Rnordman

If you learn how to manage business effectively, the results can be astonishing.

As a business owner, the most valuable thing you have is your time. If you lose stuff, you can always buy more. If you lose money, you can eventually make more. But once time is lost, it’s gone forever.

I recently wrote a post on The Pareto Principle, and the power it has to help you grow your business even if you feel like you have no time. This principle is also a major key in helping you manage business effectively.

The Pareto Principle simply states that about 20% of your activities will account for about 80% of the value of your activities. To achieve great things, you must always be concentrating on the small number of activities that contribute the greatest value to your life and work.

As a business owner, there are several ways you can use this principle to your advantage in managing your business. For example, chances are that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. If you focus on brining in more customers who are like that 20%, your profits explode.

The principle also appears several other ways in business management:

The distribution is claimed to appear in several different aspects relevant to entrepreneurs and business managers. For example:

• 80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of the time activities the staff does
• 80% of a company’s sales are made by 20% of its sales staff
• 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products

Consequently, most businesses (small and large) have easy access to dramatic improvements in profitability if they focus on their most effective areas and eliminate, ignore, automate, delegate or retrain the rest, as appropriate.

Jewelry Store Example – Pareto’s Law Applied for Effective Business Management

Pareto’s Principle can help you to maximize your business income. Remember, it says that 80% of your total income is derived from only 20% of your activities. What would happen if you could replace the 80% of unproductive activities with the highly productive 20%? Your business income could skyrocket by a factor of 16.

Let’s look at an example.

You own a jewelry store. Every week, you average the following sales… you sell 2 diamond rings that are worth $4000 each, and you sell 8 watches that are worth $250 each. The diamond sales total $8000 and the watch sales total $2000… for a total weekly revenue of $10,000. Whatever you are doing in the way of marketing and selling, you are presently attracting 2 diamond buyers and 8 watch buyers each week, for a total of 10 customers.

One day you suddenly notice an important customer pattern.

First, you recognize that 80% of your weekly revenue is coming from diamond sales.

Second, you recognize that every diamond client wants to make sure they’re receiving the most value for their money. Right before they buy from you, each customer wants you (the jeweler) to explain to them the value of their purchase. This means you are spending approximately the same amount of time with each explaining your value to each client.

Then it hits you.

This is where you should put your focus. God Bless Pareto.

What if you could change your marketing message to better convey to potential customers that your jewelry store offers much more value when purchasing diamonds versus all other jewelry stores in the area? What if this new marketing message replaced those 8 watch buyers with 8 additional diamond buyers? Look at what would happen to your weekly jewelry store revenue.

Instead of making $2000 from the 8 watch buyers, you would now make $32,000 from the 8 new diamond buyers. $32,000 divided by $2000 = 16. This means you’re now making 16 times more revenue from a segment of customers that want diamonds instead of watches. Your weekly revenue amount has gone from $10,000 to $40,000, a 400% increase in revenue! AND… you’re still spending the exact same amount of time servicing the same number out of clients, 10.

Every business has pivot strategic points like these. Little changes that could make a big difference in revenue. But sometimes we as an entrepreneurs can’t see the forest because we are so close to the trees. It helps to have a set up objective eyes look at your business to help you identify the opportunities you are missing.

If this is you, check out my Profit Accelerator Package, designed to specifically help you take advantage of strategic profit points you might be missing in your own business.

Managing Business Effectively for Results

The point is this. To get 16 times better results in your business than what you’re getting right now, you don’t have to do anything different than what you’re already doing. You just have to do more of what you’re already doing that works fantastically well.

The 80/20 rule indicates that 20% of everything you do on a daily basis produces a whopping 80% of your total income. That 20% of everything you do is what is known as your highest profit-producing activities. This explains how you can work less… and earn more… a LOT more.

In the case of the jeweler, focusing on their highest profit-producing activities would involve marketing and sales. But what if this jeweler hated marketing and sales? In other words, what if their high profit-producing activities didn’t fit their unique abilities?

Then, the jeweler MUST find someone else to handle their marketing and sales. They MUST find someone that PLAYS at the things they hate to do… but that MUST get done in order to increase revenue.

How Are You Going to Grow?

Because every business is different, and has specific needs – I don’t believe in a one size fits all formula. This is why I share basic universal principles of marketing and business strategy. When specifically applied to your business, this Pareto’s principle will make a big difference.

Are you effectively using your own talents, and the talents of those around you?

This post is the third and final of a multi-part series about the future of marketing and the role that semantic, context and intent will have on how we experience the internet.

It’s becoming eerily apparent that the Internet knows a lot about us. Due to our lust for free applications and our complete oversight of the privacy we relinquish for access, there are cookies and bots that have endless insights about what we are interested in.

Don’t believe me? Recall your past few conversations online and then look at the ads that appear on your Facebook page.

However, this is the results of big brother and big data, not some type of ESP that the internet has about our needs wants and desires.

However, the internet is getting smarter and this growing intelligence and insights is populating a new kind of semantic web that is providing more than just the most relevant results for people searching, but also some key data to marketers that may just tell us about intent.

For movie fans out there, you may remember the movie Minority Report. In this Tom Cruise feature film the star would go out and stop crimes before they would happen as intelligence reached a point where it could see a crime that was about to be committed. At the time the concept seemed pretty far fetched, but really this type of intelligence is very similar to how the semantic web may be able to tell you who may be your next big customer.

Marketers, what if you didn’t have to wonder where your future business was coming from? What if the Internet could tell you through the application of insights supported by data visualization?

Well, this future isn’t so far away. Let me explain further.

The Semantic Web Is Creating Clarity On Intent

By is very definition; the idea of “Semantic” is to find meaning and or intent in someone’s words. But as of today through knowledge graphs, socially validated search and modified SEO, most of the intent is to bring clarity as to what is being searched for today.

Revisiting one more time the example of the “Chicago Steak” query in the first two parts of this series, it was about knowing that the person searching sought to go out for steak in downtown Chicago at a high quality restaurant even though very few of those words actually appeared in the search.

This same type of ability to extract meaning from search could also be a powerful tools for marketers to better understand what a consumer may intend to do. The question comes down to how marketers can collect, sort and utilize this to connect with a consumer at the exact right time to drive an inevitable purchase their way.

An Example On Future Purchase Intent

One of my favorite examples of a consumer driven purchase that can take place almost entirely online is the purchase of a car.

What may have been driven early on by a disdain for slimy car salesmen, has evolved through a consumer driven purchase experience that puts the buyers at the controls when it comes to gathering information that is critical to their purchase.

But for a marketer, by the time the buyer shows up at the dealership it may be too late for them to drive the purchase one way or another. But through the potential of the semantic web this could be possible.

If a marketer could acquire information on a buyer that was searching for information, pricing and reviews on three different car models, they could likely gather that they have an interested buyer, however at this point they are undecided as to which of the three most interests them.

However, the time spent researches shows clear intent that the shopper is interested in purchasing one of these cars. Now that the intent is clear, their next clicks on features or lease options could show more about the exact vehicle they want and how they may be looking to pay for it.

Using other semantic queues like social data from public posts, data visualization could pull out the buyers in a geography that are asking their networks about a certain type of car. The responses could be graphed to better understand how their network may have influenced them providing the marketer with a clear picture of just how interested the buyer may be.

Knowing the buyer is looking for a lease and a certain type of car with a subset of known features, a marketer could potentially target that consumer acutely by packaging the entire deal based upon their intent. If delivered at just the right time the marketer could steer them to one particular model over another all while really using the intent data that was provided by the consumer.

Semantic Web Means Better Understanding For Marketers

In the end it is going to be the marriage of Big Data, Semantic Search and User Generated Content that will tell the story of intent for consumers.

The web is smarter, but mostly because we incessantly use tools that allow data to extract meaning. For consumers that leads to some better content to be driven our way, but for marketers this is a goldmine for understanding current behavior and how that may lead to a purchase in the near future.

This trend is in motion and irreversible. The marketers that maximize it first, will have the chance to cash in by taking the benefits of mass customization and driving it into a 1:1 marketing experience.

This post was first featured on Forbes and can be found here. Image: Creative Commons

I thought this was an interesting infographic. As sales people, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to communicate with our prospects and buyers. Therefore, it seems to me we might want to get it right.

This infographic suggests nothing in the subject line get’s open the most. Well duh, any “Re:” suggests the recipient is responding to something they sent out earlier. Therefore in essence, the recipient in an “Re:” is reading their own email. Of course it’s gonna get opened at a higher rate. We love ourselves.

However, beyond the absolute irrelevance of “Re:” open rates, this infographic offers a lot of little tidbits to think about as you reach out via email. Most notable, shorter is better.

Here’s the takeaway as I see it. The subject line matters. Take a little extra time and think about what you’re saying. If you use Contact Monkey, YesWare or ToutApp, do a little A/B testing. Don’t just ignore the subject line. You’re spending too much time on the email to waste it with a bad subject line.

First impressions baby, first impressions.

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

If you ask sales people why they hate/fear cold calling their response always revolves around them, their feelings, and rarely the buyer’s. Even when they mention the buyer, it is very much through their own filters, “I wouldn’t like that”, or about the buyer’s reaction to the call. It is important to remember that the reaction is exactly that, a response to what you said or did, so if you change the input, what you say and do, and you can change the outcome.

Get Your Cold Call-Flow Now!

This is where the Beatles come in – stop making the call about “me”. The real big downfall in cold calling is that it’s never about “me”, “my company”, “what we do”, etc. Make the call about “YOU”, the buyer. I know many are thinking they already do that, but only in thought, when you listen to cold calls, you hear a lot more “me” than ‘YOU”. “I am calling from ACME Corp, a Fortune 500 company, specializing in BLAH BLAH BLAH”. He didn’t hang up, he dozed off and fell on the phone. It is usually well in to the second act before their world is even mentioned.

Start with YOU:  Of the top 100 words used by the Beatles in their songs, the word YOU, was a distant first, 2,262 times, second was I, but only 1,36 time, and LOVE, was eighth at 613.

Not only did they use it often, but used it early, think of all the Beatles songs, especially early hits that had the word YOU, right in the first line. “Love Me Do”, their first hit: Love, “love me do You know I love you”; twice. “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, “She Loves You”, “All My Loving”, and more.

You have always been told that buyers live by WIFM, give it to them:

Stay with YOU:  Don’t go from the introduction about how great you are and all the great things your company does. Talk to the buyer in context of their world. “What YOU will get out of it”; how it will help YOU achieve YOUR objectives”. Doesn’t matter how cool, new or nifty your offering is, unless they called you, and it’s a cold call so they didn’t, they seem to be doing just fine, thank YOU! Warm the call up by speaking to direct impact and outcomes for them, moving them closer to their objectives, if you don’t, the call gets real cold – real fast.

Close with YOU:  When you close for the appointment (live or virtual), it needs to be about them. “YOU Will…” I hear a lot of sales people say what they are going to get out of the meeting, why they want to meet. But I rarely hear “as a result of us meeting YOU will be able to …..”

The reason many calls are cold, is that there is more in it for and about the caller than the buyer, leaving the buyer out in the cold, and then having the same effect on the caller.

Make it about the buyer, talk about “YOU”, and not only will things be warmer, but more appointments to boot.  It worked for the Beatles!

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

(Photo: http://nowheregirl17.deviantart.com/)

Why Successful Team Selling Is Like a Game of Jenga

There are several reasons that can prompt you to sell in teams to land new business or retain existing accounts. How you assemble and manage those teams can have a tremendous impact on their success.

It is important to recognize when individual sales reps may no longer have the necessary skills or expertise. Many industries have experienced growth, evolution, and specialization, which makes it more challenging for generalist sales reps to keep up and maintain their expertise. It is common for sales reps selling within an industry to have worked in that sector earlier in their career. But while the basics remain the same, the longer they’re on the outside looking in, they risk losing touch and expertise with the nuances that have emerged. Rather than putting these sales reps out to pasture, partner them with appropriate subject matter experts.

But perhaps a more common theme is that sales situations have become more complex, which often requires more resources, perspective, and attention than one sales rep can reasonably provide. Selling to financial services and institutions is certainly one example in which changes to the business, as well as external regulatory demands, require more expertise than ever before. Depending on what’s being sold and to whom, you can find examples of similarly more complex sales in just about any other industry.

One of the concerns we’ve observed from our clients is that teamwork is often misaligned. Perhaps you’re already selling in teams and have done so for some time. Well, what if the client’s business has changed? Or, the way they’re organized internally has shifted, yet you’ve failed to adapt to a model or team structure that matches.

Clients and prospects are likely to feel more comfortable with a seller that understands them and their business. If your configuration (or lack of) is markedly different from how they are organized, they might be wary of your ability to “get” their challenges and concerns and to provide an effective solution that supports and aligns with their business and doesn’t require them to bend over backwards to make it work.

The Solution: Developing Effective and Efficient Team Selling

As my colleague Michael Dalis noted in a recent post, leaders of winning sales teams are changing how their sales reps prepare for, execute, and follow through on client or partner interactions to address these challenges. They are also careful to realign with internal partners and sharpen their value propositions to take full advantage of their team-based approach to selling.

Building the right team is akin to a successful game of Jenga:

• You need a strong sales rep to lead the team and provide a good foundation.
• Add the right pieces to grow the sales team, but ensure balance along the way.
• If you add too many pieces, that top-heavy structure will give way and come crashing down. (Too many people is inefficient and a distraction.)
• Likewise, a structure with holes or gaps will also topple.
• The successful end result appears to the beholder (the buyer) to be a complete structure with a stable foundation with no gaps or excess.

You want to avoid your buyer thinking that your sales team is:

• Too big — Why is that guy here? He has contributed nothing to this process from what I can see. If this is how they operate, I don’t want to pay for bloated sales or service teams.
• Too small — That’s it?! Where’s the rest of the team? My business and needs are too complex for this paltry group. I expected their team to include more specialists who understand the nuances of my business. They obviously haven’t taken me or my business very seriously.

When building teams that match your buyers’ needs and expectations, be sure to adhere to some basic tenets, such as identifying a team leader, selecting complementary and not combative personalities, and ensuring that team members have met and hopefully worked out a rapport with each other in advance of meeting the clients. Have you ever watched one of those ensemble cast TV shows in which the team of detectives, lawyers, doctors, etc., are so close that they finish each other’s sentences and naturally pick up where the other left off without missing a beat? That’s what you want for your sales teams, not ones who have obviously never worked together or who have vastly differing opinions, styles, and goals.

Ask yourself whether it is more important for your buyers to adapt to how you are organized and sell or for your sales teams to adapt to your buyers. The answer should be a no brainer. Regardless of the team’s composition and size, it should be aligned to the needs of the selling situation and the buyer.

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To learn more about Richardson specialized sales training for Financial Services companies, please click here.

Download our newest E-book, A Financial Services Leader Guide for Sales Success.

 

The post Why Successful Team Selling Is Like a Game of Jenga appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Walmart is the world’s largest public corporation, biggest private employer and largest retailer. It is still a family-owned business.

Walmart also has a big social media presence. Walmart has:

• 34,000,0000+ Facebook Likes (that’s just their national Facebook page)
• 210,000+ Twitter Followers on @Walmarthub (one of 7 Twitter handles)
• 33,000+ Followers on Pinterest
• 20 bloggers called “Walmart Moms.”

Why? What does Walmart know that the rest of us can learn?

Here are 10 lessons on Walmart’s social media strategy for every business.

• START WITH A GOAL: Walmart’s goal for social media is to ensure that customers and potential customers understand that the discount store has the lowest prices in the industry and that Walmart’s mission is to help them save money so they can live better lives. That’s according to Chad Mitchell, Senior Director of Digital Communication. Because the company is often a target for controversial press, a second objective is to use social media to protect, defend and enhance Walmart’s reputation.
• TRAIN EMPLOYEES: The company trains its employees on its mission. They encourage storytelling to solidify Walmart’s brand and the values its founder established more than 50 years ago.
• ESTABLISH GUIDELINES: There are guidelines on engagement, location-based promotions for associates and “Walmart Moms” who post or publish.
• HAVE A PURPOSE FOR EACH SOCIAL NETWORK: Walmart’s role for Twitter is to ask very basic questions of its users: “What’s happening?” By having a number of Twitter accounts, Walmart aims to provide information on Walmart’s major activities and initiatives – from sustainability to diversity, from healthier foods to charitable giving. Walmart uses Facebook to communicate specific values that are occurring every day at both the national level and in each of its 3,500-plus stores.
• SEGMENT BY AUDIENCE INTERESTS: The company has Twitter handles with @WalmartHub being the “parent” handle that only Re-tweets the best performing content from the other handles, The other accounts feature the following topics:
  • @WalmartNewsroom – Press releases and other announcements
  • @WalmartVeterans – Hiring initiatives and other efforts involving veterans
  • @WalmartGreen – Sustainability-related news
  • @WalmartGiving – Philanthropic efforts
  • @WalmartAction – Public policy issues
  • @WalmartHealthy – Fresh and healthy foods
• USE SOCIAL MEDIA NATIONALLY AND LOCALLY: On Facebook, the ambitious My Local Walmart program establishes individual Facebook fan pages for its 3,500-plus stores. It also involves a Facebook App that stores can use to communicate sales, specials, and other updates with fans in their local area. But local stores haven’t been using their pages that effectively. There is learning and improving that Walmart has to do, as does any business that use social media so broadly.
• MAKE YOUR BLOG A COMMUNITY AND KEEP IT REAL: “Walmart Moms” started in the late 2000′s. They’ve always been real moms who are bloggers. Their role is simply to represent the voice of all moms, to tell and help others understand the daily challenge and triumphs of Moms. Participation in “Walmart Moms” is voluntary.
• ENGAGE FREQUENTLY: On any given day, Walmart posts on Facebook between two and five updates, including weekends, and most achieve an impressive number of responses from its fans. Most of its posts achieve tens of thousands of Likes and hundreds of comments, with pictures of pets and children proving to be particularly popular. Walmart adds about 9,000,000 new Likes every 6 months.
• LISTEN TO THE DATA: WalmartLabs uses such spikes in social network chatter to predict demand for out-of-the-ordinary products. In 2011, their team correctly anticipated heightened customer interest in cake-pop makers based on social media conversations on Facebook and Twitter. A few months later, it noticed growing interest in electric juicers, linked in part to the popularity of the juice-crazy documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. The team sends the data to Walmart’s buyers, who then use it to make their purchasing decisions.

Your business is probably not on the scale of Walmart ‘s, but these lessons should give you ideas on areas you should be thinking about. Are there lessons from Walmart’s social media strategy that apply to your business? Which ones are the most relevant?

Most sales organizations are built and run as if it were still 1989. The sales model is broken.

From 2004 through 2014 it has been a decade of the rise of Inbound Marketing.

Now, from today through 2024 will be the rise of Inbound Sales.

Early in my career, I worked as a sales representative at a Wall Street economic consultancy. Back then the salesperson had the information and therefore the power in the relationship.

If the buyers wanted information about how the product worked, they needed to come to me. If they wanted to negotiate a discount, they had to come through me. If they wanted to speak to a customer to learn about their experience with my company, they had to come through me. If they wanted to talk to the founder of the company, they had to come through me. I was involved from the very beginning of the relationship, and most of the leverage was with me, the sales rep.

That's how most sales organizations still operate.

But now, because of the wealth of information on the web, the salesperson no longer controls the relationship.

Now, the buyers can check you out themselves. They can find your customers and read their blog accounts about what you do. They can reach the founders directly via Twitter and LinkedIn. Buyers actively go around salespeople until the last possible moment and then come into negotiations armed with lots and lots of information. Now it’s the buyers who have the leverage.

Sales needs to change in order to be successful in this new world.

I wrote about this in my newest book titled The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business which is available now via ebook formats like Kindle and releases September 2 in print and audio.

What's driving the great tablet slowdown?  

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, forecasts that global tablet shipments will grow at just a 9% compound annual rate over the next five years, an unexpectedly quick deceleration from the triple-digit growth rates seen in the tablet market's early years. 

We conducted a BI Intelligence survey on tablet ownership, usage, and purchase intent to gain insight into why tablet sales have slowed, and which brands are vulnerable. 

Access The Full Survey Results And Insights By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

We generated close to 700 responses, here are the five most important highlights of what we learned. 

1. The core market for brand name tablets is saturated: 92% of our survey respondents already own a tablet, and 80% of them own high-end brands, including Samsung, iPads/iPad Minis, and Nexus devices. Because of their demographics (Over 70% lived in the U.S., U.K., or Canada, and 59% earned incomes higher than $100,000 annually), our respondents represent a good sample of tablet manufacturers' core market — affluent consumers in developed economies. 
2. Tablet owners are taking a long time to replace their aging devices with new ones: 44% of our respondents had bought their tablets in 2012, 2011, or 2010. But demand for replacement devices was soft, even for three- and four-year-old devices. People aren't eager to upgrade. 
3. Tablets are not true mobile devices, so they see less wear and tear: While a majority of respondents said they use their tablet daily, 93% told us they use their tablet primarily on Wi-Fi (this includes 20% of people who had cell access but still used their tablet mainly on Wi-Fi). 
4. Phablets are competing with tablets for consumer interest. One-third of our survey respondents said they are considering buying a phablet in the next two years. 
5. Despite the tablet market's overall weakness, Apple still has good positioning among prospective tablet and phablet buyers. For example, 54% of consumers planning to buy a tablet in the next year plan on purchasing an iPad or iPad Mini. 

The report is also full of charts and data that can be downloaded and put to use.

In full, the report: 

• Gives detailed survey results including purchase intent/loyalty among iPad and iPad Mini owners. 
• Breaks down full numbers on tablet user stats including percentage who use cell plans with their tablets, percentage who share their tablets, frequency of usage, and interest in phablets. 
• Analyzes the tablet market's recent quarterly performance. 
• Discusses market share trends for tablet makers like Apple and Samsung.
• Forecasts annual global tablet shipments through 2019. 
• Correlates recent tablet market trends with recent consumer sentiment, revealed by the survey's results. 

For full access to all BI Intelligence's charts, data, and analysis on the mobile industry, sign up for a free trial here.

Join the conversation about this story »

B2B Buyers are increasingly using resources other than a salesperson to get their information about your products. Consider these stats:

• 67% of the Buyers’ Journey is now done digitally (Source: SiriusDecisions)
• 87% of B2B Buyers say online content has a major to moderate effect on their purchasing decisions (Source: CMO Council)
• 84% of CEOs/VPs use social media to make purchasing decisions (Source: IDC)

The rise of the connected buyer means your sales organization needs to account for a buyer who is more educated and researched than ever before. They’ve done their homework on your solution – and your competitors’ solutions as well. When they finally contact a salesperson, they’re ready to talk price.

This buyer presumption of knowledge means that the salesperson has to back track discovery, redefine required capabilities and be ready to position solutions against any competitor the buyer has also likely researched. A sales force needs the ability to meet its buyers where they are, no matter how they enter the sales conversation.

Dealing with any marketplace shift can be a fundamental turning point for any sales organization. At the very basic level, your sales team needs to be armed with the following three skills to ensure they’re able to sell to an increasingly connected buyer:

1. Common Value Currency

The Economist reports that more than 50% of companies have changed or are in the process of changing the way they deliver goods and services. The rise of outcome selling and the subscription economy means sales is no longer just one role in a company. Rather, it’s a function of numerous positions across an organization. Anyone who engages a customer needs a firm grasp of the organization’s value currency and an understanding of how to leverage it throughout your sales conversations.

Remember, your currency is made up of the positive business outcomes, the required capabilities and the metrics that you use to align your solution with your buyer needs. In other words, your value is tied to what the customer is trying to achieve and what they need in order to get there.

A focus on the value currency focuses the buyer on the problem you’re trying to solve. That’s why every role throughout the customer life cycle needs to solidly grasp this value currency as it relates to the buyer. Understanding the requirements, and what outcomes the customer is looking for, helps you preserve the value of what you originally promised the customer. Having a defined process that captures that currency and creates consistency across your customer engagement model prevents churn, increases renewal rates, and delivers cohesion with the solution.

2. Sales and Marketing Alignment

As B2B Buyers consume more and more content prior to engaging sales, it’s critical that sales and marketing are aligned on the customer-facing messages. If your buyers are engaging with marketing content more and more through their own research, it should pave the way for an informed sales conversation once sales becomes engaged.

Aligning the great content marketing is producing with the same value message the sales team is articulating in front of the customer creates a powerful engine that moves a customer toward your solution. Without this alignment, the customer isn’t clear on the value you provide and the sales conversation is much more difficult. A defined process that helps sales organizations leverage marketing’s content will help drive consistency and repeatability with the customer.

3. Social Media Use

Studies show salespeople who use social media are 78% more successful than those who don’t. When you consider how the connected buyer is now leveraging the web to make their decisions, it’s not surprising.

Why does social help connect your salespeople to the buyer?

1. Customer Expectations:

The customer expects you to be connected. They want to reach your sales team on their time. Are they able to? If your customer wants to find a salesperson on LinkedIn and their profiles appear, what does the buyer see?

Part of our connected world means that a potential buyer can also see your connections and who you may have done business with in the past. The customer expects to see references and referrals, even proof points. Studies have shown that you’re more likely to do business with someone that has been recommended to you or someone you share mutual connections with. If your sales team makes a conscious effort to build a network of connections, you deliver on customer expectations of a connected buyer.

2. The Unfair Advantage:

Think about all the companies that have sellers who aren’t using social to enter into the buying process earlier. Those who are – build an unfair advantage over the competition. Also, we are at the early stages of the social media shift, which typically means that a lot of people who are trying social selling are doing it poorly (e.g., blanket Inmail requests, “buy my product” tweets). That means if you do social media well, you can build that unfair advantage.

3. Right Place, Right Time:

Social also gives you the opportunity to meet your buyer where he/she is at any given time. It allows you to stay top of mind – consistently.

Any successful sales organization keeps its customer front and center. This shift to the connected buyer means organizations need to ensure not only their sales organization, but their entire company is ready to respond to an increasingly informed buyer.

Today’s CMO is creating a new marketing language around Revenue Marketing™. Let’s play a word association game to see just how much you know. I’ll give you a word and you tell me what you think it means – you get two tries. Then, I’ll give you the definition in terms of Revenue Marketing.

Give yourself 100 points for every correct answer and 0 points if you miss. Get 6 out of 8 correct (a score of 600) and you are one savvy CMO!

ROI

• Who’s Roi? I’ve never seen someone spell their name this way. I think someone made a spelling error.
• Return on what? I’ve heard this term used in my company but since it doesn’t apply to me, I ignored it.
  • Well, ROI stands for Return on Investment and it is fast becoming the standard of measurement for B2B CMOs.

Revenue

• Some word at the end of a spreadsheet we hope is not in red.
• Revenue is something done by sales with smoke and mirrors and really frenetic activity at the end of each quarter. It’s not my responsibility so I don’t pay it much attention.
  • Say it with me – R-E-V-E-N-U-E. This is the new responsibility for today’s CMOs. It’s measured by metrics such as marketing’s direct contribution to the pipeline percentage and total dollars, or marketing’s direct contribution to revenue as a percentage or as a number. Many CMOs now have a revenue number they need to directly influence.

Funnel

• As in cake? Love those!
• Isn’t that the device used at frat parties to partake of large amounts of alcohol with great efficiency?
  • No! A funnel is the process managed by Revenue Marketers™ that begins with a cold name and ends by providing a highly qualified contact to sales. A funnel has stages and a Revenue Marketer uses the conversion rate from one stage to another to forecast their impact on revenue.

Forecasting

• What, like in the weather? That’s not in my job description!
• That useless number from the VP of Sales at the beginning of each quarter?
  • You missed again. The hallmark of a Revenue Marketer is that they show up to a senior management meeting and not only report on what they did last quarter, but also forecast the impact they’ll have on revenue in the upcoming quarter.

Lead Management

• I don’t manage leads, I’m a marketer!
• I’ve given leads to sales – it’s their job now. Not mine. That’s lead management.
  • You’re kinda, sorta on the track with the second answer. Lead management is the combined processes of marketing and sales that track and manage the entire life cycle of a lead. It’s a shared, synergistic responsibility in a closed-loop environment.

Sales & Marketing Alignment

• They stick to their side of the office and we stick to ours. That’s alignment.
• Well, in my company, we play the Sales & Marketing Angry Birds game. We’re completely aligned in our mistrust and lack of respect for one another and take lots of pot shots. Our aim is excellent!
  • OK, OK. No more violence! For the Revenue Marketer, sales and marketing alignment is a key ingredient of success. In companies where this alignment has occurred, you will see a synergistic revenue team comprised of marketing and sales, all striving and accountable for the same number. Oh, and you guys need a new game.

Revenue Marketing™

• Never heard of it. Sounds like some kind of sales jargon.
• Well, it’s clearly an impossible oxymoron.
  • Actually, Revenue Marketing™ is a term coined by us, The Pedowitz Group. We think it’s a pretty good way to describe the new role of marketing in helping to drive and grow top line revenue in a repeatable, predictable and scalable model.

So, how did you do? What was your score? And what definitions would you have provided us? Please share!

CEOs of today’s B2B organizations are becoming laser focused on profit, execution of strategy and top-line revenue growth and they expect every department in the organization to be aligned with these key goals. For many, the area that gives them the most heartburn – based on budget and non-goal alignment – is marketing.

For CMOs, this could mean big trouble. If your marketing organization isn’t making a measurable impact on revenue, your job could be in jeopardy.

This article presents three key questions you should ask yourself as a CMO to determine if you need to change your strategy.

Here’s your first question:

Question #1: How aligned is marketing to the organization’s overall revenue goals in a direct and measurable way and not the “fuzzy math” kind of connection?

• If you can honestly answer that your marketing goals are directly aligned with those of the business, ask for a raise!
• For everyone else, get in step – and fast! Executive alignment is as basic as it gets.

Easy question, right? Now let’s move on to the next question to help you determine if you are on the right track.

Question #2: When you show up to the monthly board or executive committee meeting, what kind of metrics do you present? (I know the mention of this monthly presentation probably brings on another round of heartburn, but try to focus on the question.)

Are your metrics typically activity-based?

• # of impressions
• # of ads
• # of tradeshows
• # of e-mails sent
• % of Opens, click-thrus and conversions
• Costs

Most CEOs call these metrics, “Who gives a flip metrics!” If you are only presenting these kinds of activity-based metrics, you need to change your approach and change it now! This is old school for a B2B organization given the new technologies available today that allow marketing to make a direct contribution to top-line revenue growth and to do it in a repeatable, predictable and scalable fashion.

Or, are your metrics revenue-focused?

• # of Sales Ready Leads (SRL) sent to sales
• % Conversion of SRL to opportunity
• % Conversion to close
• % Contribution to pipeline from marketing
• # Days to close
• ROI

If you are already reporting revenue-focused metrics, again – ask for a raise! Chances are that you are currently being recruited because of your skill mix and experience! CMOs who are focused on revenue metrics are generally using the optimal mix of people, process and technology to grow top-line revenue.

Hopefully, you are already doing these things and hitting it out of the park every month. But if you are still confused about your role, consider this final scenario:

Question #3: You are putting together your 2015 strategic plan. As CMO, which of the following are the top strategic initiatives you will present to the executive team?

• Improve use of search.
• Improve conversions.
• Improve use of social media.
• Create new website/messaging/colors.
• Grow number of leads sent to sales.
• Improve number of impressions from ad spend.

While these are all valid concerns for any marketing department, compare it to the next set of answers. The above initiatives should only be part of the plan – especially if your company has big revenue growth plans in 2015. If your answer stops here, you won’t have job security for long! Consider these strategic initiatives instead:

• Execute a revenue marketing strategy in which marketing will grow its contribution to the sales pipeline by 200% through marketing sourced, highly qualified leads; improve opportunity velocity by 20%; and impact overall deal size by 11%.
• Create a marketing funnel and process with standard conversion rates from inquiry to close so marketing can begin forecasting revenue impact – not just reporting on past history.
• Conduct a skills gap analysis on my current team around this journey to revenue marketing. What skills do you need to add, replace or train?
• Re-organize the marketing organization around the revenue marketing competency.
• Develop the key processes and tools across sales and marketing to help us drive a repeatable, predictable and scalable revenue impact on top-line growth.
• Select and implement or improve the use of your revenue marketing solution. NOTE: There is an entire new generation of technologies out there called marketing automation, demand generation, revenue performance management and Revenue Marketing (a term coined by The Pedowitz Group) to help marketing directly contribute to revenue growth. This is NOT simply CRM or fancy e-mail systems.

So, how did you do? For the B2B enterprise organization, marketing’s role should now be to fully participate in the revenue discussion. Today’s B2B CMO should sound like a VP of Sales – not the head of a creative agency. If you are not stepping up to this new reality, your job may be at risk. Are you ready?

Given the current round of CMO’s movement, I thought I would check in and find out what you are seeing in the market?

Most B2B companies (and companies in general) are laser-focused on generating more leads. It’s always about the leads.

However as with most things, it’s not just about volume, but rather, the quality of the thing. In this case, leads. They should be looking to generate higher quality leads. After all, a single lead that turns into a customer is better than 50 leads that don’t turn into anything, right?

Money coming in says I’ve made the right marketing decisions. — Adam Osborne

Since 95% of marketers say that lead quality is important to them, here are three ways you can improve your lead quality and convert more of them to sales.

1. Understand what is a sales-qualified lead

This simple concept can cause a lot of friction between Marketing and Sales. In fact, it’s a pretty common issue in many enterprise companies, compounded by the fact that many marketers don’t even know what a sales- or marketing- qualified lead is. Establishing the guidelines and characteristics for each type will ensure that each group is working with the highest quality lead possible, and can have more opportunities to convert them to sales.

2. Start lead scoring

Lead scoring is a “methodology shared by Sales and Marketing that ranks leads to determine their sales-readiness.” B2B companies can do this in a variety of ways, like:

• Assigning points to each lead
• Using terms like “hot”, “warm”, or “cold”
• Ranking each lead according to a pre-defined set of characteristics

Have both Sales and Marketing give input into what is a qualified lead, and then share that information between each group. Depending on the fit and interest of the lead, the appropriate group can take action.

Not sure you’re ready for lead scoring? Well, you should be. Aberdeen Research found that companies that do lead scoring have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate.

3. Nurture your leads

Lead nurturing is a critical aspect of any B2B marketing program. The B2B buying pipeline is so long in today’s market, you must “establish buyer preference for your products”, while you secretly learn the art of buyer timing. Gaining insight into the buyer’s decision making process is difficult, and timing your content with their decision is even harder. That’s why you should be continually producing content for them to consume. You must deliver sufficient value and interest to them.

Bonus tip: In today’s era of permission-based marketing and new contact laws coming into effect, it’s important to get your lead’s permission to remain in contact with them. Otherwise you may run afoul of anti-spam legislation and other more complex legal issues.

Since you’re already focused on generating more leads, why not use these three tips to get better leads?

Blogging isn’t going out of style any time soon; with the ascent of content marketing, blogging, podcasting and video are on the minds of marketers and PR professionals all the time. In this 10-part Beginner’s Guide to Blogging series, we’re going to explore what makes a blog great and give you some structures and frameworks to help make blogging easier. Take from it what works and leave behind what doesn’t work!

The Lilypad

The Lilypad is a blog post framework named after how frogs jump from lilypad to lilypad in a pond. I first learned this particular storytelling structure from Tamsen Webster of Oratium, and adapted it to blogging.

In the beginning of the lilypad, you set the stage. This can be the positioning of a problem, a question, a thought – anything that creates a starting context for your readers. Once you’ve started the journey, write out a transition for the most natural question that’s likely to come to mind to your readers, which bridges into the next lilypad.

As with real lilypads on ponds, each pad can only be a certain “distance” from the next one without losing your readers. Having written transitions between the lilypads allows your readers to make the intellectual jumps, rather than abrupt topic changes or perspectives.

Finish off the lilypad with a satisfying conclusion that echoes the problem you started out with.

Example

Let’s say you sell roasted coffee, as an example for a lilypad post:

Context-setter: Nothing quite beats starting your day with a brewed cup of coffee from freshly roasted beans. There’s just something magical about the aroma when you open your roast and smell the coffee, a savory and earthy scent that promises energy, vitality, and happiness.

Lilypad 1: What is it about freshly roasted coffee that makes us feel this way? Part of it may be memory and association – we know from experience how coffee makes us feel. Part of it is also chemical; when coffee is roasted, it unlocks hundreds of different volatile organic compounds that deepen our sensory experience. The catch with coffee is that those volatile organic compounds break down very quickly.

Lilypad 2: You might ask yourself, just how quickly can they break down? The answer can be disheartening: freshly-roasted, freshly-ground coffee loses its aromatic powers in just a few days, even under the best-stored conditions. The compounds, many of which are oils, either evaporate or turn rancid.

Lilypad 3: So how do you preserve the wonderful coffee experience for as long as possible? First, never grind beans until you absolutely need them. Grind them at the last minute so that the flavor inside the bean isn’t exposed to air. Second, buy the freshest beans possible. Coffee beans that are freshly roasted often have a sheen on them from some of the oils expressed in the roasting process. If you’re looking at beans that are dull and matte in their appearance, they’ve not been roasted in the last few days. Third, buy only as much as you need in the next month, and store them in an airtight container, not the bag they ship in. Finally, store your coffee beans in a cool, dry place. A freezer isn’t a good choice because the moment you open the beans, they will condense moisture out of the air onto their surface and accelerate the aging process. Better to put them in an airtight container in a basement or at the back of a closet.

Conclusion: If you follow all the right steps with your coffee beans, you’ll wake up every morning to that magical cup of coffee that makes every day a great one.

If the lilypad did its job, you should be wanting a cup of coffee right now.

Use Cases

The lilypad structure works best for any kind of storytelling or journey, especially if there isn’t always an overarching logical focus. Compare this to the Kennedy or the Franklin where there’s an explicit sales pitch built into the structure. The lilypad leads your readers on a journey that can wander through different sub-topics and focus points without losing readers, as long as your transitions are strong and sound.

In the next post, we’ll look at wagon wheels and how we can blog with them.

Great salespeople are organized people and it all starts with time management and scheduling. In order to be productive, every item on your calendar should be geared toward meeting sales prospects and ultimately closing sales. Below are five tips that successful salespeople use to manage their calendars:

1. Goal-setting

Taking the time to write down the income you want will set the motivation to help you stick to your schedule. Once you have defined your main goals, breaking down these sales goals into smaller, short-term tasks and milestones helps to make them more achievable. This also makes it easier to define the activities you need to accomplish in a day, week or month and add them to your calendar.

2. Set a schedule and stick to it

Scheduling your activities is key to managing your calendar well. Determine the number of hours per day or week you have to spend on various activities. According CSO Insights, salespeople currently spend 41% of their time selling (either by phone or face-to-face), 24% generating leads and prospects, 19% doing administrative tasks and the remaining time on other tasks like service calls or trainings. With this said, the main point is to increase the time spent selling, but strike a balance between other activities that have to be done to lead to a higher number of actual sales. Planning your day and allotting a specific number of hours for certain tasks only takes a few minutes but saves you a ton of hours.

3. Focus on your 20%

The 80/20 Rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. Determine what these activities are and focus on them more. Think about how to increase time with qualified sales leads. Spend more time on customers who are most likely to consider buying your product and spend less time on administrative duties and other non-revenue generating activities. If possible, outsource these tasks to a productivity assistant to get them off your plate entirely.

4. Manage interruptions

Protect your schedule from distractions and interruptions by focusing only on the tasks you need to work on for the hour. Distractions come in many forms like unproductive meetings, answering non-urgent emails, and interruptions from co-workers. Giving in to distractions robs you of your valuable time, and you have to be firm in saying no in order to avoid these circumstances. Still, some interruptions are unavoidable, and when stuck in such situations, proper management and diversion of these unproductive events can help salvage whatever time you can still save. Stuck in a meeting? Use the time to analyze data on sales leads. Receiving unimportant calls? Tell them to send you an email instead.

5. Set aside creative time

What should you do if there are no scheduled sales calls, or during “dead time” when your prospects are unreachable? Block out this time to identify what your customers’ needs are and create some solutions to meet those needs. Also, spend time creating systems that improve the flow of your sales processes, which will ultimately save you more time in the future.

Successful salespeople know how to prioritize, plan and have the discipline to stick to the plan every day. Knowing what to focus on and what to avoid can save you from time wasters and give you valuable time better spent on revenue-generating activities.

Reducing churn is critical to the success of your SaaS company.

David Skok, who is a must read for all startups, explains that as a SaaS company grows, the size of the subscribers/customers/users who no longer do business with the company will also, organically, grow.

This equates to a loss of revenue, which requires more and more signups from new customers just to replace what you are organically losing every month.

In other words, growth slows, becomes stagnate or worse, churn is so bad, you’re losing more customers than you are gaining every month. That’s why you need to be simultaneously feeding your growth engine, while monitoring churn and your other startup metrics.

Below, are 10 case studies on how to reduce churn for your SaaS product. Before we get there though, I want to mention that David Skok points out something that can massively accelerate SaaS growth: negative churn.

I have seen this happen at a few startups I’ve worked with by expanding revenue from the current product, plus up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, but that will be a future post.

Now to the case studies…

1. How Groove Reduced Churn by 71% By Defining “Why” Customers Quit

Despite a steady stream of new users, SaaS startup Groove’s 4.5% churn rate meant the company’s growth was unsustainable.

When they met to discuss and attempt to address the issue in January 2013, they realized they had little insight into exactly why customers were leaving. They decided to systematically research user behavior in order to determine what correlated with church.

The Research

Groove uncovered distinct differences between the users who abandoned and the users who stayed. They refer to these differences as “Red Flag” Metrics (or RFMs). RFMs allowed Groove to identify which users were at risk before churning actually happened.

For the first 30 days of the customer life cycle, Groove’s most significant RFMs included length of first session and frequency of logins. Total number of logins also proved to be an important metric, though not as much so as the former two. Groove found that users who stuck around after the first 30 days had initial sessions that lasted, on average, three minutes and 18 seconds.

By contrast, first sessions of users who quit lasted only 35 seconds on average. While users who remained customers logged in 4.4 times a day on average, those who did not only logged in 0.3 times per day on average. These metrics are indicated in the chart below:

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Groove uncovered another significant, though less immediately apparent, metric—time spent on a certain task.

For example, creating a rule in the Groove app tends to take between 10 and 30 seconds, while customizing a support widget is a 2 to 3 minute task. Yet many users who churned had taken significantly longer to accomplish tasks such as these.

Finally, Groove wanted to identify and leverage their “power users,” so they created a segment of customers who not only hadn’t quit after 30 days, but who had logged in and used the service frequently.

The Execution

Groove came up with several data-driven attempts at lowering churn. For starters, they used emails to target users whose first sessions were under 2 minutes, as depicted below:

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Groove’s offer to help these users through the setup process resulted in a 26% response rate. Of the users who went on to complete the process, over 40% stuck around after 30 days.

The company also sent the following email to users who logged in fewer than 2 times within the first 10 days:

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This email had a response rate around 15%, and almost half of those who responded were still using the service after 30 days. Groove was so happy with the effectiveness of these emails, they decided to integrate similar tactics into the onboarding process for every new user.

When it came to the RFM of time spent on a specific task, Groove hypothesized that the customers who took considerably longer were encountering problems of some kind. Rather than reaching out for help, those users simply quit.

To test this hypothesis, they sent the following email reaching out to users who spent much longer than average on a task in a single session:

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This email received a 10% response rate, and 30% of the users who responded were still customers after 30 days.

Finally, Groove sent the following email to two groups—their most engaged users, and a random control group—around their referral program with a month free incentive: (minus the reference to usage):

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They found that their power users sent almost 400% more referrals than the control group.

Why Did This Happen?

By identifying the behaviors that signaled when customers were in danger of churning, Groove was able to set up interventions and retain some of those high risk users. Not only that, but they also increased referrals and rewarded power users by focusing on the opposite end of the engagement spectrum.

Actionable Advice

• Though your Red Flag Metrics will be distinct, you can nevertheless identify the behaviors that signal when users are about to cancel or unsubscribe. Leverage what you learn to intervene with high-risk users and lower your churn rate.
• Unless you do some digging, you won’t know when your customers are struggling. Look for behaviors that signal when customers are having trouble and think of ways you can help them along.
• Don’t limit your testing to flight risk customers. Think of ways you can improve the UX and reward your loyal customers as well.

2. How Patrick McKenzie Reduces Churn Through User Onboarding

Software developer Patrick McKenzie aka @Patio11 (easily one of my favorite marketers to follow and learn from) asserts that 40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of almost every software or SaaS application will use it once and never come back. Sometimes they forget they even signed up for the application, or they realize it simply wasn’t a good fit.

Often, however, they’re unable to see the benefit of using the software. Patrick claims that abandonment of this kind can be decreased by both making the software better and by better communication with users.

The Research

Patrick’s Bingo Card Creator is designed to allow elementary school teachers to use a list of words to create classroom learning aids. Here are funnel analytics for the Bingo Card Creator new user experience:

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Though it’s not possible to track when cards are actually printed, downloading the PDF file for printing is used as a proxy for tracking printing, since that’s the last observable step of the process.

There is a drop-off of around 5% between teachers visiting the dashboard and actually creating a list of words, with more substantial declines between “Create List,” “Customize,” and “Schedule Print.”

Though the application is designed to take seconds, Patrick hypothesizes that many users are unaware of this fact and assuming the process will be too drawn out or complicated, they quit.

The Execution

In an attempt to increase the number of teachers who complete the Customize step, Patrick added a visible progress indicator (pictured below). Furthermore, teachers were given the option of moving forward without making changes to the default settings, further speeding up the process.

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These small changes had a big impact. Whereas before only 82% of users completed the customize step, close to 90% made it through the test version.

Why Did This Happen?

When using a product for the first time, users have no idea what to expect. A good onboarding process walks them through it, demonstrating the benefit and teaching them what to expect along the way.

(Note: Check out User Onboard by Samuel Hulick for onboarding teardowns.)

According to Patrick, the goal of Bingo Card Creator’s new user experience is getting the teacher through the funnel—and to the point at which she walks to her printer, sees the cards, and thinks, “Wow, my class will love these”— as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Bingo Card Creator’s progress bar helped get more teachers to this point by making it clear just how close they were to printing their cards.

Actionable Advice

• For a lot of companies, the new user experience is an accident or afterthought, but expecting users to simply “get it” from the beginning is a recipe for churn. We should craft an onboarding process that moves them toward the benefit of the product as quickly and simply as possible.
• Product tours should not feel like work, and intelligent defaults are a great way to balance choice vs. ease—give users the freedom to customize while preserving their ability to move quickly through the process.
• Never stop testing and optimizing your onboarding process. Even those with “good” conversions could be better, and small improvements add up over time.

3. How to Improve Mobile App Retention Through Customization

In 2011, Fred Wilson cited the 30/10/10 ratio as a “law of web/mobile physics,” generally true regardless of business or industry—that is, 30% of customers will use a service each month, 10% will use it each day, and as many as 10% of daily users will be using it at any given time.

The Research

Mixpanel felt that this ratio no longer held true. To establish some new benchmarks for retention, they decided to look at the percentage of people who first used a given mobile app and then used it at least once more in the 30 days after their first use.

Using an aggregated set of over 15 billion actions analyzed by Mixpanel each month during August, September, and October 2013, they were able to establish new, industry specific benchmarks for retention.

The Execution

In the chart below, it’s clear that retention varies quite a bit from one industry to the next.

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When looking closely at the verticals above, they found that two forces were at play—instant gratification and customization. Though the natural assumption is that instant gratification apps have a higher retention rates, the following chart shows that to be untrue:

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Actions that went beyond instant gratification, allowing users to more fully engage with the product, proved to be more sticky. While providing value quickly is important, it’s important that that value is more than superficial.

Why Did This Happen?

Mixpanel posits that the incredible stickiness of messaging and social apps is due to their increased level of customization. In the case of Facebook Login, for example, users can instantly access a network they’ve been customizing for months or years—the perfect marriage of instant gratification and customization.

Actionable Advice

• Mixpanel argues that it’s not good enough to merely meet the benchmarks in your industry. To succeed, you must beat them by consistently retaining more than the average percentage of customers.
• Just as numbers vary from one industry to another, what constitutes “customization” will look different for every app. Still, it’s important to balance instant gratification with customization in a way that works for your customers in order to have an experience that keeps them logging back in.

4. How Telefonica Ireland Uses Business Intelligence To Reduce Churn

Before 2007, O2 Ireland, part of Telefonica Europe, had a ton of disparate data and very little insight as to what it all meant. Yet in the business of pre-paid SIM cards, it can be hard to know which customers to focus retention efforts on. It’s not uncommon for a customer to buy a SIM card, use it for a business trip, and then leave the country. Yet focusing retention efforts on these customers would be a poor investment.

The Research

To better understand customer behavior, the company invested in Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) tools and a Teradata data warehouse. This unified system is a huge improvement over the earlier infrastructure, which was both expensive and slow. Every day, data from over 130 processes are collected in O2’s data warehouse, including the entire billing and customer relationship management system.

Analysis of the company’s data revealed that only about 65% of pre-paid SIM customers have an ongoing relationship with O2 (as opposed to the traveling businessman in the scenario above).

 

The Execution

Business intelligence is now part of the company culture at O2, informing everything from location-based marketing efforts to everyday decision making. O2’s Peter McKenna explains, “Given their array of behaviors, it doesn’t make sense to invest in all customers in the same way. We want to invest in the customers we can influence and the customers who are really engaging with us.”

Why Did This Happen?

Once the company had all their data in one place, some inexplicable user behavior began to make a lot more sense. With such distinctly different segments of users, it became clear that targeting each and every one with retention efforts would be a misstep.

Actionable Advice

• If you’re currently unable to take a holistic look at your data, the time and expense required to unify it will most likely be worth the insights you’ll gain.
• Understanding the various segments within your user base will prevent you from wasting your energy and marketing budget on unqualified users who are destined to churn, as well as give you insight into better opportunities for growth.

5. How Mention Reduced Churn By 22% By Increasing Communication With Their Customers

Like many SaaS businesses, Mention — a service that lets businesses and individuals track what’s being said about them online — struggled with churn. As their customer base grew from hundreds to over 200,000, they realized their current efforts were unsustainable.

The Research

Mention based their optimization on a few facts.

For starters, they knew that paid and free trial members were more valuable than users with a free plan. They also knew that the automated marketing emails sent to free trial users were highly valuable, and that feature activation during free trial was a huge driver of conversion and retention. Having successfully used webinars as conversion tools in the past, the company also saw them as a potential candidate for reducing churn.

All of this information went into the formation of Mention’s three month plan for improving communication and reducing churn by 20%.

The Execution

Using Intercom.io for customer support, Mention segmented their users according to membership type, prioritizing the help requests of more valuable users. They also implemented a new streamlined system for assigning support tickets, as depicted below:

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Handling support requests in batches every four hours meant more time to focus on other, equally important goals—such as weekly “support meet product” meetings in which the company used customer feedback to improve product and support tools.

These changes alone meant around 50% less time spent on support, as well as higher levels of customer satisfaction for both free trial and paid users.

Since they already knew how much free trial users valued Mention’s automated marketing emails, they leveraged them to encourage feature activation—a valuable customer behavior. Paying customers began receiving “Pro Tips” like the one below, which showcased popular features:

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Mention also sent out monthly “success story” style case studies like the one below:

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Finally, they created a “use-case Master Class”—a webinar that demonstrated the service’s potential and instructed new customers in how to effective use Mention’s features, with concrete examples from actual clients:

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Through a combination of the above efforts, Mention as able to lower churn by 22% in a single month—well in advance of their 3 month goal.

Why Did This Happen?

Based on data and user feedback from previous efforts, Mention already had a good idea of what their customers responded to. Using this information, they were able to craft a strong communication plan that ultimately made their service more valuable for customers—giving them a reason to stick around.

Actionable Advice

• Think of ways you can extend successful campaigns—such as Mention’s automated email campaign for free trial users—to deliver value to more of your user base.
• Don’t expect users to automatically “get” the value of your service. Show them with tips, guides, and success stories.

6. How Intercom.io Reduces Churn Through Email Automation Based On Team Behavior

Intercom.io’s Des Traynor argues that not all churn is equal, and that cancellation is the final straw in a process that begins much earlier. Thus, Intercom.io’s automated emails focus on re-engaging entire teams whose interaction is lagging.

The Research

Traynor identifies “Activity Churn” as a phenomenon that occurs prior to cancellation, as depicted in the chart below:

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Before cancellation ever happens, there are clear signals that a customer is in danger of churning. Engagement flags, and your product or service goes from an everyday occurrence to being used once a week, then once a month. Finally, they decide it’s a waste of money altogether.

The Execution

Rather than sending an automated email to every user who hasn’t logged in for a set number of days, Des suggests that the best time to address activity churn is when you see a drop in usage across an entire team—an indication that your service is losing its value.

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Many SaaS products are built around teams. Think project management (eg. Basecamp and Mavenlink) or accounting software (eg. Quickbooks and Xero). As the image above depicts, an individual customer might be on holiday or working on different projects, therefore their usage will temporarily stall.

But when an entire team, whether it’s a group of three or 300, begins to noticeably drop, action must be taken.

Why Did This Happen?

When companies measure churn based on cancellation alone, they miss the opportunity to reengage the once-a-week user who, unlike the cancelled user, can still be retained. Even when users insist on leaving, it’s possible to gain insight into their objections and craft a better service that ultimately lowers churn in the long run.

The key is understanding that churn happens long before customers decide to cancel.

Actionable Advice

• Understand the difference between someone who didn’t convert after a free trial and someone who has been active for a year before slowly disengaging. They have different relationships with your business, and sending the same email to these two customers would be a huge misstep. Automatic “Dear Customer, We miss you!” emails will seem disingenuine to long-time users who are experiencing serious issues with your service.
• For long time customers, define the metrics that indicate a drop in engagement. Check your analytics to find the common patterns of churned customers & schedule the intervention when they can be considered “disengaged”.
• If your product revolves around team usage, find ways to bucket their usage together and measure that over time. Teams are less likely to churn if they are happy with your product because of the costs to move to another software solution.
• Give customers a reason to log back in by offering a sneak peek of a new service or a reminder of features they’ve found valuable in the past.
• Accept that you will not be able to retain or re-engage every customer, and it will only hurt your reputation to fight back or spam them for months after cancellation.

7. How HubSpot Reduces Churn By Increasing Their CHI (Customer Happiness Index)

Jonah Lopin, VP of Customer Success at HubSpot, defines the company’s Customer Happiness Index, or CHI, as “a measure of the degree to which [a customer] is practicing inbound marketing in a way that is likely to lead to long-term success.”

CHI is a play on the Chinese word 气, which means life force, and is a great indication of not only how much a customer will benefit from HubSpot but also how happy they’ll be with the service and how likely they are to renew.

The Research

HubSpot calculates customer acquisition costs (CAC) by dividing the amount spent on Smarketing (according to HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah, the total cost of sales and marketing) by the total number of customers, as shown in the equation below.

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For a company to succeed, customer acquisition cost must be less than customer lifetime value (the amount he or she pays throughout their time as a customer), otherwise customers are costing rather than contributing to revenue. Lowering acquisition costs is one way to lessen the burden, but lowering churn is also critical, as the longer customers stick around the more they end up paying in subscription fees.

Because churn is a complicated metric, HubSpot wanted to implement a more concrete measure of customer success. It’s not good enough for customers to merely stay subscribed, especially when plans that lock customers in for six months or a year can make it hard to measure satisfaction based on churn alone, and by the time a customer cancels or unsubscribes, it is often too late. Yet customer satisfaction is critical to keeping churn low.

The Execution

Rather than looking at churn alone, HubSpot uses their Customer Happiness Index as a more holistic representation of success. CHI is calculated based on several factors, including how frequently customers blog and track leads through HubSpot’s system, whether they run email and conversion campaigns, whether they engage in social media, and more. These inputs are weighted according to HubSpot’s analysis of thousands of customers over years.

Any time a new customer signs up for HubSpot, they’re assigned an Inbound Marketing Consultant who will help implement the software and work with them for the first few months of using HubSpot. Though many customers are familiar with inbound marketing, others are starting from scratch, and HubSpot offers a mini-education in inbound marketing to help customers achieve the highest CHI score possible. Regardless of age or experience, each customer receives a personalized monthly account review, the goal of which is to help them get as much out of their subscription as possible.

Tracking the CHI scores of their customers not only allowed HubSpot to keep around 33% of previously unhappy customers, but Lopin also explains that customers who implement inbound marketing according to HubSpot’s guidelines “get double digit increases in leads every month.”

Why Did This Happen?

HubSpot uses CHI as a gauge of how much value the service is delivering—a critical component to lowering churn.

CHI not only serves as an indicator of which individual customers might need additional help, but it’s also a broader guide as to which of HubSpot’s strategies are working well and which ones are not, giving the company insight into broader, company-wide changes that can be made to increase happiness and reduce churn.

Actionable Advice

• To identify the factors that contribute to customer happiness, measure as many dimensions of usage and engagement as possible. Identify the segments with the highest success based on satisfaction, engagement, retention, or another metric that matters to you.
• Run regressions to identify which factors contributed to the success of your power users, and combine them to create a scale or score that predicts whether or not other customers will be successful.
• Make changes to your acquisition, onboarding, support, and more to drive that score up for each and every customer.

8. How Zendesk Reduced Churn With Human Touch

According to Zack Urlocker of Scale Venture Partners, the inefficient old school field sales model had one major advantage over the current, high-volume SaaS sales model—human touch.

Employees were up close and personal with customers, giving them the ability to ensure that the product was delivering value. Today, online sales are fairly anonymous, especially in larger organizations with a high volume of customers. It’s no longer easy to identify how they’re using a service, whether it’s making their lives easier, and how they might be struggling—which means it’s harder to prevent them from churning.

The Execution

Zack wanted to help Zendesk avoid being the kind of company who only calls when seeking renewal, so he helped the company to implement a Customer Account Management (CAM) team that reached out to Zendesk customers using a 12 month program with regularly scheduled check-ins, phone calls, and emails.

This proactive approach helped to identify and curb potential issues before they could contribute to a negative experience with Zendesk, and the close relationship between Account Managers and customers meant that issues like new management or lack of engagement (both of which put an account at risk for churn) could be identified and managed early on.

CAMs also provided information about new features, best practices, and resources to help customers get the most out of Zendesk, and they connected customers with Support and Engineering to help resolve problems quickly and efficiently.

This ongoing relationship helped Zendesk to earn trust with customers, resulting in more upgrades and referrals, as well as below-industry churn rates.

Why Did This Happen?

Adopting a new software solution can be difficult. Until customers are reaping the benefits, they see it as more of an obstacle to overcome than a valuable part of their business. By assigning customers a CAM, Zendesk helped to make the transition easier, forming a positive relationship in the process.

Actionable Advice

• The amount of contact you’ll have with your customers depends on the service you provide. Though a high-touch CAM team might not be right for you, the only time customers hear from you should not when you ask them for money.
• Use analytics to identify the points at which customers are most vulnerable to churn, and craft a plan for reaching out in a genuine, human (even if automated) way. Provide resources, best practices, or a voice or video chat where they can find support and guidance.

9. How Buffer Improves Retention Through Trigger-Based Emails

Once you have an idea of which actions generate value for customers, trigger-based emails are a great low-effort, high impact way of encouraging those actions and thereby reducing churn.

These emails are based on specific user actions. For example, if someone signs up for your service but never completes the setup process, a trigger-based email from the help desk might offer one-on-one guidance through setup.

In a study by Experian, they saw follow-up trigger-based emails result in an average 54% increase compared to just sending one message, and emails based on products a customer has viewed achieved a 3.4x lift in revenue compared to promotional mailings.

In addition, companies like and Smart Furniture were able to increase email open rates by 311% by increasing their list segments from six to 30 for more highly targeted emails.

The Execution

Buffer uses trigger-based emails like the one below to encourage customers whose streams are empty to schedule a few more tweets and keep their social channels active:

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Why Did This Happen?

For Buffer, lots of scheduled tweets indicates that customers are getting value from the service, while letting a Buffer account lie dormant is the first step down the road to cancellation.

In fact, they saw 33% of churned users were actually still active the day they canceled. This is contrary to expected user behavior, so Buffer started emailing customers when they had no future posts.

To increase retention and provide additional value, they not only made their customers aware that their Buffer queue was empty, but provided other popular applications they integrated with to make the sharing process more seamless.

Actionable Advice

• Use analytics to identify your power users. Which actions have they completed that less valuable customers or customers who unsubscribe haven’t? Take this information and come up with what an “Activated” customer looks like for your business.
• Use a tool like Customer.io, Vero, or Hubspot Enterprise to set up trigger-based email campaigns encouraging less active users to take steps toward activation.

Conclusion

Put simply again, churn is extremely critical to the success of your SaaS company. There are many ways to reduce churn (or possibly create negative churn) with an underlying theme of communicating with your customers.

Some of these case studies directly or a blend of several should be able to reduce your churn immediately if done properly. If you implement any variation of the examples above, I’d love to hear your results.

Lastly, Andrew Chen and Christoph Janz put together a great spreadsheet for churn, MRR, and cohort analysis.

Thoughts on the above case studies? What experiments have you run, successfully or unsuccessfully, to reduce churn for your product?

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The Pareto principle has been a business adage since the start of the 20^th century. Its nearly impossible to keep track of its many surprising applications in marketing and internal management.

However, is it a law that can’t be broken? In the case of marketing for example, is it really impossible for 20% of financial leads to actually be more valuable than the 80%?

It may not break it but you can ‘bend’ the 80/20 rule to a certain degree.

Imagine this scenario. You’re having the typical case of getting 80% of your sales from 20% of your financial leads. All of sudden, almost mysteriously, a sizeable population of new financial leads shows great promise. They’re interested in your services. They want to learn more. They seem the type to really commit in the long term.

There’s just one catch, they don’t identify with the special 20% of your leads. They’re still part of the larger percentage of prospects that don’t generate much business. What do you do?

• Try to isolate – Get a stronger understanding of their potential. What makes them different from all your other customers (best and not-so-best)? Understanding what exactly makes them appeal to your business or set off the sensors of your sales reps can lead to a more tailored marketing approach.

• Establish a connection – The only way you can guarantee that they are going to add bigger portions to your bottom line is invest in a connection. Don’t make the mistake of merely focusing on a segment just because they do most of the complaining. Establish a firm reason why you want to keep catering to this particular segment.

• Be a peacekeeper – Finally, whatever disagreement they have with the higher paying segments of your target market needs to be kept under control. It’s not just solely their responsibility to keep it civil. Their approach to your products, services, and even company vision can really vary. In fact, the divide can exist even inside a single organization.

There’s no breaking the 80/20 rule it seems and it doesn’t look like it really needs to. Bending it is enough to make you realize that your best sales could come out of anywhere. What’s important is investing in the potential and learn to manage conflicts among a greater variety of influencers.

Ramping up on a new project can be stressful for business development and inside sales reps. There are many different marketing materials they need to read, and processes they need to understand, before they’re able to start prospecting. Training is rigorous and ongoing. Each project and each client is different, so the necessary ramp-up materials always change. One thing never changes though: in order for a successful ramp up, sales reps need to have a good relationship management strategy. In layman’s terms, they need to be able to communicate and collaborate with closing reps effectively.

The best way to set a new project up for success is to organize a productive ramp-up week, as I described in my last blog post on this topic. The ramp-up week is a critical period where clients and their sales team (which includes business development reps, managers, and directors of client operations) connect to share goals and expectations. This is also the perfect time to set a precedence for the relationship between these teams. Effective and constructive communication is very important in order to create and maintain a positive relationship. Here are four communication tips to remember when ramping up with a new client:

1. Actively Listen.

It’s important to take the time to listen and internalize all information you are given during the ramp up period. We’ve talked about the importance of active listening in sales calls; be active listeners with your clients, too. Take notes and show sincere interest in the ramp up materials presented to you. Paraphrase the material to show that you are internalizing it and to confirm the understanding of both parties. Active listening will help you retain new information, which will better the relationship between you and your client.

2. Ask Questions.

It is important to make sure that the whole team is on the same page. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to clarify any ramp-up material. Your client will appreciate your desire to follow up and your interest in their product or service. Instead of sitting on your hands when learning new information, show your outside reps how politely persistent you are early on, and they will appreciate your desire to be politely persistent to prospects on the phone.

3. Share thoughts.

It’s important to emphasize a collaborative client relationship. Brainstorm with your client on scripting tactics and prospecting techniques. You may want to mention other techniques that have worked for you in the past. Your client will once again be grateful that you’re invested in the project enough to contribute your own ideas to make it better.

4. Be patient.

Especially when moving between different projects, it’s important to be patient. Not every client will want to use your suggestions. Remember to respect everyone’s thoughts and experiences and keep an open mind. Don’t get discouraged; there is a lot of new information to learn during the ramp-up time frame, and it will take some time for the teams to adjust to working with one another. Every client is different, and so are their processes and strategies. To make the ramp-up process easier for both outside and inside sales reps, remember to be patient.

Hopefully these communication tips will help you better the relationship between outside and inside teams when ramping up on a new project. Communication and collaboration is absolutely essential when both teams are working towards the same goal: more qualified leads and conversations.

What communication tips would you add to this list?

Drip email marketing is the “dripping” of series of relevant emails to a specified list of subscribers. These messages are typically designed to build a relationship, increase customer retention, or guide leads through the sales process.

Automation of email messages in a drip campaign is based on pre-determined time intervals, email order and number of messages. For example, when someone downloads an eBook from your website, they might get the first thank-you/introduction email within 24 hours, a second follow-up email in three days, and a third email a week later. In this example, you’ve sent three messages total; however, drip campaigns can have any number of emails in the channel, the number just needs to be determined prior to the start of the campaign.

Drip campaigns are commonly employed because they are both efficient and successful at keeping a brand top-of-mind. Efficient, because once implemented, they free up time for your sales and marketing teams. Successful, because they can lead to up to a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities if designed correctly.

Common Types of Drip Campaigns

As mentioned above, drip emails can be used for a variety of purposes. Here are some drip campaigns topics you can introduce to your email marketing mix:

• Relationship-building campaigns: Funnel leads through the sales process by establishing a relationship first. Offering valuable content, answering questions, and attempting to engage with your readers are good elements to include in your emails.
• Educational campaigns: Keep leads and/or customers informed about relevant product information as they need it. You can use advanced segmentation to ensure only people interested in your updates receive communication about them.
• Re-engagement campaigns: Target your cold leads or customers you haven’t heard from in a while with a clever email series. Perhaps you could use this as an opportunity to present a special offer or try something out-of-the-box to grab lost attention.
• Promotional campaigns: Inform subscribers of upcoming or limited-time promotions.

It’s important to note drip campaigns can be particularly useful for creating qualified leads for sales teams, as the farther through the campaign a lead goes, the more exposure they will have had to your brand, which will help them in determining if they’re ready to invest.

Regardless of what sort of drip campaign you’re conducting, it’s smart to segment your subscribers by their similarities and their relationship to your brand. Segmenting will help ensure your emails remain hyper-relevant and timely to their position in the sales cycle.

Tips for Your Drip Campaigns

Escalation – You want to make sure your emails make sense sequentially. The best drip campaigns are often ones where the messages increase in value and prominent calls-to-action as they proceed down the channel. People generally take a long time to make decisions, so use this opportunity to send snippets of information that build with time.

Testing – Like any email, the key to a successful drip campaign is to perform testing to see what works best for your subscribers. A/B test ideas include, but are not limited to:

• Subject Line
• Frequency
• Timing

Value – It’s critical to include some form of value in any and all email communication you send to leads and customers. This component is especially critical during drip campaigns, where many of your readers are in the evaluating/research stage of purchase. For leads who have the potential to turn into customers, the pre-investment stage is a perfect time to squash their indecision on purchasing by assuring them through your content that your company is the best at what it does. Do this by offering thought leadership through means of educational resources, videos, case studies, blog posts, etc. Additionally, stand out by tailoring your content to subtly address the questions leads may be having about your industry and/or brand.

Something Extra – We preach about this often, but if you want to stand out in the inbox, you need to do something different, and make an impression with readers so they remember your brand. Try experimenting with creative themes and a bold, brand-conscious look and feel. You could also try including something interactive in your email, such as a quiz.

Lead generation is an important activity for any B2B company. So much so that a lot of B2B marketers spend their time generating the leads, but not doing anything with them. And in their minds, that’s okay, because that’s all they were told to do.

“Generate more leads!” management said. So they did.

However that’s not where the work ends. In fact, B2B lead generation is just the beginning. After all, the end goal of any marketer is to actually make a sale, not just generate the lead. Sales often finds out just how “good” Marketing is at generating leads when they start going through them all. They discover that while the pile of leads is HUGE, the quality is very LOW. This leads to a lot of frustration and finger-pointing.

Avoid all of this by figuring out what kind of leads you have, and then deciding on a course of action. In other words, lead scoring.

At a basic level, lead scoring is simply a way to determine how serious a lead is to buy your product. There are all sorts of methodologies you can use for lead scoring, but it ultimately comes down to two things: Fit and Engagement.

Fit

According to Eloqua, when you qualify a lead’s “fit”, you’re looking at the individual and organization the lead belongs to. Based on information like their job title, industry, geography, company revenue, and more, a lead will be a better or worse fit.

Engagement

This is the lead’s level of buying interest. Using characteristics like their online activity and response to marketing programs, resource downloads, social media shares, event attendance, and more, B2B marketers can determine the lead’s level of buying interest.

Acting on your lead scores

After you’ve decided which elements to measure, it’s time to measure them. Having formalized lead scoring thresholds will make it easier for B2B marketers to determine when to make the next move.

• Under a certain number, and it’s a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), meaning they need to see some more content before they’re ready to buy.
• Over a certain number, and it’s a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), meaning they’re ready to buy and Sales should contact them immediately.

Knowing when to act

Regardless if it’s an MQL or SQL, studies show that moving quickly to respond to those leads is the key. Of course for B2B marketers that means entering the lead’s buying moment at just the right time. When that happens, studies show that you’ve got an excellent chance of closing the sale.

Having enough resources helps too

According to eConsultancy, many companies (52%) say they need more resources to improve their conversion rates. For B2B marketers, that means having enough content to feed leads throughout the buying cycle. Case studies, white papers, corporate blog posts, articles, checklists, webinars, events — all of these resources are needed for today’s B2B marketer. After all, it takes at least four different pieces of content to even get your name on a vendor shortlist, so be prepared!

Set yourself up the right way

Marketing in the B2B world is a marathon, not a sprint. Preparing your Marketing and Sales teams with the same expectations and the same tools and resources, and you’ll be on your way to converting all those leads you’re already good at generating.

Your value proposition is an important part of your marketing strategy that is often misunderstood. Although a key concept in marketing for decades, it is now just as important in the online world where you are trying to get people to click on your ads or convert on your landing pages into qualified leads.

A value proposition is a clear statement about the tangible results a customer will realize from using your products or services.

Delivering value requires understanding what your customer wants to accomplish, the challenges they face, what is important to them and then delivering the message in terms that your audience understands.

Sounds simple, right?

But creating a value proposition for your business is not a simple exercise because it requires that you understand what is truly unique about your business that has value to your customer.

Your value proposition needs to be the first thing your visitor sees when they reach your website to quickly know whether you are a good fit for them. Make sure your homepage encompasses your value proposition and that it:

• Explains who you work with and the value you provide – Many companies have a poorly developed value proposition because they try to be everything to everyone.
• Tells your audience what makes you uniquely different – It’s not just the product or service you sell but the perceived value in your offering that encompasses the entire customer experience.
• Aligns with what your target audience wants or needs – This shows that you understand their challenges which will entice them to find out more.

Finding a value proposition on many small business websites is difficult although some have entire pages dedicated to it. Companies hide their value from their customers by speaking industry jargon that does not help the prospect determine whether this is the right solution for them. What most of these describe is at best, their mission statement and at worse, why that company is wonderful, not how they help you solve your business challenges.

No value proposition is better than an ineffective one

Let’s take a look at three value propositions from a few different disciplines. When reading these, remember the three things your value proposition must convey: value, relevancy and unique differentiation.

• Financial Advisor – “We are committed to providing a road map that encompasses sound ethical advice, thoughtful planning and quality results. Together with our associates and subject-matter experts, we provide objective guidance by following our Unique Process and schedule of deliverables. As our relationship grows and you allow us the privilege of becoming your trusted advisor and ally over time, we will increasingly give your wealth purpose, guiding you on the pathway to a financially secure future. We also seek to earn the right to be referred to family, friends, and colleagues.”
• Web Design Agency – “XYZ partners with clients, enhancing their online marketing, web strategies and online campaigns. XYZ is dedicated to building long-term relationships through superior customer service, beautiful design, cutting edge programming and the deployment of SEO/SEM marketing best practices.”
• Business Coach – “I will confidentially work with you to find the answers to the questions that will build your organization by raising performance levels. Through a process of understanding you and your business, I will focus on strategy development and partner with you to bring about a disciplined process to execute your business plan. You will move your performance and that of your organization to a higher level.“

These statements all have the same problem. They don’t:

• Say who they work with – I need to know that you understand my business and my challenges.
• Tell me what I get for working with them – How do you increase my wealth? What results will I get from my website? What do you mean by move my performance?
• Tell me why they are different from their competition – All three of these statements would work on any of their competitors websites.

Develop a strong value proposition

Strong value propositions deliver results: increased revenue, faster time to market, decreased costs, improved productivity, increased market share or improved customer retention levels. When prospects realize value from your products and services, you increase sales, generate quality leads and strengthen customer loyalty.

Here are effective value propositions. These statements encourage prospects to find out more:

• Financial Advisor – Our services cater to individuals that want to secure their financial future. Our comprehensive financial planning and wealth management services don’t just focus on increasing wealth, but also ensure that your assets are protected.
• Web Design Agency – Our web design services increase the online visibility of our small business clients through a consistent and well designed web presence while decreasing the cost of acquiring new qualified leads by 30%.
• Business Coach – “We work with home improvement contractors on increasing sales and decreasing costs. Typically our clients grow their business by a minimum of 20-40% over the year while reducing costs by 30%.”

Value Proposition Tips

If you struggle to acquire new clients or get website visitors to take action, here are some tips to help you develop your value proposition to ensure you are aligning your value to your target audience.

First, answer the following questions:

• Who specifically do we work with? The better you understand who you work with, the more you can define their wants, needs and challenges.
• What do they want and why? What do they value the most? What you offer needs to be relevant to what they need and what they are willing to pay for.
• What do we do that is unique to our company? This is what will distinguish you from your competition.

Once you have answered these questions, then begin building your value proposition statement that targets customer needs and differentiates you from your competition.

A successfully tested and proven value proposition is essential to opening more doors and closing more sales.

Does your business have a value proposition that is clear and compelling to your target audience?

Whether you’re planning to redesign your B2B company’s current website, or you are planning to build an entirely new website for a startup or rebrand, making sure you’re using the right building blocks is absolutely critical to the effectiveness and success of your new website.

All B2B websites are not created equal. Take a quick look at your competitors’ websites and you’ll see a disparity in everything from design, messaging, content and functionality. But developing a powerful website that functions as a platform for business development requires the right strategy and components—or “building blocks.” Here is a list of the basic building blocks for a B2B website.

1. Planning and online marketing strategy

Building a powerful B2B website requires every aspect of your website to be strategically and meticulously planned and executed. Your web design partner should spend the proper time upfront gaining insight into your business, your goals, your sales process and how your website should tie into other online and offline marketing efforts. This is where working with a strategic marketing partner—­whose expertise in marketing is just as strong as their expertise in web development­—is absolutely critical.

2. Content strategy

A solid content strategy that defines how you will meet your target audiences’ needs and achieve your marketing goals is a critical building block of your website. Content is the magnet of your website and a content strategy will guide your plans for the what, where, when and why of content creation. This should include:

• Customer profile (persona) development
• Content mapping
• Content audit
• Action plan
• Information architecture

3. Key messaging and copywriting

One of the building blocks of a great B2B website that often receives the least amount of attention is key messaging and copywriting. Not surprisingly, many proposals don’t include this, because many web development shops don’t have the expertise in-house or companies try to save budget by taking care of it themselves. While it’s true that most agencies won’t be able to write your copy from scratch, don’t underestimate the value of having a professional help you craft powerful key messages that speak to your audience and bring “one-voice” and clarity to your copy.

4. Beautiful and functional custom design

The design of your website is unbelievably important. In fact, research has found that visitors will form an opinion about your website (and thus your company) in as little as 50 milliseconds—the blink of an eye. Your website is the face of your business online and represents who you are and what you offer, so needless to say, investing in professional and creative web design is crucial.

But great web design is about more than just attractive visuals. It also creates a positive user experience that will impact usability, navigation, engagement and ultimately conversion.

5. Responsive design

Building a website that works well on nearly every device is critical in our multi-screen world. And responsive design provides a viable solution and has become a “must have” for new websites. Effective responsive design requires careful planning, testing and adapting throughout both design and development. And while responsive design is a wise investment, it does require an increased investment in budget due to the additional planning, design, development and testing that is required to ensure a consistent and optimized user experience on every device.

6. Thought leadership blog

Blogging is a cornerstone of content marketing; it builds thought leadership, fuels SEO, propels social media marketing, drives website traffic and helps to generate and nurture leads. Having a blog that includes the proper functionality is a great way to provide content, increase traffic and generate leads, as well as earn SEO benefits from traffic and inbound links. Your blog should be integrated into your overall website design and navigation, as well as be cross promoted in various sections of your website.

7. Lead generation

Your blog will attract visitors to your website, but once they’re on your site, you need a lead generation strategy in place to drive them to take the next step. Your lead generation strategy should start with developing premium content offers such as whitepapers, eBooks, ROI calculators, blog subscription and complimentary consultations. A premium content offer in the context of online lead generation is a piece of content that has enough perceived value that a visitor is willing to give some personal information in exchange for it. Your premium content offers should be promoted throughout your website with calls-to-action that lead to landing pages optimized to effectively convert website visitors into leads. Landing pages promote the benefits of the offer, simplify the offer process and capture contact information from a visitor in exchange for an offer.

8. Custom CMS development

Building your website on a content management system (CMS) is another crucial building block of a marketing-focused website. But don’t assume that WordPress, a popular CMS, will function the same on the back-end regardless of who develops the website for you. The back-end design of the CMS interface often varies about as much as the front-end design.

It’s important to partner with an agency that will build a fully custom website (not a pre-purchased theme that they’ve “customized”). And in addition to the custom design on the front-end, the back-end interface should also be fully customized for your website, allowing you to be able to update and control virtually every word and image on your website—easily and quickly.

9. SEO best practices and content optimization

SEO has changed­ a lot in the last several years, with more and more emphasis on creating quality content that users are searching for, instead of technical wizardry and trying to game the system. But there are still best practices as it relates to how your website is developed that need to be addressed. In fact, failing to optimize your new website can have a negative effect on your existing search engine rankings and traffic.

It’s essential that your agency employs the latest industry best practices for SEO techniques, which covers everything from page load speed, on-page factors and clean code. You’ll also want to make sure that the copy, page titles and meta descriptions are optimized based on keyword research or search phrases that you’ve identified.

10. Marketing automation/CRM integration

Building a B2B website that functions as a business development platform focused on generating and nurturing leads will require the integration of marketing automation software and ideally a CRM system. Marketing automation will help you get the most from your website investment and give you complimentary online marketing tools such as landing pages, lead capture forms, list management and automated email campaigns. It also allows you go beyond basic web analytics to get real marketing and sales intelligence that will boost business development. Website visitor tracking can provide real-time intelligence about a lead’s interests, behaviors and sales-readiness, and allows your business development staff to have a much more targeted and relevant conversation with prospects and clients.

Marketing automation also has the ability to integrate with CRM systems, allowing for improved web-to-lead functionality and giving business development reps lead behavior and intelligence right inside their CRM console. The integration allows for easy fine tuning of both the quantity and quality of leads being pushed into the CRM and over to the business development team for increased alignment with the marketing efforts.

There are certainly other factors that are important to a website project’s success, but these 10 items provide the foundation of building a B2B website that is focused on lead generation and business development.

We’ve all heard some variation of the same story: Two hunters are in the woods, they’re separated. All of a sudden one hunter runs by the other at top speed screaming his head off. He’s being chased by a bear. As he passes the other hunter he yells, “I caught him, you skin him!”

Sometimes that seems a perfect description of the relationship between marketing and sales. Marketing spends it’s time trying to create demand—any kind of demand. They “caught the leads,” it was sales responsibility to “skin them.”

But in this story, sometimes it seems marketing and sales are oblivious to each other. They’re each hunting bear, crossing paths, sometimes getting in each other’s way, sometimes blaming the other for screwing up the shot.

We sales people think “they” don’t care. We used to think that marketing’s criteria for a hot lead was the prospect had to “fog a mirror.” Later, the more cynical of us, thought, marketing didn’t care if the lead was alive or dead—for them, success was the lead, everything after that was sales responsibility. (We caught ‘em, you skin ‘em.)

Marketing would get upset with us, the sales guys, saying, “They never follow up, they never close the leads, they are missing all the opportunities. They groused at us sales guys for not closing out every lead—because that’s what they were measured on.

Occasionally, almost by accident, a lead would turn into an opportunity, sales would chase it, win it, there was momentary euphoria, the marketing/sales process worked.

But there were some things that marketing did we sales guys liked. They provided endless amounts of brochures, mostly meaningless, but at least in full color with lots of pictures. I used to fill my briefcase with them. It was always great to leave them with customers, sometimes, they were a great excuse to see customers.

Two functions, acting independently, marginally acknowledging each other, but mostly doing their own things.

This was, in too cases still is, the kind of odd co-existence between sales and marketing. We each kind of know we need each other. There were moments of great collaboration interspersed with long periods of ignoring each other.

Fast forward to today—much of the story is the same, but everything around us has changed.

All that stuff we used to do, that really didn’t work well then, isn’t working at all. Neither sales nor marketing is achieving their goals. Executive management is asking tough questions, usually focused on “what are we paying you folks to do?”

What’s changed? Well, it’s pretty simple, but since we are so focused on our products and solutions, we tend to miss it.

It’s the customer that’s changed. Customers have far different expectations, requiring us to engage them differently. Let’s look at some data:

• Research shows buyers are a minimum of 57% of the through their buying process before engaging sales people.[i]
• 46% prefer creating a short list of alternatives before making a decision to reach out to sales people.[ii]
• 77% of B2B buyers indicate they do not talk with a sales person until they have completed independent research.[iii]
• 78% indicate the number of people involved in the buying decision have increased. Average B2B buying group size is 5.4.[iv]
• With larger buying groups, it becomes more difficult to reach a decision, with the likelihood that No Decision Made of greater than 60%.[v]
• 67% of the buyer’s journey is done digitally.[vi]
• Yet 53% of customer purchase decisions are made because of their buying experience.[vii]

Confusing isn’t it!

Buying has changed! To effectively align with the customer through their buying process, both sales and marketing have to change the way customers are engaged. What we did before didn’t work very well, now it’s a recipe for failure—all while spending lots of money.

We have to change the conversations, we have to change how we engage our customers. We can only do this by working together. We can no longer think of marketing and sales as separate processes, but as tightly interleaved.

First, what the customer cares about is different. It’s no longer about us (if it ever was)—our products, services, and how wonderful we are. Instead, the conversations have to be about the customer, their business, opportunities and challenges they face and how we can help them improve.

Customers want to learn, they want to be taught. As popularized in the Challenger Sale, Insight becomes critical. Sales must now engage the customer earlier and differently. It’s no longer just finding a customer with a problem, determining their needs and requirements, presenting a solution. Sales must help the customer understand there may be new ways to do things, opportunities they are missing. We might be engaging the customer long before they even recognize the need to change.

Marketing is different. Relevant content, talking about the customer and their business is critical. Content must be relevant to the customer role/persona. It must be relevant to where they are in their buying process, helping move the customer as they become ready to move to the next phase, complementing or supplementing sales.

So, I’ve laid the groundwork for a new approach to engaging our customers. What’s this mean for how Marketing and Sales work together? Do we continue as we have—Marketing catches them, Sales skins them. Or do we change?

In Part 2, I’ll discuss more about what these changes in customer engagement mean to how Marketing and Sales are most effective.

---

[i] CEB Evolution Of Digital Marketing, 2012

[ii] 2013 DemandGen B2B Buyer Behavior Survey http://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-topics/demand-generation-strategies/2456-2013-b2b-buyer-behavior-survey-buyers-happier-but-still-waiting-to-engage-with-sales.html#.U20RfCbn9jt

[iii] 2013 DemandGen Buyer Behavior Survey

[iv] 2013 CEB Study On B2B Decisionmaking

[v] 2013 CEB Study On B2B Decisionmaking

[vi] Sirius Decisions (don’t have specific reference)

[vii] CEB, The Challenger Sale

Lead generation can be a complicated part of the sales process, even for veteran businesses. How it relates to marketing, customer service and the rest of your sales team can become muddled at most organizations.

Unfortunately, these unclear relations have created a lot of myths about the lead generation process, and like all myths, they need to be demystified. Here are the seven most prominent – and dangerous – myths about the lead generation process that you need to demystify at your company:

Myth #1: Complete Product Knowledge Is Necessary

Loading down your sales team with comprehensive details, demos and particulars about your software doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be better at qualifying leads or setting initial appointments. While product knowledge is important, it’s not the single pivot point for lead qualification.

Most lead generation experts have enough experience in the sales process that they’re able to seek out and qualify new leads for almost any software product or service imaginable.

Myth #2: You Need Plenty Of Your Own Success Stories

There’s no doubt that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in the lead generation and sales process. Yet, many companies falsely believe that they need their own success stories in order to effectively win over new sales leads and close deals.

Instead, you should be sharing and spreading your customers’ success stories through client case studies, product reviews and user-generated content.

Myth #3: Partners Provide Plentiful Leads In The First Month

Any lead generation vendor that’s providing you with an abundant number of leads in the first month of your engagement probably won’t be doing so for long. Not only does a quick-and-easy approach often burn through relationships and harm your company’s reputation (resulting is less leads over time), but the leads they provide probably won’t match the quality you’re looking for (see Myth #4 below).

A proper lead generation provider shouldn’t just be a vendor, but rather, they should be a partner to your business, offering suggestions and building up long-term relationships with both you and your prospects. While initial ramp up might be slower, this relationship-based approach generates more revenue in the long-term.

Myth #4: Qualifying Leads Doesn’t Matter

While most businesses believe in qualifying leads, they usually don’t push lead qualification to the necessary level. Using the BANT method (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline) isn’t enough when it comes to warming up a lead and qualifying them for a closer.

Remember that when it comes to B2B sales leads, quality always outweighs quantity. Quality leads convert, whereas a large quantity of non-converting leads wastes your time.

Myth #5: My Buyer Persona Should Be Set In Stone

Establishing a picture of the ideal buyer for your business software or product is always a good idea, but you can’t let your buyer persona become a permanent fixture. If your business is never flexible or adaptive when it comes to possible customers, you miss out on potential revenue.

Instead, you need to look past any myopic views you have of your current customers and search for leads in new areas or industries in order to discover new opportunities.

Myth #6: Lead Generation Doesn’t Require Customer Education

Just as we covered in Myth #4 above, establishing prospects’ BANT doesn’t mean they’re about to buy. In fact, BANT criteria are just the beginning of a long journey of customer education when it comes to B2B lead generation.

Whether you are teaching customers about your industry, addressing prospect pains or handling sales objections with a particular lead, educating your prospects through a variety of touch points is an absolute necessity throughout the lead generation process.

Myth #7: You Can’t Track Lead Generation Success

Tracking the success of your lead generation efforts is not just an unrealizable ideal – it should be a top priority for your sales team. Whether you’re tracking lead generation ROI, your lead-to-close ratio or a customer feedback loop, you need the metrics and analytics in place to help you make the right decisions for your business.

No matter if you have an in-house lead generation team or you’re using an outsourced partner, make sure they have access to quantitative data on every aspect of the lead generation and sales process to keep them – and your company – on the right track.

While there are plenty of other myths still out there regarding B2B lead generation, these are certainly the most critical to dismiss and demystify. Once these myths are busted in the minds of your sales team, they’ll be better prepared to generate qualified sales leads and close more deals for your business.

There is no doubt about it, the B2B game has changed. As our digital world has evolved, so has the way of business. Businesses are moving away from the old researching tactics and moving it online. So why is inbound marketing great for original manufacturers? Well it seems pretty obvious, if your distributors are looking online, wouldn’t you want to be there advertising?

Manufacturer: “Well that’s why we built a website!”

Great, but that is just a small piece of the puzzle! Your website needs to deliver your information in a way that engages the buyer and encourages them to purchase. That’s exactly what inbound marketing services can do, but first you need to get them to your site!

How to increase traffic

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic. You just need to make sure you are attracting the right traffic. Your blogs should revolve around information that your distributors would be searching for. It is good to start with common questions they have already asked you and answer those on your blog. Make sure you address their pain points in your blog articles as well. These are the types of answers they are really searching for.

You can also increase traffic by using paid advertising. Try Google Adwords or other search engines like Bing. You may want to try advertising on different social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc), but your best bet is to try LinkedIn since it is a B2B site.

Does your site offer what your distributor is looking for?

Your buyers are looking for a straight-forward process. These people are efficient and busy, which means they don’t have time to look for the information they want from you. Make it easy for them. Put it right in front of their face!

These buyers are looking for a few pieces of important content. First and foremost, they are seeking information about your products or services. They need to know what you offer and how you offer it! This section will instantly qualify or disqualify you as a potential vendor. So make sure the copy on this page (and throughout your website) speaks to them. Remember you are selling to businesses, so make sure it is obvious you are not selling to end users. This is important to keep them from leaving your site at an early stage of their research.

Your distributors are also looking for a few other things on your site. They are interested in your company information so make sure you have an “About Us” page. They also enjoy seeing testimonials of consumers like themselves. These testimonials will validate you as a great manufacturer.

Now The Real Inbound Marketing Starts

So they have visited your site and qualified you as a vendor after looking at your products. Where do you go from here? Well first don’t forget to place your bottom of the funnel offer on the site. A simple buy now page, free consultation, or contact us will help convert visitors to customers FAST!

Now that you have given them the option to contact you directly, you need to start offering them “must have” information about your product or company that they may be interested in before they decide to buy. This information should be gated behind a form. If they are truly interested in becoming a distributor, they will download almost anything to learn more about your company. So what are these “must haves”?

• Pricing Information
• Technical Information
• White Papers/Case Studies
• More Product Information
• Shipping Information
• Marketing Collateral
• Etc.

This “must have” information will change from company to company and industry to industry, but this list will help get you thinking. The people that fill out these forms are leads and inbound marketing can take them from a lead to a sale!

So what do you do with your leads? Well there is a lot you can do with your leads, but for time sake I will give you two examples. First you want to make sure you have email campaigns set up for your offers to help teach these leads more about your company or product. These lead nurturing campaigns will help keep your company top of mind, while nurturing them to become a buyer. Hopefully at the end of these campaigns, they will fill out your bottom of the funnel offer.

If you are using a great CMS system like Hubspot, you can track their actions across your site. This will give you an idea of what they are interested in and what’s important to them. Now your sales team has the necessary information to tailor their future communications to each lead’s specific interests. This sets your sales team up for success rather than failure when they decide to make that first call.

Your Distributors are Online

You may not believe it, but your distributors are online and they are looking for new products; so why not make your product their next best seller? Using inbound services are very effective for manufacturers because our natural buying process is to research our purchases online before we reach out to the supplier.  So make sure there is enough information on your product or service to be found. The more information, the BETTER! The digital revolution has changed the buying process so make sure your company catches up to speed.

How do you define ‘ready’ in terms of a B2B telemarketing campaign? Do you consider yourself ready when you’ve got a target market? Or is it after spending months of pre-campaign research? Do you consider yourself ready when you’re fully rehearsed a script or should you memorize the campaign’s entire M.O. by heart?

One thing’s for sure though: Being ready isn’t enough.

“Are ya reeaaaady?”

Granted, having stock knowledge beforehand helps. Learning about other people’s cold calling experience also adds more perspective. But ultimately, you need to stop being ready and remind yourself why you’re doing it in the first place. Why?

• You’ve got a lot of steps ahead of you – Did you know that creating personas is just the first step to customer profiling? Don’t forget all the other steps right after it. Set a limit to how many you’ll make and try to move on to the next phase as soon as possible.

• Your competitors certainly aren’t waiting – You don’t have the luxury of waiting until your competitors beat you to your sales leads. While you’re training your reps, they could be just outsourcing theirs and gaining a higher score in sales. That is hardly cheating. That’s a solid business tactic against those who spend too much time preparing instead of closing. Don’t let the latter be you.

• You can’t memorize everything – Call scripts are guidelines, not robo-calls on paper. If you already know that much, then why are you still wasting time getting telemarketers to digest every word? Get to the telemarketing part already! Trying to memorize everything takes far more effort than basically understanding your own questions!

• Your prospects aren’t waiting for a solution – If you’re jealous of an inbound marketer, don’t presume they’re just getting prospects handed over to them. Their secret lies in knowing that prospects aren’t waiting for a solution. They’re actively searching for one and they know how to plant signs that point them in their direction. Hence, the only way to challenge that is to put yourself out there too, directly or otherwise!

Preparation isn’t the whole of the telemarketing process, no matter what percentage of the whole process it takes up. The only way you’re going to know if you were ready is when you all start picking up the phones and start calling!

Our sister publication, MarketingSherpa, publishes three weekly newsletter case studies, and in the B2B beat in particular, those weekly articles routinely feature a story covering marketers tackling lead generation for the complex sale.

For this B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post, I want to offer four of those case studies published over the last couple of years addressing that very topic.

If you only have a few minutes, this post provides highlights from each case study. But, if you have more time, or if one really strikes you, click on the link for the entire article and supporting creative samples.

Case Study #1 – Local B2B Marketing: 150% boost in lead generation

This case study covers how a commercial cleaning and janitorial services franchise created an Internet-based direct response marketing machine. Before this program was created, the company had a rudimentary Web presence – essentially no Internet marketing and no digital marketing strategy in place.

To create the program, the team began with the website and from there, added paid search and SEO to the digital marketing initiative. Another major piece was ongoing testing and optimization on all the new online marketing channels.

This effort led to lead generation through website form registration, and even phone calls from prospects who initially found the company through the digital marketing.

What were the results?

• 3.37% average conversion to sale across all Internet traffic sources
• 150% increase in lead generation from 2010 to 2011
• 1,500% ROI on SEO in 2011
• 200% ROI on PPC in 2011

Case Study #2 – Lead Generation: Revamped marketing automation and CRM technology drives 75% more leads

Technology is a major factor in effective lead scoring and nurturing once that lead has been generated.

A provider of management services for technology assets serving the mid- to large-enterprise market found that its technology setup had a problem – the automation solution and CRM system were operating in tech silos and, most importantly, not sharing data.

To meet this challenge, the team audited the current situation, and ended up replacing both existing marketing automation and CRM solutions, and found new technologies that were more integrated.

With the integrated technology in place, a lead scoring process was created, the contact list was built out, leads that Sales couldn’t close were nurtured, and the enterprise even found a higher level of Sales and Marketing alignment. Also, after the first year, lead generation improved 75%.

Case Study #3 – Lead Generation: Targeted event marketing effort leads to 300% ROI, generates 140 qualified leads

Technology and automation are vital and valuable pieces of marketing today, but the personal touch still has its place.

A provider of OEM equipment for printing companies created a campaign that combined event marketing with direct mail, email and teleprospecting both before and after a trade show to create brand awareness and new opportunities.

In this campaign, the company segmented its prospects for targeted marketing, came up with different incentives – such as trips to the company headquarters, or admission to a major league baseball game – for each stage of the campaign, utilized PURLs to track response to the campaign, and used telemarketing to highly qualify prospects.

This particular campaign resulted in a 300% ROI.

Case Study #4 – B2B Lead Generation: 300% ROI from email and teleprospecting combo to house list

This final case study is about how a drug information provider for health IT companies leveraged the knowledge that its conversion rate was much higher with already engaged prospects, so the goal was to increase ROI by focusing on what the team called “known” contacts.

The effort began with segmenting the list to uncover those known contacts. From there, the segmented group received an email with the goal of priming the recipients for follow-up calls instead of seeking a direct response to the email send. The first call was made within several hours of the email send.

Four days after contacting via telephone, a second email was sent. This email’s messaging featured a personal touch and referenced the earlier email and phone call. The second email was also followed up with a call.

The campaign resulted in a 13.4% average conversion rate, with a conversion being a scheduled meeting, and 15.9% of prospects scheduling meetings becoming customers. All of this amounted to a 300% ROI on the campaign.

You might also like

Sign up for MarketingSherpa Newsletters to receive these case studies straight to your inbox every week

Lead Generation: How to empower your program like Siemens Healthcare [Video]

B2B Lead Generation: 6 social media tactics from 7 experts [How-to article]

Marketing Research Chart: Most widely used lead gen tactics [MarketingSherpa Research Chart of the Week]

Questions Every Marketer Should Ask of Lead Gen Forms [More from the blogs]

Rarely has a phenomenon had the kind of effect on culture and business social media has. To say that social media has taken the marketing world by storm would be a massive understatement.

And social media can indeed be a very useful tool for marketers. Today, let’s talk about some ways you can leverage the power of social media to add rocket fuel to your online marketing campaigns. While we’re at it, let’s also cover some mistakes and pitfalls you will want to avoid.

As marketers desperately wanting an advantage over the competition, we are prone to fall for the latest digital sensation just because it’s popular, flashy and promises wonderful, previously undreamed of results  It’s common for us to think that just one special tool, one “magic bullet”, whether it’s social media, SEO or video marketing, can be the answer to all of our marketing headaches and dilemmas.

Mark my words: It’s not true! In this blog we’ve referred to online marketing as a “chain” with “links” or as a “puzzle” with “pieces”. The point is that effective marketing online requires a number of different parts, and none of these parts live in a vacuum. They depend on each other.

How Many Marketing Tools Do You Use?

They won’t succeed (and neither will you) if you try to use them in isolation. You need a powerful synergy in your online marketing, so use your tools together, to complement each other. It would be absurd for a homebuilder to use only a sledgehammer when trying to build a dream house; instead, he uses a range of useful tools. Likewise, when you are building your online marketing “masterpiece”, you want and need the right tools – not TOOL, but TOOLS!

Just as the homebuilder uses the right tools at the right time, he also ignores the wrong ones. Online marketers should do likewise, including with social media. Assuming your prospects use social media, you want to be present on the same channels they use and avoid the ones they don’t.

For example, if you sell industrial chemicals, chances are you will have zero success reaching prospects on Pinterest. You need to be on LinkedIn instead.

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Epictetus

It’s so easy to think that sales and marketing is all about speaking and telling, but it needs to be as much if not more so about listening. And social media marketing is no exception. The smart marketer who uses social media effectively will spend a lot of his time using it as a listening tool.

He’ll pay attention to what potential customers are saying about his product and company and about his competitors. He’ll listen to their conversations to learn more about what drives them and about their problems and how he can solve them.

A program you might find useful to help you in your social media listening efforts is socialmention.com . Social Mention allows marketers to monitor and measure social media conversations.

So yes, “listening” is an important part of online marketing, and social media can help you be more effective at it. But social media also lets you “talk”. It’s an ideal tool to tell the world, especially your potential customers, you exist.

It’s cliched but true; people buy from those they know, like and trust. You can use social media to build trust in potential customers’ hearts and minds. People trust givers, and social media lets you give.

You can post content, including curated content, that leads them to trust you, like you and feel like they know you. Social media can help you win first time buyers. You can use it to deepen and strengthen relationships with your customers and win repeat sales.

Here is one way effective social media marketing looks like a solid email marketing (or content marketing) campaign: give your followers valuable information they can use and see massive benefits from even if they never buy anything from you.

Don’t Be “That Guy”

We’ve all seen it: the would-be social media marketer who gets on a particular channel and does nothing but blast his audience with requests to buy his stuff. As soon as you add him as a Facebook friend, LinkedIn connection or follow him on Twitter, he starts spamming you with unwanted sales messages. In social media marketing, this is the kiss of death.

Rarely if ever will you sell directly to your network through social media. Use it instead to build relationships, credibility and your status as an industry thought  leader.

Use social media to build and maintain TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness) in your readers’ minds. Remember that when they first encounter your brand, whether on social media, through a search engine, etc., they often aren’t ready to buy. They may not be ready to buy for several months.

Let’s say they learn today about what you can do for them. They are finally ready to make a purchase six months from now. Will they remember you? Will they buy from you? Or will they forget about you entirely and buy from one of your competitors?

Take steps today to ensure they remember you. Build TOMA. Social media can help you do this, especially in conjunction with blogging and other forms of content marketing, including content curation.

Like we said a moment ago, rarely if ever will you make a sale through social media. What you want to do is drive traffic from your social media pages to your other marketing channels. For example, when you post a new entry on your blog, announce it through your social media outlets. Include a link to your blog article, of course.

If you do video marketing, post links to your Youtube videos on social media. Have a compelling bit of content that arouses your reader’s curiosity and makes him eager to check out the video. On your Youtube page, include your website’s URL. On your Facebook fan page or LinkedIn business page, include a signup form for your email list…

The Ultimate Purpose Of Social Media Marketing?

The bottom line is that you want to directly and indirectly use social media to drive traffic to your website, the anchor for your online marketing ship. Once you have visitors on your website, the sky’s the limit for marketing to them.

You can sign them up for your email newsletter. You can direct them to your blog or “Content Library” where you can “sell” them on downloading your latest white paper or registering for your value-packed webinar.

If you have an e-commerce store, attracting the attention of shoppers is a big first step in persuading them to buy. And of course, to be most effective, your online marketing campaign needs landing pages, whether your prospects come to you from your social media channels, an email you sent to your list or from a web search.

The beauty of a well-engineered, well-designed, well-put together landing page is that it takes visitors who have been bombarded with the distractions, chaos and “noise” of the web and social media and channels their attention to the issue at hand, to the thing you want them to do – convert from visitors into buyers.

Think about it: without conversions – that is, sales, you’re out of business. Social media can offer you a lot of “bang for your marketing buck”, but it’s only part of the solution. It can drive traffic to your website, it can build trust and your thought leader status, it can cause TOMA in your social media followers’ minds, but your online marketing still needs to convert. And for that, you want landing pages.

As the CEO or founder of a startup you'll someday make a decision to either grow an internal outbound sales team, or outsource it.

Outsourcing sales to people who really know how to do outbound sales is a good choice... but only if the time is right!

When is the time right? Well, there are two distinct stages of sales for any company:

Sales Exploration

At this stage you're still figuring things out. It's about learning and experimentation. You have not yet figured out a predictable and repeatable sales model. You haven't developed your sales funnel yet. You're looking for answer to these questions:

• How do you generate leads?
• How do you qualify leads?
• How do you close them?
• What are your conversion rates?
• How much time does it take from initial lead generation to closing a customer?
• What's the average LTV of a customer?
• What kind of sales reps do you need to hire and how do you compensate them?
• How much does it cost to acquire a customer?
• Do you have scalable lead sources?

You don't need to have 100% of all the answers, but at least have the answers 70%.

Sales Execution

At this stage you already have all the answers, or at least you have them 70% of the way.

70%

You already have something to build upon, you already have something that works. Now it's just about scaling it up and optimizing it.

You Can't Outsource Sales Exploration

This is something you and your internal team must do. You the founder, you the CEO, you the early employees who have a holistic understanding and know the nitty-gritty details of your startup.

The lessons you'll learn during this phase are crucial, that's why you don't want to outsource them. You want to put your own finger on the pulse of the market, so that you get a feel for what prospects respond to.

You want to know what works, what didn't work, and why. These are crucial pillars for your understanding of your market. 

The mistake many startup people make is they hire a “sales person” to go out and talk with customers so they can do what they’re good at which is building product or “running the company.” Sales people are a different breed, you say. The problem is that in an early stage business there probably isn’t a perfect fit between your early product and a customer’s needs. You learn that by showing them your product, watching their reactions, asking them questions about what they’d like to see improved and then racing back to the office to talk with the team about what you’ve learned and how you can incorporate it into your product plans.  Repeat this process 50 times and trust me you’ll see patterns.

- Mark Suster, Startup Sales – Why Hiring Seasoned Sales Reps May Not Work

Executives who lead a sales organization often ask me which Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool they should implement to achieve the best results. One of the first companies I founded years ago actually implemented CRM software for clients. From this experience, I quickly discovered organizations often over think what a CRM tool is intended to do. CRM tools are intended to help track interactions with current and future customers for the entire organization.

There are a ton of CRM systems in the marketplace. Each developer continues to add features and capabilities to extend their feature matrix. We don’t know if anyone actually cares about or uses those features, but the feature matrix is certainly growing for all vendors. After looking at all of the systems in the marketplace, the one you should use is…

The One Your Entire Organization Will Actually Use. I know, it sounds corny. The bottom line is that the most sophisticated tools are useless if your team either a) Won’t use them; or b) Spends too much time feeding the system that it takes away from their customer-facing efforts.

Licensed from © WavebreakMediaMicro – Fotolia.com

How to Avoid CRM Failure

First, let me explain the common trap that leads to CRM nightmares and falling revenue. Often, when implementing a CRM solution, each department chimes in with what customer data the system should track. The marketing organization generally wants to track lead sources, organizational structure, competitor information, and a myriad of seemingly valuable information. Accounting and Legal have their wish lists. Then what usually ends up happening in most organizations, is someone from Marketing, Accounting or Legal suggests: “While sales executives are speaking with the customer, they should gather that information.” Don’t fall into that trap! Do you want your salespeople to drive revenue, or perform data entry? Top performing salespeople are effective at planning and executing (or we hope at least one of these). Most are not wired to be stellar at data entry, collecting, and compliance.

The Key to CRM Success

Earlier this year I made some predictions for trends in sales and business development for 2014. Prediction #8 was Simplified CRM Solutions. In the prediction, I said “Look for a shift in 2014 for companies to identify the top eight (or three) pieces of information they need to understand if a deal is legitimate or not. They will ask sales reps to maintain fewer pieces of information, but will require compliance.”

How to Achieve Successful CRM

Whichever platform you select do the following six things well to achieve great success.

Maintain Institutional Knowledge

One of the most valuable aspects of a good CRM is to have a repository of information about your company’s opportunities and customers. This is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of a good CRM. Using a shared spreadsheet on a network drive just doesn’t cut it. A disgruntled employee might delete the file. Invest in a platform with role-based security.

Coordinate Across Departments

It’s about more than just sales and salespeople. Have you ever called a customer to talk about your new offering only to find out that they are having a major problem right now? Most of us have had that happen. Ensure that your entire organization uses the platform to document customer interactions. Of course, your salespeople need the discipline to check the system before contacting the customer.

Tight Email Integration

Most of your communication is likely via email. Don’t make your team jump through hoops to capture email conversations in the CRM. If you don’t have seamless integration with your email system, you are either using an antiquated email platform, or a soon-to-be-outdated CRM platform. Once you type the client or prospect’s name the system should forever link that email to their CRM record.

Native Mobile Support

I don’t need to convince you that mobile is essential. If your team can’t access what they need from tablets and smartphones, then you’ve made a bad investment. When the customer calls while you are on the road, you should have easy access to everything about their account.

Effective Follow-up and Automation

The greatest value in an effective CRM platform is the ability to remind sales reps to follow-up with opportunities at the right time. There are tools like Yesware and Contactually that integrate with email platforms to make your life a bit easier.

Know the Three Things You Need

Focus on the most important elements that tell you “which opportunities are real.” For my money, you should be tracking 1) What problem is the customer trying to solve; 2) Why is it important for them to solve that issue with urgency; and 3) How will they measure success of the solution. If you have that information, you are 90% of the way toward successful, same-side selling.

Don’t get excited about capabilities in a CRM vendor’s demonstration that you are unlikely to ever use. Will the system you are implementing capture essential information, ensure effective follow-up, and be easy enough to use that your team will see it as an asset and not just a glorified monitoring device? This essential point is worth repeating: The best CRM implementation is the one your entire organization will actually use.

It’s Your Turn

What aspects of CRM do you feel are most important? When have you seen a CRM take on a life of its own and actually interfere with success?

Many marketers feel like the engine is always running. There’s always more to do – campaigns to run, technologies to master, analytics to check… And, of course, there’s the constant need to drive more leads, better leads, and faster MQLs. In fact, 78% of B2B marketers state that “generating more leads” is the biggest challenge they are currently facing.

Increasing your commitment to content marketing is a good place to start, but you also need your content to work hard – and smart – for you. You probably already know about leveraging your marketing automation with interactive content. But did you know that according to DemandGen Report’s 2013 Content Preferences Survey, only 5% of buyers are willing to provide detailed information in exchange for whitepapers?

That is why many marketers are incorporating interactive content into their overall strategy. Assessments, benchmarking tests, ROI calculators, interactive infographics, interactive whitepapers, and knowledge tests about best practices, as well as old standbys like polls, surveys, and quizzes – interactive content is smart content.

You can think about the benefits of interactive content in three categories – facilitating dialogue, creating a value exchange, and delivering content in new, exciting ways. Here’s how these three benefits break down:

1. Facilitating Dialogue

As marketers absorb an increasingly larger portion of the sales cycle, marketers are naturally becoming better sales people. And what makes a good sales person? The ability to listen. It’s about dialogues, not monologues.

Interactive content enables you to have real conversations with your audience. That means you can ask questions and deliver answers that address their specific challenges, painpoints, or interests. Dialogue-inspiring content delivers dramatically more value (see the next section for more on that) and it’s massively scalable (you don’t need a W2 for your content).

A few examples of companies facilitating dialogue through interactive content:

• SilkRoad used calculators and assessments to create dialogue – resulting in $236,000 of new pipeline value in only a few months.
• Ezidebit turned a static infographic into an interactive one – which converts over 66% of its users.
• Endicia, an SMB package logistics company, repurposed static content to make it into an interactive quiz .

2. Exchanging Value

Now that we’ve established the need to have conversations, let’s talk about what you’re going to say. If your mission is deliver value at each stage of the buying process, this might take the form of education, problem identification, analysis, and even entertainment.

Interactive content allows marketers to customize an experience for each user, and deliver specific information based on that individual’s needs, pains, or challenges. But a true value exchange goes both ways – smart content also needs to deliver value to you, the marketer.

Interactive content can pull specific, actionable data from your audience – which can then be organized within your marketing automation. As they interact, prospects happily provide deep insights into themselves, quickly filling out profile information for lead scoring and triggering campaigns, and creating better, faster MQLs.

Two companies leveraging interactive content to exchange value with their audiences:

• Payscale allowed financial professionals to benchmark themselves against a 5,000-person panel to see how they compared – converting and gathering in-depth data on an impressive 70%.
• Bizo built a series of interactive blog posts, asking their audience to guess which ad performed better in an A/B test. This entertaining quiz earned Bizo a huge pool of new leads, at less than half the cost of leads from other sources.

3. Delivering Content in New, Exciting Ways

Whitepapers and benchmarking studies can crystalize your thought leadership and value proposition, but they often aren’t delivered in an appealing way. Interactive content can help you slice and dice this information into bite-sized, consumable pieces.

Which is easier to eat? This:

Or this:

When you make difficult or complex ideas visual and entertaining, you help users get invested in the process. Best of all, if you already have whitepapers, you may already have all the content you need. Writing big weighty pieces is hard and time consuming; pulling out some of the core ideas is fast and easy.

Here are a few examples of interactive delivery:

• Whitepapers can be a challenge to slog through, which is why Unitrends made their whitepapers interactive. (This also leveraged value exchange, as Unitrends was able to collect data on how their audience solves specific challenges around backup and recovery issues).
• Atmel, a microcontroller and components company, ran a contest to reach their engineering audience – much easier to consume that a technical paper. So far, 82% of their target audience is engaging, yielding more than 11,000 social shares.

Want to learn more about boosting conversation rates, SQLs, and lead quality with interactive content and marketing automation? Register now for our free webinar, tomorrow at 10:00am PT/1:00 PM ET: Interactive Content Marketing: The Future of Your Funnel