When we discuss trust, it's usually from the perspective of how to build trust, how to be more trustworthy and what to do when a prospect doesn't trust you. These issues led to my White Paper on Trust, a study that had some very surprising and revealing results. If you haven't seen it or downloaded it, you can get it here.
When one of my clients talked with me about trust last week, I was actually surprised about the context and direction he was taking it.
He believed that as early as his first phone call, he could determine when a prospect was going to buy and if they were being honest...but didn't think his salespeople could do the same thing.
We discussed that he has much more experience, better instincts, develops better relationships, asks better questions, and does a better job differentiating himself. Those competencies and his experience do make a difference.
He asked if that could be taught to his lesser experienced salespeople and I said "no." You not only can't teach instincts and experience, but if you tried, salespeople might use it as a justification for having happy ears, hearing more of what they want to hear without questioning it.
That said, there are some indicators that we can identify, to help salespeople have a better handle on whether the prospect is being honest and whether or not they will buy. But these are not replacements for instinct. These indicators do not change the facts, they cannot move the opportunity to another stage of the pipeline or sales process, and they cannot alter the probability of closing. They are simply indicators:
The prospect says that, "Nobody ever asked me that question before" and proceeds to answer it;
The prospect says, "Great question" and proceeds to answer it;
There is a discussion about the competition, but it does not involve having the lowest price;
The prospect thanks the salesperson for being so very helpful;
The prospect shared the names of other decision makers, their roles and invited them to the next meeting or conversation;
The prospect easily shared his/her compelling reasons to buy;
The prospect answered all of your tough questions;
The prospect shared something personal;
The prospect took interest in the salesperson's personal life; and/or
There was no game playing.
Yes, there can be more.
No, this particular list does not have any science or even a study behind it. These are simply indicators that I have consciously and unconsciously used over the years. They may or may not be transferrable. They may or may not work for you.
Of course, you may not agree with me. This is an easy article to punch holes in, so if you are so inclined, this is the time to do it!
Remember, these do not replace instinct or facts - they are simply indicators to help determine whether or not you can believe your prospect and accurately predict that you'll get the business.
by mark.synek@salesbenchmarkindex.com (Mark Synek)
Successful sales compensation plans are specifically designed to drive desired behavior. One form of desired behavior is that your top sales reps don’t quit. Especially in small and medium-sized companies, Sales VPs must retain good reps. Smart compensation plans can be a big factor.
While those nine words make enormous sense, nearly everyone I ask agrees that common sense isn’t common practice. And even the how varies widely.
I bet you can say “yes” to this question: Have you ever been “sold to” by someone who used a “technique,” and you felt manipulated (pushed, tricked, conned, slimed, mad, etc.)? So how do you get salespeople to be polished in technique and not guilty of these adjectives?
In a word, intent.
25 years ago Dr. Stephen R. Covey published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Like millions of others, I read it and it rocked me! I decided I wanted to work for Dr. Covey. That was 20 years ago and I’m still here. As part of our 25th anniversary celebration, I’m re-reading his landmark book. Only this time, I’m reading through a different paradigm—a sales leader’s paradigm. How do The7 Habits apply to sales leaders, if at all?
Even before Habit 1, Stephen talks about the difference between “Personality Ethic” and “Character Ethic.” The stark contrast between these two approaches shows up in sales interactions and affects the results that flow from them.
The former smacks of a short-cut mentality. It is full of “quick-fix” techniques that promise to get others to give you what you want when you want it. They promise “you can change anything—now!” This can drive inauthentic and even manipulative behavior, as if there were some scheme or fast way to build relationships.
The Character Ethic holds that true, lasting success comes from carefully knitting proven principles into character, e.g., integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, patience, modesty, simplicity and the Golden Rule. These he describes as foundational and catalytic (an interesting word).
The Character Ethic comes to life in the sales realm when you adopt a belief that “intent counts more than technique.” Clearly, technique is important. The most well-intentioned seller without good communication or critical-thinking skills isn’t likely to succeed.
On the other hand, a focus on others’ success first is a rock-solid, character-based approach that puts you on the path to sustainable success. This isn’t just some philosophical, empty idea—there’s solid logic behind it.
If you’re going to help a client succeed, you need lots of good information from them. They’ll decide the amount and quality of what they share—and the access they give to others in the organization—based on their view of a seller’s motive. That affects you directly as a sales leader. How? Little or poor information and no access equals a much lower chance of making a sale.
As a sales leader, the chief goal is to make sure your salespeople are putting your client’s needs ahead of their own (and yours as well). I didn’t say forget about your company’s needs. That’s stupid too. It’s about sequence. Focus first on theirs. Then yours.
Get your intent right before every interaction and you’ve made a big step toward better selling. In Stephen’s words, “. . . only basic goodness gives life to technique.” Our character and motives constantly radiate from us and inform and profoundly influence others, even on a subconscious level, about what we really are rather than what we pretend to be.
Thanks for reading and I welcome your view. Have you had an experience when you applied an idea from the 7 Habits and it helped? I invite you to share your story.
It never fails: I can’t walk into a Costco without spending at least a few hundred dollars. This weekend was no exception either. My wife and I hit up the local warehouse store to stock up on some canned goods, snacks and other food and of course I left there with a new gadget: I bought a 64 GB Dell Venue 8 Pro with folio case for $299.99.
I’m not yet sure if I’ll keep the device — Costco has a very generous 90-day return policy — mainly because I’m not sold on the need for a Windows tablet for what I do. But if I do take it back, it won’t be because the slate is a bad product: I’ve used it heavily over the weekend and it’s the best Windows 8.1 tablet I’ve tested to date, a list that includes other slates from Lenovo and Toshiba.
Here are some initial observations in no particular order.
Most Windows tablets in this size use a 1280 x 800 resolution panel and the Venue 8 Pro is no exception. However, it’s an outstanding, bright IPS screen with great viewing angles. Touch is very responsive on the screen, which supports 10 simultaneous touch points.
An Intel Atom chip and 2 GB of memory are standard fare for 8-inch tablets running Windows 8.1, so the Dell doesn’t differ much here. Dell chose the Atom Z3740D to power the device; a quad-core chip clocked at 1.33 GHz with turbo-boost up to 1.83 GHz. By comparison, Lenovo uses a slightly faster Atom Z3770 chip in its $399 ThinkPad 8.3 tablet: That chip clocks at 1.46 GHz with a boost up to 2.39 GHz but you’d be hard pressed to see a performance difference.
Out of the various Windows slates I’ve looked at, I like the Dell’s design the most. This is a light, slim tablet with nice rubberized back and rounded edges.
It weighs 395 grams (0.87 pounds) and measures 216 x 130 x 9 millimeters or 8.5 x 5.12 by 0.35 inches. Essentially, this is a full Windows 8.1 machine in a size very comparable to an iPad mini.
The device does get warm in one particular spot on the back. It’s not what I’d call hot enough to be annoying but it’s definitely noticeable.
Dell says the Venue 8 Pro should get up to 8 hours of run-time on a single charge. So far, my experience matches up with that claim although I like to fully cycle the battery of a device several times before doing an official battery test. Still, I was able to use the tablet on and off for a full day on a single charge.
Just like its peers, the Dell Venue 8 Pro comes with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013. The apps run pretty well on the device but I’ll be happier when Microsoft launches a more touch-friendly version of Office for Windows. Still, if I needed to update a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, it’s easy to do on this tablet.
Unlike other Windows tablets, there’s no Windows button on the front face of the slate. Many have a capacitive button that, when pressed, brings you back to the Start screen. Dell opted for a small physical button on the top side of the device. I don’t particularly care for that design choice.
I also wished Dell had put in a second speaker. There’s just one so if you’re going to listen to music or watch videos, you’ll want to use headphones. With headphones on, the sound is quite good.
There’s a single micro-USB port used for data transfers and charging the device. Dell includes a small 10W charger with the tablet.
Dell charges $40 for the folio case that Costco included. It’s not bad and particularly useful for propping up the tablet to watch videos or to use as a traditional PC. Ideally, you’ll need a wireless mouse and keyboard if you plan for that; Dell sells small wireless keyboard for $99.99.
The tablet has a pair of cameras — 5 megapixels on the back and 1.2 on the front — which is handy for basic photos and video-conferencing through Skype or other apps. I tested the front camera on a Skype call and the experience was pretty solid.
You don’t get integrated mobile broadband at this price, so it’s Wi-Fi for connectivity. The Venue 8 Pro supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi which tests pretty good on my home network. I get faster speeds with 802.11ac devices but Wi-Fi performance is fine on this tablet.
Back in 2007, I spent $1,200 on what was then called a UMPC or Ultra Mobile PC. These were 7-inch tablets with resistive, not capacitive, touchscreens that ran Windows. They were up to an inch thick and often ran out of battery within 3 to 4 hours.
Fast forward to today and for 25 percent of the cost you can get a lighter, thinner Windows computer good for all-day mobile use. Based on what I’ve seen so far, the Dell may be the best of the bunch. If I had to pick one to carry around with me, this would be it.
Again, I’m not sure I need a Windows tablet. I use an iPad Air for most of my tablet content consumption and a Chromebook for work: Nearly all of the content I produce is done in a browser. Over the next three months we’ll see if the Venue 8 Pro wins me over and finds room in my stable of devices; I suspect the new Windows 8.1 update will have much to do with that decision because Microsoft has definitely improved the overall software experience.
And even with just a short time using the Dell tablet, it reinforces my personal opinion that Microsoft doesn’t need to make a Surface Mini slate, particularly if the device will run Windows RT. It will be a challenge for the company to bring such a tablet to market for much less than the Dell Venue 8 Pro costs (the 32 GB model is $249.99 direct) and offers more flexibility for consumers and enterprises alike since it runs the full version of Windows 8.1 with support for older apps.
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Enterprise software vendor TIBCO has acquired Jaspersoft, an open source business intelligence company, for approximately $185 million. 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.
Jaspersoft will beef up TIBCO’s analytics business that until now was comprised of the TIBCO Spotfire software. TIBCO is excited by Jaspersoft’s traction among software-as-a-service companies that embed Jaspersoft’s analytics tools into their applications, as well as its open source business model, if statements in a press release announcing the deal are indicative of its rationale. Jaspersoft’s integration with numerous NoSQL data stores and Hadoop also offer TIBCO a big data capability that Spotfire has lacked.
However the products complement each other, though, a harsher view of the deal is that both companies are struggling to make a name for themselves in a very crowded market. Tableau owns most of the mindshare today and is growing like crazy. Then there are large, multi-faceted companies such as Microsoft that own the whole analytics story from database up through applications. Startups such as Platfora, ClearStory and SiSense are raising lots of money, promising the moon and attracting some big-name users.
A recent report from Gigaom Research (subscription required) examining the space shows Jaspersoft lagging in terms of mindshare among emerging companies (6 percent compared with Tableau’s 50 percent), while TIBCO doesn’t appear on the list of established companies.
