately calculate MRR, you need to consider these three different aspects:
New MRR: Fresh revenue brought by newly acquired customers.
Expansion MRR: Expanded revenue from existing customers, usually from upsells and cross-sells.
Churn MRR: Churn MRR refers to lost revenue from customers cancelling or downgrading.
So, Net MRR = New MRR + Expansion MRR – Churned MRR
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV or CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value simply measures the profit your business makes from any given customer. Knowing your CLV will help answer pivotal questions like:
How much can I afford to spend acquiring each new customer?
How much can I spend on retaining customers and reducing churn?
What upsells and cross-sells can be given to the best customers?
You need the following three variables to get your customer lifetime value:
ARPA (Average Revenue per Account)
Gross margin
Churn
Take the revenue you earn from a customer, subtract the money spent on acquiring and serving them, and see how long they generate profit before churning.
LTV = ARPA * % Gross Margin / % MRR Churn Rate
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
If you’re reading this, you know how expensive marketing can be.
Acquiring new customers can be costly, and that’s why tracking CAC is so important. Because pumping hard-earned money into a marketing channel with negative returns will kill your SaaS.
Customer Acquisition Cost refers to the resources that a business uses in order to acquire an additional customer. It encompasses all efforts necessary to get your products and services into the hands of potential customers, and then convincing them to buy.
Common acquisition expenses are: paid ads, staff salaries, CRM, marketing automation software licenses, sponsorships, content marketing, and social media.
Knowing your CAC will help you with:
Determining your actual profit margins
Optimizing Customer Lifetime Value
Identifying and optimizing the biggest acquisition expenses
Calculating your CAC
To calculate your CAC, take your total sales and marketing expenses over a given period of time; then divide by the number of new customers acquired in the same period.
This is the number of customers you lose in a certain time period. Simply put, it is how many customers fail to renew their subscription to your service.
Revenue Churn
Not to be confused with customer churn, revenue churn represents lost revenue numbers caused by customers that have churned.
Metric Decomposition – Making The Most Out Of Your Metrics
Tristan Handy, former VP Marketing at RJMetrics, highlights a great analysis process for making the most out of your KPI data. If you want to drill deeper into your metrics to unearth the reasons why:
Choose a small number of metrics that matter the most for your business. This will vary for each SaaS business.
Take your top level metrics and break them down into component parts. For example, Tristan broke down net new customers into new customers, churned customers, and debooked customers (customers who never were successfully onboarded).
Repeat step 2. Carry on breaking down your metrics into their component parts until you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns.
Tristan Handy:
“This process leads you to a model that allows you to ask “why did we succeed?” or “why did we fail?” for any of your top level metrics, and then trace that success and failure into each component metric to diagnose problems.”
When optimizing SaaS sales funnels, a crucial question that’s neglected is, “Am I optimizing the funnel with the right customer in mind?”
You can tweak your product copy, landing pages, and funnel flows all you want, but if efforts are directed towards the wrong user, you’re wasting, time, money, and effort.
Easy to say, but how do you make sure you’re targeting the right people? Here are a few ways.
Regularly Review Your Customer Personas
What’s the “job to be done” that attracts customers to your product?
To illustrate the impact this question has, let’s look at this case study on software development company owner, Jerry.
After testing his website, pushing out ads, and still failing to land any customers, Jerry reached out to growth consultant Lincoln Murphy of Sixteen Ventures.
Unsatisfied with his results, Jerry wanted to snag new customers and hypothesized why he wasn’t getting them. He assumed the solution was to reduce free trial time and set up a credit card wall. Murphy advised against this approach, but let him try it anyway.
Did it work?
Nope.
To combat this, Murphy helped Jerry define his ideal customer. Who would immediately recognize and receive value from his software? More importantly, Murphy forced Jerry to talk about the wrong customer for his software.
After these exercises, Jerry realized that the people who were actually signing up for his free trial offers, were the “wrong customers” that he previously described. Armed with a stronger understanding of his ideal customer, Jerry patched up his weak sales funnel and lifted conversions by going after the right customer.
Knowing your customer is more than half the battle. (image source)
Or consider a story Dr. Rob Balon tells about consulting for a large software client. The marketing team came up with a clever ad (far too clever, by the way) and it featured a good looking, stock-photo-ish guy. Now, this product was aimed at the nerdiest of nerds. When Balon showed a focus group of the ideal customer this image, they were critical. “No one we know looks like that,” they said.
Who is your target audience? Is your marketing aligned with this audience?
