Rnordman

Before you send that email to your boss, send it to yourself first. 

Why? Emails take a second to send but last forever. The atrocious ones — whether mistake-riddled, nonsensical, or aggressive — can seriously hurt your career, says Sharon Salzberg, the author of "Real Happiness At Work." 

"The classic example would be getting irate and sending something with hostility," she says. "Although Gmail gives you a few seconds, life doesn't give us that many unsend buttons." 

To avoid a situation where you regret your message, Salzberg suggests taking a moment to breathe and reread the diatribe you just mashed into your keyboard.

That, of course, is hard. Research shows that self-control is a skill that some of us don't learn very well, and we get worse at controlling ourselves as the day goes on.

So to be certain that you've adequately considered an important email, Salzberg recommends sending it to yourself first. 

"Experience what it's like to be the recipient, and then see what you want to do with it," she says. Seeing your email with fresh eyes gives you the chance to polish it and edit out any hostility. 

As Salzberg says, truly being happy at work is mostly a matter of knowing what you're doing while you're doing it — a quality also known as "mindfulness."

But the hurly-burly momentum of the workday makes maintaining that awareness difficult.

That's why the happiness hacks in the book are so useful. Simple things, like picking up the phone on the third ring, monotasking when you drink a cup of coffee, and sending important emails to yourself first, can make all the difference. 

These practices "give some space to get in touch with what we're feeling," Salzberg says, "to see if we've crafted a conversation that we actually want."

SEE ALSO: 12 Ways To Be Happier At Work In Less Than 10 Minutes

Join the conversation about this story »

Author: Dayna Rothman

As a smart marketer, you have probably considered a marketing automation solution for your business. We know that it can be confusing to sort through all of the available solutions. And we know that every marketing team is unique and has different needs. It’s easy for a marketer to be drawn to the first solution that provides more functionality than you have today—even if it only offers a marginal improvement. We call these solutions “good enough”. True, many of these solutions provide very basic functionality to keep the lights on, but we all know that basic functionality won’t make your team shine. It certainly won’t help you achieve the best results.

If you want to learn more about how choosing a “good enough” solution can hinder your growth, download our new ebook: The Dangers of a “Good Enough” Marketing Automation Solution.

Let’s take a look at a “good enough” solution in the context of lead scoring, a very important function which sorts the good leads from the bad ones. A “good enough” solution offers only basic lead scoring. Sure, some lead scoring might be better than nothing, but generic lead scoring comes with  major shortcomings.

Here are the four major shortcomings that you might come up against with a “good enough” solution:

1) Associating a Single Lead Score with Each Lead or Contact in the CRM

Most of these basic marketing automation solutions have a single lead score associated with each lead or contact in the CRM. But what if you have multiple product lines? Or multiple business units? Simply put, a single lead score won’t help you determine what product or service a lead is actually interested in.

This gets even more problematic if you have sales reps that cover different products or services. How will he or she know what product a lead is interested in? What happens if you want to put your leads into nurture programs that cover different products? None of these scenarios are possible with a single lead score. However, more complete marketing automation solutions let you use multiple lead scores, which supports the way your business operates. With multiple lead scores, you can route the right lead to the right rep.

2) Generic Scoring Campaigns

Most “good enough” solutions use generic scoring campaigns. What does this mean? For instance, there may be a system-wide score associated with one action, like “filling out a form”. However, this doesn’t take into account what sort of form a lead filled out. Ideally, you want to your scoring to reflect the importance of each form. For instance, filling out a form for a late-stage piece of content or a product demo should result in a higher score than filling out a form for early-stage content. In a “good enough” solution, you don’t have that sort of control.

3) Scoring Based on a Limited Set of Behaviors

Many “good enough” solutions have a very limited set of behaviors they score, such as form fills, landing page visits, and email opens. But as a marketer in today’s multi-channel world, you need to score more—including content across the web, social network engagement, interactions at physical events, and so much more.

Complete marketing automation solutions can listen to behaviors from across multiple channels, and score appropriately. They can also take timing into consideration—for instance, if someone visits your pricing page multiple times, a complete solution will score this higher than a single visit to a generic webpage. Or if a person downloads three ebooks in one day, that should be scored higher than downloading three ebooks in one month. A “good enough” solution is unable to track these nuances.

4) Single Scoring that Doesn’t Separate Interest from Fit

A “good enough” solution rarely distinguishes whether or not a lead is a good fit for your business. To determine fit, your score will be comprised of demographic and firmographic information like company size, budget, title, etc. That makes a huge difference! For example, students and job seekers who visit your website will probably download a ton of content. Without the right scoring technology, your “good enough” solution might score them as a hot prospect. Complete marketing automation solutions let you create scores based on interest and fit. So a sales rep can see that while a person shows high interest, he or she has a low fit score and likely isn’t a good lead for your company.

Make sure you go with a solution that provides fully customizable and flexible scoring capabilities, so that you can present the best possible leads to sales. If you have multiple products, business units, or divisions, or if you want to score based on both interest and fit, the generic, single lead scoring that a “good enough” solution provides simply won’t support your needs.

Select a marketing automation solution that fits the needs of your business. Make sure you aren’t settling for a “good enough” solution that is “good enough for now”. Instead, do your due diligence and think long term! A complete solution can give you that extra competitive edge that your business needs. Download our ebook, The Dangers of a “Good Enough” Marketing Automation Solution to learn about other pitfalls of a “good enough” solution.

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The Dangers of a “Good Enough” Solution: The 4 Major Shortcomings of Generic Lead Scoring was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

Is your business looking for leads? Are you hearing quotes of 40 to 60 dollars (or more!?) per qualified lead?

Have you considered using Facebook Ads for lead generation?

You should. And this article will tell you how. In fact, I’ll give you some tips and strategies that can earn you some of the cheapest leads your business has ever seen.

I’ll discuss how to optimize your Facebook Ads for lead generation. I’ll break down the top ten best practices for how to ensure your ads are engaged with, and then dive straight into four lead generation-specific strategies.

Before we get into the article, check out our little experiment. Here’s a video snapshot of “How to Generate Qualified Leads with Facebook Advertising” by our own Bree Nakatani:

Increasing your Facebook Ad’s Click-Through-Rate

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I’ll give these best practices to you quickly so we can move on to the fun stuff. Write these 10 tips down and check them off as you create your own Facebook Ads.

Image best practices:

• Include a person (best practice is actually a smiling, relatable woman)
• The 2nd and 3rd-most successful ad images are babies and animals (this is pretty much true across all social media marketing platforms)
• Test an odd or funny image. These make Facebook users do a double-take and encourage them to read your headline and engage.
• Remember K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple Stupid): Avoid complex images that Facebook users will just gloss over.

Headline Best Practice:

• Dollar and percentage signs, the word “Free”, and your Logo (if it’s well known) will attract the eye of Facebook users.
• Focus your headline on being eye-catching and communicating value. Your body copy will encourage a click and tell users what to do.

Color and Detail Best Practice:

• Don’t use blue or white, as these colors blend into the Facebook color scheme and users’ eyes will just skim over your ad.
• Instead, use orange, green and red: eye-catching, bright colors.
• Borders; If your logo or the image you want to use is blue, keep the same image but throw a colorful border around it.
• Borders, shadows (even increasing the yellow and green gamma on your image) can have an effect on your Facebook Ad’s click-through-rate. Remember the smallest details can have the greatest effect.

Now that your ads are getting clicks, we can get into the concrete strategies that result in a conversion.

 

Using a Lead-Generating Landing Page

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Sending Facebook traffic from a Facebook Ad to a landing page optimized for lead generation is one of the best ways to find qualified leads that, if properly nurtured, are extremely likely to convert to a final sale.

There are two primary strategies for generating leads from a Facebook Ad and Landing Page combination.

 

#1. Contests

Contests are my favorite way to generate qualified leads likely to convert further down the sales funnel. However, it is essential that you optimize them intelligently and include the right kind of prize.

Here’s a five-step strategy for generating leads with a contest landing page and Facebook Ad:

1. Create a Facebook Ad where your contest’s prize is front-and-center (dollar values, percent signs, etc).
2. Target your ad exclusively at people likely to click on it (more on this later).
3. Make your prize valuable, but not so valuable the reward isn’t worth it. I recommend gift cards, as anyone interested in any of your products will engage, and only people interested in your products.
4. Create a contest-centered landing page, which requires Facebook users provide their email address (lead information) in order to enter.
5. Run your Facebook contest and ad for 2-4 weeks before randomly choosing a winner.

Note: You will get more results with a cash prize or totally unrelated product. However, I strongly recommend against this. These kinds of leads are going to unsubscribe from your marketing emails as soon as the contest is over, whereas people who engage with a product-related prize are far more likely to stay engaged.

Would you rather have a list of 500 leads, 50% of whom will result in a final sale, or 1000 leads, 10% of whom will result in a final sale? (Do the math!)

 

#2. Email-Gated Content

Ebooks and other email-gated pieces of content are one of the best ways to earn leads.

It’s likely that you already create valuable content, whether it’s an ebook, a white-paper, a case study or a how-to-guide on selling your home. This content can directly influence a person’s, or a business’, revenue. They’re worth something in the real world.

So why don’t you ‘email-gate’ them?

Email-gating is the simple practice of asking a visitor to your website (or, to be more precise, your optimized landing page) for their email address before allowing them to download your valuable piece of content.

Here’s a five-step strategy for generating leads with an email-gate, landing page and Facebook Ad:

1. Write four-six blog articles or case studies, with well-researched and valuable content
2. Compile this content into an awesome ebook (PDF format) and upload it to your website
3. Create an eye-catching image and Facebook Ad targeted at people who are likely to value your content (again, more on targeting in a second)
4. Drive traffic to your website’s landing page, which describes how valuable the piece of content is and asks for a simple email-address to access it
5. Segment the leads you generate from your email-gated landing page into people interested in that specific content, increasing the efficacy of your marketing emails in the future.

Note: Creating an ebook from existing content you’ve already published saves you time, energy, and increases your content marketing ROI.

I recommend you split test your Facebook Ad and landing page to see which strategies and formats your audience responds most to.

 

Targeting an Audience of Awesome Leads

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At last we’re into the real nitty-gritty!

Facebook Ad targeting (I’ve mentioned it as essential a couple times above) is simply the part of this whole marketing strategy that makes it worth doing.

Facebook Ad targeting is what makes the ad ROI feasible and a good investment. An ad without intelligent targeting is an ad burning money for your business.

Facebook Ads can be targeted incredibly specifically – to the point of users who have recently sold a truck, or parents of children aged 0-3 (but not 4-7, 8-11, or 12-19). You can target people recently engaged, recently out of a relationship, or making a specific amount of money.

With intelligent Facebook Ad targeting you can find click-through-rates of around .1% (about what you get with a Google Ad side-bar ad). Don’t target it, however, and don’t come running to me when you’re seeing .01%.

There are a bunch of strategies I’ve discussed in the past for targeting your Facebook Ad, but here are the two I recommend for lead generation:

 

#1. Target by lookalike audience

For those unfamiliar with the lookalike audience, let me give you a quick breakdown.

Lookalike audiences (only available with the Chrome plugin Power Editor or 3rd Party Facebook Ad Platforms) takes your imported list of previous customers, and finds Facebook users similar to them.

Let me repeat that in case you weren’t listening: Facebook Ads can be targeted not only at your existing customers (through “custom audience” targeting) but by Facebook users who are incredibly similar to them in terms of shared demographics, shared interests and shared categories.

Lookalike audiences take “Friends of Fans” to a whole new level.

Here’s how you can do it for yourself:

• Take a list of your business’ current customers, leads, or CRM and import it into your Facebook Ads tool. This creates a custom audience.
• Click “create similar audience” when you have this audience highlighted. This matches the characteristics of the original list with Facebook users who are unfamiliar with your business but very similar to people who bought from you – users ripe for lead generation.
• Target a Facebook Ad promoting a contest or ebook at this lookalike audience.

Lookalike audience targeting increases the return you get on Facebook Ads substantially, as A) You’re only targeting a small group of very specific users (meaning your Cost-per-Click or Cost-per-Impression is very low) and B) The high click-through-rates per 1000 views mean more conversions for every dollar spent.

Sold?

#2. Target by Precise and Broad Category Interest

Another strategy for Facebook Ad targeting is by Interest and Category. This works by segmenting Facebook users based on their stated Interests, Likes, and changes on their timeline or in their profile. You can then target these segments with a Facebook Ad.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re promoting an email-gated ebook (on A/B Testing) to generate qualified leads.

Targeting Facebook users by Precise Interest might look like this:

 

The Math:

• Setting your ad budget at 30 dollars per day, and paying by impression, will result in about 50 clicks on your Facebook Ad.
• Driving this traffic to an optimized landing page that is converting at 20% will result in 10 leads per day.
• This results in only $3 per qualified lead, around a 20th the cost of outsourcing your lead generation.

Now let’s say that you’re an up-and-coming maternity apparel company, and you are running an online sweepstakes contest to generate some buzz online. You decide to give away your own products, valued at 200 dollars.

If you’re a brick-and-mortar place, target demographically by region as well as by gender. Then, target by broad category interest.

Targeting Facebook users by Broad Category Interest could look like this:

 

If you decided to also throw in some baby-supplies, you can also target people with children between 0 and 3 (yes, Facebook Ads can get this specific).

Both interest targeting strategies ensure your ad is only seen by people likely to click on it. Remember that any time somebody sees your ad who isn’t likely to click on it you’re wasting money. Facebook calculates your ad cost by the number of people who see it. Targeting makes sure those people are the right people.

Top Tip: Once you’ve generated a solid list of leads from your email-gated ebook or online contest, import that list as a custom audience, and then find users similar to it with a lookalike audience. And start the whole process over again!

 

Conclusion

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Hopefully you now have a few ideas of how Facebook Ads can work to generate your business leads at an extremely affordable rate.

If you’re not sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck with your leads, check out my colleague’s article “10 Steps to Email Automation Success”.

And for other best practices about Facebook Ad design as well as targeting, check out my own Complete Guide to Facebook Ads Ebook (just to let you know, it’s email-gated!)

By James Scherer

On May 12, Levitt and I will publish our third book, Think Like a Freak. We cannot wait for you to read it. Here’s how the publisher describes it:

The New York Times-bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came Super-Freakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.

Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.

You can read more about the book, check out our tour dates, and of course preorder it: the book will come in all formats including e-book, audio, large-print, and in translation around the world. We will also start up our fee-signed-bookplate-mailing program so that you can get your books autographed.

In the meantime, how about a Freakonomics Radio FAQ episode about the new book? Use the comments section below to ask us anything you want. Here’s the book’s Table of Contents to get you started …

1. What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak?

An endless supply of fascinating questions . . . The pros and cons of breast-feeding, fracking, and virtual currencies . . . There is no magic Freakonomics tool . . . Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger . . . How to win the World Cup . . . Private benefits vs. the greater good . . . Thinking with a different set of muscles . . . Are married people happy or do happy people marry? . . . Get famous by thinking just once or twice a week . . . Our disastrous meeting with the future prime minister.

2. The Three Hardest Words in the English Language

Why is “I don’t know” so hard to say? . . . Sure, kids make up answers but why do we? . . . Who believes in the devil? . . . And who believes 9/11 was an inside job? . . . “Entrepreneurs of error” . . . Why measuring cause-and-effect is so hard . . . The folly of prediction . . . Are your predictions better than a dart-throwing chimp? . . . The Internet’s economic impact will be “no greater than the fax machine’s” . . . “Ultracrepidarianism” . . . The cost of pretending to know more than you
do . . . How should bad predictions be punished? . . . The Romanian witch hunt . . . The first step in solving problems: put away your moral compass . . . Why suicide rises with quality of life— and how little we know about suicide . . . Feedback is the key to all learning . . . How bad were the first loaves of bread? . . . Don’t leave experimentation to the scientists . . . Does more expensive wine taste better?

3. What’s Your Problem?

If you ask the wrong question, you’ll surely get the wrong answer . . . What does “school reform” really mean? . . . Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia? . . . Maybe it’s the parents’ fault! . . . The amazing true story of Takeru Kobayashi, hot-dog-eating champion . . . Fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes! . . . So how did he do it? . . . And why was he so much better than everyone else? . . . “To eat quickly is not very good manners” . . . “The Solomon Method” . . . Endless experimentation in pursuit of excellence . . . Arrested! . . . How to redefine the problem you are trying to solve . . . The brain is the critical organ . . . How to ignore artificial barriers . . . Can you do 20 push-ups?

4. Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth Is in the Roots

A bucket of cash will not cure poverty and a planeload of food will not cure 
famine . . . How to find the root cause of a problem . . . Revisiting the abortion-crime link . . . What does Martin Luther have to do with the German economy? . . . How the “Scramble for Africa” created lasting strife . . . Why did slave traders lick the skin of the slaves they bought? . . . Medicine vs. folklore . . . Consider the ulcer . . . The first blockbuster drugs . . . Why did the young doctor swallow a batch of dangerous bacteria? . . . Talk about gastric upset! . . . The universe that lives in our gut . . . The power of poop.

5. Think Like a Child

How to have good ideas . . . The power of thinking small . . . Smarter kids at $15 a pop . . . Don’t be afraid of the obvious . . . 1.6 million of anything is a lot . . . Don’t be seduced by complexity . . . What to look for in a junkyard . . . The human body is just a machine . . . Freaks just want to have fun . . . It is hard to get good at something you don’t like . . . Is a “no-lose lottery” the answer to our low savings rate? . . . Gambling meets charity . . . Why kids figure out magic tricks better than adults . . . “You’d think scientists would be hard to dupe” . . . How to smuggle childlike instincts across the adult border.

6. Like Giving Candy to a Baby

It’s the incentives, stupid! . . . A girl, a bag of candy, and a toilet . . . What financial incentives can and can’t do . . . The giant milk necklace . . . Cash for grades . . . With financial incentives, size matters . . . How to determine someone’s true incentives . . . Riding the herd mentality . . . Why are moral incentives so weak? . . . Let’s
steal some petrified wood! . . . One of the most radical ideas in the history of philanthropy . . . “The most dysfunctional $300 billion industry in the world” . . . A one-night stand for charitable donors . . . How to change the frame of a relationship . . . Ping-Pong diplomacy and selling shoes . . . “You guys are just the best!” . . . The customer is a human wallet . . . When incentives backfire . . . The “cobra effect” . . . Why treating people with decency is a good idea.

7. What Do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common?

A pair of nice, Jewish, game-theory-loving boys . . . “Fetch me a sword!” . . . What the brown M&M’s were really about . . . Teach your garden to weed itself . . . Did medieval “ordeals” of boiling water really work? . . . You too can play God once in a while . . . Why are college applications so much longer than job applications? . . . Zappos and “The Offer” . . . The secret bullet factory’s warm-beer alarm . . . Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria? . . . The cost of false alarms
and other false positives . . . Will all the gullible people please come forward? . . . How to trick a terrorist into letting you know he’s a terrorist.

8. How to Persuade People Who Don’t Want to Be Persuaded

First, understand how hard this will be . . . Why are better-educated people more extremist? . . . Logic and fact are no match for ideology . . . The consumer has the only vote that counts . . . Don’t pretend your argument is perfect . . . How many lives would a driverless car save? . . . Keep the insults to yourself . . . Why you should tell stories . . . Is eating fat really so bad? . . . The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure . . . What is the Bible “about”? . . . The Ten Commandments versus The Brady Bunch.

9. The Upside of Quitting

Winston Churchill was right—and wrong . . . The sunk cost fallacy and opportunity cost . . . You can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you won’t abandon today’s dud . . . Celebrating failure with a party and cake . . . Why the flagship Chinese store did not open on time . . . Were the Challenger’s O-rings bound to fail? . . . Learn how you might fail without going to the trouble of failing . . . The $1 million question: “when to struggle and when to quit” . . . Would you let a coin toss decide your future? . . . “Should I quit the Mormon faith?” . . . Growing a beard will not make you happy . . . But ditching your girlfriend might . . . Why Dubner and Levitt are so fond of
 quitting . . . This whole book was about “letting go” . . . And now it’s your turn.

If you want to lead a team toward a goal, you need to make sure they know how their daily work connects to the overall objectives. Here's how to make that happen, with one meeting every week.

Great leaders set great goals, and they ensure that those who follow them know what those goals are. That's why it's important to focus on how everyone's daily work connects to the big picture.

I'm borrowing from one of the greats here: Sam Walton, who built the most successful retail operation in the world. For decades, Walton gathered his Wal-Mart leaders every Saturday morning for a meeting that was equal parts pep rally, strategy session, and feet-to-the-fire accountability check.

You don't have to wreck everyone's weekend like that, but once a week, bring your team together. Here's a 10-item checklist that will show you exactly what you need to say.

1. Congratulations.

Unless you're in a crisis of some sort, you want to start off on a positive note, by acknowledging with enthusiasm the milestones and accomplishments of your team. Your director of sales closed a huge contract? Your COO had a baby? Your marketing director got your company mentioned in a fantastic publication? (Say, for example, Inc.?) Make sure they know that you appreciate their efforts--and congratulate them in front of the team.

2. Here's what happened.

Next up, bring everyone up to speed on what has happened since the last time you met. The people in charge of marketing might not know about the challenges that the product developers have been facing, and distribution gurus don't know about the new opportunity sales has identified. Show everyone that everyone else is working hard as well, and demonstrate what they've accomplished.

3. Here are our challenges.

Similarly, talk about the rough spots as well. Break down the silos, and ensure that everyone knows in general what their colleagues are doing. More than that, you want to ensure that everyone is working in the same direction.

4. Here are our objectives.

Will your goals change week to week? I hope not, but you want to reiterate your overall objectives every time you get together. First, you want things to become so ingrained that everyone can articulate with fervor what your organization is trying to do. Second, when your objectives do evolve--of course they will, sometimes--you want to make sure that you articulate it, and that everyone has the same focus.

5. Here's what I'm hearing.

When your team members are concerned that they don't have everything they need, make sure that they know you understand, and ask for their help in finding a solution. Also, reach out and ask them to correct your understanding when they think you've got part of it wrong. Overall, this is yet another chance to get your team members who are focused on their part of the puzzle to see the overall picture.

6. Here's what I'm thinking.

Most people don't like it when you drop big decisions or changes on them without warning. So bring them into your decision-making process a bit earlier than you might do naturally. Is there a challenge or an opportunity that might present itself soon? (If you're a real entrepreneur, by the way, those two words are nearly synonyms.) Let your team know what you see on the horizon.

7. Thank you.

This is so important. Make sure people know how much you appreciate their efforts. Moreover, you want to lead by example on this note. Cultivate a culture of gratitude.

8. Why don't you tell us...?

Don't hog the attention; encourage others to contribute. Also, you want to demonstrate that everyone is being held to high standards. At the weekly Wal-Mart meetings, one writer noted, Walton "liked to go around the room and ask everyone a question--you never knew whether he would lob a softball or ask you to explain an embarrassing screwup."

9. Let me introduce...

Have you ever worked in an office where people joined and left the team without much fanfare? It's an odd social experience, and it undermines teamwork. So don't let that happen. In the military, with so many people coming and going all the time, we would hold monthly "hail and farewell" parties to make sure everyone was acknowledged. Do the same kind of thing with your team.

10. Here's how we compare.

It's like the old Henny Youngman joke: "How's your wife?" "Compared to what?" Your team needs benchmarks. They need to know what they're being compared with. If you're coming up short, make sure people know what kind of numbers they need to be reaching. And if you're doing well, let everyone know--but also find another metric to shoot for.

Want to read more, make suggestions, or even be featured in a future column? Contact me and sign up for my weekly email.

Grant Cardone on big sales no-nos, and the one critical must-have for any successful sales operation.

Are you familiar with the negotiating practice of asking for a commitment for a commitment.

It’s an important one for building and sustaining relationships, and that makes it essential for successful sales professionals and online marketers

Selling is A Series of Mini-Commitments

Especially in regards to online marketing, there is often the unrealistic expectation of consummating a sales transaction without first developing a relationship with the prospective buyer.

Relationship selling is much like a courtship. There are intentional actions taken that are designed to build familiarity and mutual trust. If all goes well, each party agrees to make the big commitment.

Thus, what ultimately results in a sale is a series of actions or mini-commitments by people that will include some of the following.

Scanning your social media or blog headlines

• Reading your article, blog post, or social media message
• Clicking on your links to discover more
• Sharing your content
• Liking your Facebook page
• Commenting on your blog
• Making an inquiry with your business
• Calling you on the phone
• Showing up at your place of business

These commitments are lead generation tactics, and most of them can be tracked. This means they can be measured to determine their effectiveness, so that resources can be allocated accordingly.

Every Commitment Merits a Response

When your community makes a commitment to your business, they expect the same in return. Doing that earns you the next level of commitment, and the next, and so on.

Your challenge is designing a process that keeps all of that going until you have solidified a relationship that results in a sale, or at least a shot at their business when budgets or timing are more appropriate.

This is a continuous process of nurturing relationships using a combination of traditional and digtial methods, including social media, newsletters, email, phone calls, etc.

The key is to understand that every commitment of attention from buyers that your business receives merits one in return. Your commitment for a commitment both acknowledges and honors those that engage with your business.

Commit To Your Community with Social Media

What’s the most valuable commitment? It’s time. Fortunately, your business can now leverage the various forms of digital media to help.

Here’s a bold statement that happens to be true:

Not using social media to help your community is failing to commit to them.

Businesses that ignore social media and content marketing are indirectly saying they are not interested in doing the necessary work to help their buyers.

Relying exclusively on one-to-one selling to help your communities is not only expensive, it forces the majority that use the Internet to get answers to go elsewhere, and that is rightfully where they will likely make their next purchase.

Sales and marketing has changed.

It’s time to adapt to a digital world.

Forget about selling as you know it. Instead think in terms of creating media that is interesting and helpful.

Make a commitment to doing that well and your business will easily convert the interest and engagement that follows into profitable outcomes.

Make a Commitment to Your Success

If your business wants help building and refining it’s sales process, adapting to the influences of social media, and better responding to informed buyers, then consider my full-day workshop.

During 2014 I will be be offering my LIVE, hands-on, Relationship Selling in the Trust Economy workshop on a limited basis.

This is personal training with me, Jeff Korhan, at your place of BUSINESS OR ASSOCIATION MEETING. It’s based on my 30+ years in the selling profession as an entrepreneur and corporate executive.

Contact me to set up a 15 minute call to learn if this trademarked program is a good fit for your organization.

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Creating a pitch deck is hard, especially when you’ve never done it before. If you’re a first-time entrepreneur like I was when we raised our series $15 million first round for Bigcommerce back in 2011, then you’re probably excited, nervous, and anxious about raising your first round of financing.

The good news is that a pitch deck can (and should be) be almost formulaic. You’ve got to tell a story, paint a vision, know your metrics, and sell, sell, sell. Whether you’re raising a small seed round or a bigger series A straight off the bat, you need to get a few things right, and the rest will fall into place. In this post I want to share with you eight tips to create the perfect pitch deck.

There’s a lot of advice out there about creating pitch decks, so why should you take mine? Well, I’ve raised a total of three rounds of venture financing totaling $75 million for Bigcommerce over the last three years. I’ve pitched to dozens of venture capitalists, including most of the tier one and tier two VCs up and down the west and east costs. And I’ve received multiple term sheets, all with strong valuations, great terms, and the most important thing: great investors and board members.

So let’s jump in. Here are the eight tips I think are the most important for creating a pitch deck that will make your fundraising experience short, effective, and rewarding for you, your co-founders, your employees, your business, and your future investors.

1) Have a big vision, then make it 10x bigger

Having a compelling vision for where you want to take your business is important, but most first-time entrepreneurs think too small. I know I was guilty of this a few years ago. I can tell you now, whatever your vision is, it needs to be bigger and more compelling.

For example, if you have a vision to make it easy for people in a specific country to solve a problem, then expand your vision to help everyone in the world solve that same problem.

How do you know when you’re thinking big enough?

When you’re uncomfortable and even nervous with the size of the vision you’re adding to your pitch deck. Over time you’ll get used to the bigger vision and you’ll be surprised at how much more aggressive it will make you towards pursuing it.

2) Explain in detail how you’ll use the money

“We will invest half in marketing and half in engineering” is not the most articulate way to address how you will spend the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars you want an investor to trust you with.

Having a detailed financial model for at least the next two years will paint a picture of not only your operating expenses but also your revenue growth, margins, and potential profit over that time, as well.

More than anything, know by department and ideally by business case where you will invest the capital, and if you already have a marketing machine with a predictable ROI (i.e. $1 in brings $5 out), then explain that in detail, too.

Having an accurate financial forecast will help mitigate some of the risk potential investors see in your business, especially if you’re pre-revenue and/or are a first time entrepreneur. Remember: the more risk you can take away, the better your chances of closing the deal.

3) Know your metrics better than anyone

For a subscription business it’s CAC, LTV, CAC:LTV, net MRR, conversion rate, churn (both number of clients and percentage of revenue), gross margin, etc. For other businesses the metrics will be similar. You need to know your current and future metrics in exact detail, and you should be able to talk to how you will improve the metrics that aren’t up to scratch.

David Skok wrote the ultimate guide to metrics back in 2010 on his great blog For Entrepreneurs. It’s a long and detailed post, but it’s foundational to understand if you’re raising capital.

4) Have a short main deck

This one is simple. Your pitch deck should have two parts: the main deck and an appendix. In the main deck, include slides that are critical to telling your story and showing your metrics, team, and vision. Supporting slides should be in the appendix.

How long should your deck be? Generally 30 to 60 slides is about average. The main part of our series C deck, which we used to raise $40 million from Revolution, was 26 slides. The appendix was 16 slides for a total of 42 slides.

5) People grow a company, not capital

The best companies are built by amazing and capable people. Devote at least one slide in your deck to outlining your team and what makes them amazing.

Are you an amazing engineer? Spell out your talents and how they contributed to your product. Do you have a strong executive team from A-list companies? Include a mini bio on each executive, including the companies they’ve been at and each of their key accomplishments.

For example, has your head of sales built large, high-performing sales teams before? If so, call it out. Did your CTO built highly scalable systems that handle tens of millions of users at her previous company? You get the idea.

Investors know you have competitors, and generally, the strongest team will build the best product and brand and therefore win the market. If you have a strong team, make it known. If your team is just a handful of first-timers, then talk to your vision for the team. Who will you hire with the capital and how will you recruit them?

Have ambition to hire and build the best team you can, and communicate that ambition in your pitch deck. Be honest about your team’s weaknesses, and emphasize your strengths.

6) Talk about pain & how you solve it

All great pitch decks include a story that guides the reader from the initial pain point to the solution to the promised land (a business with excellent metrics that’s growing quickly). Be sure to talk about the initial pain point your product solves.

How did you come across it? Why are you solving it? Why is your approach the best one, and how can you solve the problem for more people as a result of raising capital?

7) Traction speaks louder than words

Whether you’re generating revenue or not, it’s important to show your product already has traction. Again, this reduces the risk in the eyes of potential investors and gives you a better shot at getting a term sheet.

If you’re generating revenue and it’s accelerating fast, make sure that’s a slide in your pitch deck. If not, look at all of your metrics and choose the one that best represents the potential of your business, such as total number of users, total photos uploaded, or similar. Ideally this metric should chart “up and to the right” and show that with a little capital you can push this metric even faster while on your way to revenue and profit.

8) Pitch, polish, repeat

As soon as you’ve wrapped your first pitch, make sure you have a Q&A session at the end. Questions help potential investors get clarity on everything from your numbers to your competitive advantage. Take note of their questions and feedback and use them to tweak your deck before the next pitch.

Repeat this for every pitch you do and, after three or four pitches, you should notice you’re getting fewer questions about the content in your deck. Because your pitch deck is continually improving, you should get a lot of positive feedback about your presentation — assuming you’re a captivating speaker and actually have a business that excites potential investors.

Mitchell Harper is the co-founder and co-CEO of Bigcommerce, the leading e-commerce platform for small businesses looking to grow their revenues faster. Starting with $20,000 in credit card debt from a rented office above a friend’s phone shop in Sydney, Australia, the company has grown over 100% year-over-year and has raised a total of $75M from US-based General Catalyst, Floodgate, and Revolution. Mitchell tweets at @mitchellharper.

Despite the shift in the B2B buyer landscape that puts them squarely in the power position, I still hear marketers insist that the product is the hero of the story. Well, I’ll just rip the bandaid off and say it straight up – You Are Wrong.

As a level set for this post:

The hero of the story is the protagonist or main character. The protagonist has a goal; is impeded by the antagonist/villain in achieving the goal; seeks knowledge along the way from a mentor to vanquish the villain; and achieves victory to accomplish his goal successfully at the end.

Does this description of the hero represent your product? Nope.

Instead, B2B marketers need to make their buyers and customers the hero of the stories they tell.

Try this:

The buyer has a business objective (goal), is impeded by problems or issues (villain) that get in the way of achieving it. The buyer seeks knowledge along the way aided by vendor expertise (mentor) and achieves his objective with the help of your product to enable him to resolve the problems and issues keeping him from achieving his goal.

Nowhere in here is the product playing the starring role in the story.

Now try this:

A CTO and founder of a startup SaaS company that’s the subsidiary of a global enterprise is building a new application with a business model dependent upon low price, high volume sales. He knows that, at launch, the delivery and support of his application must be rock solid, the site unwaverable – regardless of how much traffic hits it. This is a key product launch for the parent company with a lot riding on it – including his career.

He’s formed a great core team focused on the development of this leading-edge application. He is trying to decide how to support taking the application to market.

He can:

• Build the infrastructure in house – hire the team, buy the hardware, develop the network, co-locate the servers, etc.
• Build it in house and spin up the servers from Google or AWS to host it in the cloud – but this also means hiring the team to build and support it
• Outsource the infrastructure to a managed services provider and keep his team’s focus solely on core product development, delivery and service
• Employ the services of his parent company’s IT division to support roll out – which is what his parent company would prefer and his board is pushing for
• Use the vendors his parent company uses to try and find economies of scale – which could be easier for his parent company to swallow than new, unproven vendors

Some of his concerns include:

• A move up of launch date that means he has to get the infrastructure up faster than he’d planned
• Concern about security and compliance in the cloud – his customers will be all over this
• A reluctance to split his or his team’s time between innovations for the new product and managing the infrastructure
• Scaling the infrastructure if volume grows faster than forecast
• He’s been burned by managed services vendors in the past and has low trust that they’ll do what they say they will after the contract is signed
• Controlling costs to keep slim margins in the acceptable range for the board – they’re already slim in the best of scenario forecasts
• Minimizing any perceptions that will get in the way of his potential customers embracing this new application

If you are a managed cloud services provider, how will you build the story for this buyer?

Will you tell him that the cloud will save the day because you’re the leading provider of cloud services?

Or will you:

• Share deep insights about the challenges of taking a new SaaS product to market and how cloud compares to an on premise deployment for scale, uptime, responsiveness and rolling out product updates?
• Produce content that talks about the role a managed services team plays in collaborating with the core team to make sure the infrastructure supports new product developments and customer demands?
• Help him to understand how the security and compliance measures you can provide will be a selling point for his customers – and his executive board?
• Show him how a pay for what you use model will help him keep margins where they need to be?
• Share your insights about how the future trends you see for the industry will be easier to address with a cloud infrastructure and why this is important for his app and his customers?

There are many angles your story can take and a number of chapters to unfold that will be integral to helping the buyer build the trust and credibility he needs to take the risk of choosing to use an outside vendor, let alone the cloud. There will be a lot of information he’ll need to build the business case and drive consensus with his board and parent company. But only if you can convince him first.

None of the stories this buyer needs revolve around your product or solution as the hero. Your solution is simply one component of the business the buyer is building. The story you need to tell is one that builds the buyer’s confidence that he’s making the best, lowest risk choice that will lead to his SaaS app succeeding in the marketplace and help to elevate his career.

Do you see the difference?

Speak with a small business owner long enough and you’re sure to hear how and why his or her business is different from the competition. Specific conversation points may include product features, outstanding customer service, or a distinct approach to a service-related need. While I’ve yet to run into a business owner who isn’t quick to share the “how my business is different story,” I’m amazed by the high percentage of these same owners who have based their own marketing programs on what competitors or friends have tried rather than developing their own unique program.

On the surface copying another business’ successes might seem harmless enough (effective marketing ideas should translate across industries, right?),but there are many reasons why not allowing a business’ unique features to drive a custom marketing program will hurt a business and waste money in the long run.

Who can forget Coca-Cola’s mid-1980s rebuttal to rival Pepsi and its “new generation” marketing? “New” Coke has gone down as one of the biggest marketing flops in history because the company interpreted a drop in sales as a reason to abandon its classic drink and force a copycat product and marketing campaign on its buyers. To the great relief of Coca-Cola “Classic” drinkers everywhere, the company learned from its mistake, embraced its original product’s unique flavor, and became one of the most valuable brands worldwide.

Unique Identity and Culture

Each business has its own unique identity and style, and it’s the job of marketers to dissect that identity and use it to develop a communications bridge to that business’ buyers. I’m talking about more than the unique selling propositions (USPs) and more about the business as a whole. Manifestations of a business’ identity can be found in its logo, brand color scheme, office or retail decor, and customer service approach, however, understanding the true identity requires digging a little deeper.

Even businesses that may seem the same from the outside cannot have identical marketing strategies. Why? Because two businesses are never truly identical. They may be in the same industry, within the same market, target the same buyers, but vastly different in culture and buyer approach. Ownership personalities, business goals, budgets, rank within the marketplace, pricing and product mix, quality control, employee skills and work ethic, and business age all factor into a business’ identity.

Assuming that market research has been performed and branding has been found in keeping with a business’ buyer, it is imperative that a business’ culture be reflected within its marketing program. As marketers, we can never forget that, fundamentally, marketing exists to sell business, and ideally the goal is repeat business. This is not only important for brand consistency, but also in maintaining honesty with the business’ targeted buyers. Using a conservative, perhaps stodgier business as an example, how would a buyer feel after biting on a whimsical and fun-loving campaign, only to discover the actual business experience has a different reality? “Betrayed” is the word that comes to my mind. What are the odds of a repeat purchase after that happens?

Related Class: Branding 101: Defining Who You Are

Tired Creative or Promotions

It’s tough for copycat marketing programs to generate the same excitement and impact as the original effort. Not only are buyers quick to spot similarities in marketing, but even the best copy lacks the element of surprise. More often than not, buyers who spot the copies will spend more time comparing the two than focusing on the business’ message. Who wants their buyers to focus on the marketing effort’s style and not on the message itself?

On the flip side, taking what’s unique about a business and applying those features to marketing will help drive fresh creative. Rather than defaulting to an industry or business stereotype, marketers should use what’s unique about a business to drive a different style or promotional campaign – and spark a copycat all their own.

Timing

There are times when seemingly outstanding marketing opportunities are actually close to their expiration dates. Timing can be the difference between a marketing program’s success and a future fraught with struggle. Simply put, a business late to a marketing opportunity may struggle to achieve the same success as early adopters. This could stem from the number of competitors or “clutter” within a particular opportunity or from changes within an opportunity itself.

Examples when timing can make a difference include professional directories, deal sites, or even store shelves where endless listings or rows of competitors can make marketing more difficult. An example where a change within an opportunity itself relates to the difference between a business with a years-old Facebook page vs. a business trying to start one up after Facebook’s algorithm changes.

Embrace the Unique

Capturing buyer attention becomes increasingly more difficult day by day, yet it is our challenge as marketers to continually make our business stand out and reach buyers. We can only do this by developing standout marketing that showcases a business’ personality while still speaking to that business’ buyer profile. This can only be achieved by embracing what’s unique about a business and allowing that to drive the creative.

Branding is important to a small business’ success and careful evaluation and research is critical before implementing. In Bonnie Taylor’s Online Marketing Institute class, Best Digital Branding Best Practices for Small Businesses, you will learn how branding should be used for your small business to advocate a stronger marketing program moving forward. Enroll in the course today!

China is changing more rapidly than ever, but has your China strategy adapted yet?  In the aftermath of the US financial crisis in 2008, companies from North America and Europe rushed into China, seeking to grow both sales and profits.  However, with China’s growth slowing over the past two years, costs shooting up, the government making life difficult for multinational companies, and confusion following the reforms emanating from the Third Plenum in November 2013, some companies are heading in the opposite direction.

In early 2014, American cosmetics and skincare products powerhouse Revlon announced that it would pull out of China completely.  Despite entering the world’s largest personal care products market in 1996, Revlon was able to generate just 2% of sales from China 17 years later.  It therefore decided that it was time to rethink strategy.  Around the same time, the French beauty company, L’Oréal, said it would stop selling its flagship brand, Garnier, in the country.

Retailers such as America’s Best Buy and Germany’s Media Markt also quit China last year while after nine years, Britain’s Tesco concluded that it was unlikely to make a dent on its own in China and entered into a joint venture with a state-owned enterprise, China Resources Enterprise.  And Western Internet companies such as Yahoo!, eBay, and WhatsApp have failed to make a dent on local leaders such as Baidu, Alibaba, and WeChat, all but giving up on the Chinese market.

However, many multinational corporations cannot afford to quit China.  Not only do they need the sales and profits that China — still the biggest and fastest-growing market in the world for almost anything — provides, but also, they realize that it will be tougher to re-enter the market in future.  China is already the world’s fiercest battleground for global brands and more local companies are joining the fray.  That leaves country managers in China with two choices, neither of which will be an easy sell at corporate headquarters (HQ) that are still looking for substantial top-line growth and above-average profits in emerging markets.

Go for Broke.  One option is for multinational companies to go flat out for market leadership in China; that is, try to be either No. 1 or No. 2 in the market.  The CEOs of companies that have adopted this strategy – such as KFC, PepsiCo, Kraft, Audi, BMW,  and L’Oreal  – spend all their time thinking about how to get bigger, faster — and don’t worry about efficiency, synergy, or cost.

The downside is that these companies may not make profits in China, at least not for a very long time, partly because of the huge investments they must make.  Moreover, year after year, local rivals from both the public and private sectors have been getting better, as mentioned earlier.  They have learnt to offer global quality at low prices, squeezing multinational companies’ margins and profits.

Indeed, Western multinationals that have picked this strategy may be able to pull it off only by forming alliances with rivals or acquiring them.  There’s no dearth of examples: Bayer Healthcare acquired Topsun to become one of the leaders in the OTC medicines segment and Dihon in the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicines) niche.  Between 2008 and 2012, Walmart more than doubled sales by adding 100 hypermarkets to its existing 400 stores, acquiring Trustmart in 2011, and picking up a majority stake in online retailer Yihaodian in 2012.  Japan’s Hitachi has struck as many as 36 alliances and joint ventures with Chinese companies such as Haier and Shanghai Electric.  And Caterpillar purchased mine safety company ERA for $677 million to break into the coal industry.  However, it had to take a $580-million charge after turning up book-keeping problems at an ERA subsidiary five months after the deal closed.

Accept that Less is More.  Several CEOs are realizing the limits to growth in China, and have focused on boosting profitability rather than sales.  Abandoning the desire to become market leaders, they have become selective.  They aren’t recruiting countless sales reps or extending their distribution to hundreds of cities every year.  They are gearing up to make more money with fewer resources by focusing on the most profitable products, regions, and sales teams.  These companies include DSM, Bayer Material Science, Solvay, P&G, and IBM.

A smaller-and-selective strategy isn’t necessarily good news for HQs; they can no longer depend on China for growth, and must invest in other markets across the globe.  Furthermore, their China teams, which have been chasing growth for years, may be on the bubble.  Not all of them will have the skill sets and networks to ensure efficiency, so several companies may well have to start afresh in China.

How do companies decide which of these two approaches will work for them?  One, they must evaluate their customers’ prospects to see if it’s worthwhile investing for growth.  In a dynamic market like China, a review of trends is necessary every one or two years.  Some sectors, such as chemicals and construction materials, are already plagued with slow growth rates; others such as consumer goods are reaching maturity so adding offices, salespeople, and distributors may boost sales but not profits.

Two, it’s important to evaluate if being the biggest kid on the block is necessary to bargain with customers.  In some industries, scale lowers supply chain costs but it doesn’t provide bargaining power over buyers.

The third question is whether the Chinese market, geographically, provides synergies or turns out to be several dozen (or hundreds of) standalone markets scattered across the country.  If customers don’t link across regional or municipal borders, as they do in the retail and healthcare industries, size won’t matter.

It’s tough to decide which play to pick, but companies that are unable to make up their minds will have no choice but to gallop out of China like Revlon — an unimaginable prospect until the Year of The Horse.

Well-designed CRM software can help make your sales or marketing job easier. It can boost productivity, help you keep track of clients and sales leads—and, on mobile devices such as the iPad, help you stay organized even when you’re out of the office. And well-designed CRM software starts a with clean, intuitive user interface (UI).

However, not all UIs are created equal. An effective user interface will present information cleanly and offer a clear, straightforward workflow. Poorly-designed UIs, on the other hand, can frustrate users with non-intuitive layouts and confusing navigation, rendering frequent visitors to the “help” and “how-to” pages.

A high-quality UI is especially important for iPad apps, since mobile users need to be able to get things done quickly and easily.

To help you decide on the right CRM system for your iPad, we evaluated dozens of solutions and selected the five iPad apps with the best UIs out there.

Base

Base’s sleek, simple interface makes this CRM and sales tracking app an easy one for new users to pick up.

 

 

To manage their sales pipelines, users can create customizable sales-tracking tags to define different stages of the sales process on the terms that best fit their business—and they can add as many new stage tags as necessary.

The above image, for instance, shows that a potential deal has progressed from the “qualified” stage of the sales pipeline to the “quote” stage. Base’s drag-and-drop function allows users to pick up these projects as they progress and move them onto the appropriate stages.

Base also syncs seamlessly with Google Contacts and other tools such as Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word, allowing users to upload documents associated with a specific contact and display them by upload date or document name. And Base’s navigation toolbar, with icons for contacts, leads, reports and deals (among others), allows users to move easily between different functions and tasks.

To help users manage their clients, the Base app presents all of a customer’s contact information on a profile page containing tracked emails, user notes and audio recordings. Its map display allows users to keep track of their contacts by location, as well (pictured below).

 

 

Finally, Base’s beautiful reporting and visualization tools make company trends immediately easy to grasp. A manager reviewing the data below, for instance, would be able to see a clear difference between the performance of two sales employees.

 

Folders

With a stitched-leather backdrop and design details such as four-ring binders and folder tabs, Folders‘ (formerly CRM Mate) interface offers a sense of familiarity for those who once worked with paper planners. On Folder’s organizer page, users can toggle between important planning tools: upcoming appointments, and tasks for the week.

They’re also presented with two different calendar views—one a simple layout of the month, the other a color-coded calendar for tracking sales projects—that provide broader overviews of projects.

 

 

The design of Folders’ customer and contact management folder is also intuitive, with basic contact details for a customer cleanly presented to the left of the binder rings and dated notes appearing to the right (pictured below). Folder tabs for “cases,” “opportunities” and “contacts” (which provides a list of all contact profiles) are also easily accessible.

Folders’ simple, straightforward capabilities make it an effective tool for sales and marketing professionals who need to find information on their contacts and campaigns while in the field.

 

Contacts Journal

Contacts Journal’s user interface provides an at-a-glance view of nearly everything you might need to manage your contacts. Users can switch quickly between the to-do lists, documents and log entries associated with a particular client (such as the one pictured below). The app also allows users to filter their contacts by logs, to-do lists or contact location, providing a handy organizational tool for businesses managing large client volumes.

Contacts Journal’s large, colored tabs and drop-down menus can also be customized to fit individual business needs: Companies might create separate tabs for important clients to make their information more immediately accessible, for instance.

 

TrackVia

TrackVia lets businesses custom-build their own CRM applications, either from scratch or using existing spreadsheets as templates. After building these apps on their desktops, users can then transfer them to their iPads for mobile use. This may sound intimidating to the non-tech-savvy, but user reviews indicate that TrackVia really does accommodate all technical skill levels.

This image of a sample CRM dashboard shows us why. To build the application, users drag their spreadsheet into this screen:

 

 

TrackVia processes the data and, from a simple spreadsheet of company contacts, will produce a CRM dashboard that looks like this:

 

 

The pieces on this page fit together clearly and logically. Beneath a widget that allows users to easily register new contacts, is the contact database. Here, the user was able to highlight important information, such as their contacts’ first names and email addresses, so that these contact details come immediately to the forefront—a helpful capability for time-pressed sales reps.

A simple, colored pie chart in the upper right corner provides broader context for these contacts, showing a breakdown of the amount of sales generated per client company: valuable background information to inform reps as they’re reaching out to contacts.

A “go to” bar in the upper left helps users quickly jump to different tables, forms, charts or spreadsheets, while the search bar and “add record” button (to the right) make the database easier to navigate.

 

TrackVia also includes a few valuable tools for on-the-go business users, such as signature capturing and audio recording. A significant extra perk: while sales automation tends to be TrackVia’s most frequently-used function, users can also build applications for asset management, help desk management, human resources and more.

Routzy

Routzy’s CRM app was designed natively for the iPad, and its UI makes creative use of the iPad’s capabilities. In addition to a clear breakdown of the relevant contact details for a certain client, the below screen displays a few of the features that make this user interface a valuable tool for sales reps and others in field service.

 

The proposal/quote function shown in the upper-right corner (and pictured in larger detail below) allows businesses to create PDFs customized with their branding and key terms. And the app’s signature-capture tool helps reps close deals on the spot, with the signed file automatically uploading into Dropbox.

 

 

Routzy’s photo annotations and drawing capabilities (pictured below, and accessible from the bottom-right of the contact screen) could also be a boon for more visual communicators, who might use the tool to draw flow charts or diagrams for a client, for instance.

Finally, its time-tracking option will document all contact-related activities completed through Routzy and create lovely, color-coded graphs breaking down an employee’s activities each day—giving employers a clear snapshot of how their employees prioritize their time in the field.

What are your favorite iPad CRM UIs? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people.  Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies.

The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves.

My first startup was no different.  I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual.  While we did fine learning on the fly, it turned out that a lot of what we did was wrong.

As we grew into several millions of dollars of sales per year it was no longer acceptable to “wing it.”

So I did want any rational person who wants to improve does – I hired a coach.  We focused together on improving our sales methodology, our training and our comp plans through a larger than life ex country manager from PTC named Kai Krickel.  He taught me much – most of it unconventional.  Most of it worked and his philosophies have proved enduring to me.

His business was called TEDIC – The Excuse Department is Closed. That mindset always stayed with me and even rung true at the time. Excuses. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. Invariably the reasons I was hearing why we weren’t well positioned versus my own perception were different.

I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology startup DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different. Obviously to understand a “class” of people you have to make broad generalizations. Here are mine.

Sales people:

• Are motivated by cash. Founders think in options. Don’t confuse the two. Sales people want the stuff they can spend today.
• Are more mercenaries than missionaries. That doesn’t make them bad – it just means that they know that they are “hired guns” and they act accordingly
• Many great ones don’t thrive in the early phase of a company where the sales is more consultative or evangelical. They like a solid product, well defined pricing, good references to sell against, a clear quota and well defined competitors. This is why I tell startups that most seasoned sales execs aren’t right for startups
• They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. That means if you don’t understand the way they work you’re susceptible to being blind sided.

Here’s what I learned in running my first startup.

1. Sales people often blame the product
Startups are the art of the possible.  By definition an MVP (minimum viable product) means there’s room for improvement. Your competitors will always highlight a feature here or a feature there that is better.  Features don’t win or lose sales – especially in nascent markets. People are buying YOU.  They’re buying trust that you’re going to do what you’re saying you’re going to do.

Customer also buy social proof because others are acting as strong references.  (there is a nascent industry to try and help you with this, too. Customers buy solutions to solve their problems.  They give orders to people they like, which is why despite your best well reasoned non-sales ethos – you need to understand that sales people do need money to schmooze.

But what customers don’t do is buy features.  Don’t get my wrong – a great looking product can really help support a sale.

But customers use features as a rationalization for why they made the decision that they concluded for a complex set of other reasons that they probably don’t even understand. How can I be so sure? Ask yourself how they came to decide what features should they be making the decision upon. Who set in their mind what the “right” feature set was? If it wasn’t you, I guarantee you they were influenced by your competitor – either through their sales efforts or through marketing.

So know up front that many times sales people will blame the product when they lose or when they’re losing. It’s never them, their lack of effort or relationships.

And as you build out your team and grow you realize that it’s always the other guys fault. It’s why leaders need to be respected, not loved or you’ll constantly be gamed. In a startup you soon learn that not only does the sales guys blame the product, but the product guys blame the marketing guys for giving them too many requirements.  The marketing guys blame the sales guys who can’t close their leads.  The sales guys in turn say that they didn’t get the Glengarry leads from marketing.

And they all secretly blame you. “It doesn’t look that tough to be a CEO. I’m doing all the hard work anyways.” Most senior execs in startups feel this way until they become CEO and then they feel more humble. Hard. Fucking. Thankless. Job.

You need to teach your sales team Objection Handling and make it clear that you don’t lose on features.  They can give you product input, customer requests and wish lists – sure. But the excuse department is closed.

2. Sales people will often blame your pricing
They lost the deal because your competitors dropped price. Customers seldom buy on price. They buy on perceived value. Sure, you need to be competitive on price. But a sales person needs to be able to demonstrate the business case of why using your product will deliver more total ROI than your competitors. Otherwise you need not keep building out great features – just always drop your price! Of course that’s not true.

If your team (and you) see a competitor massively undercut you on price you sure better be able to sell to your customer that the temporary offset in a cheaper price will be eroded by the much great benefit of working with you.

“Sure, they can sell at 50% of our price. Their customer support is much smaller and therefore won’t be able to respond to your needs as quickly. We have 12 developers and they have 3. That matters because over the next 12 months our product will continue to pull further away from them. That’s why we raised $5 million from top-tier VCs.

 

Please call our references. We worked with customer X who saved 38% of their costs in the first year and increased sales by 14%. The pay-back period on our product was 16 months. We have lots of cases of demonstrable business success.

 

If we just dropped prices to match our less funded competitors we wouldn’t be able to keep innovating and adding value for our clients. If short-term price is your primary drive then our competitor might actually might be a better fit for you. We’re definitely a premium product, which is why we don’t just drop prices to match their moves to “buy” business.

Or whatever. You need to justify value. And this has to be led by your sales teams and driven home through training.

Also, don’t give your sales teams too much authority on price negotiations. Given them small authority to discount, give the sales leader a slightly larger level and anything above that comes to your desk for negotiation. Too big of discount authority will lead to price drops because it’s easier for sales reps to drop price than to sell on value and do the hard business-case work.

3. Sales people will often sell future development work
If your sales teams think that they can throw in some extra features that you’ll build to win the big contract they will.  I’ve seen it a thousand times. They feel like they need to show a customer that they’re flexible, listening to their needs and building features the customer perceives as important.

They’ll always lobby you to approve it.  “They can’t win the deal without it!”  They’ll throw in extra storage, extra modules, extra freebies. Hold the line on any additional dev work. There will be times where you do need to commit. But find a way where the bonus program is adjusted for any work that has a higher COGS due to dev work and they’ll sell around it – I promise. Don’t let them sell futures.

4. Sales people will often exaggerate the strength of competitors
Sales people will always tell you how far ahead the competition is. It’s the easiest way to justify losing deals, put pressure on your to build the features they want and they always believe a competitors PR more than the reality they see inside your business.  Always make your own assessment of your competitors. Talk personally to customers. Encourage the sales teams to give you feedback but make it clear that it’s no excuse for losing.

5. Sales people will always ask for more sales support
Sales people are bag carriers. That’s the most important thing in your business to get revenues up. They somehow always want junior bag carriers. The more, the better.

They want lots of post-sales support. They want junior staff to work on proposals for them. “It’s not efficient for me to do my own proposals.” They want technical sales to help with customer objections.  You’re a startup. That stuff is for Oracle or IBM. They need to be scrappy, rollup their sleeves, learn multiple functions.  When you hit scale you need to add staff.  And division of labor really will drive up productivity.

6. Sales people will always tell you their quotas are too high
The quota. It’s always too high. It’s always unachievable. They were always above quota at every other company they’ve ever worked for. It’s all your fault. And when you get their forecasts they’re always sandbagged. And they know that you play games back. Management always sets sales budgets that roll up to a number beyond the actual board budget.

Sales people are smart – they know this. That’s where the sandbagging comes. They know you’re going to play games and ask for more so they need to leave room for you to do so. It’s the game everybody plays, everybody says they wish nobody played and yet it’s human nature. Just accept it and play the game.

Seriously, you DO need to be careful about not setting unattainable quotas.

And finally

OK, so if any sales people reading this took it in good enough humor for the broad generalizations that I made  - I would say two things to management:

1. Treat your sales people well. Train them, arm them with a great product and sales collateral. Get out there with them – no hiding in the ivory tower. Customers want to see you. It’s the hardest job in the company. They sink or swim on their results. And as a result they’re the best paid people in the company. If they start sucking – they’re out. They know this. Sales people are the lifeblood of your organization.

2. Don’t do silly things like cap bonus payments. Make their pay-for-performance unlimited, but well structured. They are supposed to be the best paid people in the company. That’s why they endure the jobs that they have and the constant pressure to deliver results. Don’t hire sales people if you expect to be over-the-top cheap on T&E.  They need some money for schmoozing. You can book them at budget hotels – but don’t go too far. Treat them with utmost respect or their next interview is right around the corner.

Lead generation is a key role of B2B marketing in today’s increasingly competitive business environment. Of course, in such an environment, the race to generate leads is always on, and marketing is always faced with challenges in generating the right amount of high quality leads.

There are three major challenges marketing must conquer to generate real value and become an effective force for B2B lead generation.

• Minimising your lead leakage from your marketing and sales funnel.
• Cutting through the noise of all the other marketing messages
• Developing an analytical process that is constantly checking what tactics are working and what’s not.

Plugging in the leaks

One thing all marketers are concerned about is leakage. Anyone who enters your funnel and leaves before reaching the end is a leak. Those who visit your website and don’t put in their details to subscribe or download a blog have leaked. So it is common for only a small percentage of visitors to journey further down your funnel.

As leads continue through your funnel they qualify themselves. But no matter where you reduce leaks in your customer acquisition funnel two things are certain you are directly reducing the cost per sales acquisition and increasing profit. It is important to consider the different stages your buyers go through in their buying journey. Current technologies included optimised content and automated workflows allow us to personalise this journey to each prospective customer. As the customer goes from being unaware of their problem to seeing your product as the solution to it, you display relevant information to them.

Another way to minimise leakage is to use different call to actions in your content pieces to suit buyers at different stages of their journey. Those who are ready to progress down the journey may want to download a whitepaper, but those who are not ready might prefer to just have a look at your blog. By adding in a link to the blog, you are letting your buyers go on their journey at a pace suited to them and also giving them a way to stay on your website. Keep in mind that not all buyers will progress the way you want them to, so the key is to give them an alternative.

Cutting through the clutter

The internet has afforded anyone with a computer with a connection the opportunity to connect with potential customers.

As businesses have realised the irony that they can deliver a far more personal buyers journey online than they can through other methods, even face to face, they have started to crowd the internet with offers and ideas. Placing yourself where your buyers are is only a small part of online strategy now. Getting heard through the incessant white noise of all your competitors and even non-competitors marketing sometimes seems impossible. Even when you make it into a buyer’s inbox there is still a constant fight for attention, with an epsilon study showing that click through rates are below 5% and almost 60% of new subscribers (in the last 3 months) do not click or open their subscribed to emails. From these stats we can think of two important things to keep in mind when approaching online B2B lead generation.

• Providing quality content is the way forward for any aspiring marketer. Blog after blog has predicted that content marketing will continue to rise in importance in any marketing department as key search companies optimise their algorithms away from the SEO game. Variety of content also plays a role. The new and different formats of content available nowadays is very handy for marketers vying for the spotlight.
• Each new lead must be treasured, for every lead is valuable. For them to have gone through the constant flurry of marketing content and found their way to your site makes the lead indispensable. You need to make sure that the leads you gather are provided with an exceptional experience, helping them move down their journey with the relevant engagement.

Analyse This

The need to align yourself with your buyers problems requires constant analysis. You need to have a process which consistently examines what is resonating with your buyers and what isn’t. Through proper analytics, you can make informed decisions based on research and data as to what you should be blogging, displaying on your website and offering as key assets. By following a more rigorous scientific process, marketing no longer needs to be done on gut feel and creative whim. Through this method, marketing can also become wholly accountable for the leads it generates.

The idea is to streamline your marketing messaging. You should sand and plane off any excess that doesn’t work. Tactics and content that are ineffective and aren’t providing leads or sales are a waste of your time and resources.

By streamlining your marketing and focusing on the buyer’s problems and challenges you will allow yourself the opportunity to closely align with your sales team. Research by Marketing Profs has shown that organisations with closely aligned sales and marketing had 35% more customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates. Furthermore Forrester Research has shown that aligned organisations show an average of 32% in revenue growth while less aligned companies report on average a 7% decline in revenue.

These three areas are all major challenges that every B2B business experiences. It is important to consider these challenges and address them with the right marketing strategy. To, read more about lead generation, refer to our blog on the six key elements of lead generation. Or to dive deeper into the buyer’s journey and how to use it for lead generation, download the whitepaper below.

Hopefully, the professional nature of an office phone line is enough to protect it from your neighborhood crank caller. On the other hand, other types of ‘prank calls’ can go through that end up muddling your batch of raw sales leads. What are they and how do you filter them out?

When you’re using an inbound marketing strategy, it can be a bit like panning for gold. There’s a lot of dirt and debris mixed in with the dollar. You can have scammers, people trying to contact customer service, or (ironically) other marketers.

Scammers

The FBI already has a brief but useful description that identifies potential telemarketing fraud. Although brace yourself. Sometimes these signs can hit a little too close to home when it comes to some of your marketing pitches. You don’t necessarily have to change anything but prepare for your outbound prospects to put you through the same test.

Customers

Say you’ve already made the sale, you acquire the customer, and in the midst of your relationship they still call the same number on your website. This can actually mean several things:

• They still don’t know your customer service number – This would be awkward and would certainly betray a slight error on your part. See that it’s fixed immediately.
• They feel hot and bothered by customer service – This is obviously more serious and you might need an immediately re-evaluation of your customer service staff. (Here’s one article with a list of signs.)

Other Marketers

Now before you condemn yourself by saying this is a taste of your own medicine, look to what they’re offering. True, you’ve lost all right to condemn those who send pitches your way or try to set appointments with your decision makers. It’s all business but that’s exactly the point.

What if, for instance, they’re offering a service that you’ve been planning to outsource? What if they’re selling you software tools that can further improve the development of your own software? Sure you’re more likely to end up spending money than making it but at least think of the return in terms of each individual offer.

Just because April Fool’s finally over doesn’t mean you can expect fewer cases of ‘phony’ inbound sales leads. Their intentions may not entirely be humorous but you have to stay vigilant all the same.

“Help, we’re getting so many leads from our website!”

You are one of the fortunate companies that gets several leads and business opportunities from your website each day. You aren’t equipped to handle the volume of leads that you’re getting from your website, so how do you follow up and still have time in your day to manage everything else?

Enter marketing automation — a technique that can help you recapture time in your schedule or reduce a staffing burden.

Following up on web leads

The fact of the matter is that many web leads don’t need personal follow-up.

If you’re in the midst of an inbound marketing program, you probably have several landing pages on your website that offer detailed guides, checklists, ebooks, demos or other “premium” content.

Because many people on your website are probably in the early stages of the sales process, you probably get as many (if not more) web leads/contacts from people downloading these materials as people requesting price quotes or a sales call.

These web leads should go into a marketing automation queue for follow-up.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is a buzzword in the marketing industry that really boils down to the process of automating follow-up with leads.

It’s quite simply the process of nurturing your potential customers to a point of sale. This can happen through email, social media, and other contact points. It’s most traditionally done through email.

What marketing automation isn’t

Marketing automation isn’t a sure-fire fix for all of your marketing problems. It’s not a completely automated process that will instantly generate new business leads with absolutely no work from your marketing team.

Marketing automation supports all steps in the marketing funnel — the points where potential customers are researching your company’s product/service and have indicated that they have some interest in your solution. It’s not a tool to fill the top of your sales funnel with new leads.

It also doesn’t work with email lists you’ve purchased from advertisers or third-party sources. Don’t expect to “drip” emails to your rented email list and expect that those contacts will eventually be sales ready.

Is marketing automation a good fit?

For companies producing great content and getting a steady flow of leads from their websites, marketing automation could be a good solution to the problem of timely, effective follow-up. Here’s a list of things that you should consider when deciding if marketing automation is right for your company:

• Do you have a steady flow of leads from your website?
• Is your existing sales or marketing team too busy to follow up on both web leads and offline leads?
• Is your sales team comfortable giving marketing control of the initial contact for most leads (through automated messaging)?
• Does your company understand your customer well enough to know what questions potential customers ask during the sales process?
• Does your company have a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place?

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, marketing automation might be right for you.

If you think marketing automation might be a good fit for your company, would you like us to show you how it might work for you? Let us know.

One key to successful B2B lead generation programs is to calculate exactly the right number of qualified leads to provide to sales—as part of your campaign planning. If you generate too many leads, you’ll be wasting precious marketing dollars. If you generate too few, your firm may be at risk of missing its revenue targets, with potentially disastrous financial implications. Moreover, you’ll annoy your sales team by not supporting them properly. So, let’s look at a neat way to figure out in advance how many leads your company needs, so you can invest accordingly.

This easy method uses your sales people’s quotas to back your way into the number of leads required, based on sales productivity per lead. You will need four numbers:

1. The average revenue quota per rep, in the period, whether it’s a year, or a quarter, or a month.
2. The average revenue per order, or per closed deal.
3. The percent of their quota that the sales people generate naturally, without the help of leads. This revenue typically flows from repeat sales, from deeper penetration within the accounts, or from referrals.
4. The conversion rate from qualified lead to sales.

The first three numbers are likely to come from a discussion with sales management, and your finance department. The last number you probably have on hand, from sales and marketing experience.

Revenue quota per rep $3,000,000 Percentage of quota self-generated 40% Quota requiring lead support: $3M*(1-.4) $1,800,000 Revenue per order $60,000 Converting leads required ($1.8M/$60K) 30 Conversion rate 20% Qualified leads required per rep (30/.2) 150

Here’s an example of how to do this calculation, based on a set of hypothetical numbers that might be common in large-enterprise selling environments. We are saying that each rep is on the hook to deliver $3 million in sales in the period. As a first calculation, subtract out the percentage of that revenue that the rep can produce without any leads supplied by marketing. In this example, it’s 40% self-generated, leaving 60%, or $1.8 million, that the rep needs help with from marketing.

We divide that remaining revenue by the average deal size, which is $60,000 in this example, to get the number of closed deals that each rep, on average, needs to complete to deliver on the revenue quota. In this example, it’s 30 deals.

Finally, we divide the number of deals required by the lead-to-sales conversion rate, which is 20% in this example. Voila. Now we know that each reps needs, on average, 150 qualified leads to make quota.

You can also take this to the next step, and calculate the campaign inquiries required by dividing the 150 leads by your inquiry-to-lead conversion rate. With that, you can plan your campaigns to generate enough inquiries for your pipeline that will convert to a known number of qualified leads, and thereafter to the needed revenue.

So, with this simple math exercise, you can avoid waste and keep your sales reps as productive as they can be. Do you use another method that you can share?

Sales and customer service no longer are separate responsibilities. Although there may be separate positions within an organization, ultimately sales teams need to deliver a service experience and service teams need to know how to effectively sell.

Building a highly productive sales team is essential for any business wanting to achieve sales growth. There is a reason why some organizations thrive, and it’s usually to do with high performing sales teams being closely aligned with the overall strategy and direction of the company.

Customer Experience Enhanced Sales Processes Drives Productivity

There are many ways to drive sales productivity: training, communications, planning, and a shared vision of goals and objectives are obvious ones, but critical to success – and one that’s often overlooked, is the way in which you structure your sales team.

Some organizations thrive, and it’s usually because of high performing sales and service teams being closely aligned around a clear customer experience.

These days teams need to be able to support a company’s inbound and outbound marketing efforts, as well as a range of transaction sizes. All of these have to fit a clear and cohesive customer experience and efficiently deliver it in order to create a positive connection with customers.

Teams need to be structured with separate inside and outside sales processes that have clearly defined purposes and responsibilities, but who work in partnership together in order to move leads efficiently through the sales funnel to completion.

The Need for Better Customer Experience in Lead Generation

Many organizations have realized the economical benefits of hiring an Inside Sales team. They can cover an unlimited geographical area, time zones, and in some cases can help shorten the sales cycle.

The buying process has also changed; the abundance of information readily available online, means that businesses have become more ‘educated’ and comfortable purchasing online and over the telephone. Prospective customers want to be sold on more than just a product. They care about the entire experience.

Inside/Outside Sales & Customer Experience – Roles Are Blurring

Inside sales are focused on opening opportunities and responding to inbound. Their role requires persistence, research and lead nurturing as part of the customer and prospective customer experience. It is now not uncommon for Inside Sales to close leads via the telephone, depending on the complexity of the product and transaction size.

Outside sales reps also work from the office, their role is more strategic and relationship focused, and until more recently the majority of their time was spent in face-to-face meetings.

Today, there is a changing perception about the role of outside sales, who are now spending more time (41% on average) on the telephone. How much experience training are these individuals getting? How much attention is being paid to connecting with customers not just sell a product, but solve a problem? This situation can cause inefficiencies for an organization and it does not always make best use of their sales skills.

There is definitely still a place for face-to-face meetings, but there is an entire sales process that takes place before you can even make it to a meeting. Here are just a few of the benefits to having both inside and outside sales working together:

• Efficiency: The faster you can respond to a new lead, the better chances you have to close that lead. A dedicated office-based inside sales capability will enable you to respond quicker and validate the lead further to see whether it’s worth pursuing. Targeting the right person, with the right medium, and connecting them with the right information is key to enhancing their experience during the lead development effort.

• Support & Collaboration: Even with outside sales now spending more of their time conducting sales on the phone, they still need support with their cold-calling efforts. Working in conjunction with inside sales can accelerate the sales cycle and achieve better results. A cohesive approach between different groups only enhances the experience customers receive as they see the attention you pay to ensuring that the sales process is done right.

• Clearly defined responsibilities: Clearly defined roles that are based on sales value and the complexity of the prospect’s sales cycle will not only help improve conversion rates, it allows your sales staff to do what they do best. Typically, inside sales are more focused on qualifying, prospecting and nurturing. Outside sales are motivated on closing and generating new business from referral partners, current clients, or other relationship-based activities.

In order to get the most out of your sales teams and ensure that prospective and existing customers get the very best service experience, you need to think strategically about how you divide responsibilities so that everyone is clear about their role and you get the most from your teams. In many cases, it could simply mean taking the sales resources that you currently have and using them differently, but ultimately ensuring that they focus on the same result.

At the end of it all, your sales people are service agents. They are your front-line troops, and have the most daily contact with your customers, so it’s important to think carefully about how you structure and delegate responsibility in order to maximize productivity, efficiency, and improve the customer experience across your entire organization.

Companies that Measure Marketing ROI Increase Growth

When it comes to B2B lead generation and determining the top producing marketing activities, ROI matters. A report by the Pedowitz Group says that “ The top-tier of highly effective and efficient marketers calculate ROI or similar financial measures to assess their marketing effectiveness (62% vs. 23% of all other marketers) and are more likely to indicate they are experiencing much greater growth than their competitors (55% vs. 13% of all others).”

A Case Where “Keep It Simple” Doesn’t Work

Clearly ROI is the measure that marketers should use to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. It’s not easy to do, however, because you have a mix of activities that go into generating one sale and they all need to be included in the marketing costs. Also, complex B2B sales take a while to come to fruition, sometimes over a year, so you don’t want to measure results prematurely.

For example, Techno Company sells technology solutions to operations managers. It goes to a tradeshow and generates a list of 200 leads. For the sake of simplicity let’s say the show costs $100,000. The company shares these leads with its sales people based on their territories. The sales people follow up and walk away with ten (10) closed sales averaging $50,000 each. The total sales are $500,000. Thus, the return on in investment is 400% or 20% cost of sale.

With this simplistic ROI calculation, the company might decide not to do the trade show again. But perhaps the marketing staff should instead be asking, “What else can we do to leverage these leads and increase our ROI?”

Increase Marketing ROI With Lead Qualification and Nurturing

Techno Company’s marketing leaders realize that instead of sending all the leads directly to their sales force, they could ask their tele-services company to put their business development specialists on the phone to qualify the leads.

By talking with leads one-by-one, the business development specialists may determine that 40 are qualified according to BANT criteria (budget, authority, need, and time to buy). So they only pass these qualified leads on to the sales people. The reps, excited to have qualified leads, charge forward and close 20 sales, averaging $50,000 each again, resulting in total sales of $1,000,000. If the telemarketing campaign cost them $10,000, then their return on investment is now:

($1,000,000 – $110,000)/$110,000 = 809%

Or, a cost of sale (COS) of: $110,000/$1,000,000 = 11%

Now, you may be wondering how they closed 20 sales instead of ten. How could that be? Aren’t they working with the same leads? The truth is that the sales people didn’t follow up on all 200 leads the first time. They checked out a few of the leads, found some that weren’t interested or could not afford the sophisticated technology, and quickly moved on to something they considered to be more important.

But that is not the end of it.

The diligent business development specialists also found another 70 leads who are interested in the technology solutions, and have the resources and authority to buy. But given their multiple priorities, they were not yet ready for a solution.

Over time, the business development specialists worked with these people, calling them to offer advice and sending emails with offers of white papers, e-books, webinars, and case studies that could educate them and help to move them through the buying process. As well as occasional nurture calls to keep the human touch alive. They developed deep relationships, and 50 of these leads matured into sales qualified leads, of which 25 turned into sales

The company added another $10,000 in costs for nurturing the leads, but now they’ve closed a total of 60 sales through lead qualification and nurturing instead of the original ten. What’s more, the 40 sales leads that were nurtured led to larger sales—an average of $55,000 instead of $50,000 each for initial sale. Now their ROI is:

($2,375,000-$120,000)/$120,000 = 1,879% or 5.05% COS

And there’s one more calculation Techno Company’s marketers need to do. Since nurtured prospects turn into clients that remain loyal for longer, this ROI will build over time.

Calculating a marketing ROI that includes all expenses and sales over the long term makes sense because it shows how a little extra spending can have a powerful impact on sales.

For more information download our FREE e-book: “Bridge the Divide Between Sales and Marketing.”

It’s kind of a joke in of itself that April Fools’ isn’t really a holiday but everyone treats it like one. However, pranks and publicity stunts aside, it can teach your telemarketing campaigns a serious lesson.

No, this isn’t about being mistaken for a crank caller or even the more commonplace scenario of being mistaken for a scammer. It’s about the idea that your entire sales process shouldn’t be like a prank.

How does a prank usually run?

• Victim walks in thinking like everything’s normal.
• They’re prompted to investigate something, harmless as it may seem.
• Prank happens and everybody laughs.

Now let’s take that and apply it to your sales process.

• Prospect receives a call or gets an email.
• You managed to get on their good side and set a sales appointment.
• But during the sales appointment, they suddenly realize things aren’t what they expected.

What’s the difference? Well, all the former does is get a laugh out of a prank victim’s expense. In the latter, the ‘victim’ is a disappointed prospect who will not only end up denying you a sale but could potentially refer to others that they do the same.

Sounds like a set-up for complete campaign failure don’t you think? You want to know what else it sounds like?

• Sales VS Marketing… again – Matt Wesson of Salesforce has even gone as far as to call it the original Game of Thrones. More often than not, conflicts primarily start from the very definition of a lead. On the telemarketing side (as well as the salesperson), you have to stick to this definition and not one that you just came up on your own.

• Someone’s hiding something – This is a somewhat darker version of the sales-marketing conflict. You can’t define a lead because both parties one, the other, or both parties are somehow being kept in the dark about what’s really being sold. This can be the case when you’ve outsourced telemarketing. The solution? More collaboration. More transparency.

You know you shouldn’t really be too bummed that telemarketing’s got a bad rep for false promises and scams. Even the legitimate kind can sound like a big joke further along the sales process if you’re not careful about defining leads and sales-marketing collaboration. On the bright side, pranks are intended and these are often not.

The headlines about professional social media network LinkedIn’s decision to open its Influencer publishing programme to all its members might have shouted about the opportunities to share a blogging platform with its hand-picked list of 500 influencers, but will the latest move by the network really allow your voice to be heard in a corporate landscape where every big company is using some form of content marketing?

Well, yes…if you maximize the opportunities LinkedIn is to offer its users. Unlike Willy Wonka, the world’s largest professional network isn’t offering just five golden tickets to share a blogging platform with the likes of Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, LinkedIn has opened up the previously heavily protected doors to its blogging production line to its 125 million-plus English language users, and later to its full membership of more than 277 million.

Forgive me for sounding like an official from the Ministry of the Blindingly Obvious, but the more people you broadcast to, the greater reach your message will have.

When RBS Bizcrowd, one of Southerly’s clients, ran a TV advertising campaign the number of small business owners signing up to the B2B website went through the roof.

Here at Southerly HQ, the bulk of my writing duties involve producing case studies of Bizcrowd members. A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sandra Fitzgerald from Worldwide Parcel Services, who reported that the online business had experienced a dramatic upturn in trade since Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis recommended its European and Worldwide shipping service on ITV show Daybreak.

Sandra’s good news actually reminded me that many years ago Martin and I attended the same primary school. Not only that, his father and mine often had reason to work together, so Martin and I would share lifts to the school gates and visit each others’ homes on a regular basis. That was until the day I decided to exact my revenge on Martin following a particularly fractious journey to school when I performed my best impression of 1970s wrestler Kendo Nagasaki and had the young Master Lewis’s shoulders pinned to our living room floor.

Influencing the influencers

Now, where was I? Ah yes, so if you broadcast on TV, it’s fairly obvious you will have significant reach. Likewise with LinkedIn – a far better networking tool than a company blog recalling childhood misdemeanours – not only are you broadcasting to the right type of audience, and lots of them, but you are reaching a high number of established influencers.

However, there’s no doubt that LinkedIn’s move will also produce a staggering number of influencer-style blog posts. And if we’re all blogging as influencers then surely the role of the influencer – the influence of the influencer, shall we say – will be diluted and diminished, so what’s the point?

Good question and a very valid point. But the thing is, you’re now in a situation that separates the chocolate factory owners from the Oompa-Loompas.

Whereas before you sent your ever-so-useful blog posts out into the random ether, you’re now posting your blogs in a LinkedIn-backed community more likely to contain thought leaders, and you want them to take note.

The pressure is on you now to provide something original and innovative – your job as an influencer is to provide thought leadership differentiates itself from the blogs written by other thought leaders.

But how do you up your game? The simple answer is to make your blog post a highly creative, original, innovative and well-researched piece of content.

But here at Southerly we realise that this isn’t always possible. So here’s another way big companies can use LinkedIn’s blogging platform to their advantage.

Let’s take content marketing as an example. While Southerly’s speciality area is content marketing, the undoubted poster boy – and king of the influencers – in our sector is Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi.

We couldn’t and wouldn’t want to steal Joe’s crown as king of the content marketing influencers. But in the same way that academics add their own examples in support of the opinion of other researchers and influencers, we were more than happy to post a blog earlier this week that used the example of Dagen-H in Sweden to support the Content Marketing Institute’s view that now is not the time to drop the word ‘content’ from our area of marketing expertise.

Just like academia, which uses different examples to build a body of evidence, bloggers can use the LinkedIn platform to become influencers by giving their own individual take on popular topics in their own industry. Put on that content marketing cap and make sure those views and examples are highly creative, original, innovative in their value and well-researched.

You've probably heard that being a good listener is the key to being successful in sales. While I agree that it's essential, I'm here to tell you that your ability to ask good sales questions is even more important.

Why is that? Let me give you a little bit of scientific fact. Your brain is unable to do two things simultaneously. It can either listen OR it can formulate questions to ask. Not both. Just one. So if you're just listening, that's nice and clearly your prospect is being heard.

But if you're not asking the right questions, all you're going to get is gobbledygook. Meaningless drivel that builds relationships, but doesn't advance the sales process.

The ONLY way that you're going to have a valuable sales conversation - for both you and your prospect - is to plan your questions ahead of time.

Think about what you can ask that gets your prospect talking about their situation, their issues and yes, their challenges.

Think about questions that might actually provoke your customer – making them think about things they haven't thought of before. Figure out what you need to ask to determine if making a change makes good sense for your prospect.

Write everything down. Then, when you actually do meet, you can say, "In preparation for today's meeting, I wrote down a few questions." Now, you can relax and really listen.

Mobile payments companies have been trying to bring smartphone users on board with mobile in-store payments — using their phones to pay at retail locations. But in most cases, people still aren't convinced using their smartphones to make payments in-person is worthwhile.

Fifty-five percent of smartphone owners surveyed by Harris Interactive said they were uninterested in using their smartphone to pay in-person in 2013, up from 47% in the previous survey from 2012. Meaning, mobile wallet providers have been unsuccessful at convincing a growing portion of smartphone users that mobile in-store payments solve a pain point. Instead, more people are becoming convinced that the technology is not for them.

Not having a reason to adopt the new technology, not wanting to store sensitive information on a smartphone, and not wanting to transmit sensitive information to a merchant are the top three reasons U.S. adult smartphone users uninterested in mobile payments gave for their lack of interest.

• In September 2013, 58% said that they didn't see any reason to switch from using payment cards or cash to using their smartphone to pay, down from 62% in November of 2012.
• Sixty-two percent said they didn't want to store sensitive information on their smartphones, down from 68% in 2012. 
• In 2013, 55% said that they didn't want to transmit sensitive information to a merchant's device, up from 51% in 2013. 
• Only 11% listed not knowing where to use their smartphone to pay as a reason for their lack of interest in paying with a smartphone. 

It's interesting to note, while more consumers are uninterested in paying in-person via mobile in general, specific hesitations went down in nearly every instance, except on the question of the perceived security of transmitting sensitive information. The massive Target data breach that took place after the survey will likely bolster growing concern among consumers about the safety of transactions.

Mobile wallet providers will need to do a better job making sure their technology really does make consumers' lives easier and then effectively communicating that message.

Harris Interactive's data comes from an online poll of 2,577 U.S. adults. The results were weighted to be representative of the U.S. population. 

 Click here to download the charts and data in Excel.  

 

Join the conversation about this story »

Email marketing continues to grow through leaps and bounds in this digital age of social media marketing. Approximately 91% of social media users will check their emails on daily basis.

Email marketing is considered as the most effective techniques for generating leads in the year 2013. When you have a tremendous social media presence, one of the best ways of generating leads is by tapping this pool of consumers. In this case, you would be converting followers into subscribers that ultimately become customers of your business.

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Use Sign-Up Forms

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To create leads for your business through social media channels, you must include simple email sign-up forms. In this way, you can induce fans to subscribe your email list. Most businesses would have a page on Facebook.

Now, you can create an Email tab on your Facebook page. The sign-up form should be available through this tab. Furthermore, you can also make use of email sign-up apps to generate leads. Some of the most widely used apps are iContact’s Facebook App and Constant Contact Facebook App. You can add these apps onto the Facebook page of your business.

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Provide Incentives for Newsletter Sign-Ups

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Incentives are the most preferred ways of attracting people for email sign-ups. To draw the attention of consumers on social media, you must provide them with incentives. You can provide exclusive discounts for every purchase to consumers who sign up for your email list.

Most online retail stores encourage people to sign-up for their email list by providing shoppers with 10-20% discount on every purchase. These discounts are made available to consumers through Facebook and Twitter. Discounts, free samples, and coupons are the most preferred ways of engaging consumers. Adding images and call to action tabs along with incentives draws the attention of social media users.

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Webinars to attract Subscribers

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Webinars help you in connecting with your audience. They are an excellent platform for exhibiting the human side of the business. One of the most preferred ways of attracting consumers to webinars is by launching them through Google Hangouts.

Most companies make use of Facebook and Twitter to invite consumers to their Google Hangouts. Google+ hangouts help you in connecting with your consumers and building your loyalty base. There are numerous programs to host webinars. These include GoToWebinar and Any Meeting. These programs have sign-up forms for collecting emails from viewers visiting the webinar.

The success of your business depends on the continuous growth of your email subscriber list.

Google Drive, and the apps in it—Docs, Sheets, and Slides—are great for people looking for a simple Office suite. It's free, makes collaboration easy, and pretty much anyone can use it. But if you're used to something more traditional, like Microsoft Office, you may be hesitant to use it. Here's how to make Google Drive work more like the desktop suites you're used to.

Read more...

Did you know Halley is more than just a name on a comet?

Yes, Edmond Halley discovered and predicted the returns of the comet to Earth's vicinity, which is an amazing accomplishment. But he also catalogued all of the stars in the southern hemisphere, he created the first meteorological chart (which meteorologists still use today), and he published the first magnetic charts of the Atlantic Ocean and some of the Pacific Ocean.

He also contributed greatly to Isaac's Newton's notoriety. Without Halley, Newton's proof that planetary orbit is an ellipse might never have come to light.

I did not know those things until I watched a recent episode of Cosmos. Either my teachers never told those stories or they simply gave us facts in a way that had little meaning for me.

It was the stories Neil deGrasse Tyson told during that episode that captured my attention and made me want to know more about science and math. That’s quite an achievement when my natural tendency is to shy away from those topics.

You can do the same thing with your business. You might work in an industry that sounds incredibly boring or worse is one people dread but have to endure, but you can use stories to capture buyers attention and make them want to work with you and buy from you.

Please ignore the header image. Curation is not thieving.

There are many companies that don’t have enough resources to employ a dedicated social media man. It’s also the case that many digital marketing execs take care of social media but don’t necessarily have experience with Twitter.

The most important part of managing a Twitter account is having tools in place to make things easier. Chiefly, HootSuite for Econsultancy, but it could be any of their competitors, to keep track of brand mentions, relevant hashtags and to schedule tweets effectively.

Alongside tools, content creation and curation is important. If you’re not doing this, what will you tweet about.

Again, a lot of companies don’t have the resources for copious content creation. That’s where curation comes in.

I’m by no means a social media guru (a relief?) but I think these ideas for what to whack in a tweet, when you’re busy but desire engagement, can be heeded by many. They are all free, so you’ve no excuses.

Our head of social Matt Owen wrote a comprehensive post on why engagement outside of your website is hard to measure but is worthwhile. 

I’ve only given you five simple ideas. The idea is that these will get you thinking about what else you can curate. As always, let me know your thoughts. Oh, and give us a tweet.

Spotify playlist

Music is such a universal love I don’t really need to explain why sharing it is a good engagement tactic. The mechanics of Spotify mean you can make a good playlist and stick around on a customer’s desktop for years.

Today we'll be mostly listening to @doug_johnstone's brilliant playlist for The Dead Beat. https://t.co/CgB0HoMoPj http://t.co/tOZhkepDNZ

— Faber & Faber (@FaberBooks) April 2, 2014

Other people’s Vines

Vine takes six seconds, but I get that many people aren’t confident enough to tie what can be pretty raw (slapdash) bits of video to their brand. 

So use other people’s. Vine is accessible and searchable on desktop now. If you tweet the URL of somebody’s Vine, it’ll still embed nicely in your tweet.

Slide into that tub #surfbort https://t.co/aJSodvy9A6 by @GirlsGoneKyle

— Vine (@vineapp) March 29, 2014

Quotes/literature

The whole of man’s efforts in eloquence is at your disposal. If you insist on writing your own clunky tweets, fine. But using a nice quote or excerpt can do wonders for engagement. Be it Shakespeare, Donna Tartt, Bill Gates, Ted Hughes or Bruce Springsteen.

Oh, and if it’s not pithy enough to fit in a tweet, take a picture of it. OK, it won’t be accessible by all, so perhaps don’t make a habit of picturing text, but it can be a nice work-around if you need to.

Shakespeare quotes aren't what they used to be or not to be.

— Moose Allain (@MooseAllain) April 3, 2014

Pictures

Tweeting other people’s blog post is a no-brainer, but few spice them up by going out of their way (fractionally) to screenshot an image and append it to the tweet.

Here’s a good example, below. Chris Lake’s periodic table of content marketing is all about the visual. You should try to do this every time you tweet an article (as long as the publisher is happy for you to share images).

The Periodic Table of content Marketing - a great overview from the guys at Econsultancy pic.twitter.com/1gXmPFpIWV

— Gareth Jenkins (@garethjenkinsit) April 3, 2014

Slideshows

This is a new feature. You can post up to ten pictures in a tweet now, enabling a slideshow, a funky matrix of pics in stream, and the ability to tag people, getting them firmly on your radar.

Trying to take a team content portrait, but Nic Cage has muscled in. PS: you can use multiple images in Tweets now. pic.twitter.com/pdPo6QCEBN

— Econsultancy (@Econsultancy) April 2, 2014

What’s your single biggest marketing headache? If you answered “lead generation,” welcome to the club; the majority of us marketers are here with you.

Online Marketing’s Major Challenges

BtoB and Bizo did a study comparing marketing challenges in 2012 with those in 2013. The number-one problem for both years was “Generating more leads,” given by 61% and 60% of marketers respectively. “Reaching more of our target audience” was the second-most cited challenge for both years, but the 2013 figure was 14.5% higher than 2012. “Customer retention” was the least concerning to all, but grew 37.5% from 2012 to 2013, perhaps an early indication of an incipient trend.

A Deeper Look into Lead Generation

BtoB then did a study (sponsored by Act-On) that drilled down into the nitty-gritty of that problematic lead generation. Two hundred and eighty-two B2B marketers answered detailed questions. A few resulting factoids:

• Lead generation practices have become mainstream: 81% of marketers are using lead gen practices at least moderately; only 4% do nothing. A full 29% report incorporating lead generation into both sales and marketing initiatives.
• Integrating offline and online marketing is tough. Only 6% are “fully” integrated, and 12% “very”; 13% have offline and online separated into different departments.
• The most common lead gen tactic (60%) is content marketing.
• Over half (52%) believe more/better content is the biggest challenge to their demand gen efforts; 50% say it’s improving their website.
• Only 50% have a lead nurturing process of some kind in place.
• The average length of the sales cycle has dropped from eight months to six months. This may reflect the greater self-education that buyers now do.
• A whopping 44% of marketers say it is “difficult or “significantly difficult” to communicate their company’s value proposition.

When asked about the hurdles to lead generation, 63% cited lack of resources. Depth and accuracy of the database was cited by 44%. The report’s authors speculated that most of the marketing challenges might actually be rooted in cultural problems, such as poor communications among departments and unwillingness to learn new channels.

4 Steps to Better Lead Generation

Using the lead generation research, Ad Age and BtoB created the paper “Lead Generation and Management for SMB Sales and Marketing,” which was written with the needs and capabilities of the small and mid-sized business in mind. From the paper, here are the four essential action steps to improve lead generation:

1. Integration of lead generation techniques. Integration between online and offline marketing efforts is essential. Companies face multiple marketing channels and fragmented media, which makes management tough and data collation difficult. Best-of-breed marketers are using automation and strategic initiatives to make sense of the confusion, consolidate data into contact histories, and gain control of their programs.

2. Sales-marketing cooperation. Three-quarters of companies are not working to improve cooperation between these two essential functions, and many don’t bother even trying. Those companies that encourage mutual cooperation between marketing and sales can gain significant competitive advantages, including better intelligence for sales to leverage on calls.

3. Metrics and assessment. Marketers say it is essential to use analytics, employ closed-loop analysis, calculate and show ROI, and support accountability. Basic to this effort is improving database management and data hygiene – both important elements in the lead gen process. Also key: understanding buyer personas, the buyer’s journey, and the nurturing process; engaging with buyers via multiple touch points; and defining criteria for the hand-off to sales.

4. The necessity of technology. Marketing teams, in particular at small-to-midsized businesses, are generally as slim as their budgets. Here, technology increasingly is viewed as a necessity. Marketers can liaise with their technology vendor partners and IT colleagues to leverage the synergies that exist in technology, branding, and customer interaction.

Read the paper: “Lead Generation and Management for SMB Sales and Marketing,”

For white papers, eBooks, blog posts and more on a wide range of demand and lead generation topics, visit the Act-On Center of Excellence.

Marketing managers should always be conscious and concerned with how their efforts are performing. There are many metrics that a marketer should keep a keen eye on, but there are several extremely important metrics that can key you in on successful marketing tactics.

Social engagements, website traffic growth, lead generation, customer acquisition, and conversion rates from visits to leads to customers are those important metrics to track. Below I will explain what each metric is and why they are important.

Social Reach & Engagement

Social media marketing should always be tracked by channel and in total. By channel, I mean Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Knowing the reach of each channel is important because it tells you how many people your marketing efforts are reaching. By reach I mean LinkedIn followers, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, etc. Further break down of your social reach also shows you which social media channel brings you the most engagement. This can help you strategize your social media marketing better and guide it towards its fullest potential.

Engagement is just as, if not more, important than reach. You could have more of a social reach on Facebook or Twitter than you have on LinkedIn, yet you could be achieving twice as much engagement from LinkedIn as you do from any other social media channel. It’s not just a matter of gaining followers but it’s also persuading people to engage with your content; allowing you to know how a potential prospect views your content, company, and expertise.

Website Traffic Growth

Every marketer should track total website growth by organic, email, direct, paid search, referrals, and social sources. Tracking website traffic is important because you should want to know the total amount of visits your website is receiving plus which source your most visits come from. This shows you where your marketing shines, how great your SEO efforts are, how great your social media efforts are, and where your marketing efforts need improvement.

With further investigation of what content is driving the majority of your visits, that investigation also reveals your strengths and weaknesses. It shows you which keywords and types of content drives most of your traffic and which fails to do so. This allows you to focus certain campaigns or efforts towards content that needs more refining and content that is performing great but could still be improved further.

Lead Generation Growth

Lead generation can also be broken down by source, even the same sources you use to break down your website traffic. With the knowledge of generated leads by source, you know where most of your leads come from and where you should focus more of your efforts on to drive more leads per source. You also can determine which source drives most of your sales qualified leads, leads that are ready to be handed over to the sales team to nurture them into customers.

Communication with your sales team is important because alignment between your sales and marketing team is a force to be reckoned with. Total leads generated help you communicate with your sales team by showing them how well you are supporting them.

Conversion Rates

Conversion rates indicate how well your marketing efforts push prospects through the stages of marketing. These rates show how efficient your efforts are at turning a visitor into a lead and then into a customer. At some point in this guidance if you hit a snag, and you realize you are failing at converting leads into customers or converting visitors into leads, you can focus on how to improve your methods where you capitalize on more opportunities to gain more customers and leads.

You can also see the percentages from visitors to leads, from visitors to customers, and from leads to customers. These percentages further point out where your marketing efforts are converting efficiently and where your efforts are failing to do so. An increase or decrease in conversion percentages can mirror the quality of your content, where an increase shows you a higher type of quality content.

All of these metrics are in reach and should be in the grasp of every marketer. Tracking these metrics and learning how to increase your metrics progress help you become a better marketer and bring more success to your company.

The goal of any company’s marketing team is to generate sales leads and, thereby, to increase sales. Monitoring sales inquiries and leads is the best way to find out whether your marketing program is working. When you can determine that a specific ad, trade show event or direct-mail promotion generated a particular sales lead, you gain true control of your marketing budget.

To learn where your sales inquiries come from and what happens to them, implement an lead feedback management system, under which salespeople report back to the marketing department on the disposition of sales inquiries. Was the inquiry from someone who just wanted product information? Was it from a competitor trying to find out about your line? Or, did it result in a new sale?

Follow the Marketing rule of 45

Use the rule of 45 as a benchmark. Of the people who inquire about your products, 45% will purchase a product – either yours or a competitor’s. The best way to get the lion’s share of this 45% segment is to contact 100% of the people who ask you for more information.

When it comes to estimating sales, the rule of 45 works this way: “Inquiries x 45% x follow-up % x estimated market share % x average sales price = sales.” So, if your company has a 35% market share, you receive 10,000 inquiries and your average sales price is $5,000, project sales this way: 10,000 inquiries x 45% = 4,500 potential buyers x 100% follow-up = 4,500 buyers x 35% market share = 1,575 buyers x average sales price of $5,000 = $7,875,000. Notice that sales drop precipitously when follow-up is low.

In the case of 50% follow-up, sales will be $3,937,500. For 25% follow-up, sales will be $1,968,750. Following up on 100% of sales leads is crucial.

We see that leads begin to lose value as soon as you receive them. If you don’t follow up quickly, your competitors will. You can purchase specialized software packages to track the disposition of sales leads; your company’s customer relationship management software should also work for this purpose if it has an inquiry-management component. Or, you have other options: For our clients we do use a “nurturing” strategy in which specialists inside the company attempt to prequalify the leads through phone calls, e-mails or other communications. They turn these leads over to the sales force only when they are “sales-ready.”

Marketing and Sales Department Accountability

When salespeople follow up on all leads and report on them to the marketing department, marketers have valuable information that they can use to do their jobs better. They can project accurate return on investment (ROI) on particular marketing ventures, predicting how each will do in terms of sales. In addition, they can establish ROI goals for future marketing activities and predict the number of sales for each activity. How can sales “close the loop,” that is, fully report on all inquiry dispositions?

Naturally all inquiries do not always result in leads. Some, of course, will be strong leads right away. Others will take nurturing. Still others will never advance beyond product information inquiries or even bogus queries from competitors.

The best way to qualify leads is by asking questions. We find the best questions to ask are:

• Do you need our products or services?
• When do you plan to make a purchase?
• How many of our products will you buy?
• Do you have the authority to make purchasing decisions?
• What is your budget?

Once you have answers to these questions, grade the lead and the opportunity. Track how many inquiries your salespeople follow up by going directly to the inquirers. Ask whether someone from your organization has contacted them. Once you know your current degree of follow-up, create the “lead management reports” you will need from salespeople in the future. Common reports we use include “total inquiry,” which records how many inquiries each salesperson gets; and marketing campaign reports, which record, for example, leads from each individual campaign.