As the whole analytics software space continues to evolve — largely as a result of demands around big data, user experience, real-time performance (and data streams) and an emphasis on predictive capabilities over plain reports – more acquisitions will likely follow. Larger companies such as SAP, IBM, TIBCO and MicroStrategy aren’t about to lose out on a market predicted to be worth at least $50 billion in the next few years, but they’ll need to spend to buy up the new features that customers are going to want.
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Welcome to the fifth post in our Contently Labs series, where we answer common questions we hear from current or prospective brand publishers. Today’s question:“How do I successfully evangelize content within my company?”
When Kathleen Matthews wanted to pitch the idea of content marketing to her employer, Marriott International, she walked straight into Bill Marriott’s office. She told the then 76-year-old man that Marriott should have a blog, and he should write it.
“He said, ‘”Why the heck would anyone want to read a blog from me?’” said Jay Hamilton, digital strategist and content creator for Marriott International.
Marriott didn’t use computers, and, six years later, that hasn’t changed. But that didn’t stop Matthews from convincing Marriott that he, an icon in the industry, would be the best person to tell the company’s story online.
Marriott was sold. Using an audio recorder, he’s been dictating his weekly “On the Move” blog ever since, and the brand has expanded their content efforts into a multi-channel operation.
But not every executive is Bill Marriott, and not every company is as open to content marking as those in the hotel industry. When digital marketer Brad Stephenson started the conversation about content at his 100,000-employee healthcare organization, leadership had serious legal and regulatory concerns.
“We have to be very careful that we don’t talk about any off-label uses of our products,” Stephenson said. “There were lots of concerns about how much and how quickly we could produce with that in mind.”
Whether it’s due to industry regulations, or simple reluctance to invest in a content program large enough to be effective, resistance from executives can slow the progress of any brand’s content efforts. Here are ways Stephenson and others managed to rally support within their brands for a great content program.
Seek out content champions
“One person saying, ‘This is my idea and let’s do this’ is not as strong as five people saying ‘Here’s what we want to do,’” Stephenson said. “It doesn’t hurt to identify champions. Our chief marketing official was a champion from day one, and our PR person was as well.”
Sharon Oddy, associate director of Corporate Communications at Verizon Wireless, said that gaining support from the highest levels of corporate communications was critical in garnering financial and C-suite support for the creation of the brand’s News Center.
Where are brands’ potential content champions? Perhaps in more places than one might imagine. According to PR professional Frank Strong, writing for Ragan’s Health Care Communication News, creating allies in other departments can help build the case for content, including SEO managers and even sales.
“Salespeople love great content, because it’s an opportunity to reach out to customers and offer them something of value without asking for something in return,” Strong wrote.
Some of these coworkers may already be content converts, while others might need to be inspired. Hamilton has found success in building teams of supporters around new content ideas at Marriott by initiating meetings of likeminded staff.
“You can’t lead with your feet on the desk. You have to walk the halls,” he said.
“Building a group like this doesn’t take much effort,” said Hamilton. “Everybody likes to be invited somewhere, and I find pizza works well.”
“Building a group like this doesn’t take much effort. Everybody likes to be invited somewhere, and I find pizza works well.”
Build executive trust
Once the champions have been rallied, it’s time to evangelize to executives. Before attempting to sell the C-suite on the merits of a content program, however, it’s important to assure them that their concerns — whether legal, regulatory, budgetary or otherwise — have been heard, are valid and will be addressed.
“The biggest thing was was meeting with all the appropriate people to give them the understanding that we’re going to do this in an intelligent way,” Stephenson said, “letting them know there is a workflow to this, and the appropriate people will see and approve this content.
“It’s a little bit of education and it’s a bit of presenting the documentation to show you know the risks and have mitigation for them in place.”
Drive it home with data
Nothing speaks louder to leadership than data does. When Stephenson was able to show executives in his company that a competitor held 80 percent share of voice for a product line, it really got things moving.
“That terrified them. They said, ‘Do whatever you need to do to fix this,’” he said. “If you can prove with data that your competitors are doing something well, that’s the best argument you can possibly make.”
In addition to share of voice, a number of data points can help turn leadership heads toward the power of content. Writing for the Content Marketing Institute, co-founder and CEO of digital marketing firm iAcquire, Joe Griffin recommended presenting data to executives to prove how content will increase visibility, customer interaction, branding and reputation nurturing, as well as how content can deliver higher quality leads at a lower cost.
Execute a well-researched strategy
Rallying support for a content program with data and promises before it launches is one thing; living up to the evangelism is another. In order to seal leadership’s support for content, the program must be well executed — and well funded — from the get go.
“Don’t underestimate the time and money needed as it will likely cost more and take more time then you are estimating,” said Oddy. “Have a clear content strategy and stick to it.”
Without a well-researched strategy and budget, poorly planned, underperforming content can sabotage all of the progress you’ve made rallying support for the program.
“It’s worse to have a blog with one entry a month or six months of no posts than to have nothing,” Stephenson said. “There’s nothing that will hurt your argument more than having them say, ‘We had a blog before, and remember how bad it was.’”
It’s no small task for one person, garnering support for a big idea like content marketing in a large company with skeptical leadership. But by identifying the right content champions, developing trust with executives, presenting compelling data, and following through with a well-researched program, it’s been proven possible.
And when all else fails, persistence is never a bad strategy.
“I’m kind of a gentle steamroller,” Stephenson said. “I kind of pushed forward and said, ‘We’re going to move forward, and you’ll see the light as this stuff starts to work.’” What’s the deal with the Content Strategist? At Contently, storytelling is the only marketing we do, and it works wonders. It could for you, too. Learn more.
Have you ever thought about using social media to make the first contact to a prospect or lead rather than email? I know I didn’t until I was chatting with a colleague who mentioned he was seeing a 50% better response rate.
While I don’t have any formal research on that concept, I’m quickly realizing that the way we do business is changing faster than I may have originally thought. I was watching a video from Jill Konrath on the Rise Of Social Selling just a few weeks ago and something she said stood out to me. She said:
“Sellers who’ve embraced social media are creating new opportunities that totally bypass traditional sales channels… It’s about good selling – using all the tools that are available to you today.” – @jillkonrath, The Rise of Social Selling
The idea that sales leaders who are embracing social media are bypassing those who are sticking to traditional is supported by research. I have to reiterate this because there are still non-believers. In the comments on Jills video alone, you’ll find comments from naysayers who express that they still believe that “social media is a fad.” Sales professionals around the world who are adopting social media as a tool are finding significant results. Here are a few stats to prove it:
B2B marketers who use Twitter generate twice as many leads as those that do not (Inside View)
Marketers spend an average of 4-6 hours a week on social media (Social Media Examiner)
55% of B2B survey respondents search for information on social media (MediaBistro)
86% of IT buyers use social media in their purchase decision process (IDG Connect)
If you’re still not sold on the power of social media, allow me to give you a few practical tips on how you can use social selling to drive results. These are strategies I’ve used to close prospects and strategies the best sales professionals are using to close deals as you read this:
Social Media Prospecting
Prospecting is a sales process by which a sales representative determines if a sales lead is a genuine prospect or business opportunity. In the past, sales professionals would do prospecting by speaking with the prospect – today; all you need is access to Google or LinkedIn.
A quick search on social media can help a sales professional identify a prospects role in a company, how long they’ve been there and how much power they have in regards to the decision making process. Social media can help save sales leaders time and effort by identifying who they should focus on and stop them from wasting their time on leads that don’t have any impact on the deal.
Relationship Development
Sales is built on trust, and trust is built on strong relationships. In fact, when we conducted a study earlier this year, we found that 98% of sales professionals believe that relationships play the biggest role in their ability to generate new business. As such, it’s increasingly important for you to look for opportunities and channels that can help you strengthen relationships with existing clients and potential prospects.
Here at Introhive, we’ve built a platform that helps you measure the strength of relationships within your organization. In doing so, you can be more strategic in identifying which accounts need more love and which potential prospects have strong ties with your organization. Through a combination of big data and social media, our software will help you unlock the power of relationships.
Opportunity Identification
At the entry to the sales pipeline, marketers and sales professionals are identifying true business opportunities through social media. Inbound-marketing firm HubSpot surveyed 3,300 executives and marketers and found that social-networking sites now contribute 14 percent of marketers’ total leads and yield 13 percent more than average leads in conversions to sales.
Any sales leader knows that their pipeline and funnel is their second most important asset after their existing relationships. Social selling gives organizations and sales professionals an opportunity to identify opportunities within their network they may have missed otherwise.
Introhive allows sales leaders to understand the relationship strength of their team with different organizations and identify who on their team is the right person to reach out or make an introduction. It’s through the combination of social media and big data that social selling is finally being made real.
In a nutshell, sales leaders are falling in love with social selling because it works. It’s an opportunity for organizations and sales professionals alike to achieve their goals and drive success. We’ve read the reports, we’ve seen the studies and we’re watching our clients achieve results day after day.
What are you waiting for? Get out there and start selling!
I’ve always been straight to the point, and I’ll continue that characteristic today; the answer to the question in the title is…your WEBSITE!
Your website is far and away your organization’s most impactful sales tool and I’m here to tell you why. As I take you on this brief journey with me, I ask you to consistently relate the following facts and concepts to your own organization and begin to connect the dots.
To begin with, ask yourself why you hired your sales team. If you answered “to generate more leads and sales,” you’re on the right track. Now another question: why do you have a website? SPOILER ALERT! Your answer should be the same.
Obviously there are numerous reasons to have a website, especially in this day and age, however your website is your biggest sales asset and should be treated as such. A majority of organizations around the world have come around to accepting this fact and are focusing all their efforts toward website optimization; I urge you to do the same.
Your Best Sales Rep
If you’re website is not your best sales rep, make it your best sales rep. Transform your website from an outdated brochure site into a confident, charismatic, intelligent sales rep that answers your questions before you have the chance to ask them. Incorporate a sleek, modern web design with sales-actionable functionality to create a website that intrigues and informs – much like a captivating sales rep would do.
Before I go much further, I want to express how crucial it is to still have [human] sales reps focused on generating, nurturing, and converting leads into customers in addition to your web-based efforts. However, data shows that roughly 60% of customer purchase decisions are made prior to speaking with a sales rep. A well-designed, optimized website provides your sales reps with a substantial head start as they work toward closing business.
Along with helping customers along their purchase decision journey, a stellar business website can provide valuable information to the sales team via form submissions. By implementing compelling CTAs (calls-to-action) that link to landing pages with stimulating offers (and form fields that create contact opportunities), you can transform your website into a lead generation machine running 24/7. Your sales team can then use the personal information voluntarily given by each lead to tailor their contact efforts accordingly.
Now your website is compiling leads (who are interested in the resources you’ve provided on your site) which can be automatically delivered to the sales team. You’ve avoided the necessity of soliciting unengaged contacts, cold calling, and selling door-to-door; instead, your sales team has a list of “warm,” interested prospects to reach out to in a personalized manner.
Although I don’t want this taken the wrong way, if your sales team is having success attending networking events, cold calling, or selling door-to-door, by all means continue having them do so. There is no right or wrong when it comes to effective sales efforts. However, certain improvements are far more efficient and impactful than others. A sales actionable website can be your greatest sales asset. So what are you waiting for?
Marketing is not the straightforward process that it once was. It’s no longer about creating a few promotional campaigns a quarter and purchasing some ad space.
Digital marketing is about taking advantage of all of the channels prospects use to interact with your company. It’s about website upkeep, blogging regularly, optimizing for mobile users, updating social media accounts, crafting relevant and timely emails, nurturing leads, studying analytics, staying up to date on the latest industry news -- anything and everything we can do to provide more value to our target audience.
That means today's marketers also must wear many different hats. Sometimes we’re journalists and coders; other times we’re statisticians and Excel experts. No two days are ever exactly the same. Fortunately, we have access to an endless amount of resources to help with that.
This SlideShare from Eric Leist identifies 40 tools that can help you get your job done faster, and better. We highlight our favorites below the SlideShare, covering everything from email to mobile to learning platforms.
All of the tools on this list are great resources and you'll have to try them out and decide for yourself which ones are the most useful to you. But, here are our favorites, broken down by category:
1) Litmus
Litmus focuses on helping its users analyze and optimize their email campaigns. There are a lot of cool things that you can do on this site. My favorite feature is their comprehensive design testing, which lets you review your emails across 30+ different email clients in minutes so you can optimize your emails for recipients on all platforms. If you're using HubSpot's email, this testing is integrated within your email tool.
2) Jumpcut
When I'm doing research or writing a blog post, I'm forever cutting and pasting between various browsers and documents. Jumpcut makes this tedious process easier. Jumpcut is an application that stores all of your clippings so you can access text you've cut or copied even if you've subsequently cut or copied something else.
3) Signals
Well, this one is a no brainer. Signals is an email and sales tool offered by HubSpot that allows users to track when recipients are opening their emails, as well as the actions that recipient take within an email, such as clicking a link. Signals is particularly useful in the sales process as it provides you real-time insights you can act on immediately to help you work leads when they're thinking of you, and close more business, more efficiently.
4) CardMunch
I find it somewhat hard to believe that people still use business cards. I mean, I know they do -- I see it all the time -- but the prospect of going digital is just so much more appealing.
Anyway, CardMunch is an app that is making the practice of collecting business cards more manageable. Simply take a picture of a business card with the app and it's automatically converted into a contact on your smartphone.
5) Klout
This Klout extension integrates the Klout scores into the Twitter experience in Firefox. Once you download this add-on, you’ll be able to see influence scores next to the people you follow and throughout your stream.
6) Codecademy
It can be really useful for digital marketers to understand at least some basic HTML and CSS. Codecademy is an online platform that offers coding classes in six different programming languages at no cost. When you join, you will receive your own profile where you can create your own projects and keep track of your progress in the various courses. This site is a phenomenal resource if you're looking to learn some basic coding at your own pace and at no cost.
Do you already use any of the tools in the SlideShare? Which tools do you rely on to complete your everyday tasks?
Over the years, I found that I innately gravitate towards the part of my job I enjoy doing the most. I think we’re all guilty of that at times. In fact, I would argue that most of us gravitate away from cold calling. In my experience it has been rare to see someone swan dive into cold dials every day. Generally, I had a pre-calling ritual before I got going, but there were still days when it seemed as if it took me an entire morning to get warmed up.
Those of us who dial for dollars understand those days where it feels like the phone weighs about 150 pounds and it was nearly impossible to get into any kind of rhythm. I know when I wasn’t in “the flow,” I typically would find any excuse not to make a call, but any good inside sales rep understands that, as much as we try to put cold calling off for later, it’s always going to be a requirement of the job.
Most of the outside sales reps I’ve supported in the past never really had a call plan. Generally, it consisted of an erratic combination of cold dials sprinkled in with a couple emails for good measure, with no real science to back it up. Not only that, but this was crammed in while filling out the expense report, finishing up a proposal and doing a discovery call with a new prospect. Contrast this against the small percentage of inside sales reps I’ve worked who would typically allocate a few set hours to making the necessary dials. Usually that consisted of a morning and afternoon session. They noted that having a focused couple of hours meant a huge increase in the amount of dials that went out in the course of a day. If they just did it piecemeal, their unfocused effort usually netted about a 50% lower call output. Bottom line is that you need to carve out the time. Put it on your calendar so you don’t have an excuse and just do it.
This is the mindset I want to see in my inside sales team as they take to the phones. Granted, they are tasked with calling all day long, but the road blocks that prevent them from being consistently productive do exist. You need at least 4 hours in your day where you’re doing nothing but dialing. The key thing is to set your day up accordingly.
Realistically, most of us work in an environment with constant distraction. Let’s paint the picture on typical Monday: Joanie will come by to ask a business-related question that leads into what happened over her zany weekend. After 15 minutes of her yammering on, you attempt to get off the ground and a email pops up from a prospect that you must read. Then as you are about to dial you decide to quickly brush up on the latest news on your prospect… Before you know it, it’s 20 minutes later and you haven’t even made the call yet.
While these are all things we deal with throughout the day, they can be addressed pretty simply. If you know that Joanie generally tends to yammer, then leave your head-set on, or the office door shut, to indicate that you do not wish to be disturbed. To avoid reading email, shut Outlook/Gmail down during the calling session, or at the very least remove the email pop-up notification. Research as we all know is absolutely necessary, but rather than reading that interesting article on your target company during prime calling hours, set the research aside for the first or last half hour of your day.
Here are a few other things I would suggest to allow for more efficiency:
Have your email templates pre-written depending on the interest level of the prospect. Leave the customized email writing for after your call session
Don’t waste your time digging around to find the right collateral. Have all the info at the ready before you dial.
Set your day up based on time zone. East coast calls go out in the AM, West coast calls in the PM.
Use the first and last half hour of the day for the administrative stuff (i.e. finding contact info, setting up dials for the next day, creating new prospect emails).
Again, this stuff ain’t all that complicated. Point is, any of the real sales folks I’ve been around came to terms early on in their career with the simple fact that cold calling is a necessary part of the job. If you face this reality and remove all distractions that can disrupt that flow, you may find that you could actually enjoy those couple of hours dedicated to dialing.
Traditionally, your website is thought of as a marketing responsibility and falls on that department’s plate. When I talk to people interested in redesigning their website they can be analysts, specialists, directors or managers, but all of them usually have the word ‘marketing’ in their title.
During my conversation I inevitably ask, “How can we design a website to support your sales team in closing leads?”
If I could see a blank stare through the phone, this is the point that it would happen. A well executed inbound website will always do a few key things:
It will showcase your brand
It will show what you are offering to your audience
It will generate leads, but also help your sales team close those leads
Your website should be bringing you qualified leads. Period.
It’s at the root of inbound marketing. If you design your site and the supporting copy with the focus on your buyer personas, you will be attracting the right people. Your website will be filling your pipeline with leads that have the potential to close.
Understanding who your buyer personas are and how they want to find you online is essential for getting the right people to your sales team. If you sell to C-Suite female executives, for example, you need to tailor the design and copy to get them to your site and your sales team.
Not only does the website copy count, but so does the content.
Blogging, eBooks, white papers oh my! All these are going to help attract your buyer personas and sales qualified leads. I like to see content that shows people that we know how to solve their problem and that we are the experts they want to hire. Having this advanced content not only helps get them to my website but is also useful for during the sales process.
I can use this content to help educate the lead further, show them how we solved a problem like theirs, or relay our expertise. Of course they can take my word for it, but it’s far more effective if I can back up my pitch with thoughtful content to support it.
Your well designed website will help your sales team attract leads along with the help of your marketing team. But your website will also see what those leads are doing in real time and provide insight as to the optimal time to reach out to them.
Technology is a beautiful thing for sales.
The more robust your CRM, the more tools your sales team will have at their fingertips. HubSpot is great because it gives my marketing team a whizbang tool for getting me those leads. But once those leads are in my system, I have Signals at my side to help me close them.
With Signals I am given the real-time data on what my leads are doing on our site. Have they looked at a case study and our pricing page? Perfect! I’ll give them a call, they are likely ready to have a conversation about getting started. With HubSpot’s Signals I am no longer in the dark. I know where the lead is in the buying process and I am able to contact them appropriately (and then close the lead).
Having a website with targeted design, copy, content, and intelligence will help your sales team close more deals.
You will be reaching out to the right audience, offering them the right information, and know the right time to pick up the phone or send that email. As I’ve said before, no one likes to be given a canned sales approach. It’s alienating and is going to send your leads straight to the competition who is doing a better job at doing their homework.
With a technology forward CRM and a well executed inbound marketing website and marketing strategy, you will be doing more than bringing leads to your website. You’ll also will be arming your sales team with the tools they need to close leads and grow your business.
From the time we are little and then far into our adult lives, we hear about ABCs. They mean different things to different people and if you are in sales and business development they ring in your ears and sit on your shoulder day in and day out.
You may recall the movie Glengarry Glen Ross when Alec Baldwin’s character, Blake, shares his sales philosophy with his team, it’s not exactly motivating but it was and is the way it was done.
His version of ABCs was “Alway Be Closing.” Actually, he would have said it more like, “ALWAYS BE CLOSING.”
Guess what? Buyers didn’t like to be sold. It’s time for a new tactic.
Then we had Always Be Checking. Ok, that’s a bit more sophisticated and not as in your face, right? The salesperson is just checking to make sure you are all tracking in the same direction. If you nod yes enough times, it’s hard not to agree that buying is the only option.
This works a bit better, but after a while, the checking in gets annoying and buyers still feel manipulated.
The real problem is that salespeople tend to learn one strategy and some tactics that go with that strategy and they plow through the field without giving much thought to the fact that the people they are talking to have changed. Buyers, regardless of what they are buying, have more information than ever and need the salesperson less than ever to complete a transaction. Hmmm.
Buyers are 70 percent along in their buying decision before they engage a business development person. That’s interesting. Why? They’ve done their homework. Websites, social media, LinkedIn, review sites all provide the insight — often the most real information on that person or organization. And, people tend to believe the endorsements, testimonials and referrals from their network more than all the sales propaganda that’s created.
So, what to do if you are in sales and business development? Consider a new iteration of the ABCs.
Always Be Curious. Here are some tips:
Ask great questions and then be quiet.
Be really quiet.
Listen carefully. Is there another next question to ask? If you don’t listen, you can only ask another first-level question that may or may not relate to the answer just provided.
Pick up on the nuance of what your prospect is saying (by listening carefully).
Pick up on what your prospect is saying, reiterate it and ask a more probing next question.
This allows you to check in for understanding and clarity (hmm, that’s the always-be-checking component).
Ask great, thoughtful questions not superficial questions that bore people and show you haven’t done any research.
Gain trust and share your expertise with a sense of generosity.
Ask one more question, “what’s our next step?”
Follow up on the next step.
Your curiosity gives a prospect a chance to talk and give you all the intel you need to create value by connecting the dots. In that place, you will always be closing (hmm, that’s the always-be-closing component and the most important part if you hope to make a living).
You will also be more interesting. Who doesn’t want to be considered interesting and smart and thoughtful?
The ABCs of selling are also about realizing that learning our ABCs doesn’t just happen when we are young. It’s about realizing our learning never ends.
Not thinking of myself as much of a hacker, I was curious to see how the Sales Hacker Conference would be this past week in NYC. It was being held in a space normally filled with ping-pong tables, a DJ, and a bar. Magically transformed, this space which turned into a decent learning environment for hundreds of attendees was a creative solution for a big-enough space in New York City to get a lot of business people together.
I was an attendee in the minority being female and over 40, but that was precisely why I felt I needed to be there. My colleagues in sales effectiveness would be speaking as well as some very successful business builders here to share what works, and also what didn’t work for them in growing sales and revenues. Done correctly, this event could help many younger entrepreneurs could learn from others rather than spending time making the mistakes that would be shared on this day.
The decisions on the setting, presenters, and agenda were the work of Max Altshuler, self professed Sales Hacker and Community Builder. Unlike the conferences that have been around for year on selling, Max strives to put a “no BS” event together with lots of actual takeaways that could be put right into use instead of promotion and selling from the stage. (Max now has most of the slides from the event posted at SalesHacker.)
For me, this day was well-spent. I knew My rule of thumb is that if you get at least a page or two of ideas for your business and meet a handful of interesting folks, an event like this is of great value. Even ONE great idea can justify a time and financial investment of a conference. On this day, I saw people fervently typing up ideas, snapping photos of slides, and reaching out to those around them all day long. It would be surprising to meet any attendee who thought there was little to gain by being here. I wish all my clients could have attended.
There was a little selling from the stage, and a couple of presenters that had me scratching my head, but otherwise a fantastic full day. Here are my personal favorite parts of the Sales Hacker Conference, in order of their appearance:
Elay Cohen, author of SalesHood reminded the audience that a great sales professional should consider himself or herself the CEO of their business. Know what your values are in your team and with yourself. Share those values.
John Marcus, CEO, Bedrock Data drove the point home about getting others to sell on your behalf through strategic partnerships. It is a huge idea and while John used two many ten-dollar words and phrases, what he said seemed to distill down to “create a viral sales model and find organizations and individuals who are vectors to your product or service. Let others sell for you.
Jaspar Weir, Co-founder and President, Taskus reminded the attendees of how expensive SDRs (Sales Development Reps) can be – especially if they are spending too much time doing research. Find ways to leverage all the non-selling tasks, such are research, to outsourced team members. This is what his company does, so it makes total sense for them, and he explained how it makes sense for anyone selling items or services over $5000 each. I think depending on how you set it up, it could work for those with much lower price points too.
Tawheed Kader, or TK, Founder of ToutApp, had a most clear and helpful presentation on personalizing relationships at scale. His tips included having “5 x 5″ sales messaging campaigns – send 5 different messages using 5 pre-planned templates over 5 touches to offer more insight and value to potential buyers than typical sales messaging. The strategic messaging he suggests goes like this:
First message: Introduce yourself
Second message: Produce value – talk about something not product related – don’t sell
Third message: Offer help
Fourth message: Engage for feedback
Fifth message: Go for “the ask”
Because these emails come from a person, not the “marketing machine” at your company, they are personalized and the receiver engages more.
My pal John Barrows of JBarrows gave another great presentation all about getting executive access. Some of John’s tips:
NEVER say “I’m just checking-in” or “I’m just touching base” [I could not agree more!!]
Understand your metrics – really know just how many potential buyers you need to speak with in order to convert those conversations and relationships into wins for you and for the buyers
Call High and work your way down
Executives DO respond to content – find ways to add value by telling them what their peers are doing, speaking their language, sharing results, offering new ideas, and talking about them
Kyle Porter, CEO and Founder, SalesLoft, has his presentation archived here for you to see, and said to:
Create a one-page strategic plan for yourself (if in sales) or for your sales team (if you are the leader)
Be transparent – Salesloft shares revenue information and success milestones with their whole team
Use dashboards – visual representation of KPIs (key performance indicators)
Have the best humans for sales and then equip them with technology for a superhuman performance
Mark Roberge, SVP Sales, Hubspot wrapped up the day with a fantastic session about how the Hubspot team scaled through science. The last session focused on winning strategies Hubspot has put into place through a lot of trial and error (and great success) Mark recommended insightful messaging to prospects as well as utilizing a messaging sequence over multiple touches. PipelineDeals, one of the event sponsors, live blogged about Mark’s presentation here. [note: they blogged about a number of other presentations that day, so check them out] He mentioned several resources including Hubspot’s MarketingGrader to get tips to improve your website and Signals, the tool that helps you know who has opened the emails you have sent out as well as clicked on links in them.
We’ll be posting more from this event in the days ahead. So much to talk about that it deserves more space.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
We’re all very familiar with the idea that modern B2B buyers are increasingly well-informed and far less dependent on individual sales interactions to get hold of the information they need to make buying decisions.
But according to a recent survey revealed by Neil Rackham of SPIN Selling fame, B2B buyers are also demanding more expertise and support from sales people than ever before. How can these two apparent contradictions be rationalised?
It turns out that the answer lies in the increasingly polarised nature of B2B buying behaviour…
As Rackham revealed in a recent discussion at the University of Portsmouth Business School, until a few years ago, B2B customers were generally prepared to pay a little more for the benefit of getting advice about their purchase.
Transactional vs. consultative buying behaviours
There was until recently a substantial “middle ground” of B2B buyers who were not completely transactional in their buying behaviour but at the same time did not require (and were not prepared to pay for) a full-on consultative selling relationship.
In many markets, this middle-ground-thinking represented the majority of mainstream buyers. But things have changed. B2B buying has become increasingly polarized between the extremes of highly transactional and highly consultative behaviours.
Perhaps this “squeezed middle” should come as no surprise: we’re seeing exactly the same pressures in many markets. You’ve only got to look at the UK supermarket landscape, where buyers are rapidly polarising towards cost-leader brands (Aldi, Lidl and Asda) and value-based brands (Waitrose and M&S) leaving middle of the road brands like Tesco struggling to maintain their market position.
But just as in B2C, customers don’t always make exclusive choices and many behave situationally: B2B customers may choose to buy some things transactionally and other things consultatively, even from the same supplier. In many situations, it’s often impossible (and frequently dangerous) to characterise customers as always being exclusively transactional or consultative.
Avoiding being stuck in the squeezed middle
So how can B2B sales and marketing organisations adapt? Well firstly, if your customer base exhibits both transactional and consultative buying behaviours, you had better have two separate go-to-market models – a low cost transactional channel and a high value consultative channel.
Trying to “tweak” or stretch what is essentially a single underlying business model a little bit in either direction in an attempt to compromise won’t satisfy anyone involved in the process – one or other party will soon conclude that the cost-value equation is wrong.
Two buying behaviours: two sales models
There’s an inescapable conclusion: if you’re going to have to run two separate go-to-market models, you’re going to have to run two separate sales forces. No sales force can be effective if the same salespeople are pursuing both transactional and consultative opportunities.
There’s an obvious economic explanation for this: Any salesperson that is talented enough to succeed in consultative selling is too expensive to use in transactional sales where customers don’t want, don’t need and won’t pay for high-level sales talent.
But, as Rackham pointed out, there’s also a psychological reason: When salespeople manage both transactional and consultative opportunities, they invariably pay too much attention to the short-cycle low-margin transactional business at the expense of longer-cycle higher consultative opportunities – and they are often unwittingly encouraged in this behavior by the signals they’re getting from quarterly driven sales management.
Concentrating your energies
So the conclusion is obvious: remove responsibility for low-margin transactional sales from your high-cost field sales organisation and switch it to a telesales, web-based or indirect channel. Focus your scarce, hard-to-hire value-creating sales people on high-payoff consultative sales opportunities. Concentrate their energies where they can create the greatest value for both the customer and your organisation.
This is a challenging change management exercise. It’s likely that many of your sales people will resist having opportunities taken away from them. Interestingly, the smartest top performers often see the logic in it more easily than their middle-of-the road-colleagues, particularly if they feel that the company is supporting them by heavily resourcing the most attractive high-value opportunities.
You may need to implement some form of transitional compensation scheme. You may well find that the change exposes weaknesses in some of your existing sales people that may have to be addressed through training or re-assignment to more suitable roles.
Change now or have change forced upon you
It is unlikely to be a completely painless transition. But the alternative – of staying “stuck in the middle” is likely to be increasingly painful, and putting off the transition will almost inevitably mean that your hand will be forced against your will at some future date.
So – where does your current go-to-market approach fit along the transactional – consultative buying curve? And what’s the risk that your current model is an increasingly uncomfortable compromise between the two?
Every day you read something about how today’s buyers are 60-70 percent through their buying process before they will reach out to a salesperson. You also know that I believe that if that is the segment of the market you are pursuing, you are an order taker, not a seller, a seller’s job is to go out there and engage with those potential buyers not in the market, who do not have a self-serve mentality. Nothing wrong with capturing that revenue, we all should, but that is not selling, and more importantly in most instances, not enough to get you to quota.
While there is no denying that buyers are out there scouring the web, including your company site, social site, not just for peer input, but to get a view of you as a seller; there is also no denying that much of that information is contradictory, confusing, bland beige, and often unusable. For every piece you read about buyers using the web to bypass sellers, there is an equal number that speak to how executives are often left confused, overwhelmed, and less able to move forward than when they started. They end up seeking clarity and someone who can cut down the noise, someone who is not flinging information, but someone with knowledge, knowledge they can leverage to achieve their objective.
The reality is that they do not go to the web to get informed about a line of products, rather they set out to address a business objective, be that rooted in something negative, or positive; things like the ability to increase market share, leapfrog the competitor with product innovation, etc. To do that they seek knowledge, and while the web may have a lot of information, some better than the rest, knowledge is where you can make the difference. The same knowledge that will help you sell to not only those in the market, but to identify, approach and engage the much larger pool of buyers that is not in the market, nor would they be if you did not knock on their door. The area where knowledge trumps other elements, including relationship. While we all want that relationship, building it on helping the buyer leverage your knowledge will help facilitate it. Relationships, real ones, not just following each other on LinkedIn or Twitter, take time, you can use knowledge now to start, facilitate and accelerate.
Sure, information will help you be found, but knowledge will differentiate you when found. Especially in an environment where not only is there an 80% overlap in features and functions of leading competing products, but in the stream of words and stock photos on their website, Facebook pages, etc. This extends to the information available on the web. For every point, there is a counter point; there is less and less that a buyer can discern on social media, one web site looks like the next.
Using knowledge as the equalizer and differentiator, takes a bit more work than waiting for that buyer who calls you at the end of their process or journey. But even with those buyers, knowledge allows you to take a leadership role, with knowledge you can challenge common misconceptions, and poor decision that result. There is a pundit out there who always asks “do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?” The implication is that you have to make a choice, usually at the expense of the buyer. But I am here to tell you that you can be both, you can be right, and you can be rich, by applying your knowledge to help the buyer also make the right choice for them, making you both rich.
New customers have a tendency to evolve through three phases once they decide to buy from you.
Initially they feel very excited about their decision before going through a learning curve where they may struggle with blending in your products/services.
Finally, they begin to experience the value that you provide and the relationship settles down and finds its own balance.
Phase 2 can be a potentially vulnerable time for a sales person, because without the benefit of an established track record, and in the face of possible problems, no matter how minor, this is the time when most newly acquired customers are apt to change their mind.
The process of buying has four main components that all customers will evolve through. They:
Have to be motivated to want to buy from you
Make a decision to buy from you
Want to feel convinced that they have made the right decision
Look for reassurance that they are doing the right thing
Once the customer has placed their order they are at the second stage in the buying process. If a sales person doesn’t provide the relevant reassurance that validates the benefits of their decision, then the likelihood of the customer cancelling their order increases dramatically.
This is often referred to as ‘Buyers Remorse” Therefore, it’s important to provide tangible demonstrations that the customer has made the right decision.
These can include, the use of testimonials, higher initial servicing levels, regular contact and if appropriate training sessions on the areas effected by the introduction of your product or service.
There are a number of additional ways that can improve the post-sale part of the sales process:
Set a service agenda for the first 30 days after the sale so that your customer knows exactly what they can expect from you. This may include visits and phone calls at the point when they receive your product or your service begins. This enables you to have established contact frequency at important times when teething problems could occur.
Ask each customer for their preferences in the way you manage their account and ensure that they have all the contact information for every eventuality.
After the call, send a hand-written note thanking them for their business. This is a personal touch that only takes a moment, yet leaves the customer feeling valued and special
Identify which areas in particular the customer feels is vital to the way you manage their account so that you can pay close attention to these areas.
Agree up-front how future problems will be handled.
Document all successes and evidence of your value in writing. For example: “I noticed that your delivery was received on time last Thursday and am delighted that you now have our products in stock.”
Actively ask questions to check their satisfaction. For example, “Was everything as you had expected?” “Is there anything we need to change?” This helps to flush out problems and manages the customer’s expectations so they feel they are genuinely being looked after. If there is a problem, the earlier you know about it the sooner you can remedy it.
Resolve any complaints quickly and to the customer’s satisfaction.
Never think of the first sale as the end of the sales process but rather the beginning of the next sales cycle. What you do after you’ve made the first sale determines whether you get the next one, and the one after that, and referrals.
Be assured, the more tender loving care you sprinkle on your customers, the greater the yield you can anticipate in return!
OK, as promised, here i some more information on the “Attitude to Change” assessment, which more than 400 of you completed last week to measure your creativity/flair, discipline and realism.
Potentially, you could have scored a maximum of 35 in each category, and certainly the very best sales professionals score 30+ in all three areas.
The only category that rarely changes is creativity, the other two do increase with age, experience and training.
Still time to take the test if you wish – it is anonymous! HERE
For Experts that Sell, A Surprising Key to an Effective Sales Meeting
Experts, circa 2014, sell. Are you a portfolio manager, consultant, lawyer, investment banker, engineer, architect, or estate planner? As an expert, you are highly educated and credentialed and have deep industry and subject matter knowledge. Though not in a typical sales role, you may be asked at times to participate on a sales call or pitch. The request may be driven by clients who increasingly want to meet and gain comfort with the person who will be creating their portfolio, solution, deal structure, strategy, or design. Or, the request may be driven by your firm, which has decided that your participation is essential to win the work. Regardless of how you feel about selling, the comments below are designed to help you contribute to a winning sales effort when asked.
Among the highly accomplished experts I coach, one common misconception is that the purpose of a sales meeting is to prove your expertise. There is no question buyers want to confirm what they learned about you from referral partners and their own research. As an authority, it is easy to fall into the trap of doing most of the talking, focusing on yourself rather than the client, missing the opportunity to gain feedback, and — despite your intent or the reality — coming across as arrogant.
So, how do you avoid this? To transform the discussion into an effective sales meeting, I have found that making one small adjustment in your mindset can lead to a significant impact on the meeting’s outcome. That adjustment is humility.
That does not mean that clients expect you to be humble about your accomplishments or to dumb things down. Humility, in the context of an effective sales meeting, is about recognizing not just what you know as a subject matter expert but also what you might not know about the client. There is growing appreciation for humility as a leadership quality. Look no further than Pope Francis — someone we could confidently call an expert —- and how quickly he has gained influence not just within the Catholic Church but as a world leader.
Consider how humility might change the way you prepare for and conduct an effective sales meeting:
So, for that next sales meeting, consider sidestepping the common mistake experts make when selling, focusing only on your qualifications, your approach, and your ideas. If you want to stand apart from the other experts waiting in the hallway, surprise the client with some humility to create an effective sales meeting. How will you incorporate humility into your preparation and comments in order to walk away with the win?
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Introducing Sales Process Pro
Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below.
While listening to a presentation at a conference recently, the presenter got me thinking differently. When someone can do that, you know you are in the right room.
The presenter was Sean Burke and his talk was called, The World’s Youngest Billionaires Guide to Social Selling. The title caught my attention and since I had recently met him through his company’s list of 100 Social Sales Influencers it seemed like a good idea to sit in on this one.
What totally HIT me during the presentation was when Sean talked about how WE as sellers have helped create all the tools on the web that now help our BUYERS without us – that isn’t new. What IS new is the idea that WE as sellers can do a number of things to anticipate what our buyers want and need. We can respond with the same tools to be better, more responsive sellers and ultimately have more opportunity to gain their awareness and potentially their business.
I enjoyed the presentation SO much and it gave me SO many questions that I asked Sean if he’d let me ask him those questions about getting ahead of the buyer – so we are going live tomorrow with a Google Hangout. I hope you will consider joining us – all the information to sign up is here, and if you do sign up – you’ll get a free copy of KiteDesk’s ebook, “15 Social Sales Trends from 15 Social Sales Influencers“.
We’ll talk about how to:
Anticipate your potential buyer’s next move
Develop ‘teaser’ content that is relevant and so compelling that buyers will want to replicate their outcomes
Figure out who your potential buyer learns from and invest in those relationships
Find the critical interest point that helps open the flood gates
Learn more about your potential buyer’s world
Hope to see you there! If nothing else, register and get the free ebook, Post the questions YOU have as a seller on how you can anticipate your buyer’s next moves – do you do this already? If so, HOW?
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
What is the fabulous and extraordinary thing that is UGC? No, it’s not the latest clog variation of UGG boots – it’s none other than user-generated content!
Today we’re looking at different kinds of user generated content, examples of user-generated content, where to find it, how to use it, and more!
What is User Generated Content?
A user generated content definition: UGC is anything on the web that users have a hand in making. Most of the photos, videos, and posts you see on the web are pieces of user generated content. Basically, UGC is anything not made by a brand, though brands do leverage user-generated content for ranking.
Different Kinds of User Generated Content
The variations of UGC are endless. Some major kinds include:
Blog comments
Facebook comments or posts
Reviews
User generated videos
User generated blog posts
Forums
Podcasts
Some popular streams of UGC involve collaboration between a brand and a user. Take for example, the Christmas Jib Jab “Elf Yourself” videos that tend to re-emerge every holiday season. Jib Jab let users upload photos of friends and family member’s faces, which are then pasted onto Jib Jab’s animated dancing elves. In the example video below, one users uploaded Harry Potter characters for an special Hogwarts-ian Elf Yourself video.
These videos have been hugely successful – Jib Jab provides the tech and tools while users bring their unique creative flair to the table, creating custom UGC that people LOVE to share.
User Generated Content Examples: How Brands Can Repurpose UGC
In a previous Facebook advertising post, we showed how several brands are doing a great job of repurposing user generated content for their own benefit, sharing brand-inspired fan art and customer testimonials across various social networks. Here we’re highlighting a few of our favorite user generated content examples once again.
This eloquent endorsement posted by a Twitter fan was taken by Dominoes and then pasted over an image, creating a new visual piece of UGC that could then be shared on Facebook (and other networks).
M&Ms likes to do a Fan Pic Friday, in which a UGC piece is shared on various social networks. This is another great example of a user generated content marketing strategy that capitalizes on users’ creativity.
Starbucks also posts fan generated content every so often – people love their coffee, and Starbucks isn’t afraid to share user generated content that shows off how beloved they are.
GoPro is another brand that has done a fantastic job of utilizing fan generated content. GoPro will often share and promote impressive customer-created videos on their YouTube channel.
All this user generated content marketing has meant tremendous things for GoPro. As GoPro videos become increasingly more popular, more users get excited at the idea of making their own mini-films for their own five minutes of fame. Those users naturally go out and buy a GoPro before creating even more unique UGC videos, which in turn promote the GoPro brand and increase sales. It’s a marketers dream cycle!
Reviews are another form of user-generated content that can easily be re-formatted for different mediums. A stellar Amazon review might do a lot of good repositioned on your website.
Make the most of your user generated genius – you’re letting your fans do the work for you. When you have a popular brand that generates fan attention, the user generated content that rolls in is immensely valuable. Why? Well for one, there are some pretty creative people out there who find fun and innovative news ways to talk about your product or brand. Ways you may never dream of. The creative culture of user generated content is quite impressive – even the big buck marketing teams would be hard pressed to compete with the creativity of fans.
The work of a mad man
There are dozens of ways user generated content can be repurposed across various web identities – an Instagram post tagging your business can be shared on Pinterest! A shout out on Twitter can become a Facebook testimonial. The possibilities are endless. Don’t let your UGC go to waste – make the most of it!
Where to Find User Generated Content
Maybe you’re getting excited now about all that high class, super UGC ripe for the taking. But where to find it? There’s all sorts of user generated content sites across the web, but it helps to know where to look. Some UGC powerhouses included…
Devianart
Devianart is the #1 spot for blossoming artists of the world to show off their wares. Every kind of art imaginable can be found on this online haven for the artistically inclined (from fabric design and computer generated art, to 3D modeling, drawing, and more).
Flickr
As one of the few (if not the only) photo-hosting sites giving away a whole terabyte of space for free, Flickr has a lot of users posting their photography work. If you see something you love and want to use, reach out to a user and ask.
Don’t feel like panhandling for photos? Alternatively, search Flickr via Creative Commons for photos that can be used for free in exchange for attribution. These photos can also be found by conducting an Advanced Search in Flickr, and checking of the Creative Commons-licensed only option at the bottom.
Reddit
Reddit presents a heap of UGC in the form of images, forum discussions, and comments. If you’re looking for authentic user generated content, you’ll likely find all sorts of stuff on “the front page of the internet.”
Facebook
Where there are users, there is user generated content. And boy howdy, there are tons of folks on Facebook! The semi-recently updated Facebook search tool can help you find discussions revolving around your brand.
It becomes pretty easy to find user generated photos and posts about your brand with a quick Facebook search. Try it out and reap the rewards.
Twitter
Twitter is a hot spot for discovering conversation surrounding your brand. Just hashify your business and see what’s the buzz! The Advanced Search feature is also useful for finding what people are saying about a topic during a given time frame. You can even embed relevant tweets right into your content.
YouTube
YouTube is home to the crown jewel of user generated content – video of course! The King Kong of content, video can captivate and hold the attention of viewers much longer than text or photos.
There’s been a lot of hype surrounding Taco Bell’s new breakfast menu (oh man, the 1st world in which we live), and sure enough, when I search “taco bell,” on YouTube, quite a few user generated video reviews pop up.
Assuming they have good things to say about you, user generated video reviews can be prime UGC to show off and repurpose for your business. Video user endorsements can carry tremendous word-of-mouth power, all the more mighty because you’re seeing the real people who recommend your product, making their opinion exponentially more trustworthy. Text reviews on the other hand, while still very valuable forms of UGC, can be mistrusted by skeptical users who see the reviews as potentially artificial. The Internet’s trust factor when it comes to quoting individuals has been seriously damaged.
In case the hilarity of this image sails over your head – it’s a quote from Yoda (Star Wars), attributed to Dumbledore (Harry Potter), with an image of Gandalf (Lord of the Rings). For optimal misquotation, the link to this image should say “My favorite Star Trek quote.”
Pinterest
Pinterest is another great source for user generated content. People just love posting pics on Pinterest – especially food pics. Again, search your brand and wander through pins to see if anything juicy shows up.
Instagram
Instagram has become the #1 spot for mobile photo-sharing fans. There’s a ton of great UGC on here, and it’s a great spot to host a contest or giveaway in order to obtain user generated content (more on that strategy later).
I recommend using GramFeed to search through Instagram photos – it’s a handy little site that lets you search through instagram posts by topic or hashtag.
Amazon Reviews (& Other Reviews Sites)
As discussed with regards to YouTube videos, reviews are great for swaying the opinions of hesitant buyers. Scour popular review sites for shining endorsements of your biz – try searching through Amazon customer reviews or Yelp reviews for starters, as that’s where the majority of online evals take place.
People take online reviews quite seriously (although there are tons of hilarious funny Amazon reviews out there as well) and put a lot of thought and consideration into their evaluations. Use the good ones to your advantage!
No Brand UGC? No Problem – Go a Bit Broader
The best user generated content is content that relates directly to your brand. That tailored fan content works for you on so many levels – it serves as a word-of-mouth endorsement, helps with brand development, and engages with audiences on their level. Basically, personalized user generated content is just the best – it’s the bee’s knees!
But sometimes the “best” just isn’t attainable, in which case, the next best will do just fine. If you have a tough time getting your hands on specific brand-related UGC, fear not! Instead, seek out user generated content that is related to your industry. For example, if you sell mountain hiking gear, you might be interested in user generated content from outdoor junkies. Look for photos, blog posts, gear reviews, or videos from campers.
Goal Zero sells portable solar panels for charging goods on the go, but they’ll often share UGC that will interest their audiences, such as a guest post about fly fishing.
Of course, whenever sharing user-generated content, it’s important to give credit where it is due; be sure to call out those awesome content creators for sharing their experiences.
Want Custom User Gen Content? Just Ask For It!
Sometimes, getting what you’re after is a simple as saying, “please.” You’ll be rolling in UGC in no time if you organize a contest that require a piece of user-generated content as a submission.
Take for example, a current Pillsbury contest asking fans to submit by posting a photo to Instagram of their brightest and boldest baked goods.
It’s a simple concept, but bakers from all over are more than happy to oblige, and the user generated content has been steadily coming in.
Contests are often used to build brand awareness and reach, but involving user-generated content adds a huge bonus element, as the brand earns a collection of great fan crafted content that can be implemented for different purposes and on different mediums for years to come.
Winning photos can be curated into a blog post (which fans will doubtlessly share for self-promotion sake), posted on Pinterest, tweeted on Facebook, and so much more. What’s not to love?
Communal Blogs
Another way to get user-generated content is to host a communal blog or forum.
For example, YouMoz is a communal posting space where community members can share their own blog posts and content on Moz. Members vote on the posts with a thumbs up or down – if the article gets enough positive votes, the post is promoted to the main blog. Online community-oriented sites like this are great for building community and serve as a smart source of high-quality user-generated content.
User Generate Content Blues? Fake it ‘Till You Make it
Still having a hard time getting your hands on UGC? Try creating your own! OK, it won’t really be user-generated content if you’re making it yourself, but you can replicate the user-generated style that will likely appeal to users over more blatant branded advertising.
User generated content statistics from Crowdtap show that Millennials consider UGC 20% more influential and 35% more memorable that branded messages. They also are 50% more likely to find UGC trustworthy as opposed to branded advertising. So even if your marketing content isn’t authentically user-generated, that style of marketing will appeal much more to younger audiences than classic branded marketing.
It’s unclear if this photo posted on Starbuck’s Facebook page is fan-crafted or the company’s creation, but regardless it has the style and concept (pop-culture oriented) of a UGC piece. Naturally this got a TON of likes and shares online. Nothing hits quite as hard as nostalgia.
We’ve made a pretty strong case for user generated content. If you’re not foaming at the mouth for that home grown UGC by now, you’d best re-read this post! Your quest for fantastic user generated content may take you to some strange places, but as long as you come up with some UGC spoils, it’ll surely be worth the ride.
Do you have a piece of user generated content that did a ton of good for your business? Share your experience in the comment section below!
How often do people talk about the effects of differing customs and cultures on outsourcing relationships? It seems it’s not a subject often discussed as the mere cost-benefits of outsourcing or even the rights of the workers involved.
But in outsourced telemarketing, issues like different holidays can be an obstacle when your salespeople depend on it for a consistent production of leads and appointments. It would be difficult if that production was brought to a sudden halt by the prospect of holidays that are not observed on your side of the globe.
Whether it’s the Diwali of India or the Holy Week of the Philippines, neither of which are as highly observed in the British/American calendar.
It’s not really the same when it’s the other way around either. Think of outsourced telemarketing as a sort of delivery service. It doesn’t really matter if you’re in the office or not so long as the package is left at the door for them to pick up after their own holiday. On the other hand, when you come around to visit (maybe to renew a campaign, a weekly meet-up, or just to give feedback) you’ll find their establishment closed for theirs. It’s not hard to imagine the strain this might have so here are some simple ways to mitigate it:
Research on the country, not just the company – A little bit of cultural research never hurt anybody and can be a fun learning experience. Not only will you learn more about when they could be unavailable, you’ll have some stock knowledge in case you want to go somewhere for a vacation.
Ask them yourselves – You already have the benefit of closely collaborating with an offshore company. Why hesitate to ask? It can either prompt you to do more research or better yet, save you the trouble of finding out yourself.
Know the common means of maintaining production – Outsourced companies that have been up for years will know a trick or two of maintaining production (even during their own holidays). Ask them what those are regardless if you’re already doing business or are still in the phase of meeting their own sales rep.
Don’t let unexpected holidays raise suspicion between you and your vendors. In hindsight, it can actually be petty if you had just prepared or ask. Why not do it now so you can prepare for their holidays as you do yours?
You already understand the benefits of content marketing and know that it’s the best approach to achieve your business objectives, but is everyone on board?
Too often sales and marketing teams speak a different language, each wondering what the other does all day. While you might recognise the benefits of content marketing, it can take longer to change the way sales teams think about how to attract and engage prospects in the digital age.
Here are five easy ways to explain the benefits of content marketing, win the support (and adoration) of your sales team and in doing so become a content marketing hero.
How much will your sales team love you if you can deliver them higher-quality leads ripe for a sales call?
Instead of spending hours on the phone calling prospects who are lukewarm – or worse, not even in the market to purchase – you can use content to attract the exact type of clients you want, and to create a path that effectively weeds out anyone who isn’t ready to purchase. Your head of sales will be bringing you coffee and cupcakes in no time.
An effective inbound strategy can eradicate the need for your sales team to make cold calls. Believe it or not, people are already out there looking for your solutions and services. You don’t need to sell to them, you just need to make it easy for them to find you by putting the right content in the right places at the right times. You’ll create enough inbound demand that your sales staff will soon be so busy responding to enquiries they won’t even have time to flick through the phone book.
The content you create for your company blog, social channels, EDMs and more doubles as great customer-ready collateral for your sales team. Find a way to make your content easily accessible to your sales staff so that they can quickly share it during client meetings, or as a follow-up to trigger a further conversation. You’ll create an invaluable resource for your sales team – lots of great content on topics that support their conversations with prospects.
Are your sales staff active on social media? Channels like LinkedIn are an amazing way for your sales team to demonstrate their knowledge and connect with prospects – and content is the currency that fuels all of those online conversations. Give your sales team the content they need to share frequently with their networks, attract interested prospects and start conversations.
Imagine if your sales team could tell you what to create! Content marketing offers an incredible opportunity for sales and marketing to work closer than ever before. Sales staff are on the front line speaking to customers every day, so they have first-hand knowledge about what your customers need and want. They know what questions prospects are asking and what their biggest challenges are.
That kind of information is invaluable fodder for your content marketing efforts. It will take some work, but with a little effort and education you can create an ongoing feedback loop for your sales team to share their ideas, observations and insights on topics of interest to your consumers. Their feedback becomes the basis for the content you create, which in turn goes back to the sales team to be shared.
The great thing about content marketing is that it’s not a role (or a department), it’s a philosophy that stretches right across your organisation. So it’s time to break down those old-fashioned silos and harness the power of your sales team.
These are just a handful of ways in which your sales team will see the benefits of your content marketing efforts. So get talking! We suggest you print out a few copies of this checklist and leave them lying strategically around the office.
Riddle me this. What can lift the probability of Sales accepting Marketing’s leads by 31%, increase the probability of closing these marketing qualified leads by 56%, and increase Marketing’s contribution to revenue by 62%?
Planning. More specifically, assigning the right owner to planning. To accelerate your growth, it’s as simple as that.
In this week’s blog, Hugh reveals some of the cutting-edge insights from the 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment report. He delves into who should own planning in your organisation, and backs up his argument up with some pretty impressive statistics on why this is the case.
According to recent Content Marketing Institute research, lack of time is the number one issue for both B2B and B2C marketers (69 percent and 57 percent cited it, respectively). If bandwidth is already compressed, how will content marketers find time to address splintered reader attention spans, the ever-expanding landscape of new publishing platforms, and the near-constant shifting of content consumption patterns?
If you haven’t already done so, create a documented content marketing strategy that aligns with your organizational goals. Put an end to the need-it-yesterday hunt for content. It’s a bad habit that stifles creativity, causes burnout, and allows low-quality ideas to slip through. A thorough (read: 12-month) content marketing strategy will help your team:
Align content production with business goals and buyer needs
Allocate internal resources more effectively
Achieve greater relevance by mapping content to major events, holidays, and seasonality
Address gaps in content proactively, whether related to specific keywords, buyer personas, or stages in the sales funnel.
A detailed yet adaptable plan is best, but even a basic content calendar of topics, company milestones, and industry events will help reign-in the chaos that can result from an unstructured content program.
2. Develop a production process
Next, make sure you’ve put the necessary processes in place to manage the flow of content creation, distribution, and measurement. Keep in mind that good process creates guardrails, not roadblocks, allowing your team to run with the content marketing strategy you’ve created. Consider:
Who: Writers, editors, publishers — key members of your organization, including relevant stakeholders in other departments, should be aware of who’s in charge of content, and what their specific responsibilities are.
What: Blog posts, eBooks, infographics, videos… what types of content is your target audience looking for, and what is your team capable of delivering to them? On an individual level, what buyer persona and buying cycle stage will each content asset address? What is the intended goal or call to action for each piece of content? Make sure you define these parameters in advance.
When: Establish publishing frequency, and work backward to create intermediary deadlines for internal editing and review. Build in enough time to avoid sloppy work and regulate a steady pipeline of content.
Where: Your team should have shared access to both the content calendar and working drafts. Too much time is wasted hunting down the latest version or trying to remember whether a post was finalized for publishing. Keep the latest status and file name of each content piece in a centralized location for ubiquitous access. Consider using project management software, such as Podio or Basecamp, which enable teams access to a calendar, to-do lists, and files.
Tip: There are a number of tools you can leverage to make content marketing processes even more efficient and strategic.
3. Develop writer specialization
Subject matter expertise is essential to efficiently written and technically sound content. Delegate projects that actively develop writers’ knowledge around specific topics, or “beats.” Segment by product/service, vertical, buyer persona, or editorial themes.
If your team is small, invest in necessary training and educational resources, or pull in an agency to supplement content creation efforts.
4. Hold regular editorial meetings
Turn your team into a publishing engine through editorial meetings. Bring together the organization’s content producers regularly to:
Foster creativity through consistent brainstorming sessions
Uncover unique brand stories waiting to be harvested
Evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and performance of existing content
Discuss industry news and trends, and take advantage of real-time newsjacking opportunities
Provide a forum to strategize and prioritize content production.
Each idea brought to the meeting should pass through a conversational filter to discuss the idea’s value, explore alternative angles, select topics for production, prioritize importance, and make sure all topics fit into your larger content marketing strategy.
5. Tap into subject matter experts and user-generated content
You don’t have to go it alone. Bring others into the process of content marketing, including sales, product experts, and even your customers. Make the most of employee-generated content, user-generated content, and customer advocates. Not only can their involvement lessen the burden of content creation, it can also lend greater authenticity to your content, help your team get executive buy-in more easily, and add richer detail to the stories you tell.
6. Reduce, reuse, repurpose
If you’re not repurposing content, you’re doing it wrong. Combine, reuse or rethink content in new and unexpected ways to generate more with less effort. For example:
Split larger content assets into blog posts
Write a blog post based on one section of an infographic you’ve produced
Map out a blog post series that could also serve as chapters of next month’s eBook.
As my colleague Mike Kaput puts it, “Repurposed content reaches more leads in more places and extracts more value from content marketing investments. Most importantly, it scales. An eBook begets infographics, which (with narration) can beget videos, etc. — all in exponentially less time than each asset would take to create in a vacuum.”
In addition to getting more mileage from each topic, repurposing challenges you to re-create valuable content assets for different buyer personas and verticals — making content highly targeted and relevant.
7. Garner internal support to increase budget
One of the more straightforward approaches to scaling your efforts is to draw in greater budget. To earn buy-in from budgetary gatekeepers, be proactive and prepared in conversations, and regularly share current performance and wins to build trust and bolster support. Added budget can be used to build up internal resources or fund wish list content marketing projects, like a video or infographic.
8. Be selective with content production
When creating new content, make sure your time is spent on projects capable of delivering the greatest value. Throughout each stage of the customer journey, figure out which specific pieces of content will cater best to your personas’ current needs.
Start by mapping existing content to specific personas across the sales cycle, then prioritize topics that will fill the gaps. Already done this? Evaluate your content’s performance — revamp the least successful assets, and better promote the most successful. Make your content work for you.
9. Befriend data
Building on Step 8, track performance through quantifiable metrics, and leverage this data to allocate resources toward top-performing subjects and formats. Once you’ve defined the objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will serve as benchmarks for content success, you’ll be able to analyze current activities, evaluate performance, define next steps to improve weaknesses and build upon strengths, and calculate ROI. Consider establishing a schedule like the following to ensure that you stay on top of your metrics:
Daily: Quickly monitor analytics technology for spikes and anomalies. Investigate as necessary.
Monthly, quarterly, and annually: Record KPIs, looking for trends and potential contributors.
As needed: Plan for spot-checks into your analytics now and again to evaluate the performance of new content initiatives or particularly innovative content projects.
10. Prepare for the next generation of content marketing
You may be creating content successfully now, but in order for your strategy to scale as your content efforts expand, you should also be prepared to leverage that content to its fullest potential. Create integrated content strategies that combine best practices in blogging, SEO, social media, PR, email marketing, lead nurturing, and marketing automation for maximum impact.
In an article on brand storytelling that Paul Roetzer wrote for Chief Content Officer, he predicted that the content marketers of tomorrow will take branded content to the next level through a few specific techniques:
Using historical and predictive search patterns to drive content strategy
Tailoring copy and calls to action to speak to specific needs, pain points, and behavioral triggers using contextual data (for example, by encouraging first-time visitors to “Request a Quote” while offering returning customers the option to “Contact Your Account Manager”)
Adapting content consumption patterns to a multi-screen world
Deploying marketing automation to deliver content at key touchpoints in the buying process.
As content marketing matures, strategy and execution will become increasingly sophisticated.
Taking the first step
Reevaluating your content marketing strategy may seem overwhelming. But if your current approach seems unsustainable, it’s a problem you can’t afford to ignore.
Your brand is vying for visitors, subscribers, leads, and sales, and content should be an ever-growing piece of your marketing strategy. But in order to scale to a level where your content can continually adapt to the challenge of breaking through the ever-increasing digital clutter and noise, you’ll need to prepare your team with efficient processes, integrated technology, and an intelligent strategy that can rise to any occasion.
Sales people fail all the time. Depending on how you look at it, or who you ask, they fail more often than not.
Sales people fail for two reasons, they fail themselves or the company fails them. Today’s post will address why sales people fail themselves. I’ll drop my 2 cents on how companies fail sales people in a follow up post.
Sales people fail, because they simply fail themselves. When sales people fail themselves they’ve done some or all of these things;
They don’t make enough calls
They don’t learn the product
They don’t know the product well ENOUGH
They lack business acumen
They’re selling features and benefits, not solving problems
They’re not listening
They don’t understand the value proposition
They can’t create a unique client specific value proposition
They complain about the product
They complain about the lack of leads
They’re building their pipeline
They’re wasting time on deals that won’t close
They’re not using social media
They aren’t reading sales blogs (like this one)
The don’t have a plan
They aren’t using the CRM properly (or god forbid, not using it all)
They don’t have a smartphone
Their deal strategies suck
They don’t know the buyers journey
The don’t read a book a month
They blame
They don’t have a personal development plan
The just can’t sell
They can’t identify the true client problem(s)
They’re afraid of the client
They aren’t teaching
They’re too busy building “relationships”
They talk too much about themselves and their product
They don’t work hard enough
They quit too soon
These are just a handful of the reasons sales people don’t make their number. When we miss our number, we can only blame ourselves. There is a slew of reasons and most of them start with us. If you want to make your number. If you want to be the number one rep, do less of this stuff and more of the good stuff.
Sales rocks because success is so uniquely tied to individual effort, effort in, results out. It’s that easy.
Unless you’ve been spending the last couple of months on ICQ or MySpace, you know that Twitter recently launched a massive new redesign for user profiles.
The update has transformed what have traditionally been understated, relatively simple, profiles into highly visual Facebook-esque profile pages.
A massive header image now dominates the top of each profile page that is coupled with a profile picture that has more than doubled in size.
Pertinent stats such as Tweets, photos/videos, following, followers and favourites sit underneath the header image.
Even the trusty profile timeline has received an update. Now, tweets that have received above-average numbers of re-tweets, favourites and @-replies swell in size to make them easier to find amongst a user’s less-frequently interacted with updates.
Needless to say, it’s a substantial update that has garnered much attention from the marketing community.
However, I can’t help but wonder if this update is just a precursor of a much bigger, more impactful Twitter update to come.
I can’t say that I’m aware of many people actually looking at profile pages on the platform, which leads me to think that there’s more at play here than just a nice visual update.
The latest stats I’ve seen indicate that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60 percent of all tweets originate from third party applications. I recognize this doesn’t align 1:1 with profile views, but it does indicate that there are many people that don’t even use the official Twitter platform, thus reducing the opportunity for them to see fancy new profiles.
What I’m thinking is that Twitter has another, bigger update in store to drive more on-platform usage and more profile views.
When you think about it, this makes sense because the more people they have using the official platform, the greater opportunity they would have to expand their advertising network with new media placements and potential premium features.
If something along these lines comes to fruition, it wouldn’t be the first time that Twitter has introduced a new feature to create greater opportunity for revenue generation. A relatively recent example of this occurred directly before the Twitter IPO, when they introduced the feature allowing images to automatically appear in users’ feeds without the need to click a link. Sure, this is a great way to showcase images, but it also created a great deal of perceived value to advertisers that see those images as another opportunity to catch the attention of their targeted audience. And you’ve got to imagine that this would have led to incremental ad sales.
Anyway, I’ve got a few ideas for how Twitter could attract it’s user-base back to the official platform, how newly updated profiles play into this, and what the associated benefits might be, but frankly, they’re complete guesses, so for now I’ll keep them to myself.
It can be fun to speculate, however, so let me know what you think is really going on with these new Twitter profiles in the comments.
The fans of conventional “solution selling” thinking would have you believe that the most effective sales people are problem solvers - and it’s certainly true that problem solving is an important sales skill.
But your customers expect more: the research that led to the publication of The Challenger Sale proved conclusively that helping customers to solve problems they were already aware of wasn’t enough.
That’s why the top sales performers in complex B2B sales environments are the ones that enable their customers to anticipate and address potentially business-critical issues that the prospect might not yet even be aware of.
Unless you happen to be a systems integrator that could literally solve any problem the customer throws at you (with a budget to match), this requires a completely different mind set from the traditional “what keeps you awake at night” questioning approach...
Why asking "what keeps you up at night" ought to give you nightmares
In fact, for any sales organisation that is trying to promote a replicable value proposition, asking your prospect “what keeps you up at night” (or any variation on the same theme) is one of the worst possible ways of initiating a discovery conversation.
Here are three reasons why this is such a flawed strategy:..
You have no way of influencing what their answer might be - it could be something that has no relevance whatsoever to the problems you are best equipped to solve
It does nothing to convey your expertise, or to showcase your accumulated experience of the challenges faced by similar people in similar organisations
It would jolly well serve you right if the prospect came up with an equally facile response, and good luck digging yourself out of that self-inflicted situation if they do
Assuming that your organisation’s expertise lies in solving a well-defined set of customer problems better than any other option available to them, you’re far better off with an approach that sounds much more like the following:
“When we work with other [NAME THEIR ROLE] in similar [DESCRIBE THEIR ORGANISATION], they often talk about having to deal with [NAME 2-4 ISSUES YOU ADDRESS REALLY WELL], and I’m curious about how these might be affecting your own organisation?”
A no-lose strategy
This is, from my perspective, a no-lose strategy. If you’ve done your research, and chosen the issues well, at least one of them is likely to be on the prospect’s radar. And even if none of them currently are, you’ve earned the right to ask a supplementary that probes for some of the symptoms that they may be aware of but haven’t yet associated with the issue.
And if all else fails, you can still fall back on a more open question that gives them free rein to describe their most pressing issues - but in most cases, you won’t need to because you’ve already established the agenda, and earned the right to share some insights or explore some implications that the prospect may not be aware of or may not have previously thought about in quite the same way.
Avoiding premature elaboration
And all the while, you’re educating them through the experiences of similar people in similar organisations, rather than pitching your product or prematurely elaborating your “solution”.
This targeted exploration is a key element of the Challenger Selling methodology, and it’s one of the reasons the approach is proving so successful. Your are, effectively, teaching the prospect about an issue that leads them towards recognising the need for change and the superiority of your approach to achieving it.
If - like many of our clients - you have a replicable solution and a reasonably clearly defined target audience (expressed as a combination of organisations and stakeholders) then this directional education approach is far more effective than generic “solution seeking”.
Positioning yourself as a truly trusted adviser
It gives you the opportunity to showcase your unique expertise, and to share the learning you have accumulated from working with people and organisations just like them. Even better, it offers the chance to position yourself right from the start of the conversation as a trusted adviser and not yet another tedious feature-function obsessed salesperson.
If you haven’t yet read The Challenger Sale, I suggest you put it at the top of your must-read list. And if you have, and you’ve bought into the thinking, I'd encourage you to ask yourself: is my sales organisation restricing itself to trying to solve problems the customer is already aware of, or are we genuinely creating lasting value by introducing our prospects to issues or implications they may never have previously considered?
A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a director of marketing about a demand generation program he was getting ready to launch for his company. He had formulated some aggressive objectives for this program, and he was covering all the bases during one of our meetings. When I asked about lead follow up, he brought up the fact that his sales team had only followed up on 11% of the leads marketing had sent them the year before. I said, “You know, you really don’t need to develop any new programs. If sales just doubled their follow-up rate to 22%, you’d meet your numbers.”
Of course, I was speaking tongue-in-cheek, but there was a certain truth to my comments. When it comes to being a “revenue generating marketer,” I find that many marketers are looking for the next “silver bullet” – the latest and greatest solution to their lead and revenue generation challenges. But in so doing, they often forget the tried and true, the things that work every time they are tried. Lead management is one of those things.
So, what exactly is lead management? In short, it’s seven distinct, but interdependent processes that are used to manage the receiving, qualifying, routing, nurturing and closing of sales leads.
Lead management is not a technology (although it’s almost impossible to maintain proper lead management without marketing technology). It’s not a program – programs usually have an end date. To think lead management, one needs to think “process.” Or maybe, “framework.” And a proper lead management process or framework consists of…
A Lead Planning Process
A documented “quota”, developed and agreed to by marketing and sales, for how many qualified leads marketing will deliver to sales. This quota is based on the revenue goals for which marketing is held accountable.
A Lead Qualification Process
This consists of written definitions for every stage in the lead funnel or waterfall (terms such as inquiry, lead, qualified lead, etc.); criteria used for determining those definitions; and lead scoring, which is a numerical ranking of leads in the qualification model.
A Lead Routing Process
This is a mapping to show how qualified leads will be routed to sales, how non-sales ready leads will be nurtured, and how sales will send not-ready-to-buy leads back to marketing.
A Lead Nurturing Process
Through the use of marketing campaigns, this process is where leads are regularly provided information, based on their wants/needs. This process keeps them conversing, moves them further down the buying cycle, and creates favor to company.
A Content Development Process
You can’t have an effective lead nurturing process if you don’t have a process for creating content. This process is for creating marketing content that is relevant to your audience, and moves them further along the buying process.
A Metrics Process
A process that dictates what will be measured, who is responsible for the measurement, and (perhaps most importantly) how the analysis of the measurements will be used for future demand generation programs.
Let’s face it: lead management is the boring part of marketing. It’s process-oriented, left-brain work. However, it’s a foundational piece that will elevate marketing and sales effectiveness to much higher levels. Investing the necessary time, money and resources into establishing a lead management process will yield substantial increase on the return of marketing and sales programs. It may not be new or shiny. But it works….every time it’s tried.
One of the saddest things I deal with as someone who speaks so much on this subject of content marketing comes in the form of this question, sometimes posed after one of my presentations: “Marcus, I can see how all of this could work in the B2C space, but my company is B2B, so how [...]
You might think there’s a hot new social media platform every few months. After a while they all run together, and it seems like they’re all best left to other people (and maybe even other businesses).
But are they? If you aren’t actively involved in decisions regarding your business’s social media presence, you might you miss out on something useful — something that could move your business forward with a fraction of the effort and time (and therefore money) of traditional networking and branding.
Social media marketing offers a low-cost, high-ROI way to engage your prospective customers and keep your company on the minds of your customers during a longer sales cycle. The trick is choosing the right platform to specialize in. Here’s a look at the most influential social marketing platforms and how you can maximize their usefulness for your business.
LinkedIn
Why it’s worth it:
LinkedIn is the the obvious choice for B2B lead generation because it is used in more of a professional nature. It also recently opened up its content network for all users to publish and promote original content — a bold move that has many users stepping up their personal content marketing initiatives. What wins on this platform are creative headlines, thoughtful comments in group settings and unique content.
Biggest weakness:
LinkedIn is a fundamentally closed network, which means that you can only interact with users who have mutually given each other permission to do so. Because of this fundamental privacy, your network will not grow without active networking. Other networks, on the other hand, provide engagement opportunities through communal hashtags and trending topics.
Bottom Line: If you’re looking to build a strong personal network based on real-world connections, LinkedIn networking (and possibly paid advertising) is a great time investment. It’s also the closest thing to actual face-to-face networking, so it’s a good social media entry point.
Unfortunately, Facebook is having increasingly public struggles with its news feed algorithm and approach to marketing. Many marketers are finding that users who sign up for their updates do not see them, and Facebook is moving closer to a pay-only marketing platform. For a business with the budget, paid advertising might still be worthwhile. But if you enjoy Facebook for its free platform that allows you to access your fan base, your days are numbered.
Bottom Line: Facebook is the most popular social network, but not the most popular for B to B companies. It can still be effective because of its paid advertising potential.
Twitter
Why it’s worth it:
Twitter is a large and growing communication platform, especially among 18-29 demographic. Though Twitter can be overwhelming at first, it offers plenty of opportunities to share your message and engage with users in new and exciting ways. The repetitive and cyclic nature of the platform means that you can target your messages for a variety of segments on a variety of topics. It’s high touch, but also high engagement, perfect for B2B-style conversation that leads to conversion.
Biggest weakness:
Being so popular in a younger demographic makes it harder for B2B businesses to make leads (though they are there — we promise!). If you’re targeting an older, more established population, then the people you’ll want to do business with likely aren’t engaged on this platform. But if you are targeting a younger crowd, you would do yourself a huge favor to invest in an engaging Twitter presence.
Bottom Line: Twitter is a platform that can be helpful for younger professionals to drive company awareness. It requires more time since the life of a tweet is so short, but because it’s an open network, anyone can read your updates.
Google Plus
Why it’s worth it:
Google Plus has the world’s most powerful search engine behind it — and the SEO benefits that come with it. These benefits are pushing thousands of businesses to the platform each month and as overall usage grows, so does adoption across each demographic. B2B businesses will see results in website traffic and in reach from pushing content updates on the platform.
Bottom Line: Known for a more technical audience, Google Plus might be a good option for a manufacturer or technical industry. It’s good for SEO but still lags behind LinkedIn in terms of active participation and engagement.
Social media isn’t typically the most important or interesting part of business, but there’s proven value in investing in a social media presence as part of a B2B inbound marketing program. Do your homework, commit to the right platforms for your business, and let us know which are best for your business.
Twitter is a thinking man’s medium and it is not just sufficient to launch Twitter advertising campaigns. In this article, we speak about how successful Twitter advertising campaigns
Select a precise target audience.
In order to successfully track a Twitter advertising campaign, you have to precisely target your audience through ad campaigns. For every promoted tweet, you have to presently shell out 1.50 $. On the other hand, you need to pay 3$ for every follower on Twitter. So, you need to correctly identify your target audience.
Make use of tracking tools to measure the conversion rate
While creating promoted tweets for your advertising campaign, you would have to incorporate tags with your target URL in each of your tweets. Then, you may make use of different UTM parameters to know the visitors clicking specific links in Google Analytics. One of the easiest ways of identifying your UTM parameter is through Google Analytics URL Builder. Here, you get to collect data for various advertising campaigns.
For this purpose, you need to click the tab of Campaigns under Acquisitions. You may also set up Conversion tracking tool present under the dashboard of Twitter advertising. In order to set up this tool, you have to click on Conversion Tracking link present in the menu bar of Twitter advertising dashboard.
Increase followers through promoted accounts
After launching your Twitter advertising campaign, you can easily grow your followers by making use of promoted accounts. Did you notice the “Who to Follow box” present on the left-hand sidebar of Twitter? In this section, you get to see a long list of “promoted accounts.” Promoted accounts are the most effective ways of growing your followers on Twitter. Higher the number of followers on Twitter, greater would be the success of your advertising campaign.
One of the most recommended ways of attracting followers on Twitter is by making use of specific tweet to target your followers. This tweet would be displayed on mobile devices along with the suggestion of following your promoted account. The tweet should be representative of your advertising campaign on Twitter. This would attract the right kind of followers on Twitter.
Increase Leads with Lead Generation Cards
Lead generation cards are the best tools for launching Twitter advertising campaigns. Lead generation cards are tweets which are used to collect the names and emails of people who could serve as leads for growing your business. The leads gathered constitute the mailing list subscribers whom you can target easily through Twitter.
When we discuss trust, it's usually from the perspective of how to build trust, how to be more trustworthy and what to do when a prospect doesn't trust you. These issues led to my White Paper on Trust, a study that had some very surprising and revealing results. If you haven't seen it or downloaded it, you can get it here.
I’ve always been straight to the point, and I’ll continue that characteristic today; the answer to the question in the title is…your WEBSITE!.jpg)
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Planning. More specifically, assigning the right owner to planning. To accelerate your growth, it’s as simple as that.
In this week’s blog, Hugh reveals some of the cutting-edge insights from the 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment report. He delves into who should own planning in your organisation, and backs up his argument up with some pretty impressive statistics on why this is the case.
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