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1Executive Summary Cloud computing has had a significant impact …

Don't be intimidated by borders, your business will benefit by tapping foreign buyers.

Are you spending your sales and marketing efforts in the wrong area? Are your prospects clicking away without action? How are you delivering your messages and information to those most important to your business success? The majority of sales and marketing efforts are based on outdated thinking and assumptions that these same executives are viewing your emails and online information from a desktop or laptop computer. The truth is that these people who hold the key to your sales success are not at their desks while viewing your emails or even doing research about you or your company. They are on their smartphones. Results from a survey of 23,500 executives conducted by IDG Global Solutions verified what we should already know -

“Most senior executives are using a smartphone to research business products and services”

Look at those results.

• 77% of senior execs used their phone to research your product or service. Are you prepared?
• Half have bought IT products for business from their phone.

Based on this research, the majority of sales efforts online are going to waste. Why? You can find the answer to this question yourself by going to your own company website from your phone. How does it look? Try this exercise the next time you have your sales team gathered together. For maximum impact, invite your marketing and web teams to this meeting.

• Ask everyone to bring up your company website.
• Navigate to the area where your products/services are presented.
• Take action to get more information.
• Ask a question online.
• Navigate to your “Contact Us” or “Request More Information” area and submit a request. Just try to fill out one of your forms on your phone.
• Discuss your experiences and results. Share what you feel going through these activities.
• Open a recent email you have sent to a prospect or customer. How does it look? Is it clean and readable?

I used these steps and visited over 100 websites and over 50 email messages that I have received. Almost two-thirds of those visited had significant problems that either frustrated my navigation to a point I left the site or I couldn’t take action in a meaningful way at all. Over 60 sites that simply failed to create the desired result. Take a look at your emails you send out. Focus in on any formatting and graphics you are including. Also take a look at the signature area of your email (you are taking advantage of a signature in your email right?). Open one of your messages on your smartphone. How does it look on your phone screen? What is a spectacular creation on a desktop or laptop many times turns into an unreadable number of lines and text without formatting, and if that logo you added even comes across, it will frequently look oversized and out-of-place.

Key points to understand and act on:

1.  77% of Executives are using their smartphones to research your product or service.
2. 50% have purchased IT products for business using a smartphone!
3. Mobile-optimize your online sales presence and activity to work flawlessly on a smartphone screen.
4. Create your email messages to be viewed easily on a smartphone screen.

I understand that this will take some work to get cleaned up. I cannot think of many projects that are more important than getting your message effectively displayed and actionable for 77% of your future and current customers. Are you mobile ready?

Original article: You Are Losing New Customers Before You Ever Talk To Them

©2014 Fill the Funnel. All Rights Reserved.

The Challenge: Social media has evolved into more than just another advertising channel, with communities transcending traditional social media channels. To make the most of these new opportunities, marketers need to learn what it takes to drive sales through relevant and targeted conversations.

Strategy One: Be authentic to your brand… and to customers

Every brand that succeeds on social media does so by achieving a consistent voice that’s authentic to its core message. By connecting with a responsive social audience through communities, meaningful conversations become building blocks for achieving sales objectives. For example, CLIF Bar in keeping with its message of fitness has joined the People For Bikes initiative, which is consistent with its brand message, and provides a way to directly interact with their proven customers.

Per Eric Nystrom, Director, Social Media Services Group at Dell, “In today’s world people are not interested in talking to brand spokespeople or marketers. They are interested in connecting with empowered employees and subject matter experts. Social is about relationship building”.

Strategy Two: Connect through communities

Social communities resonate with customers and let brands connect on a deeper level via viral conversations which can far surpass the reach of a singular post on a social wall. As a matter of fact, social interactions now go beyond traditional social media into mobile experiences, television events, webinars, chats, and more. Two-way interactions enable customers to become part of the brand because they can gain answers to questions, address objections, and understand brand value. Coca Cola took advantage of the recent World Cup with the goal of creating the most inclusive FIFA World CupTM Coca-Cola campaign… ever. Emmanuel Seuge, Vice President Global Alliances & Ventures stated that, “…we set out to create the most inclusive and participatory FIFA World Cup™ ever. … we gave fans from all around the world the unprecedented opportunity to be a part of the greatest soccer stage of all… “

Strategy Three: Really understand how your customers connect

Turns out the way people interact on social media is similar to that of real life. In a joint study by the University of Georgia, Pew Research Center, and Social Media Foundation it was discovered that when people interact in social media they create patterns of social interaction. Identifying the specific groups of people talking about you, lets you understand who they are, what they are saying, and what connects them to your brand.

Strategy Four- Know where to find your customers and how they communicate

Additionally, the same study found that when marketers, target key meaningful communities they also zero in on key conversations, key words, and hashtags being used about the brand.

Gatorade reached out to its core customers with a “Beat the Heat” campaign that let them connect with their key groups of customers with a message of safety and health.

Strategy Five- Understand what information customers need

Sears has created Shop Your Way Rewards which gives customers a place to find product information, ask salespeople questions, and share recommendations.

According to Eric Jaffe, Senior VP “In the grand scheme of things, social media is …about building engagement and promoting conversations… around our brand…. We are focusing around the members, and building relationships with them that go beyond what they purchase from us…. Groups, especially social communities, are the most valuable to retailers….Highly engaged members end up spending more and — more importantly — shop more frequently.”

5 Takeaways that boost sales through social communities

1. Engage consistently in a manner that that reinforces your core brand message Make sure that every channel delivers a reinforcing statement that helps customers move towards a purchase.

2. Understand which groups are the most valuable to your sales objectives. Not all consumers or social audiences have a purchase intent. Understand what social avenues best address buyers’ needs for actual purchase information.

3. Do what it takes to address consumer needs. Put in place strategies that let actual staff members interact with potential buyers so that they have access to the brand and have the resources necessary to move forward with a purchase.

4. Empower consumers to strengthen their voice. By giving your customers a platform you are empowering and respecting their voice.

5. Deliver the latest information, news and trends about your brand. If customers do not fully understand why they need to buy, they won’t go down the purchase journey with your brand. Social communities let existing customers and potential buyers understand what you are offering and your brand’s value proposition.

“Never “ does not exist in the human mind…only “not yet.”  - From the movie,The Girl in the Moon

The mind-boggling rate at which new technologies are being introduced in the global scenario and the speed at which people all around the world are not only adapting to but efficiently using them as keys to access the plethora of information has left the new-age entrepreneurs reeling to keep up with the flow of things. From desktops to laptops, the itsy-bitsy web bug’s crawl has made it all the way to our palms, and it’s gathering speed as it goes up!

Web developers are increasingly being asked to build sites that cater to smartphone Internet users, or to recast existing sites into user-friendlier formats for mobile devices. Globally, smartphone contracts are expected to reach 5.6 billion by 2019, according to a research conducted by Ericsson. That’s triple the 1.9 billion contracts that exist today!

Do you Know: Within the next 5 years, more than half of the people who access the Web will do so through a smartphone or other small-screen device.

This paradigm shift presents a challenge to the established web development community, which now has an obligation to configure web content and its tools like HTML, which had been created keeping in mind the large screen space of personal computer and laptop screens into smaller mobile device space constraints.

Why is it necessary to optimize websites for mobiles?

As Ethan Marcotte, the author of Responsive Web Design, explains, “Now more than ever, we’re designing work meant to be viewed along a gradient of different experiences. Responsive web design offers us a way forward, finally allowing us to ‘design for the ebb and flow of things.”

The rapidly growing breed of mobile users have different objectives than desktop users. They seek information in nuggets that are precise, quick and offered in easily digestible bites. Though, this involves a restructuring of the existing conventions of virtual information dissemination, entrepreneurs stand to gain the most out of it as customers report that their mobile purchases are often impulse-driven. The rate of lead conversion into actual sales is also much higher for transactions via smartphones and other mobile devices.

Do you Know: Statistics show that mobile users spend more money per purchase than customers do on desktop websites.

What do Businesses Stand to Gain?

Traffic, Heaps Of It!

From queues,  trains, couches and toilet seats, a quarter of global web searches are being conducted from smartphones by over a billion users worldwide. Even the lord our god Google, has made it quite clear through its recommendations and updates like Hummingbird, that businesses which do not optimize their sites for phones are bound to suffer from lower search rankings.

Check on Bounce Rates

Research shows that 57 percent of mobile users will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load and 30 percent will abandon a purchase transaction if the shopping cart isn’t optimized for mobile devices. Businesses which ignore the needs of fickle minded buyers of today will do so at their own peril. ‘Nuff said.

Building Brand Value

A company that provides an user-friendly experience on phones builds a lot of trust in buyers. They prefer to return to the same site even while operating on their desktops, and gradually, the site emerges as the most accessed website for a specific product or service.

Considering all this, it is startling to see that most established players and start-ups are yet to optimize their websites for mobiles.  A few genuine concerns still plague businesses from providing websites that can optimally cater to the smartphone-mongers.

Challenges and Solutions

As per the January 2014 Forrester Research Inc. report entitled “Improving Enterprise Mobility: Meeting Next-Generation Demands for Development, Delivery and Engagement,” which surveyed 146 IT managers of which 63 handle responsive design sites in the US, the following challenges were identified -

• Daunting task of rewriting the buyer-oriented pages of a site
• Wireless networks do not support smartphone-optimized websites well
• It is very difficult to mould the site as per the specific features of a phone
• Precious research and development time is wasted on generating content for otimized sites

Viable solutions to some of these problems have been provided by two websites, Moovweb and Mashable, through their strategies of  “responsive delivery,” and “adaptive design” respectively.

Responsive Delivery 

Use of cloud servers to leverage a business’s current infrastructure without rewriting any information on the site, they just restructure the  front-end to become fully responsive to the requirements of the user-device. The business logic, back-end programming and content of the original site, all remain the same. Essentially, it can be understood as just adjusting the size of the business card of an organization to fit the wallet of the client.

This approach greatly improves the page load time as the transformation engine only generates and sends information just  enough to render the site for that device type. The cloud is also used to cache data that’s frequently used in mobile browsers, and to store images etc. which leads to a dedicated content delivery network that is quick to provide information to devices.

Adaptive Design

When a site’s behavior is altered keeping in mind the specifications of the device used, the site is said to be adopting an adaptive design strategy. Mashable, the Blogging site has been a pioneer in adaptive design practices. For instance, they enable swiping between columns for touch devices. Panera bread is a leading casual dining market website which makes use of the  GPS feature to help buyers zero in on the closest location to them without having to type in the  zip code.

Do you Know:  According to a March 2013 study, conducted by Google and Nielsen, more than half of purchases occur within an hour of an initial mobile search.

Features of  Well-Optimized Websites

•  Easy to find what you’re looking for quickly from the home screen.  For example,Sony’s websites have a simple list menu to choose your category of interest with each one delving further into specific products.
• Sharing options via Facebook, Twitter or email for enhanced user experience and make use of that precious word-of-mouth( read clicks!) publicity.
• Plenty of finger space should be available between the buttons and drop down menus for easy selection. ETSY is a leading fashion apparel website that has a neat and straightforward site which is a delight to use.
• Call to actions should be precise, clear and subtly highlighted. They should keep giving a liitle nudge to the buyer without hampering their intended activity.

The transient nature of the web demands remodeling, restructuring and refining frequently. The advent of smartphones and similar devices is sure to be followed by other devices, interfaces  or browsers that will struggle to outpace each other. This constant shift demands keen vision and adaptive abilities to survive, and prosper through the tides, unscathed.

An extraordinarily helpful marketing metaphor has now expired. For years marketers have asked themselves whether their product is a ‘vitamin’ or an ‘aspirin’. That is, does my product resolve an immediate, painful problem? Or does it increase performance but in a way that may be difficult to quickly see?

Asking this question is helpful to understand how much urgency your prospect will place on solving the problem you fix. While it’s important to know, today’s market begs marketers to ask a different question. But before we get there, let’s look at a reality of marketing your product today.

Harried, Over-Worked Buyers Can’t Choke Down More Medicine

When your marketing outreaches or sales calls get to your target buyer, what’s going on in her day? Is she passively waiting for your value to come across her desk so she can start to purchase?

Of course not. She’s faced with dozens of competing priorities. Actions that have been agreed to by her and her team, projects that she wants to start — pains she already is driving to solve. This idea of the over-worked buyer is captured perfectly by Jill Konrath in her must-read Snap Selling book (a must for marketers, not just sales people).

Now your message comes across your buyer’s desk. For her to decide to add your offer to her workload, she has to do more than realize that the pain you solve is important enough to warrant buying your aspirin. After all, she’s already bought different kinds of medicine to calm different kinds of pains.

For her to buy your aspirin the pain doesn’t simply need to be so great that she wants to solve it. It has to be so great that it should be prioritized ahead of the other pains she’s already trying to fix.

She is unlikely to take on yet another project while other critical projects are underway. In fact, I would apply the “10x” rule here. That is, is the pain you solve 10x greater than the other pains she’s currently addressing? While marketers are justifiably proud of their products, that hurdle is a very high one to overcome to get repeatable sales.

Ask Yourself, Are You a “Pill” or a “Powder”?

Rather than trying to convince your buyer that you are 10x more important than the projects she’s working through or queued up, you should take a different tack. Think about the nature of her project queue. She likely has a number of medium or long-term projects that won’t show results for an extended period. There may be lengthy implementations, long training curves, and extensive evaluations. That leaves your buyer trying to demonstrate the value of the aspirins she’s already bought.

If you have product / market fit buyers will see the value that you provide. Bludgeoning them with repeated reference to the value won’t advance your case once they already grasp it. They are thinking of the five projects that are behind schedule that they need to work on when they get off the phone.

But what if you can show your buyer that you can address a pain quickly? A fast-acting solution could relieve pain with light training, minimal implementation, little process change, etc. Now you’re not a pill that is swallowed, digested, and slow to act. Instead, you’re a powder that she can quaff quickly and move on to the next pain.

By emphasizing the simplicity of consuming your solution you can be more readily prioritized as a new project. The barrier of being 10x more effective disappears. Instead, your buyer can get a quick result to demonstrate value to her stakeholders so she can get space to complete the longer term projects she’s already committed to. Emphasize this “powder” message in your marketing content and your sales enablement materials to make it reach prospects throughout your funnel.

So the next time you ask your colleagues whether your offer is a pill or a powder, think about how you’d be consumed by your buyer. And don’t be a pill.

If you want to earn more with your sales without having your clients rising in revolt, follow these easy steps: Ask before Offering When dealing with a potential client, ask him how much Money he is willing to spend and thus you can adjust your prices so that your offer can be more attractive for the buyer. Find a Good Bait An attractive product, that is highly accepted among people, can be a bait to attract more clients. You can offer it at a lower price of its value to recover profits when selling supplements. McDonald’s does not fear when offering its burgers for one dollar, since it will recover that Money when selling the complements. Offer an Inexpensive Option You must think in the market of those people who do not like spending extra Money. Cheap and low quality products that may fulfil their function but that are disposable so that you can sell more inexpensive ones but in a continuous way. 32% of the buyers considers the price to be more important than quality. Create the Premium Option In any Business you can find these three types of products: Basic, Normal, and Premium. Thus you may cover a wide spectrum of potential buyers, among which you may find those that are willing to pay more so as to feel special. When Apple launched its first computer, it had three options: 16, 32 y 64 megabytes so that people of a few, medium or high resources could get one. Restructure your Offers Offers and packages are the best way to make a client buy more than a product at a time. Besides the idea of buying things at a reduced cost is very satisfactory for the buyers. Microsoft offers you products such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel, inside of Microsoft Office, so that it can sell you three products instead of one.

When buying a personal laptop, you know what you want, your budget, and your brand preferences. Then you make your online research to come up with a short list. Your best options get compared and you make a decision, placing the order online. That’s consumerization in the IT space. Reflect how you bought your first laptop and compare with how you do it now. Figuring out what you needed was maybe a time consuming process, often with iterations and mistakes. But having done that more than once, with more information available online, you know where to go, and who to trust when making your decision.