Use Surveys To Gather Fresh Perspectives
Surveying visitors and existing customers is another way to understand customers better. You can also survey different customer segments to expose what’s attracting and repelling them.
For example, surveying customers whose usage levels have plummeted will give insights as to why some customers may be unsatisfied, and may show where your marketing communicated the wrong message.
When surveying your customers be sure to cover:
What their burning pains and problems are – What’s the driving factor behind them subscribing to you?
Problems buying from you – What points of friction did they encounter when signing up? Was there anything that deterred them or made the process harder than usual? This will kill crucial points of friction on your site and enhance user experience for customers.
Getting Better Survey Results
Some quick tips to make your survey insights more valuable and actionable…
Be clear about what you are looking for, define your goals
Understand the data through an initial review
Organize the data in a way that makes sense to you and is manageable
Interpret the data and identify patterns
Summary report of findings – next steps for testing
Focus On How You’re The Solution To A Specific Problem
“Focus on the single thing you do best, and be the best in the marketplace for your customers — not for everyone else. Trying to be everything to everyone is the easiest way to become right for no one, and we were headed in that direction.” – Alex Turnbull, Groove.
Alex Turnbull, founder of Groove, listed a series of mistakes the company made in their early days. One of the biggest was creating a large wish list of features.
They assumed that more features would add more value to the product, resulting in more sales. But this wasn’t the case (hello Presenter’s Paradox). They had lots of features, gamification, ancillary apps and more, but still didn’t have a single paying customer.
The Groove team quickly realized that a buffet of features didn’t exactly equate to paying customers; their sign-up conversion rate was a poor 2%.
Only after simplifying their product and aligning the rest of their marketing with the new initiative, did they see an increase in user engagement and conversions.
For example, their onboarding flow went from this:
To this:
According to them, this tripled conversions.
Don’t make the same mistake as Groove did with your funnel. Instead of trying to be the solution to every single problem, use your funnel to show the single problem your product/service is best at solving.
Common SaaS Funnel Mistakes To Avoid
Getting potential customers to stay in your funnel and convert is no easy feat.
When it comes to acquiring new customers, SaaS businesses have it hard. And most SaaS business aren’t helping themselves with stagnant funnels that push prospects away. To avoid pushing potential customers out of your funnel, avoid these killer mistakes.
Too Many Stages
You remember that famous case study about jam? Here’s a recap.
The experiment was carried out on two different Saturdays and had some interesting results.
The first Saturday, 24 different flavours of jam were given. The next Saturday, only 6 different flavours were offered.
On the day with 24 different flavours, only 3% of people actually bought anything.
On the day with 6 flavours, however, 30% of people made purchases. This resulted in 600% more jam sold.
The conclusion is simple: Too much choices and procedures hurt conversions (much of the time, but not always).
This doesn’t mean you have to strip away features or necessary steps. But it does mean you should consider how much effort customers are willing to exert when filling out your forms etc.
User testing and heatmap recordings are excellent tools for analyzing friction points encountered during important steps and procedures. If you’re unsure, give them a shot.
Not Remarketing To Lost Leads In The Funnel
If you’re not remarketing to visitors, you run the risk of allowing potential leads slip out of your funnel forever.
Remarketing describes the act of using web technology to target email or ad campaigns at users who’ve shown interest in your product or services.
For SaaS businesses, this means following up with leads who have expressed partial interest. Usually they do this by giving email addresses or initiating a sign up process, but not following through.
Remarketing holds extra weight for SaaS business. Why?
Because chances are you’ve spent money to get a user into your funnel; and if they don’t make it to the bottom of the funnel, you’ve lost out. Remarketing helps regain those otherwise lost leads, and can slash your CAC – like it did for this SaaS company who got $650 for $6.
Loews Hotels even reported a $60,000 boost in revenue from a small $800 dollars invested. Remarketing was one of their “biggest successes,” and according to their team, it lead to a far greater number of conversions directly from their website.
Be sure to request emails early in your funnel. If leads abandon the process, you can follow up with email remarketing campaigns that recapture them.
Sending Sequenced Emails
Marketingsherpa’s 2012 benchmark report found that 65% of companies are slacking with their lead nurturing programs.”
Sending emails based on a time sequence isn’t optimal. It increases the chance of broadcasting generic messages to customers, fails to cater to their individual needs, and neglects your most – and least – active customers.
