Rnordman

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan

When most sales bloggers write about selling, we almost always discuss direct B2B sales.  Ignored in all of these articles are those clients and companies that sell through channels.  The channels are many, and include stocking distributors, brokers, retailers, VARs, agencies, partners, resellers, rep firms and more.  The salespeople charged with selling to and through a channel are different - in many ways - and their goals, expectations, activities, skill sets and strategies must be different as well.

When we work with companies selling through channels, the sales processes, metrics, sales management, sales coaching, sales training, messaging and coaching must be different from what we do with direct B2B sales forces.  Channel sales is quite different.

Some channel salespeople simply sell to the channel and the channel does all of the work.  Retailers are a great example of this channel and the work they do is marketing and display centric.

Some channel salespeople sell by pulling sales through their distributors.  A good example of this is food manufacturers, whose salespeople create a demand with restaurants and hotels, who then purchase the food from their local distributor.

Some channel salespeople work WITH the channel reps, conducting sales calls together.  Unfortunately, most of these sales calls are nothing but quick, 5-10 minute product demonstrations.  In cases like these, the channel salespeople are more like technical experts.

Some channel salespeople are charged with signing up channel partners.  This is more like traditional B2B sales.

Some channel salespeople work with an existing channel and the only way for them to grow revenue is to either get the channel to take on new products or generate new customers for their existing products.  In these cases, the channel salespeople function more like coaches.

And, as one of my clients learned recently, if the distributors are very large, control too much territory, your product is not part of their core business, and there isn't a commitment from the distributor's ownership and management to proactively increase the focus and visibility of the product and/or brand, you're in trouble.  In this case, it doesn't matter how good your sales management is or how talented your salespeople become.  When you are held hostage by your channel, you're screwed.

Having lots of resellers may seem like a lot of work but smaller ones aren't big enough to hold you hostage, they are often more motivated, nimble, and must have stronger salespeople to compete against the larger firms.

Channel management is much more challenging and most companies using channels lack the necessary awareness to determine exactly why their channel isn't moving more of their stuff!

In some cases, it isn't until you've ruled everything else out, that you can finally determine where the real problem lies and what you must do about it.

Do you sell through a channel?  Do you have any of these issues?

1. They don't communicate their opportunities.
2. They don't share their pipeline for your products.
3. They won't make a commitment to generate more revenue.
4. They aren't proactively looking for business for your brand.
5. They don't sell - they mention.
6. They don't accept your coaching.
7. They want your brand - but only so their competitor can't have it.
8. Their reps are awful.
9. Their management is ambivalent.
10. They think your contract is unfair.

There are many ways to solve the problems of your channel, but all of them require either a different mindset, alternate approach, nerves of steel, or all three.  Have you had enough aggravation with your channel to make some changes?

 

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

According to the American Psychological Association, nearly a third of American workers believe they are underpaid and suffer heightened amounts of stress due to what they perceive to be an inadequate salary. As more jobs become available and the hiring economy slowly improves, this provides many U.S. workers with the ability to look elsewhere for gainful employment and further negotiate their salary.

However, when seeking a new position, employees are often unaware of how much they are worth and run into trouble when deciding if they should negotiate a job offer, and if so, how aggressively? While each situation is different, there are some key questions you can ask yourself to more accurately determine whether the initial figure is indicative of what you’re worth on the open job market.

Considering the following 6 salary negotiation factors should give you an educated guess about the best course of action in your situation.

1. What is your current compensation structure? Running a recruiting firm, when I see that an employer is offering a new job applicant the same or only slightly higher (less than 10%) of a salary than they are currently making, it typically leaves room for successful negotiation. In the majority of circumstances, you can be successful negotiating a compensation package that is up to 15% higher than what you are currently pulling in.

2. Have you held more than 3 jobs in the past 2 years? If you have held numerous jobs in the past few years, employers will view you as less of a long-term investment and thus will give you less wiggle room when attempting to ask for additional compensation. Luckily, this can be prevented if you have sound reasoning for departing those past positions and you broach the topic earlier in the interview process, as opposed to waiting until you receive the offer.

3. Has the job been open for more than 2 months? The more desperate a company is to get a job search over with, the more flexible they are going to be when approached for more money. Our executive recruiters have noticed a significant change in flexibility around the 2-month mark, as by this time an employer has spent numerous hours trying to find the right applicant and has most likely endured a lot of disappointments during the recruitment process.

4. Have you had experience in the industry? Roughly 80% of the time when employers come to our recruitment firm, they have a hiring preference that the applicant have experience in their industry. Though experience and expertise don’t always go together, employers will still chase those with exact or parallel backgrounds. In most instances, all other variables being equal, the job seeker with the matching background will come out of the negotiation process with 5% to 10% more than a non-experienced individual whom our recruiters present.

5. How well off are you financially? Our recruiters have seen that stress has a highly negative effect on one’s ability to influence a hiring manager, sales headhunter or HR representative. When negotiating salary, confidence pays.

6. How much are similar positions offering? This is a complex situation, as it’s always intelligent to know what similar jobs are paying prior to asking for a number. However, telling the HR representative or recruitment professional that you arrived at this number because their competitor is compensating that amount can have the opposite of the desired effect.

In the End

If you negotiate salary based upon the feeling that you deserve more money, you are much less likely to succeed in your endeavors. Prior to approaching the topic of compensation next time, base your actions and requested figures on facts rather than feelings.

Step 5 – Negotiating for What You Want!

Step 5, the last step in the Cure for Career Insanity, is negotiating for what you want.

Before you can start negotiating, you have to know what you want!

Most people think this is about money. I say bull hockey.

Think for a moment. What have been the most critical things that have made you happy in your past jobs? I will almost guarantee you that they were not monetary.

When I took my last corporate gig in December of 2007, my wife and I had planned a trip to Italy for September 2008. It would be a three week trip. I was offered a position to build a sales training program. September is the third and last month of the quarter. This is usually when sales teams are going full blast to make their numbers. I made it very clear who the real boss was (my wife). What I wanted was to have these three weeks be paid time off whether I had PTO time available or not. As it turns out, we did not go to Italy. The recession set in and we went to Oregon for two weeks. My boss did not question me taking vacation during September.

What is important to you?

• Work from home
• Child care
• Pet care or maybe you want to bring your dog to the office
• Schedule – Maybe the traffic is horrible at certain times of day. You can negotiate the time you need to be in the office
• Desk chair – After I ruptured the L4/L5 disc in my back I learned how important a proper desk chair can be
• Cell phone – For years, I refused to take a company phone. If it is my phone, I have the right not to answer it!

The first step is to develop a list of the items that are important to you.

Next comes financial requirements.

Never ever tell them what you currently make or what you want! Never! Never! Never!

Know what you are worth! Talk to peers. The world has changed and people will talk about compensation. Look at the entire compensation. Salary, benefits, 401(k) match, stock option, employee stock purchase plans, etc.

Check some of these websites for salary comparisons:

• Salary.com
• Glassdoor Salary Comparison
• Indeed.com Salary Search

If you have other sites that you like, please write a comment.

When you are given an offer, never ever accept it on the same day. If they insist on an immediate answer, walk away as fast as you can! The answer is no.

If the offer is low, tell them you want more. If they ask how much more you want, respond with, “I want to be compensated fairly.” If they insist on an answer, tell them you want to be compensated fairly. Do not take the bait!

Remember, the non-financial requirements are likely more important than the financial ones!

Negotiate on the non-financial items first!

Once they have made an offer, they have made a commitment to hiring you. They will not easily walk away. Use it to your advantage. It often turns out money is the least important negotiating point, but the one we put the most emphasis on!

Fact #1: An effective compensation plan is a critical component of a successful sales organization.

Fact #2: The effectiveness of compensation plans depends more on how well it is communicated to the sales force than how well it is designed.

Although comp plan design is undoubtedly important, what really matters at the end of the day is the sales force’s perception of the plan, particularly how fair it seems.  CEB Sales research shows that the greatest risk sales leaders face when making changes to their comp plans is seller backlash stemming from general misunderstanding—if sellers don’t understand what they need to be doing differently in order to get paid or if they don’t buy in to the plan for any reason, it’s only a matter of time until they become disengaged and resentful, rendering the comp plan a dud.

There’s no arguing that improving how compensation is communicated to sellers is something that companies need to improve. In fact, a recent PayScale survey found that 73% of leaders do not feel “very confident” that their managers could have tough conversations with their employees about compensation, the Harvard Business Review reports.

So what are the best companies doing to make compensation communication work for them? CEB Sales research finds that in order to maximize sales force buy-in to their comp plan, companies should do 5 things.

1. Consult the sales force on proposed plan changes
   Take sales force input into account as you design compensation plans—especially input from star reps. Plans created “behind closed doors” are unlikely to obtain crucial sales force buy-in.
2. Communicate transparently
   Be honest about your reasons for changing the comp plan, and explain what reps need to do differently to maximize their pay.
3. Empower first-line sales managers to have tough compensation conversations
   CEB Sales research shows first-line managers are the most effective channel for communicating the plan.  Manager communication is especially critical when bonuses are paid out and during plan changes.
4. Hold at least two formal compensation conversations per year
   CEB Sales research shows that fewer than two conversations reduces perceived pay process fairness by 50%, while more than five conversations produces little incremental gain.
5. Focus conversations on the pay-performance link
   Performance criteria used to determine pay is the number one topic managers should discuss.  Actively reinforce organizational messages around performance expectations and pay potential rather than just current pay.

CEB Sales members, visit our topic centers on Designing a Compensation Plan and Communicating Compensation Plan Changes to learn more about how to maximize the effectiveness of your compensation plan.

You’ve created a brilliant video, promoted it through social media and newsletters and have managed to earn an impressive number of views. However, these views fail to translate into leads and you’re stuck wondering what the return from this whole exercise was.

The ideal ROI for a video should be acceleration in lead numbers. Having said that, creating a remarkable video simply isn’t enough. The B2B purchase cycle is becoming increasingly complex as buyers tend to make the journey themselves without any external facilitation. To eliminate any missed opportunities, marketers should strive to engage prospects immediately after making an impression via video advertising efforts. Below are a few ways you can do so:

Insert videos with a play button in your newsletters

Replace your old-school, text-ridden newsletters with rich media that allows viewers to take in vast amount of information in a short amount of time. You will be able to track viewer behavior which can help you devise an optimal lead nurturing strategy.

Use an email gate to collect viewers’ contact information

You can insert an email gate at the beginning of the video that will collect a viewer’s contact information. If you’re using marketing automation software, the contact will be added directly to your system allowing you to track the lead’s movement thereafter. These leads can be nurtured based on their post-viewing behavior.

Include calls-to-action (CTAs)

Use CTAs to prompt viewer behavior before or after a video. Encourage viewers to share the video on social media or subscribe to your channel; you could even direct viewers to a contact form to increase your chance of generating new leads.

Use annotations to promote other videos

Insert annotations throughout the video that link to your channel, website, additional videos or other relevant landing pages. In this case, the viewer won’t have to wait until the end of the video to take action. Obviously, it’s beneficial to give prospects the option of engaging with more content from your company.

What video marketing tips do you have up your sleeve? Let us know in the comments section!

How You Fail In Sales is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Selling is difficult. It’s easy to fail. Here are some the way you can fail.

Failure to be known: You aren’t going to succeed in sales if you aren’t known. Unless people know you and what you do, you’re not going to create the opportunities you need to succeed.

Failure to connect: You still need to be liked. You have to connect with people. If you don’t connect, it’s difficult for people to choose to spend more time with you.

Failure to gain trust: Connection isn’t the only relationship component you need to create. You also need to build trust. You can be known and liked but not trusted. Without trust, you’re going nowhere.

Failure to create opportunities: Just because your prospective client has agreed to meet with you doesn’t mean you really have an opportunity. You have to create that opportunity be capturing dissatisfaction or helping to create it.

Failure to create value: Your job in sales is to create value for your buyer through their buying process. If you don’t create value, if you don’t have big ideas that make a difference, if you waste your prospective client’s time, you won’t create or move an opportunity forward.

Failure to gain commitments: Only bored, receptive buyers like professional visitors, the salespeople who spend time in their offices never asking for a commitment, never moving a deal forward. Without the ability to ask for an gain commitments, you can’t succeed in sales. Sales is conversations and commitments.

Failure to gain consensus: You may think you are calling on “the” decision-maker. But decisions are mostly made after consensus has been reached. You have to help build that consensus. Without it, the status quo wins and you lose.

Failure to present the right solution: You can have the best idea in the world, but if your dream client doesn’t share that vision, it’s wrong. You either sell them what you believe is right or you help them buy what they already want. Buyers buy what they believe to be the right solution.

Failure to ask for the business: You have to close. You have to ask for the business. You have to get a signature. This is part of selling, even if you don’t want to be “salesy.”

If you are a B2B marketer, you are paying attention to LinkedIn. You almost can’t ignore it today.

LinkedIn has become a powerhouse media company for B2B marketers, from opportunities for direct engagement (it does still have a few social media trappings) to publishing, content promotion and advertising. Not to mention the targeting data (but we’ll come back to that).

But many B2B marketers also find LinkedIn campaigns to be challenging. LinkedIn is a premium property and media programs quickly become expensive. As LinkedIn continues to move towards bid-based pricing (i.e. Sponsored Updates), it is also increasingly competitive, particularly for in-demand audiences.

But there is a solution that can dramatically reduce competition and improve the results from your campaigns. To start, you need to recognize one of the big shortcomings of LinkedIn’s targeting data: it may be accurate, but LinkedIn data is very incomplete.

Just how much data is LinkedIn missing? Here are some of the common profile points B2B marketers target and how many profiles LinkedIn is missing this data for.

(all data was gathered through the LinkedIn advertising campaign manager interface).

If you are targeting IT buyers at large companies, you are using the company size, job function and seniority. You are relying on three data points that are missing 39% to 74% of the time.

You might be missing 80% or more of the audience you care about, and because you are taking the same approach to targeting that everyone else is, you also have more competition and pay higher rates. There is a better way.

The Trick to Improving LinkedIn Campaign Performance

Build a new campaign, starting from the targeting in your existing campaigns, replacing explicit targeting with exclusions and other targeting approaches:

• Replace your current job function with skills or groups.
• Remove your current seniority target and replace it by excluding the seniorities you don’t want to reach.
• Remove your current company size target and exclude companies that are too large or too small.
• Exclude job functions you specifically do not want to reach (since you are already targeting by skills or groups, this can be more limited. If you aren’t certain where to start, just exclude sales and marketing).

Run your traditional and new campaign side-by-side. By limiting your reliance on the LinkedIn’s incomplete data, you will see higher volume, higher engagement rates and lower CPCs.

Your Turn

Do you have any tricks for improving LinkedIn campaign results you are willing to share? Let me know in the comments below!

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney via Flickr cc

90% of content on Twitter is generated by 2% of users.

Every second 2 people join LinkedIn.

3/4th of the Facebook users are closing their accounts tomorrow! [source]

Okay, I am kidding about the Facebook one :) But this true that Google+ is growing rapidly with some 1Billion+ users from recent social media stats. There is lot and lots of sharing that happens every moment across various channels, and here is an effort to differentiate these social media sharers and giving them an identity.

The Sharers

1. Hipster – These users like using other social networks mainly the popular ones like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest etc. to share content. They regularly keep liking, RTing, re-pinning, subscribing or sharing post from the brands they follow online.
2. Careerist – Active users of one social network only mainly LinkedIn. The best type of content which resonates with them is the one relating to their industry.
3. Altruist – Active users but really only watching via social channels and sharing almost no information through social networks. The only way they share content is through emails.
4. Selectives – They consume a lot of content which comes across them. But only share that content which they feel will add value to others.
5. Boomerangs- They are people who are constantly sharing content to get a reaction from their followers. They think they are influential and thus they keep sharing content.
6. Connectors- These sharers are users of social media primarily to enhance offline relationships. You will not see them aggressively sharing on social media as compared to the Boomerangs.

Some interesting stats from the infographic

• 3/4th of the Facebook users take their privacy settings seriously.
• 90% of content on Twitter is generated by 2% of users; I’m going to take my chance on those 2% being Boomerangs!
• 50% of users on Pinterest have children; they are mostly your digital moms.
• Every second 2 people join LinkedIn.
• US Adults aged 18-34 browse YouTube, than any network cable.
• 150+ Instagram users.
• Reason people share content – value & entertainment (97%), promote causes (84%), nourish relationships (84%), self-fulfilment (69%) and define identity (68%).

Some more stats on How do we share?

An Individual

• 1/4th of the Facebook users are obsessed with this social network, they check it more than 5 times a day.
• Most used social network through mobile – Facebook, and 189 Million users browse this social network through their mobile.
• Whoever thought the older generation dint use social media should think again. Aged 55-64 is the fastest growing demographic on Twitter.

Company’s CEO

• 68% of Fortune 500 CEO’s have no presence on social media at all!
• They use social media to communicate with their customers. From 16% in 2012 and it is predicted to be 57% in 2017. Looks like some of those 68% CEO’s will be joining the banter as well.
• 140 Fortune 500 CEO’s are on LinkedIn.
• Email is the king for CEO’s as 90% browse their inboxes regularly. Email is definitely their primary mode of communication.

You’re Brand

• 1 million websites are integrated with Facebook.
• 67% of Twitter users will buy from their brands they follow online.
• 85% of consumers feel connected to brands they follow on social media.
• 82% of buyers trust a brand if their CEO is active on social media. The above 68% of fortune 500 CEO’s need to be active on social media and fast!

Source: The above info graphic is sourced by StatPro

Our last post set the stage for sales enablement as a seamless, show-stopping production. We left you with this nonnegotiable yet oft-neglected truth: Putting your sales collateral in strategic lockstep is the only way you’re going to achieve sales and marketing alignment. And this choreographed collaboration is critical to surviving in such a demanding B2B market.

Sync like your company depends on it. (Because it does.)

Why is interdepartmental synchronicity so essential?

• Your market is tough.
• Your buyer is tougher.

The modern market favors the buyer and clears clumsy companies from its stage. Information is nail-biting, brain-churning currency, and the B2B buyer demands it from you: both in quantity and quality. Your show has to be on fire.

So how do you produce such a demanding yield of content? To be productive and responsive, you must be in sync. Sales and marketing alignment is no longer an option – it’s a necessity. This means sales collateral must serve and suffice both of your teams.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: Locking your sales collateral (and teams) in step.

Make it a sales and marketing collaboration.
According to Brainshark, 71% of sales reps receive materials from marketing, but of that group, 42% say marketing “rarely” or “never” makes them part of the development process.

• Marketing should provide templates and informative material that make the company’s voice, tone and messaging clear for ultimate branding consistency.
• Marketing should understand the sales process so it’s able to create material that locks in step with and makes sense for the sales team.
• The sales team must be familiar with the brand message and image that marketing has cultivated with such careful deliberation.
• Both teams need access to and visibility of each other’s processes, practices and materials – no more ambiguities or blind spots, lost-in-translations or up-to-interpretations.

Make it easier … for everyone.
A Sales Enablement Platform puts your sales collateral in lockstep and your sales and marketing teams in buyer-centric alignment.

• Communication tools allow sales and marketing to glean information from and share insight into one another.
• Detailed buyer insight enables the marketing department to create relevant, pain-centric content and helps the sales team attract, nurture and convert leads into legitimate sales opportunities.
• Precision-targeted marketing content that reps actually want to use stems from sales and marketing alignment and spurs crisp differentiation for potent B2B buyer engagement.
• Coaching tips, subject matter expert (SME) input, relevant research and thought leadership enable reps to connect with buying teams, establish trust, earn respect, inform and educate, assure key decision makers and drive consensus, pulling off that “content triple threat” (comfort, compel and challenge) that seams together the entire buying process.
• Personalization tools help reps give the discerning, highly leveraged B2B buyer that exceptional experience he demands, expects and deserves.
• Sales and marketing technology elevates you to the market’s split-second speed and your buyers’ first-rate level:
  • A CONTENT MANAGEMENT LIBRARY empowers sales reps with access to an entire collection of marketing-generated slides for easy presentation construction, plus content recommendations based on buyer persona/buying stage and detailed sales analytics on how prospects are responding to materials – all in one place.
  • PRESENTATION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE allows reps to build on marketing content and create hyper-personalized, precision-targeted multimedia displays on the fly, not to mention streamline their efforts via auto-update cascading, full-text search, systems/process integration and brand/compliance control. Textured, interactive sales presentations become simple and seamless.
  • A SALES PORTAL allows for the creation and storage of templates, brand materials and useful information that both sales and marketing teams can access, cutting down on the time and effort it takes to find what they need.
    • BUYER BONUS: It also enables reps to meet with prospects or clients, share content and execute presentations in a singular, secure hub. It puts all the content, coaching and insight at reps’ fingertips to keep them at ease and their buyers pleased.
  • CONTENT MARKETING SOFTWARE, including lead nurturing tools and other personalized communication and messaging automation, help to keep your leads primed and your company top of mind.
  • VIRTUAL AND CLOUD CAPABILITIES promote a nimble defense and proactive offense of responsive mobile sales reps who are always up to date, in the loop and on the ball.

Sales and marketing: Combine, conquer and prosper.

Ready to get your teams in seamless lockstep for sales success? 

Most technology sectors go through a certain maturity cycle. At the beginning of the cycle a number of pure-play companies, flush with venture capital in their pockets, come in for the gold rush. Next, a few of them crash and burn while a few others gain revenue momentum and significant name-recognition. Meanwhile, the majority of companies tend toward the neither extreme and just “keep on truckin.”

Consolidation comes next: Some companies merge, a few get stronger and remain independent, and several more are acquired — often by established enterprise vendors.

Dance cards start to fill
The big data and analytics world is entering that consolidation phase right now. Just last week TIBCO Software announced it was acquiring the commercial open-source analytics provider Jaspersoft for $185 million.  Jaspersoft will join TIBCO’s analytics portfolio, established by the acquisition of Spotfire back in 2007. TIBCO has built out its analytics platform quite a bit since then, with the acquisitions of Streambase in June of last year and of Extended Results in September.

TIBCO may be in the enterprise integration and middleware business but analytics is ever more important in that sphere. The two fields intersect in the zones of operational analytics and what used to get called BAM (business activity monitoring), with machine data analytics as a close cousin.

There have been other important analytics acquisitions in the last year, including:

• Actian’s 2013 acquisitions of ParAccel and Pervasive Software
• Oracle’s buying BlueKai in February of this year
• IBM’s acquisition of Cloudant

Data discovery, vendor inventory
This is just the beginning, of course. The number of vendors in the analytics space is, arguably, unsustainable. In Gigaom’s recent “Sector RoadMap: data discovery in 2014” report (subscription required), which I authored, my task of picking just six vendors to score proved very challenging. The summary of that scoring for the selected few (Datameer, Tableau, Splunk, MicroStrategy, SiSense and Roambi) appears below:

 

Beyond those six players, in writing the report, I felt compelled to summarize offerings from no fewer than 12 more:

• Actuate
• Birst
• IBM
• Jaspersoft
• Logi Analytics
• Microsoft
• Oracle
• Pentaho
• QlikTech
• SAP
• SAS
• Tibco

Including these additional vendors wasn’t a matter of being obsessive; the report simply would have been incomplete without them.

Two of the vendors in the above list have already merged.  More such unions will follow; the only question is when, and which companies will hook up.  If the 2007-era consolidation in the Business Intelligence space is an indicator, likely acquirers will include the so-called “Megavendors:” Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle.  HP, Teradata and EMC/Pivotal could go on shopping sprees of their own and many of the other companies in the analytics sector could be on their lists.

We told you so
Gigaom Research called out analytics’ inevitable consolidation in our “Big data 2013: key trends and companies to watch” report, in which we said, “There will no doubt be many big data acquisition . . . as the old-guard vendors embrace the new way of doing things or, more likely, stall it for as long as they can.”

In his article on the TIBCO-Jaspersoft deal, Gigaom’s Derrick Harris identified the analytics M&A phenomenon in the very title of his article (“Consolidation looms in business intelligence, as TIBCO buys Jaspersoft for $185M”).  Despite the deal’s relatively small size, Harris observed its significance in terms of the trend it foreshadows:

It’s not an earth-shaking deal, but it could be a sign of things to come in an analytics software market full of companies and products that have a hard time standing out from the crowd.

Be prepared
Buyers should beware of the coming consolidation and plan carefully. Sometimes acquisitions result in products being deprecated or removed from the market altogether. For example, Microsoft’s 2006 acquisition of ProClarity resulted in the namesake product receiving little investment and eventually being sunsetted.

Even when acquired products are not put out to pasture, they may be forcibly integrated with products already in the buyer’s possession. Consider Oracle and SAP, both of whom had their own incumbent BI suites when they acquired Hyperion and Business Objects, respectively.

Again though, most tech sectors go through these cycles. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting for equilibrium to settle in isn’t an option for most tech buyers. Real value can be derived from analytics technology now, despite what future product roadmaps may bring. Buyers can’t eliminate risk, but they should watch market consolidation in order to mitigate it and formulate contingencies.

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Data discovery tools and companies to watch in 2014
• Big data 2013: key trends and companies to watch
• How to find the right data-protection solution in the cloud era

You've heard about inbound marketing, now John Jantsch introduces us to inbound selling in his new book Duct Tape Selling: Think Like a Marketer, Sell Like a Superstar. For salespeople to succeed these days, they must produce content, guide buyers in the sales journey, and remain an advocate for them after the deal is closed, he says. That means marketing and sales must collaborate and blend the line that has historically kept them separate.

Jantsch, who is also founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine, and The Referral Engine, talked with me recently about the concepts of inbound selling.

 

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U.S. companies don’t have to pay U.S. taxes on money that is earned overseas as long as it's permanently reinvested offshore – so many companies have a huge portion of their cash sitting outside the U.S. This money will be subject to U.S. taxes if it's ever brought back inside the country. But this can be put off indefinitely. Even when Apple needs cash, for a buyback or dividend, it has the option of borrowing instead of using the cash it has overseas.

Companies make profits overseas by selling products to foreign buyers from foreign subsidiaries. Many tech companies employ tactics referred to as the “Double Irish” and the “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich” to move additional profits outside the U.S. These structures allow them to create subsidiaries in tax-friendly environments that hold their non-U.S. intellectual property rights and collect royalties on them from around the world.

Produced by Sam Rega and Sara Silverstein.

SEE ALSO: Should You Buy AppleCare?

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From time to time we hear disparaging words about the use of role-plays in sales training programs. The particular complaints vary from salesperson to salesperson. Some say: “They just don’t work – not realistic.” Others comment: “Role-plays are old hat – our people like activities that are built on gamification principles.” Sometimes we just hear a simple, straightforward thought like: “Nobody learns anything because nobody takes them seriously.”

Our best recommendation is we should stop picking on role-plays. Instead we start designing them based on established learning principles and stop doing them so they’re destined to create a negative experience.

Here are some the dos and don’ts – starting with a couple of bad ideas that will improve the situation if eliminated.

• At the top of the list for most undesirable is the old favorite – the “fishbowl role-play.” This is where a person is selected from the class and asked to role-play with the instructor in front of the class in real time. This was a bad idea 20 years ago and continues to be so today!
• A second bad idea is failing to incorporate time no only to do the role-play but also for preparation and feedback. When you take into account preparing, doing, and reviewing most classroom role-plays will take about 50-60 minutes. Significant less time is simply a waste of time. It is will to remember that practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice + feedback makes perfect.

It’s easy to identify the bad ideas – but what about identifying good idea? Here are some fundamentals for designing sales role-plays that will create an experience that will be well received by salespeople and sales managers – provide a platform for real behavior change.

From a design perspective, three factors stand out:

• Real-world content
• Realistic buyers
• Good feedback

Real-World Content. With a few exceptions, generic role-plays don’t work very well. In general, sales role-plays need to be customized to the specific sales challenges a specific company is experiencing at a specific time. This needs to be done with input from senior leadership for strategic reasons and from others like sales managers and sales reps because they know the day-to-day challenges.

Realistic Buyers and Good Feedback. Too often, the person playing the customer at each table during sales training is a program participant. The responsibility rotates from one practice session or role-play to the next. Feedback usually comes from the salesperson playing the customer role, then the seller, and then others sitting at the table who observed the role-play – often followed up with a class-level summary. Eavesdrop at the tables and you usually hear the customer and observers congratulating the seller on “doing a good job” – but providing little constructive feedback.

Can salespeople realistically play the customer? Sometimes they can, but more often than not, they can’t. For example, they often lack the knowledge and demeanor necessary to play a senior person in an organization. Second, no one at the table usually has mastered the best practices for handling the opportunities and challenges in the role-play.

The result? Lack of expertise, or in some cases willingness, results in sharing feedback around best practices that is incomplete at best. Even when scripted in advance, the salesperson playing the buyer role is not able to relate the best practices to what happen in the role-play.

An alternative approach is when a top sales performer at each table plays the customer role, orchestrates the feedback session and shares best practices. Who are these top sales performers? Let’s start with using front-line sales managers.

Can you justify taking a group of front-line sales managers out of the field to spend time in the classroom realistically playing the customer roles and providing feedback to a group of sales reps during training? Absolutely – and under certain circumstances it’s actually a bargain. In complex sales that generate substantial revenue, like high tech or medtech for example, it’s easy to make the business case for front-line sales manager participation.

The benefit to front-line sales managers? In most cases, the front-line sales managers will do more coaching during the two classroom days than most do in six months in the field. And, the sales training program usually can be structured so the front-line sales managers get feedback on their coaching; so when they do it in the field, they are a little bit better at it.

For organizations that don’t have enough front-line sales managers to participate in sales training programs, look to others in the organization – top performing sales people, national account executives, or field-based sales trainers with past sales experience are all good candidates.

Summary. So let’s not discard a really good learning technique like role-playing because it has gotten a bad rap for undeserved reasons. In general, with the advent of online learning, we now have a particularly good opportunity to devote even more time in the classroom to practice and feedback.

We’ve really got Mike Shultz on our minds here at TeleSmart today.

You might know Mike from his successful venture, The Rain Group, which is not only a sales training company but a mini-media empire. (Just listen to Michelle Davidson interviewing Josiane on why “Buyers Don’t Need Traditional Salespeople Anymore.”)

So why is Mike on our mind? Two reasons:

1. He just released a great book (written with John Doerr) on sales winners and what sets them apart The reaction to Insight Selling: What Sales Winners Do Differently has been huge. Major congrats are due.

2. His son, Ari — born with major heart problems — is going in for open heart surgery today. He has already had two other operations and is only a toddler. What an amazing person. This little man is building a heart that will beat for a lifetime and his wonderful family is right there with him!

Mike is donating 100% of the proceeds from his book during pre-sale and the first week of release to the American Heart Association. What a beautiful way to give back to a medical community that is giving his little family a chance at staying together! Mike posts Ari-updates on his blog. I know I’ll be clicking “refresh” while sending all the good wishes I possibly can. Good luck Mike and Ari!

Aside from the obvious good cause, Insight Selling is a book worth your consideration.

One of my favorite elements of the book is the way Mike and John clearly define what separated the A performers from the B’s in their study (which was comprised of more than 700 B2B purchases by buyers with $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power). They looked for 42 sales behaviors identified by the buyers, ranging from “the seller understood my needs” to “the seller educated me with new ideas or perspectives” and more. Then they took the top 10 most common of those behaviors in the A performers and looked at how common they were in the B group.

Their findings correlate with what a lot of leading marketing and sales experts have been saying about the new needs of Customer 2.0: salespeople who can successfully educate their prospects by providing new ideas and perspectives will win the sale far more often than those who can’t. This was the most glaring difference between the two groups.

This core analysis definitely puts Insight Selling on the right track as a Sales 2.0 resource and sets up a solid framework that helps you inspire buyers, influence agendas, and use insight to win the sale.

Check out his book here, check out Mike and John on Twitter, and wish them the best of luck with the new book and with little Ari!

The post Insight Selling Is On Our Mind appeared first on TeleSmart Communications.

This post originally appeared on the Insiders section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Insiders.

I have a new favorite power couple.

No, I’m not referring to “Brangelina” or “Kimye,” I’m talking about “Smarketing.”

If this is the first time you’re hearing of Smarketing, let me break it down to just four words: marketing and sales alignment.

It’s no secret that Marketing and Sales have never had a history of playing nice together. But picture a world in which they actually do. A world in which Marketing and Sales work so closely together that they never miss a beat. Think about how powerful it would be to have those two teams fighting to reach the same goal.

In today’s post, we’re cutting down the barrier between Marketing and Sales, and showing you the six steps you can take to build a strong Smarketing relationship.

Getting to Know One Another

Meet your sales team: They know the competition, can recite proposals like their favorite song, and know how to be clear and compelling with their messaging.

Meet your marketing team: They are content masters, they are ‘best friends’ with your company buyer personas, and they meet and exceed deadlines that impact company goals.

More often than not, we’re guessing the conversation between these two sounds a lot like this:

Marketing team: “You aren’t working my leads hard enough!”

Sales team: “You aren’t generating enough quality leads!”

Here’s one simple resolution: Instead of complaining, bickering, and pointing fingers, think of what your whole company could accomplish and achieve if that barrier was gone. Not only will your prospects and clients see an increase in your overall customer service but, you’ll also drive real business results.

It takes time and a number of different techniques to build a strong Sales and Marketing partnership. But, we can promise that the end result will be well worth the time and effort.

1) Communication is key.

An essential first step to any collaborative relationship is communication. It’s how we build trust, sustain the relationship, and how we improve. This is by far the most important aspect of a high-functioning Smarketing relationship, but certainly applies across every aspect of your business.

Your company mission, vision, goals, objectives, and values should align with both teams. This keeps customers and prospects at ease because they don’t receive mixed messages, and they get a better understanding of your business and the solutions you offer.

Here are a few tips that our team has found to be really helpful in keeping communication flowing effectively:

• Set a monthly meeting that invites both teams to sit together and talk strategy.* Talk about what’s been working and what hasn’t. This gives both teams a stage to voice their opinion and feel like they’re being heard. It also helps both teams understand how they can improve and effectively reach their goals, both as a team and as separate departments.
• Mix up your seating. If your marketing and sales teams aren’t already sitting together, then play a little game of musical chairs. The best way to improve Smarketing in your office is to break the desk barrier; the more opportunities they have to communicate with each other the stronger their relationship will become.

*We recommend that the teams meet individually on a weekly basis so that they have a hand on the pulse at all times.

2) Collaborate on your buyer personas.

A successful Smarketing team not only understands their buyer personas, but they work together to develop them. Every successful inbound marketing company has a solid understanding of their audience and who they’re targeting; and both Sales and Marketing bring something unique to the table.

With that in mind, if both Marketing and Sales collaborate on building out personas, you’ll have a much broader view point of the target audience pain points, aspirations, and compelling messages that will attract them to your business.

Need help developing your personas? Download this free template to help you get started!

3) Determine what's generating leads and customers.

Inbound marketers spend a tremendous amount of time developing content tailored to our buyer personas, and optimized for search to attract new visitors and convert them into leads. It takes some effort, but it's one of your most powerful assets.

But, we also know that not every topic will totally resonate, or get as much traction as expected to generate those quality leads. Does that mean you stop? No. It means you see what is resonating and change course as needed.

While we can pull data out of our marketing platforms, there’s nothing quite like getting direct feedback right from the source -- your sales team. While they can see what marketing offer this lead was generated from, their conversation isn’t going to revolve around content. They’re going to be asking questions about their business challenges, their goals, and determining if your company would be a good fit.

So how does this relate? Well, when Marketing hands off leads to the sales team, they’re assuming that the lead is qualified because they went through the nurturing process. But if Sales finds that the lead is actually not qualified, it’s important that information can be communicated back so marketing can adjust the process, the content, etc. Without the two-way communication, Marketing is just going to be making numbers-based decisions -- which is a good indicator, but you can’t rely solely on numbers.

4) Integrate your software.

While you can’t rely solely on numbers, they do offer quantitative points for calculating your efforts. After all, numbers don’t lie. So when all else fails, data can be the glue to hold your sales and marketing team together.

The best way to generate and analyze marketing and sales data is to integrate the software that each team uses so there is a seamless handoff of leads and shared data. The more visibility each team has into the other’s activities, the more that you will not only strengthen the Smarketing relationship, but also help keep overall efforts aligned.

At New Breed, we are huge proponents of leveraging HubSpot and Salesforce for an accurate, closed-loop integration. From a marketing standpoint, this integration helps us measure our marketing results and manage our leads throughout the buying process, which ultimately gives us the ability to hand over highly qualified leads to our sales team.

From a sales perspective, this integration gives a better idea of how leads are being generated, what channels are the most effective, and yields higher conversion results because Sales is working leads that are more ready to buy.

5) Set SMART goals.

How many times have we heard someone in our organization say, “I want to increase web traffic,” or “I want more blog subscribers.” Sure, those are things that can drive business results, but there is a major difference between setting goals like these and setting SMART goals.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. They help you keep your team on track and give you something to measure once that deadline approaches. Some examples of SMART goals are:

• Increase your visitor-to-lead conversion rate by 5% each month.
• Generate 1,000 net new leads by the end of Q2.
• Close $50K in monthly recurring revenue by June 30, 2014.

When you’re using goals that are clearly defined, with real and attainable numbers, within a set period of time, there is no ambiguity for either team. Everyone's clear on what the goals are, and then they are able to pull together and determine the best course of action to get there.

Having SMART goals also makes the post-analysis part easier. Say you don’t hit your goal; since it was crystal clear from the beginning, you are able to dig into the data and see what went wrong without having to play the guessing game. Additionally, you're able to report more accurately (both the good and the not-so-good) which continues to keep Marketing and Sales aligned.

6) Develop a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between your marketing and sales team which clearly states what each team is responsible for, and the numbers they need to hit to meet the overall goals. Both teams contribute individual goals, and together, you’re able to track how your Smarketing team is performing. It alleviates tension, breaks that barrier, and promotes the collaboration necessary for this relationship to function harmoniously.

These are the types of things that you’ll be looking for from each team:

Marketing Team

• Total sales goal in terms of revenue quota
• % revenue that comes from marketing- vs. sales-generated leads
• Average sales deal size
• Average lead-to-customer close %

Sales Teams

• The speed of follow-up for marketing-generated leads
• The depth of follow-up for marketing-generated leads

But once you have your SLA set up, the work isn’t over. It’s something you need to continually monitor, adjust, and report back on. We suggest setting up dashboards where you can monitor your numbers on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis.

Daily monitoring may seem like overkill, but we’ve found that it’s always good to have a pulse on where things are and how each team is performing so we can pivot quickly when necessary. It has helped us be more agile in both our Marketing and Sales efforts. If you’re not tracking daily, then you won’t see when things start to dip; maybe you’re not generating enough leads to hit your goal so you need to do an extra push, or maybe you’re not closing as many customers so Sales needs to push a little harder.

An SLA will truly align your marketing and sales teams, and help them see the value that each department brings to the table. They can see how each team is contributing, and as such people will be more willing to work together to achieve shared goals.

Need help putting together your SLA? Download this free template to help you get started!

With those six hallmarks in mind, think of how powerful your business could become if you embraced and integrated a unified marketing and sales team! A successful company collaborates and works together as an entire team. Sure, you may have separate roles and departments, but ultimately you have one goal: to drive real business results. When the expertise of both teams align, the potential is endless.

There’s a lot of talk about the benefits of sales and marketing alignment, but just like the whole “sales enablement” concept, most of the talk becomes pretty abstract, pretty quickly. Sure, it may have your marketing and sales people starting to like each other more, but so might a few company happy hours. So what’s the big deal about alignment? Let’s find out.

Putting facts and figures to sales and marketing fragmentation.

The Lackluster Leads

• 79% of marketing leads never convert to sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (MarketingSherpa)
• 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (MarketingSherpa)
• Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)

The Colorless Content

• 70% of content created by B2B marketing teams is never used by sales. (SiriusDecisions)
• 41% of sales reps worry that their materials are out of date, and 51% say they modify content and create their own documents from scratch. (Brainshark)
• 28% of sales reps say their content is unorganized, and 33% say they’re constantly searching for the sales materials they need. (Brainshark)
• Of the 71% of reps who receive materials from marketing, 42% say marketing “rarely” or “never” makes them part of the development process. (Brainshark)

The Scarring Costs

• Resources misused: producing sales and marketing content that’s never used and pushing leads who aren’t right for your business or ready to buy.
• Opportunities abused: sales reps creating content and designing brochures or trying to get leads on their own instead of engaging with prospects and closing sales.
• Brand bruised: reps creating content without marketing support, and marketing trying to furnish materials and leads without sales input, leading to brand damage and message dilution.

An unaligned team pays the buyer no heed.

Buyer insight gets kicked to the curb when 1) sales and marketing don’t talk to each other and 2) sales and marketing aren’t equipped with the tools to seam processes and people together.

• Marketing doesn’t have input from the sales reps (the people who know your buyers best!) or access to real-time data that lets them in on prospect engagement with your company’s content and offers.
• Sales doesn’t keep marketing in the loop when it comes to interactions with prospects or movements in the sales pipeline.

It’s impossible for these unaligned, blind-and-blundering efforts to culminate in the exceptional, personalized experience that today’s B2B buyer expects and demands.

An unaligned team makes people want to scream.

It’s not just the buyer who gets the brunt of fragmented sales and marketing. When teams work in silos and communication’s on mute, the workplace becomes a wasteland of frustration and stagnation.

• Marketing isn’t in tune with what the sales team really needs, so it ends up passing off barely qualified or unsuitable leads.
• Marketing isn’t in tune with what buyers really want, so it ends up sending off-base content to prospects or generating sales materials that reps find irrelevant for a certain buyer persona or specific stage in the sales process.
• Sales reps spend too much time on leads that aren’t even ready to purchase. And although these leads may be ready down the line, sales doesn’t have the lead nurturing tools to keep those dormant leads alive.

SALES is frustrated by unappealing leads, unusable marketing content and time squeezed from selling.

MARKETING is frustrated by blinders to buyer insight, lack of actionable feedback and the endless content crunch.

These are serious scars on your buyers’ time, your company’s bottom line and your people’s peace of mind. Luckily, a little alignment goes a long way.

An aligned team is stitched together at the seams.

MARKETING gets in on the action, and SALES gets better traction.
With more input from sales reps, marketing is able to produce the precision-targeted content it really needs and improve the quality of leads.

MARKETING gets a break, and SALES gets a power boost.
With easy, on-demand information creation, there’s less content-churning to burn out your marketing department, and more autonomous power for reps to build their own material: from hyper-personalized sales presentations and HTML emails to social media fan pages and personal websites.

SALES AND MARKETING are no longer apples and oranges.
A seamless, closed-loop marketing and sales process bridges the gap between lead creation, nurturing and follow-up for commanding, comprehensive lead management.

SALES AND MARKETING see together for more textured awareness.
Real-time prospect insight – input from both engagement analytics and sales reps who know their buyers best – helps marketing focus efforts and resources on the most qualified prospects and the best-performing content.

BUYERS get the experience they need to get on board with you.
The marketing department finally gains qualitative, rep-driven insight into prospects and quantitative, real-time analytics on how they are responding to content. Sales reps finally get the cogent, relevant material they need and aren’t wasting time and effort on unqualified leads. This opens up opportunities for both teams to truly blow buyers away with remarkable marketing content and killer sales presentations – distinguishing your company as an influential thought leader and undeniable power player in your market.

YOUR TEAM works together and wins together.
This sales and marketing alignment paves the freeway to marketing ROI and sales success that keep competition in the rear-view mirror. And for companies who implement alignment seriously into their long-term strategy, those “objects” in the mirror aren’t closer than they appear.

An aligned team is a well-oiled machine.

With sales and marketing alignment, your team gets a holistic, singular and real-time view of leads and prospects as they move through the sales pipeline. Marketing is able to provide on-point content and materials that sales wants to use. Sales is able to leverage devoted marketing support to help create powerful lead nurturing campaigns (for both new and dormant leads) as well as compelling conversations that keep customers and clients delighted long after the sale is closed.

What’s the point of blogging without targeting buyer personas?

(Real Life Healthcare Persona Example)

In the past they have been referred to as target markets or, your audience.

When you write a blog for your website, or create an offer with a landing page, who do you imagine will be reading it or taking advantage of that white paper?

Do you have a specific person in mind for your product as you create content for your website?

At Inbound Marketing Agents we have specific people in mind when we build our content and distribute it across media channels.

HubSpot refers to these specific people as our buyer personas.

WHO ARE OUR BUYER PERSONAS?

We love to help small- and medium-sized businesses get their online marketing programs up and running. One of our buyer personas is the entrepreneur.

IMA owner, Bill Faeth, entrepreneur, and owner of several successful start-ups completely understands the buyer persona as it relates to a self-employed business person.

His input on this particular buyer persona and our interest in marketing to them has really helped IMA to keep a laser focus on that market niche.

In addition to the entrepreneur, we also write content that speaks to the marketing manager at medium-sized corporations who are looking to streamline their marketing processes.

The things that we write to each of these buyer personas can be very different, because each person has their own habits, needs and issues that we can help with.

There are other people we like to write to when we post on our blog, but the important thing to understand is that there is a purpose to each piece of content.

If you are trying to take advantage of inbound marketing in any way, who you are sending your message to has a big impact on:

• How you create your content,
• Which social media platforms you choose,
• When you send it out,
• How to plan your lead generation and nurturing strategy,
• How you optimize for search engines, and even
• How you design your website.

So, for just a while, let’s pretend that IMA just signed a medium-sized company that provides products for home health service agencies and doctor’s offices.

Their gross annual revenue is just over $10M a year.

They still aren’t ready to take on a full in-house marketing team and need our services to increase their reach to the agencies and physicians in town in order to sell their full line of health care products in a more efficient way and on a larger scale.

Their goals are to:

• Create more website traffic,
• Deliver more leads to their sales team, and
• Expand their reach so they can eventually market to a larger audience.

Let’s get started.

WHAT IS A BUYER PERSONA AGAIN?

The HubSpot definition says that a buyer persona is a “fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.”

Essentially, you are going to spend a little time getting into the head of your buyer.

• Research their buying habits.
• Find out where they hang out online.
• Conduct interviews to find out what questions they ask when they get ready to purchase your product.
• How do they spend their free time?
• How does your product solve their problem?

BUYER PERSONA NITTY GRITTY

When IMA takes on a new client we conduct a full kick-off interview to find out about their products and services, their company and basically what makes them tick.

We also take the time to find out who our new client believes benefits most from their product and if they have done any preliminary research on who their buyer is.

You might be surprised at how many businesses are not exactly sure about their audience.

Using the HubSpot format, we come up with a complete profile on two or three people who we will be creating custom content for. Each client we represent has several buyer personas.

Using a real life example, let’s put together a buyer persona for a new client.

Health Products Agency is marketing to several people, but for this exercise we are going to concentrate on the buyers at home health agencies who need to purchase basic products for their care takers to make home visits.

They eventually want to increase their business reach and sell products to other, larger healthcare providers like hospitals.

As one of the buyer personas, we choose the purchasing manager at a medium-sized home health care agency.

At the end of this exercise, we will have a complete and well researched buyer persona for our client based on research and some good old-fashioned well-educated guesses.

BUYER PERSONA –WHAT’S IN A NAME?

When you create your fictional buyer persona, the name you choose for them should be memorable, and complement the product, the company and the persona you are creating.

For this exercise, we are going to call our persona Home Health Heath.

Doesn’t he just sound like the type of guy who works at a home health care agency and needs our client’s product?

BACKGROUND

Now it’s time to figure out a little about your persona’s job, their company and other pertinent information like their education and interests.

You might think that this information is irrelevant, however, when comes to creating a content calendar, designing offers and using language that is going to convert your buyer from a complete stranger into an eventual buyer, every piece of information is important.

• What is their position in the company?
• How long have they been working there?
• Where did they go to college?
• What do they do in their spare time?

Home Health Heath is starting to take shape.

DEMOGRAPHICS

To get a little more precise about our persona, you want know who they are, where they live and other information that can help determine how you go about creating messages that speak to them.

• Are they married?
• Do they have children?
• How much do they make?
• Do they live in the city or the suburbs?

Understanding Heath’s demographics helps to determine other items in the persona.

IDENTIFIERS

The things that identify and make Home Health Heath stand out are what will help to create our content.

Specific words, phrases and articles geared toward Heath will be what catch his attention when he is searching online for a new product vendor because his current one is raising their prices.

• What is your buyer persona like?
• How do they like to receive their social media messages?
• What is the best medium to communicate with them?

Knowing the key things that distinguish a persona from everyone else online makes it much easier to pick keywords, create more targeted content and get results. Home Health Heath is beginning to feel more like a real person.

GOALS

Every buyer persona has specific goals in their professional position that will affect how they work, communicate and make buying decisions.

• Do they want to move ahead?
• Are they ready to leave their company?
• How do they want to be perceived?
• What are their specific job goals and aspirations?

Knowing what makes Heath tick while he is at work can help marketing to create content that speaks to his specific desires.

CHALLENGES

Everyone has challenges in carrying out the daily aspects of their job.

These challenges might also be considered your buyer’s pain points.

What obstacles does your persona encounter every day that you can solve with your product?

These challenges are also going to be the basis for your content.

• How much time do they have to get things done?
• How much do they have on their plate?
• Is company politics an issue?
• Do they have obstacles like budgets or poor company missions and visions to overcome?
• What are the challenges specific to their position?

By understanding the things that Heath encounters at work that challenge him, you can create entire campaigns answering individual questions surrounding these obstacles. Heath has a problem and Health Products Agency can help.

HOW WE HELP

This is the part of the buyer persona where your business can get really specific.

It’s where your product and the buyer meet.

• What problems do you solve for the persona?
• How do you solve their challenges?
• How can you help them to meet their goals?

Knowing the specific ways that Health Products Agency can take away Heath’s problems helps us tailor campaigns, offers and other content around his specific needs.

REAL QUOTES

When you do the research on your buyer persona, a great way to provide relevant information is to actually interview one of your current clients or someone in the field.

Conducting an interview can provide a clearer definition of who you need to market to and how to do it.

In addition, creating a persona helps your marketing team to relate to a persona as a real peson and not a character.

Let’s say we interviewed Health Product Agency’s favorite client, HHS and found out some interesting information to put in the buyer persona.

COMMON OBJECTIONS

Now it’s time to figure out what Home Health Heath might say if a sales person were to cold call him about Health Product Agency’s products and services.

• What would he say to the sales person to push him off?
• How would he try to get around a sales call?
• Why would he try to get out of spending time with a sales person and get back to his job?

Knowing how Home Health Heath is going to react to a sales pitch is a great way to get rid of the sales pitch and use your blog and other content methods to build trust in the buying process instead.

 

MARKETING MESSAGING

When you get ready to create marketing content for your persona there are some more questions you might want to ask.

• How do they want to receive marketing information?
• What tone should your blog take?
• What language do they like to be spoken to in?
• Is there a particular platform or other social medium that they prefer to get important information on?

Having this information on Heath puts you way ahead of the game when it comes to distributing your content. Instead of wasting time with blog content he won’t respond to or putting an article on Facebook, when he clearly likes LinkedIn keeps a lot of guess work of the marketing process.

ELEVATOR PITCH

If your sales person were to come across Home Health Heath at a networking event, or actually take an elevator ride with him, what would they say?

After doing the research, the message they convey can be highly targeted and use just the right words to make his ears perk up and turn his attention to what you have to say.

A couple of simple, but highly targeted sentences can make all the difference between a polite goodbye and setting an appointment to go over a list of products and services.

When Inbound Marketing Agents creates a set of buyer personas for a new client, we send them off together with other information for approval. It’s important that our client agrees with the audience we are going to be creating content for.

What do you think about Home Health Heath? Is he an accurate representation of a Product Manager in the healthcare field? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are your sales leads making you despair? Does a lack of quality sales leads have you tearing your hair out – or a lack of sales lead follow-up have you climbing the wall? Good sales leads are critical to a business, but that isn’t enough. They need to be acted on, converted into immediate, real sales or correctly managed otherwise. We offer you the questions that help you identify if you and your business are ready for a top lead management software.

How do I consistently pick out high quality sales leads?

Whether you’re starting a big advertising campaign or you simply want a good process for funneling your leads, the right lead management application can help. Using the application, you define the criteria that make a lead a good quality one for you. The lead management application then automates the correct scoring and processing of those leads, and also ensures that the others are suitably handled.

How do I make sure sales leads are correctly followed up with?

Qualifying sales leads is a great first step, but without systematic and effective follow-up, that revenue potential is wasted. No response, poor response or untimely response (too early or too late) can all sabotage your efforts to drive sales. A lead management solution lets you define your lead handling workflows, distribute leads to people able and motivated to follow up with them, and automatically track the progress made on each lead.

How do I handle leads from customers who don’t want to buy now?

Customer buying cycles can vary, even within the same industry sector. Customers have their own timelines; and the sales leads you receive may arrive at any point during those cycles. If you only paid attention to those customers ready to buy right now, you could be wasting other significant sales potential. Lead management applications automate the nurturing of sales leads from customers with serious interest, but who need more time before making an investment with you.

The right lead management solution for you is the one that best helps you make the connection between your organization’s lead generation efforts and its responses to those leads. Some lead management solutions are also part of more global solutions for sales automation and customer relationship management (CRM). Compare the solutions below to see how they match your requirements.

Top Sales Lead Management Solutions

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM handles lead generation from a variety of sources – for example, advertising, email campaigns, trade shows and seminars. Sales opportunities are then processed by the Zoho CRM software in a four-stage sequence that covers the lead life-cycle: lead generation, lead distribution, lead qualification, and lead conversion into sales. You can create a workflow rule to pass new leads to sales persons according to specific criteria, such as geographic region, activity, etc. After distribution, the lead qualification stage in Zoho CRM separates the sales-ready leads from the general inquiries. These quality leads are tracked and followed up by sales people to transform them into business opportunities and accounts.

Salesforce CRM

Sales lead management is one part of Salesforce CRM, the cloud computing–based sales force automation solution. The lead management and lead tracking capabilities are designed to meet the needs of companies of different sizes, from smaller local organizations to larger international enterprises. Information and a complete view of prospects and customers are available to be shared between you and your colleagues in real time for focused lead management. Marketing campaign results can be tracked across a variety of channels, including online ads to social media. When sales leads come in, automated scoring and lead routing help ensure that leads are consistently followed up in a timely way by the right sales representative.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft CRM tool helps generate good quality leads through its contact management functionality. Customer contacts can be assessed according to marketing and sales history, orders and account balance, lead source and website activity history. Communications to customers can be targeted using this information to optimize conversion rates. Infusionsoft automatically scores leads based on demographics and the actions they take to let you make the most of leads that are ready to become customers. While you get on with other tasks, Infusionsoft automates lead capture and email follow-up to help you attract more leads and achieve higher rates of conversion of leads into customers.

SalesExec

SalesExec is designed to let you integrate any source of sales leads. The application also provides a tool (API) for integration with other software applications you may have. Routing can be set up for leads to go directly to the best sales agents. Leads can also be recycled rapidly if need be to ensure speedy contacts with prospective customers. SalesExec also makes ‘push’ and ‘pull’ sales lead management available to either ‘push’ leads to designated sales people, or to let teams compete for leads and ‘pull’ them out of the system. Power dialer functionality lets salespeople call more leads faster, while lead prioritization and real time notifications also let them focus on the most important ones. Automated lead nurturing campaigns can be set up using email and direct mail. Sales managers have access to metrics on all lead sources and up to the minute sales agent performance.

Marketo

Marketo’s automated lead management helps companies manage thousands or even millions of sales leads. It lets you monitor prospect behavior and take action in a timely, individualized way to optimize revenue generation. Marketo also improves lead data quality by merging customer data from different sources and automatically removing duplicate information. Salespeople get clean, current lists of leads to work with and win-ready opportunities are specifically picked out for sales rep action. Lead management metrics in the software show how long leads are taking to convert to sales, their costs and the most effective campaigns generating them. Underperforming lead generation activities can be withdrawn, while others generating the most business can be emphasized, managed and monitored for maximizing conversion of sales leads to customers acquired.

How do I discover the right Lead Management Software for my biz?

With these different solutions available, you too can have a lead management solution to suit your sales activities and to optimize your sales conversion ratios.

So, you’ve poured your heart and soul into writing your landing page copy. You’ve edited it with a fine tooth comb. You’ve even rewritten your landing page language into a masterpiece that any online marketer would envy.

But it’s not converting!

Here’s 21 of the top reasons your landing page copy isn’t converting – and what you can do about it.

 1. You don’t know your customer

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What’s the number one rule of marketing? Know your customer! If you don’t know who it is you’re trying to persuade and what it is they want, your conversion rates will suffer.

Do the basics to:

• List out your markets and demographics
• Segment your customers for each landing page campaign
• Brainstorm the needs and pains for each segment

I know this is often a lot easier to say than do, and you’ll get it wrong sometimes. But, the better you understand your consumer(s) and what they desire, the better you’ll be able to write for them and convince them to convert.

 2. You’re not writing for your peeps

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Your landing page is often the first impression a person has of your business. When you’re writing your copy, think of what you’d say to that visitor if they were walking into your bricks and mortar store.

Write in a personal and appropriate tone specifically for your customer, your business and your offer. Use a conversational style of writing and add a person-to-person connection with pronouns like “you”, “me” and “us”.

This example from Chefs Feed speaks to their demographic of foodies who want an app that has top chefs rate the best places to eat in cities around the world. They use “I” and “you” and ask conversational questions that speak to their customers’ needs.

3. You write too much

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You might love the stuff your company does or makes. You might want to wax lyrical about it all day long. But on a landing page, people aren’t going to take the time to read everything you write.

People skim, scan and read by images these days.

Keep your landing page copy short and succinct. The more you get how your customer reads your landing pages, the more visitors you’ll get to convert.

Tip: You don’t want too much text, but you also don’t want too little text that people don’t understand what your offer is about. Test, test and test your landing page copy for your optimal word count.

 4. Your words are too verbose

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Don’t use words that are too wordy. A landing page is not an academic essay. It’s a marketing piece that you’re writing for one intent: to convince your customers to convert.

Keep your words short and easy to read.

If it’s part of your marketing strategy, throw in a few lesser used words to appeal to your demographic niche. Give people something to cogitate about.

 5. Your sentences are too long

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Use short sentences. By short, I’m talking twelve words or less. That said, try to avoid choppy, fragmented structures. Avoid run-on sentences too.

Make your sentences as clear as possible, and get to point. You generally don’t want your potential lead to get turned off because your long sentence trailed off and really went nowhere…

Tip: Write out what you need to communicate to obtain your marketing objectives. Then rewrite your sentences five times to fine tune your messages.

 6. You’re not using bullet points

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Again, people are skimmers and scanners. Use bullet points to optimize conversions on your landing pages.

List out your:

• Unique selling points
• Competitive advantage
• List of benefits

Use bullet points to make your landing page copy skimmable and easy to read quickly, as in this landing page template from Wishpond.

 7. Your title is vague

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You have about five seconds (well, really less) to pique your visitors’ interest and get them to stay on your page to convert.

Your headline is the first thing people see on your landing page. If it’s unclear people aren’t going to stick around.

Make your title clear, succinct and tell exactly what your landing page is about.

 8. You’re not using copywriting smarts

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Your landing pages are your marketing and sales website tools. Use them as such. They are not your blog. They are not your homepage. They are part of your sales funnel to generate leads or get the sale.

Channel your inner Don Draper to bring out your best copywriting:

• Think of McDonald’s personal and emotional: “I’m lovin’ it”
• Use alliteration phrases like: “Drink dollar days are back”
• Use short, catchy phrases like Subway’s “Eat Fresh”

 9. You’re not showing the benefits to your customer

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Your landing page needs to answer the “What’s in it for me?” customer question. If you’re not able to express how your product or service is going to make the lives of your consumers better – they’re likely not going to be interested.

For example: Don’t create a DIY newsletter sign-up landing page and simply ask visitors to subscribe. Show how your newsletter sign-up will give your customer:

• A more beautiful living space
• An improved lifestyle
• More free time to spend with friends and family

Godiva shows the benefits of becoming a rewards club member on this email lead generation landing page.

 10. You’re not giving your competitive advantage

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Express your unique benefits over your competition. Why would someone choose your service, download your ebook or try your free trial?

Write clear, compelling reasons for converting on your landing pages.

11. You’re not using images

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It’s been said that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Or, in other words images tell a thousand words.

Use them on your landing pages to express the benefits of signing up for your free content or offer.

Colgate uses images to get its message across about healthy, bright teeth for all ages and demographics. (Ok, I don’t particularly like this landing page. It’s too busy, and the sign-up forms get a little lost, but the overall visual message is very clear.)

 12. You didn’t give the urgency

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You’ve got to create an immediate reason for people to sign up for your offer. Without the fear of missing out or a time crunch, it’s likely that less people will take the quick reaction to sign up on your landing page.

Use tactics like:

• Coupons with limited dates of availability
• Limited products in stock
• Exclusive offers to the first 100 sign-ups

 13. You didn’t test it

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A/B test, change, A/B test, change and then A/B test and change again…

You’d be surprised at what changes can increase (or decrease) your conversion rates.

At Wishpond, we’re constantly running A/B tests on our landing pages to optimize those email leads. Thinking we’d increase trust, we changed one of our product pages to include “We will not sell or rent your personal information to any third party, or spam you in any way”.

We were completely wrong. Adding this phrase actually dropped conversion rates by about 16.4%.

It pays to A/B test and cumulatively optimize your conversions.

14. You’re missing the emotion

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You’re marketing, guys! It’s all about the emotional draw with your consumer. Appeal to the senses to get the reaction you need.

Use colours, emotion-based words and images that relate to your consumer, your business and your landing page campaign.

 15. You’re asking too much too soon

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It’s not all about the immediate sale. Don’t be super aggressive about getting your visitor to convert with you or buy from you on their first visit to your site.

Think of your sales funnel as a dating process. Start with small asks, such as to view your page. Move on to lead generation by giving away free content, then nurture your leads to eventually get the sale. Don’t scare away your hard earned viewers by spamming them to become your customer right away.

Use email lead generation tactics like giving away free ebooks (such as this example of a free Google AdWords ebook) and other content. Then set up an email automation campaign to develop relationships and nurture your leads. Once your business is known, then go for the sale to get new and returning customers.

 16. You think people know you

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Don’t assume a visitor on your site is familiar with your business or products. If you’re marketing your page well with Google Ads, Facebook Ads or social media tactics, you’re going to get unique page views. In fact, you want new visitors and customers, right?

Write clearly about your offer and your benefits. Don’t make your visitor search through your entire website to figure out what you do.

 17. Oh, you didn’t edit that

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Ok, we all do it. We make grammar mistakes, forget to make the ‘a’ an ‘an’, or even leave out a word two. But, poor syntax on a landing page is money out the door. You lose customer trust and conversions.

Take the time to circulate your pages to your work team, or read it again with fresh eyes, edit, and then read and rewrite it again.

 18. You’re using the same words over and over

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Change up your lingo to make your landing page copy interesting and engaging. You’ve got a limited number of words, so choose them well:

• Use a thesaurus
• Rewrite your copy
• Get inspired by your company’s marketing material

Use those branded words, but wedge in a lot of those emotionally connected terms and expressions.

 19. Your Call to Action doesn’t stimulate action

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Your CTA needs to be clear and motivate a quick click. Use those short, action-oriented words like:

• “Shop”
• “Get”
• “Save”
• “Book Now”
• “Free”
• “This Week Only”

Buffer’s landing page for a webinar sign up uses a simple yet action oriented in its CTA button, of “register now”.

And definitely A/B test your CTA to optimally spur on your visitors to fill in your landing page form.

 20. You’re not building trust

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Trust is a key component in driving conversion. There’s tons of methods to increase a consumer’s confidence in your business. Test them out on your pages:

• Include your phone number
• Show a map of your location
• Upload images of your customers or staff
• Show customer testimonials (and include their name and photo)
• Promote awards you’ve won
• Show partnerships you’ve developed

 21. You’re just not that cool

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Let’s face it, some landing pages just aren’t cool. There’s no appeal, no incentive, no benefits for your customer.

Likely, you haven’t incorporated the 20 tips above. And, your haven’t targeted your unique target market in the billions online.

Reach your niche (small or large) and drive them to your page with:

• Online advertising
• Social media smarts
• Email automation

Maybe, just maybe, you can be cool after all.

 Conclusion

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Write your landing page copy like a marketer. Sure, having good grammar and syntax is valuable, but you’ve got to take it further. Seduce your visitor with clarity, emotion and written offers they simply can’t refuse. Motivate conversions through your captivating linguistic charm.

Try out these tips on your landing pages.

Read more about writing copy that converts:

• Landing Pages: Using the Language that Converts
• 7 Facebook Ad Call-To-Action (CTA) Copy Formulas
• 12 Ways: How to Write Google PPC Ad Copy that Converts
• 8 Steps to Write Email Copy that Converts

What do you think? How have you increased landing page conversions? What language changes did you make?

Written by Krista Bunskoek @ Wishpond

This is a story about two companies’ sales funnels. One company has a sales funnel that improves win rates, the other doesn’t.

“Company A” uses the most common approach, orienting its sales funnel to the steps of its sales process: qualifying, solution identified, quotation provided, demonstration delivered, etc. You know the drill.

Company B uses a funnel based on the customer’s buying process. Each stage of the funnel identifies specific actions that customers take when they are moving forward in their buying process. It is these “customer go forward actions” that salespeople seek to achieve as they progress an opportunity through their funnel.

Company A’s funnel causes everyone, both salespeople and sales managers, to focus on the steps of their sales process. Sales opportunities are tracked based on sales tasks performed by the salesperson.

Because of the inward focus of Company A’s funnel, a sales opportunity can seem to be progressing quite nicely because the salesperson is doing everything the funnel described. But if the customer slows down their buying process or the rep makes a mistake, nobody knows until it’s too late because neither the rep nor the sales manager is measuring the success of each sales call based on customer actions. They often get blindsided when a “sure-thing” is lost, or goes radio-silent.

In short, the sales behaviors defined in Company A’s funnel are an inaccurate metric because sales reps are so often out of sync with customers’ views.

Another flaw in Company A’s approach is that it is based on sales process statistics that are lagging indicators (data collected after a process is complete) – such as how many calls, appointments, demos, and quotes have been made. Therefore, most coaching done by sales managers at Company A is what I would describe as “performance management.” That’s where a sales manager reviews what a sales rep has already done. Typically, then, the manager cracks the whip by saying, “make more calls, and do it faster!” Meanwhile, the rep is thinking, “That’s the same advice you gave me last month and it didn’t help.”

Over at Company B, things are run differently. A few years ago they became alarmed about poor user adoption of their CRM system. Salespeople were not inputting information in a timely manner, so the accuracy of the information being recorded was questionable. Not good.

Company B recognized that simply providing more training on CRM usage wasn’t the answer. They wanted their sales force to be more motivated to use CRM. But that would only happen if sales managers used CRM to become more effective sales coaches – proactively coaching salespeople through big deals in a constructive way so that reps won more deals and made more money.

Providing sales managers with improved visibility on customer actions in the earlier stages of a deal was a big reason why Company B switched the focus of their sales funnel to be focused on the buying process. Most sales managers are instinctively drawn to intervene in the latter stages of a deal, to help close it. But from the customer’s perspective, it’s in the earlier stages of the buying process when the size of the deal is determined – so better sales coaching during the earlier stages of an opportunity is crucial to making major sales.

To build their Buying Process Funnel, Company B identified buyer actions for each stage of the buying process. These became criteria in the sales funnel that indicate a customer has completed one step of buying and is moving on to the next. Salespeople can now review those criteria to help them answer the question, “What specific action do I want my prospect to take at the end of this meeting?” They want to get the customer to commit to go-forward actions linked to these criteria. The better a sales rep becomes at having customers complete next-step actions, the smoother and more predictable the sales funnel becomes.

Now, if and when a buyer chooses not to move forward, a buying process action criterion is not met and so alarm bells go off at Company B. Sales managers are alerted to the problem right away, and can intervene while there is still an chance to fix the problem and get the opportunity back on track.

Company B has discovered that with a Buying Process Funnel they get far better usage of their CRM system by both reps and managers. Sales coaching is improved. Sales forecasts are more accurate because everybody is more focused on what the customer is doing.

For years, most sales organizations have a self-concept that “we are customer-focused.” But in practice the tools many of them have been using are built around their sales process. This disconnect leads to ineffective sales coaching and poor win rates.

If your organization suffers from some of these same problems, take a hard look at your company’sales funnel, and the sales training program it maps to. Implement a buying process focused sales funnel in 2014!

“At MECLABS we’ve spent years asking and trying to answer a simple question: ‘Why do people say yes?’

When given a whole series of options, how do you get people to say ‘yes’ to your option over another?” explained Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO of MECLABS.

“You don’t optimize websites, you optimize thought sequences: What are the essential levers we need to pull to get the prospect to say ‘yes?’”

A Powerful Value Proposition Results in More People Saying “Yes”

What pulls that lever fastest is a powerful value proposition.

It drives a “yes” by making it crystal clear to your marketplace why they should buy from you instead of anyone else.

This concept is illustrated in the heuristic below: Value force outweighs cost force. In the prospect’s mind, an effective value proposition works to assure her that the value of what the she is getting outweighs her time, energy and resources to get it.

Better Value Propositions Mean Better Revenues: We’ve Got Proof

While the illustration is simple, the outcomes are remarkable when this heuristic is applied and tested within the marketplace. This is what happened when three diverse organizations ran experiments to better understand the value of what they offered their customers and how their customers perceived that value:

• The Heritage Foundation increased click-through rates on its emails by 20% and donation size by 14.66%.

• The BostonGlobe.com achieved a 17% increase in subscribers and The Boston Globe newspaper attained 3,000 new customers and a total of more than $3.6 million in incremental revenue. (They have more results to report and will do so atWeb Optimization Summit 2014, May 21 – 23 in New York City.)

• CRC Health, the nation’s largest specialized behavioral health-care service provider, netted 220% more leads.

How the Heritage Foundation Used Its Value to Increase Contribution Size by 14.66%

The Heritage Foundation is a nonprofit research think-tank that solicits contributors through email. They wanted to increase both the size and number of donations.

So they decided to conduct an experiment. One email used their existing copy (the control) which featured a call-to-action that encouraged the reader to renew her Heritage Foundation membership.

The other email (the treatment) did far more than merely ask the contributor to renew her membership. In simple bullet points, it specified the value the Heritage Foundation brought to the issues she cared about most.

Simply pointing out three specific value points that the Heritage Foundation brought the contributor resulted in a 20% increase in clickthrough rates and a 14.66% increase in donation size.

While the control didn’t mince words on what it wanted the prospect to do, the treatment clarified why it was valuable to make a contribution. As a result, they increased their membership rates with no extra investment, just a small change in an email.

How The Boston Globe Leverages Value to Thrive in a Turbulent Marketplace

Even though the Boston Globe is one of the world’s most-respected newspapers with 22 Pulitzer prizes, they have impressive brand equity and awareness and they’re nearly 150 years old, in 2007 profits were trending downward while hundreds of newspapers nationwide were shuttering their doors.

They realized it was time to take a fresh approach.

Focusing on the Customer Instead of Resting on Laurels

“We needed to think of value proposition as the center of everything we do,” – Peter Doucette, Executive Director of Circulation, Sales & Marketing for The Boston Globe.

They stepped back and examined:

• What they were trying to deliver?
• Who was their target market?
• How could they deliver the news they wanted to bring to their target market?

This research encouraged them to expand their online presence by adding a paid subscription service, BostonGlobe.com, to their existing free site, Boston.com.

It also brought about a culture of optimizing and testing value proposition.

Value Propositions are Not a Once and Done Deal

“You have to deliver value and distinguish value proposition between the two offerings,” explained Doucette at last year’s Optimization Summit. “It was an opportunity to convince the target audience that we were going to deliver a solution and experience that met their needs…It (was) a starting point to an evolution…(today) we test and optimize everything we do.”

They began by understanding their customer lifecycle. They analyzed what they were going to do at each stage of the buying cycle, and tested price, check out and email open rates to confirm this understanding.

Just Because It Works for a Business Exactly Like Yours Doesn’t Mean It Will Work for You

For instance, at the time of the tests, The Boston Globe was a division of The New York Times Company.

So it would have seemed a no-brainer to implement TheNew York Times’ successful checkout process. It worked well for TheNew York Times, after all. But after testing, The Boston Globe saw conversions decrease by 35%.

Giving Value Every Step of the Way

In contrast, they implemented a unique multi-stage checkout process that gave value points every step of the way.

This reiterated to the prospect why she should continue to move forward with subscribing to The Boston Globe. It resulted in a 17% increase in subscriptions.

This is called process value – giving prospects reason to keep moving forward within the sales cycle.

Testing Your Value Pays Off

The check-out process test is just one of dozens that The Boston Globe is using to understand what its audience really values – which is evidenced by clickthroughs and subscribers.

They then adjust what they offer and how they position that offering’s value according to test results, not assumptions or speculation.

They even do live A/B testing on the newspaper’s Boston.com website to see which versions drive the most clickthroughs. Optimization isn’t just for marketing, after all.

As mentioned earlier, the results of this commitment to testing and evolving value proposition are impressive.

As of May, 2013, they attained 3,000 new customers and a total of more than $3.6 million in incremental revenue. You can find out how The Boston Globe is progressing when Doucette presents at Web Optimization Summit 2014.

Value Matters More than “Best Practices”

Take note: Value ranks far higher than rules or advice. No matter how tried-and-true the rules are supposed to be.

This was proved by Sierra Tucson, an addiction and mental health rehabilitation facility operated by CRC Health, when they revised its landing page in an attempt to drive more leads.

Taylor Kennedy, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS, who led the project, observed that Sierra Tucson buried the value of what they provided clientele in their navigation.

Here’s their home page before MECLABS worked on it.

Make It Easy for Prospects to See the Value

“We hypothesized that hiding value increased friction – which stops the customer from moving forward,” Kennedy explained.

So his team laced value throughout the copy on the home page to decrease friction and omitted navigation altogether (Learn more about this here: Web Usability: When should you avoid navigation?)

A long-form format was used to include all of the information a visitor might want to know on the first page. Furthermore, value proposition was emphasized throughout the headline and body copy to boost exclusivity, appeal and credibility.

The treatment was nearly twice the length of the control and the call-to-action was delegated to the bottom of the page.

Breaking the rules and promoting value gave them a 220% higher conversion rate.

But that’s not what mattered most.

“The fact that a below-the-fold form worked better than above-the-fold form was a secondary learning,” says Jon Ciampi, Vice President Marketing, Business Development & Corporate Development, CRC Health. “The primary learning was that the biggest question customers had about our health care center was around trust. ‘I’m handing my healthcare to you; can I trust you with my life?’”

The learning transformed their marketing department and led to many more lifts, including a 14,000% PPC ad improvement that their Google rep called, “the highest clickthrough rate the Google healthcare team had ever seen.”

Conclusion

If you’re ready to drive more conversions, and the revenue that comes with them, follow the lead of The Heritage Foundation, The Boston Globe and CRC Health by:

• thoroughly and succinctly understanding your value and
• how your prospects perceive that value;
• then using that knowledge to present it so they’re eager to move forward and say “yes.”

‘Time is money and money is time’ rings true for the average B2B salesperson. Interestingly enough, they spend less than half of their time actually selling. With so much pressure to get quality leads and to meet quotas, their selling potential is roadblocked by routine tasks on a day-to-day basis that hinder the sales cycle. Read on about the top 5 sales struggles every B2B sales professional deals with.

There are so many components that need to work together in order to generate new business: marketing and advertising, lead generation, lead nurturing, follow-up, and then eventually the sale.

Generating leads takes a lot of time and money, yet so many organizations drop the ball when it comes to nurturing their leads. After working so hard to collect leads don’t let them fall through the cracks. Every prospect should be placed into a sales funnel that nurtures the lead until he or she is ready to purchase and convert into a sale.

It is very important that you have a well though out lead nurturing system in place for every prospect you capture. Begin by providing them with useful information and introducing them to your product or service and the benefits it provides. Then begin to address potential questions and progress into more specific details about what you are selling. Nurturing your leads is such an important process of your online marketing effort, so make sure you avoid the following five mistakes.

1. Ignoring Your Leads

It is amazing how many businesses spend so much time and money attracting leads and then just let them sit idle in their contact management system. If someone opts in to your lead funnel then give them the attention they deserve. They are obviously interested in whatever you are selling so give them the opportunity to purchase by providing education on your product or service. Continue to provide them with information and give them the opportunity to purchase from you. If you ignore them and let your leads sit idle they will seek out another option.

2. Sounding Like an Advertisement

Do not communicate to your leads in a way that makes them feel like they are being sold every time you reach out. Consumers get hammered to death with spam and advertisement emails, so make sure that your email communication with them stands out. Make them look forward to receiving emails from you. Provide them with informative and useful information and you will gain their trust. It is important to build trust as you nurture your leads, as this will make them comfortable to do business with you once they are ready.

3. Not Split Testing Your Lead Funnel

It is very important to split test your lead funnel with different email copy and offers. You could have the best leads but a horrible email nurturing system in place. Split testing allows you to quickly see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to test different styles of email copy.

Split your leads into groups and send each one different versions of your emails at each stage. Keep track of the best performing ones and continue to adapt and test. When you have a clear winner then send out different versions of that copy and continue to test. You should always want to increase your conversion rate, and testing is the only way to make improvements.

4. Using Industry Terminology

Every business has special terms and language that someone new or outside of your industry is not aware of. Avoid using terminology that isn’t common knowledge. Too many businesses try to sound intelligent and thing that using fancy terms will make them sound more credible when in fact they are actually turning leads away because they aren’t fully connecting with the information. Your communication to your leads should be easy to understand for everyone.

5. Going Overboard With Automated Software

There are so many automated marketing programs and services and many businesses go overboard and sign up for everything under the sun. This ends up hammering the leads from every direction and it looks very spammy. All this will accomplish is getting a high unsubscribe rate from your lists and the leads finding another company. Every business has different lead nurturing needs, so take the time to create an effective nurturing funnel that educates your leads. If they feel like they are being bothered and your communications reeks of pushy sales then they will lose interest instantly.

Proper lead nurturing is responsible for converting prospects into sales, so make sure you create an effective lead funnel system. This takes a lot of data and testing to perfect and it is an ongoing process. As your business and technology change you need to constantly adapt to stay ahead of the curve.

Let me ask you a question: Do you ever feel like everyone in your industry is doing the same thing? Everyone’s newsletters look the same. Everyone’s websites are starting to look the same. Same. Same. Same.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone;

I’ve faced this issue many times throughout my business journey. And what I’ve come to learn is that marketing is 10% what you say and 90% how you say it. Now if you’re marketing your company using the same methods as everyone else in your industry not only is it going to be hard to stand out but chances are your business will never be innovative enough to stay ahead of the pack.

And in my opinion there is no marketing tool more powerful in today’s business world than LinkedIn if your business is primarily B2B. With over 300 million users and 49% of those being key decision makers, LinkedIn has ultimately become the most precious marketing resource of the 21^st century.

Is your business networking not working?

Gone are the days where you need to spend countless amount of hours implementing marketing strategies in order to get in front of key decision makers for your product or service. LinkedIn allows you to search, connect and develop relationships in real time with anyone around the world 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

No longer will you have to spend hours and hours travelling to networking functions, in the hope that you will make a valuable contact. With LinkedIn you can connect with 100’s of targeted business professional every week.

I while back I connected with a guy by the name of Alex Pirouz from Linkfluencer.com. An Australian entrepreneur who’s achieved a fair bit of success in using LinkedIn over the past couple of years. At that stage I had a fairly good understanding of LinkedIn and its potential but the more I spoke with Alex the more I realised how many different ways you can use the platform to grow a business.

He’s managed to use LinkedIn to grow his various businesses so that you too can start applying them within yours.

Here are 3 key ways to grow your business with LinkedIn.

#1. Personal branding with media exposure

Gaining media exposure on a consistent basis is a powerful way to boost your credibility in the market place, get your message in front of thousands of people and position you as an authority figure within the industry. This will ultimately drive the bottom line if effectively used. When Alex first started using LinkedIn back in 2007 he had just launched his business advisory firm so he was looking to build his personal brand in the market place.

What started off with one or two connections here or there; quickly escalated to well over 250 contacts within 3 months. A network he has managed to successful use to get featured in over 50+ media publications including Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur.com and many more all without sending out a single press release.

Personal branding is more important than ever before. Make a list of the top 10 publications you want to get featured in and start connecting with journalist and editors who cover stories for that publication.

#2. Joint venture partnerships

In my opinion one of the best ways to grow any business is to form strategic partnerships. A joint venture is a legal term that describes the relationship between two or more parties entering into an agreement to work towards the same strategic goals while remaining separate entities.

Such an agreement might exist between a digital marketing agency and a graphic designer, a web designer and a database management firm, a business advisor and accountant, a hairdresser and beauty salon, or an Internet service provider and an email provider. Just to name a few of the many possibilities.

Following on from his success in using LinkedIn to gain media exposure, Alex decided to also use the platform to connect with owners of accounting firms given they would be ideal joint venture partners.

Over the course of the next four months he managed to connect with 500 accounting firms out of which he secured 20 to come on board as partners producing 60+ qualified leads per month and increasing his revenue by over 328%.

#3. One on one clients

You may have the best product or service but if no one knows about it then you don’t really have a business” I am sure you have heard that saying before. The fact of the matter is regardless of industry, location and target demographic you, I and the rest of the business world all share a common theme:

“We are all in the business of: Marketing”

But in this day and age where people are being bombarded with a barrage of information, products, and businesses, it can be difficult to ensure that your business gets noticed amongst the slew of potential competitors.

In my opinion to compete in a business world that is rapidly changing all the time, learning and implementing the latest sales and marketing strategies is critical to your success in business.

Recognizing this Alex decided to market his business advisory firm differently to everyone else by connecting directly with key decision makers in his target market through LinkedIn. Over the past 2 ½ years he has managed to build his network to over 7,000 contacts and in doing so he has successfully made thousands of dollars for himself and the clients he has worked with.

Do you have some questions on how to use LinkedIn?

In speaking with Alex there were many key takeaways and “Aha” moments but none as profound as the moment where I realised the many different ways I could use LinkedIn to grow my business.

Over the past couple of months I have received a fair few emails from readers asking me to share more insight in and around LinkedIn and given that I got so much value from my conversation with Alex I have decided to conduct a more in-depth interview with him.

Would love to hear any burning questions you may have, so please leave a comment below and Ill do my best to cover them in the interview. Stay tuned!!

SALES QUESTION:

"I'm starting a new job next week. Once the product / service sales training is done, and it's time to hit the phones, what's the most effective lead management process to follow for best results?"

SalesBuzz Answer:

I like simple sales strategies that work. So here's what I do.

First, I make sure I understand the characteristics of what makes a prospect pre-qualified. Once I know who my targeted audience is, I turn on the turbo charges and build my list as fast as possible before making ANY sales calls. My goal is to have a list of anywhere from 200 to 500 leads in my name within the the CRM being used (which in my case, is SalesForce).

Once I have my first months "hit list", it's time to pick up the phone and make those sales calls. Here's the lead management process I follow to execute those calls for success.

It's important to know that there are three possible outcomes when working with a lead. Today, we are going to discuss the "No-Movement" lead.

The "No-Movement" Lead

The first possible outcome is the "No-Movement" lead. You won't know its a "no-movement" lead until you go through the following process. Here's the path I follow:

First Call: Gatekeeper to Voicemail or Voicemail.

If either of these scenarios happen, I leave a message following my voicemail script. Once that is done, I send an email referencing the voicemail, change the LEAD STATUS in SalesForce from OPEN to Contacted/Emailed (that's a custom drop down I created) and then I schedule a 2nd attempt.

I like to schedule the 2nd Attempt for the next day.

If on the 2nd Attempt, I get the same result (gatekeeper to voicemail or just voicemail) I leave a 2nd message, followed by another email, close out the task reminder in SalesForce and schedule a 3rd Attempt.

When to set the 3rd Attempt is debatable. If it was a warm lead, I will call the lead three days in a row in some cases. If I choose to do that, then I set the 3rd Attempt task in SalesForce accordingly. If it's an older lead, I usually follow the 0, 1, 3, 5, 30, 60 rule.

0, 1, 3, 5, 30, 60 Rule

The 0, 1, 3, 5, 30, 60 Rule works like this:

Day 0 is the first sales call. 1 is 24 hours after the first call. 3 is three business days after your last call. 5 is five business days after your last call. 30 is 30 days after your last call and 60 is 60 days after your last call.

The scenario above is for when you have a lead and you are doing the right things to make contact but you aren't getting a response from the lead (no-movement).

The last thing you want to do is constantly call the same leads that have no interest in ever buying what you are selling. So it's important that you have the right amount of touches without spending too much time chasing a lead as well as not investing the time that you should.

Of course, the scenario above is assuming (and this is a BIG ASSUMPTION) that in all your attempts, you have the right opening statements, voicemail and email messages to begin with.

Most sales people don't hear back from prospects they call / email because they aren't saying the right things on voicemail or emails. So if you follow a lead management plan like the one above and you aren't getting anyone to call you back, it might be the message, and not the process, that is causing you to miss quota.

In our last post, we talked about the wonders of sales and marketing alignment: how it stiches up the scars from fragmented efforts, patched-up processes and tight-lipped teams. But you can’t simply rely on a killer, comprehensive Sales Enablement Platform to do all the work for you. The technology is definitely necessary – but it’s not sufficient.

To really connect your teams and catapult your sales game, you need more than a rinky-dink communication model in place.

Tight lips sink ships.

Loose lips sunk ships in the World War II era, but it’s tight lips that are sinking your vessel of sales success.

Because when the lines aren’t open, your sales reps surely aren’t closing:

• There’s more than one language.
  Many sales and marketing teams struggle with communication because they’re using a mix of sales speak and marketing jargon. They simply can’t relate to one another.
• The talk gets generic.Your sales and marketing people have different perspectives, workflows and needs than everyone else in your company: from the C-suite execs to the HR personnel. Generic communication practices won’t address these position-specific intricacies.
• No tools to help connect.
  Speaking different languages is just one hurdle. Without the right communication tools, sales and marketing can’t even begin to collaborate and share information. And if your own internal teams are unable to relate, it’s impossible for your sales team to connect with prospects, leads and customers.
• The flow’s a kerfuffle.
  Without a set process flow of information between sales and marketing, neither team is aware of the other’s current status, daily efforts, weekly intentions and long-term goals. This muddles the shuffle from marketing to sales, and transitioning those leads, prospects and clients through the sales process becomes a dicey juggling act.

When communication sinks, credibility shrinks.

When your own team isn’t speaking the same language, it shows. Your prospects, and even the businesses you work with, are going to sense that internal disjointedness. And they’re going to lose confidence – big time – doubting your ability to give them what they really need.

 

 

Artillery B2B Marketing Blog > The Forward Observer

Are you generating lots of leads but few sales? You might have weak leads. Here are 5 ways to quickly strengthen your B2B lead quality and sales.

Most B2B companies (and their sales teams) always clamor for “more leads.” But what they really want are more quality leads. That’s why smart B2B marketers know that if they are generating lots of weak leads, they are in trouble.

In B2B sales, it’s all about the leads. The number and the quality.

In the movie Glenngarry Glen Ross, the quality of leads plays a central role in the drama.  (Warning: contains profane language.)

To improve the quality of your leads, here are five approaches that will yield the most dramatic improvements quickly, and increase sales:

1. Get Marketing and Sales to Agree On The Definition Of A “Sales-Qualified Lead”

Marketing and sales need to agree on the characteristics of a sales ready lead. Only pass leads to sales that have met your definition of “qualified.”

Unfortunately, only 45% of businesses have established a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead, according to a study by MarketingSherpa.

2. Implement Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a process of ranking a lead’s interest level and sales readiness based on a methodology agreed upon by marketing and sales. Companies can score leads in a variety of ways by assigning points and implementing rankings like “hot,” “warm,” or “cold.” Or A, B, C, or D.

It will boil down to a combination of “fit” and “interest.” If there is a fit but low interest, marketing needs to nurture the lead. If there is a fit and interest, sales needs to follow up quickly.

The actual scoring should incorporate a combination of explicit data and implicit data. Explicit data is information the prospect provides such as title, industry, company, etc. Implicit data is what is revealed by the prospect’s online behavior such as pages visited, and recency or frequency of visits.

In an Eloqua study of 10 B2B companies using lead scoring systems, on average, deal close rates increased by 30 percent; company revenue increased by 18%; and revenue per deal increased by 17%

3. Commit To Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of when they will buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready.

A 2010 Forrester Research study found that companies that excelled at lead nurturing were able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost per lead than other companies.

Some leads are hot and turn into a quick sale. Most don’t, however. That’s where lead nurturing comes in.

Various studies show that buyers now are really only engaging with sales representatives in about the last third of their purchasing process.

According to Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, up to 95% of qualified prospects on your website are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70% will eventually buy from you or one of your competitors.

4. Create A Marketing-Sales Feedback Loop

If marketing is throwing leads to sales and doesn’t find out what happens to the leads, stop the madness. The system is broken.

Communication between sales and marketing teams is crucial, especially for B2B companies with long, complex sales cycles.

B2B marketers can’t wait until a sale is complete to assess lead quality because the data will be so old it can’t be used to actively manage a real-time lead generation program.

By reporting in a closed loop, marketing is able to send more information to sales (such as additional lead intelligence), and sales is able to provide feedback and sales activity reports to marketing.

At least monthly, lead grades should be reviewed, updated and reported to marketing – thus completing the lead quality feedback loop.

5. Use Marketing Automation Software

If you’re trying to improve lead quality without using marketing automation software, you may be working hard, but you’re not working smart.

Automating the nurturing and scoring of leads in your funnel is fairly simple to understand. And if your sales funnel only has a handful of leads in it, you could do it yourself, manually. But scaling your sales is nearly impossible without automation.

To grow your sales effectively, you wonʼt have the time, attention to detail or the analytical horsepower to track, measure, and respond to all of these individual interactions over the totality of an ever-changing prospect database.

A marketing automation platform provides invaluable analytics and measurement necessary to improve lead quality. It also provides an overview of how each of your leads behaves in the sales funnel and how your marketing programs are affecting lead generation, sales and, most importantly, revenues. For best results, integrate your CRM system with your marketing automation platform.

Bottom line: Automate or suffer poor lead quality and mediocre sales results.

If you are already using a CRM software (customer relationship management) or are evaluating different CRM solutions, you might be wondering one of two things:

Why has the integration with LinkedIn disappeared from my CRM application? or Why am I suddenly LinkedOut?

Why don’t the CRM solutions I’m considering offer integration with LinkedIn? (With the exception of Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics)

After all, it should be quite simple – LinkedIn offers an API for developers to integrate LinkedIn’s features and data within their software. This enables users to access LinkedIn contacts and information directly from the solution they are using.

If a CRM software integrates with LinkedIn would allow salespeople to easily associate their LinkedIn profiles with sales leads/contacts and engage customers, enabling more direct and better interactions. CRM users could search for prospects’ LinkedIn profiles to associate the right handle, view the most up-to-date professional information, gain customer intelligence and build a stronger, more credible client relationship by sending messages directly through LinkedIn.

This is, of course, in the interest of the CRM developer as it offers a better service to its users. It should also be of interest to LinkedIn, as it becomes a valuable resource for millions of CRM users and facilitates better professional relationships.

It seemed a win-win situation for everybody, and different CRM software solutions, including Zoho, Insightly, Capsule and Nutshell were already offering this integration. So what happened?

LinkedIn decided to restrict its Developer API agreement, allowing only two solutions to be part of their CRM Partner Program: Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. This meant that all the other CRM vendors had to stop offering their LinkedIn integration.

In April 2013, Insightly announced they had been blocked from accessing the LinkedIn API. Other vendors managed to keep offering the integration for some more time. Capsule had to stop it in March 2014 and, only a few days ago, Zoho made a similar announcement.

In its response to Insightly, LinkedIn explained it had blocked their API access because it did not want to allow it for applications “that are used for hiring, marketing or sales.” But if this was the real reason, why did they allow Microsoft and Salesforce to access it?

LinkedIn answered Zoho with a more plausible explanation, saying “LinkedIn prioritizes whom we partner with based on strategic alignment, size of opportunity, and current needs.” Yet it seems difficult to understand why they allowed only two vendors to be part of their CRM Partner Program.

Image from Zoho CRM’s blog post showing the LinkedIn logo slipping out of a contact in the software interface

I contacted Gopal Sripada, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Zoho CRM, and Loretta Jones, VP Marketing at Insightly, to learn more about the issue. Both of them discussed it with LinkedIn to try to find a solution, but to no avail.

Gopal came to the conclusion that “The objective for LinkedIn in these integrations is to drive monetization and to deliver LinkedIn functionality only to LinkedIn premium account holders.” Based on the response Insightly got, Loretta wondered, with a touch of irony, if “maybe LinkedIn is working on a CRM application or is planning to offer similar functionality to CRMs.”

Insightly, without seeing any signs of LinkedIn changing its mind, redirected to a different strategy. Insightly strengthened its integration with other networks and even found a workaround to display contacts’ LinkedIn public profiles within its software without using LinkedIn’s API.

Image from Insightly’s interface, showing its new social integration features

Gopal, on the other hand, is “confident that LinkedIn will reconsider this decision soon. [LinkedIn] will find a model to partner with CRM vendors. It’s just a matter of time before LinkedIn realizes the impact of this decision.”

In the meantime, Zoho CRM is also taking the approach of improving the integration with other social networks and foresees a negative impact for LinkedIn. “Zoho CRM users could check all LinkedIn updates right inside their CRM software. Now, they will have to work back and forth in their CRM solution and LinkedIn. This decision will reduce LinkedIn usage by CRM users due to lack of integration,” explained Gopal.

Zoho CRM‘s new social media enriched customer profiles

While both Loretta and Gopal recognized this had a negative impact on their users at first, they did not lose any of them over the issue. While the LinkedIn integration was a useful feature, similar results can be achieved with a few more clicks or by using Zoho CRM and Insightly‘s improved integrations with other social networks.

I also contacted LinkedIn to get their point of view on the topic. Krista Canfield, their Senior Manager of Corporate Communications, explained that, “As part of routine efforts to ensure the best experience for LinkedIn members, we disabled access to the LinkedIn APIs for a handful of third-party app developers, back in February. We believe they are in violation of our LinkedIn Developer Terms of Service and/or are doing things that we believe result in a sub-optimal experience for our members.”

When I asked Krista about the type of violation she was mentioning, she stated that the developers were not part of LinkedIn’s Partner Programs so they were not allowed to use their API. As explained before, only Microsoft and Salesforce were accepted into LinkedIn’s CRM Partner Program. My next questions were: Why was it that only these two developers were accepted into the program? Were they the only ones able to offer the optimal experience that LinkedIn expected? What steps is LinkedIn taking to help other CRM vendors apply successfully to the program? But, I didn’t get any specific answers.

Furthermore, LinkedIn is no longer accepting any more CRM partners into their program. I hope they reconsider this decision soon and begin including other quality CRM vendors. This would benefit not only the developers and for LinkedIn, but particularly the millions of users that rely both on CRM software and LinkedIn to improve their professional lives every day.

Just like you, I get asked to do a lot of things.  With every request comes some type of decision process weighing the cost, or opportunity cost, against the benefit. I’ve previously shared my perspective on being Selfishly Productive and the importance of being able to say “no.” And due to my current workload and family calendar, I’m getting plenty of practice saying “no” to people who want a piece of me. But recently I was invited to participate in an event that took about a nanosecond to agree to do.

So, now I am going to ask you to do something:  Join me for this powerful event!

Three of my favorite Go-To Sales Gurus and I are putting on a free, live web-video conversation where we’ll discuss “The Fastest Route to Closing More Deals.” It’s on Tuesday, May 20th at 1:00pm Eastern, 10:00am Pacific. If you live in flyover country like I do, you can do the math to figure out what time that is for you.

The best part?  No slides. No one presenting at you. No gimmicks. No Ginsu Knives. No one trying to sell you a follow-up program. Did you catch that first one?  No slides. Really. Four hard-core sales improvement pros going at it live, all on the screen at the same time, tackling big, real topics facing salespeople and sales leaders everyday. If I wasn’t on the panel, I’d be watching this because it’s going to be fantastic.

How do I know this is going to be great? Because I know these guys. They’re not only trusted experts, but they’ve become friends. I trust not only their sales expertise in their respective areas, but also their character. Each guy brings a unique perspective to the table, and I promise you that we are going to mix it up.

Miles Austin is my #1 resource on anything sales web tools. He’s a seasoned pro with significant sales executive experience. Miles gets sales and he gets technology. Every time I leave a conversation with him I walk away looking forward to the next encounter. He’s that valuable to me.

Mark Hunter, author of High-Profit Selling, is a master at protecting the value of what you sell. He speaks all over the world to large multinational sales organizations, and he’s as comfortable talking about prospecting as he is at challenging salespeople to stop selling on price.

Andy Paul, author of Zero-Time Selling, is a true expert on compressing sales cycles and minimizing the time between creating an opportunity and closing the deal. His first book is great and I’ve got super-high expectations for his next one which is being published by AMACOM (same publisher as New Sales. Simplified.)

And you get me –  along with this promise: I am going to bring it. I’ll be blunt. I’ll be contrarian.  I’ll share what I am seeing with my clients in the real world. I’ll get emotional. I’ll tell the truth whether it’s popular or not. And if the four of us don’t get in at least one good heated argument before we’re three-quarters through the session, I’ll start one.

Go register for this thing now.  You can thank me later.

Free Live Video Conversation: Four Sales Experts on the Fastest Route to Closing More Deals  — Tuesday, May 20 at 1:00EDT/10:00PDT —  Click here to sign up

 

The post Free Live Video Conversation: Four Sales Experts on the Fastest Route to Closing More Deals appeared first on Mike Weinberg | The New Sales Coach.

The release of a campaign is for marketers the pinnacle of months of hard work. But don’t be fooled, it is not the end of the story.

Marketing teams need to continue to track the activity around their projects to determine its success. By analysing the conversation surrounding campaigns marketers can tailor their strategy dependant on real-time reactions.

Changes to the theme of a project to reflect sentiment or adjustment of placement can have a huge impact and it can all be achieved through listening to online conversation relating to the campaign. 

What matters most: massive impact or ongoing success?

Leaving your project unattended means it stagnates and loses momentum. 

When it comes to measuring success you should strive for a campaign that just keeps on giving. Having a massive impact can yield short term results but experiencing a long term high will provide a succession of positive outcomes.  

In this graph we can see a selection of campaigns for tourist boards. By tracking the conversation we can see that Campaign A experienced a sudden impact, which resulted in a surge of mentions.  

However, that fizzled out pretty quickly which meant it soon lost momentum. In comparison Campaign B and C both had campaigns that built steadily over time.  

They maintained the online chatter and eventually beat the success of Campaign A. 

By inspiring long term conversation the effect was a maintained momentum. 

Richness in reaction 

Mentions alone are not indicative to the success of a social campaign. 

The online conversations need to be relevant and relate to the products or messages a company is trying to get across. 

Taking a look at the same tourist campaigns again we can see that campaign C had the most relevant tweets in relation to vacations.  

To pinpoint the relevancy of the chat around a campaign you must identify the elements of the conversation that does not relate to the main offerings but simply comment on the trivial or obscure aspects.

When you dive deeper into the data you can also differentiate between the conversations that show true purchase intent.

It is crucial to dig below the surface of the numbers to unearth the true impact of a campaign.  By using a social listening tool companies can slice and dice the data for a more precise results. 

Measure the results from your social campaigns

There are several ways that social media monitoring tools can be used to track the success of a media campaign.

Categories

Having a custom dashboard for each campaign will allow for the measurement of different aspects of the campaign. 

It may be that there are several different media resources implemented in the release of a campaign – TV adverts, print content, online content or other types of marketing. By segmenting the data into categories, these can be monitored and compared separately or in relation to the campaign as a whole. 

Topics

Monitoring the main themes surrounding the campaign will establish if it is ticking the key responses you are expecting. 

The topics feature of your social listening platform will confirm to you what themes had the biggest amount of mentions.

You can further segment this data into categories and sub-categories for an in-depth look at the different aspects which make up your marketing drive. 

Sentiment 

Looking at the sentiment of online reactions will help you to determine if your campaign has had a positive or negative reception. 

If negativity occurs a change in tactics will be needed to regain control of the campaign. 

Being a flexible marketer is essential for reaching your goals. Deviating away from your plans may be the only way to turn around a failing campaign. 

Campaign analysis is only one of the benefits that social media monitoring offers a business. There are many more ways that you can use social listening to improve your practices. Stick around for more insight on the subject.