Now imagine yourself working for a large corporation.  - you are the final decision maker for the company’s new laptop generation. The CFO asks about the impact on cash flow, operating expenses and different “return on” metrics. The CEO wants to see the impact on productivity, the corporate IT board bothers you with a number of guidelines and policies, as well as procurement. Will you be following the same process as you would when buying a personal laptop to make a corporate buying decision? Most likely, no. The context is different, the impacted stakeholders are different, and what you buy is different, too. It’s always a specific, but complex buying situation.

Consumer and Business Buyers – don’t lump them together

People may argue that consumerization, makes all buyers the same. Buyers act as human beings. Whatever people learn in one area of their life has an impact on other areas. Your Mac at home is probably what you expect in the company. But for some reason, you won’t get a Mac there.

The buying context is different

The B2B buying situation is determined by the company’s current state, their desired results, their stakeholders, their budgets, etc. Their situational context is specific, even if the situation has common patterns, such as budget optimization challenges or effectiveness and investment challenges. As a buyer, you need to understand what different solutions mean to your area of responsibility in terms of business outcomes.

Many stakeholders – many different concepts

In a private role, you depend on your individual concept how to fix a problem, how to avoid a risk and how to achieve a goal. In an organization, you are confronted with different challenges. Therefore, your perspective how to approach those challenges are unique to your B2B role. Furthermore, other impacted stakeholders have their own, often different, concepts in mind, based on their perception of the situation.

Decision dynamic is different

While the buyer’s journey may look the same on a very high level, the decision dynamic is very different, every time. It’s true that consumerization, like our IT example, impacts people’s concepts and expectations regarding services and outcomes. But the decision criteria in a B2B situation will be different and they have to be agreed upon across the entire stakeholder network. There are people with more or less influence and power. Only a very few of them will have their skin in the game.  Imagine what happens, if a key stakeholder with lots of power and influence doesn’t prioritize your specific buying initiative? Let’s assume that all initiatives on the table have great financial impact. In this specific B2B buying situation, decision-making becomes political.

As B2B buying is different, so too is B2B sales. Understanding the buyers’ context and concepts, orchestrating their decision dynamic, to provide a value-creating perspective – that’s always unique. That’s why sales professionals exist – to create value for their customers, to help them to achieve their desired results and wins.

Editor’s note: Today’s post is from Mark Roberge, CRO of the HubSpot Sales Division. One of my all-time heroes in modern sales. Please enjoy.

What does a top performing sales person look like? Seriously. Picture him or her in your mind. How do they dress? Are they attractive? Are they eloquent speakers? What do they do in their free time?

Well, in my experience, the profile of the top performing salespeople is changing. And fast! As I built the HubSpot sales team over the last 6 years, I probably hired close to 200 salespeople. It amazes me, even in that short period, how the profile of the industry’s top performers has shifted. Here are four habits that today’s top performers exhibit that yesterday’s top performers did not.

#1: They are Data Jocks

Historically sales managers have taken extraordinary strides to measure the performance of their salespeople… and salespeople have avoided these tactics like the plague. “What I do cannot be measured. It is an art form.”Today’s top sales performers love the data. To them, data represents the blue print to excellence. They want to know:

• Which sales email templates are performing best?
• What day of the week or time of day do prospect’s most often open email or pick up the phone?
• How many calls per day do I need to make to hit my commission check goals? Am I on track?
• How does my call activity, connect rate, opportunity conversion, forecast accuracy, and close rate compare to my peers? Where can I improve? Who is the best so I can learn from them?

Now these top performing salespeople love the data for their own use. But do they want their manager to see the data too?

It depends.

If the manager uses the data to micro-manage them, forget it.

“Nobody leaves this office until they make 100 dials today!”

Ha. You’ll end up with a bunch of fake outbound calls and disgruntled salespeople.

Today’s top performers do not mind their managers having the numbers as long as the manager uses the metrics to make them better, to coach them.

#2: They are Technology Geeks

How did legacy salespeople get an edge? They owned front row season tickets for the hot pro sports team. They were members at the exclusive country club. They had access to vintage wine.

But, sorry. Customers just do not buy this way anymore. They probably wonder how much of this lavish lifestyle is baked into the ultimate sales price being pitched to them.

Today’s top sales performers look for an edge from technology, not exclusivity. They use technology to create a better buying experience for their customers and to streamline their own sales process.

Top performing salespeople no longer buy lists of cold prospects who are supposedly a good fit for them. They use technology to monitor the millions of buying signals happening online every day and engage with those companies that are actually entering into a buying process.

Top performing salespeople do not prospect into their territory of companies listed in alphabetical order. They use technology to understand which prospects are actually engaging with their sales efforts, opening their emails,visiting their website, and are prioritizing their sales efforts accordingly.

Today’s top performing salespeople don’t lead with the generic elevator pitch. They use technology to understand what information the prospect has already consumed and lead with the next piece of information appropriate for prospect’s stage in the buyer’s journey. Today’s top performing salespeople do not tolerate the burdensome tasks of updating their CRM. They use technology to automatically update their CRM records as they interact with prospects on email, on the phone, and on webinars.

#3: They think “Always Be Helping”, not “Always Be Closing”

Remember Alec Baldwin in GlennGarry Glenn Ross.

“A-B-C”

“Always Be Closing”

Legacy salespeople are closers. The pitch starts the minute they open their mouth.

However, today’s top sales performers put the customer’s needs before their own. Here are the three steps today’s top performers follow:

1. Develop trust with the prospect
2. Leverage the trust to understand the prospect’s top priorities/goals/problems.
3. If the sales person’s solution are aligned with the prospect’s priorities, the sales person presents the solution within the buyer’s context, using their terminology. If the solution is not aligned, the sales person thanks the prospect for their time and refers the prospect to someone who may be able to help. In a social-media-driven world, jamming the wrong solution down a prospect’s throat is the kiss of death for a sales person.

The one caveat to the process above is in the second step, if the sales person believes the prospect has the wrong goals, they challenge the prospect. They show the prospect industry trends on why they feel the priorities are off. They educate the prospect on more effective best practices. If the sales person truly has the prospect’s trust, they will help the prospect avoid a potential pothole.

#4: They are Digital Thought Leaders in their Industry

In a post Internet age, the power in the sales process has shifted significantly to the buyer. Buyers can be at home on a Saturday night and research the top vendors in a space online. They can find out how each solution is different, how much each solution costs. Sometimes they can try the product for free and often times they can buy it, right there on the website.

So why do we need salespeople?

In this new buyer-driven context, salespeople need to step up their game. They need to be perceived as trusted advisors by their prospects.

Top performing salespeople make the investment to attain this status. Instead of 80 hours a month of cold calling, top salespeople carve out a few hours a week to build up their online authority. They read the blogs their target prospects read and they add smart comments. They follow the Twitter users their prospects follow and they retweet the best messages. They join the same LinkedIn groups their prospects are members in and they post smart answers. They take the time to guest post on their own company blog around the top questions they receive from prospects early in the buying journey. They become digital thought leaders. Ultimately, they are sought out by their prospects for help.

True story. Last year, the VP of Sales at a Fortune 500 company called me up.

“Mark. I need to have lunch with you and my VP of Marketing. We need your help on our sales and marketing funnel.”

“Great!”, I said. “I’ll be at your office tomorrow at noon.” “

That’s OK Mark. We’ll come to you.”

They showed up with the best pitch deck I have ever seen for HubSpot. They had outlined their entire funnel with all of the conversion rates. They had theories on where they were under-performing and how to fix it. We spent 90 minutes over lunch working on the document. I shared the industry benchmarks. I coached them on the strategies they should use to address deficiencies. When the check came, I reached for it but they pushed my hand away.

“Our pleasure Mark. This was a great lunch.”

Shortly thereafter, I had the order form.

That is selling today. It no longer feels like a sales person / prospect relationship. It feels more like a doctor / patient relationship.

When the doctor asks, do you smoke? Do you have heart disease in your family? You do not lie. You see the diploma on the wall. You trust the doctor. You answer her questions.

When she gives you the diagnosis and prescribes the proper medication, you do not say “let me think about it” or ask for 20% off. You take the medication.

Today’s salespeople invest their time to reach this level of authority with their prospects.

Picture this new top performing sales person. How do they compare to the image of yesterday’s top performer? Who would you rather work with?

Today’s top performing salespeople are making the profession more honorable. They yearn for excellence. They love efficiency. Most importantly their industry knowledge and desire to help make for an enjoyable experience for all of us buyers.

Mark is Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot Sales Division. At HubSpot, he increased revenue over 6,000% and expanded the worldwide sales team from 1 to 450 employees. These results placed HubSpot #33 on the 2011 INC 500 Fastest Growing Companies list. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference.

Mark holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management where he wasawarded the Patrick McGovern award for his contributions to entrepreneurship at MIT. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University. Mark has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Inc Magazine, BostonGlobe, TechCrunch, Harvard Business Review, and other major publications for his entrepreneurial ventures.

Sales Process Optimization: Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater!

In this time of tremendous change in the buying and selling dynamic, we’ve seen a real spike in client interest in updating and optimizing their sales processes.

Your sales process has to reflect how your customers buy. Your sales process has to be designed to help your customers through their buying process. Your sales process has to be based on your best and most effective practices and support your strategic direction. So, as the buying process changes, it only makes sense that selling processes need to change.
At Richardson, we believe in a dynamic sales process that is clearly defined and followed that but gives reps and managers support as opposed to strict directives. Research from CSO Insights supports this approach over a process that is purely random or one that is formal but overly rigid.

                         Source: CSO Insights

A dynamic process acknowledges that customers likely are well informed and increasingly savvy about their needs. It recognizes that sales reps need more latitude to challenge customers and to think outside the box and get creative about creating value for the customer. However, before we even start talking with clients about a “dynamic” process, we start by finding out the degree to which a client understands their own sales process.

According to Harry Dunklin, our Sales Enablement Practice Leader, “When we start to ask questions about whether they have a sales process, sometimes we will hear that they do. We asked one company, for example, a new client. What they showed me was a book on professional selling skills … To them, that was their sales process. In some situations, when companies have developed their own sales process, it is very inwardly focused. Their process is based on internal processes, procedures, stages, and expectations. In some cases, we have been successful at getting the decision makers to think differently. A sales process has to look at things from the point of view of the customer. If you can map out how your customers buy and then mirror that with selling, you have a sales process. The sales process is designed to help customers buy.

“We have to understand our client’s perspective on their sales process because we work with what works in the client company. We don’t try to reinvent the wheel; we improve how the wheel is used. This frequently has to do with change management principles. This means that if we impose something, it is much less likely to be adopted. If we develop it based on what is already working and part of best practices, and then enhance it with what we know to be the experience outside of their company — outside of their industry — what we have is a really strong process.

“This is much more likely to be adopted because it is based organically on what already works in the company. We are not asking people to do things that they have never done before. We collaborate to create together a sales process rather than trying to import something.”

This is less risky since it links the new system to what is already there. For an aside, this is good sales — relate the new to the old.

Dunklin continues: “What we do is define those stages and the activities within each of those stages. More importantly, it should be integrated into the work stream. We call that a work product. The work product that we deliver is a published sales process. In addition to the steps and stages and activities in the sales process, we are also delivering predicted, verifiable outcomes. They are, for example, the nine or ten key transition points in any sale process that, if they are done right, predict success. If they are not done correctly, or if they are neglected, they predict failure or stalling.

“We work really hard to identify what those things are and then, in addition to the verifiable outcomes, we also create a set of coaching questions that tie to each verifiable outcome. This gives the manager the ability to diagnose the status of an opportunity or a relationship, or both very quickly, before they feel the need to coach.”

Once the sales process has been optimized, it can be embedded into your CRM workflow through a tool, such as Richardson’s Sales Process Pro. This approach significantly increases adoption and impact.

If your buyers have changed and your sales process hasn’t, then we encourage you to contact us about how we can help you optimize your process with minimal disruption to your business.

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When working on a project, have you ever felt that you and the rest of the team were making a lot of decisions based on assumptions? Having to make choices with limited information is not unusual — especially in complex projects or with brand new products.

Phrases like “We think people will use this feature because of X” or “We believe user group Y will switch to this product” become part of the early deliberation on what to develop and how to prioritize. At some point, though, these phrases start to feel like pure guesses and the ground under your feet feels shaky. What can you do about it?

Regardless of your role in the project, one activity in particular will help your whole team build a solid foundation for product strategy and design: that is, approaching potential users for research, such as interviews and usability tests.

Such research is an important aspect of user-centered design. It helps you build products that are rooted in a deep understanding of the target audience. Among other benefits, interviewing potential users helps you achieve the following:

• more precisely define who the target audience is (and isn’t),
• face and challenge your assumptions,
• uncover unmet needs,
• discover the behaviors and attitudes of potential users firsthand.

You can conduct informal yet valuable user research yourself with practice and with guidance from great sources like Steve Portigal’s Interviewing Users and Steve Krug’s Rocket Surgery Made Easy. One thing that stops a lot of people from trying their hand at research isn’t just lack of experience, but a fear of approaching people and asking for their time. This obstacle is greater than many would care to admit.

The Difficulty Of “Face To Face”

I was teaching an experience design class in high school when it really hit me. Students were engaged in the design process until they were told that they had to request interviews from strangers. The anxiety levels went through the roof! A look of shock covered their faces. Shortly after, two of the students asked to receive a failing grade on the activity rather than have to face strangers (a request that was not granted)!

This was no longer a case of time, opportunities, resources or priorities. The interviews were a part of the class and were considered essential. The students were presented with a clear set of expectations, provided with aid in planning and writing questions, and taken to the location (a college) to conduct the interviews.

When all of the usual obstacles were removed, what was laid bare? A strong fear of approaching strangers, made even stronger by the fact that so many interactions nowadays are done online, rather than face to face. Ask someone to create an online survey and they’re all over it — ask that same person to pose those same questions to a stranger face to face and they’ll freeze up.

One might assume that the problem afflicts only those in high school, but such a deep-seated reaction is felt by many working adults who are suddenly responsible for requesting something from strangers — even when the thing being requested is a relatively low commitment, like 10 minutes for an interview.

Are you at the point in a project when you would benefit from insights gained from face-to-face discussions with potential users but find yourself blocked by a fear of asking? Read on for techniques to help you approach people for research, the first step to gaining the knowledge you need.

“I’m Afraid I’ll Be Bothering People.”

I’m sure you’ve been approached by a stranger at one time or another. The negative occasions stand out the most, when you were annoyed or felt guilty because you didn’t want to say no to a request for money or personal information or a signature.

When a stranger approaches, the person being approached has several concerns at once:

• “Who is this person?”
• “Are they trying to scam me?”
• “Are they going to ask me for money?”
• “Are they going to ask me to sign something that I don’t agree with?”
• “Am I going to have to figure out how to get rid of them?”
• “How long is this going to take?”

Your memories of being approached could make you uncomfortable if you’re the one approaching others.

The good news is that approaching people for interviews can be a lot easier than requesting a donation. If you make it clear quickly that their time is voluntary and that you won’t ask for anything they don’t want to give, then you’ll generally get a positive response. After all, you’re not asking people for money, just for their time and attention. Time is valuable, but its value varies according to the person’s situation at that moment — and you can do certain things to communicate the value of agreeing to your request.

Increase the Value of Participation

Interview requests are accepted when participation is perceived to be as or more valuable than what the person is doing at the time. People calculate that value in their heads when you ask for their time.

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Below are some of the factors that can swing the calculation in your favor.

Find the Right Time

If someone is in a rush to get somewhere, then making your research seem more valuable than their desire to get to their destination will probably be difficult. Someone who is walking briskly, looking tense and not making eye contact is not the ideal candidate.