Each user will move through your funnel at their own pace, and that’s why triggered emails dwarf drip email campaigns. They allow you to communicate with your customers based on their behavior when going through your funnel.
Triggered emails are triggered by events, such as:
A subscriber being non-responsive, which would trigger a reactivation series
A lead subscribing to an free trial, triggering a welcome series
A customer abandoning the onboarding process, triggering an outreach/purchase abandonment series
A customer using the product frequently, leading to an upsell series
The possibilities are unlimited.
Triggered emails have yielded over 100% higher click rates than non-triggered emails and 71% higher open rates.
Why are they so effective?
First, they use customer behavior to segment your list
You’ve shopped on Amazon before right?
Then you’ve probably experienced how they send you emails based on what you’ve been searching for. I recently searched for some books on business and marketing. Look at what Amazon sent me after…
It’s simple, relevant to what I was looking for, and led to me making a purchase.
Second, they’re capable of using environmental triggers to engage subscribers.
Triggered emails act on your customer’s behavior. This allows you to overcome objections and capitalize on more active users. For example, if a group of users are highly active, you can offer them cross-sells and upsells. If a group is less active than usual, you can initiate a reactivation campaign, or ask them if they need help with your software.
Conclusion
To improve your SaaS funnel, you need to be able to diagnose its current condition. Is your SaaS company struggling? Or is everything humming smoothly and in sync?
Use the techniques above to avoid common pitfalls, and patch up those leaks. To summarize:
Review your Metrics That Matter (KPIs). Make sure you’re tracking them correctly.
Review your customer personas. Are you creating experiences that align with your ideal customer?
Use surveys and customer feedback to gather fresh perspectives.
Eliminate the clutter. Focus on your best value proposition, and limit the amount of choices your force upon your customers.
Avoid common mistakes, such as:
Too many stages, choices, or friction (do a heuristic analysis)
Not remarketing
Only sending time-based emails (experiment with different behavior triggered campaigns)
Note that these are best practices, and a good place to start, but once you ramp up your testing capabilities, you may find that some things work for you that might for others (maybe more choices are better for you). This is a great place to start for assessing the quality of your optimization though.
I always love having Jon Loomer on a podcast, not only can listeners learn so much, but my team and I always get so much out of our conversations. JonLoomer.com was recognized as one of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013, 2014 & 2015. It is simply the complete online resource of advanced Facebook marketing tips and tutorials, updated on nearly a daily basis. Here are the highlights from our most recent talk.
B2B VERSUS B2C MARKETING
DR: B2B is certainly a different kind of nut to crack than B2C, or Business to Consumer marketing. What do you think about using Facebook as a platform for B2B marketing? What are your overall thoughts?
JL: I get this question a lot. The truth is, I don’t differentiate between B2B and B2C, because it all really comes down to targeting, creating the best kind of content for the right audience, and being smart about how you create your campaign. Clearly, with B2C you typically have a larger audience than you would for B2B, where you’ll be targeting decision makers, but either way, you’re still creating content for people that should have an interest in your solution. The primary key is to reach the right audience, as opposed to focusing on how many likes, clicks, etc you have.
DR: I think often we forget that there are people behind companies and CEO titles.
JL: Right. When you create content, you create it with those people in mind to start. If the audience is typically a CEO, CFO, CMO- the decision maker, don’t create click-bait content just to get more clicks. You’ve got to create content that’s really going to appeal to the group you’re trying to reach. Sure, you might not get a ton of people liking your page, to begin with, but you’re going to get the right people.
DR: What are some inherent differences between using Facebook to market B2B versus B2C, or are there any? Is there a different methodology?
JL: I come from a mix of those two worlds.
B2C
It’s a larger group of people
It doesn’t really matter who they are
B2B
It’s usually a smaller, more refined audience
You’ll be targeting people by job title
Targeting by the company they work for
The first difference is that you’re probably not going to make a big splash. Targeting with B2C might look like going after women and men, 25-34 who live in the U.S., something really basic, as opposed to targeting in a way that’s more refined when it comes to B2B.
CREATING EFFECTIVE AUDIENCES
DR: That leads to something I wanted to get further into. We have lots of options when it comes to targeting audiences; geography, job titles, employers, etc. How accurate are these targeting options? Also, what are some other ideas for creating the most powerful and effective audiences? If you really wanted to zero in, are there things to keep in mind?
