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Despite all the technology tools and advances in selling, sales results still stink at most companies. Here’s why, and how the right approach to sales training can reverse this trend at your company.

Bring your sales proposal to the next level: Watch this video of the 5 keys to a sales proposal that closes deals. You’ll walk away with the know-how to write rockstar sales proposals for any prospect.

The post 5 Keys to a Sales Proposal that Closes Deals (You need to know NOW!) appeared first on Sales Speaker Marc Wayshak.

According to the Sales Education Foundation, on average, graduates of academic sales programs ramp up 50% faster than their peers without a sales-specific educational background, and experience 30% less turnover. Yet colleges and universities have been slow to meet the need, with only a few leading universities offering dedicated sales majors.

In the past few years, companies have become significantly more interdependent—users share passwords, and systems use backend technologies operated by third parties. So when hackers breach a company’s security, they often gain access to a wider set of services and information than initially expected.

That can create countless headaches for customers, whether it’s being forced to reset passwords, freeze credit records, or deal with drained bank accounts and cases of fraud. To get an idea of the scope of the danger, the top 21 security breaches in 2018 affected hundreds of millions of customers.

Beyond being hugely damaging to the brands affected, there’s the very real harm being done to customers. And these kind of breaches are especially dangerous for companies working in the growing financial technology sector. Customers who use these services—mobile banking, digital wallets, and online payment processing—expect convenience, excellent service, and peace of mind when it comes to their personal data.

That poses a significant challenge for fintech support leaders who need a customer service solution that protects the data of both customers and their companies. So when evaluating customer service software, what should those decision-makers look for?

Product security

At the most basic level, customer service software should provide secure encryption of data—for example, it should observe Transport Layer Security encryption protocols for data that moves between its servers and yours. It also means providing the environment for secure, encrypted email, and it should allow users to enact settings that automatically redact sensitive information like credit card numbers.

It’s also critical to have robust agent and administrator security measures in place, such as two-factor authentication, which requires customers to enter a code—often sent to the user’s mobile phone—in addition to a username and password, and SSO, which allows users to access several applications with a single set of credentials. And because your customer service software should allow your team to develop custom apps that integrate with other products and sources of data, API services should have strong security and authentication measures in place.

Meanwhile, your administrators should be able to set IP restrictions, manage the security level of user passwords, and set defined roles to limit who can access administrator functions.

Compliance and industry standards

When a customer service software provider states it takes security seriously, it’s helpful to look for third party attestation to be sure. Meeting compliance standards demonstrates exactly how a provider safeguards your customers’ data. Here are a few standards that you should look for:

SOC 2 Type II. For the layperson, SOC 2 Type II means that an organization follows strict security measures concerning customer data stored in the cloud. A third party then audits the organization’s operations—usually over the course of six months—which helps customers understand that the company has implemented a robust system of security controls.

ISO 27001:2013. A provider that adheres to this standard, which was established by the International Organization for Standardization, has set up a rock-solid information security process aimed at addressing risks specific to its business. Meeting this standard requires implementing a culture of continual improvement and risk management,vital elements in determining if a provider will be ready to meet new security challenges.

ISO/IEC 27018:2019. This cloud computing standard covers how a company protects personally identifiable information (PII). Organizations that meet this standard have satisfied legal, regulatory, and contractual agreements and have identified—and planned for—security risks.

European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations. Any fintech company operating in the EU or providing services to customers in that market must adhere to GDPR, a stringent set of privacy regulations that, if violated, carry serious penalties. That doesn’t mean having to store customer data within the borders of the EU, but the host country must have equally rigorous data protection laws in place.

Trust, but verify

It’s all well and good if a software provider claims to be taking security risks seriously—but when it comes to protecting customer data, you can’t be too careful. That’s why serious providers seek third-party assessments, either to confirm compliance with regulations or to verify that they are observing security best practices.

Beyond those third-party certifications, you’ll want a partner that offers clear, actionable security measures, such as disaster recovery options, frequent security training and awareness sessions, and regular comprehensive reviews. And be sure to ask questions: Do they conduct penetration tests, observe secure development and deployment practices, and have incident management processes in place? Having a solid yes to each of these questions will help you ensure your customer data is in solid hands.

Mark Taylor has a front-row seat to the development and launch of some of Canada’s greatest health-tech innovations as the leader of the licensing and commercialization team at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN), one of the largest health-care and medical research organizations in North America.

Gene therapy to treat rare diseases in a single dose, devices that recognize brain tumours using artificial intelligence and a simple blood test that accurately diagnoses if you have cancer and, if so, what type are just some of the medical breakthroughs that are being developed and fine-tuned in the country’s biggest city.

“It generally takes lots of money and risk mitigation to get these kinds of products to market, but our approach is to develop and test internally in the hospital setting before we license product or start companies,” Taylor said. “We’ve been very lucky to have some world-leading wins here and we’re glad to be able to share our successes with the community.”

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For example, Avrobio Inc., which develops gene therapy to treat cancer and rare diseases, has gone from startup to a public offering on the Nasdaq in just three years with the help of the team at UHN’s Technology Development and Commercialization office.

But even outside of programs such as UHN’s, Canada has amassed an impressive list of health-tech companies with global appeal. There’s Vancouver-based Stemcell Technologies Inc. — a biotech firm that develops cell cultures and cell isolation systems for researchers — which ships its products to more than 70 countries and has been growing by at least 20 per cent annually since its launch in 1993.

Or Toronto-based Newtopia Inc., the fourth health-tech startup launched by chief executive Jeff Ruby. Multiple Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. now use the company’s software to promote employee weight loss and substantially reduce employer-paid health plan costs.

With an abundance of clinical talent, hospital support and a current government keen to keep investing in innovation, it seems Canada is creating the perfect ecosystem for continued health-tech growth. The question plaguing many industry leaders, however, is whether the country has the infrastructure and skillset needed to sustain this branch of innovation.

The medical devices industry alone was valued at US$6.2 billion in 2015 and is projected to grow to $8.6 billion by 2020, according to Emergo, a regulatory consulting firm that specializes in global medical device compliance.

On the surface, Toronto, in particular, provides the ideal launching pad for health-tech innovation because it has a highly educated and skilled workforce collaborating within a network of world-class hospitals willing to test technologies in real-world practice, said Cameron Piron, chief executive of Toronto-based Synaptive Medical Inc.

“The talent here is unique and highly diverse and when you’re tackling problems (in health care) you need the best and the brightest,” he said.

The city’s talent base has enabled Synaptive’s founders to launch several Canadian-based medical startups over the past 10 years, the latest of which develops robotics to provide better ergonomics and visibility for surgeons while operating.

Avrobio co-founder Christopher Paige, a senior scientist at UHN, said the research hospitals and their strong association with top universities across the country create ideal synergies for innovation.

“The research hospitals put researchers and top clinicians together in an environment where unmet clinical needs of our patients are pretty obvious — a highly motivating environment to make a difference,” he said.

But industry veterans say this isn’t enough to sustain the growth of health-care technologies over the long term.

They point out that even though Toronto is among the top biotech hubs in North America (along with Boston and San Francisco), it has nowhere near the commercial recognition of those two U.S. cities.

“Collectively as an industry we’ve started to do some of the biggest deals in the world here, but we don’t publicize these wins as much as we could,” Taylor said. “Our science is top notch, but it’s underrepresented from a commercialization perspective.”

Organizations such as UHN are helping to change that, he said, but there’s still a long way to go.

As well as the lack of local recognition, Taylor said there is a lack of local talent who have the necessary management skills to bring innovative startups into the big leagues.

“We never saw the lack of C-suite as a potential problem, but now, generally speaking, people who are coming in to lead these companies are Americans or Canadians who left decades ago and are coming back,” he said.

An even bigger issue may be the lack of overall understanding that the rules of typical tech innovation — that is, develop a product and rush it to market before the competition — don’t necessarily apply to health tech.

“As we see talent moving into this space from the tech market, they are shocked by the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes,” Synaptive’s Piron said.

Piron said the industry is more like aviation or automotive, where products are thoroughly tested before launch and governed by myriad regulations.

“This is a very serious industry that leverages technology, but needs a solid infrastructure behind it,” he said.

Case in point, Synaptive in November voluntarily recalled its neurosurgical guidance system due to a software defect that could raise the risk of brain damage during surgery. Fortunately, the recall happened before any patients were impacted.

Adding to the challenges that health-tech startups face are patient privacy issues that don’t apply to other sectors to the same degree.

“Starting a health-tech company comes with a firm appreciation of health first, including adhering to privacy laws and regulations and being radically transparent throughout the process,” Newtopia’s Ruby said. “The ‘move fast and break things’ approach just doesn’t work in health tech.”

A lack of long-term capital investment is yet another key issue.

“There’s a lot of support for startups, but a lot less for those of us who have proven ourselves,” said Stemcell’s chief executive Allen Eaves, who adds that just four per cent of his company’s sales are in Canada.

“We need health care to be profitable, yet we keep focusing on cost containment in provincial (health-care) budgets — if everyone works hard to save money, then we need to get engaged in the application of new innovations.”

The four-year-old Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) wants to clear the often rocky path from startup to scale that currently plagues some of the most innovative tech firms.

Made up of more than 100 CEOs from the fastest-growing technology startups (18 of whom, including Eaves, come from health-tech companies), CCI is working with governments to ensure its members have a seat at the table when it comes to decisions around strategic standards, regulations and certifications.

“There are a lot of regulatory pain points in how health-tech companies get their products to market here compared to other jurisdictions,” said Dana O’Born, CCI’s director of strategic initiatives. “Our health-tech companies are keen to work with government to work out these kinks and all our members want to play a role in the development of policy.”

But even with all the growing pains, industry leaders say they are optimistic that things are improving every year, especially given the desire for better technologies while cutting costs.

“Long ago, the public sector thought they had to be the owner of innovation, but now they see the value in renting it from sectors like ours,” said Patrice Gilbert, chief executive of PetalMD, a Quebec City-based company that digitizes hospital schedules for 48,000 users across 150 health-care facilities. “The private and public sectors are getting better and better at finding common ground.”

Inherent in moving the dial forward in health care has to be an overall change in mentality around what health care in Canada should be, Newtopia’s Ruby said.

“We want to keep people healthier longer rather than perpetuating the sick-care system we currently have,” he said. “That should be our ultimate goal.”

Ruby, too, expects health-care costs to be increasingly offloaded to employers and insurers, because “there is no way” Canada’s current system will be able to sustain itself for much longer.

Since 2014, health spending per capita has increased by an average of 1.7 per cent annually to an estimated total of $253.5 billion in 2018, with no signs of slowing.

“As that happens, there will be more and more economic motivation to invest in companies like ours,” he said, “I absolutely see the tide changing in the years to come.”

Financial Post

If you fear losing and avoiding taking the necessary actions to win believing you might put an opportunity at risk, your lack of action is what is most likely to cause you to lose the opportunity.

If you are overconfident, believing you have already won the deal and there is no chance of a negative outcome, that overconfidence will blind you to the real dangers and increase the likelihood of a loss.

Underestimating your competitor because you believe them to be inferior in salesmanship or solution is to disrespect them and increase your risk of losing to them.

Believing that some people are not important enough for your time and attention can create a resentment that mobilizes a force of people who actively work against you and the opportunity you are pursuing.

Leaving concerns unaddressed allows those same concerns to take root and spread to others on your client’s team, making something that you might have resolved into something that eliminates your chances.

Going forward with a presentation without having done the work to ensure that is the right answer exposes you to the downside risk of proposing something your client can refuse.

Letting a small problem grow unabated creates a larger problem later, and if it was too difficult to solve the smaller problem, the larger one will cost you more in time, money, and trust.

An inability to justify the delta between your price and your competitor’s price reduces the likelihood and ability of your client to defend your pricing inside their company, while making it easier to choose another.

Not asking for a clarification when you are not certain you understand what your client is communicating leads to mistakes that cause the loss of an opportunity (or client) later.

Those who do the difficult things that others avoid reap the rewards that others are denied.

The post Perceived Risks and Real Threats appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Throughout the years, a lot of time has been spent on the concept of “journeys.” Just do a quick Google search for “customer journey” or “buyer’s journey” to see all the different ways marketers have tried to simplify the concept. And while the traditional linear buyer’s journey is useful in helping us broadly understand the different steps involved in a typical purchase decision, the reality is that no two journeys are the same. Each person has their own unique journey that they flow through at their own individual pace.

That’s why personalization is so critical for B2B marketers. Personalization allows marketers to deliver a relevant experience to each prospect or customer so that no matter where they are in their own individual journey, they’ll be able to find the resources they need to make their purchase decision or experience success as a customer.

We recently published a new eBook, Personalization Across the B2B Buyer’s Journey, to provide 18 compelling examples of how B2B marketers can leverage personalization at each stage of someone’s journey. I’ll describe three of those examples here, but check out the eBook for many more!

Initial Engagement: Make the Homepage Relevant

You spend a lot of your time and budget to attract prospects to your site. The last thing you want to do is lose those visitors before they get the chance to determine if your product or solution could meet their needs. But how do you decide what to feature on your homepage? Do you tailor your headline, images and copy to appeal to different audiences, or do you lead with a general message that you hope will appeal to the lowest common denominator?

There’s no need to keep your homepage experience static and generic for every visitor. To capture each person’s attention immediately, you should ensure that your homepage – or any page a visitor lands on – is immediately relevant to that person. For example, this site below displays a relevant homepage experience to each of its target industries. Visitors in the healthcare industry see copy and images relevant to them (top image), while visitors who don’t fall into a target industry (or whose industry can’t be determined) see a generic version of the homepage (bottom image).

Evaluation: Notify Salespeople of Engaged Prospects

When it comes to making a sale, timing is everything. This is especially true for companies with account-based marketing (ABM) programs. If a prospect from a target account reads a
few case studies or watches a couple of product videos on your website, you want the appropriate salesperson to know about it right away and to follow up (with a relevant message) while your company is still top-of-mind for the prospect. But what’s the best way to relay that information to the sales rep in a manner that will catch their attention?

Internal email alerts are the perfect solution for this challenge. These emails can be triggered the moment one or more visitors from a target account takes certain actions on your website, alerting the designated sales team member(s) of the account’s recent activity. For example, if someone from ABM target company Acme Corp visits your website, views several pages and downloads an eBook, you could trigger an email to inform the account’s sales rep of the activity and prompt her to follow up with the prospect right away. This approach ensures that the sales team reaches out at the most opportune moment.

Retention: Proactively Address Support Questions

Once a prospect becomes a customer, you want to make sure that person continues to find value in your solution so they stay a customer. Part of retaining a customer is making sure that any issues they have are resolved quickly and painlessly. The challenge is that once a customer takes the time to log an issue, she is likely already frustrated. And then there are frustrated customers who don’t even bother to ask for help. How can you address support issues before they arise?

With personalization, you can serve real-time suggestions and time-saving tips related to the person’s usage patterns or specific goals — including making in-session offers for online training or guided support when a user appears to be struggling in a particular area. You can even take a look at specific actions or search queries that often trigger support calls, and improve efficiency and customer service by automatically serving up messages with links to helpful content and tips that address these common customer challenges — as HostGator does in this example below.

By helping customers accomplish their goals or resolve their issues in the moment, you create a better experience and increase the chances that you’ll retain your customers.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways that B2B marketers can use personalization to provide better experiences to their prospects and customers while guiding them through their own unique buyer journeys. This blog post has only described three of them. Read our new (ungated) eBook for more ideas on how to best leverage personalization.

Many times people confuse sales with the closing. Closing a sale is not a sale, it is part of a bigger process that starts from lead generation and culminates in that exhilarating close. But between getting a lead and sealing the deal, there are many other processes that are time-consuming, and yet are necessary to move the lead through each level of the sales process.

This is where sales automation comes in.

What is Sales Automation?

So what is sales automation and why should you even bother with it?

Sales automation is simply creating a system that takes care of all the repetitive parts of your sales process. Fortunately, there are many applications and different kinds of software that make this easy for you.

Known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, these platforms help you centralize every piece of information on every prospect and customer. An effective CRM is key in streamlining and automating your sales process as it gives your sales team more time to build and nurture profitable relationships with prospects.

The Benefits of Sales Automation

For any organization, sales are the lifeblood that ensures success and sustainability. That’s why it’s crucial to get it right. And to get it right, it is vital to automate the sales process as much as possible. Let me show you why sales automation is critical for any organization.

Increases productivity

Sales automation frees up your sales team to focus on doing what they do best – closing. For example, by automating email follow-ups on warm leads, a sales rep can carry out more productive tasks like meeting and forging profitable relationships with prospects.

By the way, just so you are in the know, poorly managed leads and lost productivity cost organizations $1 trillion each year. A big chunk of that money can actually be recovered through sales automation.

Saves time

Sales reps never have enough time to do what you actually hired them to do – selling. In fact, statistics show that sales reps only spend 35.2% of their time in revenue-generating activities. The bulk of their time goes to other tasks they need to take care of like data logging or, God forbid, looking for a business card in a massive Rolodex. This is where an efficient CRM comes to play. It puts everything in order, making data entry and retrieval quick and easy.

And for sales reps who are on the road, there’s no time wasted in calling HQ for the latest prices. All they have to do is log into the CRM from their laptop or smart device and all the information is right at their fingertips.

Smart lead pairing

For companies that receive a lot of leads, sifting through the leads to check for the ones that qualify is tedious. And assigning the right sales rep to the right lead is something every team leader finds challenging. But with a great CRM and lead scoring tools, both these challenges are taken care of – automatically.

Increased profits

Whether you admit or not, every business exists to do one thing – make a profit. And the more profits an organization makes, the more it can grow and have an impact. Sales automation results in an increase in profits, not only because it increases productivity, but also because it gives every sales rep a proven formula to follow.

Now that you know what sales automation is and what benefits you gain from it, let’s take a look at some sales automation best practices that will help you make sure you do it right.

Sales Automation Best Practices that Guarantee Success

For many who are new to sales automation, it may seem like a thorny path to walk. And the truth is, if you don’t know what you are doing (or get an incompatible CRM), it can be. Let’s look at a few sales automation best practices that will keep you on the right track.

Study your current process

Every organization has a unique sales process. Before you jump onto the sales automation bandwagon, you will have to study your current sales process.

Source

By putting your current system under the microscope, you will gain a better understanding of all the activities in your sales process, the time taken by each activity, and the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of each activity.

Identify the processes that need to be automated

Once you have scrutinized your sales process, the next step towards sales automation is to identify which processes need automation.

In general, every sales process follows the same formula – prospecting, qualifying, meeting, and closing. However, what happens at each of those stages is unique to each organization. And in most cases, most of the activities at each stage can be automated.

Research the software that can aid in automation

Once you have identified the processes that you need to automate, the next step is to research the different types of software you can use to help automate your process. With the proliferation of vendors that offer sales automation services, this can be a daunting task.

The rule of thumb is to prioritize those that seamlessly fit into your organization, don’t have a long learning curve, and integrate easily with other applications you are currently using.

Sales Automation – An Example

Let’s quickly run through a typical sales process and see what sales automation looks like in real life.

Prospecting

Prospecting is one of the most tedious tasks a salesperson has to do. Instead of scraping for data and entering it manually into a spreadsheet, you can automate the process by using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can use these to set custom filters to get you the contacts of relevant leads. The screenshot below gives a great picture of how this works.

Source

Some CRMs can even use that information to further mine more data on the prospect. This data may include their social media profiles and even the last service or product they signed up for.

Lead qualification

Generating leads is just the beginning of all the legwork a sales rep will have to do before they initiate contact with a prospect. The next step involves qualifying leads that are a strong fit with your product or service.

Again, this is something that you can easily automate without having to manually check out everything you need to know about your prospect. By using lead enrichment tools, you can gather information about your prospect. This is information such as their current vendors, their industry, and possibly some gaps you can help fill in their business.

This data will help you build profiles of your prospects that you can use to better position yourself for a pitch and also to better pair the lead to a suitable sales rep.

Outreach

You’ve mined a list of prospects. And from that list, you’ve segmented a list of prospects that are qualified. The next step for any sales rep would be to initiate contact.

Outreach can easily be automated by creating an email template and by using a service that allows you to send bulk personalized emails. Most CRMs on the market offer this kind of service. It simply pulls the qualified leads from your list and sends out a personalized email – with a strong CTA.

And if you need to follow up by phone, your CRM will automatically send you a reminder with the details of your prospect.

Setting up meetings

One place many sales reps lose prospects is when it comes to scheduling a meeting. When you and your prospect keep volleying emails back and forth trying to set an appropriate date, the prospect may end up growing cold and slip through the cracks.

But with an appointment scheduling tool, (like Calendly if your CRM doesn’t come with one) you can eliminate this as it allows you send a link to your prospect with the days you are open for a meeting. Again, an email template and automation service will save you a lot of time here.

For example, if new leads have signed up and their details logged into the CRM, you can send out an email like this one:

Hi [first name],

I hope this email finds you well.

I’m reaching out to you because [explain how you got their contact information or what lead magnet they signed up for].

[Name of company] has a new product we believe will be a perfect fit for your team at [organization name]. Our product is proven to help you [One sentence pitch of benefits].

Are you available for a quick call [time and date]? I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have then. If the date is not suitable, here’s my appointment calendar [link to calendar]. Let me know which date is most suitable for you.

Your Name

The good thing about using a CRM for this is that it automatically logs every contact you have with a prospect. This means whenever anyone wants to pull up information on a prospect or client, they see absolutely every communication your company has had with them and where they left off.

Creating and sending proposals and quotes

Sending out proposals and quotes is a necessary but tedious part of the sales process.

Thankfully, you can also automate this without any drafting or copy and paste. By integrating your CRM with a document management tool like PandaDoc this part can also be set to autopilot – well almost. After creating a master copy, automation tools can auto-fill your important (and most used) documents. These tools also come with the option to create a workflow so that the document passes through all responsible parties before being sent out.

Sales Automation – A Human Touch is Still Critical

Sales automation is awesome and frees sales teams to be more productive. But for a sales process to be successful, a human touch is needed in some components of the process. For example, making a sales call, meeting a prospect, and even closing the sale.

This means that it is important for sales teams to automate as much as possible but never lose touch with their prospects.

If you have not yet moved to sales automation, there’s no better time than now to do so. So go ahead, get yourself a good CRM and turbocharge your sales (and profits).

It’s time for me to call the baby ugly and believe me, it is ugly! Social selling is neither social nor selling. Ok, phew! I feel better now that I got that off my chest. I’m sure I upset some of you, though. I’m not sorry. I said these were prospecting truths, so part of that means that I can’t skate past social media or email. Too many salespeople fail in sales, because they want to take the easy way out. They think that if they just send out emails or post enough on social media that the world will somehow find a path to their door.

Myth busted! It’s time to do the work! Go ahead and call it the hard work. It’s a cop out to think that you will meet your sales number with social media and email. You’re just scared to engage in a real conversation. You’re afraid to hear “no.” My favorite rule is #39 and I’ve been saying it for years. I’ll continue to say it until the myth of social media and social selling are finally put to rest.

If you disagree with me, go ahead and fire away. I’ll come right back at you with dozens of examples of companies where we’ve embraced the telephone, relegated email to a secondary role and made social media just an afterthought. In the each of these examples, the numbers prove themselves. The bottom line is that if you want to be successful in sales, you have to engage and that means you cannot be scared to use the phone for what it is.

Before you read part 4 of “5o Prospecting Truths,” be sure you go back and read truths 1-30 or if you have already, re-read them! Here are the links:

Part 1: Truths 1 – 10

Part 2: Truths 11 – 20

Part 3: Truths 21 – 30

Here is part 4 with truths 31 – 40 related to using social media and email for prospecting:

31. Bring new value with each message whether it be on the phone, voicemail, text or email.

32. Your goal with any email is to provide not quite enough information. Allow the prospect to make the decision to call you or not.

33. There’s always time to make one more call.

34. Don’t hide! Email must not be your primary or your only prospecting tool.

35. When in doubt, pick up the phone and make the call.

36. You will learn far more about your prospect in one short phone call than you will in exchanging five emails over a two-week period.

37. Never allow the need to do more research get in the way of making the call.

38. Each minute spent on social media must earn its way.

39. You can’t take “clicks,” “likes,” or “shares” to the bank.

40. Your goal with an online connection is to create an offline conversation.

Did I shake you up with these 10? I’m sure I did. I don’t think I’ve ever used one of these truths with a client and not have somebody get upset with me. I’m ok with that, though, because that’s part of my job. I am here to help you help others. Learn how to set yourself up for success with truths 41-50 coming next week!

Don’t forget: A coach can help you excel in your sales career. Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a B2B strategy in which businesses target a clearly defined set of targeted accounts and create personalized campaigns focused on key decision makers within those accounts.

Instead of casting a wide net to capture an array of varying leads, the focus is placed on quality over quantity. Targets are generally high-yield accounts and are considered a good fit for the business’ products or services. Marketing efforts are thus more personalized to the individual prospects and can lead to higher conversion rates.

Through ABM, landing these target business accounts often means generating more revenue, penetrating new and desirable territories and positively influencing your market.

Initial Considerations for ABM Strategies

Your very first step to get started with account-based marketing will be to identify your target accounts based on your buyer personas. Additionally, there are several key factors to consider when developing your target account list.

Revenue Opportunity

Revenue opportunity is a huge consideration as one of your goals of an ABM strategy should be to identify new revenue-generating opportunities. Take some time to compare target account revenue opportunities to your average deal size. Focus on those accounts as well as consider tapping into verticals or markets that you have not reached out to.

Company Size

Targeting large- (enterprise) and small-sized (startups) both come with their sets of pros and challenges. Big name companies can give a boost to your client portfolio and improve your brand’s trustworthiness, but may require more resources to get buy-in from the target account’s decision maker. Targeting smaller-sized companies will typically require less time to close in the sales cycle, but may result in lower revenue opportunities. Whichever organization size you approach is totally dependent on your company’s unique persona profile.

Matching Your Business Offerings to Target Accounts’ Pain Points

Target accounts’ needs should be a direct match to your offerings. Closely align AMB efforts to those prospects that will benefit from using your products or services. It is a waste of time, money and resources if you market to the wrong audience.

Understand your competition when targeting an account. If you are able to, research what companies the target already interacts with on a regular basis. If those companies are direct competitors, identify the unique value proposition from your products/services that would compel the target account to choose your business or solution over the competitor’s offerings. Those key benefits and value propositions are favorable messaging points to really capture your target’s attention.

Geography

When implementing ABM, another key consideration should be the geographic location of your target accounts. Do you want to focus on local businesses in your sales team’s territories or perhaps you have a cloud-based solution that can be utilized anywhere globally? Discuss what geographic boundaries to have based on supporting your organization’s sales goals.

If you are looking to expand your reach, targeting accounts in untapped regions is also a great way to broaden your market. Start by researching companies in a specific area that would be interested in your offerings and then narrow your list based on the other key considerations already mentioned.

Prioritize and Finalize ABM Lists

Once you have your list of target accounts, assign priority levels before finalizing. Priority levels will vary depending on what you set as important business goals.

When creating your priority levels, include variables such as the buyer’s journey. Accounts that will be easier to drive through a sales funnel should be of higher priority, as the resources it will take to gain them as clients may be much smaller, and thus your ROI much higher.

Readily-available content to use for your marketing efforts to specified accounts should also raise the priority of that target. Leveraging high quality content that aligns to the business needs of easy-to-reach accounts will often closely align to your business goals.

Segment your accounts with different priority levels into separate lists. It is easier to view your target accounts relevance from a more organized view. Do not create more than five lists, two to three is ideal and more manageable.

Set Goals & Monitor Engagement

Establish your goals and set up metrics to measure engagement from your ABM campaigns. Having the right metrics in place to measure and track your marketing efforts will make it easier to monitor the progress on achieving your ABM goals.

Sync with your marketing and sales teams to determine the best way to track target account activity and progress. Create a marketing dashboard to track performance and share with your team regularly to keep everyone on the same page. Track what responses you receive from ABM target accounts such as emails, social media interactions, content downloads and website engagement – being sure to have a defined lead scoring process in place for each of these interactions.

Identify high and low activity profiles and monitor their relative lead scores as you do. It is important to monitor lead scoring as you go through engagement process. High activity profiles should take precedence over low activity profiles, as they will likely be easier to advance though your sales funnel.

Planning Campaigns

ABM Campaigns should be tailored to match where the target account is in your sales funnel. Not all accounts pass through at the same rate. At the top of the funnel, generate awareness and nurture the contacts you have already established with your retargeting efforts. As they move down the funnel, support interests exhibited and provide highly-focused content such as case studies, white papers or webinars.

Personalizing your ABM campaigns to match the buyer’s journey demonstrates interest in your target accounts and knowledge in their business.

Determine all of the distribution channels available to reach your target accounts and evaluate which channels are best fit for both your business and your target’s business.

Work with what you already have on deck. Save yourself the time and energy of creating entirely new campaigns for each profile. But remember to keep it personal. Personalized content, even as simple as their name in an email greeting, can generate higher engagement rates.

Generating Revenue

Keep diligent and detailed tracking of your generated revenue from your account-based marketing efforts.

This is the most important step to ensuring your sales and marketing teams are aligned. Check in with sales to see what content and messaging is resonating and what’s not. Pull data from teams and communicate regularly about what the data is saying about your effectiveness.

Revenue reaching or surpassing your goals is obviously an ideal outcome. Analyze what has worked well with those accounts. Replicate efforts that returned positive results on similar target accounts and other lists.

You may also notice that those same efforts don’t work on all accounts. It is good to remember your lead scoring and respond to the engagement the target account has already demonstrated. Account-based marketing is not about blanket targeting, but rather finding better fit targets for higher-quality leads.

“The most important thing we can do as marketers is focus on revenue generation versus lead generation.” – Christa Kleinhans Tuttle

It’s no secret that small business owners have a lot on their plate. You might play the accountant, the HR representative, and the social media strategist, all within the space of a few hours. When you’re tackling so many tasks at once, it can be difficult to keep track of them all.

Like any savvy marketing pro, you know that social media plays an important role in your overall marketing strategy. On the other hand, keeping up with your Facebook or Twitter can be difficult. Knowing how to maximize your efforts with bulk scheduling is one of the best ways to maintain your social media presence, while freeing up time to focus on your other business endeavors.

Why Bulk Schedule?

New to the idea of bulk scheduling your social media posts? Consider some of the advantages:

• Upload your content quickly and easily. With bulk management tools, you can easily schedule all your social media messaging from one central location.
• Schedule as many posts as you want. Some social media management tools allow you to schedule hundreds of posts in advance. Take advantage of a few hours of productivity, and have enough social media posts to last you for weeks or even months.
• Consider multiple time zones. Many bulk schedulers allow you to schedule content to post at optimal times, even across multiple time zones, increasing the likelihood your customers will see it.
• Think about your campaigns ahead of time. Again, this is a great time to tap into some creative energy when the opportunity strikes. You can plan your campaigns for Halloween, the holiday season, or any other relevant occasion and have them upload when the time is right. If the fall is your busiest season, for example, you can plan all your marketing ahead of time and focus on the uptick in business.
• Improve your social media campaign consistency. Lastly, it can be difficult to keep up with all your social media networks when you have so much more on your plate. A bulk scheduler shows your audience that they can expect great content from you at regular intervals. Keeping your audience consistently engaged is a key in eliciting new sales, converting leads, and more. McKinsey and Company, a leader in retail insights, calls the three Cs of customer satisfaction “consistency, consistency, and consistency.”

How To Bulk Schedule Your Social Media Posts

Plenty of bulk scheduling tools exist – unfortunately, many of them come with a significant investment. Small businesses run on tight budgets, so saving money whenever possible is a must. Thankfully, there are a few ways you can bulk schedule your social media posts for free. Doing so requires leveraging two free tools: Google Drive and Facebook Publishing Tools.

Step 1: Create Posts in Google Drive

Google Drive is a valuable tool for collaboration and organization. Here, you’ll use it to create your Facebook posts for later scheduling. Create an account, if you haven’t already. From the drop down menu, select Google Sheets and create columns for Dates, Posts, and Links. Each column should contain the following information:

• Date: the time and day you want your post to upload to social media.
• Post: the content of your post
• Links: Any relevant link that goes with your post content, if applicable.

Step 2: Upload Posts To Facebook Publishing

Now comes the fun part. Once you finish your spreadsheet with your social media post schedule, go to your Facebook business page and select “Publishing Tools” from the top menu. Find the “Create” button on the bottom right corner, and click it. A Create New Page Post prompt should appear.

Make sure your Google Drive spreadsheet and Facebook window are side by side. Highlight the first spreadsheet cells with Ctrl+C and copy them. Paste them with Crtl+V into your Facebook Publishing tools box. Scroll down to the “Select Schedule” option and choose when to publish your post, based on the information for the first cell. Repeat for your other posts.

Viola! You’ve just scheduled your Facebook posts for free. You can do this as many times as you like, making it a great activity for downtime or when you’re feeling bursts of creativity.

Note that this technique also works for Twitter, but you’ll need the Hootsuite Bulk Composer option, which costs around $19 a month.

Small business owners must do all they can to save money. If you’re planning on using Facebook as your main form of social media outreach, you can bulk schedule your posts for free by using the method outlined above. Using a scheduling tool, you can improve your brand’s consistency in messaging, encourage consistent engagement with your readers, and take one more task of your plate. Try this scheduling method to save yourself time and money, even during your busiest seasons!

New technology companies are poised to transform the shipping and freight industry across Latin America.

Startups like Liftit, a Colombian provider of trucking services, and Nowports, a Mexican freight shipping startup, are angling to be the next Convoy and Flexport — at a time when shipping and logistics business in Latin America is booming thanks to increasing trade coming from China.

In the first half of 2018, Chinese foreign direct investment in Latin America increased to a whopping $15.3 billion at the same time it plummeted in the U.S. to $1.8 billion. And while much of that investment had historically gone to minerals and natural-resource extraction or agriculture, China is also making infrastructure investments — just as it has in Africa.

“The most exciting sectors for innovation in shipping are in trucking, consumer/third-party shipping options, and in last-mile delivery,” writes the venture investor Nathan Lustig, a partner with the Chilean investment firm Magma Partners. “Startups in the logistics industry have their work cut out for them in Latin America, and these sectors are the most prominent battlegrounds for innovation so far.”

Some Latin American logistics companies — like the Brazilian trucking company CargoX — have gained the attention of investors like Goldman Sachs, The Blackstone Group and Samsung Ventures, thanks, in part, to being initially backed by Oscar Salazar, one of the minds that originally launched Uber. The company raised $60 million in its most recent round of funding, but has been on investors’ radar for years, thanks to its famous pedigree.

Now companies like Nowports are entering the fray. The company, which is graduating as part of the most recent crop of Y Combinator -accelerated startups, has set itself up to be the Flexport of Latin America.

Flexport became a billion-dollar business by applying technology to the outdated shipping industry, and Nowports is angling to do much the same.

Alfonso de los Rios and Maximiliano Casal met at a program at Stanford University, but both come from Mexico originally. And Mexico is where the company is operating. De los Rios comes from a shipping family and is very familiar with the time-consuming, manual practices that now dominate the Latin American shipping industry.

“One out of every two containers is lost or delayed because of miscommunication,” says de los Rios. “One container can get 300 emails between the freight provider and the shipper. We reduce the mistakes to zero and processing documentation three times faster than a normal freight provider in Latin America.”

To familiarize himself with the market for which he’d be developing a technology, Casal worked in a freight forwarder in Kansas City that had been operating for more than 30 years.

Nowports is operating from Monterrey and Mexico City and will soon be opening offices in Santiago and Montevideo, Uruguay.

“Right now we have four customers and we are moving 60 containers per month and we have a pipeline that will be growing to a very big number in March,” says Casal.

In all, freight providers are getting paid nearly $40 billion per year to move freight into Latin America.

If Nowports is building a new kind of shipping business, then Liftit, which just raised the largest Series A of any company hailing from Colombia, is looking to do the same with trucking.

The $14.3 million round was led by the International Finance Corp. and the Brazilian-based pan-Latin American investment firm Monashees.

Founded by serial entrepreneur Brian York, Liftit is looking to be the logistics provider for trucking in Latin America.

York, who was born in Bogota, but was raised by his adoptive parents in Boston, returned to Latin America after several years as a successful serial entrepreneur in the United States.

After several years of searching for his biological family and exploring his roots in-between running startups, York decided to return to Colombia more permanently. He found his biological brother (who is working for Liftit as a truck driver) and launched the company with a $2 million seed round.

The opportunity for logistics startups is vast. As Lustig notes:

The challenge of automating and streamlining shipping logistics in Latin America is becoming more pressing as e-commerce and other B2C delivery businesses take hold. Not only are large corporations dealing with sending and receiving bulk cargo across the region, but individual consumers want more on-demand services that require better organization and logistics.

Latin America still lags behind in the development of its shipping industry. The World Bank reported that in 2014, no Latin American country was in the top 25% of the Logistic Performance Index global rankings. In 2016, this figure hardly changed; Panama is the top-ranked Latin American country for logistics and shipping, yet it comes in 40th on the LPI global rankings. Chile is next at 46th, with Mexico and Brazil ranking 54th and 55th, respectively.

It’s with this in mind that investors are willing to open their wallets for startups in these emerging markets. And aligning the infrastructure in the region with 21st century standards will create even more opportunities as startups can take advantage of the more modern delivery and distribution tools at their disposal.

The ongoing saga involving SNC Lavalin and the Prime Minister’s Office, in which questions are being raised about the extent to which senior government officials attempted to intervene in the company’s legal issues, is a good opportunity to reflect on how Canadian policymakers can do a better job of creating a fair and competitive business environment.

Doing so means taking a completely different approach than in the past. Instead of protecting inefficient companies and industries for political reasons, we need to start reverse engineering the kinds of opportunities an investor looks for when deciding where to allocate capital.

A great starting place is to reduce the risks associated with investing in areas of the economy in which capital is desired — quick progress can be made in such areas simply by streamlining regulations and forming strategic partnerships between government and small business.

• The race to future-proof the economy: Navdeep Bains on the state of innovation in Canada
• Canada's innovation policy needs radical rethink, Fraser Institute study finds
• 'There's a lot of frustration': Tech CEOs say Liberal innovation agenda does little to help firms scale

There are a couple of great examples that show how government-led policy can have a tremendous impact, if done correctly.

To start, look at Israel, a nation that at one time had zero foreign capital being injected into its economy. The government began to invest massively in research and development (primarily military related), which has now grown to 2.2 per cent of GDP and is the third highest in the world.

By partnering small business with the military, new startups could substantially de-risk their business models by first establishing proofs of concept with the military, and then introducing and scaling them into industrial applications in other sectors.

As a result, the country saw growth explode, with thousands of new companies producing telecommunications equipment, software, semiconductors, biotech and medical electronics. Consequently, these high technology products now account for more than 70 per cent of total exports — more than any nation globally.

Israel’s successes are also backstopped by local expertise, which the Israeli Defence Forces helped establish by identifying the most talented young people and putting them through rigorous training — a process that has led to the country having the highest percentage of engineers at 135 out of 10,000 workers.

Texas is one region that at one time had a lot in common with Alberta thanks to its oil and gas exposure, but it has since done a fantastic job of economic diversification. This process is showing its merit as, despite the tremendous volatility in oil prices over the last five years, Texas is now the fastest-growing state in the U.S. with an annualized 5.2 per cent GDP gain last quarter and an unemployment rate of only 4.1 per cent. The state also has a higher GDP than Canada despite having a labour force that at 13.5 million people is only about two-thirds of our 20-million-strong pool.

A lot of the state’s success can be attributed to its focus on business-friendly regulations, especially when it comes to promoting small business. According to Chief Executive magazine, Texas has been ranked in the No. 1 spot for doing business in each of the 14 years since the beginning of its survey.

The state also happens to be a hub for financial innovation and could soon rival Silicon Valley. Interestingly, Texas is also the highest recipient for military funding outside of California, and the U.S. Army’s new Future of War Command Centre is strategically located in downtown Austin, sharing space with the University of Texas’s School of Engineering.

The lessons for Canada should be clear. If we want to attract capital, we need to see government policy that is finally free from political bias and that instead encourages economic diversity by promoting and rewarding risk taking. So let’s plant the seeds for the next generation of Canadian leaders instead of supporting ones that are reliant on government policy to protect their market share.

• Martin Pelletier, CFA is a Portfolio Manager and OCIO at TriVest Wealth Counsel Ltd., a Calgary-based private client and institutional investment firm specializing in discretionary risk-managed portfolios as well as investment audit and oversight services.

Imagine someone has something that you want or need. You want to acquire what is that they have, meaning it has value to you. But it also has value to the person who presently possesses it. Some laws prevent you from taking it from them under cover of darkness—or by force.

What are you to do in this situation?

Wait. You have an idea. You have something of value that you would be willing to exchange for the object of your desire. If the person who has what you want would trade what they have for something they value equally (or more), an exchange is possible. Maybe even likely.

This is sales. It is the free exchange of value between willing parties. Neither party is compelled or forced to make an exchange of the value they possess or create, regardless of how much another party may want or need it.

Both parties are capable of influencing the other party to believe there is more value in what they have, with one side building up the value and offering what they have for a certain price, the other side working to suggest that it isn’t worth the asking price and offering less to obtain it.

Who determines what something is worth? It may be true that the person possessing a thing being sold sets the price based on what they are willing to accept. However, it is equally true that the buyer sets the price because they have the power to choose not to pay the asking price and walk away or find an alternative.

Where more value is created, more value is captured. Where less value is created, less value is captured. Value is in the eye of the possessor and the beholder, which means I may believe something is valuable that you think is worthless. What is important enough for you to spend a great fortune to obtain might be something that wouldn’t move me to act at all.

When people believe that the word “sales” has a negative connotation, recognize that none of us would have anything that we want without these fundamental ideas being in place as far back as when Grok had two woolly mammoth steaks, and Glub could make a fire.

The post Sales Is the Free Exchange of Value appeared first on The Sales Blog.

I’ve just spent a few minutes completing the annual survey from one of the world’s most widely respected sales training organisations. Of course, I haven’t yet seen the results, but I was intrigued by the implications behind a number of the questions.

There appeared to be a strong implied endorsement of the value of adopting a structured sales process – a theme that is promoted by many of the established sales methodologies. But I’ve come to believe that this is now an outdated approach, particularly if taken to extremes.

In fact, the very word process is unhelpful. It implies linearity and a “production-line” approach to selling - which as any observer of complex buying decisions will know is completely at odds with how typical buying decisions are actually made...

Non-linearity is the true reality

As Gartner recently pointed out, significant B2B buying decisions are inherently non-linear and sometimes verging on the chaotic - you've only got to look at the image above. Customers often revisit previous assumptions, loop back to previous phases and re-evaluate what they are looking for based on changing circumstances and perspectives, or the introduction of new and opinionated members of the decision team.

Assuming that our customer has a clearly-defined buying process often proves to be a serious error, as does assuming that our initial qualification (assuming that we actually conducted some measure of formal qualification) remains valid for the duration of their buying journey.

I’m not suggesting that we descend to fighting chaos with chaos, or that we ignore the opportunity to significantly improve our sales performance through the application of effective practices and proven winning habits – simply that we should be thinking in terms of flexible frameworks, rather than rigid linear processes.

Rather than fixed formulas, rigid processes or inflexible methodologies, we should be thinking in terms of helping our sales people to make intelligent choices based on a thoughtful appraisal of the customer’s situation and the dynamics of their buying journey.

That, of course, turns out to be how the most successful sales people tend to sell anyway. They demonstrate situational fluency. They avoid relying on untested assumptions. They take steps to fill in the blanks in their knowledge. They know that they should never rely on the face value of anything they are told.

Avoiding ignorance and ineptitude

And while their strategy and execution may not be perfect, they tend to make fewer errors than their less-effective colleagues. Atul Gawande, in his hugely influential “Checklist Manifesto”, referred to the two primary causes of knowledge-related failure as errors of ignorance and errors of ineptitude.

Errors of ignorance relate to information that exists, but which we failed to uncover. This is primarily a function of ineffective conversation, questioning and listening techniques, and these are and should not be left to acts of randomness.

Successful sales people suffer fewer errors of ignorance because they prepare more effectively for every sales conversation, and because they have better conversations with their customers. This is not - as you might think from some sales methodologies - exclusively about asking the right questions.

They also listen and interpret more effectively. Rather than focusing on the answers they are hoping to hear, they are looking for the meaning and intent that lies behind what the customer is saying. They have a plan for where they hope the conversation will go but are also prepared to adapt it in the light of what they have just heard.

Errors of ineptitude relate to information that already exists somewhere in the system but has not been applied. One of the characteristics of the most effective sales people is their ability to learn from the past, to recognise patterns, and to leverage the experiences they have accumulated over time.

This is, of course, even more powerful when applied at an organisational level – by sharing pragmatic experiences of what works and what doesn’t across the entire sales population, as part of a flexible sales framework the reflects the accumulated (and continuously) evolving experience of everybody involved.

A customer-centric perspective

Rather than promoting our “sales process” we need to be coaching and equipping our sales teams to diagnose the customer’s situation, their motivations, and what phase they are in with regard to their decision-making journey.

Rather than implying linearity, we need to equip our sales people to have value-creating conversations and to apply the sales strategies and tactics that are relevant to the customer’s actual situation.

We can do this through playbooks and sales frameworks that allow our sales people to access situationally relevant sales tools and buying enablers and encourage them to think for themselves, rather than relying on following a fixed regime.

One of the most obvious considerations is whether the customer thinks of their exercise as a well-understood and familiar transactional process (in which case we need to make their task as friction-free as possible) or an unfamiliar and significant strategic decision (in which case we need to help them fully understand all the implications).

Our guidance needs to take the form of a supportive and flexible skeleton rather than a rigid and unyielding cage or shell. And we need to establish mechanisms that allow and encourage sales people to share their latest learnings with each other.

Learning, adapting and evolving

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that this implies a significant amount of emotional intelligence, domain expertise and business acumen on the part of our sales people. And yes, some sales people who appear to have been historically successful might struggle to keep up with these demands.

In today’s world, 20 years of the same sales experience repeated every year is far less valuable than a much shorter period of active and progressive learning. Attitude and aptitude invariably turn out to be far more accurate predictors of future sales success than an apparently impressive CV.

We need to hire for these qualities. We need to train for these qualities. We need to recruit people who are capable of thinking for themselves and encourage them. We need to establish supporting systems that guide them in making situationally-appropriate choices rather than following a fixed formula.

Some of our existing sales people will relish the challenge. Others will never be able to make it. And a significant number of middle-of-the-road sales people, armed with the right attitudes and supported by the appropriate encouragement and guidance, will show us that they are capable of doing better than any of us might have thought possible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, a member of the Sales Enablement Society, a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and the Sales Experts Channel and the founder of Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the leading UK-based B2B value-selling experts.

Following a successful corporate career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and market leaders, Bob is now relishing his role as a pro-active advisor, coach and trainer to high-potential B2B-focused sales organisations, systematically enabling them to transform their sales effectiveness by adopting the proven principles of value-based selling.

I love new technology. Especially presentation tools that make connecting with an audience more effective and impactful. That’s why I was excited to try the new Logitech Spotlight remote. Like most presentation remotes, the Spotlight allows you to advance your slides and go to black without being tethered to your laptop. It can even control the volume, which is super handy if you’ve ever started a video and had to race back to your computer to stop it from blowing everyone’s ear drums away!

But the real showstopper on the Spotlight is a feature that allows you to magnify or highlight a circular selection on your screen while shading the rest of the slide. And it doesn’t just work on slides. You can even use it on word, excel or other software.

Here’s an example of a screen in typical presentation mode:

And here’s an example of that same screen using Spotlight’s highlight feature:

Wow, right? That was my reaction the first time I saw a presenter use the highlight feature. And it wasn’t just me. The whole room was a buzz. Although the presenter valiantly tried to press on with his presentation, the audience’s reaction eventually became too loud to ignore. Soon the presenter was fielding questions — not about his topic, but about the tool he was using. “How does it work?” Where did you get it?” “How much does it cost?” One audience member had already googled it and shouted out: “It’s $99.99 on Amazon.”

While audience interaction is generally a positive thing, this was clearly not what the presenter had in mind. After a few minutes the chatter finally died down, but the damage had been done. The audience was completely distracted and the presenter struggled to regain their attention. He never did generate anywhere near the excitement level for his presentation topic as did simply using his presentation tool.

I was torn. Placing a literal “spotlight” on the content you want your audience to focus on is a pretty nifty tool – especially when you have a busy screen or graph. But distracting your audience from your topic all together by the sheer novelty of how you accomplished it is counterproductive. But I was curious, so I decided to test it out myself. Here’s how it went:

My Test:

I chose a mixed business audience for my test. I wanted to see if their reaction would be different from that of a sales audience. I didn’t use the Spotlight feature until I was about five minutes into the presentation and I chose a screen that wasn’t critically important to the overall message in order to minimize the potential damage.

My Results:

As soon as I hit the highlight button a low buzz filled the room and began to grow. Someone laughed. Another person asked loudly, “How did she do that?” So I stopped and addressed the elephant (technology) in the room: “This is my new presentation tool. It’s called the Spotlight and as you can see, you can highlight any area on the screen simply by pointing at the screen or the monitor. If you want to see it afterwards, I’m happy to give you a quick demo.” And then I moved on.

What I learned:

No doubt about it. The Spotlight is a “Showstopper” even though it’s been on the market for over a year. Should you still use it? If you’re a presenter, you should definitely have a remote, and the Spotlight offers some great advanced features. There will always be new technology and soon this may be old school compared to what lies ahead. But if you do use the Spotlight – or any exciting new technology — be prepared to manage your audience’s attention using the following tips I learned.

How to keep your presentation tools from stealing your spotlight:

1. Choose a slide that’s not critically important when you introduce new technology or presentation tools. Understand that it will likely distract your audience and your current message will be, at least momentarily, completely overshadowed.
2. Acknowledge the showstopper. Allow your audience time to absorb what they’re seeing. Let them have their reaction and don’t try and compete with it.
3. Provide a succinct description. Have a short statement prepared that answers the burning questions (how, what, where, when) and try to keep it under 30 seconds if possible.
4. Park further questions. Invite those who are interested in more details to come up and see a demo of it after your presentation.
5. Repeat what you said before you introduced the tool.
6. Prepare a strong transition back into your topic. Your audience has been distracted and it is up to you to bring them back. Try one of these attention-grabbing hooks here.

“Step up on the railing. Hold on, hold on. Keep your eyes closed.” Jack is holding Rose around her waist, cautiously lifting her up to the Titanic’s bow. “Do you trust me?” He was a stranger up until days earlier, but still, her response is almost instantaneous. “I trust you.” Moments later, Rose opens her eyes and she’s flying, arms outstretched as the mighty liner propels her forward. She and Jack hold hands; they kiss. Celine Dion’s music wafts in the background. Teenage boys in the theater start gagging, while romantic types swoon. There’s a good chance you lived through this very experience. James Cameron’s 1997 cinematic landmark Titanic was an unprecedented hit, holding the title as highest-grossing film of all time for 14 years. The scene described above is perhaps its most famous — the linchpin in a love story sparked by deep, genuine trust that materialized almost out nowhere. When I say, “Everyone and their mom saw this movie,” I mean it a bit too literally because I actually saw it with my mom, as a 12-year-old, and it was… awkward. With that embarrassing story out of the way (I swear there’s a reason I mentioned it, and we’ll get back to it later), let’s move on to one you might actually care about: The state of trust in marketing. Strap on your lifejacket and prepare for a journey through these choppy waters...

By the Numbers: The State of Trust in Marketing

At the outset of 2016, trust toward all four institutions measured by Edelman Trust Barometer reached their highest levels since the Great Recession, with businesses seeing the largest spike.

(Source)

Things looked good. Confidence was high. We were all cruising merrily along. Then, we hit the iceberg that was 2016. You might remember that year not-so-fondly, for any number of reasons. The following year, Edelman declared that “trust is in crisis around the world,” citing an unprecedented drop across all four institutions. The 2018 research revealed “a world of seemingly stagnant distrust,” with no rebound to be seen. Things weren’t merely stagnating everywhere, though... In 2018, only 48% of people in the United States said they trust businesses, down from 58% in 2017. (Edelman)

(Source)

This was a point where people were frantically piling into lifeboats. I think I just saw Billy Zane kick a little kid off one. What a jerk. Anyway, this is a problem. [Side note: If you’re noticing a lot of Edelman citations thus far, it’s because their Trust Barometer is such a valuable resource for the topic, and offers a consistent baseline to show the progression of trust. But there are plenty of other sources to come.] 63% of people agree with this statement: “A good reputation may get me to try a product—but unless I come to trust the company behind the product I will soon stop buying it, regardless of its reputation.” (Edelman) Oh, and: 68% of adults in the U.S. say that trust in a brand has "a great deal" or "a lot" of influence on their decision when making a big purchase. (SurveyMonkey) I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between “a great deal” and “a lot,” but alas... We've reached an era where people at large are digitally adept and savvy. They know they have a world of options at their literal fingertips, and can thusly hold brands to the highest of standards. Trust strikes a deep emotional chord. “The digital era has fundamentally shifted assumptions for how individuals will do business and engage with companies," Kevin Cochrane, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP, wrote at Harvard Business Review last year. "Once trust has been lost, it’s nearly impossible for brands to rebuild sustainable, honest relationships with their customers." In other words: once the ship has sunk, it ain't coming back up. [bctt tweet="Once #trust has been lost, it’s nearly impossible for brands to rebuild sustainable, honest relationships with their customers. - @kevinc2003 #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Some of the damage has already been done. A few months ago, Accenture released its Bottom Line on Trust report, which uses an "Accenture Strategy Competitive Agility Index” to “quantify the impact of trust on a company’s bottom line." Scoring more than 7,000 companies, this system found that... 54% have experienced a material drop in trust at some point during the past two and a half years, "conservatively" losing out on $104 billion in revenue. (Bottom Line on Trust) "In today’s world, it is no longer a question of if a company will experience a trust incident, but when," the report asserted. This is getting grim, I know. But we're not underwater yet. There is time yet to turn this troubling tide, and as the primary conduits between customers and brands, marketers can and must be at the forefront. Marketing executives at B2B and B2C service firms rank “trusting relationships” ahead of “low price” and “superior innovation” among their customers' priorities. (The CMO Survey)

(Source)

As we build relationships, we build trust. Edelman's 2018 report found that company content is twice as trusted after a customer-brand relationship has been formed. Marketing has a lot of functions (even a great deal of functions?) but this one will be most vital in the months ahead. All of our efforts are doomed without this crucial piece of the puzzle. So, how do we stay on course and prevent relationships from sinking? Well... 65% of business buyers say they’re likely to switch brands if vendors don’t make an effort to personalize communications to their company. 52% of consumers say the same. (State of the Connected Customer) This seems to be the the sweet spot. Personalization is the surest way to build a rapport in the digital space. When we fail to connect, it sets off immediate alarms. Personalization comes in many forms. It can be as sophisticated as using adaptive AI, or as simple as narrowing the scope and voice of your content to resonate with very specific audiences. Whatever the approach, customers clearly want it. And the potential revenue benefits are undeniable. [bctt tweet="#Personalization is the surest way to build a rapport in the digital space. When we fail to connect, it sets off immediate alarms. @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Personalization can deliver 5-8 times the ROI on marketing spend, and can lift sales by 10% or more. (McKinsey & Company) Now that sounds like smooth sailing. Research makes clear that marketers are wise to chart a course for more personalized waters. Granted, that’ll mean different things to different organizations and strategies, but it simply must be a central focus if we are to stay afloat. Personalized marketing is the byproduct of turning customer data into useful insights. It’s the industry’s prime directive as we speak. I’m excited to see what we can accomplish on this front in 2019 and beyond. I will leave you with one final word (statistic) of caution, however. 79% of consumers will leave a brand if their personal data is used without their knowledge. (SAP Hybris Consumer Insights Report) Let’s steer clear of that. Transparency is now more essential than ever in marketing. Using data is not wrong — in fact, it’s requisite for personalization — but the last thing you want to come off as is sneaky or underhanded about it (just ask Facebook). Something as simple as a friendly, casual pop-up message on your website informing visitors that you use cookies (and why) can go a long way. By following the principles of responsible personalization, we as marketers can right the ship and play our part in building sturdy relationships that ensure customers... via GIPHY

Moral of the Story: Steer Toward Trustful Shores

A bit of good news: in the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer results, released a couple of weeks ago, trust toward business increased in 21 of 26 markets, including the U.S. where 54% of respondents voiced confidence — one of the biggest jumps. Now, we need to stay that course. At a high level, personalization should be the true-north on every marketer's strategic compass. But on a day-to-day tactical basis, I believe there are three focal areas for continually building trust. As it happens, I've attempted to incorporate each into this blog post you're reading. Storytelling. My goal here was to take a set of statistics and craft them into a coherent narrative. For added effect, I juxtaposed it against another extremely recognizable story. Your mileage may vary on the wisdom and effectiveness of this particular approach. Authenticity. For better or worse, this is who I am. I’m the kind of guy who intertwines 20-year-old movies with blog posts about marketing. (More seriously, I have a genuine passion for the subject of trust in marketing, which is why I write about it so frequently here.) Transparency. Even — no, especially — when it’s information you’re not entirely jazzed to be sharing. I didn’t love telling you all about sitting uncomfortably next to my mom during the infamous “Draw me like one of your French girls” scene at age 12, but I did so with the hopes it’d signal an openness and candor in the writing to come. Recently I highlighted a company called Lemonade that runs a “Transparency Chronicles” series, in which they speak very frankly about their experiences as a growing business — including their failures and shortcomings. Customers are tired of hearing how great and perfect brands are. They want realness. Content marketing strategies founded on personalization, with storytelling, authenticity, and transparency as cornerstones, will be primed to stand the test of time in an age of digital disorientation. Maybe, one day, we can finally restore the fundamental trust that’s been shattered ever since some genius marketing mind came up with the “Unsinkable Ship” slogan. Did you like this post? Want to read more from me on trust and transparency in marketing? Check out these past articles:

• Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics
• In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide
• Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling
• How Brands Can Avoid the Dreaded Fauxthenticity Pitfall

The post Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

In third grade, I remember winning a top prize in my non-mandatory elementary school science fair with an amazing papier-mâché Mount Vesuvius, chili lava, and hot dog people. I also remember desperately studying for spelling tests in order to have the privilege of the “teacher’s chair.” In the decades following, I saw McDonald’s successfully increase its bottom line through their Monopoly sticker game, which allows buyers to win prizes instantly, or by collecting all the stickers in a given color assortment. The frenzy was real. Nowadays, Starbucks keeps me around via their virtual cup accumulations and tiered incentives like free birthday gifts or coffee. All these events had or have one basic commonality.

What is gamification?

In business, gamification isn’t only about playing games, it’s about using psychology and technology to improve your workflows and ultimately your bottom line by using internal and external motivators to your program’s advantage. Organizations must use technology to help channel sales reps build on three inherent human desires: competence, relatedness, and autonomy, ripening them for maximum productivity. This is believed by psychologists to exist naturally in humans, creating a direct link between personality, motivation, and optimal functioning. A Talent LMS Survey found 87% of respondents felt more productive and 84% felt more engaged when using gamified technology. This was true across gender, age, industry, and roles. Additionally, research done at the University of Southern Maine also finds that “demographically, there were few direct correlations with gamification use.” So, for an individual to perform at optimal efficiency and be engaged (and therefore maximize profit for your sales channel), managers must look to satisfy the human desires for knowledge (competence), connection (relatedness), and control of their own lives (autonomy).

What psychological factors come into play with the use of gamification?

When gamifying your channel program, know that third grade me and Starbucks guzzling adult me are motivated by the same two basic types of motivation. Everyone’s motivations in the world can be generally broken down into these two–intrinsic and extrinsic. If you are reading this blog in order to study for a test on gamification, then you are extrinsically motivated. If you are reading this to learn more about psychology and motivation, you’d be intrinsically motivated. These two coexist as the vehicles we use to actively chase the natural desires mentioned above.

Intrinsic motivation is an inherent drive within to complete an action which can include our interests and values. It is intrinsic because it originates within the individual as they seek new challenges or possibilities. Simply put, this is a human’s own personal desire to perform tasks well or learn about something new. The “reward” can be self-fulfillment, expanded knowledge, or the pleasure of knowing it was a job well done or the fact they made someone else proud.

Extrinsic motivation comes from external factors such as money, leaderboards, and other tangible rewards or incentives. Therefore, in extrinsic motivation, individuals favor the outcome over the actual process. Motivating them are the typical gamification examples- the miles and levels at their favorite airline, or the employee of the month wall at work. Other examples can include rankings, lotteries, and timers. It is at this point (favoring outcome vs. process) that channel managers can use gamification to capitalize on and compliment extrinsic and intrinsic motivators for individuals in their sales channel.

Remember, your sales reps are your greatest asset. Start motivating and achieve channel success today.

The knee jerk reaction to an increase in costs is often a price increase. Some years ago, I was sitting in the office of the VP of Pricing at a major manufacturing company. It was during a period of rising commodity costs and their input costs (metals, rare metals, energy) were climbing quickly. He was called out of our meeting by the CEO to explain to the board how he was going to protect margins by increasing prices. The advice he gave was quite different. He suggested lowering the cost of equipment and increasing the prices of software services. Their software was used with their equipment to make manufacturing more efficient.

There was a post on the Professional Pricing Society’s LinkedIn group earlier this year that strongly advocated raising prices in response to higher costs. Judging by the number of ‘likes’ this seems to be a popular idea. But is it a good idea?

If you are reading this, chances are that you have high sunk costs (research and development), high sales and marketing costs, but that your variable costs are relatively low. This is true of most SaaS companies. I know this is changing, in some cases quickly, as data acquisition becomes more and more important to business strategy and as data becomes more valuable it is, in some cases, becoming more expensive. But in general, variable costs associated with each unit sold will be relatively low. So, this leads to our first question.

Which component of your costs has gone up?

(Note: This style of diagram is informed by Turing award winner Judea Pearl’s causal diagrams. Expect to see a lot more use of these. They clarify models and are easy to connect to causal and predictive models).

Your response will be different depending on which cost component has changed and how this impacts the long-term viability of your business. If R&D costs have gone up (perhaps because you use a lot of data scientists in R&D and their compensation has climbed over the past few years) you will need to look at your long-term investment requirements and how attractive you are as a place to work. If sales and marketing or variable costs have gone up, you may first ask how to change your offer to better manage these costs.

Followers of OpenView are aware of its philosophy of product led growth. (See the collection of Product Led Growth Resources). One of the implications of this is that you can use the product to manage other costs.

Beyond this, one can use sales and marketing to manage variable costs, by designing your marketing and directing your sales towards the customers with lower cost to serve.

A second question to ask before responding to a cost change is, “How will this cost change impact Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC).”

Look closely at the equations that drive LTV and see how they are changing and how this impacts the LTV/CAC ratio. Product investment is one of the best ways to manage these long term. All of this has been internally focused. You cannot decide how to respond to price increases just by looking inside your own company.

The above is a recipe for failure. You have to consider two other things. Ask, “How does the cost increase impact my competitor?”

If you don’t know the answer to this question you cannot anticipate the competitive response to any price change you may make.

Even more importantly, ask, “How does the cost increase impact my customer’s business?”

Does the change in your costs also impact your customer’s costs (and their revenues for that matter)? If the increase in input costs also has a direct impact on your customer’s costs, and you then increase your own prices, your customer is suffering a double whammy. They are not likely to respond well to this.

We started this post with the response of a manufacturing company to a price increase. This response was brilliant. It began by understanding how the cost increases impacted customers and not just their own bottom line. Once they understood that the cost increase was even more serious for most of their customers, they decided not to increase prices for their own equipment, which would have been rubbing salt in the wound. Instead, they focused on the part of their overall solution that could have a positive impact, their materials optimization software. This software was more valuable in the new market conditions, so they lowered the prices of their equipment and increased the price of their now more valuable software, to the delight of many of their customers.

Predicting the impact of a price increase is a complex business. I have written about this elsewhere, in another example of how simple causal models can clear up communication and make it easier to build analytical and predictive models (see Predicting The Outcome of Price Changes).

So, when your costs rise, and you have to make some kind of response, ask yourself the following questions:

1. How exactly have costs changed: research and development, marketing and sales, variable costs and cost to serve?
2. Can investment in the product or service reduce the cost of marketing and sales costs or variable costs?
3. Can investment in marketing and sales and better customer targeting reduce variable costs and cost to serve?
4. How will the costs (and the investments being made in response to increased costs) impact the lifetime value of a customer and customer acquisition costs? (Note that when costs go up in one part of the business one generally needs to invest more, not less, in some other part of the business).
5. How does the cost increase impact the costs of the competitive alternatives?
6. How will they respond to your cost increase?
7. How will they respond to their own cost increases?
8. How does the cost increase impact your customer’s business model?
9. How will your response impact your customer’s business model?
10. How will your competitor’s response impact your customer’s business model?

The post Should You Raise Prices When Your Costs Go Up? appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot of uses, particularly in digital marketing. You may have already encountered chatbots in your inquiries on certain websites. AI has long evolved since Siri was launched. While most marketers see it as a B2C tool, artificial intelligence has slowly woven its way into the B2B world as well. In the State of AI in B2B Marketing report released by Everstring, it showed that 71% of B2B marketers are interested in AI for personalization while 59% expect AI to help identify prospective customers.

While the interest is there, B2B marketers are still in the early stages of navigating the use of artificial intelligence. The report revealed that only 12% of marketers are confident in their knowledge of AI. Hence, it’s not surprising that 49% of B2B marketers don’t use it in their marketing strategies. To help you understand AI better, here are some practical ways it can be useful to B2Bs.

1. Highly Targeted Content

Hyper-personalization is the next big thing in digital marketing and if there is one tool that can achieve this, it’s artificial intelligence. With the AI’s ability to sift through big data, it can easily determine the kind of content your clients want based on their online behavior, purchase history, interests, and more. As a B2B marketer, you don’t have to send the same emails to all your customers. Artificial intelligence can show you which clients were engaged in your content, helping you create content that is relevant to them!

2. Improved Lead Generation

Most B2B marketers generate leads manually by searching for companies, looking for their contact details, then reaching out to them one by one. This can be very time-consuming and tedious. Artificial intelligence can quickly gather a huge bulk of data across different platforms, analyze it, and generate a streamlined list of prospects that will be worth your time and effort. Your salespeople will end up being more productive, too, as they focus on quality leads.

3. Maximized SEO

SEO marketing is crucial to B2B companies with 90% of B2B buyers turning to Google as the starting point of their search for products and services. Using AI, B2B marketers can automate keyword search and tagging; analyze natural language inquiries that Google will most likely pick up; and generate market and competitor insights. It can also help in doing predictive analysis by analyzing Google Trends and forecasting search trends that can help improve your sales.

4. Better Customer Experience

The use of chatbots is becoming more common on websites. However, this is not limited to B2C companies only. B2Bs will also benefit from this AI-enabled technology by providing quick answers to client inquiries. Chatbots can accelerate the sales process, easily schedule meetings, and provide quality leads as it allows you to ask questions without being intrusive. In today’s real-time-driven culture, AI chatbots can immediately engage your clients, giving them a better customer experience.

Artificial intelligence may still be unchartered waters for most B2B marketers but its advantages should make it worth the plunge. AI enables businesses to improve their customer engagement, sales process, market reach, and customer experience. Now is the best time to integrate AI into your marketing strategies and reap its benefits before everybody else does.

Years ago, when I first started split-testing, I thought every test was worth running. It didn’t matter if it was changing a button color or a headline—I wanted to run that test.

My enthusiastic, yet misguided, belief was that I simply needed to find aspects to optimize, set up the tool, and start the test. After that, I thought, it was just a matter of awaiting the infamous 95% statistical significance.

I was wrong.

After implementing “statistically significant” variations, I experienced no lift in sales because there was no true lift—“it was imaginary.” Many of those tests were doomed at inception. I was committing common statistical errors, like not testing for a full business cycle or neglecting to take the effect size into consideration.

I also failed to consider another possibility: That an “underpowered” test could cause me to miss changes that would generate a “true lift.”

Understanding statistical power, or the “sensitivity” of a test, is an essential part of pre-test planning and will help you implement more revenue-generating changes to your site.

What is statistical power?

Statistical power is the probability of observing a statistically significant result at level alpha (α) if a true effect of a certain magnitude is present. It’s your ability to detect a difference between test variations when a difference actually exists.

Statistical power is the crowning achievement of the hard work you put into conversion research and properly prioritized treatment(s) against a control. This is why power is so important—it increases your ability to find and measure differences when they’re actually there.

Statistical power (1 – β) holds an inverse relationship with Type II errors (β). It’s also how to control for the possibility of false negatives. We want to lower the risk of Type I errors to an acceptable level while retaining sufficient power to detect improvements if test treatments are actually better.

Finding the right balance, as detailed later, is both art and science. If one of your variations is better, a properly powered test makes it likely that the improvement is detected. If your test is underpowered, you have an unacceptably high risk of failing to reject a false null.

Before we go into the components of statistical power, let’s review the errors we’re trying to account for.

Type I and Type II errors

Type I errors

A Type I error, or false positive, rejects a null hypothesis that is actually true. Your test measures a difference between variations that, in reality, does not exist. The observed difference—that the test treatment outperformed the control—is illusory and due to chance or error.

The probability of a Type I error, denoted by the Greek alpha (α), is the level of significance for your A/B test. If you test with a 95% confidence level, it means you have a 5% probability of a Type I error (1.0 – 0.95 = 0.05).

If 5% is too high, you can lower your probability of a false positive by increasing your confidence level from 95% to 99%—or even higher. This, in turn, would drop your alpha from 5% to 1%. But that reduction in the probability of a false positive comes at a cost.

By increasing your confidence level, the risk of a false negative (Type II error) increases. This is due to the inverse relationship between alpha and beta—lowering one increases the other.

Lowering your alpha (e.g. from 5% to 1%) reduces the statistical power of your test. As you lower your alpha, the critical region becomes smaller, and a smaller critical region means a lower probability of rejecting the null—hence a lower power level. Conversely, if you need more power, one option is to increase your alpha (e.g. from 5% to 10%).

Type II errors

A Type II error, or false negative, is a failure to reject a null hypothesis that is actually false. A Type II error occurs when your test does not find a significant improvement in your variation that does, in fact, exist.

Beta (β) is the probability of making a Type II error and has an inverse relationship with statistical power (1 – β). If 20% is the risk of committing a Type II error (β), then your power level is 80% (1.0 – 0.2 = 0.8). You can lower your risk of a false negative to 10% or 5%—for power levels of 90% or 95%, respectively.

Type II errors are controlled by your chosen power level: the higher the power level, the lower the probability of a Type II error. Because alpha and beta have an inverse relationship, running extremely low alphas (e.g. 0.001%) will, if all else is equal, vastly increase the risk of a Type II error.

Statistical power is a balancing act with trade-offs for each test. As Paul D. Ellis says, “A well thought out research design is one that assesses the relative risk of making each type of error, then strikes an appropriate balance between them.”

When it comes to statistical power, which variables affect that balance? Let’s take a look.

The variables that affect statistical power

When considering each variable that affects statistical power, remember: The primary goal is to control error rates. There are four levers you can pull:

1. Sample size
2. Minimum Effect of Interest (MEI, or Minimum Detectable Effect)
3. Significance level (α)
4. Desired power level (implied Type II error rate)

1. Sample Size

The 800-pound gorilla of statistical power is sample size. You can get a lot of things right by having a large enough sample size. The trick is to calculate a sample size that can adequately power your test, but not so large as to make the test run longer than necessary. (A longer test costs more and slows the rate of testing.)

You need enough visitors to each variation as well as to each segment you want to analyze. Pre-test planning for sample size helps avoid underpowered tests; otherwise, you may not realize that you’re running too many variants or segments until it’s too late, leaving you with post-test groups that have low visitor counts.

Expect a statistically significant result within a reasonable amount of time—usually at least one full week or business cycle. A general guideline is to run tests for a minimum of two weeks but no more than four to avoid problems due to sample pollution and cookie deletion.

Establishing a minimum sample size and a pre-set time horizon avoids the common error of simply running a test until it generates a statistically significant difference, then stopping it (peeking).

2. Minimum Effect of Interest (MEI)

The Minimum Effect of Interest (MEI) is the magnitude (or size) of the difference in results you want to detect.

Smaller differences are more difficult to detect and require a larger sample size to retain the same power; effects of greater magnitude can be detected reliably with smaller sample sizes. Still, as Georgi Georgiev notes, those big “improvements” from small sample sizes may be unreliable:

The issue is that, usually, there was no proper stopping rule nor fixed sample size, thus the nominal p-values and confidence interval (CI) reported are meaningless. One can say the results were “cherry-picked” in some sense.

If there was a proper stopping rule or fixed sample size, then a 500% observed improvement from a very small sample size is likely to come with a 95% CI of say +5% to +995%: not greatly informative.

A great way to visualize the relationship between power and effect size is this illustration by Georgiev, where he likens power to a fishing net:

3. Statistical Significance

As Georgiev explained:

An observed test result is said to be statistically significant if it is very unlikely that we would observe such a result assuming the null hypothesis is true.

This then allows us to reason the other way and say that we have evidence against the null hypothesis to the extent to which such an extreme result or a more extreme one would not be observed, were the null true (the p-value).

That definition is often reduced to a simpler interpretation: If your split-test for two landing pages has a 95% confidence in favor of the variation, there’s only a 5% chance that the observed improvement resulted by chance—or a 95% likelihood that the difference is not due to random chance.

“Many, taking the strict meaning of ‘the observed improvement resulted by random chance,’ would scorn such a statement,” contended Georgiev. “We need to remember that what allows us to estimate these probabilities is the assumption the null is true.”

Five percent is a common starting level of significance in online testing and, as mentioned previously, is the probability of making a Type I error. Using a 5% alpha for your test means that you’re willing to accept a 5% probability that you have incorrectly rejected the null hypothesis.

If you lower your alpha from 5% to 1%, you are simultaneously increasing the probability of making a Type II error, assuming all else is equal. Increasing the probability of a Type II error reduces the power of your test.

4. Desired Power Level

With 80% power, you have a 20% probability of not being able to detect an actual difference for a given magnitude of interest. If 20% is too risky, you can lower this probability to 10%, 5%, or even 1%, which would increase your statistical power to 90%, 95%, or 99%, respectively.

Before thinking that you’ll solve all of your problems by running tests at 95% or 99% power, understand that each increase in power requires a corresponding increase in the sample size and the amount of time the test needs to run (time you could waste running a losing test—and losing sales—solely for an extra percentage point or two of statistical probability).

So how much power do you really need? A common starting point for the acceptable risk of false negatives in conversion optimization is 20%, which returns a power level of 80%.

There’s nothing definitive about an 80% power level, but the statistician Jacob Cohen suggests that 80% represents a reasonable balance between alpha and beta risk. To put it another way, according to Ellis, “studies should have no more than a 20% probability of making a Type II error.”

Ultimately, it’s a matter of:

• How much risk you’re willing to take when it comes to missing a real improvement;
• The minimum sample size necessary for each variation to achieve your desired power.

How to calculate statistical power for your test

Using a sample size calculator or G*power, you can plug in your values to find out what’s required to run an adequately powered test. If you know three of the inputs, you can calculate the fourth.

In this case, using G*Power, we’ve concluded that we need a sample size of 681 visitors to each variation. This was calculated using our inputs of 80% power and a 5% alpha (95% significance). We knew our control had a 14% conversion rate and expected our variant to perform at 19%:

In the same manner, if we knew the sample size for each variation, the alpha, and the desired power level (say, 80%), we could find the MEI necessary to achieve that power—in this case, 19%:

What if you can’t increase your sample size?

There will come a day when you need more power but increasing the sample size isn’t an option. This might be due to a small segment within a test you’re currently running or low traffic to a page.

Say you plug your parameters into an A/B test calculator, and it requires a sample size of more than 8,000:

If you can’t reach that minimum—or it would take months to do so—one option is to increase the MEI. In this example, increasing the MEI from 10% to 25% reduces the sample size to 1,356 per variant:

But how often will you be able to hit a 25% MEI? And how much value will you miss looking only for a massive impact? A better option is usually to lower the confidence level to 90%—as long as you’re comfortable with a 10% chance of a Type I error:

So where do you start? Georgiev conceded that, too often, CRO analysts “start with the sample size (test needs to be done by <semi-arbitrary number> of weeks) and then nudge the levers randomly until the output fits.”

Striking the right balance:

• Requires a thoughtful process as to which levers to adjust;
• Benefits from measuring the potential change in ROI for any change to test variables.

Conclusion

Statistical power helps you control errors, gives you greater confidence in your test results, and greatly improves your chance of detecting practically significant effects.

Take advantage of statistical power by following these suggestions:

1. Run your tests for two to four weeks.
2. Use a testing calculator (or G*Power) to ensure properly powered tests.
3. Meet minimum sample size requirements.
4. If necessary, test for bigger changes in effect.
5. Use statistical significance only after meeting minimum sample size requirements.
6. Plan adequate power for all variations and post-test segments.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment.

As one might do in experiments, imagine A/B testing. We’ll create an A group and a B group. The people in each group are identical in capabilities, backgrounds, experiences. Both groups are equally skilled and capable.

Now we are going to give people a test. It’s around some complex issues. Group A doesn’t have to study or prepare for the test. We’ve decided to given them the answers.

Group B has to study and prepare. We train them, we coach them. Some struggle a bit, but they learn.

Test day, 100% of the people in Group A pass the test as we would expect. In fact, we were a little worried that they would remember the answers, so we gave them the answer keys to take into the test with them. All they had to do was copy the answers from the answer keys. In fact, all of them got all the answers right—no surprise.

Group B, 100% of the people pass, but some of them struggled, they didn’t get perfect scores, but they all passed.

Now you are a manager. You need to hire people that need to do the things the test was testing. Who are you going to hire? You can select anyone from Group A or B. Remember, they are all have similar backgrounds and experiences. But you want to hire the people you think can best execute the things on which the test was testing.

You know that the test didn’t cover everything that people will confront, but you want to hire the person who is more likely to have the capability of figuring out the right answer to address the situation.

Who are you going to hire?

My guess is 100% of you would choose someone from Group B, perhaps you’d look at the scores and hire those with the highest scores.

Why do you choose the people from Group B over group A? Probably because they have demonstrated they have the knowledge to do the things the test tested them on. If those are the tasks that are important to doing the job, you want the people who have the knowledge to do the job.

We all recognize that the people in Group A, while they provided the right answers, they didn’t have the knowledge to understand why those were the right answers. They just copied the answers that we gave them, without understanding why they were the right answers to the test. They did what we told them to do.

This is important. Being effective in any sales role (or any knowledge based job) is not just a matter of knowing the right answers. It’s about being able to figure things out, to be able to understand the situation, understand what’s going on, and to assess the best answer/response for a specific situation.

You are probably guessing where I’m going.

If we want want to maximize the performance of our people, we know it’s important they have the knowledge to do the job. That’s why we invest billions in training. We also know, we won’t be able to give them all the answers, so the more knowledge and experience they have, the more likely they will be able to figure things out.

It’s also helping them learn through their experiences by coaching them and helping them develop the ability to figure things out.

The problem is, if we know all of this, why do we treat our sales people like the group A?

When, if, we coach them, why do we have the tendency to say, “Just go do these things, come back and tell me what happens?”

Why do we spend millions on scripting conversations, rather than giving people the ability to engage the customers in a dialogue?

Why do we introduce tools with “screen pops” giving them the best answer to a specific conversation (not to mention the “distraction” effect)?

We will never be able to provide our people with all the answers. Each situation they encounter is unique to both the situation, customer (enterprise/individual), and a point in time.

If we are to maximize the performance of our teams, if we are to help them have the capabilities to be helpful, creating value with the customer, we have to help them learn how to learn. We have to help them figure out what the right answers might be and how to leverage that knowledge most impactfully with customers.

Sadly, it seems too many are going the opposite direction.

LinkedIn InMail messages have been getting a lot of airtime recently. From webinars to ebooks to A TON of client questions, it seems that this LinkedIn resource that helps you directly message non-connections is simultaneously appealing and intimidating. But have no fear! I send InMails all of the time, (daily as a matter of fact), and I’d like to share some pointers with you.

With nearly 5 years of experience in reaching out to candidates on LinkedIn, I’ve honed my InMail messaging quite a bit over the years. I also often get feedback from candidates that they’ve received other messages from recruiters on LinkedIn that they never responded to, but that my message was different. It is always wonderful to hear this feedback!

I am not sharing this information to brag. I just want to reassure you that you’re in good hands, and I think these tips will help you send great conversation starters on LinkedIn.

It’s Just a Conversation Starter

My first note on InMails is an important one to consider. I sometimes see our clients put a lot of weight into their InMails, as if this one message is going to make or break their entire campaign. But it’s important to remember that this message’s primary purpose is to start a conversation. Nothing more. You’re not going to close business by sending one InMail message. You’re not going to fill a position after a brief exchange of messages on LinkedIn. You will need to put in the hard work on the phone or in person. This message should really just create some interest and encourage connection.

So stop, breathe deeply and carefully consider things through this lens. It will help you quite a bit.

What Kind of Message Do You Want to Receive?

What kind of message would you be happy to receive on LinkedIn? This is my primary piece of advice, and it really takes a lot of the mystery and anxiety out of the process, doesn’t it? You want to, above all else, consider what kind of language, phrasing and details would actually make you pause, consider and reply if you received a message from a stranger on LinkedIn.

It may seem too simple, but often people type a message that focuses too much on their goal and it arrives feeling rigid, stuffy and uninteresting. In January, I began each InMail I sent with “Happy 2019!” It subtly communicated that this was not a message template that I created months ago, and that I’m a friendly person. Many people replied with “Happy New Year to you too!” It was just a nice exchange.

Lead With Something About the Recipient

In considering what kind of message you’d like to receive, how many of you thought, “I’d like for the message to try to sell me something without knowing anything about me.”

None of you? Really?

In all seriousness, the reality is that no one wants to be pitched to. It instantly takes any conversation potential from neutral to tedious. If you want someone to open, read and respond to your message, you need to first prove to them that you did your research. Open with an observation about them, their background, their business. It could be as simple as, “I see you hail from Penn State!” Or for recruiters, “I read through your profile and see that you’re currently open to considering new opportunities.”

You could also lead with something more closely aimed at establishing connection, “I can tell by the words that you use in your profile that you’re a leader that is focused on your people.”

Of course all of this means that you have to take the time to read the profiles. If you really want to illicit a response, you are going to need to earn that response. There aren’t many shortcuts around that.

Keep Your Message as Concise as Possible

You’ve now geared your wording toward normal human speak and not marketing robot speak AND you’ve opened your message with something about the recipient. You’re now ready to include some detail about why you’re reaching out. It is in your best interest to say it as concisely as possible.

#1 – Long messages do not get read on LinkedIn.

#2 – Many individuals check their messages from their mobile devices. They don’t want to read paragraphs.

#3 – Remember, your InMail is only meant to start a conversation, and then to be resumed on the phone, at a Starbucks, or in the office. This InMail does not need to sell your product or service outright.

LinkedIn allows space for 1900 characters in an InMail message, but that’s entirely too long. My rule of thumb has been to keep my messages as close to 600 characters as possible. It’s a good length. You can read 600 characters quickly and easily without feeling like someone is wasting your time.

You can count characters by drafting your messages in a Word document first. You should be doing this anyway. It’s best to draft your messages thoughtfully and with intention, as opposed to just “riffing” in the moment.

And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? A careful plan and the right intentions. Sales people – sell your hearts out! Recruiters – find all of the talent! Just make sure it’s genuine and coming from a place of providing value as opposed to making this InMail just another drop in the bucket.

Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine. We’ll call him Alexander.

Alexander was working with one of his company’s best clients—a high-value, long-term customer. That client was evaluating alternatives and considering leaving the company for a new vendor. Alexander had been negotiating with them for a few weeks, trying to keep them around.

I was serving as an advisor and helping him out with the process. He would call me up after his interactions with the client and let me know how things were going. I’d give him some advice each time, and he’d keep me in the loop.

At the beginning of the process, the client was 99% sure they would change to a competitor. We eventually moved them to 50/50, and even 60/40 in favor of Alexander’s company. I was sure they were going to stay on.

You might not have a seasoned startup CEO as a personal advisor by your side, but you can get a free copy of my book on negotiating better deals.

Then, today, Alexander called me with a confession. “Steli,” he said, “I think I made a big mistake.”

Even veterans make rookie mistakes

It’s worth noting here that Alexander is an experienced salesperson. He’s not new to this game. But he was under a lot of pressure. And that’s when people make mistakes.

He’d been going through this negotiation for weeks. He had other things to get done. He was tired of working with this client day in and day out. And he was under pressure to keep a valuable client on board.

Even veterans make easy-to-avoid mistakes when they’re under pressure. Sales negotiation is about avoiding dumb mistakes. It’s not just about doing everything right and getting the sale. It’s also about avoiding mistakes that make you facepalm when you see how easily they could have been avoided.

That’s the kind of mistake Alexander made. Here’s what happened:

Alexander had an in-person meeting with the client a while back. And in that meeting, he told the client that some customers who had left his company for other vendors had run into painful difficulties. Integration, implementation, pricing, and transitions had all been a source of serious headaches.

The day after the meeting, the client called and asked if they could get in touch with one of the companies that had gone through these difficulties.

Alexander knew he should think about this request carefully, but he was distracted. He gave it some thought while he was going through his email and doing other daily tasks.

He didn’t call me.

Instead, he thought of a company that had transitioned away from his, figured they’d be a pretty good reference, and made the introduction.

Then today, he learned that his company’s client was flying out to visit the ex-customer at their home office.

As soon as he told me that, I knew the deal was almost certainly lost. Why would they be flying out there if not to ask about things like tips on how to make the transition go more smoothly? Or to connect with the ex-customer’s consultants? Or get suggestions on which vendors to look into?

Alexander was so close to closing the deal, and he threw it away.

He should have talked to the ex-customer to set expectations, find out what they would say when asked about the transition, and see what they would recommend to his current client. He needed to be in control of the message—and probably should have also been on the call. (Despite these requirements, sharing references is a great tactic if you do it right.)

Now all he can do is call the ex-customer to ask about how the conversation went and why his client is flying out to their office.

This was a big mistake. Even the smartest people—like Alexander—make dumb mistakes under pressure.

How to not screw up your deals

Pressure comes from things like high-value deals, long negotiations, and high quotas. But you might feel pressured for any number of reasons. There are two things you need to do when you’re negotiating under pressure:

First, use an external advisor to check yourself. It might be a friend with sales experience. It could be someone else at your company. There are just three requirements: that advisor needs to be honest, sharp, and not invested in the deal.

That means you can use an engineer, a project manager, or an administrative assistant at your company. If you trust their wits and they’re not involved in the deal, they’ll make a good advisor.

The further along you are in the negotiation, the more crucial this is. During a grueling negotiation, you can’t trust yourself to think rationally. You’re emotionally invested, you’re exhausted, and you’re under pressure. That’s when you make mistakes.

Second, you need to be completely transparent with that advisor. Don’t do anything without talking to them about it first.

This is especially important if you feel uncomfortable about a particular idea or tactic. If you think your advisor will say “no,” be doubly sure to talk to them. If you’re uncomfortable, you’re probably about to make a mistake.

No matter how senior you are—whether you’re a brand-new salesperson or the CEO of a company—you need to talk to your advisor before making a decision.

I do it myself. Two years ago, I had a big negotiation with one of our clients, and I bounced a lot of ideas off my technical cofounder. He has no training or authority in sales—but he’s a smart guy and very honest. I used him as a sounding board almost every day.

I was feeling impatient. I just wanted to get the deal done and move on. But I knew that I couldn’t trust myself, because I was under pressure and prone to making a terrible mistake.

But with my cofounder’s help, I avoided making a mistake and kept the client onboard.

Check yourself

It’s easy to think that you won’t make a dumb mistake. Whether you’re a salesperson, a sales manager, or an executive, you think your experience will prevent you from doing something like Alexander. But trust me: when the pressure’s on, you will make a mistake.

So find someone to talk to about your sales negotiation, and be totally upfront with them. It will save you lost sales and a whole lot of headaches. 

Want more tips on negotiating better deals? I've written an entire book on the subject, and you can claim your free copy here!

GET OUR SALES NEGOTIATION GUIDE

By now, most B2B companies will have established their revenue growth goals for this year. Growing revenues has never been easy, but producing consistent revenue growth has become more challenging because of fundamental changes in the B2B competitive environment.

Today’s business buyers have more choices, more bargaining power, and higher expectations than ever. And the growing use of “as-a-service” and other subscription-like business models has elevated the importance of long-term customer relationships, while also making them more fragile. Therefore, there’s a growing need to provide outstanding experiences at every touchpoint across the entire customer lifecycle.

To address these challenges, a growing number of companies are retooling their leadership structure and adopting new approaches for managing revenue-generating activities. Some B2B companies – particularly technology companies – have created a new C-level position that is usually called the chief revenue officer (CRO).

The specific duties of the chief revenue officer and the scope of his or her authority vary across companies, but the CRO is usually tasked with managing the company’s revenue-related business functions, including marketing, sales/business development, direct outside sales, channel management, and customer success/customer service.

A similar approach has been adopted by many B2C companies. In 2017, for example, Coca-Cola made news when it chose not to replace its retiring chief marketing officer. Instead, the company created a chief growth officer (CGO) position to manage its marketing, customer, and commerce teams. Culture App, an employee engagement and analytics software firm, recently reported that 455 U.S. companies have chief growth officers, and that number may be higher now.

These organizational moves have been driven by the recognition that the dynamics of revenue growth have changed in fundamental ways. For most B2B companies, the business case for implementing a chief revenue officer or chief growth officer role has become compelling for two reasons.

Growth Originates from Multiple Sources

To optimize revenue growth, business leaders must first identify how growth happens, or more accurately, where it originates. There are several distinct sources or wellsprings of growth. These “structural” sources of growth are not dependent on the way a company is organized or on the types of products or services it sells. Instead, they are based on the strategies and tactics a company can use to exploit each source.

The following diagram shows the four most common structural sources of revenue growth. These sources are always present, and they exist independently of the market conditions facing a company. However, the volume of growth that any particular company can extract from each source is greatly influenced by the company’s market and competitive environment.

As a practical matter, no single source is likely to produce enough growth to enable a company to reach its overall growth objective. Therefore, to maximize overall revenue growth, most companies will need to tap all four structural sources of growth.

Growth Demands Cross-Functional Teamwork

Successful revenue growth requires the active participation of multiple business functions, particularly given the need to leverage multiple sources of growth. The following table shows that three or four distinct business functions must be involved to maximize the potential of the four structural sources of growth. And this table is an oversimplification of reality for some companies. For example, companies that derive significant revenue from online sales and/or sales by channel partners would need to add e-commerce operations and/or channel management to the business functions shown in the table.

Successful revenue growth also requires the activities of these business functions to be tightly coordinated, which means that they must work collaboratively on an ongoing basis.

In most B2B companies, the revenue generation process has traditionally involved a series of “hand-offs” from one business function to another. The metaphor often used is a relay race in which each member of the relay team runs for a specified distance and then passes the baton to the next runner.

It’s now clear that the relay race approach is no longer an effective way to manage revenue-generating activities. To optimize revenue generation, customer-facing functions must act more like a basketball team than a 4 X 100 meter relay team. All team members are involved throughout the entire game, and their roles change based on the situation.

Enter the CRO/CGO

These circumstances provide a powerful argument for creating a chief revenue officer or chief growth officer role to manage and coordinate all revenue-generating activities. Long ago, the architect Louis Sullivan argued that the shape of a building should be based on its intended use, that “form ever follows function.” The same principle applies to business organizations.

Placing all revenue-generating activities under the leadership of a chief revenue officer or chief growth officer enables a company to make the “shape” of its organization reflect the realities of today’s revenue generation environment, and constitutes an important step toward optimizing revenue growth.

Top image courtesy of ccpixs.com (Creative Commons License).

Originally published here.

Being a salesperson isn’t just about knowing the ins and outs of your product. You may have all the answers to commonly asked questions and have no problem pitching your product, but your value proposition only goes so far. In order to be successful, you have to be able to identify the needs of each potential customer.

A needs-based salesperson is the gateway between brands and consumers. With 30 percent of the workforce now made up of millennials, it’s important to understand how sales are changing from both a professional and consumer’s standpoint.

When you learn how to tap into your customer’s needs, you can become an invaluable asset to your company. You may feel like everyone prefers the web when it comes to closing a deal, but statistics say otherwise. When people are making a large purchase, which is usually the case with B2B marketing, they want evidence that this is the right choice.

That evidence comes from the assurance and demonstration of a real salesperson. A website or app can only present a list of facts; a salesperson is dynamic and fluid, capable of adjusting their approach and providing the best resources for each specific client. If you want to up your sales game and transform the way you connect with clients, here are three tips to becoming a needs-based salesperson.

Don’t be afraid to go off-script

One of the reasons salespeople are so valuable is that they are able to provide a personalized touch to the marketing process. While it’s good to have a general pitch in mind when presenting a product, a needs-based approach to marketing encourages you to go off-script.

Salespeople need to ask questions that encourage well-thought-out answers from your client instead of just a yes or no response. This opens the door to conversation, which creates connections and leads to a greater chance of conversion. Demonstrate your own interest in the client’s needs, then show them how your product can offer a solution.

Focus on education instead of information

Anyone can give a spiel about their product, but a generic rundown of its main features and general uses won’t win over a client. From a needs-based approach, the client’s unique likes, dislikes and problems are evaluated. They will be given a new perspective on their own issue through the lens of your product. Don’t just talk about what your business can do for a customer – show them why it matters.

Utilize digital media

Pamphlets and business cards are a thing of the past. Potential customers like to have real facts and figure presented to them authentically. In order to succeed in needs-based sales, you have to be transparent. It’s a balance between show and tell that will leave a lasting impression in a customer’s mind and encourage them to explore further.

Lead generation, not just conversion, plays a big role in the B2B marketing industry nowadays. If you’re able to combine your brand’s social media and digital assets in your presentation, you can demonstrate a sense of brand awareness and continuity that reassures clients you’re on top of your game.

Remember that sales is another form of customer service

In many ways, a salesperson and customer service rep share the same job. You have to troubleshoot problems, provide solutions and connect with a consumer in order to deliver personalized care that achieves a desired result.

A needs-based salesperson humanizes the marketing experience; when you focus on value and connection over features and profit, you can stop selling yourself short and start to show consumers what your brand is really all about.

The post Why You Need to Be a Needs-Based B2B Salesperson appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Marketing and sales teams used to have separate responsibilities. Marketing teams were responsible for generating leads, and sales teams converted those leads into customers.

But these days, the lines between marketing and sales teams’ responsibilities have blurred. Prospects no longer come to sales with limited information. They conduct significant research before reaching out, consuming dozens of marketing assets along the way.

This shift has created demand for a new working model for marketing and sales—one that requires close alignment between the two teams. To create that alignment, marketers are using a number of marketing- and sales-enablement activities to generate leads, qualify them, and move sales-qualified leads down the pipeline:

Our latest survey results show that more than 50% of marketers agree that the following marketing activities “significantly help” in making sales teams more efficient:

• Generating more marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads (77%)
• Creating more content to attract and educate prospects (74%)
• Lead generation via company website (72%)
• Creating content for use in the sales process (54%)
• Improving marketing’s CRM usage (53%)

Other popular activities listed as significantly helpful include automating email messages from marketing (50%), standardizing email templates used throughout the sales process (28%), lead scoring (22%), and implementing meeting-booking tools so prospects can schedule time with salespeople easily (22%).

Less popular activities include:

• Using surveys, quizzes, or other interactive content to qualify leads further: only 16% of marketers report that this has significantly helped.
• Setting service level agreements for lead volume and quality: only 12% of marketers report that this significantly helped.
• Implementing website chat: only 9% of marketers report that this significantly helped.

However, some of the less popular activities may just be the result of low usage. In fact, our survey results showed that more marketers plan to start using interactive content this year than any other technology or tactic for gathering information about leads:

While 97% of marketers plan to continue using lead forms and landing pages in 2019 to gather more information about leads, many marketers also plan to start using more advanced tactics:

• 23% plan to start using market research surveys.
• 17% plan to start using data appending.
• 16% plan to start using progressive polling.
• 11% plan to start using email nurturing campaigns to get existing leads to provide more information.

So what activities, techniques, and technologies should your team use to align sales and marketing—and boost sales’ efficiency—this year? We asked 31 marketers to share their best practices for sales enablement. Here’s what we learned.

Start by Aligning Marketing and Sales

Marketing can’t help sales become more efficient if the two teams work in silos. As SparkReaction’s Jesse Frye says: “From my experience, the best way to help your sales team become more efficient is to first understand their challenges. Once you understand the challenges in selling, you can equip sales teams with marketing tools to make their jobs easier.”

If your marketing and sales teams are working in vacuums, consider these suggestions for improving cross-department collaboration and encouraging ongoing communication.

Define Processes for Marketing and Sales Collaboration

Before you help your sales team become more efficient, you must understand what sales needs from marketing. That understanding comes from a close collaboration between the two teams.

According to Weidert Group’s Nicole Mertes: “It all starts with alignment. If marketing and sales are aligned, the collaboration between the two departments typically results in many ideas, including those for sales team efficiency.”

Mertes recommends that marketing teams work with sales to create a service-level agreement (SLA): “An SLA that outlines your shared goals and the commitments of each department to reach those goals is a great place to start.”

But collaborating with sales doesn’t always have to be so formal and defined. Just setting up regular meetings can encourage communication and alignment.

Carolinas IT’s Jennifer Noto meets with her sales team once a week: “I provide updates about our ongoing campaigns, share information about our upcoming events, and provide PDF files of our marketing emails so account managers can reach out to their clients and prospects directly with a personal note.”

Regular meetings also provide marketers with an opportunity to educate the sales team. “One way our marketing team helps sales reps generate more revenue is through education,” says Michael Maynes of CIENCE. “Many marketers focus on educating markets/prospects, but our marketing team designs education programs for the sales team.”

“In our space, there is an oversaturation of information—but maybe less education,” Maynes says. “Our marketing team filters the material critical for relevance and presents it every week in a one-hour program called Thought Leadership Tuesday.”

Align on Each Team’s Role at Different Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

Another strategy for aligning marketing and sales is to determine which team is responsible for working with prospects at different stages of the buying journey.

Revenue River’s Marc Herschberger recommends connecting your entire campaign strategy to the buyer’s journey:

“We’ve been able to simplify everything the marketing team does by basing our decisions on the needs and goals of the buyers at different stages of the decision-making process. By doing this, marketing and sales have content and processes that are better aligned, reducing the friction that prospects feel as they move from marketing assets to sales conversations.”

Elika Dizechi of Campaign Creators recommends taking this one step further: “Sit down with both parties to establish a set of processes and procedures for client onboarding and employee training. Because the sales and marketing teams have to work together as a dual entity for clients, it’s important that the handoff between each team is seamless.”

Once marketing and sales are aligned, you can start to develop strategies for generating more leads, qualifying them, and passing qualified leads to sales.

Generate More Leads with Inbound Marketing

The two strategies that our respondents reported as being the most successful for marketing and sales enablement were creating content to attract and educate prospects, and lead generation via their companies’ websites.

Nearly all respondents agree that these two tactics either help or significantly help with marketing and sales enablement.

Kris Hughes says his team used lead generation tactics on the ProjectManager.com website to double their free trial signups in 2018. Additionally, “The increased volume of leads allowed the sales team to better vet potential customers and start to prioritize the potential clients which deserve—and to some extent demand—a greater level of attention and more touch points to become full customers following a trial.”

Our respondents recommend the following techniques for generating more leads with inbound marketing.

Publish Educational Content and Optimize it for Search

Best Company’s Chad Zollinger says that publishing knowledge-focused content helps his team produce more qualified leads: “Because our content is knowledge-focused, our leads come away with more industry knowledge than normal, leading to higher retention for the companies they end up buying from.”

Beyond publishing knowledge-focused content, the content team at Best Company also focuses on employing the best practices of SEO to grow content visibility: “When the content team increases organic traffic by winning a featured snippet or ranking on the first page of Google for a branded term, our lead quality goes through the roof,” Zollinger says.

The marketing team at Fundera also uses educational, search-optimized content to attract inbound leads. According to Nicolas Straut: “By targeting and ranking for less-competitive, long-tail keywords, we’ve drawn high-intent customers to our site and converted them with both quizzes and CTAs within highly-informative content.”

Use A/B Testing to Optimize Your Landing Pages

Smallpdf’s Hung Nguyen asserts that running experiments by A/B testing your landing pages is the best way to drive conversions:

“However many hypotheses you can come up with, the only way to properly test them is to run A/B tests until you’ve reached statistical significance. Once you’ve found the most optimized version of your landing page, run it, and hand the data over to your sales team to nurture your leads.”

Solicit Content Ideas and Feedback from Sales

Casey Bowden of Design Extensions recommends working with sales during the content ideation process: “Our marketing team works hand-in-hand with our sales team, creating videos, infographics and effective content that helps sell to potential customers—especially on our website, which has been a big lead magnet.”

Ryan Bromsgrove of Flawless Inbound agrees: “We’ve undergone a deep sales and marketing alignment. Our marketing content is used by sales to assist with their outreach to prospects. Likewise, our marketing department remains in constant contact with sales in order to evaluate what’s working and glean ideas for further content. The result is more content that aligns with what our clients are trying to solve—and better conversations on the sales side.”

Creating content that answers prospects’ most pressing questions and alleviates their biggest concerns is key to inbound marketing. As Sneakerlost’s José Juan Morales says: “Today’s consumers don’t like to be chased. You have to attract them with arguments that interest them and reach out only when they are ready to take the next step.”

Nurture Leads with Automated Email Sequences

85% of our respondents use automated email sequences to nurture leads. How?

“We send personalized content to our leads via workflows and e-mails,” says Romy Fuchs of BEE Inbound AG. “We try to nurture leads by being as helpful as possible and not primarily offering our services. Our goal is for leads to reach out to our sales team—not vice versa.”

Adam Rowles of Inbound Marketing Agency recommends using blog content to create nurturing emails: “Creating blog articles that speak to objections and questions that come up during the sales process has helped us improve close rates. We create email templates (2-3 paragraphs that link to blog posts) for the sales team to send to prospects when needed.”

Rowles continues: “Then, we add these emails into our marketing automation platform, and when a prospect meets a particular stage in the sales process, these emails are sent automatically, periodically, to keep prospects engaged and keep our business at top of mind.”

Qualify and Score Leads Before Sending them to Sales

Having more leads is great, but not all leads should be sent to the sales team.

As Print4Hospitality’s Richard George says: “Qualifying leads makes salespeople more efficient. It allows them to focus on worthwhile leads and waste less time on unqualified leads.”

77% of our respondents reported that generating more marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs) significantly helped improve the efficiency of their sales teams.

But before you can generate more MQLs and SQLs, you first have to determine how to qualify leads. Here are some of the techniques our respondents use.

Create a Lead-Qualification Matrix

Kiwi Creative’s Kaity Huff recommends developing a lead-qualification matrix: “To make sure that marketing is generating leads that the sales team can turn into customers, both teams need to have a shared understanding of exactly what a qualified lead is. Luckily, that comes down to answering just two main questions.”

The first question to ask, according to Huff, is “What makes someone a good fit for your offering? Create an ideal customer profile that lists the key traits a person or organization must possess to be a good fit.”

The second question to ask, according to Huff, is “Which actions demonstrate that someone is sales-ready? Identify the actions a lead takes to demonstrate that they’re ready to buy.”

“Once you know the qualifications for fit and sales readiness,” Huff says, “you can create a six-category lead qualification matrix that will define exactly which leads should be passed on to sales—and which ones should continue to be nurtured by marketing.”

Define Lead Qualification Categories and Criteria

AJ Alonzo’s team at demandDrive uses “Good,” “Better,” and “Best” categories to score leads: “We operate on a ‘Good, Better, Best’ model with our accounts: accounts that could use our service (‘Good’), accounts we know could use our service (‘Better’), and accounts we’d love to convince to use our service (‘Best’).”

“We always had these distinctions,” Alonzo says, “but by better aligning marketing and sales, we’re able to easily identify which bucket an account belongs in.”

Use Technology to Score Leads Automatically

Several respondents reported using marketing automation and CRM tools to score leads automatically.

Kristin Dennewill of Denamico uses HubSpot to score leads for agency clients: “We start by having a conversation with sales and marketing teams to identify what, exactly, is a sales-qualified lead. We discuss what triggers indicate a lead has moved from an MQL to an SQL. Maybe they’ve looked at the pricing page or requested a demo.”

Lead scoring also helps Dennewill’s team disqualify specific leads: “A prospect can also take actions which decrease their score—for example, not opening a lead nurturing email.”

The right tool also helps you identify qualified leads through behavior monitoring. According to Brian Pappalardo of Pappalardo Digital: “By using a marketing platform that captures behavioral data on your leads, you don’t have to wait for a form submission to indicate that your prospect is nearing the decision-making point.”

“For instance,” Pappalardo says, “if a lead clicks a ‘Speak to a Representative’ link in your marketing email but doesn’t submit the contact form on the landing page, that’s still a pretty strong signal that you’re dealing with a warm prospect. And if you haven’t reached out in a while, it might be time for your sales team to get that prospect on the phone.”

Passing Qualified Leads Over to Sales

Our respondents also offered a number of suggestions for handing qualified leads over to the sales team:

• “Provide automated alerts to salespeople when their prospects take some kind of action with marketing assets. For example, when an active prospect visits our company website or opens a marketing email, the assigned salesperson gets an immediate text alert that contains details about the visit.” (Jake Fisher, Bridges Strategies)

• “We’ve implemented IP tracking that tells sales reps which companies visit our website. In that way, we can still start conversations with potential customers even if they have not converted on an offer. IP tracking expands the number of warm leads that sales reps can work with on a daily basis.” (Thorstein Nordby, Nettly)

• “Our marketing team has created a landing page for our sales person so prospects can book an appointment directly on her calendar.” (Kristin Dennewill, Denamico)

• “Our marketing team has connected all of our different lead sources to Zapier, allowing us to automatically assign leads—based on their area codes—to the correct rep, enter the lead information into our CRM system, and add the lead to specific drip campaigns.” (Joe Sloan, Advice Media)

It also helps to pass along information on how prospects have interacted with marketing assets when sending leads to sales.

According to Brianne Rush of Kuno Creative: “The typical B2B buyer is likely to make it through 60% of the decision-making process before speaking to a salesperson. In this time, prospects can take any number of actions: become a blog subscriber, download an ebook, or sign up for marketing emails about a specific product.”

Rush continues: “With the right tools to monitor these moves, sales teams will be armed with relevant information to guide the other 40% of the buyer’s journey.”

Create Content to be Used During the Sales Process

53% of our respondents reported that creating content for use in the sales process is highly effective for sales enablement.

As Jesse Frye of SparkReaction says: “Every salesperson works differently, but as long as you develop content that aligns with the overall sales process—and educate the sales team on when and how to use the content—it usually makes their jobs easier. If they have to spend hours searching for marketing tools and materials, it hurts their ability to close deals.”

Here are a few ways our respondents enable sales teams with sales-specific content:

Make Sure You Are Creating the Right Content

Creating content for sales only works if sales and marketing are aligned. Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers asserts that sales and marketing must work hand-in-hand to create content.

“It’s important to have the sales team explain to the marketing team precisely what content they’re looking for and what the content will be used for. Once the marketing department has created the content, the sales team will review it and propose a few changes. Then, the marketing team will make the changes and re-submit it to the sales team for approval.”

Use Technology to Deliver Content to Sales

Make it easier for sales to find the content you’ve created for them by adopting tools that make the content discovery process easier.

Stan Robinson, Jr. of Vengreso uses a content distribution platform to queue up relevant content

Anne Shenton of Ascend Inbound Marketing recommends the Documents feature in HubSpot Sales: “Once documents are uploaded into the tool, sales reps can quickly access them and insert them as a link in an email, from within HubSpot, or from their email client with the HubSpot extension.”

“Another benefit of using this feature,” Shenton says, “is that reps are notified when a prospect opens the document. And if the prospect forwards the document to someone else, they have to input their email to view it, which also notifies the rep. Reps can see how many times and how long the document was viewed for. They can then use this insight to tailor their follow-ups.”

Eric Pratt of Revenue River recommended Pandadoc for the same capability of “tracking exactly what prospects care about. With PandaDoc, you can see exactly what parts of the document prospects are reading, among other things.”

Build Interactive Content

Nearly half of all marketers plan to use quizzes, surveys, and other forms of interactive content in 2019 to gather more information about their leads.

According to Mike Stiriti, the marketing team at TSL Marketing is already using interactive content to provide sales teams with more information about leads:

“Our marketing team has increased our qualified lead rates and discovery calls exponentially through targeted digital advertising. They have executed survey campaigns through LinkedIn sponsored updates that lead to valuable business intelligence and follow-up conversations.”

for the sales team to share on social. “It also shows us when readers have engaged with the content so we can respond to them,” he says.

Marketing agency, Overgo Studio, is doubling down on interactive content as well. Kranz is implementing SnapApp’s Interactive pdfs, “SnapApp offers a content creation platform that lets marketers ask questions as prospects read pdfs. This allows us to capture more information about our leads using the eBooks we have already created and easily gather intelligence that can help us qualify or disqualify leads before they reach sales.”

Create Content Templates

If you have types of content your sales team uses over and over again, consider formalizing the template and adopting tools that make it easy to personalize the content.

For example, Jen Lombardi at Kiwi Creative uses Quilr to streamline proposal writing: “Our marketing team designed reusable blocks of content that we can quickly add/edit without having to worry about formatting issues. The final document is a slick looking landing page that alerts you when it’s been viewed.”

Build Standard and Reusable Emails

Marketing teams can also help sales by creating email campaigns designed for sales-qualified leads. Alex Robinson of Team Building Hero did this recently, saving each of his company’s sales reps an estimated 19 hours a month:

“In 2018, one of the major contributions of marketing to sales was building a customized email follow-up that sales reps can trigger just by moving the lead along the customer path in the CRM.”

“In the past,” Robinson says, “our sales associates were manually following up with leads, which I’d estimate at 20+ hours of work per month. With our automated follow-up, sales reps are only spending around an hour per month on the task, which has given them more time for calls with qualified leads and building long-term relationships with clients.”

Steve James of Stream Creative agrees: “Creating sales email templates in our CRM for different lead scenarios has been a huge timesaver for our team. It’s helped our response time as well as keeping our messaging consistent across our teams.”

Use Sales Playbooks

“One of the best things you can do to improve sales and marketing alignment is to build out sales playbooks.” said Doug Davidoff of Imagine Business Development. https://www.imaginellc.com/ “With digital marketing, it easy for marketers to see which of their work resonates with prospects. They simply have to log into their analytics or marketing automation tools to see the numbers. However, we have never had data about which questions and soundbites are the most effective on a sales call… until now.”

Davidoff shared how his team has been building sales playbooks using Costello https://andcostello.com/ to enable marketers and sales people to collaborate on what to ask, what to say and how to say it. “Using the platform, they get instant feedback about what parts of the sales conversation maximize close rates. Because Costello collects information from the prospects in a structured way, it can also help marketers determine which content to use with each prospect, making marketing automation more personalized too.”

Kickstarting Your Sales Enablement Efforts in 2019

If your sales and marketing teams aren’t yet aligned, make an effort to kickstart the collaboration this year. The simplest starting point: schedule a meeting with sales to discuss shared goals.

In the meeting, ask what they need from marketing. Maybe it’s content they can use during the sales cycle. Maybe they need more upfront information about leads that you can gather through interactive content or by adopting a tool that passes your marketing data to their CRM.

Once you find out what they need, deliver it. Show them how marketing can make their jobs easier, and it will be easier to convince them to start collaborating more closely with your team.