Approach people who appear to be one or more of the following:

• Between tasks
  If you’re asking about a particular activity, go to areas where people tend to be finishing up that activity, and talk to them as soon as they’re done with it. You’ll get a fresh perspective on the whole experience, and they likely won’t be in a rush to get to their next activity. For example, if you want to interview runners, wander the finish line of a race. Look for runners who are cooling down and checking out their swag but not yet heading home.
• Bored
  Waiting in line, waiting for a bus or waiting for an elevator — if someone seems to be idly swiping their phone or staring off into space, they might actually welcome a distraction.
• Procrastinating
  Some activities take a long time. The human brain needs a change of focus every now and then, and your research could be just the thing. If your target audience is students, visit a study area. When a student comes up for air, ask for some time. They might need the mental break!

Regardless of whom you approach, give them an idea of how long the interview will take (about 10 minutes, for example), so that they can do the mental math of calculating the value of saying yes.

Be Aware of Body Language

As mentioned, pay attention to the candidate’s body language. Do they seem tense? Are they frowning at their phone? Are they power-walking? They might be late for a meeting, so the timing would be wrong. Someone gazing around or strolling casually is a better bet. People on phones are a bit harder to read because many check their phone when bored or procrastinating — still, their facial expression might tell you whether they’re open to being interrupted for something more interesting.

Your own body language is important, too. Planting yourself in the middle of a person’s path and facing them squarely will come off as aggressive, likely triggering a negative reaction. They might feel like they’d have a hard time getting rid of you if they’re not comfortable with your request.

Approach within clear view, but from the side. Also, try angling your body slightly away from the person. You want to seem engaged but also make them feel like they could end the conversation if desired. This will give them a greater sense of control and increase the likelihood that they’ll give you those precious seconds you need to make your request.

Fostering Interest

The feeling one gets from participating in research can be rewarding in itself. Interest is one positive feeling that leads people to say yes to research, which you can emphasize when approaching strangers.

Mention early on that you’re conducting research, which makes clear that you’re not asking for money and tends to generate interest.

Being approached to participate in research is fairly unusual for most people. The fact that you’re conducting a study might inspire a healthy curiosity. People will often be curious about what topic is being researched, what kinds of questions might be asked, and what they might find out about themselves in answering. The prevalence of quizzes and personality tests online is a good indication of this interest; those researchers are gathering data from the tests, but many of the respondents feel like they are learning about themselves (and potentially others) by considering the questions being asked.

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The person might not be expecting to learn whether they’re a “benevolent inventor” or an ENFP⁶ by the end of the interview, but they might still find your questions interesting to consider.

Will the interviewees be shown something that others don’t have access to yet, like a new product or campaign? If so, bring that up quickly. It really boosts curiosity!

Furthermore, people might be flattered that you’re interested in their thoughts and opinion. Build on that! If there’s a reason you approached that person, share it. If you’re interviewing people about healthy food choices near a health food store and you stop someone who has just purchased something at the store, you could mention that their interest in health is one reason you approached them. Stick to obvious observations — you don’t want to come across as creepy!

Fostering Goodwill

Donating to a cause feels good, and volunteering time for research is no different. If your efforts are for a worthy result, like making texting easier for the elderly, share that benefit.

Another magic phrase? “I’m a student.” If you are, say so quickly to allay the person’s suspicion about your motive. Your effort on the path of learning will appeal to their goodwill.

If you’re not a student and your topic doesn’t sound particularly socially relevant, people might still be willing to help out if they connect with you. If you’re friendly and enthusiastic about the topic, then they’re more likely to say yes.

To keep the goodwill flowing, express your gratitude for their time and thoughts. Let them know before and after the interview that their time will have a great impact on the success of the research.

Offer Incentives

This one might seem the most obvious: You can increase the value of participation by offering an incentive. A $10 or $20 gift card from a popular vendor like Amazon or Starbucks can incline someone to accept a 15 to 30 minute interview. As the inconvenience to the participant increases, so should the incentive — whether that inconvenience is the length of the interview, the location or the time of day.

The incentive doesn’t have to be monetary. Be creative in what you offer. It could be access to a service that most people don’t have or a fun gadget that’s related to your topic (like a pedometer if the topic is health).

Offering an incentive can be useful, but don’t let it turn into a crutch. The point is to get comfortable with approaching people; associating a cost with that adds pressure that you don’t need. Learning to request participation without an incentive — and learning to increase the perceived value of participation without one — will take the cost out of the equation. Nevertheless, if you’re conducting formal research with a specific audience for a lengthy period of time, offering an incentive is definitely a best practice.

“I’m Afraid Of Rejection.”

Rejection is people’s number one fear when approaching strangers. Hearing no has always been difficult, whether it’s a polite no or an angry no followed by a rant. Either way, it stings. Your response to that sting, though, is what matters. How do you explain the rejection to yourself, and does your explanation help or hurt you?

Martin Seligman, one of the originators of positive psychology, conducted a study in the ’70s that gives insight into the types of mindsets that make people feel helpless. Seligman found that those who exhibit long-term “learned helplessness” tend to view negative events as being personal, pervasive and permanent. In other words, if a person is rejected, they might rationalize that the rejection is a result of their own failing, that everyone else is likely to reject them as well, and that they can do nothing to lessen the likelihood of rejection.

When you prepare to approach someone, consider instead that, if they say no, they aren’t really rejecting you, but rather rejecting your request. It’s not personal. Maybe they’re in the middle of something, or maybe they’re just not in the mood to talk. The rejection is fleeting, and the next person might be perfectly happy to participate.

Even knowing this, your first attempt will be the most difficult. Think of it like jumping into a pool: The initial shock is certain, but you’ll quickly get used to the water and will be swimming in no time!

Turn It Into a Game

When my brother was in college, he had a friend — let’s call him Bob — who had been single for a long time. Bob wanted to develop his ability to approach a woman and strike up a conversation, but he constantly froze up because of his fear of rejection.

One night at a lively bar, the two of them decided to make a game of it. If an approach led to a conversation — fantastic! He got 1 point. If the approach led to rejection, he still got 1 point for making the attempt. This turned failure into a small win and encouraged Bob to try and try again. The person with the most points at the end of the night won a free drink from the other. This shifted the focus and value onto the attempt, not the result.

Try this technique with someone who also wants to practice approaching people for research. Award a point for each approach, and reward the winner. Choose a prize that you both value but that doesn’t outweigh the good feeling of a successful approach. Not that you want to be turned down, but it helps to have a reward for plucking up the courage to try.

Variation: Football Rules

If you find the incentive to approach is still not enough, award a field goal (3 points) for every unsuccessful approach and a touchdown (7 points) for each successful one. Because interviews take time, the person who is trailing in points could pull ahead even if they’re mostly getting rejections.

“Only Extroverts Are Good At This.”

Google tells us that an introvert is “a shy, reticent and typically self-centered person.” Not a pretty picture! (An extrovert is defined as “an outgoing, overtly expressive person” — a more positive description, at least in the US).

Introversion has been erroneously associated with characteristics like being “bad with people” or being unsuccessful in approaching others.

In psychology, the field that gave us the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” (thanks to Carl Jung), the definitions are fairly different. The focus is on how people recharge their energy. Introverts tend to recharge by spending time with their own thoughts and feelings; extroverts recharge with external stimulation, such as time with friends or adventures in new destinations.

Jung stated that, “There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.” We all fall somewhere along the continuum. It turns out that some of the most fantastic researchers out there fall almost in the middle (called “ambiverts”). They balance an extrovert’s drive to interact others with an introvert’s skill in observation and reflection.

Daniel Pink explores this in his book To Sell is Human, which summarizes a variety of studies that find no link between high extroversion and major success in sales. (Pink defines sales as “persuading, convincing and influencing others to give up something they’ve got in exchange for what we’ve got” — a broad definition that could include asking someone to give up their time to participate in research.)

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In fact, in the studies Pink cites, such as one by Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania, the highly extroverted — who tend to talk too much and listen too little — performed only slightly better than the highly introverted. Who did the best by far? The ambiverts, who balanced a drive to connect with an ability to observe and inspect.

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If you consider yourself an introvert, then you’re probably relieved to hear that you don’t have to swing to the other side of the scale to be successful in interviews. You can use your skill in observation to pay attention to the environment and identify people to approach. You might need to tap into your extroverted side to approach someone, but once the conversation begins, you can call on your skill in observing and listening intently. With practice, this introverted quality will become an important part of the process that leads to the payoff: generating important insights.

Let’s explore a few techniques to ease gently into the ambiversion zone, exercising your interviewing muscles!

Practice Playfully

Practice your requests with a friendly audience and in a comfortable location to make the experience more playful and less stressful. Learning and playing go together!

Set challenges for yourself that expand your skills but that don’t have serious consequences. Instead of waiting for an intense, highly visible project at work to make your first attempt at approaching people, give yourself a short interview challenge. Pick a friendly location and choose a topic of research that would be of interest to most interview candidates and whose results you would not formally present.

Can you think of a local restaurant or cafeteria? Try interviewing its employees about their experience with the lunchtime rush to identify ways to better manage lines (of course, wait until after the rush to approach them). Taking a taxi? Interview the cab driver about their use of technology and how it has changed in the last three years. Do this as though you were conducting research for a real project (for example, ask to interview them, rather than launching right into your questions).

Here are two introductions you can practice:

“Excuse me! I’m a student, and today I’m conducting research on ways to improve transportation information for commuters. Hearing about your experience would be really valuable. Do you have 10 minutes to answer some questions?”

“Hi! We’re conducting some research today. Would you like to be interviewed on your lunchtime eating habits? It’ll take about 10 minutes, and your thoughts will help us improve the availability of nutritional information.”

Make It Meaningful

Whether you’re interviewing for practice or for work, tap into the aspects of the topic that make it deeply meaningful and personal to you. Genuine enthusiasm for a topic is hard to fake and will override fear to a large extent.

Remember the high-school students who were so afraid of approaching people? The class ended up going through the research process a second time with different topics. Instead of being told to interview college students about financial planning, students picked their own topics, like helping other students complete their homework, eating healthier meals and handling peer pressure.

The class picked students to interview, a mixture of friends and strangers. Because they were passionate about the topics (and had practiced once already), the second round of requests was much easier.

Likewise, consider practicing with more than one round of interviews:

• Round 1
  Choose a topic that you know will be of interest to the people you’re interviewing.
• Round 2
  Choose a topic that you’re passionate about. (Try to be objective, though!)
• Round 3
  Take on a challenge for a product or project with support from other team members. (See the section below, “Pair Up Personalities,” for an example.)

If you’re on a team that wants even more practice, you could take turns suggesting practice challenges for each other. The more you practice, the easier it gets — promise!

Pair Up Personalities

If you consider yourself an introvert, pair up with someone who considers themselves an extrovert, and play to each other’s strengths for the first few interviews.

Using your observational skill, you could identify candidates to interview, and the extrovert could approach the first three people.

After the first three or four approaches, take a break and share your techniques with each other. You could share your insight from observing the environment and suggest tips on which people in which location might be best to approach. The extrovert could share tips on conversation openers that seem to be working well. When you’re both comfortable, switch roles to exercise the other’s skills.

This method situates you as mentors to each other, bringing you both closer to the middle of the introversion-extroversion scale.

Go Face To Face

Now that you’ve learned some techniques to get started, don’t let another week go by without trying one of them out! A good first step? Think of topics that you’re passionate about, the ones that are intriguing enough to propel you forward. You’ll find that the skills you develop will give you confidence to pursue the answers you need, leading you to better experiences for yourself and others.

Resources

• AdventuresXD¹²
  has sample challenges that you can work with.

(cc, al, ml, il)

Footnotes

1. 1 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Value-opt.jpg
2. 2 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Value-opt.jpg
3. 3 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Personaldna-opt.jpg
4. 4 http://personaldna.com/tests.php
5. 5 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Personaldna-opt.jpg
6. 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENFP
7. 7 http://www.leathersmilligan.com/2011/your-explanatory-style-explains-your-success-the-choice-is-yours/
8. 8 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SalesExtraversion-opt.jpg
9. 9 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SalesExtraversion-opt.jpg
10. 10 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WhoSells-opt.jpg
11. 11 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WhoSells-opt.jpg
12. 12 http://www.adventuresxd.com/adventure-blog/2014/4/13/the-toocooks-sample-challenge

The post Facing Your Fears: Approaching People For Research appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Content marketing isn’t new, and for modern marketers it’s the go-to digital strategy for driving new business, leads, and revenue into their coffers.

14 Fundamental Content Marketing Best Practices by @jeanwrites

But not all companies have sorted out how to implement content marketing. Even though 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing, the notion of streamlining efforts and reaping the benefits of this relatively green process still eludes many.

So we decided to round up some of the most essential content marketing best practices, and share them with you.

Content Marketing Best Practices

1. Write down a strategy annually, update it quarterly.

Adopting inbound marketing (drawing customers to your business by producing quality content) doubles average website conversion rates from 6% to 12%, yet only 44% of B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy. Considering these two stats in tangent reveals an important insight: taking the time to develop a content strategy leads to revenue opportunities.

So before you jump into random acts of marketing, identify your strategy, write it down, and get feedback from internal stakeholders. At Kapost, we recommend mapping out your strategy annually, then making quarterly updates to ensure content is timely, relevant, and in line with business objectives.

2. Organize content campaigns in an editorial calendar.

Once you have your strategy, map out the core content pillars on a calendar.

This seemingly simple step covers a lot of bases. It takes care of deadline appropriation, allows for coordination of efforts, and provides visibility into launch dates for cornerstone content assets.

Also, crafting an editorial calendar unifies your content team around a single timeline, and alerts other departments of content that might be relevant to their job. For instance, a new eBook might be on a topic that’s important to a hot prospect. Their sales rep can check the status of publication, then deliver the eBook to nurture the relationship with his or her prospect.

3. Identify key contributors for each content piece, and use project management software to group those people around production.

Who’s responsible for making sure each asset is launched on time? This varies depending on the kinds of materials your business is producing, but is a key question to answer before you get started producing content.

Perhaps bottom of the funnel materials (pitch decks, case studies, etc.) are assigned to your product marketing, whereas eBooks and whitepapers might be in the wheelhouse of your marketing communications team. Discerning who is in charge of each asset ensures everyone is aware and held accountable for their responsibilities, giving you a better shot at staying on top of production schedules.

4. Create comprehensive task lists needed for the production of each asset in your calendar.

A list of content marketing best practices by @jeanwrites

Once you have an overarching strategy, the execution is in the details. List out each workflow task involved in the production of a particular asset to keep the engines churning on production. And get specific—it’s not enough to have “first draft due” and “final draft published” as the only two tasks in your workflow. Fleshing out the entirety of the project from start to finish outlines the necessary steps, clearly communicating all the nuances required to pull it off.

For instance, when writing a blog post this is the workflow we follow at Kapost:

Get more workflows for all content pieces with this free download.

5. Identify the person or people responsible for each task.

For each task on your content and campaign workflows, make sure there is a person assigned to it—and that they know when it needs to be completed. That way, content producers know what they need to do and how their role contributes to the overall plan. This keeps production well-oiled, and breeds efficiency across departments and teams.

6. Identify key content distribution channels.

As I explain in this article, not all content should live on every social platform. Different types of content do better in different digital ecosystems. Use that meme on Twitter instead of a case study; use infographics on SlideShare and smaller images in email. Find the right distribution channels to support your content assets, then test how different content styles and types perform to better optimize how, when, and with whom that content is shared.

7. Identify key performance metrics to track for each of those channels.

Once you’ve identified the channels you’ll be populating, implement a barometer for success. Pinpoint the performance metrics that will shine light on your content success or failure. Often, this goes beyond Google Analytics. As Derek Edmund of Content Marketing Institute says in 6 Ways to Measure B2B Content Marketing Performance, “Even though page performance metrics found in Google Analytics are strong indicators of B2B content marketing success…they don’t fully illustrate the reach of the content that’s developed and marketed.”