JL: First of all, when you’re doing this initial marketing, it really should be top of the funnel stuff. Here’s the issue with Facebook being around for so long. Say that you’re targeting by job title, the accuracy of doing that depends on people updating that information. When we are using that information, we’re using it for the top of the funnel, and it’s something a high volume action- something that’s easy to post. So you do it wanting to sell something, knowing that there might be a lot of waste, as opposed to a creating a video that’s going to appeal to my target audience that I know will get a lot of views at an inexpensive price. I can then create my audience from people who watch the video, and I can remarket to those people and not waste my money down the road.
Whether it’s job title, or interests, or behaviors- I certainly question the accuracy of all these things. In fact, I recently wrote a blog post about this subject. Facebook will show you how you’re targeted by interests- a lot of it is accurate, and a lot of it is inaccurate. That’s why it’s important to target with high volume actions like watching videos and reading blog posts before we bring people into our Facebook funnel.
DR: Obviously, there’s almost an infinite number of industries out there. But with regard to interests, in a B2B world, what are some that we should keep at the top of mind?
JL: I think that’s always going to be dependent on what your product is and who your target audience is.
DR: What about behaviors?
JL: That’s really where you start getting into careers, education, job titles, and things that you bought. You need the history of what products people are buying, and how they relate to your brand.
DR: That’s a good point, and something I think people should really pay attention to. You can define your audience if you know them well enough. Now, how do you filter out bs titles, like “CEO at Making Money”, which is actually a real example?
JL: That’s why we create a funnel. If we create a video, it will be boring to most people, but interesting to our target audience. Someone who is CEO at Making Money is probably going to ignore the video. The thought is that the top 5% of people who watch a portion of the video that we determine, say it’s 30 seconds, will then be added to an audience. Not only were they someone from the original audience who we thought may be relevant, but they paid attention to something that we think is relevant to them. To us, that’s a sign that they are someone we should be spending money on, and not someone with a bs title.
Long term, in all these situations, you don’t want to rely entirely on things like interests and behaviors, because they aren’t all that accurate. We use them for a first step.
DR: So, what you’re getting at is there is some great targeting available, but you use it as the first cookie you’re sending out. Let people take a bite of that cookie, and build up a more refined audience from there. Remarket to that audience, and then, start serving buying ads to the audience you’ve built from the initial targeting.
JL: Yes, I would even take it a step further and turn this into what I call an evergreen campaign to refine your audience.
DR: Are there any other creative practices to apply once you’ve narrowed down your audience?
JL: Videos are a great, whether they’re live or Q&A’s. Also, lead ads, carousel, and canvas ads. Canvas ads offer an interactive experience and are really interesting for B2B.
LEAD ADS
DR: You mentioned lead ads, which are more of a conversion tactic, but they don’t just serve one purpose- like a submission form for a sales call or an email sign-up. In addition, just by clicking on the lead ad, you can start creating custom audiences. It’s interesting that you touched on that.
JL: Yes, it’s a big development. If anyone isn’t familiar with lead ads, they basically replace sending people to a landing page on your website. When you send someone to a landing page, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Loading time, (which is 8 seconds on average)
Mobile responsiveness
is it too much of a hassle to enter information, (especially on a mobile device, and B2B)
A lead ad automatically opens a form, never going to your website. A lot of the information will be pulled from the visitors profile- first name, last name, phone number, fields like that. But, you can also ask custom questions as well. It simplifies the process, so it’s much easier for people to complete the form. In the past, one of the negatives of not sending people to your site is that you have no insight to how people engaged with that form because it was all on Facebook and not your site. Now, Facebook has created lead ad engagement custom audiences, which is a very helpful new addition.
DR: That’s a very big deal and a huge addition. As a credit to you, I want to mention that we appreciate you never acting as if you have all the answers. You always say to test- try lead ads, try sending people to a landing page, and track results. You don’t know until you know.
Are there any differences in strategies when working with smaller target audiences? For instance, what if you’re only going after C-suite people, in a specific industry, in a very small geographic area.
JL: The main difference is that you have to budget and bid differently. If you’re going after an audience of 5,000 people, you can’t spend $50 a day. Make sure that it’s not just a small audience, it’s a very relevant audience. So, make sure if you’re narrowing your audience, you’re narrowing it for the right reasons. Using custom website audiences as an example, where we know if someone performs a certain action on our site, we know it’s extremely relevant. Say we get 500 or 1,000 of those people a day, and we want to treat them all equally, keep in mind that by default, Facebook is still going to optimize and show the ad to maybe 200 of those people. If you want to reach 100% of the 500 or 1,000 people, you’ll need to start looking at CPM bidding or daily unique reach bidding, and removing Facebook’s optimization.
SMART MARKETING
DR: We have a fear of over-saturating some of these smaller audiences. I’m curious how to avoid becoming annoying, and sticking to smart remarketing. Do you have any advice?
JL: There are a few things you can do.
The first thing you can do is take the evergreen campaign approach, so if someone doesn’t take a certain action in a specified number of days, they’ll fall off of your campaign, and stop seeing your ad.
The second thing to consider is the type of bids you use. A prime example is when I use daily unique reach bidding, is when I’m trying to reach as close to 100% of people as I can, but I’m really careful to do it more than once a day.
You’ve also got an option to choose reach and frequency bidding. Just know that once you’ve selected that, you’ve got to be looking at several thousand in budget scale to make it work.
DR: I think everyone should heed that advice. You can go from looking very smart to being very annoying, very easily! That’s something I’ve been talking with my own team about, just because I’ve been seeing my own ads so much.
JL: Dave, that’s why it’s important for you to show your ads to yourself. I hear from a lot of people who want to exclude themselves from seeing their ads. First of all, you aren’t spending much money at all on this. Also, I’ve been in the same situation- seeing my own ad a lot- so it’s good to be in the audience so you’ll know what’s happening. Otherwise, you’re spending having to check the metrics frequently.
DR: So small businesses with small budgets- where is the very first place you would tell them to start?
JL: Basically, we need to find our audience. The first place I would send them to is audience insights,which is a tool within the ads manager, because the audience is going to determine if we’re successful, or not. What most small business will jump in and make a whole bunch of guesses, find out their targeting doesn’t work, and conclude that it’s not working. What we’ve got to do instead is find our ideal audience- using audience insights. You put in targets, and Facebook comes back with lots of information, giving you lots of ideas for targeting. The second thing I suggest isusing look-a-like audiences. So, if you’ve got a small email list, website traffic that’s coming in over the last 6 months, it’s not a lot- but having Facebook find people who are similar to those people, and automating that process.
DR: I think you’ve really given everyone a lot to chew on and some really great advice. Do you have any final thoughts you want to leave with us?
JL: It’s constantly changing! It’s a really exciting time, so keep experimenting and trying different things. You never know what the perfect combination is for you- there really is no one formula that works for everyone.
DR: How can people learn more from you?
JL: The best way is to visit my website at JonLoomer.com and at the top, there is a link for a quiz. This is a 30 question quiz to help you find out what you know, and what you don’t know. At the end of the quiz, you’ll know if you’re in the beginner, intermediate, or advanced level. Based on those findings, I’ll recommend a free webinar for you.
Jon Loomer is a Facebook marketing coach, author, speaker and strategist. He became an early user of Facebook for business purposes while working for the National Basketball Association in 2007. Jon launched Jon Loomer Digital in late 2011, and in little more than a year established JonLoomer.com as well as his Facebook page as go-to resources for Facebook marketing research, guides, and tutorials.
JonLoomer.com was recognized as one of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013, 2014 & 2015. It is simply the complete online resource of advanced Facebook marketing tips and tutorials, updated on nearly a daily basis.
Here’s a “fill-in-the-blank” approach you can utilize to instantly make yourself more attractive to potential customers and prospects on LinkedIn.
With it becoming easier than ever to quickly identify and engage your ideal prospects on LinkedIn, a critical component is knowing what to send those professionals in order to turn new connections into paying customers.
What follows is a word-for-word script you can use to instantly appeal to and engage with your top prospects on LinkedIn. It includes everything from breaking the ice with a quick personal touch to moving your prospect into your sales funnel as quickly as possible.
Before we get to the actual script, however, let’s first start with some strategy.
The Big Mistake Marketers Make With LinkedIn
No matter what type of product or service you want to sell on LinkedIn, you must follow some specific steps in order to win business on the network.
The first – and most important – step is this: You cannot rush the sale.
If you insist on hammering people you just met with requests for phone time, generic sales pitches or a one-sided dissertation about you and your services or products, you’ll lose the sale before the process even starts.
Dale Carnegie, one of the most successful and influential business authors of all time, said it best: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
Prospects – Get To Know ‘Em
This is where you must start – by taking a few precious seconds to learn about your prospects.
Where do they live? Where did they go to school? What are their hobbies or interests outside of work?
That type of information is readily available on most LinkedIn profile pages, and it becomes a quick and easy ice breaker to ask your new connection or prospect about.
I’m not saying you have to spend hours becoming everyone’s BFF on LinkedIn, but you do need to do a little professional courtship.
The Fill-in-the-blank Script to Warm Up Prospects on LinkedIn
With that in mind, here’s a fill-in-the-blank script you can send each new prospect or connection you come across on LinkedIn. In the example below, I’ll use where the prospect lives, which you can easily find via his or her profile page, as an ice breaker.
“Hi [NAME] – so excited to connect!
Hey, I noticed you live in [Location] – [Add a comment/question about the weather there, or what that location is known for or something about current events in that place, etc.]
Also, I noticed you are in [type of job/industry they work in].
Curious what your biggest needs/challenges are right now professionally. If you have a minute, tell me more about what you’re up to so I can better understand how I can hopefully send some business your way at some point! :)
Very quickly about me: I help [My Target Audience] achieve [Their Goal] by providing [My product or service].
Excited to learn more about who you are, what you’re up to professionally and how I can help you out moving forward.
Also, don’t forget to tell me your thoughts on [What You Asked About Their Location] too! :)
Cheers,
[Your Name]
[Your Contact info]”
It can be that simple – you just fill in the blanks and watch the conversations take off!
Notice how I start and finish the script above by asking a personal question. This is key! What I’ve discovered is that if you ask someone a personal question, and do it in a friendly tone/style, they will feel socially obligated/compelled to respond and write you back.
Also, if it’s a question about something of keen interest to that person (where they live, where they went to college, what their favorite sports team is, etc.) they will be excited to respond and tell you more.
Once this happens, you start to build a rapport with your new connection around a non-work item (where they live, a comment about their college, hobbies, etc.) that you can come back to time and again as a way to stay in front of him or her without pitching or selling every time you send a note on LinkedIn.
In addition, you make yourself more memorable, personable and likable, because you’re getting your prospect talking about his or her favorite subject – themselves!
The First Step in the Sales Funnel
Keep in mind, this is just the first message you want to send to a prospect.
Where the conversation goes after that all depends on what type of response a prospect gives you, and how aggressive you want to be in moving someone further into your sales funnel.
As I outlined in a previous post, it’s always a good idea to ask that person what he or she is looking for help with professionally, and then give him or her free tips, advice or resources to help solve some of those problems.
Doing so builds up goodwill, demonstrates you know your stuff and makes prospects excited to hear more from you in the future.
In terms of giving value first, I even go so far as to offer every new connection I make a free copy of my bestselling book.
The more up front value you give and the more personal you can be in your 1-on-1 interactions with prospects on LinkedIn, the more goodwill, trust and sales you’re going to see as a result.
Start with the fill-in-the-blank script included in this post, and let me know how things go for you moving forward!
In June, Netflix released a collection of episodes produced by the encouraging, incredibly talented Bob Ross. “Beauty Is Everywhere” catalogues some of Ross’s lively landscapes, memorable phrases like “happy little trees”, and favorite pastimes including cleaning a brush by slapping it against his easel, laughing as he suggested viewers “beat the Devil out of it.”
Hiring sales professionals that not only have talent, but that also fit well into your organization, is more complicated than many sales leaders realize. The right person needs to have the skills and abilities necessary to blend in with your existing team, connect well with prospects and clients, and commit to growth within your organization.
This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "
What’s really going on in financial technology? 
![Download Now: 25 Sales Email Templates [Free Access]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/be67aa79-8dbe-4938-8256-fdf195247a9c.png)
![how to end an email after a meeting. Please let me know by [date] if you are ready to [next step].](https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/Google%20Drive%20Integration/how%20to%20end%20an%20email_32023-3.png)
![how to end an email when accepting a job. Thank you for the opportunity! I am available to start on [start date].](https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/Google%20Drive%20Integration/how%20to%20end%20an%20email_32023.png)
![how to end an email when warming up a lead. Food for thought: Half of [insert type of business] don't comply with new regulations.](https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/Google%20Drive%20Integration/how%20to%20end%20an%20email_32023-Jun-13-2023-02-19-56-5121-PM.png)
RIO 2016 | CBC
Acquisitions starting with a “B” are not uncommon in the tech industry in Silicon Valley. Roughly two to four billion-dollar deals have gone down each quarter (on average) over the last few years. The recent purchases of Cruise Automation by General Motors and Dollar Shave Club by Unilever turned heads for another reason — the buyers were as non-techie as you can get. 
Is Your Marketing Being Held Accountable?
Tristan Handy:
