As a salesperson, you'll often encounter objections from buyers regarding the price. Though these objections can be frustrating, it's crucial to grasp the reasons behind them in order to handle them effectively. This article explores three common reasons for price objections and three tactics you can use to overcome them.
When you send a sales email, you could have the most compelling subject line. The most enticing content. The most exciting CTA. But if I don’t know you and your company, I’m always going to be left with one question: Why should I trust you?
If you want to get a better response rate for your sales emails you need to answer that question. And one of the best ways to do that is with social proof.
Today, I’m going to answer every question you could possibly have about social proof in sales emails, from what it is and what kinds of social proof you could (and should) use, to where to place it and what to do if you don’t have any.
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Social proof is proving your credibility by pointing to other people or organizations you’ve worked with that already have credibility with your prospect. It’s the quickest way to go from a random name in someone’s inbox, to a person they trust and want to work with.
I can’t stress just how important this is.
If you’ve spent hours writing the best subject line, clearly articulated your value prop, and given me an exciting call to action, you have to make me feel comfortable and confident in taking that next step. Without social proof, your sales emails are a lost cause.
Social proof is a simple concept. But it can be deceptively complex to get right. You can’t just tell me to trust you. You need to show it to me. More than that, you need to show me social proof on multiple levels:
Each of these levels of social proof is important in their own right. And while you might get away with using just one, the best sales emails pitch social proof on all three levels.
There are tons of ways to show social proof and which one you choose will depend on what you have available. However, before choosing any type of social proof to include in your sales emails, you need to ask two questions:
First, does this social proof resonate with this specific prospect? Your prospect has to be familiar with the person, organization, or press you’re talking about and believe that your association with them shows credibility.
Next, will the prospect perceive this social proof as credible? Bad social proof is worse than no social proof at all. If you link to some random blog article or namedrop someone I don’t know or think is spammy, that’s worse than not including anything.
With that in mind, here are the best ways you can show social proof in your sales emails.
Happy customers are the best source of social proof. Instead of you telling a prospect all of the value they’re going to get, they get to hear it from someone they know who has already gone through the process.
But not all customer social proof is equal. To be impactful, the customer you use has to be relatable (i.e. can I picture myself getting the same results as them?) and/or aspirational (i.e. are they someone I aspire to be like?)
You have a few options when choosing the right customers to use for social proof:
You can use customer social proof by talking about them in the third person. However, whenever possible, try to include a direct quote from them, such as:
“This customer [who you know and recognize] uses our product. Here’s what their head of marketing has to say about the results…”
If you don’t have any customers or any you feel confident highlighting, you can create social proof by showing a common connection you have with the prospect. Not only does this let you piggyback on the credibility that connection has, but it reminds them there’s a human being behind those words on a screen:
“I’m reaching out because I know you and Steli have done business in the past. We’ve worked together as well and he mentioned you’re doing some incredible work that I think we can help you with.”
However, you have to be careful here. A common connection isn’t just one of 5000 people on your LinkedIn or Twitter. It has to be a real connection you both know and trust. Before you use that connection’s name, make sure they actually know your prospect and have social capital with them.
Money talks. And highlighting verifiable monetary success is a great way to prove your legitimacy.
Have you done some impressive numbers in the past year? Did you just close a big round of funding with a credible VC firm? Or pass a major milestone?
Again, you can’t just say you’re one of Inc.’s fastest growing companies or that you hit $100 million in profits last year. Any monetary social proof has to be verifiable by another source or else it’s useless.
Press doesn’t carry the same social status as it once did, but it’s still a great way to show you’re worth talking about. You can assume your prospect will click any press links you include. So make sure you’re only using outlets your prospect will find impressive (in other words, no random blog articles or product roundups).
In certain situations, the places you’ve worked in the past or where you went to school can be used as social proof. Are you building a highly technical product and your entire product team comes from MIT? Or maybe you’re building search technology and your full of ex-Google employees.
Again, in certain circumstances, relevant accomplishments or personal awards can help build your personal or product credibility. If you’re building design software and your founder received a well-respected reward in the industry, that can work as relevant social proof.
No matter what social proof you give, it has to be honest and verifiable. You can say whatever you want, but in 99.9% of cases, your prospect will do a bit of digging on their own. That means if you link to a press article, it better be good. If you mention a customer, you should have them on your website. If you list accomplishments or associations, someone should be able to find that.
Beyond that, your personal online presence needs to have credibility as well. Most people will check your LinkedIn or social media profile to see who you are. And if those pages are shady or unprofessional it can kill any social credibility you’ve developed with them.
Always assume your prospect is intelligent, savvy, and will do their due diligence. So make sure whatever they find about you and your company amplifies your social proof.
The next question after what kind of social proof to use is how do you use it? The short answer is: It depends.
If people are abandoning your emails early on: Add social proof to the beginning to grab their interest and engage their imagination.
If people are reading your emails but not responding: Add social proof right before or after your call to action so people feel confident about responding.
There’s one more place you should use social proof that is so underutilized. Your signature is a social proof machine. Everyone includes a signature in their email, but few optimize it to build credibility and show social proof. I do this shamelessly by linking to my podcast, book, and popular keynote speeches. These are things I know people are clicking and checking out and help build my own social proof.
Our CRM with built-in emailing enables you to easily create customizable templates that have social proof placed at just the right position in your cold emails.
With Close.io's built in reporting, you can keep tabs on your email response rates for different emails and optimize those that perform the best.
If you're looking for a CRM with built-in email features that are specifically designed to help sales people close more deals, definitely give Close.io a try. Here's just 3 reasons why sales reps love using Close.io:
Sound good? You can learn more about our CRM and how it helps sales people close more deals.
Social proof is a powerful sales tool. But if you don’t have any yet, there’s still a few options you can use.
First, you need to recognize that personal social proof is important to everything you’ll ever do as a sales rep and an individual. Your brand and reputation will follow you everywhere you go. And while it takes time to build, it brings massive returns in the long-run if you keep up with it.
Next, honesty and openness can be just as strong as social proof. If you try to fool someone with some embellished (or completely fake) social proof, you’re going to destroy your reputation. Instead, if you don’t have any good social proof to show, just be transparent about your situation:
“Hey! I just launched this incredible thing. You’re one of the first people I’m asking for advice and feedback from so I don’t have a lot of proof that it’s working. But I’m dedicated to this vision and solving this problem and would love to have 10 minutes of your time.”
This kind of vulnerability can be incredibly powerful and make someone want to trust you, even if you don’t have the proof to back it up yet.
You wouldn’t let a complete stranger into your house, so why should a prospect reply to your sales email if they don’t know you and trust what you’re saying?
With social proof, you give your prospects a reason to believe. It’s the foot in the door that lets you use every other sales technique and strategy you have to close the deal. We all have some form of social proof we can use. So find it. Use it. And build that trust. Because without it, I don’t have a reason to talk to you.
Want to level up your sales emails? Get the new and improved edition of my book Cold Email Hacks!
Forget #DeleteFacebook: If you really want to protect your data, you may want to consider a number of other platforms and websites who have access to your sensitive data.
The massive Facebook hack in 2018 affecting 30 million users led many, including notable celebrities, to delete their accounts en masse. But Facebook is definitely not the only website on the Internet that has a chock-full of data stored on you.
It's possible that any of the other major websites, apps, and services — Amazon, Apple, Google, even Snapchat — could be next. That fear of what can happen to your information in the hands of third parties has led some to take steps to ensure their data can't be compromised.
The only way to ensure your sensitive data can't be compromised is by removing your information from the internet entirely. In other words, if you're really worried about protecting your data from any future hacks, now is the time to delete your account.
Here's how to delete your accounts for some of the most major websites, apps, and services:
By deleting your account, you will remove everything you've ever put on Facebook— profile information, photos, status updates, timeline posts — but it doesn't include messages sent via Facebook Messenger.
However, it will take 30 days for your account to actually be deleted. This "grace period" used to be 14 days, but Business Insider reported in late 2018 that Facebook raised it to a month to give users an opportunity to reactivate their account if they get cold feet.
If you don't want to lose everything you've put on Facebook, there is an option to download a copy of all your information. But you have to request this archive before deleting your account, and you'll have it sent to you via email — if you delete your account before requesting the archive, you're out of luck.
Follow this link to deactivate (and delete) your Facebook account.
Instagram requires you to delete your account from a web browser instead of through the app, which is where the platform's full capabilities can be accessed (direct messaging on desktop has just started rolling out to users).
The photo sharing app does have an option to "temporarily disable" an account, but that option isn't a middle step before deletion, like it is for other social media platforms. In other words, if you opt to temporarily disable your account, you can pick it up again later at your pleasure.
Follow this link to delete your Instagram account.
Of all the websites covered in this article, Amazon by far made it the trickiest to figure out how to delete your account. Here's the short version: You can't delete your account on your own — you have to actually contact Amazon and ask for your account to be deleted.
In going through the steps of trying to close an account, the simplest way I figured out to do this is to go right to the Amazon customer support's "Contact Us" page, and use it to send a message to Amazon. According to the virtual live chat I had with a customer service representative, sending a message through this form will get your account deleted within 12 hours.
Follow this link to access customer support and delete your Amazon account.
TikTok has exploded in popularity in the last couple years, but there are already users who have vowed to delete their accounts and not return to the app.
While mobile apps like Snapchat may make you navigate to a web browser to delete your account, TikTok lets you do this right on the platform. Under the right-most tab on TikTok, where your profile is located, click on the icon in the top-right corner to bring up your "Privacy and settings." Click on the first option — "Manage my account" — and you'll find the option to delete your account on the bottom.
You can find step-by-step directions for deleting your TikTok account on its website.
Although Snapchat is a phone app, you'll need to visit Snapchat's website on an internet browser to completely delete your account. Simply removing the app from your phone will not delete your information.
Snapchat's website features an accounts portal, where you can log in to your account and select "delete my account" from the options listed. Snapchat will also first deactivate your account for 30 days in case you change your mind, and also offers you the opportunity to download your data before you delete your account.
Follow this link to deactivate (and delete) your Snapchat account.
WhatsApp may be owned by Facebook, but it has a totally different way to delete your account.
You can delete your WhatsApp account through the messaging app itself. Under "Account" in the Settings tab, you can delete your account easily by typing in your phone number.
You can request a report of your account information, which takes about three days for WhatsApp to prepare. You should wait to actually receive your report before deleting your account, just to be sure.
Twitter maintains a 30-day "grace period" similar to Facebook's. You have to first deactivate your account, and then wait a month to completely delete your account and all its information.
The option to deactivate (and delete) is found at the bottom of the "Account" tab on your Settings and Privacy page. Like Facebook, you can also download all your data before deleting your account.
Follow this link to deactivate your Twitter account.
Trying to figure out how to delete your Apple account can be a difficult process, but it's actually quite simple once you know where to look: the privacy page for your account on Apple's website.
Remember that your Apple account is associated with any iPhone or Mac you own, and is how you access any service associated with your Apple ID: iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, Apple Music, and other subscriptions or content you've purchased. You won't be able to sign in or access any of this content once you delete your account.
Apple also allows you to make a copy of your data, but that doesn't include your music, books, and app purchases.
Follow this link to deactivate your Apple account.
Between search, email, documents, and much more, it's an understatement to say that Google stores a lot of your private information.
The easiest way to go about deleting your Google account is to make sure you're logged in, and click the "Data & personalization" tab from your Google Account home page. Scroll down to find a section titled "Download or delete your data," and click on "delete a service or your account." Under this tab, you'll be able to delete your entire Google account, or a particular Google-associated service.
Choosing to delete your Google account will bring you to a page like the one pictured above. The page lists out the content from your various connected services — including Gmail and Google Photos — that will also be deleted with your Google Account. On this page, you also have the option to download your data before deleting your account.
If you're looking for apps and services you can use instead, check out this list and get ready to ditch Google.
Follow this link to deactivate your Google account.
If you're uncomfortable deleting your entire Google account, there's an option to delete profiles associated with Google-linked services, such as Gmail, Google Pay, and YouTube.
The "Data & personalization" tab on your Google Account home page is where you can choose to delete your Google account or an associated service. Scroll down to find a section titled "Download or delete your data," and click on "delete a service or your account." Under this tab, you'll be able to select a particular Google-associated service to delete.
It's important to note that deleting your account will also delete content, whether that's emails or uploaded videos.
Follow this link to deactivate your YouTube account, or any other Google-associated account.
Finding the page for deleting your Microsoft account is incredibly difficult if you don't know where you're going. Luckily, we have the link directly to the page for closing your account, which can be found on a page for Microsoft account support.
The website makes your manually check off a list of what happens when you close your account, but it's just more taxing than anything.
Microsoft has a similar option to Google, which lets review all the services you use that are connected to your account, since those are affected when you delete this data. This includes Windows devices, Outlook email, Skype, and the Microsoft Office suite. You can also choose to download all your data before you "mark" your account for closure.
Microsoft's grace period between request and actually deleting your account is 60 days.
Follow this link to deactivate your Microsoft account.
Funnels, stages, paths, journeys, and more labels that suggest some form of a linear line of thinking has dominated marketing and sales for decades. Whereby the notion of awareness, evaluation or consideration, and purchase decision is built-in to these views. In reality, whatever labels have been applied, there are more similarities than differences.
As forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders prepare for 2020 and continuous digital disruption, it is time to alter this line of thinking.
In vogue the last few years is the idea that the buyer’s journey is the best way to view how buyer’s get to a decision. Mapping such a journey is very helpful and can reveal what steps and processes the buyer is going through.
The notion of the “journey” came into the conscious stream of business around the time when the concept of “customer experience” was introduced in the late 1990’s. A precursor to customer experience was the concept of diagraming processes introduced by W.E. Deming in the 1980’s when Total Quality Management (TQM) was first introduced.
I bring this up because the idea of touchpoint analysis and journey mapping has been around for a few decades. It may just have taken marketing and sales a while to catch up.
A lot has changed since the introduction of journey mapping.
We have to ask a serious question: is the buyer’s journey the right perspective and mindset in an era of digital disruption?
Part of the answer may exist in the simple definition of the word “journey.” If we look at any of the dictionary sources available, the simple definition will be – an act of traveling from one place to another. Usually, there is a time element associated with the definition of “journey” such as – a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.
Our own mindset of the word journey lulls us into thinking of a long methodical approach that buyers are taking. An image of someone with a backpack going hiking seems to be one that is used often.
The journey concept has spurred a mountain of marketing advice-oriented content related to stages and time. For example, how many articles have there been about “aligning content to the stages of the buyer’s journey” in the last few years? If we guessed in the millions, we just may be close.
In an age of digital disruption and a new decade fast-approaching by 2020, having a “traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time” mindset can cause organizations to be significantly out of synch with their buyers and customers. The biggest danger businesses can face is being caught off-guard as buyers shift to even faster and newer ways of engaging when seeking to solve a problem or fulfill a need.
Buying behaviors are changes so rapidly that we are forced to redefine the concept of journey. Developing a static view of a buyer’s journey is becoming problematic. One important reason is that we are finding that no two buyer’s journeys are alike – even within the same market, segment, or industry.
In several buyer persona research engagements within the past three years, this has become noticeable. We are finding multiple views on how purchase choices and decisions are being made. With wide variances in how people and organizations go about buying. Resulting in multiple buyer personas with multiple buying experience views.
If this is the case, then a one-size fits all static or snapshot view of a buyer’s journey can be erroneous. Causing marketing and sales departments to make faulty choices on how to engage buyers and customers.
First-hand interviews are revealing that the buyer’s mindset varies from a perceived journey perspective. Here is an example:
“When I’m trying to solve a problem, I am on a mission, so to speak. Searching for ways to resolve. The company just didn’t seem to get this.” – Vice President, Operations
I heard comments like this many times. This was not a mindset of getting ready to go on a long journey and making stops along many stages.
What is it more like then? Here is one interviewee from a buyer persona research engagement that gave a clue:
“I was on a quest to find an answer. Getting the team involved also. It was an urgent matter for us because we discovered we were falling short in supporting customers. That’s why we needed to find someone else kind of quickly.” – Director, Customer Support
The term quest stood out. When we look up the simple definition of “quest” in multiple dictionaries, this is what we find: the act of searching and pursuing something; to search for something.
This definition also aligns with a significant change in buying behaviors in the last decade. Whether it is in business-to-business or consumer markets, the empowerment that buyers now have to search is the greatest it has ever been. The digital disruption caused by devices and access to information anytime and anywhere has caused us all to be quest-like.
Buyer’s today behave more akin to being on a quest for knowledge. On a quest to find an answer. On a quest to discover a way to solve an issue or an urgent problem. As we approach 2020 and the state of digital disruption accelerates, this quest-like behavior will also accelerate across the spectrum of low-stakes and high-stakes purchases.
The usefulness of the buyer’s journey will not go away. What businesses will need to adapt to is that a Buyer’s Quest may or may not involve a journey. That there will be a potential for multiple forms of journeys to go with a Buyer’s Quest. This is a significant mind shift in buying behaviors that organizations can adapt to in the following ways:
Seek to understand the Quest of buyers: Before diving deep into understanding journeys, businesses to need to first dive deep into fully understand the quest buyers are undertaking. Too often, marketing and sales journey exercises have been done with presumed ideas of what buyers and customers were seeking.
Align Quest understanding with intent and signals: There has been plenty of talk about understanding intent and signals from a journey perspective. Not enough on understanding intent and interactions from the viewpoint of what quest the buyer is seeking to fulfill.
There is no such thing as the “average” buyer: Buyers respond to organizations that get the “quest” they are on. The more you can be relevant through your brand and different forms of media, the more responsive buyers will be. Researching and creating goal-directed and quest-directed buyer personas can go a long way in terms of understanding what is relevant to buyers today – not yesterday.
Give “AI” a different meaning: The acronym of AI has meant Artificial Intelligence. What if we changed the mindset to that of Assistive Interaction? By 2020, buyers will expect that you will understand what they want and serve it up when they need it. They will expect to be assisted, through automation and digital experiences, in their quest to find knowledge about how to resolve or reach a goal important to them. Organizations will need to invest in assistive intelligence and automation.
Many organizations will need to transform their thinking to a Buyer’s Quest perspective. The buyer’s journey then is seen as part of the overall quest buyers undertake. This is instead of viewing the buyer’s journey as an end means on its own. How buyers behave in undertaking a quest – the search for something and the search for knowledge – will continue to evolve via an accelerated pace by 2020. Meaning organizations must accelerate their own pace of understanding buyers and the quest they are on.
When it comes to B2B social media management, the LinkedIn Company Page generally falls in the realm of marketing. It is, after all, an ideal location to convey your brand identity, share content, and capture inbound interest.
But sales reps are also wise to take a vested interest in this asset, because there are distinct ways — aside from the general business benefits previously mentioned — that Company Pages can benefit the sales team specifically.
Let’s start with this: at a time when the majority of buyers complete research and select vendors on their own, it’s important even for salespeople to adopt an inbound mindset. Outreach will always be part of the job, but modern sales pros recognize that it’s essential to be discoverable and approachable.
What’s better than a conversation initiated by a prospect who is already primed for purchase and familiar with you or your company?
There’s a good chance a prospective customer researching your solution will come across your LinkedIn Company Page along the way. This can certainly work to the seller’s advantage.
An optimized Company Page will feature clear and compelling information about your business and what it offers. As such, the prospect can enter a sales conversation better informed, saving time and creating momentum to move forward. This also turns your Company Page into a handy resource where sellers can direct people to learn more.
Your business can leverage the Company Page as a platform to prop up and feature members of the sales team. Mention top reps in the About Us copy, or feature them in your updates. Profiles of sellers also might show up under the employees section (especially if that seller is connected in any way with the perusing member), creating a pathway for contact to be made.
Familiarity is critical, but tough to generate in a digital environment. One key strength of LinkedIn for B2B sales pros is that potential buyers can gain some level of familiarity with unacquainted sellers by exploring a rep’s profile, seeing his or her face, and learning about their professional background. By taking steps to make the sales team visible on your Company Page and related assets, you’re helping facilitate this.
If your company sells across several distinct business lines, it can be challenging for a single Company Page or corporate website to effectively convey the information a customer needs about specific products or services. This is where Showcase Pages come in handy.
Showcase Pages are dedicated offshoots of the Company Page, designed to highlight particular sub-brands, business units, or initiatives. This page can be used to reach a more qualified audience through refined targeting, and the content there will speak more directly to discrete solutions in a seller’s niche (while also perhaps highlighting that seller’s expertise, in accordance with the tip above). And again, this equips buyers to come to the table more informed and confident.
Marketing should usually be in charge of running the Company Page, but this is a terrific opportunity for alignment and collaboration with sales. Bring both sides together to maximize this asset as a business development tool and optimize its value to the sales team.
Considering the low investment and major upside of making even a few strategic tweaks, it should be an easy call.
For a look at how top-performing businesses on LinkedIn make it happen, check out our Best of Company Pages 2018, which features plenty of takeaways that others can apply.
And for more guidance on using LinkedIn to power up selling success, subscribe to the LinkedIn Sales Blog.
The now increasingly discredited BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe) approach to opportunity qualification discouraged sales people from pursuing opportunities unless there was a clearly defined project with an already established budget.
Now, if you’re selling low-value commodity-like solutions where there is little scope for differentiation on anything other than price and delivery, or if you are competing in tightly-regulated markets that seek to eliminate any chance of creativity, BANT may still offer a potential approach.
But in complex, high-value B2B sales – and particularly where the customer’s need is real but nascent or poorly-defined – the rigid application of BANT as an early-stage qualifier will cause you to eliminate or abandon opportunities just when you have the strongest chance to influence the prospect’s thinking.
This, surely, is madness...
I’ll accept that BANT may have its place – but only after the customer, hopefully with our help, has understood the business case for change, assembled their decision-making team and established their requirements and their decision criteria and process, typically signalled by the issue of a tender document or RFP.
But by then, it is inevitable that someone’s fingerprints will be all over their specification, and – if they are someone else's rather than yours and assuming that you are not by a significant margin both the lowest cost and most credible supplier – you will be forced to play by someone else’s rules.
It should come as no surprise that your chances of winning the sale under these circumstances – according to a wide range of credible studies by Accenture, IBM and others – are in the low single digit percentage range. In most cases (and absent the “highly regulated” exception), there is little rational justification for investing valuable sales resources in responding.
And unless the requirement is an inevitable purchase, many of these RFP projects end up in a decision, having kicked the tyres of the market, to “do nothing” and stick with the status quo, further compounding the utter waste of energy by all of the participants.
That’s why early engagement is so critical to sales success – well before an opportunity could be described as BANT-qualified.
I’ve written before about the fact that complex potentially high-value B2B buying journeys (despite appearances to the contrary) are often poorly defined, somewhat chaotic and non-linear.
Whilst recognising that these journeys can go backwards, go forwards, stall or be abandoned at any point, it is nevertheless possible to identify a number of the key phases they are likely to pass through and to aim to get involved as early as possible in their journey.
If we are to focus on pre-BANT opportunities, we of course need to ensure that we are focused on the most valuable “sweet-spot” potential customers. You can read more here, but in summary this means identifying and targeting:
Here are the typical phases in the (non-linear) evolution of a complex B2B customer decision journey:
Our sweet-spot potential customers are likely to be monitoring trends that may affect them, but they appear to be currently satisfied with the status quo and are not yet actively concerned about any of the issues we have chosen to target.
Assuming the organisation and role have both been well-targeted, establishing thought leadership at this early point can offer tremendous opportunities in helping our customer to recognise the importance of exploring these issues.
But we won’t achieve this by pitching our solution prematurely. At this stage, we need to focus our conversation on key trends and the resulting potential problems, opportunities and threats – using insights and anecdotes to offer our prospective customer a fresh perspective that (hopefully) makes them want to learn more.
Something has happened to arouse our prospective customer’s interest and they are trying to determine whether there is a clear case for change. If we have ourselves acted as the catalyst by engaging them while they were unconcerned, that is even better.
It is still too early to present our “solution”. Instead, we need to educate our customer on the trends, issues and implications, and help them to understand and appreciate why our company has chosen to focus on these aspects, and why we are a credible business partner.
In addition to continuing to shape our customer’s thinking, we gain tremendous advantage by helping them to establish a sound business reason why their organisation might need to change.
Having now concluded that there is a clear business case for change, our prospective customer is defining their vision of a future solution, their potential solution options, and their decision team, criteria and process.
Even if we have not been involved earlier, this is the last critical phase during which we have the chance to significantly shape our prospective customer’s thinking before they finalise their requirements.
The benefits of engaging by or before this stage are profound: Forrester found that three-quarters of all complex buying decisions are made in favour of the vendor that did the most to shape the prospective customer’s vision of a solution.
By the time our prospective customer has entered this phase (often signalled by issuing an invitation to tender or RFP), they are already actively evaluating their shortlisted options in order to identify their most viable option(s).
Whilst it may be possible to reshape their thinking (typically by persuading them that they need to re-open the previous “defining” phase), we are usually obliged to play with cards that the customer has dealt us.
And, of course, if another vendor has engaged the customer earlier in the process, these cards have probably already been marked, and we are likely to be playing a game in which the odds are stacked against us.
It always surprises me to see how many sales people – and the sales organisations they work for – fail to recognise the critical importance of understanding where the customer is in their decision journey, of recording where the sales person first entered that process.
Armed with this awareness, we can make much more intelligent decisions about how to qualify the opportunity, whether it is worth pursuing, and what strategies and tactics we need to implement.
Rather than relying on BANT, we can instead apply much more meaningful opportunity qualification criteria, such as:
Allow me to make a handful of recommendations:
As always, I’d appreciate you sharing your experiences and observations...
Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, an award-winning blogger, a confident and entertaining event speaker and workshop leader, a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the B2B value-selling experts.
Following a varied and successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates Bob now works as an adviser to some of today’s most ambitious B2B-focused sales organisations, equipping and enabling them to accelerate revenue growth and transform sales effectiveness by implementing the proven principles of value-based selling.
In the digital age, most sales conversations occur remotely. Sales professionals must make an impression without the benefit of an in-person meeting, often making it more difficult to rise above the noise.
How can you ensure the first impression – whether via phone, social media, or email – is a positive one? In both inbound and outbound prospecting, it is the first conversation that often sets an opportunity on the road to success (or failure).
Many a persistent sales rep has suffered due to not making the most of these crucial moments of initial sales engagement. In this post, we will focus on how something as simple as a call transfer strategy can improve the buying experience and ultimately close more deals.
Imagine, you have been prospecting an opportunity for a few weeks. You’ve researched the company, reviewed your LinkedIn connections, and utilized every tool in your toolbelt to prepare. You have touched base via email, left a few voicemails, and even managed to get a gatekeeper on the phone. There is every reason to believe you are getting traction and that your desired contact will pick up on your next call. It’s time for the moment of truth! You dial.
Ring… ring… ri – hello?
The prospect answered! You dive right in, introducing yourself and quickly getting to the purpose of your call. Your prospect seems open to listening. The gatekeeper even mentioned you earlier in the week, and the prospect had time to look into your solution. They are very interested and have requested a demo. The situation is ideal. What do you do next?
You schedule a demo call with an Account Executive for the next day.
What do you think the outcome of that sales interaction was? It started out promising. Overall this story is an ideal situation for many sales development reps. Unfortunately, the prospect lost interest shortly thereafter.
Prior to the call, the prospect had reviewed your solution using a tech review site and had also looked into your competition. They had cleared some time on their calendar and had hoped to have more information at the end of the call rather than having to schedule a second time to connect.
Your competitor’s outbound rep contacted them shortly after your conversation. He was able to transfer the call to an account executive who could demo the solution immediately. You are no longer in the lead, and your opportunity has lost momentum.
Companies that don’t utilize call transfer often suffer from a loss of momentum early in the sales cycle, inadvertently hurting their pipeline. They will pique prospect’s interest and then say, “I’ll have your account executive call you back tomorrow.” Or, worse yet, “You’ll receive a call from an account executive in two to three business days.”
Sales reps must be prepared to field and react to such requests in real time or risk losing momentum due to long holds or too much time between scheduled calls.
The average person spends 1.2 years on hold, and most prospects hanging up after an average of one minute and 55 seconds of hold time (The Small Business Chronicle). NATA reports that playing music during a hold can extend the average amount of time a caller is willing to wait by 60 seconds. That is 3 minutes the average person is willing to wait for an answer. That is not a lot of time.
All of this drives a need to rework the selling experience to support a more collaborative process in real-time.
Develop a workflow that fully engages a prospect that shows interest. Invest in systems and processes that empower reps to address requests as quickly as possible, ideally without a long hold or scheduling a future call.
In a world of instant gratification, sales organizations need to find a solution that supports immediate collaboration across sales functions through real-time call transfer.
Let’s review the most common sales call transfer types, along with their pros and cons, to better understand the options available.
Each transfer option has its strengths and weaknesses but not all are created equal. Research conducted by Stan Rapp and Tom Collins of Maximarketing found 16-20% of buyers make a purchasing decision based on information they hear while waiting on a resolution to a request. This supports the preferred transfer type being one that does not stop the flow of information during a call. The more seamless the experience, the better.
Your best option is… Live Transfer. This transfer type doesn’t require a hold and allows the sales representative to continue the conversation while looping in additional team members.
Supporting call transfer is only one way to foster collaboration in your organization for an improved buying experience. When in doubt, ensure team members are able to share information and expertise freely, encourage teamwork through healthy competition, and progress deals faster.
Salesforce Research indicates that 79% of buyers believe its very important that a salesperson act trusted advisor, addressing concerns and collaborating for mutual success. By embracing collaboration throughout the sales process, companies enable their reps to better serve prospects through collective knowledge and teamwork.
Today’s buyer is more informed, and sellers must be prepared for them. Prospects will discount the value of their interactions reps if a sales rep is not prepared to advance the conversation fast enough.
Collaboration encourages sellers to work as a team for increased efficiency rather than against one other. With a collaborative sales process, reps are encouraged to share information and foster expertise. Sales organizations have an opportunity to provide stellar buying experiences by empowering reps to quickly ramp a conversation to the next level, exceeding prospects’ expectations.
Learn more about the best practices of top performing sales reps in the research we sponsored for TOPO.
We are grateful to have you here with us on this journey, and we hope you feel the #saleslove support with this post. If you have any questions about what features SalesLoft offers that support collaboration, please check out the Knowledge Base, or contact support@salesloft.com.
The post Call Collaboration Leads to Sales Success appeared first on SalesLoft.
As a sales professional on LinkedIn, you get the value of a shared space where you can keep pace with industry trends, build your personal brand, and strengthen important relationships.
Driven by our commitment to evolve and promote that sense of community, we recently unveiled a new LinkedIn Groups experience. In addition to making Groups available in the main LinkedIn feed and app, we’ve added new features designed to drive more value through the interactions taking place in the 2 million+ groups on LinkedIn.
While these changes offer new ways to engage with your groups, it’s also important to note that the same engagement principles apply for earning coveted buyer trust. Don’t forget to carefully review the group description and rules before requesting to join a group.
Now let’s dive in and explore how you can take advantage of the reimagined LinkedIn Groups experience.
One of the best ways to get prospects to actively seek you out is by becoming known in your groups as a trusted resource. You can convey the value you offer through your authentic interactions, along with the comments and content you share with your groups. Before you post your own content, be sure to review the latest conversations to get a sense of the culture and see if there are opportunities to jump in and help others.
Remember, professionals are on LinkedIn to share knowledge, build relationships, and advance their careers. With a selfless focus on being a helpful resource, show your unique perspective on the topics that matter most to prospective buyers. Do this well and prospects will visit your LinkedIn Profile and Company Page to further explore how you might be able to help them achieve their goals.
Quality interactions are the result of quality conversations. Now you can spark more vibrant conversations by sharing rich, embedded media, native video, and multiple images in your posts. According to our analysis, posts with an image get 98 percent more comments. Unlike in the past, you can include rich media in your replies to comments and even edit your posts and comments, giving you more control over your side of every conversation.
Here’s a tip to keep in mind: When you post videos from desktop, you can add closed captioning that provides important context. For instance, maybe your caption highlights a key point so the group gets the main message even if they don’t watch the full video. Or perhaps you add colorful commentary to show your unique take on the video content.
You’ve always been able to stay up-to-date on what matters to your prospects and customers by participating in LinkedIn Groups. But now you can more easily track all the conversations and activities going on in your groups. How? You’ll be notified when someone comments on one of your group posts, making it that much easier for you to respond to engagement in a timely manner.
The better you know your target audience, the better you can prospect and close deals. LinkedIn Groups offers a unique space for finding out firsthand what matters to your prospective buyers and customers. You can now stay engaged and build up that knowledge base from anywhere by accessing your groups using the LinkedIn iOS and Android app.
As you’re engaging with people in a LinkedIn group, you can qualify them as prospects based on their pain points and other relevant details they share. When you spot a promising connection, you can reach out to that person privately. Just keep in mind that you are allowed to send 15 free 1:1 messages to fellow group members each month (that’s combined across all groups you belong to, not 15 per group). Once connected directly with a prospect, you can further develop the relationship by sharing information and ideas in line with their interests and needs.
We’ve already started rolling out the following features:
Navigate to your groups more easily. You’ll be able to quickly find and get to your groups right from a navigation panel on the LinkedIn home page.
Keep the conversation going from your LinkedIn Feed. Soon you’ll be able to start and join conversations in your groups right from your main feed. You’ll be able to reply to comments or share an interesting article without having to navigate to your group.
Easily discover new groups that match your interests. Looking for new groups you may want to join? You’ll be able to discover recommended groups based on your network and interests from the My Network tab on desktop.
By taking advantage of the latest changes to Groups, you’ll find yourself getting even more value out of this unique professional community. Best of all, you can easily participate in your groups alongside everything you already love to do on LinkedIn. And you can get started without skipping a beat since all Groups are being migrated automatically to the new experience.
Stay on top of all the latest sales trends and tools by subscribing to the LinkedIn Sales Solutions blog.
Misunderstandings in the workplace cause productivity losses, hurt feelings, and unnecessary conflict. Communicating with clarity can prevent misunderstandings and keep things running smoothly and peaceably. Ensuring clarity in communication is the responsibility of each individual, particularly since our performance is so frequently appraised based on our ability to effectively communicate.
Here are seven tips for building trust in sales by improving the clarity of your own communication. They apply with your colleagues AND with your customers. In fact, these communication techniques show up in research with buyers about the behaviors they want to see more frequently from sellers.
Today’s guest post comes from Lee B. Salz, who recently wrote the book Sales Differentiation. I encourage you to check out the book, as well as my two interviews with Lee at the end of this post.
The most powerful sales differentiation tool in a salesperson’s toolbox is the words used, and not used, with buyers. Some expressions excite buyers and compel them to want to do business with you. There are also expressions that quickly turn buyers off.
That means that salespeople need a moment of pause when planning buyer communication, so they use words that positively differentiate them.
Let’s first look at an expression that is deeply ingrained in our communication style. These two words are pervasive in the sales profession. This sentence starter is guaranteed to repel buyers. It makes them want to do business with your competitor instead of you. Those two words are “I want.”
Many sales training courses teach salespeople to begin calls and buyer meetings with “What I want to do today is…” The concept behind this is that it sets an agenda for the meeting. Agenda setting is certainly a best practice, but this approach tells the buyer that the salesperson is there for his purposes, not theirs, because of the use of “I want.”
In sales, this expression is commonly used in these fashions:
Salespeople don’t always realize it, but when they use the expression “I want,” their buyers give them a virtual eye roll. “Of course, you want _______. You want to sell me something and get a commission.”
There is only one person in the world who cares what you want. It’s Mom! No one else cares what you want. When communicating with buyers, you need to put their interests at the forefront. What buyers want to know is:
Because this way of thinking doesn’t come naturally for all salespeople, care and planning are needed for effective, differentiated buyer communication. What is the benefit to them to meet with you, to learn about your products, and to introduce you to their colleagues? The answer to those questions is needed to differentiate yourself by showing care for your buyers.
The last question (having buyers introduce them to colleagues) is a sales challenge that is often posed to me by salespeople.
“I’m stuck. How do I get buyers to introduce me to others in the account?” The answer I always give in return is a question. “Why should they introduce you to their colleagues?” If they struggle to come up with the reason, they now know why they have been unable to expand account relationships.
The words salespeople use, and don’t use, differentiate them. This is just one of nineteen sales differentiation concepts you learn in the book Sales Differentiation. Order your copy today on Amazon!
And check out my videos with Lee below:
Learn how to win more deals at the prices you want! Get your copy of Sales Differentiation now.Whether you have been selling for twenty years or are new to sales, the tools you will learn in Sales Differentiation will help you knock-out the competition, build profitable new relationships, and win deals at the prices you want.
When you order today, you’ll gainaccess to Lee’s “Sales Differentiation Minute” video series (a $1,495 value). For 20 weeks, you will receive an email with a video link in which Lee brings Sales Differentiation strategies to life helping you put them into practice. Learn more here.
Remember that now debunked research claiming that humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish? Can you believe that we bought into those statistics for even eight seconds? Have you ever known a goldfish to binge watch an entire season of Game of Thrones? Please, that goldfish wouldn’t get through the opening credits of Finding Nemo.
The State of Attention 2018 Report from Prezi reinforces that the attention span of the B2B buyer isn’t floundering. It’s just evolving as prospects become more discerning about what they want to consume. If you’re offering generic flakes of content, it’s unlikely that you’ll even get a nibble. But, if you go beyond the standard fare to offer fresh content, your prospects are much more likely to bite.
While fresh veggies may be surefire way to retain a goldfish’s attention for extended period of time, B2B prospects expect more. According to the Prezi survey, 90% desire a strong narrative or story, and nearly 80% indicate that audience engagement hinges on animated visuals. In other words, B2B buyers expect binge-worthy infotainment. But before you hire extras or commission someone to build a set, check out this week’s trending sales content. Keeping your B2B prospects' attention well past the closing credits may be easier than you think.
When you’re presenting to a B2B buyer, do you ever feel their attention wandering? It’s not your imagination; 4 out of 5 professionals who responded to Prezi’s survey admitted that their attention shifted away from the speaker in the most recent presentation they watched. In this post, Adam Wooley teaches you how to include compelling visuals, repeat key story elements, use cliffhangers, and skip the drawn-out intro to make your presentations more binge-worthy and less snooze-worthy.
Do you have one competitor that is virtually impossible to sell against? Do you wonder what they have that you don’t? Is it a superstar rep, untouchable value, or an incredible training program? Any are likely but it could also be something even more basic. In this post, Chris Orlob shares insights that Gong Labs garnered from listening to two million sales calls. Read the post to learn about how market-leading sales teams separate themselves from the pack.
You don’t need be extroverted to succeed in sales. But, to be effective, introverted sales pros must sell differently. In this post, Nancy Ancowitz talks with Matthew Pollard, the author of The Introvert’s Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone. Pollard shares how YouTube helped him perfect his sales craft and shares his seven-step process for achieving an introvert’s edge in sales.
What is the deciding factor that will help you reach the pinnacle of sales performance? Personality? Prospecting? Presentation? Find out how Anthony Iannarino answers this question in a post which also addresses the need for intangibles such as strength of character, humor, and a sense of purpose.
In this post, Shawn Karol Sandy highlights ways sales pros can increase resiliency. After a phenomenal failure—or even a stunning success—saying, “So what. Now what?” can help refocus your attention and allow you to move forward. Check out the post to learn other ways resilient people behave differently.
We all have ways of dealing with disappointment. Positive self-talk, including repeatable mantras, can be an especially effective way for everyone, including sales pros, to get back into the right headspace. Despite preconceptions, mantras don’t always have to be as cheesy as “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” Check out the post by Marina Khidekel to learn how professionals in a variety of fields bounce back from their setbacks.
For more tips to help you create binge-worthy presentations and build your sales skills, subscribe to the LinkedIn Sales Blog.
Recently, I was speaking with an executive whose team was involved in a major purchase decision. I asked him to describe his buying process/journey. He looked at me with an amused/quizzical look. “We don’t think in terms of a buying journey. We just have something we need to get done, part of it involves buying…..”
All of a sudden, it struck me: The buying process or buying journey is just an artifact invented by marketers and sellers to rationalize what we want to inflict on the customers.
Of course I’m being a little harsh here, customers do talk in terms of buying processes and journeys, but only because we’ve trained them in that–so they’ve adopted our language. But customers don’t really think in terms of a buying journey. Customers just want to get stuff done! They think in terms of projects, things they need to get done to achieve their business goals. Buying is sometimes a component of those projects.
Even if buying is the project, “We need to buy a …..,” they still think of it as a project, not a buying journey. (By the way, if this is how they describe the project to you, you are already very late in what they are trying to achieve.)
Several years ago, I was asked to speak to a group of procurement experts. As I listened to their discussions, the concept of buyer’s journey never came up. Here was a group of some of the most advanced thinkers in buying–people whose job was to buy, and they didn’t describe what they did in terms of their buying journeys!
Why is this important?
We are (or should be) trying to see things through our customers eyes, thinking the way they think, approaching things in a context that is meaningful to what they want to do.
In the “old days,” we were less sensitive, we focused on ourselves and what we wanted to do to our customers—we wanted to sell to them.
Then some guru came up with the idea, “Customers don’t want to be sold to, they want to buy…..”
Immediately, we adopted the “buyers’ perspectives,” we translated our language from selling to buying, using terms like the buying process and the buying journey to make us appear to be more customer sensitive. But, too often, they are thinly disguised terms of what we want to do to the customers. We want them to buy, we focus on the things that make them buy.
What if we changed our perspectives?
Our customers have projects–these projects are things they want to do, goals they want to achieve, changes they want to make, improvements to what they do. What if we started talking to our customers about their projects and plans? What is we started looking at how we could help them with those projects, help them to better execute their project plans?
Why do we need to inflict our language, regardless how politically correct, on our customers? Wouldn’t we be more effective if we worked with them on what they need to get done? Wouldn’t we be more impactful if we looked at things they way they look at things?
Ask yourself a question, when was the last time a customer described what they wanted to do as a “buying journey?”
Imagine you’re part of a Grand Prix race through the winding streets of Monaco. You’ve got the fastest, most exotic car. The best crew. Powerful fuel. And you’ve been training for years.
But, while your rivals zip along the harbor like electric slot cars, you sputter along at a crawl. It turns out, your wheels aren’t perfectly aligned. They’re each set in slightly different directions, creating tremendous friction. And it costs you the race.
Racing cars isn’t unlike the race to market leadership. You need a great product (car). A winning team (crew). Funding from supportive investors (fuel). And spades of experience. But if your competitors have those things, too, who makes it across the finish line first?
The company with a fully-aligned sales organization, marching in the same direction. Let me explain.
Market-leading companies have an underestimated trait in common: Organization-wide sales consistency.
Their sales teams execute the same selling motions, messaging, and call structures, without much deviation from rep to rep. Most sales teams don’t enjoy such consistency. There’s usually a wide variety of haphazard selling approaches from rep to rep. This “delta” of inconsistent selling behaviors creates a bell curve of quota attainment:
In that scenario, everyone is “figuring things out on their own.” The top 10-20% figure it out and enjoy massive overachievement. But their stellar performance is canceled out by everyone else who hasn’t cracked the code, leaving the team at break-even overall.
Market-leading companies are different. Their selling motions, messages, and call structures are adopted across the team. As a result, they’re crushing it with a performance curve that looks more like this:
They have more top producers. They get higher quota attainment from their “middle of the pack” producers. And they have fewer low producers. Having consistent selling behaviors from rep to rep accelerates growth.
Erratic behavior, on the other hand, introduces friction and unpredictability into your revenue machine. It’s like flooring a racecar with the wheels all pointed in slightly different directions. Instead of deals moving smoothly from first call to close as if they’re going through a predictable production line, they’re thrown into a violent tornado. Few leads make it out the other side as revenue. Most of them are flung by the friction to a dark corner somewhere.
Now for my favorite part: supporting all of this with data. Our team at Gong.io analyzed more than 2,000,000 sales call recordings from a few hundred companies. The calls in this data set were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with AI to identify selling motions, call structures, sales messaging, and much more.
Of the companies in this data set, 17 are described as clear market leaders.*
After analyzing the data, here’s the main thing we learned from market-leading companies: Their sales teams have much more consistent selling behaviors from rep to rep.
In other words, they are dependable in their selling motions, their messaging, and their call structures. That’s important because it leads to a much smaller gap in quota attainment between their top producers and their “middle-of-the-pack” producers.
They have more reps meeting or exceeding full quota.
Let’s dig into some of the data we unearthed to illustrate what I’m talking about. Check out the rate of question asking in market-leading sales organizations. Top and average sellers both spread their questions fairly evenly across their sales calls:
It’s hard to identify a crisp difference between the two groups because both of them behave fairly consistently.
Now, look at the rate of question asking in companies that were not market leaders:
That’s a crisp difference.
Disparities like this destroy predictability in your sales machine, especially when they compound over many sales behaviors.
The top producers at these companies are on a totally different plane than the average sellers. That is less a testament to the top producers’ greatness and more a testament to the average reps’ erratic execution.
Let’s look at another insight from our analysis of call structures. Our AI has identified five segments of a typical sales call:
It looks something like this:
The differences in how top producers and average producers at market-leading companies flow through these segments are negligible. There’s less than half a standard deviation in difference. However, in non-market-leading companies, the call structures vary widely. Individual reps spend unpredictable amounts of time on discovery, pitch, etc. which occur at inconsistent points in the call.
Here’s one more data point that illustrates what I’m saying. Top and average producers at market-leading companies mostly deploy similar sales messaging. Here’s a breakdown of messaging themes each group discusses in their intro sales meeting:
Sure, there’s some variation, but not much. Especially when you compare how wide the messaging gaps are in non-leading companies
Top and average producers are talking about totally different things. This is a living nightmare in which every sales rep makes up their own questionable narrative. Individuals “do their own thing,” whether they’re a top-notch seller, average, or about to be fired. But in winning companies, the differences in reps’ behaviors are marginal. This consistency is the type of stuff that launches you into market leadership. The kind of thing you tell your grandchildren about one day. While vacationing at your villa on a private beach, piña colada in hand.
Here’s the point I want you to take away from this post:
If you have a wide gap between your top sellers and the rest of your team in terms of:
Then you have a stubborn “emergency brake” on your revenue growth. You may have cracked the code in terms of your product, your market, your team, and everything else. But if your sales team is all over the map, you’ll be pegged low in your industry’s pecking order. And you’ll stay there.
On the other side of this coin, consistency in sales motions, messaging, and call structure across your sales team unleashes growth. It’s like taking the emergency brake off while driving a Porsche 991 Stinger (or the exotic sports car of your choice).
The post This “Unfair” Advantage Separates Top-Notch Sales Teams from The Rest appeared first on OpenView Labs.
Crafting the perfect B2B cold sales email is both an art and a science. They must include a compelling subject line and engaging message all within a skimmable length — but writing cold emails is not always as easy as it sounds. Balancing a friendly tone with getting to the point can be tricky. Crafting a CTA that is inviting and not forceful takes skill.
Luckily, you won't have to figure it out on your own. In this piece, I’ll share expert tips on best practices, templates to use, and what not to write in your next cold email to give you the confidence to write attention-grabbing emails that prospects want to read.
Editor's note: This post contains an excerpt from the book The Predictable Revenue Guide to Tripling Your Sales, and is published here with permission.
![Download Now: 25 Sales Email Templates [Free Access]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/be67aa79-8dbe-4938-8256-fdf195247a9c.png)
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A pain point is something your prospect is consistently struggling with. Pain points can range from unmet needs on the individual level to major problems plaguing an entire company.
The best way to uncover these pain points is through research. I recommend doing this before anything else in your process, as it impacts every element of what you’ll include in your email, from the keywords you use in your subject line to the unique offer you present.
Bruno Gavino, Founder and CEO of CodeDesign, says he always takes the time to research before reaching out. He said, “Before writing a cold email, I conduct thorough research on the potential client's business, industry trends, and even their competitors. This allows me to understand their specific needs, challenges, and opportunities.”
Once he’s uncovered their key pain points, he tailors his emails to speak directly to the recipient's pain points, and how his offer is a direct solution. He adds, “This customization shows the recipient that I have a genuine interest in their success and am not just sending a generic sales pitch.”
And, directly tailoring email content to pain points builds trust and shows that you take recipients seriously.
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“Having spent a decade in sales, I’ve realized the importance of unique approaches when crafting cold emails. It all begins with prioritizing subject lines that capture attention, address specific problems, and offer value to recipients,” says Virag Shah, Vice President of Sales at NamanHR.
This makes sense to me — your subject line is your gatekeeper. I’d recommend crafting and testing different subject lines to create an exciting but credible (not spammy or sales-y) subject line that intrigues recipients.
Your subject line should also be compelling and informative to pique the recipient's interest in the body of the email — and research the prospect so the subject line is personalized to them.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s AI content writer to generate engaging subject lines for your cold emails.
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When you’ve researched your recipient and their specific pain points, you’ll know the key value points to call out in your email to help you stand out the most.
This is what Bhavik Sarkhedi, CMO of Write Right, does: “We succinctly articulate the unique benefits of our services. For instance, if the prospect's industry suffers from poor content engagement, we highlight how our SEO-optimized content can increase visibility and engagement rates.”
Another great way to convey value is social proof and past successes with other clients. It proves your offer is realistic and attainable, and including numbers and statistics makes it even more exciting.
One of your biggest barriers to selling is risk. No one wants to be the first customer and work with a company without credibility or experience. Mentioning one of your customers and the results you delivered to them makes you less of a risk.
Your current clients are the best form of proof that you have. You can attach case studies to show recipients what they can expect from going with your offer. . A compelling example can leave your prospect more inclined to work with you.
Matt Little, Director and Entrepreneur at Festoon House, has a unique strategy for the social proof he uses: “The second weapon in my arsenal is social proof with a twist. Yes, testimonials are great, but everyone uses them. I go the extra mile and find a relevant industry influencer who's a happy customer.”
He uses lines like “Did you see [Influencer Name]’s recent article praising [Your Product]? They mentioned how it helped them achieve [Specific Result]” because a name drop of a trusted source builds credibility, shows results, and “Positions your product as the secret weapon of the ‘cool kids.’”
A subject line can inspire me to click on an email, but my interest will fall off if the content is the length of a short blog post.
You can avoid someone clicking out of your email by keeping your initial cold outreach short and sweet. The faster a prospect understands what they’ll gain from you, the more likely you are to inspire a conversion or reply.
Focus on briefly explaining how your offer addresses their pain points and helps them succeed, and end with a CTA (more on that below) that establishes the next steps for those genuinely interested. Also, avoid jargon and any fluff that distracts from the value you want to convey.
You want to make sure your email feels human. When you're too formal, you sound stiff and like a salesperson rather than a person-person. Avoid stuffing your email with marketing cliches and buzzwords. Instead, humanize your approach and write in a way that feels like you.
Kevin D’Arcy, CEO of ThinkFuel, told me you can show personality in your cold emails with a bit of humor. He said, “Humor is a great way to open the door and pique interest. Even a sprinkle of clever sarcasm can make your email stand out — just keep it light and clear.”
Yuvraj Pratap, Founder and CEO of Supplement Launchpad, says, “In a sea of standard, formal emails, a dash of humor can be a refreshing change.”
If you use humor, Pratap says that the catch is to be subtle and appropriate. In short, you risk turning a lead away if you’re cracking jokes and being too informal. He said, “Humor should be subtle and appropriate. It's not about cracking jokes but more about lightening the tone and humanizing your approach…humor should enhance your message, not distract from it. Always ensure that the main purpose of your email remains clear and compelling.
Personalization is the name of the game. Nearly a quarter of sales professionals told us that the biggest change in the sales field is that personalization is much more important.
This makes sense to me, especially with cold emails — the more aligned and relevant your content is to recipients' interests, the more likely you are to build interest and inspire follow-up.
Personalizing your emails shouldn’t be too challenging if you've already researched your targets. You don’t need to know everything about who you’re emailing, but, at minimum, you should be able to address them by name and call out their unique pain points.
If it makes sense with the context of your email, you can include unique details that relate directly to the recipient, recent press or media coverage, or even a shared interest.
Whatever you choose to say, personalizing your outreach shows that you’re invested in their specific needs and not simply pasting their name into a canned template you’ll send to 25 other leads.
Picture this: your engaging subject line inspired a click. Your opener and value proposition inspire thoughts of “Hey, maybe this is a worthwhile offer!”
The reader reaches the end of your email and is ready to learn next steps, but you sign off and say bye. Your prospect is left confused because you piqued their interest.
That sounds like the opposite of what you want. Reduce the chances of this happening to you by including clear and actionable CTAs in your emails so recipients know the exact next step you want them to take.
For example, if you want them to book a meeting, schedule a call, or even just reply to the email — let them know that that’s what you want.
Make sure to take the extra time and set up a professional email signature. This helps you stand out among dozens of other cold sales emails recipients read through every so often.
Including additional contact details here, like links to your social accounts and website, is another great idea. You give recipients the chance to learn more about you and familiarize themselves with your company’s product or service — it can make all the difference between getting a response and not.
Having your job position, company logo, and profile picture in your signature also helps you appear more trustworthy.
This is a unique tip, but Patrick Beltran, Marketing Director at Ardoz Digital, says that using a P.S. is one of his most effective cold email strategies.
To do it yourself, he says to include a P.S. after your email signature. In it, you can summarize the key message of your email content, point out key features, give more details about your CTA, or even inspire urgency with a limited-time promotion.
He says, “In my experience, this is a powerful way to capture the reader's attention and reinforce the main point of the email…Incorporating a P.S. in a cold email allows us to highlight the most crucial elements of our message, boosting the chances that the recipient will respond as we hope.”
If you use Beltran’s tip, he says to ensure your P.S. is concise and direct. Introducing new information at the actual bottom of your email can distract from your message.
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Hello [Prospect Name],
I have an idea that I can explain in 10 minutes that can get [company] its next 100 best customers.
I recently used this idea to help our client [SaaS company/competitor] almost triple their monthly run rate.
[First name], let's schedule a quick 10-minute call so I can share the idea with you. When works best for you?
- [Your Name]
The results of this email template speak for themselves:
When to Use This Cold Email Template: Use this template when you want to quickly share your value proposition and let prospects know what’s in it for them.
Why does this sales email template work well when others don't? It feels human.
The offer is intriguing without being pushy. The copy has the basic format and tone of an email you could send to your mom or best friend. The salesperson’s "idea" makes the email less aggressive and aligns with where the recipient is at the beginning of their buyer's journey.
You’re also backing up your claims with evidence from other clients.
Hi [First Name],
Quick question: Who handles your team's marketing budget at [Prospect's Company]? They'll want to look into this marketing tool before the end of the quarter — it could help the team hit those lead KPIs in just a few weeks and save your business (and your customers) a lot of money doing it.
I know you're busy, so I won't get into the details of how [product]works right now. But I do want to highlight the benefits we see consistently with our clients:
Some of our top clients include [X client, Y client, and Z client].
I want [Prospect's Company] to join this list.
If you are the appropriate person to speak with, what does your calendar look like this week? If not, who would benefit most from this conversation?
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Use this cold email template when you can’t find a clear point of contact for your request.
This email template works because it clearly states the purpose of your outreach and includes information about previous clients to demonstrate your credibility.
Most importantly, you’re requesting contact information for the person best suited to handle your request, and you’re giving just enough information for the recipient to figure out exactly who to put you in contact with, if not them.
Hi [First Name],
Just left a quick message at the office for you. I chuckled a little bit when I got an automated email this morning from your predecessor, [NAME OF PREDECESSOR] who we worked with briefly, and before him, [OTHER FORMER COWORKER NAME], who we worked with as well ...
First and foremost, congrats on coming into this new role! I'm sure you've got a lot going on - so this conversation might be timely or not. If you're stressed, this is my go-to.
My role here is working with businesses (in the area) on how they can effectively and efficiently drive more traffic to their website, increase conversions, and nurture leads into customers.
How has your first month kicked off so far?
- [Your Name]
Use this template to establish rapport with a new point of contact at a company you’ve already done business with.
Caroline Ostrander, a HubSpot Senior Customer Onboarding Manager, used this template after researching the prospect and finding a rapport-building opportunity. Not only was she able to relate to the prospect regarding the new job, but she also mentioned their co-worker's names and referenced her other attempts to help their company.
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I saw you recently downloaded a whitepaper about X. I've worked with similar companies in [Y field/industry] and I thought I'd reach out.
[Prospect's Company] looks like a great fit for [Your Company] and I'd love to understand what your goals are for this year.
We often help companies like yours grow with:
If you'd like to learn how [Your Company] can help you reach [X goals], feel free to book time on my calendar here: [Meeting Link]
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Use this cold template to nail down the value you’ll provide the recipient.
What do you have to offer the prospect?
I like that this template lets you show exactly what you offer by briefly explaining benefits. This B2B email template also helps you engage and suggest a time to connect in an inviting way.
Hello Dr. [Last Name],
I'm following up on my previous email with a free tool I think you'll love.
It's a brand analysis survey I created just for you (literally, your name is on it), that will help you understand how your practice is different from other doctors in [insert city they're in].
Click here to begin the brand differentiation analysis survey. When we speak, I'll benchmark your responses against the top physician brands around the country.
I'm sharing my calendar (click here) so we can schedule a convenient time to discuss.
Enjoy your weekend,
[Your Name]
Use this template to nurture leads with a relevant and valuable offer to pique their interest.
This email tests the tried and true reciprocity principle — you’re giving your prospect something helpful and useful to them with the goal of having the favor returned.
The convenient CTA at the end of the email makes it easy for the prospect to take action as soon as they can access the free tool.
Hi [First Name],
I'd like to introduce myself as your resource here at [Your Company Name]. I work with businesses in the [software, healthcare, nonprofit, education, etc.] industry, and noticed you visited our website in the past.
This inspired me to spend a few minutes on [Prospect's Company] website to learn more about how you're approaching [X strategy for customer service, sales, marketing, etc.]. I noticed some areas of opportunity and decided to reach out to you directly.
[Your Company] is working with similar companies in your industry, such as [X Company Name], to help them accomplish [Y goals], and giving them the [Z tools/solutions] to succeed.
Do you have 15 minutes to discuss [Prospect's Company] this week?
If so, you can book time directly onto my calendar here: [Meetings Link]
Looking forward to meeting,
[Your Name]
Use this email template when you’re looking to book an initial introductory meeting with a lead.
This template works because it helps you stand out with the strategic yet subtle name-drop that lends social proof to you and the company you represent.
Hi [First Name],
Sorry I missed you on the phone today, I was calling because…. (leave a one sentence reason for your call, or the name of the referral / event that introduced you)
In my voice mail, I mentioned that I will call you back on [DATE] at [TIME] and of course you can always reach me before then at [YOUR PHONE NUMBER].
I look forward to connecting.
Cheers,
[Your Name]
Use this cold email to supplement a voicemail you’ve already left.
An email and phone call combo can yield big results in moving a prospect through your pipeline.
This email template works because it’s a brief and friendly follow-up to let the prospect know you're actively attempting to get in touch with them and that your emails aren't just coming from an automated system with no consideration for the person on the receiving end.
Also, not everyone listens to their voicemails, so you’re giving non-listeners the same information over email.
[First Name],
Hope all is well. I had put a reminder in to check-in with you to see how things were going with the [NAME OF CAMPAIGN] initiatives. We had discussed a potential partnership a few months ago, but hadn't been able to formalize our recommended engagement.
We would love to catch up and see if there are any opportunities to engage with you and help with your [DEPARTMENT (eCommerce, marketing, etc.) ] strategy. Let me know if you have some time to reconnect this week and catch up business owner to business owner on where you see things and I can provide some ideas on where we can help.
Look forward to hearing from you.
[Your name]
When you’re trying to gauge if a prospect is still interested in an offer.
As a salesperson, you want your clients to know that your attention is focused on them and their needs, and this template works because it lets you do that with personalization. You’re telling the recipient that you’re thinking about them, you remember their needs, and giving them a renewed opportunity to move forward.
Hi [First Name],
I'm sorry we haven't been able to connect. Again, I know how hectic things can get at work and with family.
I would be available for a call during [YOUR AVAILABILITY OPTION 1] or [YOUR AVAILABILITY OPTION 2] if that's easier for you. I don't mean to bug you, but I do want to help you manage your team so you can exceed your goals of [GOAL].
To schedule a time on my calendar, just click here: [CALENDAR LINK]
Best,
[Your Name]
to follow up with a prospect that you know has a busy schedule.
This follow-up email works because it reassures the prospect that you're not trying to be pushy. Instead, it shows that you're willing to meet them where they're at, even if it means scheduling a call outside your availability.
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Because I work so much within the [Industry Name] industry, I constantly follow industry news. Recently I noticed that you've [company accomplishment]. Congratulations!
Usually when that happens, [business issue] becomes a priority. That's why I thought you might be interested in finding out how we helped [well-known company or competitor] get going quickly in their new direction — without any of the typical cookie cutter approaches to marketing.
Check out our previous campaigns here — [LINK TO RELEVANT CASE STUDY].
If you'd like to learn more, let's set up a quick call. Schedule 15 minutes here on my calendar: [CALENDAR LINK].
Regards,
[Your Name]
P.S. If you're not the right person to speak with, who do you recommend I talk to?
When you want to initiate a conversation and flex your skills.
What makes this email effective is that it shows that you have a pulse on what's happening in your industry and are genuinely interested in your prospect's success. You also establish credibility with your prospect by showcasing your knowledge — and how it has helped other clients with the same problem.
Hi [Name],
I am writing in hopes of finding the appropriate person who handles [Department (i.e. media)]? I also wrote to [Person X, Person Y, AND Person Z] in that pursuit. If it makes sense to talk, let me know how your calendar looks.
If you are the appropriate person to speak with, what does your calendar look like? If not, who do you recommend I talk to?
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Use this template to land a meeting with an ideal prospect.
Keeping it short and sweet, this email template immediately states the purpose and details what you want the prospect to do. It also allows them to pass the information along to the correct person.
Hi [First Name],
I've tried to reach you a few times to go over suggestions on improving [Business Needs], but haven't heard back which tells me one of three things:
Please let me know which one as I'm starting to worry!
[Your Name]
To re-start contact with an unresponsive prospect.
Let’s face it: being left on read comes with the territory of sales. This email template helps you navigate being ignored by a prospect by reminding them of your intentions with a humorous, low-stakes sign-off.
Hi [First Name],
Many of our enterprise customers like [Competitor] have huge sites and multiple domains, making it tough for them to manage their [Business Need] effectively.
After they started working with [Your Company], [Competitor] was able to use [Your Product] to improve [pain point].
The [X results] they achieved through their work with [Your Company] also drove over Y% growth in [clicks, followers, sales, etc.].
Want to dig in further to see how our [Your Product] can benefit your organization? I'd love to chat over a 15 minute call to share more.
You can simply reply to this email and I'll set up a time for us to chat!
Chat soon,
[Your Name]
When you want to let a prospect know you understand their needs.
This email is appealing because it provides an example of how the product helped solve a problem for another customer, establishing credibility with the prospect. Then, it gives them the opportunity to reply and learn more about how the product could benefit them.
Hi [First Name],
This is [Your Name] from [Company]. I noticed that you [downloaded/watched/listened to] our [piece of content], [link].
I just wanted to make sure you got the [piece of content] and to see if you had any questions. There is a lot of information in there, and I thought I might be able to help you find the answers you are looking for.
Let me know if you would like to schedule some time to chat.
Thanks,
[Your Name]
To engage with a prospect you know is interested and engaged with your website content.
This template works because it builds on the interest the recipient has already expressed in their engagement with your website. It offers a segue into establishing rapport and helps you flex your expertise in offering to help them get the most out of your content.
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If you have a targeted lead list and your response rate is less than 10% with personalized emails, your emails could use some work. Let's say a B2B company comes to you for help with their emails. They offer an incredible service for the SaaS space but aren't very successful with their sales emails. Their response rates are below 2%.
After about a month of working together, you create a single sales email template that gets them more than 16 new customers. Let's dig into what was wrong with their previous approach by touching on some of the reasons why emails fail.
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With this in mind, stick to one idea in your email. All of the copy you write should support that one idea, whether you're piquing their interest, adding value, making a persuasive claim, or providing proof to support your claims.
Generally speaking, your buyers don't want to read a mini-ebook in an email if they don't already know who you are. You first have to provide value and establish trust before you can earn their attention.
With that in mind, structure your cold sales email in a way that clearly and concisely communicates the following:
A caveat:
There's not a hard word or character count that makes for a successful sales email. Email copy should be as long as it needs to be to achieve your desired outcome. With this in mind, sales email length can vary according to what your buyers' preferences are, what their intent is, and how much engagement you can get out of your copy.
Long-form sales emails do have their place. For example, Close.com states that they use a long-form sales email because their subscriber engagement rate is high enough to warrant one.
However, in many "cold" emailing situations, you may not have that high level of engagement to justify it.
Just like in real life, too much "me, me, me" can be grating. Don't let your email talk way too much about why you're awesome, especially if you're reaching out cold. Instead of talking about yourself, focus on helping the prospect overcome a problem they have.
Overly fancy email templates can make your emails seem impersonal and spammy — even with customization. No one thinks they're getting a personal email if it's too pretty.
I know that sending a sales outreach email can be nerve-wracking. It’s easy to get caught up in concern for what the person on the other end thinks of you.
If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember the name of any salesperson that has sent me a cold email or any salesperson who sent repeated emails.
If a prospect doesn't know you, then they know they're probably being sold to. Soft language just beats around the bush and undercuts your message, which defeats the purpose of a cold email.
Instead, use phrases that clearly convey value, get to the point, and call the prospect directly to action.
If they're not interested, they wouldn't do it anyway. Softer language won't change that fact.
It's a mistake not to include a human element in your emails. Cold, rigid emails that do nothing but harp on generic marketing points are a surefire way to turn prospects off.
Instead, rely on what you know about your buyer persona and create personalized messaging that asks them questions and speaks directly to their pains.
Avoid typing like this!!! It can be seen as spammy and unprofessional!!!
A well-placed emoji or exclamation mark can add a little flavor to copy, but the caveat there is "well-placed."
Instead, I recommend being as straightforward as you can. Be sparse with your emojis, bolding, and italics, too.
Speaking of spammy, sending messages with too many grammer or spelling mistake are a good way to look sloppy (haha). At worst, it erodes trust and your authority and professionalism into question.
Below, you'll find a template library you can use to turn your email game around (plus a number of additional templates for inspiration).
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Other opportunities call for cold emails, and below, I’ll share more cold email templates for different use cases.
Hi [Recipient's Name],
I'm [Your Name], and I admire the content on [Recipient's Website]. I specialize in [Your Niche] and have successfully contributed to platforms like [Link to Previous Work 1] and [Link to Previous Work 2].
I'd love to offer a guest post on [Topic Idea 1], [Topic Idea 2], or explore topics aligned with your audience. Let me know if you're interested, and I can provide more details and samples.
Looking forward to a potential collaboration!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Contact Information]
To land guest blogging opportunities.
I like this email template because it's a concise introduction to you and your skillset, and it establishes credibility and expertise by linking to previous work. You’re also offering topic ideas as a proactive CTA to drive engagement.
Hi [Recipient's Name],
I'm [Your Name] from [Your Company]. We’re a [product category] company that helps [customer base] with [purpose of your product].
I [read, consume, related word] your content on [outlet or publication name], and I’m reaching out to see if you’d be interested in a story about [product or offer you’re seeking press for]. I think it’s a great fit for your audience because [explain how your offer or product fits].
[We are or I am] available for interviews and to provide additional insights, and you can check out our website here [hyperlink] and watch product videos here [hyperlink].
Let me know if this is of interest to you. Thanks so much for your time and consideration!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Contact Information]
To pitch your offers’ compelling story to media outlets, publications, or even journalists for press coverage.
This template works because it leaves little guesswork for the recipient about why it would make sense to give you coverage. It outlines exactly what you want covered, how it relates to the recipient and demonstrates your readiness for media interviews.
It’s also professional and formal, as a more conversational tone is not a good strategy for press requests.
Hey [Recipient's Name],
My name is [Your Name], and I work [at/for] [brand or company]. I've been following you on [channel] and really love your [type of content] about [topic].
At [brand or company], we [your offer and unique value proposition]. I'd love to send you our [relevant product or service] so you can try it and share some feedback with your audience. I think you'll appreciate how it [how your offer will meet their needs].
Let me know if you're interested. Thanks!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Position and Company]
Use this cold email template when you want to offer your product or service in exchange for a review and brand visibility.
This template works because it establishes a personal connection and highlights a value proposition that could generate excitement for this exclusive opportunity.
Hi [Recipient's Name],
I’m [your name] from [company or brand], and I’ve been a fan of you for a while. I really enjoy [specifics of what you like].
I think there’s great potential for us to collaborate. Combining our [strengths you share] and expertise in [relevant topic area], we can complement each other's strengths and do something truly impactful for both our audiences. Here’s a few of my ideas:
I’d love to schedule a [next step] and dive deeper into how we’d work together. Let me know if you want to join forces.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Contact Information]
Use this cold email template to reach out to collaborators for mutually beneficial opportunities.
This template works because it uses a friendly and approachable tone and highlights the relevance of a collaboration between you and the recipient. It also presents a clear CTA to initiate further discussion of the brief ideas you’ve shared.
Hi [Recipient's Name],
I hope you’re well! My name is [You’re Name] and I’m a recruiter [at/for] [company or brand name]. I’m reaching out because I’m hiring for [position], who will play a key role in [position goal].
I came across your [] on [channel], and your experience with [recipients past experience] and I wanted to see if you might be interested in learning more about the role.
If you’re interested, here’s a link to my calendar where you can schedule a [next step]. This would be a no-strings attached exploratory call to learn more about the role and your interest.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Company and Position]
Use this cold email template when you’ve identified a qualified candidate for a role you’re recruiting for.
This email template works because it gets rid of any long-winded explanations of company details and role expectations for something more relevant: a direct explanation of how the potential candidate relates to the role.
It also offers a casual form of follow-up, letting the recipient know that they won’t be jumping into a job interview if they schedule a meeting.
Crafting the perfect cold sales email can be tricky, but these tips and templates are a great place to start. Above all else, remember to keep it simple and helpful. By understanding exactly what not to include in your sales email, you'll be able to cut through the noise in your prospect's inbox and truly stand out as a solutions-oriented partner to their business.
Editor's note: This post was originally published on March 7, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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As a sales professional, you’ve seen firsthand that sales is changing dramatically.
Your buyers expect personalized experiences and can see through cold or impersonal outreach. You’re also navigating a more complex buying process that involves more people and distributed decision-making. Technology, and particularly sales automation, is bringing new levels of productivity to selling — but in today’s climate, productivity alone isn’t enough.
Relationships, built on a foundation of trust, are now more crucial to sales than ever. Sales professionals, particularly those from younger generations, are embracing new strategies such as marketing and sales orchestration, a sales approach that involves tighter collaboration between marketing and sales departments to better target prospects. Today’s top-performing salespeople are working more closely with their marketing teams to target leads and are closing more deals as a result.
At LinkedIn, we’re closely following the ways in which the modern sales landscape is changing. To be successful in modern sales, you need to build relationships at scale by tapping into advanced sales technology to engage with the right contacts faster, while fostering human connection and trust.
Our third annual LinkedIn State of Sales report explores this evolution from the point of view of B2B sales professionals and decision makers. Our research revealed some notable trends in the technologies and strategies that set top-performing salespeople apart, as well as the considerations that are most important to buyers today.
Read on for our biggest takeaways in this year’s State of Sales report.
Technology is helping sales professionals extend their impact by automating administrative tasks and gathering intelligence about prospects. It’s no wonder that since our first survey in 2016, planned investment in sales technology has grown by 53 percent.
While technology plays a significant role in modern sales, decision makers still want their purchasing experiences to feel personalized. They’re more likely to engage with sales professionals who show they understand their needs and take a tailored approach to selling.
As more businesses pursue marketing and sales orchestration, sales professionals are starting to work more closely with marketing to target leads.
Top sales performers (those who exceed their sales target by at least 25 percent) work more closely with marketing. On a scale from one to 10, 57 percent of top sellers rank the importance of working with marketing at an eight or higher, compared to 41 percent of their average counterparts.
However, data silos still stand in the way of successful orchestration. Just 20 percent of salespeople say there’s a significant overlap in the data used by marketing and sales to target leads. This misalignment could explain why only 22 percent of sales professionals say leads from marketing are excellent.
As we saw in our 2017 State of Sales survey, millennials (ages 21-38) tend to be early adopters of new strategies and technologies. While sales professionals across generations plan to spend more time in 2018 using sales technology than last year, millennials were the highest at 62 percent, compared to 56 percent of both Generation X and Baby Boomers.
Millennials are also more likely to bring together different tools as part of their modern sales technology stack:
Since our first survey in 2016, we’ve seen that trust consistently influences deals. Sales professionals rank trust as the No. 1 factor in closing deals (40 percent) — above ROI and price. Fifty-one percent of decision makers rank trust as the top factor they desire in a salesperson.
Professional and social networks are helping sales professionals better understand buyers’ needs and establish trust early on:
While our profession is quickly changing, a few constants remain. Relationships are still the heart and soul of sales, and the most successful relationships are built on a foundation of mutual trust.
Technology is no substitute for human connection, and our State of Sales report shows that when used strategically, it can help bring you closer to who you want to reach. This approach, combined with marketing and sales orchestration, will help you better target prospects, personalize their experiences and build long-lasting relationships at scale.
To read the full report, download The LinkedIn 2018 State of Sales Report.
LinkedIn research recently found that 60% of sales and marketing professionals believe that sales and marketing alignment can boost revenue. So why do so many companies still suffer from the consequences of misaligned sales and marketing departments?
The statistics below from our new “The Art of Winning” guide show not only the clear downside of sales and marketing organizations that are not aligned but also the depth of this misalignment. The numbers are downright alarming:
Because of this widespread misalignment, the buying process is often broken. Does this scenario below sound familiar?
A prospect receives an enticing email offer to try a new software application for free. This well-targeted prospect contacts a sales rep at the software company, but, due to misalignment, this rep has not heard about the promotion. After some discussion, the sales rep does find a workaround to offer the software at a trial discount — but not for free. The prospect, frustrated, declines the discount and asks to be removed from all future emails and other communications from this software company. Nonetheless, the emails and calls keep coming, causing the prospect’s frustration to boil over into anger and an insistence that he will never do business with your company.
What’s even more absurd about this scenario is that marketing — which generated a strong lead — will likely see this interaction as a success. Similarly, sales might view the situation as a potential step forward: The prospect isn’t ready to buy yet, so he was placed back into the nurture stream.
So what’s to be done? Our new “The Art of Winning” guide identifies the areas where alignment between sales and marketing breaks down — and then takes the extra step of prescribing solutions that bring about true sales and marketing orchestration.
Here are three critical areas where sales and marketing alignment falls short — but can be fixed.
Both marketing and sales have embraced automation. Marketing uses marketing automation tools and sales uses customer relationship management tools. But oftentimes, these technologies operate completely independent of each other. In a world where the gold standard of customer experience is Netflix and Amazon, which provides a completely personalized experience for each customer based on past interactions, companies with misaligned sales and marketing departments are failing far short.
Ultimately, automating a bad experience leads to alienation of your prospects and customers at scale. The key to solving this issue is for both marketing and sales to take a holistic view of the customer journey from start to finish.
First, marketing and sales consult different data sets. Marketing relies on marketing automation and data management platforms; sales relies on customer relationship management platforms.
Second, marketing and sales look at customers differently. For reach, marketing necessarily looks at the customer in broad demographic tranches. To close deals, sales looks at the customer on a more granular and individual level.
Third, marketing and sales work in parallel, not in coordination. The two departments aren’t even aligned on metaphors with marketing talking funnels and sales talking pipelines.
The good news is these divides aren’t impossible to overcome by focusing on a unified view of the buyer’s journey. When marketing and sales do align, companies generate 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts.
Marketing looks at prospects through the lens of its marketing automation system. At the same time, sales looks at prospects through the lens of its CRM system. These two systems work together to provide an efficient way to move leads from marketing to sales — but there’s much more to alignment than an efficient hand off.
To generate improved alignment, marketing and sales should stop thinking about funnels and pipelines. Instead, they should focus on the buyer journey and on working together to deliver the right content and actions at every step on this journey.
For the ultimate resource on how to align your sales and marketing efforts for a seamless customer experience, download The Art of Winning eBook today.
Let’s face it: The success of your marketing campaign relies heavily on how effectively you can get people to do something. Whether it’s to download a guide, join a webinar, or buy a product. Making irresistible CTAs not only encourages user engagement, but it also generates leads, cultivates customer relationships, and increases your website’s conversion rate. And with how internet-savvy the netizens have become, simply creating a site or a landing page that “looks good” just won’t cut it anymore. If you want to influence them to take action on your offers, you need to have a compelling CTA.
In this post, we’ll be taking a closer look at how you can create CTAs for your website that visitors can’t ignore. Ready? Let’s get to it.
More than having a good-looking website, online business owners should place more value on creating a better experience for digital consumers. Why?
Consider the following statistics:
As a start, you can check your website’s current page-loading performance using GTMetrix:
With that said, it pays to invest in making sure your pages load fast, regardless of what device people will be using, the volume of site traffic, and other factors.
And here are some ways you can accomplish that:
If you’re not familiar with how a content delivery network works, it’s basically a service that delivers your page content faster by fetching data from the nearest server to the user. This reduces latency, which is the time it takes for data to travel from server to the ‘end user’.
Not everyone who dives into digital marketing is well-equipped for the task from the get-go. Sometimes, a lot of research is required, especially if the goal is to understand the minds of online users.
One marketing discipline every agency should invest in researching is visual marketing.
You can easily harness the power of visuals in your marketing material by creating ad banners, email sign up forms, or blog posts that contain visually appealing design and colors.
The focus is more on providing images, videos, and other multimedia to attract people’s attention. Just don’t overdo it or you’ll risk making your website cluttered.
You can use online photo-editing tools like Canva or BeFunky if you’d like to try your hand at creating engaging images:
For creating stunning infographics, we also suggest using Venngage. They offer a wide range of design templates that you can tweak to suit your specific content needs.
Infographics are increasing in popularity, and many agencies use them to explain services, share insights, and teach people how to do specific things. Here are some helpful tips about using CTA in infographics you should know about:
Venngage offers free infographic templates to use which lets users edit even with minimal knowledge in graphic design.
CTAs are, in essence, just a bunch of words strewn together that tell people to do something. But just using random works isn’t going to get you the results you want from site visitors.
There are CTA sentences or phrases that have continuously produced amazing results for agencies, and some of them are the following:
“Get Started Today”
“Sign up for FREE”
“View/Book a LIVE Demo”
“Contact Us Now”
“Learn More Here”
You may have noticed a pattern from the examples shared. They either create a sense of urgency or encourage people to act now or today. This encourages them to take action immediately, which is what you want.
And when you combine good design with a good choice of words, you’ll definitely end up with CTAs that are powerful and produces results. You can even include them in other aspects of your content marketing, such as in how to end an email, or in your email subject lines.
Just don’t forget to make the text the center of attraction, so people know exactly what it is you want them to do.
Combining The Three
Let’s summarize what we’ve covered in this post. Basically, the three things you need to focus on to increase CTA engagement from site users are:
Doing all three will change the face of your website for the better. You’ll end up with happier site visitors because you’ve done your part to give them the best experience. At the same time, your business benefits because they’re more likely to make a purchase or avail of a service.
And the great news is that these three things aren’t difficult to do. They also won’t take long to integrate into your business’ current development and marketing strategy.
Conclusion
It’s important to get each part right. Your business depends on it.
If you don’t think you have the necessary skills to implement the above-suggested changes yourself, we suggest hiring an expert. This may be a content writer who can create better landing page copy or a web designer who can take care of site optimization.
But make no mistake that investing the necessary resources to make these changes happen will reap amazing results, in the form of increased sales, higher leads, and better user engagement.
Just don’t forget to make adjustments if you think you could have done better. Test different fonts, colors, designs, and layouts. Sooner or later, you’ll find out which mix works best for your brand.
A quick google search for lead nurturing confirms what you probably already know, dear marketing friend: things are pretty bleak out there in terms of our overall efficiency. Marketers and salespeople alike are working toward the holy grail of a funnel full of hyper-qualified leads that drive unprecedented revenue, but it’s clear that somewhere along the way we’re getting off track.
When a google search reveals a heap of stats like these:
You can clearly see…
We have a problem here.
Sales and marketing today both work tirelessly to generate more leads to hit increasing revenue goals, but those leads aren’t translating into customers.
And that’s because what we’re calling a “sales-ready” lead today simply isn’t that.
Whether a lead came from marketing or sales, lazy recon. work and outdated nurture practices mean sales spends hours chasing leads that are uninterested, unqualified, and unlikely to convert.
If we’re doing our job as marketers, we are creating high quality content that positions our company as a thought leader, and seamlessly draws prospects into our orbit as they are unable to resist giving us their email address to access a new shiny eBook.
But we’ve gotten so good at creating quality content industry professionals will be interested in, that interest alone is no longer a viable signal of any real buying intent.
And the answer to the complex task of sussing out general interest from actual buying intent is better lead nurturing. In fact, Forrester reports that marketers see a 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured vs non-nurtured leads, and companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
Hard to argue with those numbers, right?
In an analysis of more than 2,200 companies, Harvard Business Review found that salespeople who attempted to reach leads within an hour of a conversion action were nearly seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who waited even one hour.
Hubspot also found specifically in terms of sales follow up calls, a prospect is 21 times more likely to become qualified when contacted within five minutes following conversion.
That’s not to say that rapid follow-up will translate to forcing a prospect who is simply interested into a buying process. However, driving towards “meaningful” conversations allows you to connect, continue to nurture, or disqualify and move on, without wasting your time.
Read more about the counter-intuitive benefits of disqualifying leads.
This underutilized practice can be incredibly effective when applied to this understanding of interest vs. buying intent.
Here you can see how Marketo segments behaviors into interest and intent categories for behavioral lead scoring.
This same concept can be applied to segmenting follow-up in different nurture tracks based on the likelihood a prospect will convert.
While this kind of behavioral scoring doesn’t account for the fact that if I attend two webinars my lead score could be the same as a buyer who has been trolling a pricing page for 15 minutes, segmenting nurtures based on engagement (or interest behaviors) from buying intent is particularly effective today.
In fact, by segmenting your contacts by behavior like this you can improve your email open rates by over 15%.
According to the Sales Performance Optimization study, 89% of companies that aligned sales and marketing lead generation efforts reported measurable increases in the number of leads that turned to opportunities as a result of continuous nurturing.
And it makes sense. Having a communal understanding of terms like MQL, SQL, and SAL means that marketing can focus on driving the leads that will help sales get over the finish line faster.
Additionally, well-aligned marketing and sales teams allow for faster, more seamless follow-up, which like we mentioned above, is critical for success in today’s environment.
A quality over quantity approach is the secret weapon of effective sales and marketing organizations in today’s buying environment. When the overwhelming majority of hard won leads don’t convert into opportunities, let alone customers, we need to do something different.
By focusing on smarter, modern lead nurturing practices that differentiate between interest and buying intent, marketers and salespeople alike can meet their goals.
Explore how interactive content can support your lead nurturing efforts in our guide!
Oh My God! I have the opportunity to speak! I’m going to be in front of a room full of people who are my perfect audience, my ideal clients, and I can’t wait for the opportunity to make an impact!
These are statements I hear in my world almost every single day. And then I watch as incredibly clever people get caught in prepping for the delivery, in ensuring they can squeeze value and knowledge into every single moment. And in the midst of wanting to squeeze every single moment, I watch these fabulously clever people descend into the detail and lose sight of what is most important.
The Big (Speaking) Rocks.
The Big (Speaking) Rocks are where your delivery is made or lost.
The Big (Speaking) Rocks are where you craft the ability to suspend reality for your audience for a moment in time.
The Big (Speaking) Rocks are the elements which take you from simply connecting with an audience to shifting them to where you want them to be.
The Big (Speaking) Rocks are:
1. Your single, clear message.
2. The gift to your audience – what it is, and why it is important to them.
3. The stories which you will use to move them in beside you, to trust you, which are shaped on purpose.
4. The takeaways and key actions the audience can use to change their world immediately should they choose to.
And you need to work on these as chunks.
1. Get the message and the gift to your audience absolutely crystal clear.
2. Choose the stories and shape them to ignite all the senses, speaking clearly to your message, your purpose.
3. Identify the key takeaways and building in actionable steps your audience can use straight away.
But what I consistently see with people just like you is you will nail the first big chunk. Usually the first story. And then, before you have even started working the second story through, you get caught in how to do the transition, the segue, between them, losing sight of the stories still to be captured and shaped to bring strength to your message.
You know you want your audience to get immense value, so you get clear on the first major takeaway. And then caught in the detail of how to move from the first to the second, to the third, before even fully fleshing out what those key takeaways are.
You are getting so caught in the detail, you forget the magic is in the big rocks.
1. Do the big rocks first.
2. Then sequence them.
3. Then do the transitions, the segues, and the closes – once you can see the magic and the segues open.
The same as an Executive Summary is written after the business report is done, the transitions, the segues, and the closes can only become clear and powerful after the big rocks have been brought to life, in full.
Originally published here.
This is already an AI-driven world regardless of Elon Musk’s fears, isn’t it? And the goal of each business today is to learn how to live with it and how to take advantage of the AI tech to achieve a successful digital transformation. Why is it critical?
IDC predicts AI corporate market will reach $57.6 billion in 2021, significantly more than the $12 billion spent last year. PwC estimates that in 2030 AI would contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy. This figure is higher than the current output of China and India combined. Furthermore, a recent Accenture report says AI will contribute £654 billion to the UK economy alone by 2035. And according to Accenture’s MD Vinod Patel, “a significant portion of that will be outsourced to third-party service providers. Increasingly, organizations are looking at external parties to drive innovation.”
In this article, I’m going to explore in what particular ways AI outsourcing will impact organizations’ digital transformation journey as well as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the months to come.
In an AI-driven environment, robotic process automation (RPA) is a major force behind the digital transformation. Tech giants like AT&T, IBM, Deloitte, and Dell are already adopting RPA at a head-spinning rate. Yesteryear, 16 case studies conducted by the London School of Economics demonstrated clearly that return on investment from using RPA could range between 30% and a staggering 200%. The 2017 ISG Automation Index Report states that 72% of companies will have adopted RPA by 2019. Moreover, as the research indicates further, IT operations will be the main area of its impact.
As an integral part of a larger AI concept, RPA is, in essence, the complete automation of routine, repetitive, and rule-based tasks such as:
In fact, RPA is capable of providing high-volume IT support and streamline financial and customer services as well as HR processes. Understandably, financial and manufacturing companies are pioneering its adoption, although other industries are catching up, tool. But, there’s one huge but to it! The total cost of implementation!
Introducing RPA is a very costly and resource-intensive endeavor. The cost is so high that even tech giants rely on third-party service providers. The reasons why enterprises choose not to develop their AI assets in-house are numerous, but they all boil down to the lack of resources such as time, money and expertise.
Today, like any other industry, IT outsourcing (ITO) is undergoing a major transformation with key focuses being shifted from pure software development/IT cost reduction and increased time to market to accessing hard-to-find tech expertise, gaining niche-specific and tribal knowledge, and sourcing innovative skills and approaches for building and developing in-house competencies.
Having turned from sci-fi to reality, AI is sure to transform every existing industry and vertical.
The smartest and the fastest ITO providers are already busy developing RPA offerings for their clients. And they are not just doing that to gain a competitive edge and stay ahead of the curve. They’re acting proactively and they tend to be ready when AI goes mainstream. They have to meet the rapidly growing market demand for industry-specific AI solutions, and the sooner they do it, the faster they’ll yield commercial results.
No secret that many enterprises today are facing infrastructure limitations: some of their critical operations run on legacy applications and hardware. For them, developing AI solutions in-house and deploying them on existing capacities would mean jeopardizing business continuity and disrupting workflow. On the other hand, replacing outsourced AI solutions, if they don’t meet expectations, is easier and better justified from a security standpoint.
With data analytics and machine learning experts demanding salaries and compensation packages that defy imagination, hiring a qualified professional could take months, if not years. Moreover, finding an employee with an industry-specific set of skills can be even harder. The demand for these specialists exceeds supply, while artificial intelligence outsourcing companies have access to talent pools worldwide.
For non-IT companies, educating their own employees to the level where they could develop complex AI tools would require investing time and money into something with a highly unpredictable outcome. An outsourcing model, with a dedicated development team working exclusively on crafting an AI solution tailored specifically to the organization’s unique needs, looks much more attractive.
For businesses, it’s ultimately more beneficial to focus on critical evaluation of their core processes — which of them could be painlessly automated, and, conversely, which cannot run without human supervision. Having this understanding is crucial before forging a partnership with an AI outsourcing provider.
The story of Vestas Wind Systems collaboration with a machine learning provider SirionLabs is a spectacular example of such a partnership. What started out as a tactical decision during an economic recession in 2015 brought 300% ROI to the Danish manufacturer of wind turbines during the first year of collaboration alone.
The company had SirionLabs leverage machine learning to manage contractual issues. “They can bring us those new technologies much faster and better than we could develop it ourselves,”— Vestas IT Leader Henrik Stefansen told Diginomica.
In fact, Stefansen estimated, developing such algorithms in-house would have required hiring 4 IT specialists.
“That’s probably one element that surprised me a little bit — how much energy I had to put into my own organization to get my own colleagues to work in these new processes,” — he said.
Commenting on the current state of AI outsourcing in Europe, Vladimir Potapenko, CEO and Co-Founder of an international outsourcing company 8allocate says:
“We see a growing demand for AI solutions outsourcing from many Western European companies. Driven by the lack and/or a very high cost of onshore AI developers and experts in machine learning, NLP and other AI-based technologies, many view outsourcing as their last resort.”
One of the UK’s leading content and media service providers has successfully launched a mobile platform similar to 9gag and Reddit. Their goal was to enhance platform monetization by increasing user loyalty, engagement, and responsiveness to CTAs. Using AI algorithms for data analytics was the most viable solution, so the company came to 8allocate with their NLP, text mining and deep learning outsourcing request.
As Vladimir told me, using offshore AI capacities, the client was able to increase revenue by 25% within just one year after deployment.
“But what’s even more important is the fact the company got a full-fledged AI and data science department offshore. From now on, they can always rely on their remote team to be the main “conductor” of long-term digital transformation,” concludes Vladimir.
Yet, the main reason why AI outsourcing is likely to thrive is AI’s double-edged potential: although it has great transformative power, it can bring business to ruin if implemented incorrectly. Enterprises have to pass through a tight bottleneck: not using RPA will push them out of competition, while failing to use it properly could seriously disrupt their business operations. AI outsourcing remains a reasonable alternative under these circumstances.
A recent IDC research claims that the constantly growing AI solutions market will exceed $52 billion in 2021. To have a good bite of the pie, ITO companies have to undergo a radical makeover by honing their AI skills and restructuring the services they provide. Today, enterprises in long-established partnerships with outsourcing companies increasingly demand that they provide RPA and reskill their experts to embrace innovations. If they don’t comply, clients are ready to opt for onshore plus RPA solutions, instead of sticking with a purely offshore model. They are also considering using robots over humans.
In fact, the entire ITO business model will have to be reinvented. As far as AI outsourcing is concerned, territorial price arbitrage will no longer be the main source of revenue — ultimately, it’s the technological expertise and the quality of services that will keep them on top of the game.
Sources:
Pickup, Oliver. “Is it smart to outsource all your AI?” Raconteur, 2018
Reed, Jon. “How Vestas Wind Systems used outsourced machine learning to transform contract management,” Diginomica, 2018
Sharma, Mohit. “10 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) predictions for 2018,” Mindfields, 2018
Terrell, Brian, “Will Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Replace Business Process Outsourcing?” Sage Intacct, 2018
“Artificial intelligence: the future of growth,” Accenture, 2018
“AI to drive GDP gains of $15.7 trillion with productivity, personalization improvements,” PWC, 2017
“IDC Spending Guide Forecasts Worldwide Spending on Cognitive and Artificial Intelligence Systems to Reach $57.6 Billion in 2021,” IDC, 2017
“The Value of Robotic Process Automation,” McKinsey, 2018
Chances are you got into sales because you've been told you're likeable, that you have "a way with people." But does your inherent likeability cause prospects to also view you as trustworthy?
For most sales reps, the answer is no. The truth is that only 3% of B2B buyers trust sales reps. That means either B2B buyers are a cynical lot or that most sales reps don’t exhibit behaviors that earn trust. It’s likely a bit of both, with the former stemming from the latter.
Even though they’re called B2B buyers, most go out of their way to avoid being sold. Fewer than one-fifth of buyers want to speak to a salesperson during the awareness stage, before they’ve had the opportunity to conduct research and come up with a shortlist. This is especially true when buyers feel like sales reps are only interested in them as a conduit for commission.
The best way to gain trust is through thoughtful, forthright communication that’s scrutinized from the buyer’s perspective before it’s sent. In the first article featured below, you’ll learn why it’s critical to slow down, listen intently, and truly get to know your prospect before going in for the sell. When sellers try to advance a deal before laying a foundation of trust, the whole deal—not to mention the relationship—might come tumbling down. But with trust established, you have a foundation for not just a sale, but future sales and potential referrals.
This week’s trending sales content contains advice for building trust, a nifty formula for accelerating sales, and more tips to up your sales game.
Treating B2B buyers like they’re just part of a transaction is one of the surest ways to lose their trust. This post by Sujan Patel highlights reasons why prospects don’t trust sales reps and how to gain trust by focusing on the prospect’s needs. Check out the post for three simple ways to make better connections with prospects.
Do you know how fast you’re making money? Instead of taking a peak in your wallet, Courtney Zwicker suggest using a sales velocity formula. Beyond indulging your inner mathematician—if you have one—this equation can help you pinpoint problem areas that impede progress. Click through for the visual equation for sales velocity and tips to help you source more opportunities, pump up the value, and increase your win rate, all while reducing the length of your sales cycle.
Pitching your product-solution isn’t much different than pitching a movie concept. In both cases, the challenge is to create a succinct pitch that conveys not only the premise of the story but also manages to pack in an emotional hook to stimulate interest. For sales pros it’s telling the story of your solution in a way that gives your prospect a reason to care. In this post, Carmine Gallo challenges you to keep your pitch short (less than 140 characters) while still highlighting the one thing you want your B2B buyers to remember.
This post by Weldon Long outlines how his career in sales and a “prosperity mindset” allowed him to get back on track after a life defined by “poverty, desperation and incarceration.” Along with his personal journey, Long shares how he altered his sales approach upon learning that in-person (face-to-face or phone) decisions are more likely to be positive than those made over email. Check out the post for a healthy dose of inspiration.
Can a cold call lead to a sale? Sure. Can cold calling lead to sustainable success? In most cases, no, it can’t. Joanne Black explains why, calling upon the seasoned observations of fellow sales expert Jill Konrath.
For more sales tips and strategies to help you reach the next level of sales performance, subscribe to the LinkedIn Sales Solution blog.
Being relevant today in a digital world filled with millions and billions of interactions per day is one of the greatest challenges facing organizations today. Both B2B and B2C (and hybrid) are investing in attempts to capture these interactions. In the form of data and analytics, organizations are hoping to glean informative insights into the purchase behaviors of their buyers and customers. With hopes that the new trend of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can serve up exactly what customers want at the right time.
While what is happening today in Big Data and AI can be characterized as “listening”, it is nevertheless artificial listening. It is listening in a world of bits and bytes. Without human interaction.
Deeper buyer insights that are true revelations come from social and human-centered listening. It involves social and human interaction. In a world that becomes increasingly digital, the human art of listening is at risk of being marginalized. Especially within business contexts.
For organizations to sustain within, let alone survive, today’s fast-evolving world, it cannot forgo active human-centered listening. From an insight’s perspective, the end objectives become drivers for both forms of insights gathering. Let us take a quick look:
Big Data and AI: Seeking to interpret
Human-Centric Listening: Seeking to understand
While the difference may seem subtle, they are enormous. Since the dawning of data, the aim has been to interpret. To gain meaning and to help predict. It is highly dependent on transactions of bits and bytes. Without some levels of data transactions, interpretations cannot happen.
Deeper insights that help us to understand buyers and customers, come from human interactions. To understand requires social human-centered dialogue.
When active human-centered listening happens, organizations can gain significant insights that can offer the understanding needed to get closer to customers. Here are three powerful forms of deep buyer insights that are must-haves by the year 2020:
Relevancy For All, Not The Few
How organizations maintain being relevant in a world of digital noise is, as mentioned above, one of the biggest challenges facing all types of organizations today. What makes this point essential is that organizations must learn to be relevant to multiple groups, segments, or tribes in a world where one size does not fit all. The way people think, feel, and behave are hard to discern from data or AI alone. As segments become more diverse and more personalized, the challenge to be relevant grows. In a world that is becoming increasingly diverse, in part driven by digitization, this point has to be underscored as a must form of insight organizations will need to prepare for by 2020.
Environment
Social and human-centered listening offer us a window into the environment in which buyers and customers live. Big Data and AI cannot provide a three-dimensional view of what surrounds and influences buyers. A myriad of environmental situations influences how buyers and customers behave and decide. For example, in an engagement study on behalf of a parts manufacturer serving the mining industry, data pointed to a significant drop in certain parts sales over a two-year period. They attacked the issue from a perceived belief that they needed to improve their marketing efforts. The revealing insight, however, pointed to a change in how the parts were engineered. Changes that resulted in the parts not being able to withstand harsh weather conditions for an extended period of time when they were stored in open fields at mining sites. This environmental issue most definitely began to shape how mining purchasers began to seek other suppliers.
Tribal Understanding Required
The nuance yet deeper understanding of the difference between customer segments may be hard to discern from data alone. As the importance of personalization grows, understanding diverse differences become deep insights must-have. The future beholds another significant shift as we approach the pivotal year 2020. Organizations will require a deeper understanding of their “tribal knowledge” about their buyers, customers, and users. Tribal knowledge is the often unwritten, unspoken, and unarticulated knowledge that exists in companies, fields, and industries. For instance, recall the peer experienced employee when you first started a new job and that person knew everything about the “ins and outs” of the job – most of which was not written down or described anywhere. Gaining insights into “tribal knowledge” is going to matter a lot in the future as organizations seek advantages in a digital-centric world. Tools, such as buyer personas, will need to be reinvented to be relevant on this element of deep buyer insights.
With digital disruption affecting many types of businesses and industries, gaining deeper buyer insights becomes critical for business leaders. What is making human-centric understanding more urgent, is the speed at which digital disruption will occur in the next few years. Especially as we approach the pivotal year of 2020 and enter a new decade that is destined to be historic. A monumental shift in how people and business interact and in how commerce is conducted will undoubtedly happen.
Will you be prepared for 2020 by engaging in active human-centric listening to gain deep buyer insights?
(In this excellent video, William Ury, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, talks about the power of listening and how listening is essential to understanding. Enjoy.)
How many books do you read a year? Recently I took the time to read three books over a two-day period, and one of those books really grabbed me. The Seller’s Challenge by Tom Williams and Tom Saine tackles straight on the issue of the complex sale from an account manager perspective.
Authors Williams and Saine have a unique perspective, as both of them have held very senior level sales positions and more. Williams has been a CEO and has sat on both sides of the desk, buying and selling. Saine has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. This means these two people have a level of expertise few others in the industry can touch.
The elephant in the room they call out is procurement. I see too many people dodging procurement, and as a result, they’re never successful when faced with having to sell to them. This book frames procurement up as what they are — masters of the supply-chain — and the book details their role in business.
To help share with others the value of the book, I interviewed via video Williams and here is one of the links:
Do I recommend the book? Yes! I recommend it for any salesperson, but in particular for account managers. I know I have a number of procurement people who read this blog and my suggestion is to pick it up, too. You’ll read strategies I’m sure you’ve seen, but I think you’ll also read about others you’ve never seen. No need for anyone to panic about being thrown under the bus. Williams and Saine are too classy to do that.
The Seller’s Challenge identifies 10 of the most frequently cited deal-killing obstacles sellers encounter.
Each chapter is designed to be read on its own. Readers can read the entire book or just pick the chapters that interest them the most.
The Seller’s Challenge is a “tactical field manual” that taps current research, best practices and real-life examples to help sellers craft action plans that optimize productivity and drive success. It’s all about what top performing sellers do – how they research, plan and implement activities that maximize their chances of winning.
In the book we share the harsh realities, myths, data, best practices, game changing approaches and guerrilla tactics that will elevate a seller’s prospects of winning good business. The book includes many addendums in the form of checklists and worksheets that simplify the content.
Definitely grab yourself a copy today!
And don’t forget that a coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results
Before we entered the Digital Age, consumers traditionally relied upon advertising and company sales materials to learn about products and services for sale. The Internet has fundamentally changed all of that. Today, buyers are in the driver’s seat, and they use the Web to independently research companies and what they sell, often with virtually no input from the seller.
Free and easy access to online information from a variety of sources enables buyers to inform themselves in depth about products and services, relegating salespeople to the unenviable role of mere order-takers with little influence over the purchase decision-making process.
So, how do sales teams earn back early access and the ability to influence their target customers?
As traditional advertising and its costly methodology of pushing sales messages out over passive general media or online become increasingly less effective, they are being replaced by a highly-effective approach that engages sales prospects using valuable online content that directly addresses their concerns and interests. Called “Inbound Sales,” this new approach enables sales to be highly selective when targeting prospects while appealing to them by offering valuable information with each outreach attempt, connecting with that ideal prospects at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods while gaining access when the prospect is first researching solutions.
Inbound Sales differs from traditional solutions, now referred to as “outbound sales,” in three fundamental ways. Inbound Sales is:
Buyer-centric, based entirely on what the buyers want, not the seller. Inbound marketers attract the attention and interest of prospects using content that directly addresses a problem or need that is causing the consumer to look for a solution.
In this new and improved sales scenario, salespeople fill a new role, as an advisor and product expert making recommendations to help prospects achieve the goal of their intended purchase which is to address a problem or need that they have.
Personalized Unlike traditional advertising or marketing methods, inbound sales enables messaging personalization and customization to create even more effective and influential messages that address the specific needs of specific consumers and businesses. Sales and marketing teams today can leverage a host of technologies and data analytics to monitor what buyers are seeing and saying online. This kind of information provides unprecedented insights into buyer behavior that enables messages to be customized and targeted even more effectively.
Advisory Inbound Sales is all about building trust with prospects. While consumers are increasingly suspicious these days of the information contained in traditional advertising messages, they tend to trust content they perceive as impartial and valuable. This trust is transferred to the provider of that content, creating goodwill between the buyer and the seller that often leads to a dialog between the two that, properly nurtured, can lead to a purchase.
Salespeople now take on an advisory role as a product or service expert in the eyes of the prospect, in a position as a trusted consultant.
This new buyer-centric, personalized, and advisory approach to building consumer relationships is implemented over the four stages of the inbound sales process:
Stage 1: Identify
Identify your target audience by researching your ideal prospect and creating a buyer profile (persona). This method will help you create the most valuable and compelling messages for reaching and attracting those prospects. Inbound salespeople Identify strangers who may have goals or challenges where they can help. These strangers become leads.
Stage 2: Connect
Develop useful communication sequences (e.g., email campaigns, blog posts, social media messages) for each target persona and create appropriate content for each outreach sequence to establish a connection and engage with prospects. Inbound salespeople Connect with these leads to help them decide whether they should prioritize the goal or challenge. If the buyer chooses to do so, these leads become qualified leads.
Stage 3: Explore
Not every quaffed lead is ready to buy, or they may not yet be feeling the pain that would cause them to want to address the problems you solve. It is the Inbound salespeople Explore their qualified leads’ goals or challenges to assess whether their offering is a good fit for the qualified leads’ context. If it turns out it’s a good fit, these qualified leads become opportunities.
Stage 4: Advise
Once you establish an initial relationship, use a set of detailed questions to determine the level of buyer commitment to your product or service. This method enables your sales representatives to focus in on the most appropriate purchase recommendation for any given prospect and provide a compelling closing offer. Inbound salespeople Advise these prospects (opportunities) on how their offering is uniquely positioned to address the buyer’s context. If the buyer agrees the salesperson’s offering is best for their context, these opportunities become customers.
It requires a different mindset for engaging with consumers and a commitment to establishing and nurturing relationships that build trust and loyalty with the customer.
Because the outreach activity requires analytics about how the prospect is engaging during the connect phase of the inbound sales process and multiple outreach attempts are necessary to connect, Inbound Sales teams need the help of an Inbound Sales Enablement Solution (a CRM that is optimized for this sales methodology) to make this approach productive for them.
The time and effort invested in the Inbound Sales method offer a substantial payoff unavailable through traditional outreach methods. By focusing on buyer needs first and foremost, and heavily personalizing your connection methods, Inbound Sales practitioners have the opportunity to build a significant amount of perceive value with prospects, create a strong, positive brand identity, and deliver unmatched brand value.
As long as reps are around to sell products, there are two inevitable truths: email will never die, and neither will the desire to connect with decision makers. The challenge is the volume of emails being sent is skyrocketing, and the changes of connecting with decision makers is plummeting.
Ask anyone on your executive team how many emails they get per day. Now ask them how many they reply to. Slightly depressed?
Fear not, for there is hope! In today’s vlog, I sat down with Rob Jeppsen, CEO and Founder of XVoyant, a sales coaching technology platform embedded in Salesforce.com to help create a world-class coaching culture for any sales organization. I asked him, “how can reps reach the decision makers at their target accounts?” You won’t want to miss his rant and advice.
Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT:
Brandon:
So, how can reps reach the decision makers at their target accounts? Hey, everyone, I’m Brandon Redlinger here, Director of Growth at Engagio and I’m honored to be joined by Rob Jeppsen, the CEO and Co-founder and Founder of Xvoyant. – Thank you.
Rob:
So, Rob, I would love to hear your thoughts on this because I know you have very strong opinions. – I am so sick and tired Brandon, of people, I’m not sick and tired of you reaching out, I love sales people. I love the sales profession. I consider myself a practicing salesperson. I love it. I believe that we’re the best profession in the world. So, I don’t have a problem with people reaching out. What I have a problem with is when they reach out and they do a shitty job connecting with me, that they get pissed off if I don’t respond.
Brandon:
They’re getting entitled, right?
Rob:
Yes, they’re entitled. Hey, I sent you something, you owe me a response. I got news for you all, I don’t. Okay, I don’t. I am gonna respond. If I don’t respond, I’m responding. That’s my point. If I don’t respond, I’m responding. – That’s a response. And when I start getting more and more, and more, you keep hounding me with “hey, did you get it, did you get it?” Or, “I sent you this, I’m just following up.” and finally, “hey I’d appreciate a courtesy response.” All I can think about is I have responded, by not responding, okay.
So, here’s my rant. I wish that sales people, whether it’s an SDR or AE or whatever it is, when we start reaching out, we think that it’s my job to be valuable enough, interesting enough, creative enough that I’ll stimulate a response. And if a customer doesn’t respond, we haven’t connected. The first law for me is connect before you correct. And if that happens, don’t get pissed off, don’t send them hate mail, don’t think that I’ve prospected into a jerk. What it means is, my prospecting hasn’t been relevant enough. So, instead of getting angry,
I’ve got a couple of ideas of what you can do. Number one: if you want to get to a guy like me show that you’ve spent some time understanding what I do. I can’t tell you how many people send me things for, they say they’re gonna do this for me when if you did even a teeny, tiny bit of work, you would know I’m not in that business, okay? So, reach out say, hey, I’ve been researching you for the last couple of weeks. I’ve found three things that I think are worth talking to you about. Here they are: bop, bop, bop, bop.
Brandon:
Show them that you’ve actually done the research. –
Rob:
That’s right. And include it. Don’t just have a spot, include what they are. Right? Let me know. Two things you should think about: what problems am I trying to solve that you’re aware that I’m trying to solve? What results am I trying to achieve that you are aware I’m trying to achieve, but most important, how can you help me do that differently if I was left on my own?
Cause if you can’t help me do something because I’m with you than I would have done on my own, what value are you? And don’t get pissed off at me and make me have to tell you that. If you’re not connected enough, innovated enough, creative enough, or thoughtful enough to make that clear to me, don’t expect me to respond because my time is my most valuable possession and I hope that helps.
Brandon:
Great! I love it. Thanks, Rob.
Rob:
Thank you.
Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released their B2B Content Marketing: 2019 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America research. The ninth annual report is packed with findings collected from B2B marketers representing a full range of industries, functional areas and company sizes.
The 44-page report provides a snapshot of the current state of B2B content marketing while providing insight into how the most effective content marketers do things differently. The survey featured many changes and saw the addition of new questions that better reflect the maturation of the B2B content marketing discipline. This year’s survey was limited to respondents whose organizations have used content marketing for at least one year. In addition, respondents were also qualified to confirm they were actually involved (directly or indirectly) with content marketing—providing a more experienced pool of practicing content marketers and better insights.
As the findings support, content marketing is without a doubt, an evolving discipline and one that both marketers and organizations continue to work out. Here are some key insights from the report:
This year’s report indicates marketers have made significant progress over the last year, and content marketing is thriving. When asked to rate the success of their overall content marketing efforts, this year 78% of marketers said their efforts were either extremely successful (4%), very successful (23%) or moderately successful (51%). A somewhat significant number of marketers (20%) considered their efforts minimal successful and only 2% reported their efforts to be not at all successful. When asked how the success of their organization’s current overall content marketing approach compares with one year ago, 70% reported their organizations are much more (17%) or somewhat more (53%) successful.
In line with last year’s report, 67% of marketers said their organizations were either extremely committed (27%) or very committed (40%) to content marketing (up from 56% in 2018). Not surprisingly, 93% of the top performers in content marketing said their organizations were extremely/very committed to content marketing. This further highlights that content marketing is no longer simply a trend or a “shiny new object,” but rather it’s become a core competency of B2B marketing teams.
One question asked was: “How would you describe your organization’s content marketing maturity level?” Only 42% defined their content marketing as mature or sophisticated (up from 34% in 2018). While the majority considers their content marketing maturity level “immature,” only 5% are in the “first steps” category (down from 9% in 2018). But as it turns out, content marketing—while fairly simple and straightforward in theory—is quite challenging to execute. As companies become more sophisticated and seasoned in their content marketing efforts, this statistic is certainly shifting.
In this year’s survey, 78% of marketers said their companies had a content marketing strategy, however only 39% said their strategy was documented. There is a direct correlation between having a strategy and effectiveness, as 65% of the most successful marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. Plus, 77% of those without a content marketing strategy in 2018 plan to adopt one in 2019, demonstrating the growth in importance of content marketing. According to respondents, the two biggest benefits of a documented content marketing strategy are that it aligns teams around common missions/goals (81%) and makes it easier to determine which types of content to develop (81%).
When asked what types of content they’ve used in the last 12 months, 74% of B2B content marketers overall and 90% of the most successful say they’ve used or developed long-form content. When used for demand generation purposes, B2B marketers rated blog posts/articles, white papers, and case studies to be the most effective types of content for the early, middle, and late stages of the buyer’s journey.
Regardless of what some may think, social media has shown no signs of slowing down as a tool for B2B content marketers. In fact, while only 5% of B2B marketers decreased their use of social media compared with one year ago, 61% increased their use of social media for content marketing purposes. Sponsored content on social media is the top paid content distribution method B2B marketers use, with 70% using it to promote their content. And 45% say changes to social algorithms is a top content marketing issue of importance to their organization in 2018, second only to changes in SEO/search engine algorithms.
Paid amplification has become a widely used means of content promotion, with two-thirds of B2B content marketers having used paid methods to distribute content in the last 12 months. 71% of the most successful B2B content marketers use paid methods to distribute content,
compared with only 55% of the least successful marketers. Some primary motivations marketers cite for using paid methods include attracting a new audience (80%), generating traffic when organic search isn’t producing desired results (65%) and reaching a niche audience (52%).
As content marketing has grown as a discipline, so has the availability of digital technologies (often referred to as MarTech) that can be used specifically for content marketing. Two out of three (67%) of the most successful B2B marketers describe their company’s use and proficiency of content marketing technology as expert or advanced. The top technologies B2B marketers use to assist with managing their content marketing efforts are social media publishing/analytics (84%), email marketing software (81%), analytics tools (77%), marketing automation (54%), workflow/project management (53%), content creation (51%) and content management systems (50%). When asked what benefits technology provides, three out of four (75%) B2B marketers say it provides better insight into how content is performing.
Over the last 12 months, B2B marketers have used content marketing successfully to achieve a wide variety of marketing goals. These goals include creating brand awareness (81%), educating audiences (73%), building credibility/trust (68%), generating demand/leads (68%), nurturing subscribers/audience/leads (58%) and building loyalty with existing clients/customers (54%).
Despite success achieving goals using content marketing, targeted measurement is lacking. Only 49% of B2B marketers are measuring content marketing ROI. However, 72% of the most successful B2B content marketers report their organization measures content marketing ROI. On the flipside, 65% of the least successful B2B content marketers do not measure ROI.
The findings from this year’s report reveal the fact that, without the right strategy and approach in place and a high commitment and priority placed on a company’s content marketing program, it will not be successful. Content marketing is first and foremost a strategic exercise, requiring a documented strategy and meticulous execution.
Other critical factors of success:
The annual report from CMI and Marketing Profs allows B2B marketers to check the pulse of content marketing and gain insight into its ongoing growth, maturity and evolution. There are many more insights in the report, in addition to the key insights that stood out to us. Download the complete report here: B2B Content Marketing: 2019 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to leverage inbound marketing on LinkedIn to create a steady stream of high-quality B2B leads and accelerate your sales. No scraping emails and outbound outreach with your inbound marketing. No mass-spamming. …..
The post Boost B2B sales on LinkedIn with inbound marketing: step-by-step guide appeared first on Smart Insights.
Remember ten years ago when market analysts were predicting that the paper book market was going to vanish into the ether as the oncoming storm of digital e-books quickly took over the publishing world? Most of us nodded in agreement, thinking it was inevitable. But in fact, since 2009 e-book sales have stalled at a fairly low plateau while paper book sales have gone up and the number of new independent bookstores nationwide has increased by more than 40%. Kindles and Nooks are still plenty popular and useful, but people have not stopped buying bound books.
Remember in 2011 when the launch of Google+ had marketers racing to secure their business pages on the platform? Considering Google’s power in the game, people predicted that they could (and would) take down Facebook. But, earlier this week Google announced it was shutting the platform down due to a data breach…and because of the fact that the platform has turned into a ghost town, with 90% of users spending less than 5 seconds on the site. Thus proving once again that some “inevitabilities” just aren’t meant to be.
Nobody can definitively predict where the future of marketing will lead us. But, we do know what’s working today and what will certainly continue to prove effective in 2019.
1. Video Marketing
Early next week, using the example of UK firm Peppermint Technology, we’ll go into further detail about the power and necessity of high-quality video messaging. The trend has, predictably, shown zero signs of slowing down. Amazon’s Alexa tells us that the video-sharing site Youtube is second only to Google in terms of global daily traffic, and a very detailed Cisco forecast report also tells us, convincingly, that by 2020 video will make up more than 85% of all consumer internet traffic in the USA.
Let’s face it, we are visual creatures. Compelling graphics grab our attention, but movement grabs it even more. Take Facebook, for example. Posts with photos get 3x more engagement than those without, but, posts with video get 135% more organic reach.
Video creation is no longer only for big brands with enormous budgets. Granted, there are still times and places for large-scale productions. But, video marketing should be part of your overall brand strategy in a way that prioritizes authenticity over special effects and personality over polish. Video can be used to tell your Story, do product demonstrations, spotlight clients and case studies, educate your audience, and much more.
Any good marketing campaign is designed to trigger emotion, and no other medium has the capability to do that more than video. Video lends an opportunity to tell your Story in a more compelling, engaging, and memorable way. Just remember: no matter the medium, your audience has a very short attention span. So video or otherwise, make sure you get to the heart of your Story and give your customers a reason to care within 6 seconds.
2. Automated Marketing
A couple of months ago we wrote a series of articles about marketing automation: the value of it, what programs to use, how to create workflows, and understanding if you’re ready to implement. At the time of writing that series, there were nearly 7,000 companies in the MarTech landscape. If history repeats itself, that could be up to 10,000 marketing technology companies by the end of 2019. That is a ton of options for marketers to work faster and smarter, while obtaining a deeper understanding of their customers. Scott Brinker, Founder of Chief MarTec, said, “As much amazing marketing software as there is today, there is still an opportunity for new ideas. Marketing should be — and can be — better.”
Marketing automation empowers marketers to be better and more productive. And for those who fear being replaced by bots—you can rest easy. Automation has become widespread because it makes marketing more effective, not because it makes jobs obsolete. Think of automation as a set of tools that help attract, convert, and close new leads and prospects. We’d be crazy not to take advantage of them.
3. Inbound Marketing
Traditional marketing is too transactional, too tactical, too impersonal and far too interruptive. Inbound marketing is one way to combat that. In terms of attracting clients and prospects in a b2b marketplace, there really is little else that compares with inbound. And no wonder, because the practice relies on producing high-quality, useful content and then using it to position yourself as a trusted authority. Once you do that, you invite business in rather than firebombing customers with targeted ads. As a result, content marketing, automation, social media, multichannel marketing—just about all of it becomes part of the inbound method.
The inbound approach allows you to create a reputation rather than just flash a brand name—and that reputation is seen as authentic and valuable to customers at all stages. By its very nature, the marketing chaff separates itself from the inbound wheat in short order. And just as massive growth predictions were made and met in 2018, neither I nor HubSpot’s stateofinbound.com sees any reason to believe that the trend will change in 2019.
4. Old School Marketing: Direct Mail and Physical Storefronts
Paper brochures anyone? How about an inch-thick value pack of coupons in your mailbox?
Believe it or not, the old tricks still work.
Direct mail just might be the comeback kid of 2018. In an upcoming article, TopRight Principal, Judi Friedman, will dive deeper into how and why direct mail drives results, particularly with the often-forgotten Generation X audience.
Reality is, everyone likes getting mail…when it’s not a bill, when it’s personalized, valuable, unique, aesthetically pleasing and most importantly, relevant to the recipient. All of the advancements in digital marketing and automation have made things like direct mail far more effective than it once was – because marketers are understanding our customers on a much deeper level than we once were. Powered by data, micro-targeting, and segmentation, response rates for direct mailers and value packs have risen to as high as 5%, where as digital email campaigns can expect response rates of only about 0.7%.
We live in a digital era, so it’s surprising that direct mail is so effective and still relevant. And, so are brick and mortar storefronts. Many originally online retailers are opening brick-and-mortar stores: Amazon, Bonobos, Casper, Warby Parker. It’s actually a huge trend. As it turns out, people don’t simply want to sit in front of their computers all day—many still prefer to browse, test, touch and interact with products prior to purchasing. Still, I can imagine a time when even brick & mortar stores will be staffed only by computers and require zero human interaction. Oh, wait, that already exists!
5. E-commerce
This rapidly evolving industry is only going to get more and more excitingly pervasive (or scary, depending on how you look at it). With the expansion and perfection of voice search, chatbots, omnichannel commerce, artificial intelligence, robots, and virtual and augmented reality, we may see a time when there simply isn’t much of a dividing line between real and digital life anymore.
The U.S. leader in this market is (not surprisingly) Amazon, followed closely by Wal-mart. Many of the others in the running are international brands from the Mideast and China. And this is yet another manifest benefit of the expansion of e-commerce—it’s global by its very nature. That could mean that one day there will be no such thing as a dried-out market: with all things immediately available to all people around the world, there may be little reason to fear massive fluctuations in demand. If the need for a product drops away in Cairo you can pick it back up again in Sao Paolo without missing a beat. What a world!
Come see us again on Monday, October 15th next week, when we’ll be digging deeper into the smart use of video marketing. In the meantime, if you’d like to read more right away, just download our use-as-is 3S Playbook for Transformational Marketers or check out this overview of my book Marketing, Interrupted.
You think you’re a sales leader? Congratulations! You will never become one without first seeing yourself as one. Thinking you’re a sales leader is not enough, though. You have to walk the talk, not merely talk the talk.
The number of sales managers who are despised by those they lead is probably a number with at least 7 digits. Salespeople are smart and they don’t have time to be led by the village idiot. What does it take to be a sales leader? Sales leadership is centered around 9 traits. Each trait is essential. It’s not about 2 or 3. It’s about all nine.
1. Demonstrates trust
2. Creates a motivating environment
3. Sets and communicates clear objectives and goals
4. Supports and empowers others
5. Commits to follow-through and completion
6. Listens attentively
7. Remains vision-oriented
8. Fosters team environment
9. Focuses on people, not tasks
Download the infographic showing these 9 at this link. If you’re a sales leader keep it in front of you. If you’re a salesperson, download it and get it in front of your manager.
Sales is not a solo activity. Sales is a team sport and that means everyone has to be on the same team — salespeople and sales manager! Everyone!
And don’t forget that a coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!
Copyright 2018, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results