Metrics could include: referral traffic to your website, social shares, number of influencers who share your content regularly through the identified channel, individual engagement per post, and more. Then take those key performance indicators (KPIs) and…

8. Set benchmarks for performance accountability.

Once you’ve identified the metrics that matter for performance, how do you actually measure success?

Read this Quintly post for a useful tool to get started mapping social media.

17% of marketers have no content effectiveness measurements in place, and 49% are using only basic metrics such as click or downloads. You can (and should) do more. Use industry data or internal data to benchmark success. Or in other words, how many “retweets” is “good” in your books? Depending on the size of your company and number of followers, perhaps five retweets is good, perhaps 1,000 is. All benchmarks should be numerical and trackable.

9. Set a cadence for regular analytics check-in.

It’s not okay to check in with your content marketing analytics irregularly. Irregular tracking results in inconsistent data, misleading figures, and a marred content marketing strategy.

Set consistent data check-in intervals. Incorporate that into your overarching content marketing strategy, and use the data to inform better content. Marketers increasingly find that incorporating a metrics-and-data-based feedback loop into their marketing strategy is transforming content from fluff to influential.

As Heather Healy writes, using data makes it possible for marketers to “eliminate the guesswork and work out what our target audiences actually want.”

10. Update internal departments about new content.

Avoid operating in silos. It’s a familiar adage, I know. But for content marketing to function, it’s an important one to follow.

Develop and implement a way to update internal departments about new content as it is launched. This arms them with fresh, relevant content to use in their various prospect or customer touchpoints. Sales teams, for example, can provide fresh content to prospects that aligns with existing messaging. Account managers can use content to help current customers implement best practices and be successful. This also avoids teams creating duplicative content on their own.

11. Define a feedback system between internal teams to identify what’s working (and what’s not).

Tracking KPIs provides invaluable perspective on what content is working, and what’s not. But qualitative data helps, too. Ask people from your organization which pieces of content they use, which they don’t, and why?

Recently I did this in Kapost. I had shared three new articles with our sales team, and asked them which one was most useful in their sales conversations. The feedback I got was unexpected. The article that was most useful was written by our CEO on intra-marketing alignment. One saleperson explained that posts by our CEO are powerful and trusted, making them more useful in her sales conversations.

So, more CEO blog posts (or at least quotes—CEOs are kinda busy people) coming up!

13. Archive your content and campaigns for easy retrieval and access.

Content can be reused and repurposed. Or rather it should be.

To decrease total costs associated with content marketing, reuse, rewrite, repurpose, and republish assets that do well for your business. This shouldn’t be thought of as “cheating the system,” or not working hard. On the contrary—it takes a keen mind to recraft content in a meaningful way. But as a best practice, you must also be able to access those content pieces for easy retrieval and republication. Content that is lost, buried, or forgotten provides no value to your organization.

Integrate a system that makes resurfacing old content easy and quick so that your company can reap the benefits for months and even years to come.

14. Coordinate a cadence for retiring old content.

In a similar note to number 13, it’s also important to retire old content. Users want freshness. They want the most up-to-date information. Purge your content archives, from time-to-time, to keep your brand and company polished and hot off the press. To do this, you must identify a cadence that works for your business (perhaps once or twice annually) and regularly wipe old content off the grid.

Follow these precepts to establish an infrastructure for success, and transform your content process into a powerful marketing operation.

It’s a tough market out there. You’re probably all too familiar with the stat that 55 to 80 percent of new products flop, depending on how generously you’re willing to define success.

Additionally, according to the CSO Insights 2014 Sales Performance Optimization Study, nearly half of B2B sales leaders feel that their teams “need improvement” in effectively introducing new products to the market.

So how can you overcome this “failure to launch” phenomenon? It comes down to avoiding three key product launch mistakes:

1. Your launch shouldn’t be synonymous with product training. You need to provide the right selling stories. The bulk of most B2B product kickoffs and training focus too much on precisely the wrong information: all the cool, dazzling new features. You treat your launches like they are product training, but product knowledge won’t drive decisions. Before your salespeople earn the right to talk about your cool new solution, they must first be able to give your customers a reason to think about changing the way they are doing things today.

Alternative: Launch your product to your salespeople with the same message you expect them to deliver to your customers. First, tell them a powerful story that helps them see and show customers which business objectives are at risk if they stick with the status quo and what unforeseen or undervalued challenges in their environment are threatening their desired outcomes. In other words, first give them a why-change story. Once you’ve convinced customers of the urgency to move from the status quo, your salespeople have earned the right to prove why you are the best alternative. Then you need to provide a follow-up story that speaks specifically to the why-you story, depicting how you solve the problems you just raised in a unique or advantageous way.

2. Your launch shouldn’t send salespeople on an archaeological dig to find the right selling tools. You need to embed them in the way they work. Most marketing organizations now set up extensive Web portals and microsites to support their new product launches. But here’s the problem: Most salespeople won’t search out those sites after the event, and if they do get there, they are often overwhelmed by the amount of content and limited amount of context for how to use it. This is a prescription for low adoption of your marketing tools, fading momentum for your new product and poor first-year sales results.

Alternative: Stop trying to drag your salespeople to your portal or microsite. Instead, push the new story to them in engaging chunks of content and best-practice delivery examples. Make sure it works the way they work by serving up this information on their mobile devices. Furthermore, don’t rely on just one content push. Instead, provide compelling, fun and educational reinforcement videos on key storytelling skills and examples for several weeks to keep your launch top of mind.

3. Your launch shouldn’t neglect first-line managers. You need to help them coach their teams in a way that adds value for all parties. Many B2B marketers focus their efforts on outbound launch communications (to drive customer awareness and leads) as well as tools to help the sales team sell the new product. They treat sales managers as part of the sales team, expecting them to figure out how to support the new product after the initial launch. Unfortunately, managers are often busier and more distracted than their sales teams. Your product launch is just another (new) item on their “to-do” lists, one that probably won’t make it to the top. At the same time, your sales managers are your first line of defense in ensuring the adoption and consistent delivery of your new message. You can’t afford to overlook them.

Alternative: Provide coaching resources specifically targeted at your managers to make it easy for them to host a local “stand and present” event to practice and reinforce your new product messaging. Help them facilitate opportunities for their team to try on your new message in front of the internal team for the first time, instead of your customers, by creating event agendas and training content they can administer in team meetings.

Your company invests too much time and money in developing your new products to risk a weak launch to your sales team. You owe it to yourself to learn more.

*This article originally appeared on CMO.com. To read more of Tim’s Marketing Messenger insights, visit http://bit.ly/UY7jGY.

You’ve probably invested a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the creation of your store’s website, but if no one knows about your site, how can they possibly buy from you?

Here are the seven website tips for attracting shoppers to your website.

1. Excel in SEO

If customers can’t find your website on a search engine like Google, then you’re never going to get much business. Customers looking to buy a specific items usually start with Google first. Since so few customers go farther than the first page of search results, it is therefore essential that your website be in the top search results.

But how do you get there? Your website should have excellent search engine optimisation (SEO), meaning that it’s easily searchable. Here are a few features of a great SEO website:

• Website meets Google Panda 4.0 and other updates
• Great keywords and phrases to capture searchers
• Design is website responsive, meaning one site for all platforms (browser, smartphone, tablet, ect.)
• Healthy link profile

All of these factors will help your website reach the top in search results. Keep in mind that building SEO takes time, usually months. It won’t happen overnight, but if you keep working at it, you’ll see very real results.

2. Create dynamite content

You might be thinking, “I’m a store. Why do I need to have content on my website? People are coming here to buy things.” Many sellers have trouble understanding why they need content on their websites. When a buyer walks into a store, for example, they’re looking for a product, not to read about the industry. So why would you need content on an online store’s website?

The truth is that content helps build your brand and establish yourself as an expert in your field. By having a blog or producing podcasts or videos, you’re interacting with your audience and showing them what your brand is all about. Your content will keep them up-to-date on the latest advancements or styles in your industry.

Customers will enjoy shopping at your website because it is both entertaining and informative.

3. Utilise social media

Hopefully you already have at least a Facebook fan page, but if you don’t, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. Almost all of your customers are using social media in one form or another, and you have the power to connect with them on those platforms.

All websites should be connected to a Google+ page, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, no matter what the site is selling. As these are usually considered the three most popular forms of social media, you should have a presence on these sites. Interact with your followers and encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions. They will help you better see how people discovered your website and thus provide insights on how you should direct your marketing efforts.

You should also look into other social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and StumbleUpon. These sites will allow you to post pictures and create videos that will back to your website and encourage your followers to view and share them with their friends.

Be sure you provide a link to your website with all the content you post so viewers can easily get to your website.

4. Master online advertising

When you’re looking to generate interest for a store in a strip mall, how do you get the word out? Usually it’s with advertisements. You might rent a billboard on a nearby highway or take out an ad in the local paper. On the Internet, ads work similar to billboards. They display a message to people going in the direction of your store, hoping to direct them to you.

Paid online ads, like Google Adwords, are triggered by keyword search. You can pay to have Google target certain keywords that relate to your business and display an ad for your business on certain sites. For example, an online shoe store might target words like “high heels” or “boots.” Customers searching these keywords will see ads for the online store displayed on the Google Display Network sites, sites that have agreed to show these ads, they visit. You’ll get your name in the hands of people who are looking to buy your products.

There are all types of paid advertising available online so if you’re not sure who to go with or how effective they are, try small campaigns first and use the data to fine tune your campaign.

5. Consider engaging with affiliate networks

Affiliate networks are websites that will send traffic to your site in return for a commission fee, usually calculated on a Cost Per Acquisition analysis. If you’re site’s SEO isn’t as high as you’d like, you can commission other higher-ranking sites to help give you a boost and get your name to people who would be interested in your products.

Though this option is usually fairly cost-effective, it still means that the more people who buy from you, the more of your sales you’ll have to give to your affiliate. Still, for a site just starting to gain an audience, this can be extremely beneficial in building your brand.

6. Offer free shipping promotions and other incentives

Sometimes you need appeal to your shopper’s wallet and give him or her a concrete reason for shopping with you.

First, you could offer free shipping or set a value, say $25 or $50, at which shoppers will receive free shipping. While free shipping on every order might seem like a major loss to you, it will definitely attract customers. Rather than buying from a local store, they might feel buying from you is worth saving the trip to the store. Setting a limit will also encourage shoppers to spend a little more to get the free shipping.

You could also offer promotions and discounts to entice buyers to look around your site. Again, play to your customer’s wallet and give them a chance at a discounted item. They’ll be more likely to want to come back if they know there’s the possibility of getting a product marked down.

7. Hire a digital advertising marketer or company

Digital advertisers are committed to building your brand online and obtaining a following on social media. They know how to optimise your website so it will rank higher on Google and other search engines, and they’ll help you cultivate a campaign that combines content and social media marketing.

There are companies that specialise in digital advertising, but you can also hire a marketer to do this for you. Just be sure that whomever you hire, a company or an individual, they understand you, your message and your goals.

Did you know that it takes between five and twelve interactions with a prospect to close a sale? Now, did you know that 48% of sales people never follow up after an initial meeting with a potential client? (Figures: National Sales Executive Association)

A few days ago I met someone who was planning to attend the same University as me and read the same degree. They wanted to speak to someone who’s been there and done it, and I agreed to meet up for a chat over some coffee. What happened 2 days later, left me absolutely god-smacked. I received a Thank you note. Yes, a Thank You note. A hand-written, coming-through-the-post Thank you note! I must admit, that was a first. I was impressed by the gesture as well as the thought behind it.

It made me think about follow up emails (the Thank you notes in the business and sales world). Customers are flooded with choice. There is a sea of products and service vendors who offer the same thing as you. So how do you show your appreciation to the prospect that has picked your business?

It never ceases to amaze me how only a handful of business people take the time to follow-up after they have made initial contact with a prospect or customer. A simple thank you for meeting up with me email, thank you for choosing us, or do you have any further questions, takes no more than 5 minutes to produce, yet the benefits are enormous.

For example, a good follow up email may be just the reminder a prospect needs to go ahead with a sale. It shows your consideration as well as the maturity and professionalism of your business. So follow up emails are not only a tool for closing a sale, but also a way to present yourself and your company.

Reasons people don’t write follow up emails:

• Too busy – I have heard this excuse so many times. We are all busy! A follow up however doesn’t take too much of your time. How long do you need to write an email or to make a phone call? Think about it, as those few minutes you decide to spare, may cost you the deal (and a follow up would also be a great way to grow your email list)! If you really lack the time, simply read these Small Business Productivity Hacks that should free up a couple of hours a day for you. Don’t want to appear pushy – Nobody wants to appear pushy. The aim of a follow up email is not to overwhelm the client, but to remind them that you are there for them. So don’t sound too insistent, but rather try to be helpful. Solve a problem.
• Forget – following up from excuse number one, sales people often forget to follow up. In an age when we can set tasks and reminders and schedule events in advance, forgetting is not a good-enough reason not to follow up. Simply make it a routine. Set yourself a reminder as soon as the meeting is over.
• You don’t know how – many haven’t been trained, but guess what, following up is not rocket science. Approach the email in a friendly manner. What would you say to that person if you just met them on the street? Thank you for meeting up, do you have any other questions? I thought of a way to solve issues X,Y and Z for you etc. Show that you are attentive and that you care.

How to write follow up emails?

• Tasks and reminders – set yourself a reminder to follow up as soon as the meeting is over. We live busy and fast paced lives and if you are like me, unless you set a task or write it down in your diary, it will never get done. So the first step to a follow up is making sure to remember to follow up.
• Have a pre-written email – Some people find it difficult writing a follow up email. There are many examples, but the best solution would be to sit down and pre-write a few template emails that would be suitable for you and your particular business. Try to keep them friendly and personal. However do stick to the email best practices: make sure for instance, that the actual email that you send doesn’t sound like a pre-filled form.
• Encourage a reply. During follow-up, it’s important to ask questions and then listen. You could ask: What did you think of the quote? Or how did you feel about the offer we made? Asking open-ended questions gives you an opportunity to gather more information from the prospect to pinpoint his or her needs accurately as well as deepening the relationship.

Follow up emails are all about the routine. If you get used to following up, you will find it impossible to do business without the courtesy email a few days or weeks after a meeting with a potential client. You will create a better bond with the client which will also pay-off in the long term since you will be creating not a one-off customer but rather tending to a loyal client.

Just as I was fascinated by a Thank you note, make sure you follow up with your leads and clients. Don’t be a stranger and send that email!

If you’re going to do any kind of business development, prospecting or social selling on LinkedIn, the first thing you need to focus on is optimizing your LinkedIn profile. When I say “focus” I mean like a laser beam. Here are some LinkedIn profile tips that will really help you.

Every existing and new person you request to connect with will judge you based upon how well your profile looks and reads. It could make the difference between lots of new valuable connections or very few. Remember, making good first degree connections is the start to your success. If you don’t look professional then you must not be professional…perception is reality. Start using the LinkedIn profile tips now to improve your personal brand and getting found.

Quick Tip: Use a Word file to write your summary and positions of employment. You can easily see the typos and grammatical errors.

1. Get Found in LinkedIn and Google Searches

There were 5.7 billion professionally oriented searches done on LinkedIn in 2012. With LinkedIn’s new Advanced search feature, expect that number to double or triple in 2014.

Are you being found for keywords on LinkedIn that could mean new business for you? Have you done your research using Google’s Keyword Tool to see what keywords you should be using on your Profile and in group discussions? All of these are indexed by LinkedIn and Google.

Another reason why you need lots of new first degree connections is that first degree connections always appear first in search results.

Add the most important keywords to your LinkedIn profile title and your summary. Add those same top keywords to Skills and Expertise and other sections like Interests.

Quick Tip: Go to Google.com (make sure you’re signed out) and start entering your keywords. Google will auto-populate suggestions for searches. These suggestions are top searches performed on Google by other people.

2. Keep Your Profile Name Clean

On my profile under my name, my name is ‘Ronan Keane’. It’s not ‘Ronan Keane – Email (ronankeane1@gmail.com) or call/text 703-489-7886.’

Don’t confuse LinkedIn search by putting in additional info in your name section.

3. Your Profile Photo

There should be absolutely no debate as to whether to include a photo on your profile. Anyone who uses the default grey avatar is an idiot. LinkedIn relegates people with default grey avatars to the bottom of search results. As humans, since the day we were born we learn to read faces and all their nuances. In fact, we’re experts at reading faces. If there’s no face to look at on your profile you’re at a huge disadvantage. In this heat map, you’ll see that people stare at your photo the most on your LinkedIn profile. This is a top LinkedIn profile tip.

There’s a big caveat: make sure your picture looks good. I mean, not a photo of you at a black tie event or on vacation. Go to a local mall in a shirt or blouse and jacket and get a good photo taken of yourself. I recommend this to all the sales people I train.

4. Your Public Profile URL

Nothing says, “I’m a LinkedIn neophyte” with a profile url like this: http://linkedin.com/pub/firstname-lastname435564-hjfjrigjhot

Clean it up by deleting the extra numbers and letters.

Quick Tip: You should also include this link in your email signature, presentation decks, business cards and any other material that you hand out.

5. Personalize Your Websites Under Contact Info

When you edit your website, the drop down menu gives you the option of  “other”. Click on it to open a new field that allows you to type in your business name, website name, call-to-action, or description of your website.

Quick Tip: Instead of “Company Website” or “Personal Website” this section can read “Social Selling for Prospecting” or “Click here: Social Selling Advice”.

6. Recommendations: Powerful Third Party Corroboration

LinkedIn tells you your profile is complete with three recommendations. I suggest between 10 – 15 good recommendations. And when you’re asking for recommendations, provide a bulleted list of your skills, strengths and services so people will write a more accurate account of how well you performed your job and not: “She’s good at what she does”. I also recommend that you might write a recommendation that the recommender can use or base their recommendation from.

Quick Tip: Use your written recommendations in all of your promotions, slide decks and collateral. Put them in a PDF and add them as content in your Summary.

7. Join Groups…Strategically

There are three types of groups you want to join of the possible 50 you’re allowed to join. A small percentage should be your competitor’s groups, your industry and your prospects’ industries. The second type are geo-located groups like local chambers of commerce. The third and biggest should be persona-type groups for CIOs, CTOs, Entrepreneurs etc. You should be starting discussions in these groups by sharing content and asking people’s opinions about the article or content.

Bonus Tips: 8, 9 and 10

Here are three bonus tips that you should definitely use.

8. Message for Free. Send a message to any LinkedIn group member. Just search for their name in a group and click “message”. Warning: this function should be used very judiciously. I’m not condoning SPAM.

9. Trigger Event – A Prospect Clicked My Link. Wouldn’t it be great to know if a particular person clicked on a link you sent them? It’s possible with bit.ly. Create a free account and send each prospect a custom link. Upload content to Slideshare.net and Google Drive for free to create those links.

10. Collect Leads Directly from Your Profile. Do you have a white paper or ebook to give away? (If not, have one created on a hot topic.) Build a web form with Google Drive. Place the links on your Summary and share them as updates once a day every day.

The Bottom Line

Start doing what I’ve described above and you’ll be way ahead of the competition.Consider investing in a LinkedIn profile makeover by a professional who’s worked with hundreds of sales people.

Author: Bill Balderaz

Today, the distinction between offline and digital marketing has become practically irrelevant. “Offline” marketing like TV and radio ads are likely to spark activity online (say Twitter, Facebook and Google+) which means that a well-executed radio ad could have a significant, if indirect, impact on your SEO. It also means that marketing has become so multi-channel and integrated that making a distinction is not only pointless – it’s restrictive.

The key to getting your marketing right is to understand the relationship between each different marketing channel and how each one can complement the other. While every situation, website and industry is different, there are four concepts that digital marketers often miss.

1. ROI-Driven Metrics

As famed business writer Peter Drucker has said, “What gets measured, gets managed,” and this has underpinned many successful marketing campaigns. However, it is possible to measure too much.

Many marketers simply measure every metric they have access to, rather than focusing on metrics that really matter to their campaigns. As such, they waste valuable resources and produce misleading data.

To streamline your next campaign, make a list of everything you want to measure. How many items are on your list? 20? 30? More? Look at each metric, and ask yourself: “What decision would I make differently if I knew this number?” If you can‘t come up with a clear answer, it’s not a good metric.

Also, if a metrics isn’t about growing your business, it’s not a good number. Focus on metrics that actually lead to conversions. Are you generating leads, sales, voters, donors, patients or members from your marketing? What steps do customers take in order to convert? How do you improve each step? Ultimately, driving more opportunity for your organization is all that matters.

If you still gauge the value of reporting by the pound (that is, if you measure the worth of your reporting by printing out all the pages and weighing them), it’s time to rethink your data. Solid marketing metrics should make your decisions significantly easier.

On that same note, some marketers claim that they can’t be held accountable for their marketing spends, but in 2014, every dollar needs to deliver a meaningful ROI.

That’s why marketers must be able to directly correlate their marketing efforts to leads and sales, which is the backbone of Fathom’s ROI centric reporting. Website traffic gives you thrills, but revenue pays the bills.

2. Behavior-Based Marketing

We all like to think that we understand our customers. And you probably do – to a degree. Unfortunately, you’ll never know your customers better than they know themselves.

In this age of big data, there really is no reason to guess about how your customers will behave. You have access to search patterns, interactions with advertising, and conversations on social media to help you make informed, data driven decisions about how your customers ARE behaving – not how you think they’ll behave. Tools like Google Trends and Social Mention are a good place to start; personalization software can actually identify personal data, and then use it to inform user experiences in real-time.

Also, a data driven approach to marketing will often uncover new opportunities. By analyzing this data, you can form actionable plans that impact pricing, features, sales, customer service, and logistics. Give it a try – you might be surprised.

3. Complete Alignment with Goals

Every day there is a new app, social network, or marketing tool that promises to make your life easier and supercharge your next campaign. Sure, some of them might work, but if they aren’t helping you execute your business objectives, what’s the point?

The fact is, you may not need to be on that hot new social network all of the middle schoolers use. On the other hand, you may see great results from a 15-year-old discussion board where every executive you are targeting gathers. It’s about steak, not sizzle.

Want a simple rule to separate valuable tools from flashes in the pan? Ask if your core client is reachable through this channel. For example, if your target is 60-year-old males with MBAs, Pinterest (where 80% of users are women), might not be your target audience. You can’t catch fish where there aren’t fish.

4. A Willingness to Fail

Sometimes you might see a program that doesn’t produce the results you’d hoped for. Sometimes, it only needs a few small tweaks to get back on track. That said, there are sometimes programs that are going to fail – no matter how much tweaking you do. The trick is learning to identify these situations, and having the confidence to cut and run.

To understand when you should cut a program, as opposed to saving that program, is to understand why it’s failing. For example, you may have a program that’s reaching its target audience successfully, but the messaging is wrong. This program is worth saving – just change the messaging and measure the results. But let’s say that you know with certainty that your email program is being delivered, but the click-through rate is abysmal. In that case, you need to change everything about your send – your subject line, your offer, your copy, and possibly even your segmentation.

In Conclusion

Marketing should be integrated, but the integration of all these different marketing disciplines can often lead to chaos. The key to successfully managing this transition is to always keep thinking about the bottom line. Why are you marketing in the first place? Marketing is all about results – and we’re not talking about search positions here. We’re talking about conversions, sales and leads.

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The 4 Things Digital Marketers are Missing was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

Who?

Who has traditionally bought your products?  Who in the future will buy your products?  What traditional expectations/applications  have relegated your capability to a less impactful role than you might have?

Simple questions – but incredibly most B2B manufacturing companies never look deeper into their target buyer profiles than reflexively assuming that recent and traditional sales provide a prospective insight into who the profitable, enthusiastic customers will be in the future.

That’s why an integral step in designing a B2B sales and marketing plan is a deep dive into target customer profiles and buyer personas.

You can’t educate folks and articulate the value of using your products in a vacuum!

Demographic trends

But you’ve got to go a step further too.  Demographics are rarely discussed in the formation of long term business development strategy for B2B manufacturers – but they are critically important.

Periodically we write about demographics in the context of targeting specific international markets for export sales.  (get our free eBook on the topic here)  We’ve also explored the likely impact of demographics on the valuation of your business when you prepare for a liquidity event (and why sales growth and diversification will be critically important.)

But what about the millenials and the silver backs?

Why do aging consumers matter?

After all, you sell B2B.  True.  But the premise of our business development strategies is helping manufacturers create value for their customers.  In many cases those customers are B2C, and therefore cognizant of the specific requirements of their aging consumer base.

So any manufacturer which studies the issue, understands their customers’ customers’ requirements, and tailors products and marketing accordingly will be strongly positioned.

A recent AT Kearney study highlights the magnitude of the shift – and the risk/opportunity.  ”

Mature consumers form a worldwide market segment that spent $8tn in 2010 and will be spending $15tn annually by the end of this decade…For manufacturers, responding to the ageing phenomenon will require a far-reaching re-thinking of product design, particularly in labels and directions, legible prices, and easy-to-open packaging…Above all, manufacturers will need to work closely with retailers to coordinate an effective response to the ageing consumer market…These key cultural and demographical changes need to be addressed by retailers and manufacturers to meet the needs of this market segment“

If you design, build and sell products to manufacturers of CPG products, you’ve got an opportunity to create real value for your customers by leading in this area.

Millenials…the generation that manufacturing forgot

The implications of aging consumers is a developing trend.  But here today, and disregarded by nearly every manufacturers with whom I speak, are millenials.

If you walk into a software company you quickly find the kegerator, fussball table and other cultural indications of a largely millenial workforce.  In a manufacturing facility one doesn’t.  Aside from the OSHA implications of workplace beer with heavy equipment, one known challenge to advanced industrial manufacturing in the US is the reticence of today’s new workers to embrace manufacturing jobs.

So owners and execs of B2B manufacturing companies instead generally work in a time warp.  As they cross the factory floor each day they see not only the same faces, but the same type of faces.  Generally factory workforces in the US are aging.  One can understand why those execs struggle to intuit the impact of millenials on business.

And that’s a critical myopia!

Buying vs. selling: habits, perspective and expectations

To understand why, let’s back up.

Increasingly today people buy.  They resist being sold to.  And that resistance is stronger among Gen Y than Gen X, and substantially more so than among boomers.  B2B buying cycles have changed.  Information is so abundant that “leads” are now early stage musings rather than a hand raised to execute a transaction.

Further, research shows that more than 90% of B2B purchases originate with internet search and that folks are typically more than 70% of the way through their buying journey before they’ll entertain speaking with a rep.  And finally, all those internet searches that initiate B2B sales are increasingly executed from tablets and smart phones – and the goal is not product identification, but education.  Today buyers search for information on the problem they face and possible solutions.  The actual product is a late stage factor.

So with that background, let’s look at who’s buying (or would be) your products.  Somewhere there’s a GM, president or CEO with whom you would comfortably bond at a conference table.  They will ultimately decide whether to authorize the purchase of your products.

BUT….

They’re not the ones searching and engaging.  Your B2B marketing must target those millenial engineers (the ones with whom you, as a middle aged manufacturing exec, have almost no interaction) to engage in the protracted B2B sales cycle of today.

In other words, while you used to be able to grow your business basically selling to folks like yourself, now to succeed you must market and sell to folks who view the world very differently.  They’re still engineers, MBAs, etc.  but that’s where the similarities end.

And to complicate things you still must market and sell to the maturing execs as well!

Have you accounted for that in your B2B marketing?

Want to learn more about how to manage internet marketing for today’s B2B manufacturers?  Download free info here and check out the video below.

images – luismmostacero and imagemeestilo

BRUSSELS – The European Union says the surcharges for surfing the Internet on mobile devices while travelling across the 28-nation bloc will be more than halved.

The European Commission says the new cap on the so-called roaming fees will be effective starting Tuesday, just in time for the summer holiday travel season.

It said Monday the price cap for one megabyte of data use will be lowered to 20 euro cents (27 dollar cents) from 45 cents — a 55 per cent drop. Phone calls and text messaging services across national borders are also getting cheaper by about 25 per cent.

The bloc’s executive Commission — keen on being seen as helping the EU’s 500 million consumers — started cracking down on the fees in 2007 and seeks to abolish them altogether by 2016.

The post EU slashes maximum fees for mobile Internet surfing when travelling in Europe by 55 per cent appeared first on Canadian Business.

Where are the opportunities to grow through innovations? Which innovations are defensive in character? And which innovations will kill the business if they are not addressed? These questions can pose quite a dilemma because doing the right thing can be the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing can be the right thing.

During the keynote presentation “The Future of Enterprise Applications,” Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner, founder of SAP and Chairman of SAP Supervisory Board, and Christensen discussed the need for knowing when innovation is building growth and responding to the needs of the customer at the right moment.

Welcome to the innovator’s dilemma

According to Clayton M. Christensen, Professor at Harvard Business School and author of the Harvard Business Review article “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change,” there are three types of innovations companies can choose:

1. Sustaining innovation. In this case, companies make good products better – ranging anything from incremental and dramatic breakthroughs. Although this approach is critical for survival, it enables just that – survival. It doesn’t create any real growth because the resulting innovations are easy to replace. In other words, when a consumer buys a new product, they tend to not purchase an older version of it.

2. Disruptive innovation. This approach doesn’t necessarily need to be dramatic or game changing. Companies can transform a complicated, expensive product into a product that’s more affordable and accessible – allowing more people to buy and use them. To respond to demand, business operations need to scale to reliably manufacture, distribute, and sell these products – creating an engine for new business growth.

2. Innovation that can be used by customers immediately. Almost always, a company’s ability to improve products outstrips the customer’s ability to use them. For example, a company that offers a product that isn’t good enough for what customers need at that point of time may run the risk of refining that product to the point where a customer cannot realize its full potential. Because all the wrong decisions were made for all the right reasons, this mismatch can mean that the company may miss out on disruptive innovations in the future. To create innovations that drive growth, companies must ensure that innovations can be immediately and fully used by customers.

Drawing from his own experience, Plattner mentioned, “The innovator’s dilemma is everywhere. There’s significant change in the environment and the world, and companies must react to it as quickly as it arises. Companies may try to catch up with sustainable innovation and hope for a few leaps with technological breakthroughs – but again and again, they fail.”

So here’s the challenge: Executives must figure out when it’s time to move from sustainable innovation to disruptive innovation and manage the disruption. To what degree do companies really need to change?

How much innovation is too much?

Christensen alluded that some companies are good at responding to evolutionary changes in their markets. But, they run into trouble when handling or initiating revolutionary changes in their markets or dealing with disruptive innovation. One way companies go wrong is by using the customer as a unit of analysis. “There may be a correlation between a customer’s attributes and characteristics, but these factors don’t necessarily cause them to behave in a certain way. It’s not our characteristics that make us purchase – it’s the job at hand. With aggregated analysis, we lose our ability to understand an individual customer,” Christensen commented.

Developing a product to nail a job and become successful is the name of the game. To be successful in almost every case, you have to understand the inner workings of a job and design a product around it. But to accomplish this task, you need to create a structure that promotes innovation – and that takes time.

Christensen stated, “Companies tend to aggregate things into boxes and assign metrics to them to determine if they’re successful. In the end, they end up with an organizational chart that has nothing to do with getting the job done. And this makes everyone lose focus on the job and any sense of differentiation.”

Rather than having people buried inside an organizational chart aggregate, information about people, customers, and technology should be one layer thick. Doing so helps ensure full transparency. Plus, this method enables the ability to reorganize on the fly in response to jobs that need to be done can transform the way companies can innovate.

Plattner advised, “Simplicity beats complexity. I’m not saying we should reduce the functionality of systems, but the primary objective is to be simple. It’s not a marketing slogan to be simple. It’s a necessity to that we fight the complexity and build-up we have experienced over the last 25 years.”

With simplicity in mind, companies can deliver innovations much faster to market when they’re not hampered with an organizational chart based on aggregates. “If a company understands what customers need to get the job done, it can then determine what needs to be integrated and how to link it all together to provide the right experience,” Christensen explained. Rather than having a static organizational chart, companies can deliver processes and flows designed to perform the job perfectly.

Plattner continued Christensen thoughts by reflecting on the need for meaningful insights. For most companies, they have the data – but now they have to redesign how that information is used. Plattner noted, “Companies still need to define the insight and controls we want, but not relegate them to a predefined system. They have to build models and feed them with transactional data to get insights. And then they have the option to predict and simulate. The freedom to arrange information differently gives team the insight they need and work differently.”

Check out this informative keynote featuring Hasso Plattner and Clayton Christensen. You can also find the entire library of SAPPHIRE NOW keynote replays here (registration required).

On July 1, Canada is getting a fun present for its 147th birthday: new anti-spam laws.Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, or CASL, is coming into effect and it’s fair to say there’s some confusion about it.

Many small businesses aren’t ready for the new law—nor are they even aware that it’s happening. Critics, meanwhile, have suggested that CASL will do little to curb the worst spammers but plenty to harm legitimate businesses, who will be forced to rebuild their mailing lists and spend money on compliance with the new law.

Some of the fears are overblown, according to University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist. Writing in the Toronto Star, he says the fear and loathing stems from a few factors, especially CASL requiring businesses to acquire express consent from customers to communicate with them, rather than the implied consent they’ve been working with till now.

READ: It’s Not Too Late To Prepare for CASL »

The other worrying part of the new legislation are the stiff penalties. Individuals can be dinged with a fine of up to $1 million for sending out spam, while companies can get hit for up to $10 million. This has led to a recent spate of mass mailouts over the past week or two from companies looking to get that express consent.

What’s not being as widely reported is that while CASL takes effect on July 1, businesses actually have a three-year grace period to convert people on their lists from implied consent to express consent. And those sky-high fines are unlikely to be handed down in a heavy-handed manner by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which is tasked with enforcing complaints. Warnings for innocent violations, especially in the case of small businesses, are more likely.

READ: New anti-spam law won’t put a stop to all unwanted emails, says legal expert »

I chatted about CASL with Jake Enright, spokesman for Industry Canada, the government department overseeing the new legislation. Here’s that conversation:

What’s the goal of the legislation?

Enright: Our government believes Canadians should not receive email they don’t want or did not ask to receive. Often online solicitations lead to harassment, identity theft and fraud, so for example, if somebody is emailing you saying you’ve won a trip to Morocco and you click on that link, malware can be installed on your computer. That leads to identity theft and fraud and potentially your personal information to be compromised.

In January 2015, that is going to be illegal – it’ll take a little longer for that part of the legislation [dealing with phishing] to kick in – but it’ll also be illegal to download programs onto your computer without your consent or knowledge.

What’s also important is that CASL expands information sharing with all G7 countries, or countries that have very similar legislation to our legislation. If someone in in the United Kingdom is spamming someone here in Canada, the CRTC can work with officials over there to identify that threat if it’s brought to their attention.

It’s also very good for businesses too because if you’re compliant with the UK anti-spam legislation, you would also be considered compliant with the Canadian anti-spam legislation. It’s a bit of a red-tap reduction measure.

Why is CASL necessary?

Nearly 70% of all email in the world is spam. It’s estimated this costs the Canadian economy over $3 billion a year.

Spam filters tend to take care of the really overt stuff, like Viagra and Nigerian scams, so is this aimed more at legitimate businesses sending out unwanted email or is it still going after those obvious spammers?

It’s both. There’s a component of this that is being monitored more closely in the media about Canadian businesses sending out unsolicited commercial email, but the way the regulations work, if you have express consent of Canadians already you don’t have to worry about CASL because you’re CASL complaint.

For example, I couldn’t figure out why the Toronto Blue Jays hadn’t sent me my CASL email yet, but I think when I signed up for it two years ago I actually checked the box. They have my express consent.

For those Canadian businesses that have implied consent because they’re in a commercial relationship with someone – say I bought something and they send me email as a result even though I didn’t consent to it – they actually have three years to move from implied consent to express consent, or July 1, 2017.

What will change on July 1, 2014, is for the people in the business of spam. It will be illegal [to send spam]. We’ve taken every step to ensure that the impact on legitimate Canadian businesses is as minimal as possible.

When [Industry] Minister [James Moore] first became Minister, he sat down with stakeholders and did a roundtable. One of the things that came out of it and was implemented in the regulations was the transitional rule in implied consent. We wanted to make sure the impact was as minimal as possible and we understood that small businesses often operate on implied consent when they’re communicating with their customers.

There are concerns that this is going to harm legitimate businesses in terms of forcing them to start their mailing lists over, and in terms of compliance costs. Is this not the case?

While we’ve taken every step to limit the impact on Canadian businesses, our government does have an obligation to put the interests of Canadian consumers first and foremost. This legislation was passed four years ago, the regulations have been in place since December 2013.

Can you explain the difference between implied and express consent a little more?

Express consent is when I have you tick the box and you’ve said, “Yes, I want to receive your emails.” Implied consent is that you have entered into a client relationship because you’ve bought something from me and have given me your email and I’ve just kind of started sending you email as a result of that, but I don’t really have your consent to use your email for that purpose.

What happens if a business tweets you on Twitter?

CASL applies to direct messages in social media and inboxes. It does not apply to, for example, Facebook walls and Twitter feeds.

What can someone do if they feel they’ve received one of these unwanted messages?

They can visit fightspam.gc.ca.

And it’s the CRTC that will determine if a message is offside?

They are the enforcement mechanism and I’ll have to send you to them for a more fulsome explanation.

In that vein, I asked the CRTC about enforcement. Here’s what spokesperson Patricia Valladao said:

What can someone do if they feel they’ve received an unwanted commercial message? What will the enforcement process look like?

Valladao: Consumers, businesses and other organizations will be able to report their unwanted spam to the Spam Reporting Centre via fightspam.gc.ca as of July 1, 2014. The Spam Reporting is the point of contact for receiving complaints, reports of spam and other electronic threats related to CASL.

The information that is submitted with be gathered as evidence and intelligence that will be used by all the three enforcement agencies (the CRTC, Competition Bureau, and Office of the Privacy Commissioner) to support purse and support their investigations against those who violate CASL.

What if the message is coming from outside of Canada? Can you give an example of how enforcement of that might work?

The CRTC will work with our foreign counterparts to help us promote compliance with CASL for those sending unwanted CEMs to Canadians. The Compliance and Enforcement section has had success in developing investigation and enforcement relationships with several countries under the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules [telemarketing regulations]. We have been solidifying these relationships with an eye to enforcing CASL.

CASL provides us with the tools to share information with our foreign counterparts on a reciprocal basis. There are however non-cooperating countries that we have yet to make inroads with. Other countries may very well be willing, but unfortunately lack the resources to assist. We will continue to work towards developing new relationships as CASL is enforced.

The post The CRTC will take a light touch enforcing Canada’s new anti-spam law—for now appeared first on Canadian Business.

Investment from businesses is driving growth in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland, while other provinces need to get on the private-sector bandwagon, according to a report from the C.D. Howe Institute.

Public-sector investment has grown to a level almost equal to that of private enterprise in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Quebec, according to The Public Purse versus Private Wallets: Comparing Provincial Approaches to Investing in Economic Growth.

It’s important for laggard provinces to catch up because private investment goes hand-in-hand with growth, according to the report:

Large investments such as the oil sands, industrial plants or large office buildings require years of planning and building before completion. After the investment is made, production begins on a regular basis. As such, investment is a leading indicator of future spending. The commitment to invest is also a good indicator of a firm’s willingness to hire more employees. As a result, periods of robust business investment almost always are periods of strong economic growth.

The solution to stagnant growth and looming deficits is to make a play for privately-held money, according to the report. There’s a double incentive to try and attract corporate spending: the promise of growth, and the increasing difficulty of finding funds for public investment in a rough economic climate.

Canada already has one of the most business-friendly tax environments in the world. Provincial differences in private-sector investment levels seem partly a result of differential resource development timelines: oil and natural gas have flourished, while mining projects like Ontario’s Ring of Fire have stalled.

Then-Bank of Canada head honcho Mark Carney slammed the country’s businesses last year for sitting on an estimated $600 billion cash pile:

The bank sees it as unneccesary and views the cash stockpiles as the only available lever to goose the economy. Canada’s debt-saddled governments aren’t in a position to reprise the 2009 stimulus spend, and Canadian consumers definitely shouldn’t be further stressing their credit cards and bank lines. Yet on an aggregate level, business fixed investment hasn’t been pulling its weight, contributing 1.4% to annual real GDP growth in 2011, but only 0.5% in 2012, according to a recent Bank of Canada report.

That stashed money could right the investment imbalance for provinces like Quebec or Manitoba. But companies may be holding out for sunnier financial skies, creating something of a chicken-and-egg problem for governments seeking to boost the economy while reining in spending.

It seems governments across Canada are going to have to get creative if they want to see more corporate cash invested in their provinces.

The post In these provinces, government spending accounts for nearly half the economy appeared first on Canadian Business.

Email marketing is sending out an email to your email contacts with a promotional message. One of the big guns of online marketing, email marketing campaigns are a simple yet effective way to reach out to specifically targeted customers. Email marketing software has a ton of benefits.

These awesome benefits include:

• Connecting with your customers
• Creating engagement
• Promoting your business
• Providing information
• Improving your Search Engine Optimization
• Driving traffic to your website
• Making sales!

You need to build up a contact list by creating sign-up forms and putting them EVERYWHERE. On your website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter account etc. Talk about it to anyone who will listen. Ask past and present customers to subscribe. Make your social media followers, offers they can’t refuse. Promise freebies, discounts or mind blowing information (as long as you can follow it through).

There is software to track your emails and measure your success rate. Measure and analyze your results, find out which campaigns are working and which aren’t. You need to measure your open rate, click through rate, click to open rate etc. Next is your ROI. Track your website traffic from each email and the profit made from each compared to how much you spend.

Content is king

It’s a pointless exercise to send out daily emails to thousands of people if no-one reads your stuff. Good quality content is essential to keep people interested in what you have to say. Share your blog posts with your list. Offer freebies and discounts exclusively to your email subscribers. Give them insider information or advice. Whatever it is you are sharing with your customers, it needs to be quality. A really great email, once a month will have them wanting more. A daily waffle with nothing important to say will see people unsubscribing faster than you can blink! Set yourself goals and a posting schedule, keep it consistent.

Why do I need Email Marketing software?

Email marketing software allows you to contact large groups of people/potential customers at once. Emailing in the normal way is limited and time consuming as you can only email so many people at once. Not only that but you can have your email account blocked for “spamming” if you’re not careful.

Design is also important for brand continuity in your email marketing campaign. Design your emails to match your website, shop and social media accounts. Use your headers and logos for easy recognition. There is a lot of competition out there so you need to make your email fabulous.

Sign up or subscription forms are the key to building your list. These forms are simple to make on most email marketing platforms, no coding is needed (whoop!!). All you do is design your form and a line of code is generated for you to add to your online networks and website. It really is simple, so simple even I can manage it.

Although you still need to create your content, you can hand over the rest to your email marketing software to do for you. Schedule your email campaigns months in advance if you like, set times and dates for them to go out, sit back and relax…your work here is done.

Check out some of the best…

Infusionsoft

Sales & Marketing Automation for Small Business

Infusionsoft is an all-in-one marketing and sales automation system designed for small businesses. You can organize your marketing campaign with a great CRM, lead scoring and a fab email marketing system. 23,000 small businesses use Infusionsoft services to manage their online marketing campaign. It is flexible, easy to use and easily customizable for great brand continuity. If you need an all-round marketing platform then this is the one for you!

Key features:

• Social sharing
• Easy to publish
• Automated email marketing
• Measuring and Tracking
• Marketing reports
• Sales reports
• Ecommerce
• Analytics
• Professional and attractive email design

Prices start from $199 a month for this one stop shop sales and marketing software.

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SendinBlue Email

Easy To Use Email Marketing Service

SendinBlue is solely an email marketing service. With easy-to-manage email campaigns and SMS services it is a great way to start your email marketing journey. All on one powerful platform, you can create beautiful, brand focused, email templates for your business. For those who have strong ideas on branding and design this would be a great fit for your email marketing campaign.

Key features:

• Google analytics integration
• Customizable subscription forms
• Import your contacts
• Creation tools
• Scheduling for automation
• Create different lists
• Trackable results
• Hard-bounce pooling

There is a free option with up to 9,000 emails per month, paid subscriptions start at $7.47 per month and the SMS service is pay-as-you-go.

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Benchmark

Benchmark is an international, easy-to-use email and eventmarketing service provider.

Benchmark is an email and event marketing service. They are extremely customer focused and have a great suite of tools for all your online marketing needs. Wow your customers with beautiful and creative email and video email newsletters. This is an amazing platform for those in events, but can also be used solely as email marketing software, a great all-rounder!

Key features:

• Real-time reports
• List management
• Auto-responders
• Social Media integration
• Sign-up forms
• Email templates
• Surveys

Benchmark is free for up to 2,000 contacts, contact them for their pricing plans for larger lists.

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MailChimp

Easy Email Newsletters

We can’t talk about email marketing without giving MailChimp a mention. With great email templates and scheduling, you can also manage your subscribers with ease. You can clearly track your open rates, click through rates etc. MailChimp are also Facebook integrated so you can easily connect with your Facebook fans. They have a great free option for up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month.

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Are you ready to simplify your email marketing?

Why not sign up for a free trial or demo to take this email marketing on a test drive:

• Sign up here for a Free Demo of Infusionsoft
• Sign up here for a Free Demo of SendinBlue Email
• Sign up here for a Free Demo of Benchmark

And here’s a list of all the email marketing automation tools you can compare and read independent reviews from their users!

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan

When a great salesperson is recommended by Objective Management Group's (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment, and this star has a great track record, and great references, should we expect this person to succeed?

Most executives do.

But even though salespeople will tell you that "If you can sell, you can sell anything", that statement is only true some of the time.  Here are some examples of salespeople who are successful in one environment, but usually fail in another:

1. They were the best in their business at selling high-volume, low-cost products until they went to work for a value-based company and the "beat their best price" tactics were no longer available.
2. They were the best at selling programs to procurement until they went to work for a company where the sale had to be made in the C-Suite where they were intimidated, unable to speak the language and unable to grasp the importance of strategy, profit and return.
3. They were the best at selling components to OEM's until they went to work for a company where they had to sell conceptual services and were lost without a product to demonstrate.
4. They were the best at finding and selling new accounts for a local company until they went to work for a national firm and had to do the same thing, in a brand new territory, working from their home.
5. They were the best at selling 5-cent parts by the thousand until they went to work for a company where they had to sell 6-figure programs and choked over the amount of money they had to ask for.
6. They were the best when they were managing, retaining and growing key accounts, and now that they work for a company where they must hunt for new business, they are sucking wind.
7. They were on top of the pack when they sold services with a six-month sales cycle, but now that they work for a company selling a product in a very short sales cycle, nothing is getting closed.
8. They were #1 at the last company, working under a hands-on sales manager who was a stickler for coaching and accountability, but the results just aren't there with the new company where they are reporting directly to the President who only responds to the proactive requests of his salespeople.
9. There was nobody better at getting contracts signed when they sold the product that everyone buys and it was only a matter of who they would buy it from, but now that they are selling things that companies could either do themselves or not do at all, they can't overcome the ambivalence.
10. They were at the top of the heap working for the large, well-known industry leader where prospects rolled out the red carpet and eagerly bought their products.  Now that they are working for a lesser known company, they aren't able to overcome the resistance that is always there now, but never there before.

Skills and experience are terrific, but track record is extremely misleading!

For example, if you go back and take another look at #4, this is where great salespeople, selling the exact same thing, can suddenly fail because they aren't able to succeed when working remotely from a sales manager who doesn't manage her salespeople very closely.

I reviewed OMG's data on a random set of 4,500 recent sales candidate assessments and only 12% were suitable for working remotely.  BUT…upon closer look, 12% was not representative of the findings for any one company!

Image Copyright: ljupco / 123RF Stock Photo(c) Copyright 2014 Dave Kurlan

Like most of the online world, I’m stunned by the Facebook experiment designed to surreptitiously toy with the emotions of its customers. But it goes beyond the simple shock value of a company manipulating people.

The news emerged that in 2012, Facebook conducted a study to determine whether it could alter the emotional state of its users. The company’s data scientists enabled an algorithm, for one week, to automatically omit content that contained words associated with either positive or negative emotions from the central news feeds of 689,003 users. They examined whether content from the subjects was more positive or negative based on the manipulated tone of the news feed.

There are broad reasons for concern that are deeper than what we see on the surface.

1. This was a corporate decision

I’m not a person who hates Facebook and is looking for a reason to ding them. I actually think it is understandable that Facebook wanted to conduct this kind of fundamental research.

However the rational decision would be to pay a university to get the same results under controlled and honest conditions. No company should ever make a decision to turn their customers into lab rats. The more disturbing issue is that Forbes reported that this research was approved by an internal Facebook review board. So this was not the case of a lone wolf embarassing the company. This breach reflects the dysfunctional corporate culture of Facebook. That makes my head spin.

2. Facebook is hiding behind legalese

At this moment, days after the furor erupted, Facebook has still not issued any apology. One of the researchers, Adam Kramer, created a Facebook post explaining the methodology and stating the impact on people as “minimal.”

Facebook justified the news feed mind game by saying it was covered by the company’s “Data Use Policy” (part of the terms and conditions nobody reads), which contains one cryptic line about how your information could be used for research. Christopher Penn did a nice job separating the difference between “legal” research and “ethical” research in his post about Facebook emotional testing.

So the message here is that the company will do whatever it wants as long they can cover their asses legally.**

3. They haven’t learned their lesson

Facebook’s arrogant approach to customers and privacy was so extreme that it was the subject of a U.S. Congressional investigation in 2012. They were found guilty, fined and subjected to 20 years of privacy audits by the goverment. The government essentially ruled that Facebook needs a babysitter. This Facebook experiment shows that the company still has the attitude and maturity of a petulant 5-year-old, doing whatever it wants unless it has adult supervison.

What if somebody was already experiencing depression and this experiment made them more depressed … even dangerously depressed? What is the probability that over 689,000 people that somebody was pushed into an inescapably dark place? Did they even THINK about the fact their “users” are real people who may already be suffering?

4. Its arrogance will be its undoing

Facebook made a terrible error in judgment. But it gets worse. It published the study in the March issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The message here is, “we screwed our customers and we also want to stroke our egos buy getting academic credit for it.” It put its ego above its customers.

Here’s the chilling thought: This is the only experiment we KNOW about because it was published.

5. Facebook: The world’s Valium?

One takeaway of the study was that taking all emotional content out of a person’s news feed caused a “withdrawal effect.” Facebook concluded that it should subject you to happy content to keep you coming back. The implication is that to increase usage (i.e. maximize profits through ads) Facebook must not just edit your news feed through Edgerank, it should tweak the emotional tone of its world like a digital Valium.

The actual experiment is only the tip of the iceberg. What are they going to DO with the results of this research? I doubt the answer is “nothing.”

Implications of the Facebook Experiment

One camp has emerged supporting Facebook, claiming that we are all subject to digital manipulation by every company and Facebook has the right to do whatever it pleases with its data. Some contend this is simply normal A/B testing conducted by any company involved with eCommerce. It is more complex than that. Intentionally making sad people sadder crosses an ethical line beyond the day to day work of improving a user experience.

Last year, before the Facebook IPO, I wrote a post called “Why Facebook Will Become the Most Dangerous Company on Earth.” The premise was that with the unrelenting pressure to increase profits — every quarter without end — the company eventually would be forced to use its only real asset, our personal information, in increasingly bold and risky ways.

I think this is proving to be true.

The implication of a strategy that disrespects customers is not just a temporary emotional furor. There is an economic implication, too. Facebook is the world’s dominant social network and its only significant threat is itself. Corporate arrogance is a sure path to self-destruction as history proves.

What are your thoughts on this experiment and its implications?

** I think you could make an argument that Facebook is NOT covered by their terms and conditions on this episode. The policy states that the company “Uses the information it receives about you … for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.” The word “research” was added to the terms and conditions four months after the experiment started. I think it is questionable that changing the data you see in an experiment fits under this data usage policy. Clicking a box on a website does not constitute informed consent.

The post Five reasons to be freaked out by the Facebook experiment appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

If you’ve been to any of Buffer’s social media accounts recently (take Twitter, for instance), you may have noticed that the lion’s share of stories we share come from us. We tweet our own stuff. We toot our own horn.

It would certainly seem that we are in the minority with this strategy. There seems to be a a fine line between sharing enough of your own stuff and sharing too much. Most people would rather err on the side of just enough (or even less) in their social media strategy.

We all want to see our content read and shared widely, but no one wants to look like an attention hog. How much self-promotion is too much self-promotion? It’s a great question. Here’re some thoughts.

6 popular ratios for sharing content on social media

There are quite a few methods out there for choosing what to share. Most of these methods skew heavily toward sharing content you curate from other sites and sprinkling in your own stuff here and there. Here are 6 popular ratios.

5-3-2

Introduced by TA McCann from Gist.com, the 5-3-2 rule of social media sharing aims for a blend of your content, others’s content, and personal updates. Note that the 5-3-2 is not a daily quota but rather a ratio for any group of 10 updates you post over any timeframe (same goes for the rest of these ratios, too).

• 5 should be content from others
• 3 should be content from you
• 2 should be personal status updates

4-1-1

Much like the 5-3-2 rule, the 4-1-1 Rule seeks a good ratio of content from others, content from you, and reshares. Popularized by Andrew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute, the 4-1-1 looks like this in practice:

• 4 pieces of relevant, original content from others
• 1 retweet for every 1 self-serving update

555+

Shai Coggins of Vervely has a somewhat unique approach to a balanced sharing schedule. The 555+ Guideline seeks to add some variety to a timeline and to keep your social media profile from “looking like a pulpit.”

• 5 updates about you and your content
• 5 updates about others
• 5 responses/replies
• + miscellaneous posts that add value like #FollowFriday or user-generated content

Rule of Thirds

Mentioned on the Hootsuite blog by Sam Milbrath, the Rule of Thirds is a perfectly balanced way to split up your social media posts. It works like this:

• 1/3 of your updates are about you and your content
• 1/3 of your updates are for sharing content from others and surfacing ideas
• 1/3 of your updates are based on personal interactions that build your brand

Golden Ratio – 30/60/10

The Golden Ratio from Rallyverse covers similar ground as the 5-3-2 rule, albeit with a couple small tweaks to the percentages and the content. Here’s how Rallyverse proposes an ideal sharing ratio:

• 30 percent owned
• 60 percent curated
• 10 percent promotional

The 20-to-1 rule

This ratio by Michael Hyatt varies a bit from the ratios above in that it is not a strictly, cut-and-dry social media formula. The ratio has a lot to do with the way you update but moreso with the type of message you’re sending with your posts. Here’s how Hyatt explains things:

This phenomenon is what I have come to call the 20-to-1 rule. It represents a ratio. It means that you have to make 20 relational deposits for every marketing withdrawal. This isn’t science. I don’t have any hard, empirical evidence to prove it.

Buffer’s ratio for sharing content on social media

In the above examples, the scales are tipped quite heavily in favor of sharing content from others. Our ratio at Buffer is going to seem quite contrary.

Our social media updates are 90 percent our own content and 10 percent from others, and many days those numbers are even more lopsided.

Take Sunday, for instance. Here is a breakdown of a group of 10 updates we posted to our Twitter account. Green check marks are our own content. The orange exclamation point is content from others.

This selection of updates has a 90:10 ratio of our content compared to others’s content. Had I grabbed 10 updates from Monday, all 10 might have been Buffer content.

Clearly, we lean heavily toward sharing our own stuff.

Though we’re in the minority with our sharing ratio, we’re not alone. Some of the world’s best players in content share nearly exclusively from their own archives, blog, and marketing. Looking at the most recent 10 posts from Moz on Twitter, all 10 of them are Moz content. The most recent 10 posts from Brain Pickings are all links back to the Brain Pickings blog.

How to turn down a marriage proposal like Charlotte Brontë http://t.co/RcZA5neoDS pic.twitter.com/Jqok2Q6cJk

— Brain Pickings (@brainpickings) June 19, 2014

So what is it about us outliers? What do we see that others don’t?

Self-promotion can work when you add value and engage

Self-promotion has a bad reputation because it is so often associated with marketing, advertising, and social timelines that do nothing but pitch, pitch, pitch regardless of how it makes their audience feel. No wonder the term “self-promotion” makes you fidget in your seat. We’ve been trained to think of it in a certain way.

Well, can I let you in on a secret? You can be self-promotional and still provide value.

Self-promotion can be a good thing if your content is outstandingly useful and always adds value. This is how we think of our social sharing at Buffer. If we share the best content we have and do so in a helpful, actionable, high-utility way, we believe we are doing right by our audience.

Value takes a front seat, and self-promotion sits in the back. Both elements are there, but the high value of outstanding content is what matters most.

Since we post up to 14 times per day on Twitter, filling those posts with our own content—and ensuring that the content stays outstanding and helpful—requires a deep pool of posts. We are fortunate to have deep archives of evergreen content to pull from on the Buffer blog; we can grab stories that were originally written more than a year ago that still have application today.

So reason number one why we toot our own horn: Providing value.

Reason number two: We value transparency and sharing our work.

Austin Kleon wrote a book, Show Your Work!, about this very concept of being self-promotional without being a turnoff. He calls it a book for people who hate the idea of self-promotion. Here’s the outline for what the book covers. Take note of points three, four, and six.

“Tell good stories” is akin to sharing outstanding content. “Open up your cabinet of curiosities” and “share something small every day” equate to the notion of transparency, camaraderie, and community.

At Buffer, we feel that sharing our own content on social media is a way to reveal more about us, to show and share our work. Much of our content has a “let’s learn this together” feel, and we’re never shy about sharing our process, warts and all.

The third reason we feel comfortable with our 90/10 split for content sharing is that sharing content is only a piece of our social media strategy. We are also on social media to engage.

Sharing content is a broadcast; engaging the community is a conversation. We’ve found that having both parts to our social presence makes self-promotion all the more powerful. We can share our own content, and our followers know we are still there listening, replying, and engaging.

Our Happiness Heroes reply to nearly every tweet that comes our way, including the conversations that happen with our self-promotion/broadcast content. Here’s a recent reply thread from something we shared.

@PrintcessGinny Ah shucks, thanks Ginny! Feels like the Brady Bunch to me. :) -Mary

— Buffer (@buffer) June 19, 2014

Also, we’ve started up a weekly series of Twitter chats (the next one is Wednesday, if you’d like to join). These #bufferchats give us yet another opportunity to engage directly with followers and fans.

We’ve found that engagement and sharing go hand-in-hand in a smart automation strategy, even—or maybe especially—a strategy that is as self-promotional as ours.

Baby steps – Start with something small

If you’re interested in getting more comfortable with self-promotion but aren’t quite sure you want to jump all the way to 90/10 like us, you can take baby steps. Start by sharing the same piece of content more than once. We’ve written before that reposting content multiple times can lead to double the engagement. Reposting helps reach your audience in different time zones and new followers who might have missed the post its first time around.

Garrett Moon of CoSchedule put together a really sharp graphic for showing how you might schedule this reposting of content. Feel free to start with this template, test your results, and iterate from there.

Recap

A recent customer survey found that pushing a sale through self-promotion can drop consumer trust by nearly 50 percent. Stats like this are one reason why folks are scared to try self-promotion.

But can you spot the key phrase in that stat? “Pushing a sale.” Not all self-promotion needs to be sales-oriented. The best kinds are quite the opposite.

From our perspective, it feels that the problem most of the time isn’t self-promotion, it’s self-promotion of content that isn’t adding value. If your content is intriguing and useful, chances are it will be welcomed by readers—no matter your sharing ratio.

It’s about showing your work. It’s about adding value. And in the midst of sharing your own content, stay engaged with those you’re there to serve.

What is your take on the idea of self-promotion on social media? What ratio do you aim for with your social sharing? It’d be awesome to hear from you in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy our Buffer Blog newsletter. Receive each new post delivered right to your inbox, plus our can’t-miss weekly email of the Internet’s best reads. Sign up here.

Image credit: KISSmetrics

Where do blog post ideas come from? This one came from someone else’s headline.

We are constantly inspired by the amazing work of others, and we owe a lot to the deep thinking and amazing resources that are readily available within the industry.

How can we get more ideas more consistently? There’s inspiration everywhere. We’ve just got to keep our eyes open.

Copyblogger gave us the inspiration for this post. One of their recent headlines mentioned “idea curation,” a new-to-us term that really hit home. We so often talk about the way we curate content. What about the way we curate ideas? Seems like a good seed for a story.

So here it is. I’m excited to shed light on this process and show how we curate ideas and how those ideas turn into blogposts. What’s the idea process like for you? Read along and see if we share any of the same steps.

How we curate ideas at Buffer

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” – W. Somerset Maugham

This quote about writing and inspiration could work just as easily for idea curating and inspiration. We’ve found that inspiration strikes because we are consistent in our methods for finding it. We’ve erected the lightning rod. Now we wait for lightning.

Our infrastructure for ideas depends on a couple of key points. Maybe these sound familiar to you?

1. We aren’t shy about taking inspiration from others.
2. We spend a lot of time reading, thinking, and sharing the stories and ideas we love.
3. We save all our ideas—no matter how small

Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these.

Taking inspiration from others

Our cofounder Leo has been fond of a particular phrase when it comes to creating content: Copy the hell out of others. It’s a sentiment that is shared by a huge number of content creators. Take author Austin Kleon, for instance. His bestselling book Steal Like an Artist tackles this topic directly, making the point that every creator takes inspiration from somewhere. And the better you are at seeking out inspiring sources, the better your work can become.

“You are the sum of your influences.” – Austin Kleon

In practice, this concept of inspiration takes on a number of unique looks. We have several different ways in which inspiration adds to our list of ideas.

We come across articles that we love and want to dive even deeper into. We Crafters have the privilege of time to dig into research and cover all angles of a topic to create an in-depth and actionable post. So when we come across articles with an interesting angle or topic we’re into that might not go as deep into a concept as possible, we often see an opportunity to dig in and take it even further.

We find headlines that grab us, and we repurpose them for other topics. Have you ever found just a really solid headline? One that grabbed you, even if the subject wasn’t up your alley? Whenever this happens, we try to take note of the headline and seek new ways to use it somewhere else.

For example, our post Everything I Wish I Knew About Twitter When I Started began with the seed of an idea from a Quora post titled 26 Things Every 20-Something Should Wish to Know. Here’re the notes from the original idea:

We collect interesting phrases and soundbites. Sometimes, all it takes is a phrase to get us started on a topic. One of our best examples of this is from our first content crafter Belle who wrote an entire post based on nothing more than a phrase and image. Leo jotted down a note, “People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves,” and he dropped in an image:

Belle took it from there.

We learn from what’s worked in the past, and we build, modify, and iterate on the theme. Our archives are a great source of inspiration for what we might write next. We can take a look at what’s worked well in the past and run with those themes for future posts.

Our recent post about social media stats came as a sequel to an incredibly popular stats post last summer. The goal is to capitalize on a formula that has worked before.

We listen. An incredibly valuable source of inspiration is you, the reader. We listen to blog comments and to conversations on Twitter to see what you’d like to learn more about, what you’re interested in, and where are your pain points. Then we aim to tailor content to provide benefit to you.

Our most recent Instagram post came from a comment. A reader noticed that a past Instagram stats post could use a refresh, so we added the idea to our list and came out with something new.

@oggsie I think you're right Oliver, the new Instagram update is huge and we need to refresh this! Thanks for flagging this! -Dave

— Buffer (@buffer) June 6, 2014

We take note of our experiences. Inspiration also comes from what we’re learning. We are aware that the kind of topics we’re learning about as we grow Buffer—like A/B testing, SlideShare, and email list building—might be some of the things you’re working on for your own growth and marketing, too, and we use these as sources for ideas.

Where we find inspiration

If writing and publishing were our only activities, we’d quickly run out of ideas. The idea process requires our thinking outside the box of content creation and spending time dipping our toes in elsewhere.

We often find our inspiration in content curation—the regularly scheduled reading, discovering, and sharing of the best stories online.

How do we come across the “best of” content? It requires a lot of reading. We spend time in a lot of places, soaking in all the content we can get (building the lightning rod, so to speak). We aim for variety, both in the places we read our content and the tools we use to surface it. So our reading might take us to KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Seth Godin, and we may use RSS, Twitter, and email newsletters to get there.

Personally, I’ve found a lot of value in keeping a big list of RSS feeds in Feedly, checking in with a number of Twitter lists, and visiting content sites like Inbound.org and BuzzSumo. Here is what my Feedly looks like today:

We also benefit from variety among our content team. Courtney and Leo have different sources than I do when it comes to curation. I still don’t know where they find all the great ideas they do (and I’d imagine they wonder where mine come from, too).

Of course, the next step after coming up with all these ideas is what to do with them. Here’s how we store our ideas.

What our ideas look like: Inside our Trello board

We use Trello to organize our ideas and to assign content for the coming weeks. It’s a rather wide open method of idea curating: Pretty much anything goes. Some ideas are nothing more than a phrase or headline. Others have a half dozen links or comments.

Here’s what the idea list looks like today:

We currently have 47 ideas in the list for our social media blog (the one you’re reading now) and 36 ideas for our sibling blog, Open. Do any of the ideas sound like something you might like to read?

What our Trello board amounts to is a digital swipe file, a collection of ideas we can reference with ease.

Swipe files began as a means for copywriters to store tested and proven advertising letters, and the practice has since blossomed to a huge number of industries. Newspaper reporters call theirs a “morgue” file—it stores the dead things that you’ll reanimate later. Designers and artists have variations of swipe files at Dribbble and Ffffound.

The value, as Jerod Morris of Copyblogger so eloquently states it, is that swipe files keep your ideas right within reach so that you’re never without inspiration.

Successful writers have a system for recording and recalling ideas… Because if you know that you always have a catalog of great ideas to fall back on for those days when you wake up with nothing fresh in your head, it completely removes that fear of the blank page from the equation.

If you’re interested in creating a swipe file for your ideas, you can do like we do and collect things in boards like Trello. Here are a few other of my favorite alternatives, too.

Evernote – Probably the most popular bookmarking tool, Evernote has an incredibly deep assortment of clipping and saving features. You can clip inspiration you find online as well as in the real world. Evernote even has image recognition that can pull text from photos.

Icebergs – The visual bookmarking service at Icebergs collects screen grabs, uploaded files, text, video, and notes in a beautifully-designed board that you can share and collaborate with team members. Here’s a link to a shared board that I use to grab some favorite GIFs from our Buffer GIF parties.

Gimmebar – Much like Icebergs, Gimmebar lets you save whatever inspiration you find online—even bits of text that stand out to you in the body of your posts. It also provides quick and easy linking to tweets and videos.

From idea to execution: The lifecycle of a blogpost

Now that you know where our ideas come from, I thought I’d quickly explain how an idea goes from Trello board to Buffer blogpost. It’s a constantly evolving process; here’s what it looks like now.

On Fridays, we brainstorm the best posts for the following week.

We generally aim to focus on at least one statistics post or tools post each week. We’ve been focusing on more thoughtful content, too, so that post fills another slot. Other than those, we simply grab what seems like the most relevant, timely, “blogbuster” idea we see. The more actionable, the better.

I break each story down into a three-day schedule. In a perfect world, each day will include one stage from three different blog posts—I’ll research one, write another, and edit a third.

Day one: Research

Research is where a blog post idea really shows its worth. Sometimes we’ll start with an idea that looks completely different once the research is done. If the sources don’t back up the premise, we can be flexible and evolve the idea in a new direction.

Once the research is complete, I place it all into outline form in the post editor, ready for writing on day two.

Day two: Writing

The first draft of my posts are sometimes quite terrible, and this is OK by me. That’s one of the nice reasons to have the writing process spread out over three days. I can write terrible drafts on Day Two and still have time to fix them up on Day Three.

This writing step is my excuse to get as many thoughts written down as possible. I write long today, knowing I will edit tomorrow. Also at this stage, I’ll add as many visuals and graphics as I can.

(I write exclusively in the WordPress distraction-free editor. It’s been a huge time saver for me. If you want to try it yourself, click on the “distraction-free” icon in the toolbar of the post editor.)

Day three: Editing

By taking a break between writing and editing, I can approach a blog post with a fresh perspective. I have a tendency to get in pretty deep with the stories I write, so I need the space to think and breathe before I edit again. The 24-hour window between writing and editing has been a huge benefit to publishing content I’m confident in.

Publishing, learning, and more ideas

Once the post is out there, we celebrate and share it … and then curate some more. Comments and reaction to the post can be a great source for new ideas—elements we could expound on, parts we missed, areas that really resonated with readers. We’re constantly on the lookout for new ideas as soon as an old idea sees its way through.

What does your idea process look like?

It’s been awesome to share how we curate ideas from start to finish. Do any of our methods hit home for you? What kind of process helps you get more ideas? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy our Buffer Blog newsletter. Receive each new post delivered right to your inbox, plus our can’t-miss weekly email of the Internet’s best reads. Sign up here.

Image credits: normalityrelief, User Onboarding,

To win in sales you, and your company, need a recipe for success. The ingredients to win in sales must be pure and of high quality to create a great, high-end, finished product. Here is what we believe it takes to compete with a strong solid sales team that closes the right deals with great sales velocity.

Keep it Simple – the very best repeatable recipes are the ones that are simple to make. Complicated commission plans or unwieldy territory rules and exceptions cause a half-baked sales team. For a perfectly cooked main dish of deals that hit quota, keep things simple to understand and easy for sellers to sell.

Keep it Nimble – as a mid-market company, are you getting so big that you can’t be flexible? Our recipe for success requires that you be able to listen to the customer and flex in ways that help bring big opportunities and deals to closure. Don’t act like an enterprise company that is immovable. If you can grow and still adjust as you go, you’ll have an ongoing advantage over those “big” guys.

Keep it Fresh – the best ingredients are fresh ones, and so are the fresh insights your sales team needs to have with potential buyers and existing clients. They need to track their buyers and clients through social platforms or by aggregated content specific to their industry niche, geographic territory, or through named accounts. This is a daily necessity that is as important as remembering the baking powder when baking a dessert.

Keep it Consistent – baking is scientific, and so is selling. You must have a repeatable sales process and methodology for your team to follow in order to repeat the results you desire. You must consistently hire sellers who fit the profile of your most successful reps. You call on those companies who are “more probable” to buy from you than those who are “less probable” to maximize reps’ time. Those who are “less probable” but possible in the future go into a nurture program as future clients.

Keep it Tasty – your offers to prospects must be enticing. They either solve existing issues your buyer has or they help create a better future for your buyer and their company. If they don’t entice, then you compete with the “status quo” when the buyer does nothing and simply works with what they have. How can you engage them in a taste of what you offer?

Cooking Review:

Based on the recipe above, here are some ideas to think about with your sales team:

Review how you hire and retain sales reps. Do you have a well thought out process?

Conduct assessments to find reps consistent to what it takes to succeed in sales at your company.

Train and coach frontline sales leaders. Studies show this is the best place to invest in training with follow-up coaching for reinforcement. If your frontline sales managers get it right, they will impact everyone on their teams.

Assess everyone through metrics and conversations. Individuals should be getting better at identifying, creating, qualifying, and closing business. If not, measures must be taken.

Create content that catches buyer’s attention. Help the sales team with consistent, progressive messaging. If they get messaging right, appointments, meetings, and deals will flow.

How does your recipe for success work for your sales team?

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email lori@scoremoresales.com | View My LinkedIn Profile | twitter |Visit us on google+

The post 5 Ingredients To Win In Sales appeared first on Score More Sales.

A worldview is a philosophy or set of values through which people interpret and interact with the world. Do you understand what this is for your ideal customers?

Communities align with businesses and brands that reaffirm their worldview. 

This is the power of your story.

The Market Shapes Your Story

When you launched your small business, you most likely tested the idea by sharing it with friends who eagerly supported you. In fact, a few of them probably became your first customers.

If your business delivered on its promise, those early customers shared your story with their friends, at least to the extent that they understood it.

What happened over time is their worldview shaped your story to become what it is today. This is a subtle, yet powerful aspect of marketing that many businesses miss.

Most businesses are so busy promoting the features of their latest products that they forget it’s what their customers are saying that matters most. That’s because their friends are listening to them.

Learn Which Words Trigger a Response

If you are intentionally listening, the key words that your customers identify with will jump out of the conversation. They are embedded in their stories, and should be in yours too.

Study these words, because they become triggers for attracting others that share their worldview. They reveal what it is about your business that gets and keeps people associated with it. Most important, it gives you a better understanding of who they are as human beings.

• What they say and do
• How they think and feel
• What they see and hear

Hopefully, that last one is your media, provided your media is congruent with the other media they engage with that reaffirms their views.

Therefore, commit to making a list of the media sources they follow. Then have your team subscribe to and get familiar with them.

Get Involved with Customers to Learn

A young couple that was a customer of my landscape business shared something with me that changed how we marketed and operated. They said: “You know what we like about you Jeff? You’re a neatnik.”

The word neatnik is an old-fashioned one you would not expect someone in their twenties to use, so that caught my attention. After translating neatnik to attention to detail, suddenly a lot of things became very clear.

We soon discovered our customers valued the little touches that personalized our company and the people within it. This included picking up the newspaper from the driveway when greeting the customer at the front door, and how our mowing crews neatly rolled up the garden hose instead of just tossing it into the bushes like so many other companies.

What is it about your business that resonates with how your customers see the world, and therefore shapes the stories they tell about you? I’ll give you a clue; it’s not quality.

Quality is a meaningless word these days. Reliability, simplicity, consistency, friendliness, and attention to detail are examples of what people talk about.

This is the new marketing. It’s what drives online and offline conversations.

Photo Credit

This is  a guest post from Mark Roberge, Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot. Mark has done some amazing things at Hubspot and the data they’ve been gathering on sales and marketing is impressive.  This post on email timing is a great example of connecting with prospects.

I hope you like it.

Break it down Mark –

This is an actual email thread I had with the VP of Global Sales Operations at a $10B+ revenue company.  After a good discovery call with a strong next step, the executive went dark.  Here is my follow up exchange with him.

—————————————–

On Jun 1, 2014, at 9:29 PM, “Mark Roberge” wrote:

Hope the weekend went well QQQQQ.  I wanted to follow up on scheduling this call.  How is your schedule this week?

Best,

Mark

———————————————————

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 9:44 PM, QQQQQ wrote:

Hello, I am out of the office for the next week. Can we shoot for connecting week after next?

QQQQQQ

————————————–

On Jun 1, 2014, at 9:45 PM, “Mark Roberge” wrote:

Definitely QQQQQ.  Is there a time that works for you?

—————————————

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 9:50 PM, QQQQQQ wrote:

How about 4-5PM Friday the 13th?

QQQQQ

———————————————

On Jun 1, 2014, at 9:53 PM, “Mark Roberge” wrote:

 

Confirmed QQQQQ.  Enjoy your time off.

 

——-

There is nothing that notable about this exchange.  In fact, many can probably criticize the overall approach to this stage of the process.  However, if you look closely, there is an interesting take-away.  This entire exchange occurred between 9:29 PM and 9:53 PM on a Sunday night.

At the time I wrote the email, I was not running an experiment or setting myself up for a blog article — I was simply preparing for my week before the craze of Monday morning.  One of my salespeople had requested I make this follow up.  I had planned to schedule the email using Signals for Monday morning, hoping to be the first email in the executives Inbox.  However, I literally forgot to.

Good thing! As you saw, the meeting was booked less than 30 minutes later.

According to some new data, this result was not a fluke.  Our recent report on Sales Email Best Practices analyzed the days and times when sales emails are most successful.  One of the key charts on this analysis is shown below.  In this chart, we analyzed 6.4 million 1:1 emails sent by Signals, and compared the volume of emails sends with the open rates of those emails by day of the week.

 

The gray line shows the number of emails sent each day of the week.  This line illustrates that most emails were sent on Monday, with over 1,000,000 sent that day.  The least amount of emails were sent on Saturday and Sunday, of course, with under 200,000 sent on each of those days.

The black line shows the open rate of the emails for each day of the week.  The worst days for open rates are Monday and Tuesday.  However, the open rate gradually increases over the course of the week and then spikes on Saturday and Sunday.

Interesting.  So what is going on here?

Perhaps I can speculate.  Salespeople jump into their week energized from the weekend with high hopes for a big week.  They pound the phones and their email, prospecting to as many of their leads as possible.  As the week progresses, they lose a little steam.  Maybe they do happy hour on Thursday.  Maybe they leave early for the weekend on Friday.

However, for the executives receiving the sales emails, the opposite behavior occurs.  Executives are bombarded with the week’s activities on Monday morning.  The first half of the week is jammed with meetings.   Finally, as the week comes to a close and things slow down a bit, they have a chance to catch up on email.   Some of that email flows into the weekend when they finally have a chance to clean out the inbox after the kids are asleep.  That certainly describes my work week.

What do you think?  Am I close in my speculation?

So how do we respond as a sales team?  Should we really take Monday off and work on Saturday, as I suggest in the title?  Probably not.  However, I think there are some really important tactics that can be taken away from these results.

1. When you are behind on your goal, digging in on the weekend can be a very productive exercise.
2. Schedule call blitzes for the end of the week, not the beginning.  Consider a weekend email blitz if the team is behind or needs a big month.
3. Use sales email scheduling tools like Signals to schedule some outbound emails for the weekend.  This is the opposite of our instincts but the data suggests it will work.
4. Download the free mobile version of Signals to stay on top of executives opening your sales emails on the weekend while you are away from your PC.  Don’t be afraid to spit off a quick response at the moment of the open to instigate an email dialogue while you have the executive’s attention.

What other ideas do people have based on this analysis?

—————————–

Mark is Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot Sales Division.  At HubSpot, he increased revenue over 6,000% and expanded the worldwide salesteam from 1 to 450 employees. These results placed HubSpot #33 on the 2011 INC 500 Fastest Growing Companies list. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference.