Rnordman

I wrote, “Improving Sales Performance Without Changing How You Sell.” Readers started responding, “This is great, where do we start?” Here are some thoughts:

“One size fits all:” Too often, we have a “one size fits all” approach to performance improvement. We focus on one thing, for example prospecting or pipeline coverage, and inflict this on the entire organization. Yet each person is different, as a result we may be doing the wrong thing with some, or may not be as impactful as we might be.

For example, we may have high performers who have a great prospecting cadence and healthy pipelines. Focusing them on these initiatives creates no value for them, or may distract them from what they need to be doing. Or those who struggle in the sales process, we may be making things even more difficult by diluting focus.

It turns out each person is different, we have to assess each person, working with them to improve performance. We must identify the one thing they must focus on to improve performance, coaching them and working with them to achieve it, then move to the next, and the next.

“A Plague Of Initiatives:” Sometimes we see numerous conflicting initiatives. They may be well intended, they may have originated with different groups, each trying to be helpful or “doing their jobs.” For example, sales enablement may have several initiatives to improve performance, marketing, sales ops, and so on.

The result is, inevitably, confusion and loss of focus. Sales people don’t know which they should focus on, which will produce the best results. They are distracted by each group, while well intended, pushing them, “How are you doing, where can we help?” What happens, in addition to confusing sales people, is we divert them from what they really should be doing–selling.

We need to drive change, we need to introduce new initiatives to support those change efforts. Too often, we inflict plague of intitiatives on our people because we don’t know what we should do, we fail to commit to a course of action, so we try to do everything. These always fail.

We must focus those efforts, providing context and direction to the sales people. Long time readers know my mantra, “What is the one thing we need to focus on?” Every initiative we develop must be positioned in the context of that one thing and must contribute to that. Otherwise, we have no focus.

Everyone in the organization needs to understand the focus and priority for driving sales performance. All initiatives must be positioned in the context of these. No sales person should have more than 2 initiatives they are responsible for implementing/executing at any point in time. Otherwise, they just won’t be done.

Overwhelmed by complexity: Our performance improvement initiatives sometimes fail because we try to accomplish too much, we are not focused, or we make them too complicated. The best initiatives are simple (don’t confuse this with easy). It’s incumbent on leaders/change agents to make things as simple as possible. If it isn’t, inevitably, we don’t have the clarity we need to have to achieve the outcomes we hope to achieve. Mark Twain is famous for the quote, “I would have written you a one page letter, but I didn’t have the time; instead here’s this 10 page letter.” It’s great advice. We should be able to express each initiative in a couple of paragraphs, or no more than a page.

Each person should clearly understand what to do, how to do it, how to measure/assess progress. They must be coached and helped in execution.

Starting then forgetting about it: Too often, we start an initiative, either with the organization or with an individual, but we fail to monitor progress and follow up. The hard part of driving any kind of change or new initiative is not coming up with the initiatives themselves, but in execution. As Mike Tyson has said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The real difficulty is in implementation and execution. It’s incumbent on all leaders to measure, track, follow up, coach, adjust, improve.

Where you start is often less important than starting: I often get managers asking me, “Where do we start?” For example, in coaching a sales person, “do I improve their qualification skills, discovery skills, prospecting, opportunity management, account management, and so forth.

We shouldn’t obsess on finding the right starting point. What we know is all these things are important, and they are all interconnected. So as we start improving in one area, we will see changes rippling through to other areas. So choose the starting point most important to you and the organization or individual you are coaching. Commit to that, master it, move to the next. Eventually you will come full circle.

At the risk of confusing things, while you can start anywhere, generally there are some starting points that offer more leverage than others. The pipeline is a great starting point, it helps you understand where the performance challenges might be and helps you identify and focus on the most impactful. I’m biased to the selling process, disqualification, then discovery. Being very good in these, ripples through everything else very quickly. They drive more winning deal strategies, higher quality prospecting, more focused account/territory penetration strategies.

But all this is just me, you choose the starting point you think most impactful.

Afterword: We developed the Sales Execution Framework to help managers and sales people address these issues, learning where to start and how everything is interconnected.

Let’s be honest with ourselves a little bit here. Sending email campaigns can sometimes feel like one of two fun, but strangely aggressive, children’s games.

Whack-a-mole, and pin the tail on the donkey.

Sometimes it can feel like we are just trying to keep up. We know we need to send a daily newsletter, or a new campaign promoting a sale, or tweak an old transactional email template.

We also need to keep up with the times, incorporating personalization, segmentation, and maybe even the odd piece of interactive content into our emails. Those moles keep popping up, and we simply try our best to whack them down.

Other times, we’re blindly sending a campaign, choosing a subject line, embedding an image seemingly on a whim, hoping for the best, thinking ”maybe this time I actually pinned the tail on the donkey”.

I imagine you’ve felt this way once or twice in your email career. Even when we have a clear plan, strategy, and roadmap to get somewhere, we can still feel lost in the dark.

As you can imagine, these problems are not unique to email teams. They’re actually pretty standard across any project involving consistent shipping like factories, software releases, and advertising just to name a few.

There are a whole host of ways to approach a problem like this, some of which we’ve covered on other blogs about email teams and workflows. But one approach that has historically worked very well is the Scrum Framework for Email Teams.

Table of Contents

1. What is Scrum?
2. How does Scrum apply to email teams?
3. The People on a Scrum Email Team
   1. Project Owner
   2. Creator Team
   3. Scrum Master
4. Creating an Email Campaign Using Scrum
   • Project Backlog
   • Sprint Backlog
   • Daily Scrums
   • Increments
   • Sprint Review
5. So Scrum is for anyone and everyone?

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a framework for teams to work together on iterative projects in a more effective way.

Perfected over the last decade or so by software development, a Scrum team brings together a cross-functional group of people to abandon their job titles, and within short segments, release products (or campaigns) quickly.

These segments, referred to as sprints, can last anywhere between a couple of days to a month. The length really doesn’t matter so long as the end result is well defined, achievable, and can help inform future “sprints”.

Rather than approaching projects with a waterfall methodology where projects start with a clear plan that is stuck to from point A to Z, Scrum uses sprints to optimize for changes. Whether it’s a change in the scope of the project, a change in the data we’ve collected about our end-user or audience, or a change in our team.

A Scrum team, consisting of a project owner, developer team (or creator team), and Scrum Master, cycle through phases of sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, development, and release.

If the larger project is to release an app, a sprint could be as simple as building the landing page. If the larger project is launching a new daily newsletter, a sprint could be as simple as building or refining the contact database.

If you want to dig more into what Scrum is and how it works, our friends at Atlassian do a great job for you here.

How does Scrum apply to email teams?

The nature of Scrum is bringing together cross-functional teams to release complex projects in an iterative way.

When you think about some of the modern email campaigns today that involve beautiful design, excellent copywriting, personalization, and interactive content, you begin to see not only all the work, but also all the people that go into email campaigns.

There’s copywriters, designers, motion graphics designers, CRM specialists, data engineers, developers, a deliverability team, lead/contact generation team, and sometimes even more. Let alone the teams that also rely on external agencies and third-party providers. A Litmus survey in 2018 found that on average there are 8 people that go into an email campaign.

The problem is especially compounded by the fact that these individuals often come from 3 or more different departments, and email is likely not their only task. Rather than operating in silos, one great benefit of Scrum is the ability to not only tear down silos, but by definition tear down job titles.

In Scrum, you check your job title at the door and simply become a part of the “Developer” or “Creator” team of a sprint.

Scum is particularly compelling for email teams because of the iterative and data-centric nature of email. Depending on your company, you could be sending out millions of emails every day, capturing data and reimplementing on an on-going basis.

Rather than breaking email down into large chunks that go through changes maybe once per quarter, email teams can be using the lessons they’ve learned in the creation process, and in the data from each campaign, to drive decisions on a daily or at least weekly basis. A Scum approach allows for this.

The People on a Scrum Email Team

There are three primary roles within a Scrum Team (at least as defined by the original Scrum approach…but this can be flexible):

1. Project Owner
2. Creator Team (or Developer Team)
3. Scrum master

How can this apply to your email team?

Project Owner

A project owner’s main responsibility is to maximize the value of the Scrum team and oversee the project backlog of tasks, ideas, and campaigns. They clearly define and prioritize what the team can be working on during sprints, and has an eye on finding those sprints that can have the most impact on the business for the least cost.

This will likely vary across your teams, but an Email Marketing Manager or Email Loyalty Manager fits this role well. Sometimes it could be a Digital Marketing Manager or VP of Marketing who has their sights set, not only email, but also how email also fits into the larger scope. Regardless, this is one person. One very important person.

Creator Team

The Creator Team (or developer team in software development parlance) includes people who produce a “releasable increment of the product”. Or, in other words – a finished sprint. As you can imagine, this creator team can be quite fluid depending on the sprint. This team can consist of any configuration of email marketers, copywriters, designers, CRM specialists, data engineers, and on and on. If the sprint goal is to create a new template, it more likely involves designers and copywriters, compared to a sprint that is trying to create a new segment.

Scrum Master

A Scrum Master serves the role of advisor on the project. They help everyone understand and put into practice the Scrum framework through advice, coaching, and ensuring the process is being followed properly. When everyone’s head is down on their work, it’s easy to forget or deprioritize important elements like daily scrums, prioritizing sprint items, and ensuring a deliverable’s scope doesn’t evolve.

A Scrum Master often contributes to the Creator team as well, so this role can be filled by the Email Marketing Manager, a designer or someone else on the Creator team. Sometimes, however, a Scrum Master is outside the Creator team and serves this role for multiple different teams, such as VP Marketing or Digital Marketing Manager.

Creating an Email Campaign Using Scrum

To help illustrate, let’s look at an example of where you can apply Scrum to email. And where else could be better than the peak of email every year – Black Friday. In a traditional workflow, perhaps the waterfall methodology, you would:

• Define the project: determine, perhaps 2-3 months in advance the campaign you want to send on Black Friday to drive the most clicks or traffic to your store.
• Build: you would then follow your plan or Gantt chart to a T, ensuring that you first create a template, then add copy, then add segments, and so forth.
• List: Now, with Black Friday just around the corner and your series of campaigns set up, you would then send a few tests to make sure they look good in all inboxes.
• Send: Now, you trigger your campaigns and hope for the best.

This approach is solid, and probably the one you are pretty familiar with. Plan a campaign, build it, send it, move on.

A Scrum-based approach, however, breaks up this large plan (or this large gamble) into smaller component parts. It lets you test the components along the way contributing to a more validated, and more informed series of campaigns come Black Friday.

Let’s take a look.

Project Backlog

The project backlog is essentially your master to-do list. Within this list are the tasks, ideas, and enhancements for the larger project.

For Black Friday, this could include things like:

• • Create new templates for each email
  • Integrate your user data into your ESP
  • Create a dynamic recommendation section to ensure sale items are personalized
  • Write copy to promote each sale item
  • And so on.

Sprint Backlog

A sprint backlog is the subset of this list that the Project Owner (with input from all stakeholders) has decided should be the next priority. They decide on a short time-bound “sprint” to accomplish these tasks. Perhaps, for Black Friday, the first priority is to ensure that you have well-defined segments ready for the Black Friday campaign.

So, in this backlog, you could include tasks like creating segments based on past buyer behavior. Rather than waiting until Black Friday to refine and define these segments, Scrum allows you to create your segment months ahead of time, test it, and using the data you get back you can also improve the granularity of these segments.

Daily Scrums

Daily scrums, or stand-up-meetings, are an important part of Scrum. They are the daily meetings that your team has to go over: (1) what have you since the last stand up, (2) what you are working on today, and (3) what are you facing to get your task done. This breeds accountability, collaboration, and consistent progress throughout the sprint.

Increments

Increments are essentially the “releases” of each sprint. The delivery you send out to the world. When developing an app, this could be a new feature release. In email, this could be sending a new campaign or publishing a new template.

Our sprint above could result in building new segments and sending a new promotion. We can now use that data to continually improve our segmentation strategy leading up to Black Friday.

Sprint Review

After the release of your increment, or campaign, a sprint review (or sprint retrospect) reviews how the previous sprint has gone. What did you accomplish, what problems did you encounter, and what new information did you gain that you can then use for future sprints?

Our segmentation sprint ahead of Black Friday could have revealed new interesting user data such as designs and templates that could work for one segment over to another. Perhaps you learned that certain segments respond to “sale” messaging differently. You can use this information for future sprints and for the ultimate Black Friday campaign.

So Scrum is for anyone and everyone?

No, of course not. Scrum is a set of guiding principles that can help you define and deliver your projects in a more consistent, evolving nature. Is that for everyone? No.

Is it for every email team? No, not necessarily. Some teams may have less of a need to create, test, and adapt. Some teams may be small enough that they don’t need to consider how to bring cross-functional teams together.

But, as email teams grow and become more cross-functional (especially in enterprise organizations), then we need to reconsider the linear approach to how your team builds and sends emails. Perhaps an iterative approach is best for you.

So what’s next? We have three recommendations for you:

• 1. Identify who’s on your team, including those who don’t contribute daily
  2. Find projects that have a big goal and a long time frame. Make small bets, not big gambles
  3. Turn one email project into a scrum email project (new template, new campaign, etc.)

When you're employing an all-star salesperson who closes deal after deal, it's disheartening when that rep decides to leave. Not just because the departure impacts your bottom line, but because it contributes to a notorious and ongoing problem in sales departments across the country: a high sales employee turnover rate.

Employee turnover for salespeople remains high for many reasons, both in and out of your control, and it's up to the leaders of your sales department to:

• Know your sales department's employee turnover rate.
• Understand the reasons why your turnover rate sits where it is.
• Take proactive steps to lower your sales employee turnover rate.

What is Sales Employee Turnover Rate?

Sales employee turnover rate measures the percentage of employees who leave a company's sales department in a given period of time. It is calculated by dividing the number of employees who leave the sales organization in a given period of time by the average number of employees in the sales department for that same period of time.

The average sales turnover rate is 35%, compared to an average turnover rate for all industries of 13%. In other words, sales turnover rate is nearly triple the average employee turnover rate.

Yikes. But why is sales turnover rate so high?

The truth is, there's no one reason. Sales employee turnover rates tend to be higher than other professions due to a competitive landscape for talent and an increasing demand for new sales hires, underperformance, and dissatisfaction with compensation — to name a few. We'll get into more reasons and what you can do to lower your sales turnover rate a little later in the article.

But first, let's do some math.

How to Calculate Sales Employee Turnover Rate

If you want to calculate and document your sales employee turnover rate, download our sales employee turnover rate metrics calculator. You can record your sales turnover rate over time to see how your employee retention efforts are paying off.

Download this Calculator for Free

To calculate your sales employee turnover rate, you'll need the following information:

• A specific time frame (a year, a quarter, etc.).
• The number of employees at the start of that time period.
• The number of employees at the end of that time period.
• The number of employees lost during that time period.

The image below outlines the two different formulas you can use to calculate sales employee turnover rate:

Let's put this formula into action. Say you want to know your sales employee turnover rate for last year. You had 20 BDRs on January 1, and 28 on December 31. During this period of time, though, 8 BDRs quit or were fired.

Our variables are:

• Lost Employees in the Year: 8
• Employees at the Start of the Year: 20
• Employees at the Start of the Year: 28
• Average Number of Employees for the Year: 24

Here's how we'd do the math out.

Sales Employee Turnover Rate = Lost Employees ÷ Average Number of Employees

Sales Employee Turnover Rate = 8 ÷ 24

Sales Employee Turnover Rate = 33.33%

8 ÷ 24 simplifies to ⅓, meaning your sales employee turnover rate for BDRs would be 33.33% for the year.

Remember, if you want to simplify the math and let us crunch the numbers for you, just use our sales employee turnover rate metrics calculator.

How to Lower Sales Employee Turnover Rate and Increase Employee Retention

Fortunately, there are concrete steps you can take to reduce the number of salespeople who leave your organization. Here are a few of our favorites.

1. Calculate and track employee turnover numbers

The first step to improving your turnover rate is knowing your turnover rate. Calculating it regularly and documenting rates over time in one central location will show you how your turnover rate is changing and give you insight into whether or not your employee retention efforts are working.

Featured Resource: Sales Employee Turnover Rate Calculator

Download this Calculator for Free

We suggest calculating your sales employee turnover rate every month, quarter, half-year, or year (depending on the size of your sales team) with a sales metrics calculator. This will give you confidence in the turnover rate that's reached and allow you to compare dips and improvements in the number.

2. Run an employee NPS

An employee net promoter score, or an eNPS, is a survey sent to employees asking how likely they are to recommend working for your company on a scale of 0 to 10. You can learn more about how to calculate net promoter score here.

Typically, NPS surveys include an optional follow-up question as to why respondents submitted the number they did. Analyze the responses from promoters to understand what you're doing well to retain employees and the responses from dissatisfied or passive employees to learn more about what changes you can make.

The very fact that you run an eNPS survey is a great retention tactic as well. It shows salespeople you're eager for their feedback and want to make changes to keep them happy and employed at your company.

3. Compensate fairly

Salespeople work for you because they need to get paid. 89% of top-performing sales reps who leave their jobs say it's due to insufficient sales compensation.

We're not here to tell you the best compensation model for your sales team — that will vary for every business based on product and service pricing models, the age and size of the business, and the differences between salespeoples' performance. All we will say is poorly perceived sales compensation can be directly traced to high sales turnover. Ensure you have a model in place that works for your company and your salespeople.

4. Create a crystal-clear hiring and onboarding process

According to Gallup, the second highest cause of employee turnover is when an employee is a poor fit for the job.

Sometimes, employees are hired even though they're not necessarily the right fit for your sales team. You can ensure you bring more qualified people onto your sales team by asking better sales interview questions to see if someone would thrive in your company.

On top of that, sometimes employees feel like they're not a good fit for the role because expectations were not made clear. Once employees join your sales team, give them a sales onboarding and training plan with clear goals and expectations for their role so they can better understand how to thrive and operate.

Featured Resource: Sales Training and Onboarding Template 

Download this Template for Free

5. Offer clear paths for advancement

I can say this with almost complete certainty: no one wants to cold call for their whole life. Entry-level BDRs typically have their sights set on inside or outside sales, account executive, or even sales manager roles. If these employees don't see a path to one of these roles, there's a good chance they'll look for that upward mobility elsewhere.

Be up front with employees about what opportunities exist beyond their current sales roles, what it will take to advance, and a rough timeline of how long it will take to get there.

Pro Tip: Avoid giving a specific date as to when a promotion may happen, as this can disappoint and frustrate employees if it's not met exactly. Instead, say something along the lines of "If X, Y, and Z are met by the end of this quarter, I'm fairly confident we'll be able to move you officially into your new role within three to six months after that."

6. Be open about your sales plan

Another big reason for sales turnover is a perceived lack of connection with or view of incompetency of leadership. Given how hectic and stressful working in sales can be, it's understandable when the big picture gets lost — but it's not excusable if that's causing a high turnover rate.

One best practice is to document and share your company's sales plan. Offering transparency about your sales team, process, and goals to your salespeople gives them the insight needed to rally behind leadership's aspirations for the company and tactics to realize them.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

Download this Template for Free

7. Put poor performers on improvement plans

Unfortunately, you may have to make the decision to raise your turnover rate by letting poor-performing salespeople go. This is never easy or fun, so taking action to reduce these terminations though performance improvement plans can help turn things around.

If employees aren't meeting quota, set up a clear path to what needs to be done to stay employed and what resources are available to them. Hold sales managers accountable for their teams' success and performance, and encourage them to ensure employees operate at peak performance.

Lowering Your Sales Employee Turnover Rate

While sales turnover is almost as inevitable as death or taxes, there are crucial and clear steps you can take to understand the cause of turnover in your business and lower it for a happier, more productive sales team.

One of the best ways to do this is by periodically calculating, monitoring, and comparing your sales turnover rate with a sales turnover rate calculator — which you can download for free here.

Even the most “optimized” landing pages — with a clean design, simple form, compelling image, strong value proposition, etc.— will fall short if it’s intended to serve your entire audience.

That shortcoming continues to be more costly. PPC campaigns are more expensive; organic search is more competitive.

So how do you keep from wasting clicks? By segmenting your audience based on awareness. Once you understand what they need, you’ll be able to give it to them — and generate more conversions.

This post walks through each stage of audience awareness to show you:

1. How to identify customers who likely fall into each stage;
2. Channels in which to target those potential buyers;
3. Landing page principles that will help reach them effectively.

Segmentation by audience awareness

A post-click landing page that converts customers on your email list (who already know about your brand and what you do) needs to convey a different message than the one that tries to convert cold traffic (people who have no idea who you are).

Creating an audience segment groups together similar audiences to help you create relevant marketing messages (ads, landing pages, emails, etc.) that address their specific needs so they have a better chance of converting on your page.

Schwartz’s 5 stages of awareness

Eugene Schwartz presented 5 stages of audience awareness in his book Breakthrough Advertising. Although the book was published in 1952, marketers and copywriters everywhere still use its ideas to better understand how to market to audiences.

Each stage of awareness signifies the degree to which the prospect understands:

• Their pain points;
• Solutions they can take to alleviate their pain ;
• Your product as a solution ;
• Your product’s ability to solve their problem.

The 5 stages of awareness are:

1. Most Aware. The prospect knows about their problem and your product and is looking for the right offer.
2. Product Aware. The prospect knows about your product but isn’t sure if it’s the right one for them.
3. Solution Aware. The prospect knows what they want, but doesn’t know if your product provides it.
4. Problem Aware. The prospect senses that they have a problem but doesn’t know that there is a solution for it.
5. Completely Unaware. The prospect has no knowledge of the problem or solution.

Tailoring landing pages to the level of audience awareness can help you present the right information at the right time.

For example, let’s say that you’re selling invoice-generating software to two different customers:

• Customer 1 wants to create better invoices for clients but doesn’t know such a solution exists (problem aware).
• Customer 2 is looking for invoice-generating software, but they just haven’t decided which one to purchase (product aware).

Your landing page should focus on different issues:

• Customer 1: The landing page copy and other elements will highlight how your product can help them solve their problems.
• Customer 2: The landing page will focus on explaining the benefits they’ll get when they choose your solution. Explain pricing points, list features—differentiate your offering from others on the market.

But how do you identify which visitor is Customer 1 or Customer 2? By traffic source. The traffic source—while not a guarantee—helps you understand the general awareness level of most visitors.

For instance, a user runs a Google search for “versatile conference cameras” is likely in the “solution aware” stage: They know they need a conference camera with a particular feature (versatility) but don’t necessarily know which brand or brands they’re interested in.

In this case, Google returns an ad for the Meeting Owl conference camera:

Since the user is aware they have a problem for which the conference camera is the solution, the landing page focuses on explaining the features of the product and how the product works:

Here’s how to apply those same insights to every stage of awareness.

1. Creating landing pages for “Most Aware” audiences

The Most Aware audience segment includes prospects who are already familiar with your brand and know about your product.

Who falls into this category?

These prospects probably already signed up to your email newsletter, subscribe to your blog, or follow you on social media. They could also include users who have bought something from you in which case you can up-sell or cross-sell to them or users who were on the verge of buying but didn’t.

Which channels should you use to target them?

You can target Most Aware audiences via the following channels:

• Email. For audiences who’ve already subscribed to your blog or have signed up for an offer, you can use email landing pages to guide them toward additional offers.
• Retargeting. These are for audiences who’ve already visited your website or clicked an ad and landed on your landing page.
• Social media. Use social media posts to direct them toward a specific offer.
• Brand-specific PPC campaigns. You can also target Most Aware audiences with relevant landing pages when they type brand-specific queries in search engines (including competitor brands).

Which questions does the landing page need to answer?

Landing pages for Most Aware audiences should answer the following questions:

• What other solutions do we offer? (this is for existing customers who you are trying to upsell or cross-sell to)
• What are the benefits of your product/service?
• How much does it cost?
• How successful have past visitors been with your product?

Include images or videos that showcase how your product works, how easy it is to use, and then guide them toward a call-to-action for purchase or trial (depending on your acquisition strategy).

For example, Grammarly uses email marketing to upsell Grammarly Business to existing customers. The landing page highlights the product’s benefits, mentions the price, features a customer testimonial, and includes a call-to-action that takes the visitor directly to a sign up form:

2. Creating landing pages for “Product Aware” audience

Product Aware audiences know about your brand and product but are still hesitant to buy because they can’t determine if your product is the best solution for them.

Who falls into this category?

Product Aware audiences have visited your website or sales page and maybe even signed up for a free offer, but they haven’t converted yet into customers.

Which channels should you use to target them?

You can target Product Aware audiences via the following channels:

• Remarketing ads. Use remarketing campaigns to reach visitors who visited your website but left without signing upon buying your product.
• Email marketing. If you have the user’s personal information, you can also reach them with remarketing campaigns through email marketing.

Which questions does the landing page need to answer?

Landing pages for Product Aware audiences should answer the following questions:

• Why should the user choose your solution? (Reinforce the user’s desire for the product).
• How does your product work?
• Why is your product the best at solving the audience’s problem?
• How does it stand out from other products in the market?

Use customer testimonials to highlight how your product offers the best solution in the market. Product Aware audiences are likely already familiar with your product category and, possibly, your specific product. You may be able to gloss over (or skip entirely) the basic features or benefits of your solution.

Let’s look at Workamajig’s remarketing ad and landing page that promotes a product demo. The page has minimal copy and features an image of the product dashboard supplemented by a video on how the product works:

A Vimeo remarketing ad leads to this long-form page. It features pricing options along with features and benefits of the product:

3. Creating landing pages for “Solution Aware” audiences

Solution Aware audiences know that there is a solution to their problem, they just don’t know that you have the solution.

Who falls into this category?

You’re likely to find these audiences on top-of-funnel blog posts or downloading gated content relevant to their problem. For example, a user who is struggling to set up PPC campaigns may register for a webinar from a PPC agency or read blog posts that describe how to set up successful paid campaigns. The approach with Solution Aware audiences is to warm them up with content that explains how your solution helps solve their problem transitioning them from one awareness stage to the other.

Which channels should you use to target them?

You can target Solution Aware audiences via the following channels:

• Organic search. Lead magnets on blog posts can help capture emails from prospective clients and showcase the potential value of your solution.
• Squeeze pages: These short on-screen pages persuade users to give you their contact information in exchange for a content resource (such as a guide, ebook, or worksheet) that helps them solve their problem.

Use psychographics data such as user activities, interests, and opinions to create strong customer personas that help make sure that your squeeze page offer and messaging are relevant to the user. You can collect psychographic data from Google Analytics and customer surveys. Use the Reports tab and then select Audience > Demographics or Audience > Interests. Then, review the Demographics Overview report to analyze the high-level view of your audience from there you can click the ‘Other Category’ dimension to look at interests of the demographic groups.

Which questions does the landing page need to answer?

Landing pages for Solution Aware audiences should answer the following questions:

• Is there a solution to their problem?
• How does your product solve their problem?
• What benefits/features does your solution offer?

You’re soft-selling to Solution Aware audiences, so your landing page messaging should build rapport. Inform prospects about how your solution can solve their problem.

Kuno Creative launched a content and remarketing campaign for a medical manufacturer to generate leads and improve brand recognition among dialysis professionals. To improve brand recognition, Kuno created relevant content with blog posts, ebooks, etc. When a user engaged with the content, the agency retargeted them with gated material encouraging them to learn more — moving users down the funnel to a demo landing page. The new demo page focused on the product’s UVP and features, guiding audiences to the new demo landing page lead to a 283% increase in conversions and adding $30,000 potential revenue per sale.

Here is the comparison of the old Contact Us page and the new, optimized, demo landing page:

The Instapage Preferred Partner program landing page highlights how the solution can help agencies without overwhelming them with product-specific information:

4. Creating landing pages for “Problem Aware” audiences

Problem Aware audiences know they have a problem but are unaware of your brand. They aren’t subscribed to your blog and don’t receive your newsletter.

Who falls into this category?

You can mostly find these audiences through PPC ads on search engines and social media.

Their search queries will likely be broad but not product/feature specific. For instance, a user having trouble managing social media campaigns may search for “how to run social media campaigns” rather than “social media management tools.”

Which channels should you use to target them?

You can target Problem Aware audiences via the following channels:

• PPC ads. Create ad campaigns on search and social media that target these “problem-focused” queries. Use relevant long-tail keywords.

Which questions does the landing page need to answer?

Landing pages for Problem Aware audiences should answer the following questions:

• What is their problem?
• Why do they need to solve their problem?
• How is your product a solution to their problem?
• Have people with the same problem succeeded with your solution?

The landing page for Problem Aware audiences should show audiences that you understand their pain. Focusing on customer testimonials that showcase how past users solved the same problem can be a powerful tool.

After a click from a PPC ad, Trello introduces users to their product, focusing on how it can help companies achieve their goal of easy collaboration:

5. Creating landing pages for “Completely Unaware” audiences

Creating landing pages for Completely Unaware audiences is the toughest feat because although these audiences are logical prospects of your product, they aren’t aware of your product and that they need it.

As Schwartz puts it:

‘And finally—the most difficult. The prospect is either not aware of his desire or his need—or he won’t honestly admit it to himself without being lead into it by your ad—or the need is so general and amorphous that it resists being summed up in a single headline—or it’s a secret that just can’t be verbalized.

This is the outer reach of the awareness scale. These are the people who are still the logical prospects for your product; and vet, in their own minds, they are hundreds of miles away from accepting that product. It is your job to bridge that gap. ‘

These audiences are your classic cold traffic. They don’t know who you are, that your product exists, or that you can solve a problem for them.

Who falls into this category?

Completely Unaware Audiences have matching characteristics with your target audience but haven’t yet connected with your brand on social media, your website, or landing pages.

Which channels should you use to target them?

You can target Completely Unaware audiences via the following channels:

• Google Ads: Use Google Ads’ Audience Search and Audience Ideas features to help with audience targeting and create ad campaigns. The Audience Search feature helps you find additional audiences that are also related to your search terms.

Audience Ideas helps you select the right audience for your product or brand and improve your reach by surfacing audiences in your target market. You can suggest which audiences will be better suited for your ads. Google Ads will use suggestions for large amounts of aggregated advertising data, which can help you reach the audience best for your ads and potentially help you discover new audiences.

• Social Media Ads: Use social media ads like Facebook Ads to target audiences that share similar traits with your target audience. For example, Lookalike Audiences can include and exclude people that meet specific criteria. Selecting the option will automatically include or exclude people who meet your added criteria. You can also use the narrowing audience action to target people who meet all your criteria. However, be careful when creating narrow audience lists so that it’s not too specific that it becomes ineffective.

Australian Jewelry company Belle Fever used a combination of Facebook Similar Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, video ads, and Messenger to increase their customers by 65% and their revenue by 3.5%.

The company wanted to find more customers using a gameplay sequence with a video click-to-Messenger ad. They used the Facebook Pixel to track and target to users who hadn’t bought anything from the website for 180 days and also used Lookalike Audiences to target users similar to these audiences. Ultimately, the campaign was a success leading to a 4x return on ad spend.

Which questions does the landing page need to answer?

Landing pages for Completely Unaware audiences should answer the following questions:

• What is your product?
• Does it solve a problem?
• How does it solve the problem?
• What makes your brand credible?

The page should highlight what your product can do, then offer something for free to warm up your audience. Shorter pages are likely to work better: These users are most likely browsing your page without the intent to buy, so they have a shorter attention span.

Noom’s display ad and landing page offers prospects a smarter way to lose weight. When you click the landing page call-to-action button, you’re asked to enter your weight, height, age, and eating habits. Once submitted, they request your email address to send a free personalized eating and workout schedule:

Now that Noom has the user’s email address, they can then start sending users content that tells them more about Noom’s solution.

Conclusion

What helps you convert prospects on landing pages? Creating landing pages that take into account the user’s awareness level.

Segment audiences based on their awareness level. Your campaigns and bottom line will both thank you.

The term ‘revenue enablement’ has recently surfaced in our industry conversation, which may raise an eyebrow given the rapidly evolving sales enablement category itself is still emerging. This article offers a perspective on this new term’s definition and aims to establish clarity about its place in our larger category dialogue.

Let’s begin with perspective from our friends at SiriusDecisions:

“An increasing number of sales enablement functions are responsible for supporting not only quota-bearing sales reps, but also additional buyer-facing roles (e.g. customer success, channel sellers, sales engineers, marketing personnel). The common thread among these roles is that they are all part of the organization’s revenue engine — the go-to-market functions responsible for revenue growth. Businesses are starting to recognize new terminology — e.g. “revenue operations” and “revenue enablement” — to align goals, practices, and initiatives among these interlocked buyer- and customer-facing employees.”

–Sales Enablement: Planning Assumptions 2020, August 2019

The sales enablement category is already full of unique vocabulary that can potentially disorient the very people most likely to benefit from enablement technology itself. So, before we examine yet another new term, let’s establish context.

Sales Enablement Is a Hot Topic

Sales enablement — the strategic, ongoing process of equipping sales teams with the content, guidance, and training they need to effectively engage buyers — has become table stakes for companies everywhere. This year’s State of Sales Enablement report found that more than 79% of respondents have a sales enablement practice in place, or are planning to by year’s end. Why? A major factor is that sales success and high customer retention are increasingly difficult to achieve in a hyper-competitive global marketplace. In fact, Gartner recently reported that the “B2B buying process is markedly nonlinear and has increased in complexity. An average buying team consists of seven to 13 active participants, depending on deal size, plus additional occasional stakeholders” (“Use Buyer Enablement Content to Increase Deal Velocity and Shorten Sales Cycles,” August 2019).

As sales enablement has gained widespread popularity, the broadening conversation has evolved to include many more voices. This, of course, introduces new perspectives that advance the dialogue but also introduces different terms and definitions as the category matures.

Revenue Enablement Enters the Conversation

SiriusDecisions’ examination of revenue enablement is worth considering:

“The core competencies addressed by the traditional sales enablement function — supporting the effectiveness of talent, assets, and communications in buyer-facing interactions — naturally overlap among all staff who deal directly with prospects and customers; these groups can benefit from the same types of empowerment.”

Put simply, there are many roles in your company that talk to customers and can benefit from the guidance, content, and training that are core to successful enablement. SiriusDecisions identifies a number of revenue-generating or revenue-associated roles in their definition of revenue enablement, including customer success, channel sellers, sales engineers, and marketing personnel. All of these teams need to have effective customer conversations and, as sales enablement has gained greater mindshare across organizations, it makes sense to consider their needs in the process.

Terms Aside, the Goal is Strategic Growth

The current thinking about revenue enablement is interesting, but still doesn’t encompass all of the roles that need to effectively communicate with customers. For example, support and services are two major groups that frequently play important roles in delivering world-class customer experience. However, these groups are less associated with directly generating revenue and are more often focused on high customer satisfaction and retention. In our view, these outcomes, combined with growing revenue, make up what we call strategic growth — sustainable growth across revenue, customer satisfaction, and retention.

For everyone who talks to a customer at any stage of the relationship, from the first discovery call to troubleshooting a deployment issue, a positive and effective engagement boils down to what they know, what they say, and what they show. As the enablement category continues to evolve and play an increasingly larger role in overarching customer experience initiatives, we can expect to see multiple terms arise to describe the basic concept of giving customer-facing roles what they need, when and where they need it, to elevate customer conversations. Regardless of the terminology, the goal isn’t revenue at any cost; it’s strategic growth, which, at its core, is driven by delighting customers at every turn.

Interested in becoming part of the active and evolving enablement conversation? Read the 2019 State of Sales Enablement report to get familiar with the current state.

I’ve encountered many in B2B who say they’re struggling to find success with social channels and, portfolio-wide, to convert qualified leads to opportunities. Some struggle to just find qualified leads.

Not surprisingly, these same advertisers all fall short in adopting the six strategies I’ve found to be integral to building and maintaining healthy social ROI. So, before throwing in the towel and letting competitors sweep in on your misfortunes (typically, misunderstandings), adopt these key strategies to find success on social with your B2B account.

1. Warm up your leads before bringing them down the pipeline, then nurture those audiences

When was the last time you came across a brand’s ad for the first time on Facebook or LinkedIn, went directly to the landing page, bought in at a high price-point contract, and started using the software all in the same window session/sitting?

If you’re like all other good business leaders, this has most likely never happened, as your goal is to vet out your options and truly understand each solution’s offering and capabilities at each price point. So, why do you expect your prospective customers to first hear about your brand or offering and follow through to conversion in one go?

The answer is to warm up these targets by giving them ways to learn about your brand or solution, and how others are finding success with it. Too many times I’ve taken on accounts that are sending users to a landing page to start a trial or demo, and they can’t figure out why they have a poor trial or demo-to-contract-signed CVR. Marketers must understand that on social, especially when prospecting, this is interruptive marketing—you should hold your potential customer’s hand through the pipeline with strong content and nurture strategies.

2. Solve for pain points with content (and keep testing!)

Your sales team is sitting on a mountain of valuable qualitative information. They’re contacting users at different stages of the funnel, fielding their questions, and hoping to solve their pain points. Yet, most marketing teams are either oblivious to the fact that this information is out there, or are too busy to use it. Interestingly, teams like this also often have issues moving users down the pipeline!

Just by holding recurring meetings with select sales staff or mining for this qualitative data out of Salesforce, marketers can understand prospects’ pain points and match or create new content to help solve for them. Once the content is ready, you can upload these audiences into social channels and serve the appropriate content piece tailored for that audience segment. Then, you can continue to build on this approach by testing content pieces against one another at each stage to find the optimal performance and user experience.

3. Test your attribution models and understand incremental impact

The vast majority of social traffic is on mobile, yet conversion paths and actions are still typically designed for desktop. This leads to attribution models typically showing social yielding poor acquisition costs, with even greater drop-offs when comparing to backend data. Given that social is mostly an upper-funnel channel to help find new audiences, it’s important to ensure that your attribution model can account for this drop in data.

There a few ways to do this, chief being multi-touch attribution (MTA) models (Facebook even has its own built-in and available for all advertisers) and incrementality testing. I recommend a mix of both because even MTA isn’t perfect at truly understanding performance at all of the user touchpoints along the journey of a long sales cycle.

Advertisers who fail to adopt these practices into their models will also fail to understand a channel’s true performance, which will then lead them to misguided budget allocations. Ultimately, this drives advertisers to pull funding from social, and opens the door for their competitors to fill their pipeline with these new leads.

4. Adopt in-platform AI product features and
work smarter

Similar to B2C, B2B marketers can and should be adopting most AI product features available in these social platforms in order to work smarter and leaner. Facebook specifically has grown its AI product sets, including solutions that find the best budget distribution across audiences, placements, and even the best creative messaging mix.

With only a few additional optimizations, B2B advertisers can use these tools to find success. Advertisers who work with AI will find themselves running more efficient accounts with better opportunities to scale.

5. Feed AI with as much data as you can

While AI can be a powerful tool, it must be fed ample amounts of data to find the best solution for each advertiser. The more touchpoints you can identify as a conversion event and feed back into each platform, the stronger AI will work for you.

With each standard event identified on the site, the AI platform will match that standard event in its black box of data of all advertisers’ standard events to find similar users in a similar market / vertical. This allows you to use your own data warehouse, plus each platform’s data warehouse, to match audiences and drive performance on the channel.

For B2B advertisers, it’s important to match these standard events to valuable event triggers on the website—for example, defining a blog subscriber as a shallower event than someone who submits a form for a demo video. (But, to each their own—understand your funnel and website user journey).

6. Find success on LinkedIn for improved pipeline performance

LinkedIn is a valuable channel that’s getting left in the dust due to high costs shallow in the funnel or even at the delivery stage. I’ve found LinkedIn to drive more quality audiences down the funnel at more efficient costs deeper in the buyer journey, despite having over 400% higher CPM or CPLs. To help get you started, follow this proven step-by-step guide to unlocking success on LinkedIn.

I’ve tested these strategies with B2B clients again and again and have always found that they help strengthen the account’s performance. Before Q4 is officially upon us, take the time to reassess your brand’s standing on social platforms. If you find that there’s room for improvement (hot tip, there’s always room for improvement), dedicate some time to exploring these avenues – your bottom line will thank you.

My colleagues at WordWrite often joke about my unofficial role as an expert on famous film quotes. I’ve come by that title honestly — it’s no secret how much I enjoy going to the movies.

My most recent trip took me to see “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Quentin Tarantino’s latest spotlights the declining career of a once-famous actor, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the death of the traditional studio system, both of which are coinciding with the rise of “auteur” filmmaking and the counterculture movement. The chief conceit of the story has DiCaprio’s character living next door to Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s wife and one of the victims of the Manson family murders.

In his review for entertainment website Collider, Gregory Ellwood expertly frames the lasting impact of that horrific crime. “The faux innocence meticulously managed by the big studio machines had been fading for a decade, but it was truly lost that night,” he writes. It’s not at all a spoiler to reveal Tarantino clearly wishes the entertainment world of his childhood had lasted at least a little bit longer.

Fast forward to 2019 and we’re living in another transitional era in entertainment and media consumption, thanks to streaming services, tablets and other portable devices.

In the communications world, instant accessibility to information has presented us with significant challenges in the most effective ways to share our clients’ stories, messages and thought leadership with their key target audiences. Cutting through this noise becomes even harder when factoring in the slow death of traditional “earned” media outlets like daily newspapers.

Gone are the days when agency professionals can measure their value primarily via media hits, placements and press release pickups. A combined 74 percent of CEOs polled for the 2019 USC Annenberg Global Communications Report said “shared” social media and “owned” content such as blogs, podcasts, webinars and websites would be considerably more valuable to their companies in the future than earned media (14 percent).

For good or bad, William J. Comcowich, the founder of media monitoring measurement service Glean.info, recently described in Ragan’s PR Daily how more than 60 percent of communications pros surveyed in the same report believe news consumers won’t be able to tell the difference between content written by reporters, paid for by a company or shared online via social media by another influencer. More revealing, 55 percent believe people won’t even care where this information is coming from.

To adapt to these changes, we’ve adopted a more holistic approach focused on the “PESO” (paid, earned, shared and owned) content model originally developed by Gini Dietrich in her book and blog, both titled “Spin Sucks.”

Effective delivery methods, strategies and service mix percentages will always be part of execution, and PESO is the most effective way to distribute the messages our clients share.

Increasingly, however, execution has become a table stake — clients expect any professional strategic communications partner to have the tools in place to uncover and share outputs.

But what about identifying the ideas that will deliver ROI and measurable business results for your clients, time and again?

At WordWrite, we always start by identifying a client’s Capital S Story – why someone should buy from you, work with you, invest in you or partner with you. We believe every organization has at least one great “untold” story to tell: its own.

Why is that story untold? Because too many businesses conflate their story with their brand, just like they overvalue execution above strategy. Modern public relations practices lack the perspective of the human experience rooted in our biological and cultural need to remember powerful stories. We’ve gone as far as creating a proprietary, service marked process called StoryCrafting to help businesses uncover, develop and share their Capital S Story in a world consistently filled with noise and clutter.

Think that’s too esoteric or far-fetched?

Recent industry insights (and our more than 100 years of combined experience as communications professionals) conclude that valuable expertise and wise counsel are far more important than execution for clients.

The Holmes Report moderated a roundtable with global brand executives in France earlier this summer. Feedback consistently revealed that providing solutions to 21st-century communications challenges is the best way to build, grow and sustain long-term client relationships.

Consider this powerful statement from Damon Jones, vice president for global communications and advocacy at Proctor & Gamble:

“My advice to agencies, is fall in love with the problems of your client at the highest level. If I think we’re thinking about the same things when we’re trying to get to sleep at night, we will have a very different relationship and very different conversations.

“The challenges I am facing are business challenges, and so I need people who really understand business strategy. There are a lot of people in our profession who don’t fundamentally understand business. But more and more, we need that business standpoint first and foremost to define the problem we are trying to solve.”

These comments might come as a revelation to some in our industry, but speaker, author and business advisor David Baker has been making the case for expertise over execution in his consulting work with more than 900 agencies since 1994. Among the many highlights from his book, “The Business of Expertise,” Baker suggests agencies use the following approach: two rooms, one entrance.

“Most firms are allowing new clients to enter either room from the outside, buying either a defined strategy plan first (their preference) or moving straight to execution (the entrance that tends to get the most use). Instead, close off the outside entrance to the larger implementation room, forcing all new clients to enter by the strategy room.”

Our big ideas, not our execution, are the keys to delighting clients and their audiences. They are also the keys to building a sustainable business with a culture that will attract and retain top talent to deliver the results you want to achieve for your partners.

Together, we can help you discover your Capital S Story and tell it using experts in your organization in a way that consistently engages your audiences.

Once upon a time, before you had a brand, you had a story. These days, we all need a good story to tell.

We’ve all been there. You make the call and boom, you’re blocked by the gatekeeper. They won’t let you get to the person you want to speak with.

First off, remember that the gatekeeper is only doing their joy by guarding the gate. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’ll let you pass but only if they feel that you are worthy. To understand how to get past them, you must put them in one of these two broad categories:

The first category is the admin / receptionist / security desk / or any other person who is responsible for stopping phone calls, unless they’re very important. The second category is the administrator who controls the schedules / sets the flow and often, actually runs the department you’re calling.

Video: How Do I Get Past the Gatekeeper:

You handle each one totally different, but it’s determined quickly which category they fall into. The secretary / receptionist rushes through the call, while the admin who runs the place is more engaging. In a perfect world, when you call, your objective is to have a name to ask for, not a position. There’s no harm in trying if you don’t know the name, but know that it will put you behind. Thankfully, getting a person’s name is becoming easier and easier with the web nowadays. I’ll deal with that in an upcoming blog post. Regardless, it’s still important for you to show them respect and understand they’re just doing their job. This is why I don’t view them as a gatekeeper but rather as a door opener. When asked the reason for your call, don’t smoke it or fake it. Be upfront and honest. Integrity is a must!!

State: I’m looking to discuss __________, or I was speaking with ___________ and thought it would be good for me to talk to __________ , or there have been quite a few changes with ____________ and I wanted to make sure _____ is up to date on them.

What you shouldn’t say is: I’m looking for whoever buys ________. If you say that, you’re getting yourself a ticket straight to the purchasing department. If they say they’re not available, ask when might be a good time for you to call back. If they say the person is unavailable, then ask if they might know the answer to _____ and ask them one of the questions you would have asked the decision maker if you had been able to speak with them. I like this approach, because it allows the gatekeeper to begin seeing you as having value. Keep in mind that your goal is to use the gatekeeper as the door opener. Treat them in the same way that you would the decision maker if you were talking with them.

When the gatekeeper / door opener does connect you, say “just in case we get disconnected, what’s his/her extension?” If they are blocking you at all points, here are a few techniques to try:

-Ask for sales. It’s amazing how they always answer the phone!
-Call before 8 AM or after 5 PM
-Call a different office location
-Call a number just a few digits off from the main number
-Call Friday afternoon / over lunch
-Always call a different day / time and record it.
-Change up your phone numbers

When you have the gatekeeper’s name, use their name when you get someone else. For instance, you say: “This isn’t Barb, is it? Hi _________ great to meet you, I’m looking for _______ .” When doing that, it’s amazing how the “guest answerer” starts viewing you as somebody they should know. From then on, they will forgo the normal gatekeeper response and connect you. Don’t stop just because you’re getting blocked. Remember the same thing is happening to your competitor and chances are, they are not being as diligent as you are.

Be sure to download my ebook on 50 Prospecting Truths! 

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 Result

Sales managers often get promoted to their position from the rep ranks. When they were individual quota-carriers, it was relatively easy to assess their sales pipeline. Because they were intimately familiar with each of the deals in their forecast, they developed a sort of “sixth sense” about which would close, and when.

But assessing an entire team’s sales pipeline stages -- where the manager is not apprised of the ins and outs of each and every deal -- requires more than simple intuition. Managers must develop a more systematic process to test sales pipeline heath across the organization as a whole

The following three questions can help sales managers quickly and accurately assess their team’s sales pipeline -- no sixth sense required.

1. What shape is the sales pipeline?

The immediate image that pops into most sales reps’ and managers’ heads for the term “sales pipeline” is a funnel -- wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. This type of pyramid shape implies there’s a 3x multiple relationship between leads at the top and closed deals at the bottom. It’s with this shape in mind that some managers require their reps to have 3x the amount of deals they need to close in their pipeline at all times.

Unfortunately, this shape is inaccurate. A healthy sales pipeline doesn’t look like a funnel at all -- it looks like a wide-mouthed champagne or cocktail glass:

The most significant drop-off in the pipeline should be near the top -- when the lead reaches the first significant process milestone (for example, a demo or trial). After this milestone, the opportunity pool shouldn’t narrow much more. In other words, in a healthy sales pipeline, once a lead makes it past the first milestone, it should be highly likely that the opportunity closes and creates a new customer. A good sales manager will tolerate poor conversion rates early on (during qualification) in exchange for fantastic conversion rates later (close).

High-performing reps often maintain a 1.25x or 1.5x ratio of opportunities to deals in their pipelines, and this ratio mimics the champagne glass shape. If your team’s pipeline looks more like a funnel than a cocktail glass, it’s time to make some changes.

2. What’s the breakdown of revenue vs. units?

Since sales teams work off a revenue target, revenue is generally what sales managers focus on when assessing pipeline and forecasting. But by concentrating only on revenue, managers miss a crucial metric: units.

“Units” refers to the number of deals in the pipeline. For instance, let’s say a rep is working three deals, forecasted at $1, $100, and $1000, respectively. This pipeline contains $1101 in revenue, and three units.

Why care about units? There are two reasons. First, a pipeline containing a massive amount of revenue but a low number of units is risky. What happens if the $1 million deal falls through? The rep has nothing to fall back on to make up the lost revenue, and the entire team’s pipeline crumbles. Rather than focusing all their effort on closing the biggest deal in the pipeline, sales managers should instead think about the replacement plan if it falls through.

A metaphor I like to use when talking about revenue vs. units that helps to illustrate this point is weight vs. height. Let’s say I weigh 180 pounds. Is that good or bad? Well, you can’t make that determination unless you also know my height. Just like 180 pounds on a 5’0’’ frame is unhealthy, having a lot of revenue spread over just a few deals should be a red flag for sales managers.

In addition, tracking units can shed some light on sales reps’ bandwidth. Think about it: A deal worth 10x more in revenue probably doesn’t require 10x the amount of effort than a typical deal. Being mindful of units can help managers formulate a benchmark number of deals that one rep has the bandwidth to work at any given time.

3. When are deals purged from the pipeline?

Every rep knows to remove a deal from the pipeline when the customer buys from a competitor, or flat out says they aren’t interested. But what about the prospects that express interest and then go quiet? Reps often keep these deals in the pipeline for months and months, hoping that they can restart the buying conversation eventually.

However, while it’s fine for salespeople to check in with these prospects occasionally and try to rekindle the flame, it’s not okay for sales managers to allow these deals to stay in the pipeline indefinitely. To ensure you’re looking at a healthy pipeline, define a purge timeline (somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 days) and enforce it.

After a deal hits the 30-day mark with no activity, the manager should move it out of the pipeline and into a “deferred” bucket. Placing the deal into the “deferred” category allows the rep to continue working it but doesn’t affect the overall accuracy of the sales pipeline.

4. What’s the sales pipeline velocity? 

Sales velocity is crucial to assessing the health of your pipeline. There’s always a defining moment that reps drive toward to pivot the deal and close. This could be the proof of concept, the presentation, the trial, or an ROI calculator. 

It’s as if the prospect is doing their version of a car test drive. At that pivotal moment, the ability of the sales rep to control every element of the sale diminishes.

To prepare for the inevitable lack or loss of control with speed, it’s important reps understand they’re going to give up some grip on the steering wheel because they’re going faster. 

For example, if your prospect is taking your product on a test drive, try measuring the average number of touches and days necessary to get to that point in your pipeline — as well as the number of days it takes to close the deal after the trial. It should be faster to close the sale after the pivot. If not, take another look at the effectiveness of the trial experience.

A deal’s speed should get faster the closer you get to the close. Learn how to absorb the slowness of the deal and put fixes in place where necessary. 

5. What’s your historical discounting rate throughout the year?

It’s rare that reps use consistent discounting to close deals. Discounts are generally tethered to other things. If you’re using discounts regularly, ask yourself whether you’re discounting more at the end of the month or quarter and adjust your closing tactics accordingly. 

Are there certain months you’re discounting more than others? Maybe you didn’t prospect enough. And if there are certain line items you discount frequently — like training implementation — you might just be running afoul with your company’s efforts and losing rapport with your colleagues. 

The use of discounting identifies gaps in your pipeline. Be honest with yourself about why you’re offering discounts and improve your sales.

Pipeline management is one of sales managers’ most critical tasks. By asking these three questions, you can ensure a healthy pipeline that lays the groundwork for blowing revenue goals out of the water on a consistent basis. 

The post An Inside Look at How SurveyMonkey Overhauled Pricing After 10 Years appeared first on OpenView.

By Tibor Shanto

There is a lot of focus on storytelling in sales these days and for all the right reasons. Stories help spark the imagination, help people look beyond their limits. On a tactical level, stories help younger sellers level the playing field with more senior buyers, using stories as a form of validation. But as with other types of storytelling, without interesting themes and strong plot lines, it’s just another story. The best stories are those that specifically move the opportunity forward; for that.  The best stories are those told by the buyer, not the seller.

Getting buyers to tell their story is a challenge for many sellers. One reason for this is many confuse a good story with a polished pitch — a fatal error. Stories need to be engaging, a means of creating dialogue and exploring the specific situation from an alternative vantage point. A good story unfolds between buyer and seller, hard to do when sellers are taking up all the airtime.

The story not only seems to involve their product, but their product is always the hero. But the best stories are the ones where the buyer is the hero.  The hero for his company by delivering something over and above their expectations. These stories again, come from the prospect, not the seller.

Making Them The Hero

Getting the prospect to tell their story is more complicated. Especially when prospects have to end up as the hero, and it can’t be about your product (cause you left it in the car). Based on what buyers are saying today, sellers are not good at this.

The most immediate benefit to having buyers tell stories is learning how the buyer views things; what they believe may be a viable direction. You will also learn how they speak, jargon, likes, dislikes, and more.  This will all be a plus when it comes time to present your ideas. A simple way to start this practice, and to gain confidence, try asking a prospect, “what do you do better than your competitors?” Make sure you have a pad and pen. As we listen, we will learn what it will take to meet the buyer’s requirements and win the deal. That is the beauty of collaborative story building over pitching or just telling marketing stories.

The advantage of having buyers tell stories is in what they learn when they hear their own story. When buyers feel they learned something while collaborating with you, you will get the halo and bonus points. That won’t happen when we are telling the story.

So how do we get people to tell us the stories that will get prospects calm down and open up? There are several ways, at Renbor we favor a couple, here is a sample of one.

Help The Buyer Tell Their Story

The key is in the follow-through as much as the question if not more. Most salespeople stay close to the surface. They cover a lot of ground with their questions but rarely go deep or down far enough to make it count. I like to identify gaps in their thinking, after all, if you want them to learn, you need to cover new ground. Many sellers are good at creating a scenario where a prospect will present a challenge or shortcoming. This is where most sellers blow it; they see it as an invitation to run out to the car and introduce their product.

I see you shaking your head, but I bet if we recorded you, you do it too.

The alternative is to get the prospect to expand on their thinking. While the moment may seem right to bring out the pitch, ask some follow-up questions instead. My favorite, no matter what they say: “That’s interesting, what would you attribute that to?” So when a VP tells me that they are missing their new revenue target, rather than teeing up my Proactive Prospecting Program, I ask, “Really, what would you attribute that too?”

It’s About The Theme Not The Plot

To be honest, I rarely learn anything new, but the prospect does. When they hear themselves describe their reality, hearing the actual words, they see their reality in an entirely new light. And best it is coming from their mouth. But we are not ready to pitch yet.

“So if you were able to hit your stated goal for revenue from new logos, what would be the impact?” This is the part you don’t want to rush. Ask follow up questions, make them go deep. Remember they have learned to live with the shortcoming, especially if you called them. You need to allow them to get emotionally reinvested in the effort. Without that, they won’t act. But if you can make them believe that they can hit their goal, they are more inclined to move towards it.

We’re not done yet, once we exhaust all the upside of addressing their stated scenario, follow up with “How long can you sustain the current situation without change?” Most people will revert back to where they were before you leave the parking lot. This is why you need them to clearly articulate this risk for themselves. It will always sound truer than when you say it.

There are more steps, all part of Objective-Based Discovery, because change does go deep. Most salespeople are in such a hurry to get to the product and pitching; they fail to create an opportunity for the buyer to actually want to buy.

There are a number of other steps in the flow, but they all have one common element.  That is allowing the prospect to tell their story, uninterrupted, mostly for their own consumption.

The post The Best Stories Are Told By Buyers appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

By Tibor Shanto

Looking to the past as a means of moving prospects forward may seem counterintuitive.  Done right, it can help you accelerate opportunities.  It not only gives you a clear view as to how they think and buy.  It also allows the prospect to reflect on their past purchases, what worked what didn’t and more.  I know we are all in a hurry to close the deal but step back to give you more insight and momentum with buyers.

It is as much for the prospect as it is for you, and it always serves the deal.

So what can you learn from looking at past deals to move current prospects forward?

The post Looking To The Past To Move Prospects Forward appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Too often, I’m in reviews with sales people whining, “The customer is irrational!”

They go through a litany of complaints, including:

“They don’t understand our products and why they are superior…..” (Of course it’s not their job to do that.)

“They keep changing their minds….”

“They aren’t being logical, we’ve presented all the data/analysis, it should be obvious….”

and on and on and on…..

The net of it seems to be “customers are behaving irrationally when they don’t do the things we want them to do.”

There’s the managerial version of the same thing, whining about their people. You know all the complaints, but it always comes down to, “our people are behaving irrationally, they aren’t doing the things we tell them to do.”

The reality, unless the customers or our people have been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness, is they always behave rationally–though it’s different than how we would like to see them behave.

We forget, people are driven by their emotions, beliefs, values, and past experience. They are inspired by their hopes and dreams. They are constrained by their fears and overwhelm. But these form who they are, how they react, how they behave—and within that frameworks, they are always behaving rationally.

When we sell, when we lead, we are trying to get people to change. We are trying to get them to do something new or different. Whether it is to buy a product/service or to change how they do their jobs.

They will always behave rationally, that is in the context of what makes sense to them, what they believe in, and within the bounds of their fears and dreams.

No amount of data, customer testimonials, or facts will change this until we start understanding who they are a people and human being. Until we make a connection at this level, we will be limited in our ability to connect.

This people to people connection is something, that I’ve personally struggled with for a very long time. As an introvert, an aspiring theoretical physicist, trained in some of the best universities and working for some of the top companies in the world, too often I thought “facts, data, logic win all the time.”

It took me some time, as a sales person to recognize that facts, data, and logic don’t win–by themselves. That until I got to know my customers as human beings, until I could begin to care about them as people, both they and I would not achieve what we could.

I had to relearn that in my first leadership/management roles. Initially, I thought I was the boss, I was put in place because I was a top performer and could get results. I used logic, data, and sometimes dictates, to try to drive behaviors and improve performance.

The core of selling and leadership is all about people. If we are to be effective in driving change–whether it’s how our customers do business or how our people perform, we have to connect with them on both the human and business logic/reasons level.

We have to remember, people make decisions with their hearts, rationalizing them in their minds.

Human beings tend to be rational–they are influenced by their values, beliefs, dreams and fears, as they should. Until we can understand these and connect with them personally, we will not be able to connect with them logically.

Our customers and our people are always rational, we just have to care enough to understand and connect.

The best part about competition is that we discover what we're capable of achieving—and how much more we can actually do than we might have believed. It’s an internal passion for competition that inspired many executives to start their careers in sales. It’s an internal passion for competition that makes many athletes great salespeople.

Yet for some reason… many companies avoid internal competition like the plague.

It shouldn’t be avoided. 

It should be embraced and properly facilitated. 

OK, sure—competition can go wrong very quickly if it’s not facilitated the right way. There’s nothing worse than unhealthy internal competition. A few months back I chatted with an executive who was struggling with intra-team sabotage. Salespeople were so territorial that they wouldn’t make introductions on behalf of their colleagues even when they had a connection to a prospect’s company. 

Why?

Because they wanted the credit for themselves. 

That’s a broken mindset and a broken culture. Sales teams need to recognize and embrace the power that is unlocked when they collaborate toward a common goal. And sales leaders need to help facilitate this by showing their teams key metrics that demonstrate the role that collaboration can play in success. Furthermore, sales leaders need to recognize the role technologies like a sales leaderboard/ dashboard can play in facilitating and improving the competitive culture with their team. 

Want to build and run a highly motivated sales team? Get a free copy of The Sales Hiring Playbook where I share advice on not just hiring but also managing and motivating a high-performance sales team.

When you’re a kid you play soccer, basketball, baseball and other sports without really caring too much about the score. It doesn’t matter who has the most points and it doesn’t matter who has the most assists. But as you get older and begin to play at a higher level all of these details begin to matter more and more. On a sales team, it’s important to recognize that no one is getting a participation trophy. They don’t exist.

You’re either hitting your quota or you’re not. And an internal sales leaderboards is a great way to stir up competition, show the score and create a culture that thrives. But that’s not the only reason why sales dashboards should be embraced. Here are a few key advantages:

More sales transparency

When you can see how everyone on the team is doing with their outbound activity, inbound efforts and email outreach, there are many benefits—the biggest being that no one wants to see their name at the bottom of the list, so team members will push themselves harder to achieve results that are comparable to their colleagues’. 

By tapping into a sales rep’s internal desire to measure their performance against others’, a leaderboard increases motivation and ensures that there’s nowhere to hide when it comes to meeting goals and expectations. 

Increased employee engagement

According to the Gallup Management Journal, only 29% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, and 54% are not engaged at all. Many case studies over the years have emphasized how important it is to have an engaged team. 

Sales leaderboards reveal just how engaged the team is while also inspiring more engagement. The last thing you want is a sales team that sleepwalks their way to quota without ever striving for a little bit more. A leaderboard can facilitate that desire by rewarding the person at the top and gamifying the sales experience for the entire team.

Be mindful about your approach to this. Here's one best practice tip for boosting your team's motivation by Brian Trautschold, who has a lot of experience in that field:

"Its key to understand that for most companies, only 10-20% of your sales org will end up on any given leaderboard.

One thing sales leaders should explore is how to highlight effort and improvement of their reps who may not be the top performer in any given category. For example, showcase who has improved the most over a time period versus simply who has done the most."

Remember, it's about elevating the performance of every single team member, not just about shining a spotlight on your sales stars.

Real-time feedback

The best sales leaderboards are connected directly to your CRM so there won’t be delays between your team’s activity and the leaderboard standings. When you’re checking in on a basketball game, you don’t want to see updates that are minutes or hours behind. It’s the same thing here—no one wants their sales leaderboard showing key metrics that are way outdated.

The built-in sales dashboard provided by our CRM gets all the sales data in real-time directly. This is important not only for individual team members but also for sales leaders who have to give progress reports to the C-suite or board. 

Improved coaching model

The best coaches will tell you that data is one of their most powerful tools. Adding leaderboards to your set of sales management tools allows leaders to pinpoint where your team is struggling, which efforts need more attention and which regular tasks aren’t moving the needle enough to drive results. 

Insights like this offer MASSIVE value for team development. The leaderboard can help a leader identify a weak link who needs to be encouraged—or let go. It can help a leader identify gaps in their team’s schedules.

Our friends at Ambition shared this story of a sales team that implemented sales leaderboards:

"We partnered with a great sales organization that was trying to change their culture, wanting to create better utilization of their CRM and have some more fun as a group.

Initially, they came to Ambition with some level of skepticism because a large number of people on their team were field sales reps. So why would they care about a leaderboard?

But they'd heard rave reviews about our platform and wanted to give it a try.

Amazingly, the success came in two parts. First, by adopting Ambition they had to clearly define the KPIs (and associated activities) that were important to sales success. Doing this created visibility and drove adoption of the CRM.

Compounding on those positives, the fun started as the field reps discovered that back at the HQ, company execs were seeing top performers and leaders on big screen TVs. But word spread quickly as leadership started celebrating and recognizing excellent performance they'd seen on the TVs with shoutouts and emails to the entire sales group.

The transformation locked in a powerful feedback cycle as doing the right things became celebrated and rewarded with recognition."

- Brian Trautschold, co-founder of Ambition

Wrapping things up

A sales leaderboard is a simple yet effective way to drive more engagement, improve your coaching, promote transparency and offer real-time feedback to you and your team. Combined, these ingredients facilitate a competitive internal culture that thrives. 

As you think about your sales team and how you can increase engagement, consider a leaderboard as a part of your management stack. It can change the way your team views competition and supercharge their motivation to pick up the phone, make a call and close a new deal. 

Want to learn more about cultivating a positive sales culture? Download a complimentary copy of The Sales Hiring Playbook, which not only gives you actionable advice on hiring the right people, but also on how to manage and motivate them.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY

Many sales representatives only start to think about closing the deal later in the sales process. However, to really set yourself up for closing, you need to be setting the groundwork from the very beginning. The best way to do this is to exercise control over sales conversations. If you can do this, you can successfully deploy a solution-selling approach.

This approach means diagnosing the prospect’s problems early in the sales process. Then, the sales representative recommends a solution for the problem and explains why the proposed solution addresses the prospects’ needs. When using the solution selling approach, the sales representative needs to be focused on value. Getting derailed by price concerns and other things the prospects raise can be detrimental to this approach.

Here are some tips for taking control over sales conversations so that you can sell your solution:

1. Early on in the process, identify and understand the prospect’s major pain points and aspirations.

By asking the right questions in your early conversations, you can discover the prospect’s major pain points. This should guide the rest of your approach in sales conversations. When conversations start to get off track, gently steer the conversation back to the original pain points. Remind the prospect why they’re seeking your help.

In addition to uncovering the pain points, identify the prospect’s aspirations. What do they hope to achieve? Use this knowledge to paint a picture for them.

2. Create an action plan for closing the deal.

Once you’ve had your initial conversation with a prospect, create a simple template that outlines a realistic plan for how you are going to close the deal. Include a step-by-step description of every step in the process. This helps you to visualize closing the deal and allows you to think strategically about what you want to accomplish in every conversation. The plan should include potential roadblocks and steps for navigating them.

Consult your action plan periodically to remind yourself about what you hope to accomplish and how you plan to accomplish it.

3. Go into every sales conversation with a clearly defined plan and goal. 

The best sellers don’t just play things by ear. They enter every conversation with a goal for the conversation and a plan for how to achieve that.

Realistically, you might not always achieve your top goal. So, you should also have a backup goal in mind. That enables you to make progress on the close even if things don’t go exactly as you might have wished.

4. Subtly guide the conversation, but don’t simply recite a sales script without alteration. Shift the conversation towards value.

Subtlety is key for guiding sales conversations. Prospects can tell right away when the seller is simply reciting from a pre-existing script. To avoid this pitfall, be natural in steering the conversation towards the value your solution provides. Acknowledge what the prospect is saying, but redirect the conversation towards value.

5. Decide when to introduce price into the conversation.

Studies demonstrate that top sellers usually first raise the issue of the price at the 38-46 minute mark of an hour-long call. This enables them to establish the solution’s value before wading into this tricky territory.

Prospects will want to discuss price at some point. If the seller can be the one to raise the topic, they can set the terms of the discussion and remain focused on value.

6. Encourage your prospect to ask questions by providing just enough information to raise their interest.

Although it’s tempting to get your best pitch out there right away, this tactic doesn’t really engage prospects in a true back-and-forth conversation. Instead, provide information that piques their interest. They will ask for additional information, and that allows you to engage. You’re still controlling the conversation, but it’s more natural than a straight sales pitch.

7. Refocus the conversation and explore the prospects’ priorities.

At some point in the conversation, the prospect is likely to discuss tricky topics such as price and potential reasons why the solution might not work for them. Without dismissing the prospect’s concerns, refocus the conversation towards the solution’s value as it relates to their priorities.

8. Exchange value instead of giving it away.

Making a lot of concessions early in the sales process sets yourself up for an unproductive negotiation session and possibly losing the deal. Concessions are counterproductive when it comes to establishing the value of your solution because it prompts prospects to think that maybe your solution isn’t really as valuable as you claim. Be flexible, but make sure that you’re getting something in return for concessions.

9. Ask questions when the prospect raises objections.

A well-placed question can be invaluable when it comes to helping a prospect to reframe an objection. For example, if the prospect worries about price, say, “I understand your concern. What other plan do you have to address the problem?”

By framing your response as a question, you enable the prospect to handle the objection for you. They better understand the value of your solution when they can articulate it in their own words.

10. Be willing to challenge your prospect on occasion. 

Customers want a business partner, not a yes-person. Sellers who are in control of the sales conversation are willing to challenge the prospect’s ideas on occasion. If the prospect loses sight of their major problems and ambitions, don’t simply accept the framing of the issue. Use questions and gentle rebuttals to challenge their thinking and show your solution’s value. 

11. Use language that encourages your prospect to think about how your solution can help them to succeed.

Ultimately, you want to show the prospect a cohesive and emotionally moving story about how your solution can help them meet their business aspirations. To do this, use the language of success early and often in sales conversations. Help the prospect to visualize the value your solution offers and how it will change the game for them. If you can show them a better future, you can close the deal.Discover the best sales career opportunities. 100% free and confidential.

The post How to Control Sales Conversations appeared first on CloserIQ Blog.

Discovering and drilling for the important minerals used for industry and the technology sector remains incredibly important as existing mines are becoming depleted. If the mining industry can’t become more efficient at finding these important deposits, then more unnecessary, harmful drilling and exploration takes place. Applying AI to this problem would seem like a no-brainer for the environment.

Andreessen Horowitz knows this, as they invested in KoBold Metals. GoldSpot Discoveries is a competitor.

Joining this field is now Earth AI, a mineral targeting startup which is using AI to predict the location of new ore bodies far more cheaply, faster, and with more precision (it claims) than previous methods.

It’s now closed a funding round of ‘up to’ $2.5 million from Gagarin Capital, A VC firm specializing in AI, and Y Combinator, in the latter’s latest cohort announced this week. Previously, Earth AI had raised $1.7 million in two seed rounds from Australian VCs, AirTree Ventures and Blackbird Ventures and angel investors.

The startup uses machine learning techniques on global data, including remote sensing, radiometry, geophysical and geochemical datasets, to learn the data signatures related to industrial metal deposits (from gold, copper, and lead to rare earth elements), train a neural network, and predict where high-value mineral prospects will be.

In particular, it was used to discover a deposit of Vanadium, which is used to build Vanadium Redox Batteries that are used in large industrial applications. Finding these deposits faster using AI means the planet will thus benefit faster from battery technology.

In 2018, Earth AI field-tested remote unexplored areas and claims to have generated a 50X better success rate than traditional exploration methods, while spending on average $11,000 per prospect discovery. In Australia, for instance, companies often spend several million dollars to arrive at the same result.

Jared Friedman, YCombinator partner comented in a statement: “The possibility of discovering new mineral deposits with AI is a fascinating and thought-provoking idea. Earth AI has the potential not just to become an incredibly profitable company, but to reduce the cost of the metals we need to build our civilization, and that has huge implications for the world.”

“Earth AI is taking a novel approach to a large and important industry — and that approach is already showing tremendous promise”, Mikhail Taver, partner at Gagarin Capital said.

Earth AI was founded by Roman Tesyluk, a geoscientist with eight years of mineral exploration and academic experience. Prior to starting Earth AI, he was a PhD Candidate at The University of Sydney, Australia and obtained a Master’s degree in Geology from Ivan Franko University, Ukraine. “EARTH AI has huge ambitions, and this funding round will supercharge us towards reaching our milestones,” he said.

This latest investment from Gagarin Capital joins a line of other AI-based products and services and investments it’s made into YC companies, such as Wallarm, Gosu.AI and CureSkin. Gagarin’s exits include MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), and AIMatter (acquired by Google).

Today Scott Santucci, CEO of Growth Enablement Ecosystems, joins us to discuss digital transformation and how it impacts revenue growth.

Digital is transforming the market as companies like Apple and Amazon reign supreme. The landscape has changed drastically and integrating a successful strategy is no easy feat. There are a variety of ideas and definitions that surround “digital,” and Scott addresses common issues that companies run into when undergoing their own digital transformation.

Scott shares his journey navigating the digital landscape and how to begin visualizing how making your number happens.

Click here for the podcast version of this interview.

Segment 1: Understanding Digital Strategy

• Finding clarity on what digital strategy is. minute 5:53 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=353

• Digital best-practices for sales leaders. minute 9:55 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=595
• Building a consensus of understanding your strategy. Minute 13:06 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=786

Skip to minute 7:14  to listen to Scott discuss the changing landscape of a digital economy:

“…I like to talk about it to make it more practical, is digital is very vague and broad and quite frankly very intimidating. It’s easy to dismiss, but a way I like to think about it is are you doing the digital telling or are you being digital told.”

Segment 2: Integrating Product into Your Digital Strategy

• Achieving interlock between sales, marketing, and product on a digital strategy. Minute 17:22 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1042
• Modernize the sales force to adopt to change. minute 19:10 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1150

Skip to minute 20:08 to hear scott share his thoughts on breaking down silos to achieve unified digital transformation. https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1208

The sales group, sales operations has their own view of data management and so does marketing. Who’s right, just on that concept? Getting everybody on the same page is really hard. You need to take the time to do it.

\Segment 3: Guiding Principals of Digital Transformation

• How effective leaders execute digital strategy. minute 21:12 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1272
• Leading a team with clarity. minute 23.58 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1438

Skip to minute 24.42 https://youtu.be/0iiQCJ8vNWs?t=1482 to hear Scott discuss the opportunities to drive customer experience with digital strategy.

in the B2B world, people tend to not focus on the experiences of who specifically those buyers are, because they’re working an agreement network. And it’s not a static journey, it’s a flow

Like family dynamics, sales and marketing dynamics can be….

Interesting. 

Having been on both sides of the equation, I’ve seen how lack of alignment gets in the way of everyone’s best intentions.

BUT just like there is a path to a drama-free Thanksgiving, Sales and Marketing alignment is possible. To me, it’s about the “3 T’s”: 

1. Trust
2. Transparency
3. Timing 

… and possibly a 4th: Tequila. 

The 3 T’s all go back to data and insights — which most of us don’t have. And it’s why customer insights, revenue operations, and a platform approach are critical.

To set ourselves up for success it’s important to get to the root of our issues. 

B2B buyers are now in control of the information flow during the buying process, leaving sales and marketing teams to operate in the dark for most of the journey or the “Dark Funnel.” And it’s getting worse. 

With more buyers involved in decisions, less desire to talk to salespeople, and more anonymous research, it is wreaking havoc on our existing systems built for leads (one person) and known activity. 

In fact, according to Forrester, only 12 percent of B2B sales and marketing teams have confidence in their data. 12 percent!! 

Sales and Marketing alignment is hard when we are all fumbling around in the dark with data that we don’t even trust. 

And because our traditional marketing efforts are no longer cutting it — emails are going to “unsubscribe island,” and prospects aren’t showing up for events, for example — pipeline isn’t progressing and we have no understanding of why. 

This all really sucks and breaks down the trust between teams.

So how can we get out of the dark funnel and get back on track with our sales and marketing efforts? 

To enable alignment and the 3 T’s (trust, transparency, and timing), we must look to: 

• Customer insights
• Revenue operations
• A platform approach 

1. Light up the dark funnel with customer insights 

To create a message that resonates with the right buyers — buyers who are ready to act now — you need to be able to collect, connect and act on customer insights. 

Combining third-party intent signals with your organization’s first-party marketing automation and CRM data gives revenue teams insight into every known and unknown behavior, allowing them to create personalized and targeted outreach. 

With these insights, we know the keywords prospects care about, so we incorporate those words and phrases in our subject line, confident our emails will get opened… 

We know Arizona has more late-stage buyers than Los Angeles, so we set up our Field Marketing dinner there… 

We know the pipeline isn’t progressing because our accounts are researching competitors, so we strategically place messaging and display in front of those accounts to get them familiar with our brand. 

These insights help align sales and marketing, putting them on the same page, helping them engage better, get into deals sooner, and win more often.

TIP: Make sure you’re collecting data that gives you insight into customer needs, desires, and behaviors. Make sure you’re also using that data to engage buyers when they’re ready to act.

Take SailPoint for example, the Texas-based cybersecurity software company that delivers identity governance to enterprises all around the world. The company has leveraged customer insights through the power of AI and big data to become much more strategic in their execution. 

Now, the SailPoint revenue team goes after accounts and launches campaigns according to fit and intent scores, which has led to an increase in opportunity creation and pipeline velocity.

2. Invest in RevOps to optimize your resources

One of my most embarrassing executive meetings was one where the Head of Sales and I both came into a meeting with our own set of numbers, neither of which really tied out because we were operating in different silos with our own systems. We both looked liked idiots. 

I don’t want to look like an idiot but, more importantly, I want to have an impact. To have an impact you have to: 

• Get teams mobilized towards common goals
• Fix the data silo problems 

Here is where Revenue operations, or RevOps, can help. 

READ MORE: What Is RevOps? (And Why You Need it for Real Sales Success)

It truly is the next frontier of competitive advantage in B2B. RevOps streamlines processes, communications, key metrics, and technology across the entire revenue team — honing in on data that reveals trends over time and areas for improvement. 

And when teams are aligned, they generate 38 percent more revenue in 27 percent less time. It’s a game-changer. 

With RevOps as the unbiased single source of truth about sales, customer experience, and marketing, everyone can come together to look at pipeline, win rates, deal size, velocity, customer adoption, and churn — and determine the best place to deploy resources. 

At any given time, one or a few of these things may need more attention. For example, we recently found we had ample top-of-the-funnel coverage. Instead, our issue was with BDR coverage to work in-market accounts and convert. So we knew we needed to employ more BDR’s to hit those accounts. 

Too often marketing is just associated with top-of-funnel pipeline, which is a very limiting view that doesn’t show you other areas of success. 

TIP: Develop a RevOps person/team (if you haven’t already) to give objective oversight of your entire operation. Allow them to shuffle resources, so your teams are more efficient and profitable.

Let’s look at PGi, the leading global provider of conferencing and collaboration solutions for over 25 years, as an example of a successful revenue team. With limited resources but an interest in separating themselves from the competition, the PGi team knew they needed to do more with less — and aligning sales and marketing efforts was the key. 

By establishing a common focus on goals, like increasing average deal size and time to contact, sales and marketing worked in tandem to create tailored strategies for each target. PGi’s sales and marketing teams molded into one powerhouse, increasing win rates by more than 75 percent!

3. Invest in a platform that brings AI insights and orchestration to every member of the revenue team

Okay, we’ve established that sales and marketing must work together to move prospects through the funnel. Yet, siloed tech stacks are pushing sales and marketing teams apart, interfering with their ability to deliver a great prospect experience. 

We have tactical apps and legacy systems that create mountains of disconnected data — making it impossible for either team to analyze and orchestrate it into meaningful outreach in a timely fashion. It’s a bit of a stack-show. 

Prospect behavior changes all the time, new personas come into the mix, new competitors enter a deal, a key analyst report gets released… 

So we need a single platform that shows sales, marketing, and customer success teams the entire buying journey. In real time. Showing us what prospects are reacting to and what our best action should be, so we can get into deals FIRST. 

To me, the most critical part of this is understanding timing. 

According to Forrester, the early bird catches the worm, with a significant 74 percent of all deals going to the provider who helps “establish the buying vision,” while only 26 percent goes to the vendor who “responds to a request.” 

So even though prospects want to remain anonymous and not talk to sales, we still have to be first to engage. 

When we all know what phase of the journey the buyer is in (especially if they are “in market”), sales, marketing, and BDR’s can work in parallel, targeting these prospects with the right message, at the right time, making our tactics much more effective. 

But in order to analyze, orchestrate, and execute in real time — so we don’t miss the boat and become part of the 26 percent — we must look to technology and the power of AI. 

With so many martech solutions out there, we run the risk of piecing together a frankenstack. And this frankenstack keeps us so busy that we have become an IT shop instead of our original ABM goal. 

RELATED: Why Revenue Ops Is Broken Everywhere (And What to Do About It)

TIP: Rather than buying 5 solutions to try to accomplish ABM, look to one platform that integrates seamlessly with your CRM, giving sales the transparency to see every touch across the buyer’s journey, enabling sales and marketing to engage critical personas in real time. 

Aprimo understands the value of a unified platform that can get them in front of qualified accounts with tailored content before contact is ever made, putting them ahead of the competition. 

Since adopting their all-in-one tool, Sales is closing larger deals faster than ever before, increasing their trust in Marketing and ABM. And their sales and marketing teams are able to work together, in tandem with a cohesive, effective message.  

Bottom Line

It’s all about the economics of winning by uncovering and influencing the buyer early before the deal is already baked or an RFP is issued. 

With the revenue teams united and able to see high-intent signals early, you can actually market to accounts before the prospect becomes known in the funnel.

But you must achieve real sales and marketing alignment. You must commit to the 3 T’s: Trust, Transparency, and Timing. 

Don’t forget the tequila! Not because your marketing strategy is a mess, but because you are celebrating the fact that you have a way to align your sales and marketing teams, putting them on a clear path to success. 

The post Sales and Marketing Alignment: 3 T’s for a Clear Path to Success appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Your definition of success may be different from someone else’s. There are as many varieties of the pursuit of happiness as people are pursuing it. However, whatever your success looks like, and however you seek it, here are ten reasons why you should chase success.

1. Full Potential: As far as I have been able to discern, no human being has ever reached their full potential. The most successful people you know will tell you they believe they still have much runway ahead of them, that there is still growth available to them. You are pure potential. There are many things one might describe as a “sin,” and allowing your potential to go waste must be one of them. Chasing success will require you to grow beyond whatever you are now and become the person that comes after the person you are now. Even though you are not likely to reach your full potential, you’ll get a lot closer.
2. Exercise Your Gifts: You have some talent, some skill, something unique, even if you don’t recognize it as such. Let’s call whatever it is that you have your gift. All people are created equal, which is to say, unequal. The distribution of individual talents, attributes, and interests vary from person to person. Your gift is not the same as my gift. Those who seek success play to their strengths, leveraging their gifts. They shore up their weaknesses by surrounding themselves with other people who gifts in other areas. Your pursuit will require you to exercise your gifts.
3. The Process Provides Growth: Too many people want success but fail at the first two points. There is a cottage industry of people who sell them the idea that they can have success without the effort. There is no success without struggle. Greater success requires even more considerable effort. As much as I resist cliches like “Trust the process,” there is a truth there that is undeniable. There is no substitute for consistently doing the work and persisting over time. The process provides growth, and growth provides better results—the results that lead to success.
4. Increase Your Capabilities and Capacity: The very pursuit of success and the growth it requires will build your capabilities. Your version of success will no doubt require you to gain new competencies. The more capable version of yourself will produce better results than past versions. Your capacity to produce better results will also improve as you pursue what you want. As your capabilities and ability grow, so will your vision of what is possible. So will your perception of what success means.
5. Higher Standards: One success leads to another success. The success you create sets a standard for what you expect of yourself. That high standard spills over into other areas of your life. Soon what was once an acceptable performance is no longer satisfactory. By raising the bar on yourself, you ensure that no one has to do that for you. Or worse, set it too low.
6. A Life You Design: If you have been here for any time, you have no doubt bumped into the concept I call “The Drift.” The drift is all the things that pull you in a direction that is not of your making. The very goal of deciding what success means to you and chasing after it with all you’ve got will prevent you from drifting. It will also cause you to live a life you design.
7. Create Abundance: Success comes with all kind of benefits, including abundance. Money is undoubtedly one of the outcomes that come with success, but that isn’t the most interesting area of abundance. You also have a wealth of choices, opportunities, and the ability to provide greater abundance to those deprived of it.
8. People Are Counting on You: People are counting on you to succeed. There are people to whom you are responsible, and your obligation to them requires you to find success. These obligations may be familial. They may be monetary. The most successful people chased success not for themselves, but for the people who were counting on them. If you resist pursuing success because it feels self-oriented, know that it is not. It is other-oriented, and especially as it pertains to money, something that can only be acquired by creating value for others.
9. You Are an Example: You are an example for others. No matter where you are on your journey, there are countless others far behind you on the path. Those behind you are looking at you as their model. They look to you to determine what is good and true and beautiful. Your working to produce success will be what they believe they should do. Should you choose not to, the people behind you will think they should not either.
10. Make a Greater Contribution: The framework you might consider here is “be more, do more, have more, and contribute more.” The order here is important. Too many want the “have more” without working on “being more and “doing more.” This final reason is perhaps the most interesting of the collection here. Most people get the most satisfaction from contributing themselves.

If you need reasons, let this list be your guide as to why you should chase success.

Essential Reading!

Get my 3rd book: Eat Their Lunch

"The first ever playbook for B2B salespeople on how to win clients and customers who are already being serviced by your competition."

Buy Now

The post Success: 10 Reasons You Should Chase Success appeared first on The Sales Blog.

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Teams just starting out with account-based marketing (ABM) often make one significant mistake—they take all the data they have and dive head first into the strategy. It’s great to put your strategy to work and learn from the experience. But following a “do what you can, with what you have, where you are” approach might not be best for ABM.

Account-based marketing can’t succeed with just any data. Even if you’ve spent years collecting data from prospects and customers, it’s possible that you’re not set up for ABM success. That’s why you can’t dive head first into ABM with your existing database.

Instead of trying to make ABM work with what you have on hand, take the time to properly prepare your data.

The Current State of B2B Data

You might take a look at your database and think that it will work perfectly well for your ABM efforts. But if that were the case, there wouldn’t be such rampant problems with bad data in B2B marketing.

The reality is that if you trust your entire ABM strategy to existing first-party data, you might struggle to succeed because:

• 60% of companies say their data is “unreliable” overall
• 40% of leads contain bad data
• 65% of job titles and functions change annually
• 62% of organizations rely on data is that’s up to 40% inaccurate

Each of these statistics point to long-standing issues with the data B2B marketers collect through online forms, sales calls, and email outreach programs.

When your first-party data proves unreliable, your first instinct might be to invest in third-party data. That can certainly help but there’s a deeper problem plaguing ABM strategies. Once you have a combination of first-party and third-party data filling out your CRM and other systems, you have to take steps to prepare the data to drive ABM success.

Preparing Data for Account-Based Marketing

Once you shift from lead-centric to account-centric marketing, you no longer have the luxury of trusting high volume balancing out low conversion rates. Each account is critically important to the success of your overall strategy. Taking steps to prepare your data ahead of time will make it easier to drive results at each stage of the sales funnel.

Preparing your data for account-based marketing requires you to:

• Establish the Right Target Accounts: All the data in the world won’t help your ABM strategy if you’re targeting the wrong accounts. Sifting through your database to weed out data that is irrelevant or poorly correlated to target accounts will help set your ABM strategy on the right path.
• Continuously Evaluate Contact Records: Buying teams are constantly evolving. Just because you have the right records today doesn’t mean a new decision maker won’t enter the picture tomorrow. Using third-party data to identify buying teams in real time, fill in gaps in your contact records, and cut back on duplicate entries will give sales and marketing the support necessary to close more deals.
• Score Accounts Based on Intent: Understanding the total addressable market, identifying buying teams, and scrubbing records are all great for data preparation. But once your data is all clean and complete, you need a formal approach to scoring target accounts based on intent. Having a framework for scoring new behavior gives you a way to evaluate the best times to make contact with target accounts.

Data preparation isn’t something that will work with a “set it and forget it” mindset. You need to regularly track the accuracy and quality of the records within your database. And while third-party data won’t completely eliminate the need for data preparation, it will certainly alleviate pressure as you try to put an ABM strategy to work.

The right intent data provider will help you create a foundation of quality data for your ABM strategy—one that will continually evolve alongside the behavior of your target accounts.

Do you know which specific companies are currently in-market to buy your product? Wouldn’t it be easier to sell to them if you already knew who they were, what they thought of you, and what they thought of your competitors? Good news – It is now possible to know this, with up to 91% accuracy. Check out Aberdeen’s comprehensive report Demystifying B2B Purchase Intent Data to learn more.

Way to go! You finally got that meeting or phone call set up with a person you've been looking forward to talking with. Whether it's a sales call, job interview, donor information session, or just a casual coffee with someone who might be able to help you, you've taken the first step.

But how can you best prepare for this important meeting? Go straight to the person's LinkedIn profile. It's a virtual goldmine of insights about him/her. And knowing this information will significantly increase your odds of getting the results you're seeking.

**Note: You may not be able to do some of these steps on the LinkedIn mobile app.
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10 tips to discover golden nuggets of information

In just a few short minutes, you'll be able to get a pretty good idea about who this person is and what's important to him/her—and you're sure to find an icebreaker topic or two as well.

1.  About (previously called the Summary section). After reading this, you may know precisely what other profile sections you'll want to concentrate on.

2.  Articles & Activity. Check out the content they're writing (articles) and sharing (activity), and you'll surely know what is top of mind to them and what they consider important. This information should help you put together a few discussion topics for your meeting that will really get the conversation rolling.

3.  Media items. If they've uploaded media items, watching a video they're in, reading a document they wrote, viewing a slideshow they prepared, etc. can give you insights into who they are and what's important to them.

4.  Recommendations. Read a few they've received and also some they've written for others. This is priceless information. You'll gain great insight into what people think about them and what qualities they appreciate in people.

5.  Education. If you find a fellow alumnus here, it's usually a home run.

6.  Mutual connections. Take a look at the friends you have in common. You may even want to get ahold of one or two of them to get the scoop on this person. If you're already connected to the person on LinkedIn, do a filtered search into their network to find interesting people in their network to talk about. Click here for a detailed article on how to do this.

7.  Groups. By scrolling through the full list of the person's LinkedIn groups, you can quickly get a feel for their personal and professional interests. To view a list of their groups, click See all at the bottom of their Interests section (which is near the bottom of their profile) and then click Groups.

8.  Accomplishments. In this section the person lays out on a golden platter what he/she is most proud of and/or interested in. These are perfect conversation starters.

9.  Volunteer Experience. This may give you even more insight into where someone's heart is. Don't be afraid to mention this in your discussion with the person. People usually love to talk about the organizations they support.

10.  Experience. Look for companies, careers, etc. that you have in common and thus can leverage when starting a new relationship. You may also find significant volunteer experiences listed here that are great conversation starters.

Keep this list handy and use it as a checklist for all of your upcoming meetings with strangers. Perhaps they won't be quite as "strange" after you're done checking them out!
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The post LinkedIn Can Help You Make Your Next Business Meeting More Productive appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

• General Electric has been an icon of American innovation and manufacturing for most of its history.
• The company reached its peak in 2000 and has had a rocky journey ever since.
• Now GE says it will split its three remaining divisions into three publicly traded companies.

1889-1892: Edison General Electric

In 1879, inventor Thomas Edison patented the incandescent light bulb after his laboratory tested 3,000 designs over two years. 

By 1889, Thomas Edison had formed Edison General Electric from a handful of electricity companies he'd been operating.

Three years later, Edison merged his company with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and The General Electric Company was formed.

1896: The Dow Jones Industrial Average

Just four years after its formation, General Electric became one of the original 12 companies to be a part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

GE was included, on and off, for most of its existence until June 2018, when it was replaced by Walgreens Boots Alliance as one of the current 30 companies included.

The roaring '20s: New technologies

GE began making electric home appliances in 1922, such as the first electric stoves, washing machines, and refrigerators. And in 1927, GE developed the first television. 

1940s and 1950s: Mid-century modern

GE built the first American jet engine in 1941, and in 1957, opened the first nuclear power plant near Pittsburgh, which stayed open until 1982.

1981-2001: The Welch years

GE's best-known CEO, Jack Welch, took over in 1981 and kicked off a frenzy of sales and acquisitions that reshaped the American corporate landscape.

One of his biggest acquisitions in 1986 – RCA, which owned NBC – advanced Welch's goal of taking GE beyond manufacturing to become a "boundary-less" business.

By the time Welch stepped down in 2001, GE had grown to a nearly $130 billion behemoth.

2001-2017: Troubled times

GE's next CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was hand-picked by Welch and took over as the company's market capitalization was declining from its peak of more than $450 billion.

A lot happened during Immelt's 16 years running GE.

The 2008 financial crisis dealt a huge blow to the company: Its stock fell 42% in 2008, forcing GE to rethink its operations. Warren Buffett even stepped in and invested $3 billion to keep the company afloat.

GE quickly sold off some of its biggest past money-makers, like NBCUniversal, GE Plastics, and GE Water, and the selloff continued with financial services in 2014, home appliances in 2016, and oil and gas in 2017.

In spite of the company's performance, Immelt maintained a pair of private corporate jets without telling GE's board of directors. The day Immelt announced his retirement, June 12, 2017, GE stock went up 4%.

Although Welch publicly supported Immelt, he later admitted to other GE executives that the choice was one of his biggest mistakes, according to Fox Business.

2017-2018: John Flannery's stint as CEO

John Flannery, the head of GE's health care business, took over after Immelt after having been with the company for 30 years.

He served as CEO for 14 months before being removed in October 2018 by a unanimous vote from the board of directors, receiving an exit package worth $10 million.

The company lost over $100 billion in market value during his tenure.

2018-2021: A leaner manufacturer

Since Larry Culp took over in 2018, GE has been steadily reducing its debts and selling off parts of its business.

The years were not without controversy however, as a whistleblower accused the company of accounting fraud in 2019. Those claims did not appear to have merit.

In November 2021, the company said it would spin off its last remaining three business divisions – aviation, healthcare and power – into separate publicly traded companies.

"This is the best way to fully realize the potential of these businesses," Culp told the Wall Street Journal.

Even so, the GE's share price is little changed compared to what it was when he took over three years ago. By comparison, the S&P 500 has climbed by about 60%.

 

Ivan De Luce contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Nothing that was once necessary for sales has disappeared, despite what the pundits and prognosticators suggest on the internet. Had they been right in their past predictions, there would no longer be nearly so many salespeople. Nor would those salespeople still use telephones. Instead, selling continues to evolve, transcending and including what came before, and increasingly creating more value along the way. Here is how you need to be enabled for winning sales.

A Theory About Why Your Dream Client Should Change

You need to know why your prospective client should change. Understanding why they should change before they recognize the need on their own is more valuable than waiting until your potential client is unhappy with their results and begins searching for answers. The difference between these two approaches helps define the difference between selling at Level 3 and selling at Level 4. At Level 3, you are reactive, helping your client solve a recognized problem. When explaining a gap your prospect hasn’t yet identified or framed effectively, you are proactive and approaching them from Level 4.Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

If you don’t have an understanding as to why your dream client should change before they are dissatisfied with their current results or partner, selling is more difficult. When you work in a business that requires competitive displacements to grow (i.e., winning customers away from your competition), it’s very difficult to eject your competitor from their seat at the table without a theory about why your prospect should change now.

An Understanding of How to Create Value

The world of sales and marketing has long recognized and spoken about “value creation.” Much of what is written or spoken about value creation is about the company or product or service’s value proposition. A stronger value proposition is better than a weaker one, and while it is helpful, it isn’t often enough by itself to win in B2B sales. What is more important is your ability to create value for the contacts you are selling to throughout the sales conversations.

Creating value as a salesperson means providing ideas and insights that help provide context and direction about why your dream client should change. It means helping them understand what and how they need to do something different in the future. Value creation also means providing the advice on what to do and how to do, the very behavior that makes you consultative (which is something more than not being a pushy, smarmy, and self-oriented).

If the experience of working with you through the sales process isn’t valuable for your dream client in comparison to others, your general value proposition isn’t likely to carry the day for you.

Knowledge of Likely Questions

Every once in a while, you get a question so novel it surprises you. If you have worked in the same space for a long time, these questions should be as frequent, as say, a total lunar eclipse.

Your prospective clients have questions at every phase of the sales conversation. In early discussions, they want to understand why they need to change or why they struggle to produce better results. As they move forward, they have questions about what their choices of action might be and how to make the best choices. At some point, your contacts will have questions about their ability to produce those results with your help, meaning questions about whether or not you can help them execute.

Because there are questions at every stage of the sales conversation, there is no reason not to have effective language choices to answer and address them. If you are continually asked the same question, you should never be surprised, and you should never have to fumble around for an answer.

Strategies for Effectively Eliciting Meaningful Information

Rackham’s book, SPIN Selling, contained a framework for asking questions of increasing value. His view that “implication questions” were a necessary component to compel change (my words, not his) was transformational for some sales organizations. His work, like most other’s, is “more honored in the breach than the observance.” Most salespeople still ask questions that attempt to get their prospective client to share their dissatisfaction.

A salesperson recently asked me, “If you could change one thing about your current solution, what would that be?” A variation of “What’s keeping you up at night,” and a question so direct as to leave no doubt that the salesperson is not equipped to create value outside of explaining why their solution is better.

There are better and more powerful ways to elicit meaningful information. You can, for example, ask about your dream clients strategic outcomes as a way to expose a gap in their results or their overall strategy. If you want to ask more powerful questions, you can also ask questions that cause your contacts to discover something about themselves and their company, namely, that they need to change.

Your performance is improved when you have strategies for effectively eliciting meaningful information. The word “meaningful” doesn’t mean useful only to you; it needs to be meaningful to your dream client. You will know you hit the mark when your contacts say, “That’s a great question.”

Depth of Experience of How to Change

Too many salespeople rely to their detriment on subject matter experts. Some have become so dependent on a SME that they don’t even want to have a discovery meeting without having one with them. There is nothing wrong with having a subject matter expert as part of the sales conversation. There is, however, something wrong with not knowing enough to explain why you recommend a particular course of action, why you do things one way instead of another, and how your prospective client should change.

One way to describe the amount of knowledge is to think of yourself as a 52% SME, which is to say you can get through the first and second level conversation about your solution without needing a SME. The 52% SME concept also speaks to the need to know as much or more than the business owner, since you are advising them (something that in no way suggests you shouldn’t also allowing them to educate you, as well). It doesn’t mean you have to have more technical knowledge than your dream client’s technical expert, their SME.

You need to know enough to be able to recommend how to change, the trade-offs between certain choices, and why one way is better than another in the context of your client’s strategic outcomes.

Ability to Control the Process

Neither the sales process or the buyer’s journey are linear. You need to know how to get your client from where you found them to where they’re going. Sure, they are going to have ideas about how to get there, what works for them, and what doesn’t. However, you need to know the road better than they do to give them competent counsel.

One of the reasons your clients struggle to make decisions is because they don’t have the reliable guidance they need to know how to make them confidently. Controlling the process requires that you sell your dream client the value of the different commitments they need to make, as well as all the conversations and decisions they need to make.No more pushy sales tactics. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales. The more help you provide, the higher the likelihood of your winning—and your dream client getting the result they want.

When you believe you sell your company and your solution, you miss selling the meeting and selling the process, things that mostly turn out to be more important than either your company or your solution.

An Evolutionary Change

The outcomes you need to create have changed in meaningful ways. They are complicated, and they require more of you as a salesperson. Because these are not the common topics taught, training, or developed, you may have to start enabling yourself.

Essential Reading!

Get my 3rd book: Eat Their Lunch

"The first ever playbook for B2B salespeople on how to win clients and customers who are already being serviced by your competition."

Buy Now

The post Winning Sales: How You Need To Be Enabled appeared first on The Sales Blog.

In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the Web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

Want to Maximize Cold Email Intrigue? Show, Don’t Tell
Why tell people about your product when you can show them exactly what it does? Thanks for your thoughts, Shawn Sandy.

Do We Need Sales People Any Longer?
A look at the necessity of sales people in today’s world. Thanks for your insight, David Brock.

Marketing And Sales Need to Rally Around A Single Story
The method for aligning sales and marketing is still underdeveloped, but they should start with the same story. Thanks, Chris Wallace.

This Is the No. 1 Reason You’re Not Closing More Sales
The balance of power has shifted largely to the customer. Understanding that could be the key to closing more sales. Thanks for your insight, David Cancel.

ABM Trends: What the Best B2B Companies Are Doing
A look at what some of the best companies are doing when it comes to ABM. Great read, Jon Miller.

4 Ways to Overcome Communication Barriers in the Workplace
Now that we end up doing most of our work in virtual spaces, good communication has become even more important. Thanks for the tips, Mile Živković.

How Reducing Friction For B2B Buyers Can Boost Conversion & Revenue: 3 Examples From Star Marketers
Some great examples to follow to enable your buyers and see meaningful increases in funnel conversion and revenue. Thanks, Riviera Lev-Aviv.

How B2B Buyer Personas Influence Online Marketing Campaigns
It’s important to make the right decisions when trying to achieve your goals and objectives for lead generation, brand development, and customer experience among other things. Great insight, Derek Edmond.

Here are 5 Reasons Your Sales Process Will Fail
Process alone isn’t going to save your organization, here are some things to avoid so your sales process can be more successful. Thanks, George Brontén.

Six Agile Marketing Myths That Need to Die
More and more marketing departments are moving toward Agile practices, here are some Agile marketing myths to clear up any confusion. Thanks for the article, Monica Georgieff.

The post B2B Reads: Cold Emails, ABM Trends, and Agile Marketing Myths appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

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We know from experience that misalignment around goals is one of the biggest challenges for marketers trying to make the move toward revenue-focused measurement (as opposed to being exclusively lead-focused). Additionally, according to research firm TOPO, 86% of marketers rate measurement as critical to their success when transitioning to ABM metrics and strategies.

So, how can you step out from the lead-based shadows into the new revenue-based sunshine?

Never fear – marketers have walked this path before you, and there is a better way to measure! One that gives you more credit, and focuses on quality engagements over quantity of output.

Whether you’re using Terminus or another data tool to track these ABM metrics, nailing down the following measures will be a centerpiece as you grow your own account-based practice, and gain buy-in from across your organization that you’re on the right track.

1. Target Account List Engagement

If you’re practicing modern account-based B2B marketing, you’re starting with a list of accounts you know are a good fit and are behaviorally ready (or soon to be ready) for a conversation. That means your first job is to get those target accounts engaged.

Terminus lets you concretely measure the number of targeted accounts that have visited your site (initial engagement), and the number that have shown significant engagement (Engagement Spike).

Think of this as your top-most funnel stage, the de facto stand-in for MQLs. Except that here, all of the traffic is pre-qualified (because you did a great job of picking the right accounts in the first place).

2. Influenced Pipeline & Revenue

This is the total live pipeline (in potential revenue) with marketing influence or influence from specific ABM programs (represented as account lists in the Terminus Account Hub).

By focusing on influence, you can get a true comparative measure of how programs impact revenue, without fights over which attribution model is best and how much partial credit each email or web touch should get.

Instead, you can focus on what matters – which activities show up time and again in successful deals, and how do you use that information to get more of the right content and touches introduced at the right time into future deals.

3. Sales Cycle Velocity

Long under-valued by the marketing team, a speedy sales cycle can be the difference between a KO and a drawn-out battle with more competitors coming on the scene. Speeding the sales cycle means more favorable deal economics (because you’ll spend less marketing and sales resources developing the sale), edging out competitors before they have a chance to gain a foothold, and keeping momentum to avoid the dreaded “no decision” loss.

By focusing on how marketing can impact deal velocity with high-touch, multi-channel programs, you’ll also uncover new ways sales and marketing can work together, and get valuable insight into what content is most likely to impact deals (because you’ll actually be working them alongside your sales team!).

4. Annual Contract Value (ACV)

Average contract size is an indication of how well you surfaced opportunities to introduce more value during your sales process, and how good a fit the account is for your highest-value products or services.

Doubling a deal by uncovering additional need is as good as (and often easier than) acquiring a net new key account. By tracing ACV across different cohorts or marketing programs, you’ll be able to hone in on opportunities to use advertising or other channels in a precision-strike way to ensure every customer you sign has visibility into the full breadth of your solutions.

There you have it – ABM metrics that matter. Once you orient your demand engine this way, you’ll end up uncovering more opportunities for high-revenue-impact activities, and focus on what really matters.

There’s no way around it – in the modern business world, companies need data from all areas of their business to keep up. One industry that hasn’t typically been at the forefront of the data revolution is customer support. However, with many businesses now realizing that support isn’t always a cost center (and can sometimes even pay for itself) the demand for actionable data has been on the rise.

So, how exactly are companies leveraging support data for their overall business strategies? Let’s look at a few different ways to take a data-driven approach to managing customer support…

Sentiment Analysis – Every experienced support agent has received a long email from a customer. But, before committing 10 minutes just to read an email, wouldn’t it be nice to know the mood or tone of the message beforehand? This is what sentiment analysis does for support teams. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) technology to automatically assign a sentiment, such as “satisfied” or “frustrated”, to an email when it hits the inbox. In addition, a confidence score is added to each email so agents can understand the accuracy of the assigned sentiments. The true business value with this technology is speed and efficiency. For example, if a long email reaches a junior agent with the sentiments “sad” and “impolite” and corresponding high confidence scores, they can skip reading it and forward it on to their supervisor immediately.

SLAs (Service Level Agreements) – Regardless of the industry, responding back to customers in a timely and consistent manner is important. As a result, many companies have created SLAs that are agreed upon by both the business and the customer. These mutual agreements create a defined communication process that ensures a business isn’t ignoring the customer. It also creates an expectation with the customer, so they aren’t asking for updates on their issue every hour (unless of course that is defined as a requirement in the SLA). With sophisticated customer support software, SLAs can be monitored in real-time, with alerts popping up in the software should an issue be on the brink of violation.

Overall Customer Distress – We’ve talked about data and information including sentiment analysis and SLAs. But how do you connect these with traditional customer support metrics such as total number of tickets and average ticket close time? The answer is through a CDI, or Customer Distress Index. This enables a business to aggregate most of their key data points to create a score that lets them know how happy or unhappy a customer truly is. CDI is provided directly within a support software solution and can be easily monitored to help businesses craft their communication strategies with customers. For example, if a support manager notices a customer has a high distress score, a ticket automation rule may be set up so all tickets from that customer go only to a small group of experienced agents. In addition, a business can change the weights of each customer support KPI (key performance indicator) within the CDI so the score accurately reflects the expectations of their customers.

Highly Customized Reporting – Last but not least, sometimes a business needs to take their data offline to find those truly actionable nuggets of information. By leveraging customer support software that features highly customized reporting, it’s easy to get the data needed to find the right information so a business can make those essential decisions. Combining support data with information from other departments such as product and sales can paint a clear picture of every customer including their praises, pain points, and areas for growth. Aggregating business data from multiple sources isn’t just a great way of keeping customers happy, it’s also ideal for creating successful upsell opportunities. If you look at product data and see a customer constantly poking around your software trying to find a feature, then they reach out to support and ask about a feature that’s in a higher price tier, it’s time to capitalize on what may be a good sales opportunity.

To summarize, taking a data-driven approach to managing customer support is all about making the most of technology and collaboration. Use your customer support software to obtain a better understanding of customers on the support side, then take the information obtained and share it with other functional areas. Customer support data is essential to business growth because when a customer communicates, it opens a window into their perspective about your business. Don’t let that window close right away and for good, instead work with colleagues to maximize the immediate communication and long-term approach so an even stronger customer relationship can be built.

I succumbed to a certain amount of narcissism (as I often do) in my post: Sales Is Simple, Simple Is Not Easy.

The problem with my post, as accurate as it may have been, is that I did what too many of us do, focusing on ourselves–sales people, sales leaders, and selling.

We all do that, we focus on what we do. We get into conversations about how we do what we do better. I don’t want to dismiss those conversations, they are important. But starting with what we do is the wrong starting point.

We always have to start with the Buyer.

Buying, more accurately, what our buyers face isn’t simple. In fact, every piece of research indicates buyers, customers, are overwhelmed with complexity.

They are overwhelmed by the rate of change, the volume of information/data, risk, the increasing complexity of getting things done within their own organizations, ambiguity, conflict, increasing competition, disruption, and transformation. They are distracted, confused, overworked, under-resourced. They struggle with coping.

The data on buying, as well as the data on internal problem solving success (buying is just a component of the problem/opportunity solving process), demonstrates this struggle. Gartner data has shown 53% of all buying journey’s end in no decision made. The primary reasons for this failure has nothing to do with vendor/solution selection. For those that struggle with buying, Gartner research shows huge amounts of buyer remorse with the quality of those decisions.

Separate data on company project success shows similar challenges with the majority of internal projects failing to achieve their objectives.

Gartner data, also, shows this struggle isn’t because of the lack of high quality information and content from suppliers. In fact, buyers are, increasingly, overwhelmed with high quality information from suppliers.

Our buyers are struggling with complexity and coping.

And that’s the challenge we sales professionals must focus on–both to help and create value for our customers, and in achieving our own goals.

The discussion on sales being simple and what we need to do to execute at a higher level is the wrong starting point. But if we focus on simplification in sales/selling, we don’t address what our customers face, and what stands in the way of our ability to sell.

Sensemaking, helping our customers understand and deal with the complexity they face, individually and organizationally, needs to be the center of our focus. Ironically, in doing this, we will continue to simplify what it means to sell.

Stated differently, we can no longer focus our questions on how to sell, we have to focus our conversations on our customers and how to help them understand, make sense of what they face, and buy. Only through understanding that, can we begin to discover how to sell.

Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of B2B companies apply ineffective demand generation strategies to their startup. If you’re a B2B founder trying to grow your business, this guide is for you.

Rule #1: B2B is not B2C. We are often dealing with considered purchases, multiple stakeholders, long decision cycles, and massive LTVs. These unique attributes matter when developing a growth strategy. We’ll share B2B best practices we’ve employed while working with awesome B2B companies like Zenefits, Crunchbase, Segment, OnDeck, Yelp, Kabbage, Farmers Business Network, and many more. Topics covered include:

• Descriptions of growth stages you can use to determine your company’s status
• Tactics for each stage with specific examples
• Which advertising channels work best
• Optimization of your ad copy to maximize CTR and conversions
• Optimization of your sales funnel
• Measuring the ROI of your advertising spend

We often crack growth for companies that didn’t think it was possible, based on their prior experience with agencies and/or internal resources. There are many misconceptions out there about B2B growth, rooted in the misapplication of B2C strategies and leading to poor performance. Study the differences and you’ll develop a filter for all the advice you get that’s good for one context (ex: B2C) but bad for another (ex: B2B). This guide will get you off on the right foot.

Table of Contents

• What growth stage is your B2B startup?
• How do you find B2B customers?
• When do you use which channels?
• What kind of marketing messaging should you use?
• How do you build your sales funnel?
• How should you calculate and use the ROI of your marketing budget?
• In summary

What growth stage is your B2B startup?

The best growth strategy for your company ultimately depends on whether you’re in an incubation, iteration, or scale stage. One of the most common mistakes we see is a company acting like they’re in the scale phase when they’re actually in the iteration phase. As a result, many of them end up developing inefficient growth strategies that lead to exorbitant monthly ad spends, extraneous acquisition channels, hiring (and later firing) ineffective team members, and de-emphasizing critical customer feedback. There is often an intense pressure to grow, but believing your own hype before it’s real can kill early-stage ventures. Here’s a breakdown of each stage:

Incubation is when you are building your minimum viable product (MVP). This should be done in close partnership with potential customers to ensure you are solving a real problem with a credible solution. Typically a founder is a voice of the customer, as someone who experienced the problem and sought out the solution s/he is now building. Other times, founders enter a new space and build a panel of prospective buyers to participate in the product development process. The endpoint of this phase is a working MVP.

Iteration is when you have customers using your MVP and you are rapidly improving the product. Success at this stage is rooted in customer insights – both qualitative and quantitative – not marketing excellence. It’s valuable to include in this iterative process customers with whom the founder(s) have no prior relationship. You want to test the product’s appeal, not friends’ willingness to help you out. We want a customer set that is an accurate sample of a much larger population you will later sell to. The endpoint of the iteration phase is product/market fit.

Scale is when you have product/market fit and are trying to grow your customer base. The goal of this phase is to build a portfolio of tactics that maximize market penetration with minimal – or at least profitable – cost. Success is rooted in growing lifetime value through retention and margin, maximizing funnel conversion to efficiently convert leads to customers, and finding repeatable tactics to drive prospective buyers’ awareness and consideration of your product. The endpoint of this phase is ultimately market saturation, leading to the incubation and iteration of new features, customer segments, and geographies.

How do you find B2B customers? 

Here’s a list of B2B customer acquisition tactics we commonly employ and recommend. Later in this article, we’ll connect each channel to the growth stage it’s best used in. This list is generally sorted by early stage to later stage:

1. Leverage your network. This is particularly valuable for founders who are building a product based on their own past experience.

• Reach out to old colleagues you know have the same problem you had (and are solving).
• Leverage the startup ecosystem. If your startup is in YCombinator, for instance, other companies in your batch may be prospects, along with alumni who will take your call simply because of your affiliation.
• Example: If you’re building an app for marketers, ask past marketing colleagues you’ve worked with to try out your product is a no brainer.

Cold emailing is a powerful tool for generating leads and making sales. In fact, a recent census by Econsultancy found that email showed the highest ROI out of all other marketing and sales channels. It is no surprise, therefore, that over 89% of marketers already use email as their primary source of lead generation.

Why are cold emails such an important part of a sales strategy? Because email provides a direct link to your prospects. Today’s consumers are getting most of their information and products online, and 99% of them check their email every day.

Sending an email is simply an effective way to gain visibility with digital-age consumers. Unfortunately, getting a prospect to actually respond to a cold email is no easy task.

To help you crack the code, we’ve put together seven cold email templates that will skyrocket response rates, generate a ton more leads and boost conversion rates.

#1: Quick question… (asking for a referral)

Use this template when you aren’t sure if you have the right contact. You’ve done your research, found a big-fish company your product would be perfect for but can’t identify the right person to contact.

Keep this email as short as possible and get to the point quickly. The less time your reader has to commit to your email, the more likely they are to take a quick moment to respond.

Template:

Good afternoon {first name},

Could you tell me who handles decisions in the {sales/customer relationship/product buying} department and how I may connect with them?

Thank you in advance,

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: The “quick question” template has a high response rate because it asks very little of your recipient. You aren’t trying to sell anything; all you’re asking for is an email address or phone number. This is effective because people are more likely to respond to a request that requires little to no effort on their part.

Additionally, acknowledging that you are unsure of whether or not you have the right contact helps humanize your email, making the recipient more likely to empathize with you and want to help.

When to use it: This cold email template is useful when reaching out to a larger company that doesn’t have a clear point-of-contact. Use it to ensure you’ve got the attention of the right person before taking the time to craft the perfect pitch.

#2: Third-party connection

On the other hand, let’s say you do know who the right contact is but are having trouble reaching them directly or getting a response. LinkedIn, Twitter, directories and other social media are great resources for finding employees slightly further down the chain of command. Use their contact information and the third-party cold email template to gain access to your prospect indirectly.

Template:

Hi {first name},

I came across your name on {source} and was wondering if you could help me out.

I have a solution for {industry problem or pain point} that I think {company name} could really benefit from, but I’m having trouble connecting.

Who is the right person to discuss this opportunity with, and how may I reach them?

I appreciate your time.

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: Lower-level employees are apt to present a profitable opportunity to their employer in the hopes it moves them further up the chain of command. In this scenario, your email is their opportunity to do just that, which makes a response likely. Furthermore, calling out an employee by name puts pressure on them to get your message to the right person. No one wants to be the employee who dropped the ball on a good opportunity.

When to use it: The third-party template is a cold email strategy used to gain access to a hard-to-reach prospect via a lower-level employee. Use this template when you are struggling to reach or get a response from your prospect directly.

#3: PAS: Problem, Agitate, Solve

The PAS cold email template is a three-part formula:

1. Problem: Start by identifying a problem specific to the customer you are cold emailing. Twitter, Google, Yelp, Facebook and other user-driven sites are ideal for pinpointing a problem your recipient may be struggling with.
2. Agitate: Now that you’ve identified the problem, poke at it a little. Try and evoke an emotional response from the reader by reinforcing why their problem is so frustrating.
3. Solve: Offer a solution to the problem. The goal is to convince the reader that your product or service is a no-brainer solution that makes all their problems go away. Make sure this section includes a clear and low-commitment CTA.

Template:

Hi {first name},

I noticed your company has some negative reviews about poor customer service.

It’s incredibly frustrating to lose customers because of lost tickets, lack of tools and disorganization in the support department.

{Product} integrates all of your customer data into one centralized place, allowing you to easily track, manage and measure customer interactions no matter the channel.

Would you like to hear more about how {product} can turn those negative reviews into loyal, satisfied customers?

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: The opening line of this email example is personalized and shows the reader you’ve done your research. More importantly, pointing out a flaw or problem your reader has is highly motivating. They don’t want their weaknesses to be known by the general public, which is why the PAS formula has such a high response rate. Your reader will be desperate to fix the problem, and they’ll have an easy solution right in front of them.

When to use it: Make sure you’ve done your research before using a PAS email. It’s most effective once you’ve clearly identified a prospect’s pain point that you know you have a “no-brainer“ solution to.

#4: AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

Social proof, data and intrigue are what make the AIDA formula successful. Let’s look at an example of a cold email using the AIDA template backed by real data.

Template:

Hi {first name},

What if a {product} could help you {solve a problem}?

In one year’s time, we helped {company name} achieve a {x%} increase in sales after implementing {product name}.

In addition to an increase in sales, {product name} helped {company name} improve their overall workflow, increase efficiency, reduce response rate time and improve customer satisfaction from {A%to B%}.

I’d love to talk to you about how {product name} could help your company increase sales and improve workflow. Do you have time to connect this week?

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: The data and social proof should be relevant to your cold email prospect. For example, if your prospect is part of an enterprise company that sells home improvement tools online, your use case should reflect a similar brand model.

The opening line should grab the attention of and intrigue your lead with a thought-provoking and attractive scenario (attention). The second line is designed to keep the reader interested by offering a tidbit of social proof or data that supports your opening statement (interest). Next, peak your lead’s desire by offering even more social proof (desire).

The “attention,” “interest” and “desire” sections of AIDA will keep your reader hooked throughout the email, envious of the social proof you’ve presented and eager to achieve the same success. The last piece of the AIDA formula (action) should address the question, “Ok, I’m convinced. What do I do next?”

When to use it: Use the AIDA method when your cold email prospect is with a data-driven brand. Find out what is important to your prospect on a professional level. If your product is a match for that prospect, presenting attractive data from a successful use case will motivate your reader to respond.

#5: Don’t beat around the bush

Sometimes the direct approach is the best approach. This is especially true for busy executives and no-nonsense brands. Get right to the point by identifying a scenario or problem common to your prospect. Without any added fluff, present the reader with concrete data that proves your product is the logical solution.

Template:

Hi {first name},

Is your customer support system actually losing you money?

We’ve helped large companies like yours lower support costs by {x%} and improve overall sales by {xy%} in less than a year.

All we did was integrate their entire, company-wide support system into one efficient, easy-to-manage workflow called {product name}.

It’s quick, easy to set up and requires no onboarding at all. Do you have time this week to discuss how {product name} could boost your sales?

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: The opening line is the perfect hook for a busy prospect: short, attention-grabbing and engaging. In this case, the cold email caters specifically to the no-nonsense mind of your prospect. You get straight to the point, provide proof and leave your prospect with a low-commitment CTA that fits their schedule. Use a cold email following this example, and you’ll see your response rates skyrocket.

When to use it: This approach is also highly effective for eliciting responses from busy professionals. It quickly answers the question, “what’s in it for me?”, and provides proof to back it up.

#6: Paint a picture

Convince a prospect that your product will directly improve their world by first painting a picture of what your prospect’s life currently looks like without your product. Make sure whatever scenario you present is realistic to your prospect.

Next, paint a picture of that same scenario, only this time with your product. What’s changed? How has your solution made their life so much better?

Template:

Hi {first name},

Nothing is more frustrating than losing a great candidate because you can’t find their resume, interview history or contact information.

Imagine a world where all of that information is organized in one simple, easy-to-find place? {Product name} is that place.

Do you have time this week for a quick demo to see how it works?

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: Cold emails are only effective if the product you’re presenting makes sense to the reader. And by that I mean, they need to know how the product will directly benefit them.

The “paint a picture” format is a shortcut to getting your prospect to the “Aha” moment as quickly as possible. If they can envision having a better, easier or more productive life with your product, they’ll only have one question left: “Where do I sign up?”

When to use it: Some people may have a harder time understanding how your product works in a practical sense. This cold email option answers that question with a real-world example.

#7: Offer something useful

Everyone loves receiving valuable and useful resources for free. Cold emailing is the perfect platform for building a relationship with a prospect. The key is to give something valuable without asking for something in return.

A good tip is to do some initial research on your prospect. What are they sharing on social media? What are they interested in learning about? Use that information to your advantage.

Template:

Hi {first name},

I stumbled upon a post you wrote on {social media site} about {topic or post}. I thought your points were spot on!

{Insert main takeaways from the piece and how you found them helpful.}

Did you see {article} by {name} on a similar topic?

{insert signature here}

Why it skyrockets response rates: As I stated earlier, everyone loves to receive valuable resources for free. Additionally, praise and flattery can go a long way toward eliciting a positive response from your prospect.

Finally, you aren’t asking for anything in return. You’re just both excited about the same things and are starting what could be a profitable relationship for both of you. Humans inherently like to connect with one another over shared interests, which is why this template has such a high response rate.

When to use it: We recommend using this template when your goal is establishing rapport with a prospect. Perhaps you know that your recipient is going to be a hard sell or is more likely to do business with someone they already have a relationship with. This template helps you get there.

Start cold emailing today with a cold email template

Feel free to copy and paste a cold email template for your own use, but don’t forget to customize each one! Carefully reread every cold email before you send to check all merge tags and personalized information have been updated. Otherwise, response rates are likely to plummet.

One more thing: Crafting an engaging and compelling subject line is a vital piece of the cold email puzzle. Make sure you stay out of spam by avoiding flagged trigger words, and don’t feel like you have to reinvent the wheel. Take a look at the type of subject lines that are working for other cold emailers, and A/B test away!