Research shows that healthy competition within sales teams can boost results — often substantially. Sales contests are one way to introduce “healthy” competition into your team. In fact, they can be so effective that the organization who ran that study saw an incredible 45% increase in their bottom line margin the second time they ran a competition. For that, you need sales contest ideas. 

But, to have a positive effect, sales contests need to be given careful thought, or they’ll turn into a playground only lets the top performers play. In that scenario, poor — or even perfectly adequate — performers become discouraged and stop bothering to try to win and the contest fizzles. 

The elements of a good sales contest

So, to combat that, you need to understand what a good sales contest should achieve. To raise everyone’s motivation, your contests should meet a few criteria. A good sales contest has 3 main goals: 

1. To improve the performance of bottom performers;
2. Increase overall team productivity;
3. And, boost team morale.

 If an idea doesn’t do these 3 things, scrap it, or at least don’t repeat it. 

In line with this, traditionally sales contests reward the best rep in a set period of time — i.e. the rep who generates the most revenue in a month wins. We certainly include that idea, but if you’re striving to achieve those big 3 things, you’ll have to get more creative. 

A few ways to do that is to focus on front-end activities and KPIs — the processes of sales — and reward appropriately. Or, focus on specific thresholds, where anyone who reaches the minimum wins some sort of prize. 

So, without further ado, here are our contest ideas. 

12 sales contest ideas

Milestone-based ideas

1. First to reach X leads/sales/meetings/revenue

This is a more simplified version of the KPI-based contest and can be a great short-term contest. For example, if your marketing team just ran a very successful campaign and there are lots of SQLs just waiting to be given attention, that’s the perfect situation for this type of contest. 

First past the post is typically the rule: the first person to qualify 50 leads a day, or book 10 meetings, or generate $25K in new sales pipeline — you get the idea. 

2. Anyone who reaches X sales in a month receives a prize

Similar to the objective goals, this one has a twist to ensure that everyone gets motivated: whatever goal you set (X sales, Y revenue, etc.), whoever reaches that metric in a month gets a prize — not just the top or first person. It’s a sort of everyone past the post take on the traditional. 

Fun ideas

3. Yankee gift swap

Also known as “Dirty Santa”, this one can be effective around the holidays. Rules are simple: every time a rep makes a sale over the predetermined amount, they can open a gift. Once a gift is opened, anyone else who makes a sale over the set amount can either open a new one or steal. 

Ben Jackson, VP of sales at Voices.com, reported that this contest was so successful that his team opened all the gifts the first week, forcing management to restock. They had a 50% increase in larger-than-average deals. 

4. Short-notice “flash” contest

Everybody loves leaving early on Fridays — why not use that as a short-term contest reward? Jackson found that inside sales reps tended to ration their end-of-month deals to get a jumpstart on the next month. So, he spontaneously announced that if everyone met a certain quota in the last few days, everyone could leave early on Friday. It worked. 

5. Poker

For this one, set predetermined small, daily goals for your team. If and when a team member reaches that goal, they pick a card from a 52-card deck. Throw in a random bonus card for fairness, and at the end of a 5-day workweek, everyone who reached their daily goal each day has a full hand. The best hand wins. 

6. Trade show

If you do trade shows, this can a fun 1-day or week-long contest. It’s simple: whoever makes the most sales during the event wins. Just let your team know ahead of time and make an easy way to track their sales. 

7. Bingo 

Like the poker contest, this one focuses on small, daily goals. Make bingo cards with different types of sales or tasks in each square. Every time a teammate completes a task, they can check off a square. When they fill the row or card, they get rewarded. 

Positive + negative points ideas

8. Points for “carelessness”

Typically, contests are run to reward good sales behavior — what about the poor? Imagine that your team has been giving away a lot of free products added to deals to make the sale — too many. While it works in the short-term, it can lead to buyer relationships that are less likely to last. To cut down on this, reward reps for the deals that contain no free products. 

To do this, you might consider mounting a board upon which points are added beside each team member’s name for careless sales practices. At the end of the week, the “leader” has to put $20 or $50 in a charity pot or office party fund. It’s a bit of a parody that servers to highlight less-than-optimal practices in a fun, non-accusatory way.

You can also combine the concept of positive and negative points by awarding points for good practices, and removing them for bad. 

Objective-based ideas

Every contest needs a goal: so what are you hoping to improve among your sales team? Picking a specific objective is key. 

9. More new clients

Using this metric, whoever gets the most clients in a set period of time wins. 

10. More revenue for X product

Again, whoever generates the most revenue for a specific product of your company wins. Which product do you need to improve sales of? 

11. Greatest gross profit for the period

Take a metric, like gross profit, and pick a concrete length of time, like the quarter. You can also do per month or otherwise. Again, whoever has the highest gross profit of that period wins. 

12. KPI-based contest

Focusing on improving KPIs a process-based idea. What KPIs are lagging? Sales cadences? “50 meaningful calls per day” could be the goal for a contest. Start with 5-10 metrics and keep it simple. Resist the urge to overcomplicate this one. 

Conclusion

You probably didn’t need us to tell you that salespeople are competitive — it’s a quality that often makes the top performers just that. But while sales contests have proven to be effective, they’re best when they: 

• Elevate everyone’s performance, especially poor and average performers;
• Increase overall team activity; and
• Boost team morale. 

Hopefully, this list helps you get started doing just that. 

Click here to download “25+ Tactics for Scaling Modern Sales Teams”

The post 12 Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Sales Team appeared first on CloserIQ Blog.

Learn the significant competitive advantage of having non-commissioned salespeople from Mitch Little of Microchip Technology. Read on to find out more. RELATED: How to Pay Your Sales Development Reps In this article: The Shift from Having Commissioned to Non-Commissioned Sales People How Salespeople Affected the Shift in the Commission Structure Implementing the Non-Commissioned Sales Approach […]

The post The Advantage Of Non-Commissioned Sales People w/Mitch Little @Microchip appeared first on The Sales Insider.

The following strategy is for salespeople who are asked to present to a prospect by a broker or agent. Here is how to win when you have an hour to present to a prospect you haven’t met. You might want to read this primer on Value Creation before you read this post.

The Temptation to Sell

The temptation when asked to present is to establish your credibility by sharing information about your company. Because the prospective client doesn’t know you or your company, you need to start by providing your bona fides. Following this line, you show your potential client the logos of the companies that make up your client list. The more impressive the logo, the better your company, so the thinking goes. Once you’ve established your credibility, you move onto the other things you believe your prospective client needs to see.

How is it possible for your prospect to choose you over the two or three other companies in this beauty pageant if you don’t explain your solution? You plow forward with your solution, providing careful details over the course of, say, 100 slides, to ensure the prospect understands your approach. You believe sharing the solution allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. The truth is that it’s more likely you and your competitor could swap your company logos on your respective logos without much trouble.

Making sure your end on a high note, you share testimonials and case studies to prove you can produce the results your prospective client needs. I recently heard of a situation in which two competing companies both shared a testimonial from the sales client. Awkward.) If you succeeded for these other companies, you would surely succeed for your prospective client.

If this approach isn’t the one you would take in the first meeting with a prospect you developed, why would you choose this approach when invited to present to a prospect from a broker or agent?

One of the biggest problems with this plan is that your approach to the client is no different from your competitors. Here is how to turn the tables and create a preference to work with you.

Creating a Preference in One Hour

You have an hour to create a preference to work with you and your company. If the approach above isn’t likely to achieve that outcome, what is a better approach?

Generally, the way we have thought about the way buyer’s buy is that they become unhappy with something or discover some need. Later, they explore and evaluate their options, seek consensus, and resolve their concerns. There are buying more complicated journeys, but the orienting generalization above provides enough guidance for an effective strategy. Because you have had no discovery meeting, you enter this meeting with the prospect at the “evaluating options” phase of their process. The process has deprived both you and your client of the most valuable part of the sales conversation, something we call discovery.

If you want another view of the buyer’s journey from a practical, tactical B2B sales approach, see my second book, The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales.No more pushy sales tactics. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales.

To create a preference, you need to treat this hour-long meeting as a discovery. You need to help your prospective client with a better process for getting than the broker or agent’s boilerplate RFP. Fortunately, the buyer wants what they want, and they are trying to decide who is going to make sure they get it.

Disrupting the Process without Being Disruptive

Instead of going straight to your slide deck, the first thing you might do to distinguish yourself is to ask well-placed questions. You want to ask questions designed to cause your prospective client to recognize that there are factors and choices they haven’t considered. You want to ask a question that causes your prospect to discover something about themselves, that something about which they are going to have strong opinions. You want your questions to expose how they are going to get what they want with you as their partner.

These questions should be strategic and prove you are consultative. Your questions prove you know things that will be useful in helping them get what they want. A disruptive question might be something like, “What are the most strategic changes you are planning to make over the next 18 to 24 months to improve your result in this area?” You might also ask a question like, “Of three different models companies in our space operate, have you decided which model makes the most sense for you now?” If you want to expose a knowledge gap, you might ask a technical question like, “What was your overall cost per transaction and what changes have you already made to lower your cost structure?”

If you want to be a trusted advisor, you need trust and advice. Your questions prove you have the business acumen and situational knowledge to provide the guidance. Your questions also move you back to discovery, where you have an excellent chance to reframe how your prospect is thinking about their decision.

What Do They Want

If there is one thing I know to be true about prospects and dream clients, it is that they want you to hear them. They want someone to listen to them, to understand them, to understand their needs, and to care enough to help them get what they want. If you are talking about your company and your solution, you are depriving your prospect of the opportunity to tell you what they want and why they want it.

You can very easily ask a single question like, “Can you share with me how you are thinking about the outcome you need and what you are going to need from a good partner?” There are many ways to ask this question, but whatever the words, giving your prospective client a chance to say the words out loud to a person who is paying attention, taking notes, and sharing a little about how they might be able to help produces a better result than an approach that we might call “desperate proof providing.”

Taking Control of the Agenda

You are better served by asking questions than making statements about you and your company. I once had a meeting with a decision-maker who asked me to share with him information about my company. I told him it would be the least interesting conversation we could have in our short time together. When he insisted, I said, “The best way to describe my company is to tell you some of the things we are thinking about and what they mean to our clients.” Instead of sharing anything about my company, I shared trends in the industry and asked him to share his thoughts as a way to elicit what he wanted.

For more on this approach, see Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition.Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

If you have been asked to provide an overview of your company, you can be creative about how you share something more meaningful than your company history and accolades (proof that tends to be more valuable later in the sales process). Your slide deck likely already has answers to the questions your dream client has about how they get their results. It’s a much better approach to let to support the conversation with slides than to supplant the discussion with an hour-long monologue.

If you have a single hour, make sure you put it to good use in serving your prospect’s real needs in a way that creates a preference to work with you.

The post Winning Sales: How To Win When You Have an Hour to Present appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Have you considered adding white papers to your marketing strategy? The term “white paper” has been around for a long time; originating in England as government-issued documents, many point to the Churchill White Paper in 1922 as one of the first examples.

But today, white papers are in-depth, research based reports or guides created by businesses to help their audience understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. So, a well-written white paper has the ability to build your authority in your industry, generate leads, and even boost sales.

While you may think that white papers aren’t the most exciting content, they’re still effective. Plus, with a few tips, you can turn your boring white paper into something your audience will love to read and drives them to take action.

Here’s how to write an awesome white paper that generates sales.

Set a goal for your white paper.

The first step to an effective white paper, is to create your white paper with one main goal in mind. Setting a goal for your white paper will help keep the content focused and make it easier to achieve the results you’re looking for.

Some common goals for white papers include:

• Generate leads
• Nurture leads
• Thought leadership
• Generate sales

Choose a goal for your white paper and then choose a topic that will help you reach that goal. For instance, if your goal is thought leadership, a white paper about the state of your industry would be a good choice. If your goal is lead generation, choose a topic that will help solve the pain points of your target audience and tie it in with your products/services.

Don’t make it a sales pitch.

If your goal is to generate sales with your white paper, you might be tempted to pack it with sales pitches for your product/service, but don’t. Your white papers should never be too salesy — it will only turn readers off. Instead, focus on helping your readers learn more about a topic or solve a problem.

According to statistics, 71% of B2B buyers have used white papers in the last 12 months to research purchasing decisions. So, if you can impress readers with your expertise and provide actionable solutions to their problems, they’ll naturally be more likely to check out what you have to offer.

Do your own original research.

In your white papers, you should always back up your claims with statistics and credible research. So, check out scholarly work, industry research reports, and government websites for instance. But, don’t forget that you can do your own original research as well. Your original research will be especially powerful for your target audience because it’s information your competitors don’t have.

Creating original research doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive either. For instance, you can create a survey for your existing customers to find out their needs, goals, pain points, and information that your readers can use and relate to.

Image Source

By adding your own original research to your white papers, you can establish your business as an authoritative leader in your industry. Plus, you can learn how to create better products and offer a better customer experience to your existing customers at the same time.

Add eye-catching visuals.

When many people think of white papers, they think of boring, uninteresting text-heavy reports. So, if you want your white paper to be engaging to readers, you need to make it interesting. You can do this by adding eye-catching visuals to your white paper. Including visuals such as graphs, charts, and images will make your white paper more readable.

Aside from adding visuals within your white paper, you should also create a cover design. An eye-catching cover design like in the example below, is what will encourage your audience to open up your white paper in the first place.

Image Source

Don’t have any design skills? Don’t worry, you can easily create a cover page for your white paper using a free tool like Canva.

Don’t forget to add a CTA.

Of course, after reading your white paper, you’ll want people to keep engaging with you, whether it’s heading to your website, joining your email list, trying a free demo, making a purchase, and so on. But, if readers don’t know what to do next, they’re less likely to take your desired action — they’re not mind-readers after all. Which is why adding a CTA (call to action) to your white paper is so important.

Adding a clear CTA at the end of your white paper will let readers know what to do next. So, if you want your white paper readers to sign up for a free trial, just ask them to and provide a link! According to a study from HubSpot, they found that anchor text CTAs increased conversion rates by 121%.

Over to you.

With these tips, you’ll be able to create engaging white papers that are able to turn readers into customers. Don’t forget to promote your white paper so that it’ll be read by as many people as possible. Create a landing page for it, share it on social media, and give it out at conferences and webinars. The more you promote your white paper, the more results you’ll see.

• I've been working and traveling abroad for more than two years, and I'm a firm believer in waiting until the last minute to book flights and hotels.
• Waiting until the last minute can save you money on airfare and lodging.
• Last-minute travel plans can also lead to unexpected adventures and a sense of independence.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For about two and a half years now, I've been living out of a suitcase, working, and traveling abroad at beaches in Sydney, a monastery with nuns in Venice, and many other destinations.

But the thing is, 99% of my travel plans are made at the last minute.

Sometimes, I blame it on my free-spirited astrological sign (Sagittarius). Other times, I attribute it to my grandma who raised me, as we'd take many spontaneous trips when I was growing up, whether to a chocolate festival in the suburbs of Chicago or a cross-country Amtrak trip to Los Angeles.

Years later, I'm still convinced that waiting until the last minute to book travel is the best way to go, especially when you're a solo traveler (although the benefits apply to all travelers).

Here are my top eight reasons why I still prefer last-minute travel.

SEE ALSO: I've been traveling around the world for over 2 years — here are the 13 best budget hacks that will make your next vacation cheaper

READ MORE: I've flown at least once a month for the last year — here are 17 things I never travel without

You don't spend too much time planning (or overplanning)

When you travel at the last-minute, you often don't have time to do much, if any, research in advance. As a result, you save time and spend it packing and getting to the airport instead.

You learn to become more independent and resourceful

When you arrive in a new destination without housing, transportation, or any plans, it forces you to become resourceful and independent.

For example, when you land, your phone may not work — and the airport Wi-Fi may not be working either. So you'll have to ask a local for the best way to get to where you're going — and take the train with them into the city.

If you're lucky, they may even offer to show you around the next day. Before you know it, you'll know all the city's secret hotspots — and you'll have made a new friend in the process.

You have more opportunities for unplanned adventures

While some people may prefer to have every minute of their trip planned out, when you don't, you have more opportunities for unplanned adventures.

On group tours, for instance, you often have allotted time at each destination on the itinerary. But, if you're really enjoying that particular place, you cannot stay longer — unless you want to miss your tour bus and potentially the rest of your trip.

Some of my most beloved experiences would not have happened if I'd planned everything in advance.

For example, an American can only stay in Croatia for 90 days within a six-month period. On my 90th day there, I went to the Zagreb bus station and decided to hop on the next bus leaving for Slovenia. I felt I was in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel.

When I arrived in the city of Maribor, I found an Airbnb in a 100-year-old tiny stone house in a woman's backyard, and there was even a treehouse sleeping option. To date, it's one of the most memorable places I've stayed.

You can find amazing flight deals when you book last-minute

One of the primary questions my American friends ask me is how expensive it is to travel from country-to-country within Europe. When I tell them it's cheap — often under $50 for a one-way ticket — they're shocked. Of course, it helps if you have some flexibility when it comes to your travel dates.

My favorite go-to flight website is Skyscanner, where you can check out a whole month's worth of flight dates at a time — or even several months' worth.

One moment, a last-minute flight from Madrid to Berlin, for example, may be around $200, but the next, later that day or the following day, it may be around $50. And then it may increase again. 

Since the prices tend to fluctuate, if you don't want to keep checking the site yourself, you can set up flight alerts that'll let you know when a fare increases or decreases in cost.

It also pays to check out European-based budget airlines, like Ryanair — which often has flights for $10 one way — and Wizz Air. They, too, can be lifesavers.

It forces you to travel light

Packing light goes hand-in-hand with taking a last-minute trip since you may have to be at the airport — or train or bus station — in a few hours.

Plus, traveling with just a carry-on bag makes things less stressful: You won't need extra time to check your bag at the airport, you won't have to pay extra baggage fees, and you may end up having to lug your bag(s) around more than you think, which will be simpler with a lighter load.

It's often easier to negotiate housing when you book last-minute

A lot of travelers are afraid to negotiate for housing when they're on vacation, but I've found it's possible, especially when you're trying to find a place at the last minute.

Unless I'm staying with friends or family, I use Booking.com and Airbnb to find last-minute housing. Booking offers "deals of the day," and with Airbnb, I find a few similar listings, all different prices, and then message the hosts and try to get my favorite one to match the least expensive one. Most people would rather get their place booked than not and are happy to create a "special offer" for you — whether they reduce the cost of the room or remove the cleaning fee.

In addition, if you tell the Booking.com or Airbnb host that you're traveling alone, they may reduce the rate on their own since some tend to price their place based on two people.

If you want to extend your trip, you can do so without ramifications, such as paying hefty fees to change your flight

When you book travel last-minute, you can extend your trip without worrying about paying big fees to change your airline ticket.

For instance, in June, I was in Iceland and was about to leave for Madrid when I learned that the Reykjavík Fringe Festival was about to begin. I decided to stay in town for it, met and networked with fellow creative types, and saw some of the best comedy acts and one-act plays I'd ever seen.

That wouldn't have happened if I had a tight schedule I needed to follow, or if I couldn't afford to change my flight.

• Read more:
• I've been traveling around the world for 2 years with just a carry-on — here are my best tips for packing light
• I travel the world full-time — this is how I budget so I can actually afford it
• Travel guru Rick Steves shares 10 tips to save you money, time, and stress when you're on vacation
• I traveled around Portugal with 35 people around 70 years old, and left with several valuable life lessons

In much of our work, we are asked to unbundle an offer so that it can be repackaged as a set of offers that will command a higher price. Even when this is not specifically part of the mandate, it often becomes a precursor to our work on value-based market segmentation and pricing. This opens the question though, ‘Why do offers need to be unbundled?’ and ‘How does one go about unbundling an offer?’

Please take a quick survey on Value Innovation and Pricing Insights

Before digging in, it is worth asking why offers even need to be unbundled.

Often it seems simpler to just bundle what customers are used to buying, and the company knows how to sell and deliver. Unbundling can open a can of worms and lead to uncomfortable questions about what functionality is being used and why. Nevertheless, unbundling and then repackaging can be the key to successful pricing innovation. It is difficult to price before one has done some research into how different parts of an offer contribute to value. Remember, the best pricing model is one in which the value metrics (the unit of consumption by which users get value) are tracked by pricing metrics (the unit of consumption that is priced).

The first reason unbundling can be necessary lies in product history. Most successful products began as a simple idea that filled a clear need. “How do I know the skills of the people in my company?” “How can I track prospects through a pipeline and generate reports?” “How can I distribute load between multiple servers?’ The idea starts simple. As it goes to market, the provider comes to realize that other things are needed in order to have a ‘whole product solution.’ This term, popularized by Geoffrey Moore in his classic book Crossing the Chasm, refers to all of the different functions, integrations and services needed to get value from a product. The agile idea of a ‘minimal viable product’ derives from this and is the minimum offer that can create value.

Over time, the whole product expands. New features are added. New services are wrapped around the offer. When a product is successful, and even creates a new category, a whole ecosystem evolves around it. In many cases, features and services are simply layered on top of the original idea. Sometimes they are layered on so thickly that the original vision gets lost. In other cases, the evolution of the ecosystem creates new niches and opportunities that are not well articulated at first. A patchwork of features and services sprout up to try to fill each of these niches. Unbundling is a way to see how all of the different parts fit together and how different combinations are creating value.

There are many ways to unbundle a solution.

One approach is to unbundle on a feature by feature basis. The software engineers and user experience (UX) team generally have a pretty clear idea of what features the offer has.

Another way to unbundle is to separate out features, data and services. Data, in particular, is playing a bigger and bigger role in creating value, and there is generally more than one type of valuable data locked in any application. When an application has grown into an ecosystem, the number of different types of data can be quite staggering, far longer than the list of features.

One of the key questions in unbundling is deciding how granular one should get. If the analysis is too coarse, ways in which value is being created can be missed. An example is talking about the ‘value of the data’ without being explicit about which data and how it is used. One can go too far the other way as well. Staying with data as an example; in most cases, one does not normally need to drill down to each metadata field (metadata is data that is used to describe other data).

At Ibbaka, we use a value lens to guide our approach to unbundling. Basically, before we try to unbundle an application, service or solution, we work to understand value from the buyer and user perspective. We use our standard taxonomy of economic and emotional value drivers to do this. In some cases, we expand this to include social or community value drivers.

The value drivers then becomes the filter we use to unbundle. We are trying to find the different collections of functionality and data that enable each of the value drivers. One way to do this is to build a benefit ladder, but then extend it beyond the benefit to value. See a simple example below.

Benefit ladders are a commonly used marketing tool that helps us think our way from features up through functions to benefits and on to value. Below is a frequently cited example of the Starbucks benefit ladder developed by BCG.

The important thing to note here is that there are many paths up the benefit ladder. The same feature and attribute can support several different functions. The raw GPS data has multiple uses. The same functions can have many different benefits. One way to use benefit ladders is to see if there are features that do not support functions or functions that do not link to benefits.

Take these ladders and layer on top the economic and emotional value drivers. It is the value drivers, and the paths back down from benefit to function to feature that you are trying to get to when unbundling an offer for pricing purposes.

This does not mean that each of these value clusters should be its own offer. That generally leads to too many offers and market (and pricing) confusion.

The other part of this work is to match the offers to the value-based customer segments. For Ibbaka, a good segment is one that gets value in the same way and that buys in the same way. Once one has a value-based clustering of features and functions, and a value based clustering of potential customers (the market segmentation), it is usually pretty clear how to combine them into offers. Because this has all been done on the basis of value (emotional and economic) it is easier to discover the value drivers that will inform pricing.

All of this is easier said than done. A mature application can include thousands of features wrapped in services powered by data. Data analytics often needs to be used to find the clusters of feature-function-benefit-value. The same is true for the market segments. At Ibbaka, we are pioneering techniques from social network analysis to find the meaningful and actionable clusters in data. We started off doing this for market segmentation, and we are now extending it to the unbundling part of our work.

Reach out to us if you would like to explore how your applications and services can be unbundled then put back together in ways that create compelling value for specific market segments.

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The global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software market is expected to be worth over $48 billion by 2022. And a UK-based survey showed that 53% of respondents said ERP and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are priority areas for investment.

You might be on a first name basis with your CRM but less familiar with ERPs. Here’s a breakdown of the similarities and differences between CRM and ERP, details about the top ERP systems, and how you can integrate your ERP and CRM.

Similarities Between ERP and CRM Systems

An ERP and a CRM are similar in the sense that they are both data repositories that are vital to your company's ability to manage, carry out, organize, and act on all business functions — the systems streamline these business processes. An ERP and CRM both contribute to the growth and profitability of your business. 

Differences Between ERP and CRM Systems

Simply, CRMs are an effective way to improve the customer experience while ERPs improve a company’s overall health and wellbeing.

An ERP system is used to organize and manage all aspects of a business, from supply chain management to financial data and even payroll. ERPs are commonly used to help enterprise-size organizations unify their business functions and communications in order to reduce costs and increase revenue.

For example, an ERP might manage project planning, pricing configuration, and business procedures to help your teams talk to each other, reduce redundancy, and lower costs for your next product launch.

A CRM system streamlines your interactions with current and potential customers by automating repetitive tasks and sharing data among sales, marketing, and customer service.

If we look back at the same example used above for ERP, a CRM would allow salespeople to create email templates and automated workflows to send a segment of prospects an announcement for that new product.

Now let's look at some of the top ERP systems available today. 

Note: If you're looking for the top CRM software, check out this post. 

Top ERP Systems

Here are five examples of ERP systems you may consider. 

1. NetSuite

Price: Available upon request

NetSuite boasts the ability to reduce manual and spreadsheet-based processes by up to 70%. Financials, fulfillment, inventory, and sales are a few of the business areas you can manage efficiently using this system. Real-time scorecards make tracking daily cash flow easy. And anytime-access means you can monitor your business from anywhere, 24-hours a day.

Get the CRM, ERP, and ecommerce integration for NetSuite and HubSpot. 

2. SAP Business ByDesign

Price: Base package, $1,673/ mo; Self-service user, $17/ user/ mo; Team user, $88/ user/ mo; Enterprise user, $148 /user /mo

Financial and managerial accounting, cash flow management, CRM, human resources, and project management are just a few of the business areas SAP promises to streamline. Geared toward mid-market businesses with skyrocketing growth, SAP is a premium solution for scaling your business "without the complexity.”

3. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Price: Unified Operations Plan, $190/ user/ mo; Dynamics 365 Plan, $210/ user/ mo

Microsoft’s ERP allows you to optimize any type of manufacturing and the parameters for each product. It also allows you to streamline scheduling, accelerate product delivery, and improve product quality using real-time insights and predictive intelligence.

Get the Dynamics 365 integration to keep all of your contacts and companies in two-way sync with HubSpot. 

4. Odoo ERP Self Hosted

Price: $20/ user/ mo base price; Additional app pricing varies

Odoo is an open source ERP — meaning, the code is available to anyone — which allows developers anywhere to modify or improve it. Odoo has had thousands of developers work on its apps. It’s user-friendly and allows customers to build ecommerce websites, manage projects and timesheets, run inventory, and more.

Get HubSopt's Odoo integration to keep your CRM data in two-way sync across your apps. 

When it comes to your business, it's safe to say ERP and CRM systems are useful for a wide variety of reasons. That's why combining the two systems, or integrating them, can be even more powerful. Let's talk about ERP and CRM integration next. 

ERP and CRM Integration

Traditionally, ERP and CRM have remained separate solutions. But, integrating your CRM and ERP can streamline business processes in lucrative ways.

For instance, by allowing salespeople in the front office to send orders directly to the fulfillment office, or facilitating your finance department to see the revenue coming into your pipeline in real-time, you can remove friction in your business and create a better end-to-end experience for customers. 

Additionally, the two systems have data that's critical to your business's growth and success. So rather than having two entirely separate record-keeping and operating systems for this data, keep them in sync in order to have one, single source of truth when it comes to that data. 

To give you a better idea of that an ERP and CRM integration might look like, here are two examples.

ERP and CRM Integrations Examples

There are a number of ERP and CRM integrations today — here are two examples to help get you started. 

1. HubSpot and Odoo Integration

Price: Starter, $39/ mo; Pro, $49/ mo

The HubSpot all-in-one CRM integrates with Odoo ERP so you can set up a real-time, bi-directional sync between your HubSpot CRM and the ERP tool in minutes.

With this integration, you can: 

• Sync your Odoo contacts to HubSpot, HubSpot customers to Odoo, or both. 
• Use HubSpot's contact fields, lists, and smart lists, or Odoo's default and custom attributes, to filter contacts.   
• Save time and maintain data accuracy with preset field mappings to Odoo’s data objects. 
• Link HubSpot’s properties to fields in Odoo with custom field mappings. 
• Stay up to speed on the health of your data syncs and how each platform is contributing to your bottom line by tracking Odoo connector performance when it comes to your net new contacts between both platforms . 
• Detect failing contacts so you can align your data.

2. Commercient

Price: Check out the pricing page for the tool you're integrating.

Commercient offers SYNC apps that work as ERP integrations for CRMs. They require no code, mapping, server, or ETL. Commercient can help you get integrated quickly so all of your account data, orders, payment records, and more are synced.

Here are some more benefits of using Commercient: 

• Download your Commercient SYNC app and quickly gain access to all of your sales, marketing, and customer service data wherever you need it. 
• Set up data syncs between your ERP and CRM as often as you'd like (daily, hourly, or real-time).  
• Use integration apps for a variety of tools such as HubSpot, Dynamics 365, and Salesforce. 
• Keep your data safe and make internal team access to data simple because Commercient is cloud-based. 
• Choose to 1) integrate your ERP data with your CRM system, 2) integrate your CRM data with your ERP system, or 3) use a two-way sync to integrate both ERP and CRM data so everything is in one location.

Integrate Commercient’s Sage 100 SYNC
with HubSpot to sync your customers, companies, deals, items, pricing, and invoices. 

Lastly, let's review a few more high-level benefits you'll get from integrating your ERP and CRM no matter which integration you select. 

High-Level Benefits of ERP and CRM Integration

Here are three major benefits you'll get out of using an ERP and CRM integration. 

1. Get accurate quotes.

Never worry about your reps quoting a price or quantity your business or warehouse can’t support. By integrating your CRM and ERP, reps can communicate with, and have visibility into, your company’s inventory and costs.

2. Reduce duplication and increase knowledge sharing.

Have trouble with your sales team duplicating reports finance has already created? Kiss redundant information goodbye and welcome a little more time and a lot more collaboration into your employees' workflows.

3. Improve forecasting.

Speaking of sales, make sure your sales reps can access vital financial information stored in your ERP while they’re forecasting. Integrating your ERP and CRM can lead to more accurate planning.

Integrate Your ERP and CRM

Begin by choosing your ERP and CRM, and then the integration that's going to connect the two. This way, you'll be able to streamline businesses processes, increase productivity, and keep all of your business's data in a centralized database to increase productivity, efficiency, conversions, and more. 

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Whether you’re running an online business or an old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar store, you need to get a website up and running to attract more customers.  That’s why it’s crucial to make sure that you choose the right Content Management System (CMS) to host and manage your website.

A CMS is a software made of different programs that allow you to create, schedule, publish, and manage your website and its content. Many of the CMS websites now even include web hosting among its features.

Benefits of using a CMS

Coding’s no longer a requirement

Back then, the only way you can create a website is through HTML coding. If you don’t know, you’ll need to hire a web developer to create, update, and maintain this for you. The thing is, web and software developers don’t come cheap.

With a CMS, you can design the way your website looks and functions even if you don’t know how to code. All you got to do is to choose a template, tweak it, and install the different plugins you need, and you’re set.

Your website is mobile-friendly

Since Google launched its mobile first indexing, it’s now a must to make sure that it’s easy to navigate through your website and read your content on mobile devices.

Most—if not, all—of the CMS platforms available have already updated their software to meet this requirement. Also, all the templates they provide are responsive. That means they automatically adjust depending on the screen size of the device your target audience is using.

Optimize your website for search engines

Another benefit of using a CMS platform is it also guides you on how to properly optimize your web pages, blog posts, and other content types. This is crucial because it’ll increase the chances of your target customers to find your website when they search on Google.

Restrict access

If you’re working with a team, you wouldn’t want all of them to have the same access to your website’s back-end as you. You can specify on your CMS what access level will you grant to the different members of your team so that they can get their respective jobs done.

Choosing the right CMS platform

1. Opt for a web-based CMS platform

Although you can have someone create a custom CMS for your website, it’ll be a better option for you to go with one of the CMS platforms you’ll find online.

For starters, you’ll be dependent on that person or company to maintain and update your CMS. If they go out of business, you’re left out in the cold.

Also, the price of a custom-built CMS is more expensive than what you’ll pay for a web-based CMS.

2. Ability to scale with you

As your business grows, you’d want to add additional features to your website. Make sure that the CMS you decide to go with will allow you to do all of these without you having to pay more for their service.

3. Capable of omnichannel marketing

This is essential if you want to get the widest possible reach for each content you publish. There are now so many channels available to your target customers to use to find and consume content. Choose a CMS platform that’ll allow you to distribute your content to those channels your customers frequent.

4. Reliable customer support

Of the different things to consider, this is perhaps the most important.

No CMS is perfect, so you’ll need assistance now and then. The last thing you’d want is finding out that the CMS website that you’ve chosen to use provides hardly any help.

Review sites like Capterra and CMSWire can help prevent this from happening. Here, you’ll find feedback from current users of the CMS platform you’re looking at about their customer service and other features.

5. An interface that matches your technical skills

Here’s a surprising fact: all CMS’ interfaces are user-friendly.

What sets one apart from the other is how well it matches your technical skills. If you’re a complete beginner or a visual person, a CMS that has a drag-and-drop user interface would be the best option for you because it requires very little technical know-how. At the same time, you’ll also get to see how your website’s taking shape.

6. Allows you to automate workflow processes

Managing your website is essential, but it isn’t the only task that you got on your plate. Getting a CMS that includes marketing automation features will help you get the job done faster. At the same time, you can track and monitor the progress of your marketing campaigns to see what’s working and what’s not.

Now that you know what to look at when choosing a CMS platform for your website, here are some of the top ones that you can choose from.

1. WordPress

WordPress is the platform used by 24% of all websites on the Internet, including ThriveGlobal.

Because of its popularity, the majority of third-party plugins and apps available today seamlessly integrates with this CMS. The downside is that it can be quite overwhelming to choose which plugin or app to include on your website.

Since the platform’s one of the oldest CMS platforms, it can take a while for you to get the hang of using this, even if you’re using a ready-made theme. This can be quite frustrating, especially if you’re a complete beginner.

2. Spark CMS

Spark CMS is one of the newest kids on the block. Still, it’s a CMS platform worth looking at, especially if you’re looking for one that’s easy to use and on your budget.

One of the most significant advantages of this CMS platform is that you can start a professional looking website complete with the fundamental components for free.

It’s got a library filled with responsive design templates you can use to create landing pages as well as different parts of your website so that it comes out just how you envision it.

Another advantage is its pricing plans. While you’ll need to pay more to get access to more features, the price difference isn’t that steep. So, you can quickly scale your website’s features along with your business without affecting your net profit.

3. HubSpot CMS

HubSpot’s CMS is designed specifically for businesses looking to use inbound and content marketing strategies to promote their brands and products.

In addition to the standard features you’ll find in most CMS websites, HubSpot’s CMS also allows you to research and develop your entire content marketing strategy in one place.

It also gives recommendations on how to properly optimize your website and the content you publish here for search engines.

Lastly, it allows you to schedule posts to be published on different social media accounts the moment your brand-new post goes live.

One of the downsides to this CMS is its hefty price tag, which can set you back a whopping $300/month!

And since this CMS was specifically designed with inbound and content marketers in mind, it can also be quite complicated for a beginner to figure out and make use of its full potential.

4. SquareSpace

SquareSpace is a CMS platform that has a very clean and straightforward interface. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it easy for someone without any background creating a website.

At the same time, it allows you to customize the CSS and HTML codes on the templates using their What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. This is great if you know a bit of coding and want more control over how your website will look.

SquareSpace’s CMS will even generate your content’s metatags and metadata. Unfortunately, there’s no way you can manage them. Also, it doesn’t give you anyway on how to check the SEO of your blog posts and web pages, so you’ll need to do this manually. Loganix’s SEO services are quite comprehensive and can help you make sure your website ranks favorably on Google.

5. Wix

Wix’s CMS most significant selling point is that it gives you full freedom to design and create a website just the way how you like it to look and work. You can do all of this through their drag-and-drop editor.

At the same time, it has built-in email marketing and live-chat features that allow you to quickly connect and engage with your visitors and convert them into customers.

They do offer a free plan, but it comes with a catch: Wix will promote ads on your website. Some don’t mind while others may find this annoying. The only way to get rid of this and have access to many of their key features is by upgrading to one of their paid plans.

The disadvantage to using Wix is that you can only make changes and updates on your desktop or laptop because this feature isn’t available on the CMS’ mobile version.

Also, if you’ll need to contact their customer support, you’re only given two options: sending an email through their ticketing system or by talking to an agent over the phone. This can be a potential problem if you’re living outside the US.

Final thoughts

Subscribing to a CMS platform is just like buying a pair of shoes. Just because it looks stylish and fits doesn’t mean that it’s meant for you. You got to see if you’re comfortable wearing them.

Each of the CMS platforms we’ve looked at here has its set of pros and cons. Carefully review them using the tips shared here.

At the end of the day, the best blogging platform for your business is the one that you’ll find easy to use, within your budget, and contains all the features that you need now and in the near future.

Related posts:

Best Content Management Systems in 2019

Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: How To Set It Up On Your Blog

I succumbed to a certain amount of narcissism (as I often do) in my post: Sales Is Simple, Simple Is Not Easy.

The problem with my post, as accurate as it may have been, is that I did what too many of us do, focusing on ourselves–sales people, sales leaders, and selling.

We all do that, we focus on what we do. We get into conversations about how we do what we do better. I don’t want to dismiss those conversations, they are important. But starting with what we do is the wrong starting point.

We always have to start with the Buyer.

Buying, more accurately, what our buyers face isn’t simple. In fact, every piece of research indicates buyers, customers, are overwhelmed with complexity.

They are overwhelmed by the rate of change, the volume of information/data, risk, the increasing complexity of getting things done within their own organizations, ambiguity, conflict, increasing competition, disruption, and transformation. They are distracted, confused, overworked, under-resourced. They struggle with coping.

The data on buying, as well as the data on internal problem solving success (buying is just a component of the problem/opportunity solving process), demonstrates this struggle. Gartner data has shown 53% of all buying journey’s end in no decision made. The primary reasons for this failure has nothing to do with vendor/solution selection. For those that struggle with buying, Gartner research shows huge amounts of buyer remorse with the quality of those decisions.

Separate data on company project success shows similar challenges with the majority of internal projects failing to achieve their objectives.

Gartner data, also, shows this struggle isn’t because of the lack of high quality information and content from suppliers. In fact, buyers are, increasingly, overwhelmed with high quality information from suppliers.

Our buyers are struggling with complexity and coping.

And that’s the challenge we sales professionals must focus on–both to help and create value for our customers, and in achieving our own goals.

The discussion on sales being simple and what we need to do to execute at a higher level is the wrong starting point. But if we focus on simplification in sales/selling, we don’t address what our customers face, and what stands in the way of our ability to sell.

Sensemaking, helping our customers understand and deal with the complexity they face, individually and organizationally, needs to be the center of our focus. Ironically, in doing this, we will continue to simplify what it means to sell.

Stated differently, we can no longer focus our questions on how to sell, we have to focus our conversations on our customers and how to help them understand, make sense of what they face, and buy. Only through understanding that, can we begin to discover how to sell.

1. Update your Linkedin profile and connect with key buyers

LinkedIn has over 25 million users in the UK and 575 million globally. That means there’s a good chance there are potential buyers who you can contact in there. You can search for them based in location, company name, industry and lots more. Once you’ve found them, simply send them a connection request with a short note outlining how your company can help. Don’t go in with a hard sales pitch in your first message.

2. Offer your expertise for free

You won’t win any new customers until they know they can trust you. Offering something for free whether it be an ebook, a free consultation or a product sample will open the door to an honest conversation that can lead to a new customer.

3. Hang out where your target customers hang out

Obviously you need to be visible in order for customers to find you. Google ads will help with this but it’s worth thinking carefully about where your potential customers hang out whether it be forums, events or online groups. Make a regular appearance and offer help so you start to become a familiar and friendly face.

4. Write guest posts

Content is a crucial part of online marketing nowadays. But if you aren’t getting visits to your website, how do you get people to read your content? Guest posting is a great way to do this. Write some great content and share it with websites who’s readers will find it useful. They won’t all say yes, but over time you should be able to figure how and where you can get your guest posts published.

5. Have a sharp website

You should think of your website as your store front. It needs to look professional, presentable, trustworthy and inviting. Get your key messages across effectively using the right balance of words and images, and you will greatly increase the percentage of your visitors who go on to make an enquiry or purchase. Think seriously about getting help with this if you’re unsure. A good wordsmith and designer can work wonders to produce a website you will be hugely proud of.

I have spent much of my career in product marketing roles at fast-growing companies. At Glassdoor and Lever, we doubled in size each year; and Reflektive—where I am now Head of Marketing—was recently recognized by Deloitte as the 13th fastest-growing technology company in North America. Over the last five years, I’ve had a lot of experience tackling pricing challenges at companies that were rapidly pole vaulting their way through growth stages.

It didn’t take me long to realize the critically important role pricing plays in a company’s success (or failure). At Glassdoor, where we went through several iterations on our pricing strategy, I had a front-row seat to witness how these changes directly influenced the way we went to market, our overall sales motion and the types of conversations we were having with prospects and customers in the marketplace.

Having gone through the pricing process multiple times, I have developed my own framework for assessing the situation and then developing pricing that is appropriate and effective. From helping me determine when it’s time to make a change to actually implementing that change, this process has been a valuable resource to me over many different pricing projects.

What to watch – pricing signals you need to know

When it comes to updating your pricing, you need to keep your ear to the ground for certain internal and external signals that indicate when it’s time to make your move. These signals come from a wide variety of sources, but together reveal a telling pattern.

Sales Reps

Establishing a close and trusting relationship with your sales team is critical to your success as a product marketer. As the people on the frontlines, they are an invaluable source of first-hand data on what’s actually happening at the point of sale. The key to getting the real story is to be real with them. Make it your mission to understand what they are going through, both the good and the bad. Invite them to share details about where they are running into trouble, and then focus your energy on helping them win without caving in on discounts. Keep in mind that your goal is to develop a collaborative partnership. This means keeping the sales team in the loop on sales-enablement and other supportive marketing initiatives; and it means walking the floors and halls regularly so you can have ongoing, one-on-one, personal conversations.

CRM Data

Regular and consistent review of specific CRM data points can yield important insights and trends that will help you predict when you’ll need to consider a pricing shift. Things to keep an eye on include your average price by segment, how those average prices evolve over time, how they measure up against your list price, and how pricing affects your win rate, cycle time and time to close. The answers to these questions will give you an accurate picture of whether your pricing conversations with customers are as efficient and effective as you’d like.

Win-loss Interviews

We are committed to doing win-loss interviews at Reflektive because they are a great way to hear directly from buyers about what’s working and what’s not. Inviting buyers to share their uncensored experiences gives you the opportunity to really understand how buyers perceive the value of your product and how that compares to their perceptions of competitors’ products. Good stuff to know.

Competition and Market Behavior

Finally, there are a couple of external signals that are worth watching. One is what specific competitors are doing, and the other is trends in the overall market. You can find a wealth of information online about how different companies are packaging and pricing their products. Even the most cursory research will help you uncover problem areas, such as cases where you’re charging more than a close competitor. These are the day-to-day challenges your sales team faces, so it’s important to be aware of them.

Staying on top of these signals helps you identify when you’re reaching a point where a pricing and/or packaging change might be a smart move, but how do you know when you’ve reached the tipping point to make such a shift in executive-level priority? Pricing often falls into the important-but-not-urgent category, until it’s suddenly on fire and becomes everyone’s priority. You can avoid that kind of panic by realizing that there is a pretty common confluence of factors that—when they come into play—require you to take a really hard look at pricing.

One factor is when the competition is heating up because your conversion rates are down or there are new competitors entering the market. Another is when you’re about to release a bunch of new features or products, and you need to figure out how to effectively move people through the different models you’re trying to sell. And another is when you’re about to hire a ton of new reps in different locations, and you need those new people to be as productive as possible, as quickly as possible. To meet sales goals, you may need to adapt your pricing structure so it’s easier for the new team members to understand, allowing them to take it to market with confidence. Any of these scenarios should trigger a serious pricing conversation with leadership.

Three key considerations – underlying concepts of successful pricing

When you have decided that it is definitely time to make a pricing adjustment, there are three key considerations that help ensure your new pricing structure is successful.

1. Knowing how pricing impacts your market position

Pricing is inextricably tied to how you position and market your product. If you price high as a premium provider, you have to back that position up with a lot of tangible value. Not only that, but you also need to have the right resources and examples to prove that you are, in fact, delivering that real-world value to actual customers. On the other hand, if you choose to be a low-cost leader your strategy needs to focus on getting as many people through the door as quickly as possible. In either case—and any position between those two extremes—the way you use price to position your product in the market drives many downstream effects in your overall sales and marketing motions. So, it’s important to really think it through.

2. Getting your packaging right

From the product marketing angle, packaging is a critical element of the pricing equation. The tricky thing in SaaS is that, with new feature releases and so forth, your product offerings can change pretty quickly. To help keep your pricing grounded, you need to figure out which are the primary features and values that you deliver. Once you’ve defined those, you can figure out how to slice and dice different feature sets into packages that really resonate with different types of buyers. You may, for instance, want to consider the specific needs of small businesses versus enterprise companies and develop packages that are tailored to those specific requirements. Look at your product’s pricing and packaging from the customer’s perspective to ensure you stay focused on what’s actually valuable to them.

This is also an area in which it pays to carefully monitor the competition. Your reps will be your best source of intelligence on this front. I was in a situation at one company where our reps kept telling me that our competitor was offering more for less. Based on the sales team raising this red flag, we did an assessment of the two portfolios and found that the competitor had, indeed, crammed more features into their starter package. Because of the friction, this was causing for our sales team, we moved a key feature from our middle-tier package to our starter package. Small change, big results.

3. Keeping things simple, transparent and fair

Finally, something that is particularly important to both sales reps and customers is that pricing is easy to understand, easy to justify and honest. The last thing you want is to make the pricing conversation more complicated than it has to be. Reps want to be able to look at the rate card and then jump into a prospect conversation with confidence. On the customer side, they want to be able to quickly grasp how much they’re paying and what they’re getting in return.

It’s challenging to master the art and science of achieving simplicity in your pricing, but it’s especially worth it in high-growth environments where you are talking to a lot of prospects over a short period of time. The key to the process is picking the right price metric, something both reps and customers can agree is a good proxy for value. This might be the number of employees or jobs or page views. Whatever it is, it needs to make sense to the customer, and—optimally—have as few moving parts as possible. The more variables and components you add into the equation, the more difficult the pricing conversation becomes. Facilitating a clear and effective pricing conversation will go a long way toward reducing friction in your sales process.

As an aside, a question that often comes up is whether packaging and pricing should be used as your primary competitive advantage. The answer is yes and no. It depends on the dynamics of your industry and your position in the market. In commoditized and highly competitive industries, being the low-cost provider has obvious appeal. On the other hand, if you’re operating in a new field and carving out a niche in a less competitive market, you may be in a strong position to create brand loyalty that will allow you to sustain both high retention and a premium pricing structure.

The Pricing Project Framework – four steps to get it right

You’ve monitored the critical signals and taken the time to work through the three key pricing considerations. Now it’s time to take action. While the process will vary depending on your specific situation, product type and available resources, there are several broad steps that every team should take when embarking on a packaging and pricing project.

Step 1: Analysis

Analysis falls into two main buckets: internal and external. Internal analysis is all about collecting input from your sales reps—via surveys and conversations—and looking at your CRM data to understand how internal players react to and work with your existing price structure. Are they happy with the feature sets and packages, or do they want more? Are you constantly having to pull à la carte items into lower-level packages? Where are your internal teams encountering pushback from prospects and customers? What hurdles do they have to clear to book a sale?

Externally, your goal is to understand how the market and competitive set are evolving, which requires conversations with customers and prospects. In addition to surveys, this research also includes getting on those 1:1 win-loss calls for direct feedback on not only why people bought (or didn’t buy), but also what the process was like overall and how your product measured up against the competition.

The goal of all this research and analysis is to get a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not. It’s also to gain a greater understanding of which features your customers value most—what are the table stakes, and what are the nice-to-have items for which they’re willing to pay extra?

Step 2: Straw Man

Armed with insights from your in-depth analysis, you will be prepared to engage your leadership team. This step needs to be taken fairly early on so that you can accurately scope what’s on the table, what’s off the table and what suggestions your leadership team might have to contribute.

Once you have all the data points in place, you can start developing a basic straw man or model for the overall pricing structure. There are many options and variables to consider including the different segments you’re selling to, what kinds of packages you could offer and also things like what types of scenarios might drive different types of discounts.

Flexibility is another important pricing element to think through. There is a balance to be struck between finance, sales ops and sales reps. You will definitely need to factor flexibility into your model—especially if you’re using an enterprise SaaS pricing model—because your sales reps will need some room to maneuver. Giving them the ability to negotiate prices and features will give your reps more confidence and empower them to create the right conversations and, ultimately, the right offers. Be cautious, however, about giving your newest reps too much leeway. You don’t want your sales team giving crazy discounts to the smallest tiers. That just doesn’t make good business sense. Reserve that for the larger deals where you need some bargaining chips to land the customer.

Step 3: Testing

Once you have your pricing structure defined, it’s time to start testing. Initially, it’s useful to do quick, ad hoc tests by talking with a rep who is working a deal, asking what price they are proposing and then seeing how that might factor into the proposed rate card. This will help you see if there’s alignment and get some insight into how the new rate card might affect an actual deal.

After a few of those inquiries, you can move ahead to piloting the new rate card with a select group of reps. Best approach for this is to pick a mix of individuals with different abilities who sell to different groups and segments from different locations. A diverse test group will help you get the best overall feedback on how different kinds of customers react to the new pricing. Avoid defaulting to engaging only your top reps in a pilot. That approach won’t reflect how the pricing will work for a less experienced or skilled rep.

This beta group of reps will become the champions of your new pricing structure. Their support will be critical as you expand the new pricing to the entire sales organization, so it’s important to give them a voice in shaping the final pricing product.

It’s also important to enable a close collaboration with this group because, in a high-growth company, you won’t have a lot of time to run a pilot and wait to get results. With sales cycles of 30 to 100+ days, you need to work on the fly to get a handle on qualitative and quantitative indicators from the field. On the quantitative side, look at how the new pricing is affecting things like average deal size, win rates, days to close and attach rates. And on the qualitative side, solicit anecdotal feedback from sales reps to hear first-hand accounts of how the conversation is developing around the new pricing.

Step 4: Iteration and Rollout

Once you’ve completed enough testing to have a solid sense of how things are going, you can iterate on the overall model and then do the full rollout to your entire organization. Ideally, some of your test reps will step in to champion the cause as you take your show on the road. The sales reps who have already been working with the new pricing will be able to back up the value of the new pricing with proof points derived not only from research and analysis, but also from frontline conversations with real customers.

Overall, this process can take six weeks or six months. It depends on where you’re starting from, how big a change you need to implement and how in-depth you want to go with each step in the process. Some pricing projects are much less complex than others. It will also depend on your specific company situation whether it’s best to handle everything internally or hire consultants. In most cases, I advise at least trying to do it on your own to start. Most companies can manage the investigation piece and get to a hypothesis about what’s working and what’s not. From there, you can size up how big an issue you’re dealing with, and determine whether you need to bring in outside help to sort everything out. Even if you’re planning to hire external resources from the start, it’s still important to do the internal investigation yourself so that you have the information you need to set the right scope for the consultation.

A few last words of big-picture advice

While there are no silver bullets or one-size-fits-all pricing solutions, these frameworks and processes will give any team a solid foundation on which to develop and refine their own approach to pricing and packaging. Just being aware of these core elements and considerations goes a long way toward ensuring that you are putting your best foot forward and not missing out on any opportunities.

Stepping back a bit, there are three big-picture pieces of advice that are especially important for SaaS founders:

Fight for the high ground

In the early days, you want to price high and then fight for that price. While no one wants to have to struggle through a pricing conversation, it’s only by standing your ground that you’ll be able to get the data points you need to understand your customer’s thresholds and priorities. If you price too low, those critical conversations won’t happen, and you won’t gain any insight into how your first buyers are truly assessing the perceived and actual value of your product.

Keep things simple

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of overly complicated pricing. This is usually the result of trying to please everyone and account for every possible sales scenario. Resist that urge. It’s much, much more valuable to have a pricing structure that both your reps and your customers can easily understand and discuss. That diminish friction, allow for greater transparency and build trust in the relationship.

Review your pricing annually

Finally, remember that pricing is never really done. Your product, audience, market and competition are always evolving. This is why, even when you think you’ve designed the perfect model, it’s important to take another look at least once a year. Listen for those signals. Pay attention to the data. And be prepared to dive back into a new pricing project when conditions warrant it.

The post The Four-step Pricing Process for Fast-growing SaaS Companies appeared first on OpenView.

Remote teams are slowly becoming the new norm as many employees choose to work without geographical constraints, while businesses look for new talent outside their immediate surroundings.

Freelance platform Upwork has released a Future Workforce Report which concludes that as younger people (Millennials and Gen Z) are moving up to managerial roles they expect that the future of work moves more toward remote.

As a matter of fact, 69% of managers interviewed in that report have said that they would allow the members of their teams to work remotely. The biggest driver for this kind of shift is their perception that hiring is getting harder. This is due to challenges and scarcity of skilled talent in the traditional hiring process.

There are some interesting stats about remote work that describe why so many companies today opt for remote teams in this post from Remote.co, but I will mention just a few of them here:

• Remote work can increase worker productivity.
• Remote teams decrease real estate and overhead costs.
• Remote work often leads to greater employee engagement.
• Remote work positively impacts the environment.

But, at the same time, there are challenges when it comes to employing remote teams. Those challenges mostly manifest themselves in the lack of adequate tools, internal policies, and proper remote team structure. If you want to build a remote team that is effective in time management, you will need all three to make sure the team operates optimally.

Let’s move on to some ideas and proven practices that will help you to master time management for remote teams.

Set project goals and determine deadlines beforehand

Preparing timetables, important documentation and software tools before the project starts saves time for those unavoidable activities later on. Managers tasked with leading remote teams must plan projects in advance. While this does sound pretty obvious, many managers avoid planning and jump straight on to execution.

Some managers see planning ahead as a waste of time, but on the contrary, the purpose of developing a project plan is to collaborate and communicate with your team. Which in return allows the team to work through most of the potential issues early on in the project.

Define project requirements

Once you have selected and hired your remote workers, share the project details and let them know what is expected from the team as a whole and from every individual employee. Remote workers who have a clear picture of what needs to be done and what is expected of them can better plan their time.

We will dwell on this in more detail in a bit, but the gist of it is that clear project requirements and goals lead to cost reductions and make communication between the team more effective.

Define project expectations

Project expectations are defined by management and C-suite executives. When these expectations are established they should be communicated with employees working on those projects.

Also, keep in mind that managers must communicate any subsequent changes to these expectations that occur down the road. This kind of open communication with remote teams helps in the reduction of time that is wasted because it lowers the number of errors that derive from miscommunication and misunderstanding.

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Define project deadlines

When it comes to defining deadlines with your remote team, discuss project objectives and goals first. Breaking project into chunks and defining milestones for these chunks can save time on project tracking. Every milestone should be followed by a report.

Reports are very important when it comes to managing remote teams and making sure everything is delivered on time. A clear reporting structure helps remote employees to always know who they are taking orders from and to whom are they reporting to, so there isn’t any double work taking place.

Dedicate a specific time of the day for daily, weekly, and monthly reporting to make sure everything is running smoothly and in line with the deadlines set.

Define project goals

When setting project goals, a real time-saver is a technique called SMART goals technique. Managers should be guided with its acronym to choose goals for their remote team that are:

Specific – Specify exactly what you want to achieve, as well as why achieving this goal will help your company do better. The more you describe the reasons behind a specific goal in detail, the more chance your team has to successfully tackle it in a timely manner.

Measurable – The second important thing is to make sure the goals you have chosen are can be easily measured. Break your goals into measurable elements and define evidence that concludes that your goals have been met. This will make the goal clearer and easier to reach.

Agreed upon – Is the goal acceptable to everyone in your organization and especially the team you are managing? When you put in the equation the time and effort required for reaching that goal, does it pay off? Is the goal in question too hard to reach? There is nothing wrong with shooting for the stars, just make sure you don’t burden your team with unreachable goals.

Relevant – The main question here is to explain to yourself and the team why do you want to achieve this goal? What is the objective behind this goal and will the completion of this goal help reach that objective?

For example, you could think that hiring more salespeople will make the sales team perform better. But, will it really? It depends on many levels.

Time-based – When you got all of the aforementioned questions answered, make sure you make a fixed deadline for the goals you have selected. Deadlines are what makes people switch their mindset to action. Don’t be too strict with the deadlines, though. Make them flexible and realistic so your team’s morale will be kept high.

Streamline communication among team members

As mentioned above, effective communication between team members saves time. But, as team communication channels become more virtual, they also become more complex and challenging. According to research commissioned by Tata Consultancy Services, “about 90% of the time in a project is spent on communication by the project manager.” At the same time, 30% of all project failures are a consequence of inadequate communication.

From this info, we can safely say that good, scratch that, GREAT communication is one of the most important aspects of leading a well managed remote team.

And who would have thought that increasing the number of channels used in professional communication would have a negative impact on transparency and productivity? But it actually does.

A remote team now uses multiple channels for work communication. And the main problem is that there is often a lack of rules when deciding on what occasions should each of those channels be used. Managers should define different channels a remote team may use and set clear rules for them.

For example, use:

• Instant messaging tools for urgent requests and instant updates,
• Email for important company messages and memos,
• Project management software for comments, questions, and details related to specific tasks,
• Social media for casual and non-work-related talk.

To make sure you have created a setting for clear communication also aim to:

• Encourage questions between team members.
• Make sure you have everything in writing and documented for accountability.

Good communication is not a finite thing. You need to constantly adapt and improve communication channels and norms for maintaining optimal results.

In general, there are four main practices that a remote team should use for effective communication:

1. Real-time communication – Real-time communication solves the problem of waiting for daily meetings or video calls for clarifications and issues. Tools for real-time communication offer teams short one-on-one or group conversations. What’s great about these tools is that they often have integrations with other tools remote team might need, such as calendars or project management software.
2. Face-to-face communication – According to Agile Manifesto, face-to-face communication is considered to be the most effective and most efficient form of delivering a message within a development team. But it’s also true for most other types of teams as well. Setting regular conference calls with Skype or Zoom offers an opportunity for managers and remote employees to come together and collaborate by discussing details regarding tasks and projects.
3. Frequent meetings – We will cover the importance of regular meetings later in this post, but in short, meetings keep everyone in the loop and allow the team to quickly react where a reaction is needed. Meetings also give managers and employees a chance to form tighter bonds and better cooperation.
4. Shared cloud storage – Having all documentation and important files in one place is crucial for managing time within a remote team. Google Docs is a great free option for handling project documentation, but if you want something more secure you can check out other paid solutions.

According to one MIT research and explanation in this HBR article, great teams possess three aspects of communication that affect teams performance:

1. Energy – the number and nature of exchanges among team members.
2. Engagement – the distribution of energy among team members.
3. Exploration – communication that members engage in outside their team.

Aim to create atmosphere in your remote team which will have high levels of each of these dimensions, and your team will run like clockwork.

 

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Track time and tweak accordingly

Time tracking motivates a team member to be more productive as everyone can see everyone else’s contribution in reports. There are many other reasons why companies should ask remote workers to track time.

Some of them are:

• Companies pay employees by the hour and need the details for payroll.
• Companies got funding from the government and have a contractual requirement to log hours.
• Needing to be able to calculate project profitability depending on the input-output ratio.

However, tracked hours data shouldn’t be used against employees as a mean for punishing or rewarding them. When that happens, there is a danger that tracking hours will become their only concern and they may practice it even when they are not working, which will result in compromising data accuracy and the main point behind time tracking.

Trust is extremely important between team members and managers, and if you start using this data against your employees you might start a silent revolt.

If you want to use a time tracking tool in your company, it’s best to choose a solution that is trust-based, like Clockify for example. Where there are no screenshots and other dubious employee tracking methods.

Manager’s goal should be to create a pleasant atmosphere inside a remote team, and when that is achieved the productivity levels will also rise.

Besides the indispensable data it provides for coordinating and evaluating task and project effectiveness, time tracking has other benefits too. Some of these benefits include:

• Knowing that everybody is doing their share of work
• Maintaining motivation and high productivity
• Organizing and prioritizing better
• Tracking expenses
• Avoiding bad habits like procrastination and multitasking
• Keeping a record of overtime, PTO, vacation time, and sick leaves
• Spotting bottlenecks in processes

Take advantage of time management techniques

Practicing a time management technique can really boost productivity levels, for both individuals and organizations. There are countless time management techniques out there to try, but I’ll cover a few of them that are best suited for remote teams.

Kanban technique

Kanban is a visual time management technique that helps a team to comprehend the progress of tasks and projects. Kanban means “signpost” in Japanese and was first developed at Toyota to help aid production.

Kanban is really easy to implement. You determine the number of stages in your project or task and create corresponding columns. For example, these columns can be backlog, to-do, doing, done, like in the image below.

As you make progress with your tasks, you move the cards from column to column until the task is marked done. This visual divide between different stages can motivate employees to be more productive as they feel fulfillment when moving cards until project completion.

Today, there are online tools that remote teams can use for Kanban technique, like Trello or VivifyScrum, just to name a few.

Timeboxing technique

Timeboxing, Time blocking, and the Pomodoro technique are all variants of the same principle. The idea here is to work in so-called “timeboxes” and divide your time into fixed sessions.

When it comes to the Pomodoro technique for example, sessions are divided into 25-minute bursts of work, followed by 5 minutes of rest.

Timeboxing or Time blocking is similar, with that difference that time isn’t fixed and you allocate the time of your sessions as you wish or in accordance with the task’s needs.

Fun fact: Elon Musk was the one who made this time management technique popular while he was the acting chairman of Tesla and SpaceX.

Here’s an example of a schedule made with Timboxing technique:

The Eisenhower technique

This technique helps with task prioritization and thus saves time by letting a team know which task should be done immediately, which you should be left for a later time, which ones should be delegated, and which ones should be eliminated altogether.

This technique was named after the former American president Eisenhower who was known for his productivity during his time in the Oval Office.

With the help of the Eisenhower Matrix, a manager can categorize your team’s tasks according to quadrants which are divided between urgent and not urgent, and important and not important.

Top Goal technique

The Top Goal technique helps with time management as it helps you identify your most important goal and dedicate time for it every day until the goal is accomplished.

For example, you and your team determine the top goal for the next period and dedicate two hours each day for working on that goal. This will help the team make great progress, and fast.

Hold regular meetings and provide timely feedback

Virtual meetings are immensely important for remote teams because they are a quick way to get everyone on the same page. The tricky part here is not to overdo it and hold too frequent or too long meetings.

Look to avoid calling for meetings that are not crucial to the project’s success and you will both save time and keep your employees from fatiguing.

Many teams practice daily stand-ups, and remote teams should have their own variant in the form of, let’s call them, daily sit-ups. Choose a part of the day when everyone is available and quickly go over what’s been completed previous and what are the plans for the workday ahead.

If your remote team is spread out in multiple time zones where it’s not convenient for everyone to be online at the same time, tell everyone to send a short video explanation of their workday instead.

Also, organize regular one-on-one meetings and provide feedback to your remote employees. Go over their work and make suggestions or them for a job well done. Constructive feedback can help steer individuals and teams in the right direction and forestall possible issues that would have otherwise been overlooked and caused more trouble further down the road.

The best way to drive a remote team’s performance is by focusing on values, trust, and interdependency. By scheduling regular meetings and providing the right and timely feedback you can accomplish just that.

Final word

When leading a team that is geographically and culturally dispersed, good time management can be of central importance to a project’s success. Following the tips and practices mentioned above should reduce the time needed for a remote team to successfully finish any given task and projects.

“We don’t use social media. We’re B2B. Social media isn’t for our industry.”

Have you said this? Have you heard someone else say it?

Sure, maybe it doesn’t seem like your industry has a place on Instagram. But maybe there’s another platform that works better. Or maybe there’s a way for you or your team to use some of the platforms another way.

At the end of the day, social media has changed the way we communicate, the way we spend our idle time, and the way we conduct commerce.

Humans – No matter your industry, the entity on the other side of your business transaction is a human.

Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than three billion people around the world using social media every month, it’s no passing trend.

So… why do you need to be on social media, no matter your industry? Let’s dive in!

Humans are Social

Social media is supposed to be social. It’s where we get to know people. Including people behind a brand.

Getting to know people (and brands) is the first step in the know-like-trust journey. People do business with people/businesses they get to know, like, and trust.

One way to show personality in your social media is to offer “culture posts” on your company pages. Impulse Creative did this on Instagram and Facebook, introducing the world to the humans behind the brand. You can get to know the humans of Impulse Creative through our posts, showing that we have a varied team.

Humans Research

Build your authority on social media through thought leadership-style posts. These can come from your sales team, your executive team, and even staff of all levels and departments. Securing your place as a thought leader in your audience’s mind increases the opportunity that they will name you when someone in their network asks for recommendations.

Maybe you have a legal department. Does anyone there speak at events on industry related topics? Share the news, and even their presentation!

Perhaps your marketing manager has their own podcast where they interview thought leaders, exploring storytelling from all kinds of angles. You could feature their show on your website and share episodes occasionally in social posts.

Sharing your thought leaders, along with resources in your industry on social media can help build your authority. It doesn’t have to be all original content – curation helps as you become the go-to-resource in your network.

Humans Need a Break

Be their break – entertainment, emotional connection. When you can show that human side and share fun or inspiring content, you endear people to your brand. Even when your brand is serious, you can share a coffee break with people connected to your company.

A great example of using social media to inspire and connect is a local non-profit I volunteer with, Domestic and Sexual Abuse Services. The subject matter is heavy, and doesn’t have a lot of room for “silly” and entertainment. But DASAS shares inspirational posts, helpful content, and shows some personality in its social media.

Another example of using social to give people a break is Michigan’s travel department. The brand is Pure Michigan. And if you’re on Facebook and in their target market, you’ll enjoy the occasional break with their photos and videos. Sure, maybe you’re not lucky enough to draw from natural beauty like a travel brand. But you can take inspiration from the fact that they aren’t pushing the end product – hotel reservations and vacation plans. They’re just showing off what they love!

Humans are Mobile

Social is mobile. How often do you pull out your phone to check Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat? We spend downtime looking at social, connecting, zoning out, researching.. All on our phones.

If you’re not taking part in social media, you’re missing a naturally mobile experience where audiences hang out. Part of our goal as businesses is to be where our prospects are. That used to mean advertising and interrupting their TV, radio, or reading experience. Now, inbound marketing and social media helps us be there as part of the conversation rather than an interruption.

Humans Like Video

We love video (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook videos that make you cry – is that just me?). Video is huge on these platforms – it gets more attention so it spreads beyond your first circle. Putting your message into video format and using social media to connect with viewers can only help to increase your footprint in the media world.

You can refresh older content you’ve written by simply creating a video – talking head, interview style, animated – that tells the story in a new way.

In each of the previous points, video can actually play a part. Use video to connect – video is second only to face-to-face in its power to connect us. Use video to highlight thought leadership and help people research their problem. Interview different people in your organization about their expertise and how it helps your buyers. Use video to offer a break. Check out George’s blooper reel below!

As you can see, social media isn’t just a wasteland of “influencers” and game requests and political rantings. It’s really a place where people – those humans on the other side of your transaction – are spending their time.

While you don’t “have to” be on every platform, you would do well to test out your impact on each platform and how your audience interacts. You could use Instagram to show off your culture and your human side. You could use LinkedIn to connect with potential business partners, with prospects, and to highlight your thought leaders. And you could use Facebook to run ads to reach potential prospects with a helpful, human message.

If you’re not sure where to start, or you need help with your social media marketing, let us know what we can answer. Leave a comment below, or connect with us in social!

Most sales organisations - and most of the sales people who work for them - are capable of describing their target market in broad demographic terms. They might, for example, choose to focus on organisations of a certain size, in one or a number of industries, in one or a number of geographical locations.

Their marketing departments might be chartered to build lists and to generate leads with these characteristics. And, of course, it’s relatively easy to identify target companies by applying these simple filters. But there’s a problem - particularly in complex B2B environments: these basic demographic characteristics are very poor predictors of whether any specific organisation is actually likely to do business with you.

It’s no wonder that “leads” that have been generated are rarely treated with urgency or enthusiasm by the sales people receiving them. They know from bitter experience that that the majority of these enquiries will turn out to be duds...

Organisations have personas too

As you may have noticed, many B2B marketing departments have become rather taken by the idea of “buyer personas” which reflect the imagined common characteristics of a number of different key buyer roles. It’s an interesting idea, if occasionally naively executed. But there’s an often even-more-important truth embedded in the concept: organisations have personas, too.

The basic demographics of size, sector and location may help you to establish the outer boundaries of your potential target market. But it’s the firmographic characteristics - particularly structure, culture and circumstances - which offer the best predictors of whether any given organisation is likely to do business with you now or in the future.

Structural considerations

Let’s start with structural considerations. These are typically issues of fact - and often require more research than the basic demographics (but it’s worth it). They might include how the company is organised, whether they are in start-up, scale-up or mature operating mode, what their go-to-market model looks like, and so on.

They will also often include who their existing strategic suppliers or vendors are, whether they have a centralised or decentralised operating model and - particularly if you are a technology vendor - what other systems they might have in place.

Cultural considerations

You might also think of these as behavioural factors. These are issues of judgement. They typically include their appetite for innovation and their position on the adoption curve - are they pioneers, early adopters, pragmatists or laggards? You might want to know whether their vendor relationships tend to be collaborative or confrontational, and whether they typically buy on value or price.

If you’re an emerging vendor, you’ll probably also want to know whether they have a track record of buying best-of-breed solutions, or whether they tend to always default to the safety of an existing supplier or an established brand.

Circumstances

And, of course, you’ll want to understand your prospective customer’s current circumstances and in particular to look out for the common catalysts or trigger events that typically initiate a new buying journey. These might be internal events - such as a new executive appointment, or a new strategic priority or initiative, or they might be external events, such as new legislation or a change in the competitive environment.

And while demographic, structural and cultural considerations are the things that help to indicate whether a particular company is a potential long-term target, it’s their current circumstances (and in particular, recent changes in their circumstances) that indicate whether or not they might be a good short-term opportunity.

Identifying YOUR ideal customers

The best place to start is by examining the common characteristics of the organisations you regard as your most valuable current customers. This may not, of course, simply relate to your existing largest customers. In fact, it’s more likely to be related to what you perceive to be the long-term revenue potential - taking into account your realistic future sales including expansion, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

Once you’ve established who these most valuable existing customers are, you need to identify their most obvious common demographic, structural and cultural characteristics. How are they organised? Do they tend to be start-ups, scale-ups or established organisations? What about the other obvious common structural patterns?

And what about the cultural aspects? Where do they fit on the adoption curve? Do we have the potential to become trusted advisors, or will we always be merely one of many suppliers? And were they prepared to go out on a limb to choose the best solution for their organisation?

And, finally, what were the circumstances that caused them to start searching for a solution in the first place? How would they describe the problems they faced, and what did they think they were looking for in a solution?

Ideal-acceptable-avoid

You need to distil your findings into a simple one-page ideal customer profile that captures the key demographic, structural and behavioural characteristics. You need to identify the factors that make an organisation an ideal customer, an acceptable opportunity, or something to avoid. And you need to use this profile as the basis for your outbound marketing and your opportunity qualification.

And then you need to give each sales person the chance to tailor this generic ideal customer profile to reflect the unique circumstances of their particular territory. Once you apply this thinking, you’ll find that you are pursuing more of the right sort of opportunities and eliminating more of the wrong ones.

A version of this article was first published in Top Sales World magazine.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, a member of the Sales Enablement Society, a founding contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and the Sales Experts Channel and the founder of Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the leading UK-based B2B value-selling experts.

Following a successful corporate career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and market leaders, Bob is now relishing his role as a pro-active advisor, coach and trainer to high-potential B2B-focused sales organisations, systematically enabling them to transform their sales effectiveness by adopting the proven principles of value-based selling.

Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals like you define and grow brand value. BSI readers know, we regularly answer questions from marketers everywhere. Today we hear from Simon, a Startup CEO in London, England who has this question about pricing strategies.
“We are exploring pricing strategies for our new line of consumer products. What should we be considering?”

Thanks for your question Simon. There is much to consider. As we have shared in the past, brands send powerful messages through how they price. Price can be influential in portraying a brand as affordable and ‘on the side of the customer’, or exclusive and just for the few. It can generate responses ranging from the thrill of a bargain to the indignation of a price tag that seems far too steep. Pricing strategy helps shape the reputations and fortunes of brands. Use the following guide to help make an informed decision about your pricing strategy.

Reference Prices

People often compare a product’s price to a “reference price” that they maintain in their minds for the product or product category in question. A “reference price” is the price that people expect or deem to be reasonable for a certain type of product. Six factors affect reference prices:

1. Memory of Past Prices.

2. Frame of Reference. That is, the price as compared to competitive prices, pre-sale prices, manufacturer’s suggested prices, channel-specific prices, marked prices before discounts, and substitute product prices, etc. Creating the most advantageous (and believable) competitive frame of reference is essential to achieving a price premium.

3. Prices of Other Products on the Same Shelf, in the Same Catalog, or in the Same Product Line. The addition of a more premium-priced product typically increases sales of other lower-priced products in the same product line.

4. The Way the Price Is Presented. For instance:

• Absolute number vs. per quart, per pound, per hour of use, per application
• Four simple payments of $69.95 vs. $279.80
• Total purchase price vs. monthly loan payment vs. monthly lease payment (e.g., for automobiles)

5. The Order in Which People See a Range of Prices. Realtors, for instance, use the trick of showing the lowest value house first.

6. “Rule of 100.” Percentage discounts seem larger if the total amount is less than $100. If it is more than $100, the absolute discount amount in dollars seems larger.

The Decoy Effect

• The decoy effect, also called the asymmetrical dominance effect, is a phenomenon where people tend to have a change in preference between two options when presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.

Add On Pricing

• Additional automobile features: leather seats, heated seats, moon roof, satellite radio, built-in GPS, custom colors.
• Airlines: checked luggage, upgraded seat, purchased alcoholic beverage or meal, purchased in-flight wi-fi.

Product Bundle Pricing

Bundling products, services, attributes, features, packaging, delivery mechanisms and quantities in different ways to create a unique incomparable offering or to achieve a certain price point.

Captive Product Pricing

Captive products are strategically used to maximize revenue.

Examples:

• Razor & razor blade
• Printer & ink
• Camera & film

Price Segmentation

Price segmentation (offering different prices to different market segments) increases overall revenues and profits, and it is particularly beneficial to industries that have high fixed cost structures. Obviously, price segmentation works better to the extent to which there are real customer need segments and to which you can effectively isolate those segments.

Price Sensitivity

It is extremely important to be able to estimate the impact of price changes on sales and profits. That is, it is important to know how a price change will impact consumer response, competitive response, and unit volume. Many business people believe that a price increase is the most cost-effective revenue-generating marketing tactic. This is not so. People display different price sensitivities to different products in different situations. Often people are relatively price insensitive, but only within a relevant price range. Once a price exceeds that range, people become very sensitive.

Factors That Decrease Price Sensitivity

• Relevant brand/product differentiation.
• Marketing and selling on factors other than price.
• Convincing consumers that quality differs significantly among products and brands in the category.
• Self-expressive or “image” products or brands. (For example, if I wear sports apparel featuring Nike’s swoosh logo, it implies I have the “Just do it” attitude of Nike’s “authentic athletic performance” essence. If I carry a Gucci handbag or wear a Rolex watch or drive a Mercedes-Benz, it says I have social status.)
• Brand advertising.
• Situations in which price is a signal to quality—usually for relatively new or unknown products or brands.
• When it is difficult to ascertain a “reference price” within the category.
• When there are significant switching costs—in dollars, time, effort, risk, or emotional impact.
• Product categories for which the risk of failure is an important issue.
• When the price is insignificant relative to the total budget or discretionary income.
• When the item does not significantly contribute to the cost of the products and services that a business sells.
• When the price falls within the expected price range for products in the category.
• When offering “value-added services” vs. “price discounts” to motivate purchases.
• New markets.

Factors That Increase Price Sensitivity

• Price promotions, especially when people are able to stock up on the price-discounted items.
• Mature and declining markets.

Pricing Strategy Guidelines

• Once an item is sold at a lower price, it is very difficult to sell it later at a significantly higher price.
• Premium brands lose some of their cache when some of their products are offered at much lower price points.
• It is somewhat easier to eventually move a more mainstream brand up into premium categories.
• Providing value-added products and services at “no charge” is superior to price discounting as a short-term purchase incentive, because it preserves the value of the brand.
• Price your products and services to reward brand-loyal (vs. brand-switching) behavior.

Other Price/Value Considerations

In your pricing strategy you should consider these five factors:

1. Perceived customer value
2. Competitive response
3. Channels of distribution
4. Cost parameters
5. Congruence with the brand position

Whatever pricing strategy your choose Simon, do everything in your power to maintain the integrity of your price. Price integrity reinforces the value claims you are making.

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FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

• As summer draws to a close, so does the time for reading by the beach.
• When you consider your final beach reads, take these professional development books into account.
• From an Elon Musk biography to a neurological explanation of "eureka" moments, these books will make you smarter about business.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The best part of the summer could be the sunshine, activities, time off — or the beach reads. There's still time to catch up on your reading as the season draws to a close, and there are plenty of great business books to add to your list.

We've picked our favorite books that will help enrich your professional life. From the first in-depth biography of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to a neurological explanation of "eureka" moments, these books will make you smarter about business while you're waiting in the airport or lying on the beach.

SEE ALSO: 10 books that will give new managers the self-confidence necessary to lead, motivate, and inspire their team

'Elon Musk' by Ashlee Vance

Musk is the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. He says his mission in life is to prevent the human race from destroying itself.

Vance, a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter, gained unprecedented access to Musk and those closest to him. He paints a picture of a man who has always felt a desire to change the world despite having difficulty finding his place in it, and a leader whose intensity can be difficult for the people he works with while simultaneously inspiring them.

Buy it here >>

'Work Rules!' by Laszlo Bock

Since joining Google as its senior vice president of People Operations in 2006, Bock has seen the company transform into a powerful global business, growing from 6,000 employees to nearly 60,000. In that same time, Google has regularly topped lists of the best places to work.

Bock takes readers behind the scenes and explores the management strategies that have helped make Google exceptional, from differentiating between employee development and performance and "paying unfairly."

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'No One Understands You and What to Do About It' by Heidi Grant Halvorson

We'll give you the benefit of the doubt: You're the smartest, most talented member of your team. But if your colleagues don't work well with you, it is partially your fault.

Halvorson, a social psychologist at the Columbia Business School, breaks down decades of research into an enjoyable guide to understanding how people perceive each other, and how this knowledge can make you a better communicator.

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'Straight to Hell' by John LeFevre

LeFevre is a former Citigroup bond trader who got famous through his Twitter account "Goldman Sachs Elevator," a collection of biting Wall Street satirical pieces pointing out callousness and cluelessness that bankers, traders, and investors came to embrace.

His book is part satire and part memoir, an insider's "unapologetic" look at the world of finance.

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'Digital Gold' by Nathaniel Popper

Last year, Newsweek caused a stir when it ran a cover story claiming it had identified the creator of the online currency Bitcoin. Soon after the report, members of the Bitcoin community were convinced Newsweek found the wrong guy.

Popper, a New York Times reporter, seems to have discovered the actual man behind Bitcoin, and "Digital Gold" is the most complete look at the currency's history, concluding that it has passed the point of being a mere fad. 

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'The Misfit Economy' by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips

Authors Clay and Phillips take a look at the organizational models of outlaws like Somali pirates and Brazilian counterfeiters, arguing that "these innovators display remarkable ingenuity, pioneering original methods and practices that we can learn from and apply to move formal markets."

Their book compels readers to not dismiss fringe management styles, even from the world's most unsavory characters, and instead learn how to incorporate a fearless experimentation into your workplace.

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'When to Rob a Bank' by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

In 2015, economist Steven Levitt and author Stephen Dubner celebrated the tenth anniversary of their blockbuster book "Freakonomics" with a collection of 131 of their favorite blog posts from the past decade.

You'll learn about the psychology of lying, the argument to abolish the penny, and why robbing a bank isn't a bad idea because of the morality, but because it has a terrible return on investment.

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'Bold' by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Serial tech entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis and author/entrepreneur Steven Kotler follow up their best-selling book "Abundance" with a look at the technologies and entrepreneurs redefining our world.

The book has valuable insight from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson.

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'Design to Grow' by David Butler and Linda Tischler

That Coca-Cola has dominated the soft-drink market for more than a century and is one of the world's largest brands isn't just because lots of people enjoy drinking Coke.

With the help of Fast Company's late senior editor Linda Tischler, Coca-Cola's former VP of innovation and entrepreneurship David Butler offers a rare look into the workings of Coke and how it has stayed ahead of the competition by remaining agile.

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'Clay Water Brick' by Jessica Jackley

Jackley is the cofounder of Kiva, a microlending site that helps entrepreneurs from around the world develop their businesses as a way to lift themselves out of poverty.

"Clay Water Brick" is Jackley's recounting of developing Kiva from a dying startup in 2005 to a global network that has raised $709 million in loans, with a repayment rate of 98.72%.

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'The Road to Character' by David Brooks

New York Times columnist David Brooks believes the increasing fixation on online personal branding and racking up achievements for a résumé has become toxic.

He explores the lives of a wide variety of historical figures like St. Augustine and Dorothy Day to illustrate his point: that true success should be associated more closely with forgetting one's self and connecting with others.

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'The Eureka Factor' by John Kounios and Mark Beeman

Drexel's John Kounios and Northwestern's Mark Beeman are neuroscientists who have spent their careers studying the manifestation of creativity in the brain.

Their book is a collection of their research into "aha! moments" when the brain overcomes a confusion to have a spark of insight.

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'Better Than Before' by Gretchen Rubin

Rubin has devoted her writing career to examining the latest and most important research on how happiness is manifested in the brain and how people can change their lives to increase the regularity of these reactions.

In "Better Than Before," Rubin takes scientific findings on habit formation and turns them into practical and useful processes that can help you live a happier life.

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'Rise of the Robots' by Martin Ford

Robots are increasingly intelligent and they're coming to take your job, says Ford, a futurist and entrepreneur.

But rather than being a warning from a tech-fearing Luddite, Ford guides readers through the surprising evolution of artificial intelligence from simple task-based machines into quick-thinking programs that can replace service workers, journalists, and programmers. 

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'How Music Got Free' by Stephen Witt

The story of how the digital music industry crushed the CD industry has been old news for years now, but Witt takes a look at the personalities who accelerated the spread of piracy to profit off the death of the physical album.

Witt uncovers the largely untold stories of people like the German entrepreneurs who invented the mp3 file and Dell Glover, the compact disc factory worker who leaked some of the biggest albums of the aughts, leaving record label execs frustrated and scared.

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'The Creator's Code' by Amy Wilkinson

While any successful entrepreneur has to experience failure, enjoy luck, and learn along the way, there are certain approaches that can make the journey a bit smoother, says Stanford Business School lecturer and corporate strategist Amy Wilkinson.

From more than 200 interviews with entrepreneurs like LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Chipotle's Steve Ells, and Gilt Groupe's Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkins, Wilkinson has determined six essential skills that drive success across all industries and circumstances.

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'Holacracy' by Brian J. Robertson

You may have heard that popular online retailer Zappos now operates as a "Holacracy," a system in which manager roles and job titles are eliminated.

Holacracy is a difficult concept to understand, but its founder Brian Robertson breaks it down simply and thoroughly. Regardless of your conclusion about the system's potential, it is undoubtedly the alternative management approach that will be getting the most attention over the next few years as we see how it affects thousands of employees around the world.

Buy it here >>

'Triggers' by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

Goldsmith is an executive coach who has worked with the leadership of massive companies like Pfizer and Target.

His approach can help you determine what isn't working with your team, and how to develop new habits and processes for maximizing efficiency and productivity.

Buy it here >>

'The Career Playbook' by James M. Citrin

This book is the perfect gift for a new college graduate, or for yourself if you happen to be just starting out in your own career.

Citrin leads executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart's North American CEO practice, and has spent decades determining what makes a job candidate stand out from a highly competitive pool of applicants. His book breaks down the basics of skills like networking, interviewing, and negotiating.

Buy it here >>

'Bourbon Empire' by Reid Mitenbuler

Mitenbuler is a journalist who tracks the history of American whiskey, from the frontier through Prohibition to the luxury brands of today.

He shows how bourbon is a product uniquely tied to the history of the US, and one that required ruthless business tactics and innovation to become an iconic product.

Buy it here >>

A carefully thought-out email marketing strategy is a great tool for building brand awareness and increasing sales.

Email marketing is perhaps the most pocket-friendly marketing channel. It gives you the undivided attention of your customers and prospects. Email marketing analytics are easy to measure, and the content of an email message can be instantly changed whenever required.

Apart from encouraging sales, email marketing can build your brand, turn customers into loyal supporters and establish you as a trustworthy authority. And that’s why using emails to merely announce a sale or send a newsletter doesn’t even come close to fully exploiting the true potential of email marketing.

Below are the five most important things you need to do with email to build your brand and increase sales.

1. Ask for permission

No brand can ever grow by ignoring the preferences of its customers. Before you begin sending them your email drip campaign, always make a point to ask if they wish to receive emails from you.

Not asking for permission puts you under a unique risk: the very recipients you want to win over might report you as a spammer. (In any case, regulations like the GDPR make permissions compulsory.) Bear in mind how you ask for permission is critical.

The Onion, in the following example, seeks confirmation in a positive way without going over the top.

How it impacts your branding:

It shows you care for your customers and put them above everything else. It strengthens your brand as a business or an enterprise that willingly conforms to the law.

How it impacts your sales:

If you send out emails without looking at recipients’ preferences, in all likelihood your recipients won’t read your email. That tremendously increases the risk of being labeled a spammer. Hence, the first step to sell via emails is to ask for permission.

After all, emails can generate business only if they’re read.

2. Build a strong landing page to support your emails.

Email marketing requires you to begin with the end in mind. Before you write a draft of your email, ask yourself: where do I want my readers to go after they’ve read the email?

Your landing page is an important part of your marketing funnel. Your landing page is where you want your subscribers to come to when they click on the CTA inside your email.

How it impacts your branding:

If you’re wondering how to build a brand using emails, this is your first lesson: the design of your landing page must be consistent with your email. Always make sure the aesthetics of the landing page design match that of your email. Soon, your subscribers will come to identify the design with your brand.

If your email and your landing page are drastically different from each other in terms of aesthetics and design, visitors could believe they’ve landed somewhere else and will quickly exit.

Have a look at the two images below (source: MarketingProfs). The one on your left is the email, while the one on the right is the landing page. Notice the way they’ve used color and design to create a seamless visual experience so that your move from email to the landing page is smooth and natural.

How it impacts your sales:

A visitor who’s on your landing page has shown some intent of exploring your product further – which is why they clicked on a link and landed there. A persuasive headline coupled with a clever copy, and a clear and strong CTA will go a long way in making your landing page more powerful.

How much you want to sell from your landing pages depends upon your marketing strategy – in some cases a gentle nudge works better while in other cases you’ll need a stronger effort. If you have a trial version, you’ll want to have visitors try it first.

3. Create your welcome mail

Your welcome email chalks out the path for the emails that follow and tells subscribers what to expect. Welcome mails will have a very high open rate, so you want to make the most out of it. But remember to maintain clean lists first to ensure high deliverability. Regularly verify email addresses on your mailing lists to make sure you’re sending out emails only to deliverable addresses.

It’s a great opportunity but also a challenge in itself. If your welcome email doesn’t kindle the reader’s interest, the rest of the emails are going to face an uphill task.

How it impacts your branding:

Your welcome email is your calling card, one that’s going to try and make sure your subscribers feel glad they subscribed. If you already have a large community, a considerable social following or something similar, use it to further strengthen your claim of being an authority. Impressive numbers help reinforce your brand.

In any case, give your subscribers an outline of what to expect in subsequent emails. That tells them you are organized enough and that you care about their time.

How it impacts your sales:

Many businesses underutilize the potential of personalization in the welcome email. If you have more than one services or newsletters, include the links to all of them and have subscribers choose what they’d like to read.

Use that information to segment your mailing list, and send more behavior-based, targeted emails. It almost effortlessly provides you a strong basis for segmentation. Using clearer segmentation is a great solution to the problem of how to use emails to increase sales.

The image below shows how the welcome email MIT Technology Review tries to place subscribers in the correct segment at the starting point itself.

4. Remain consistent

There are some areas where you should be creative and experiment on a regular basis. On the other hand, there are some things you should not change because consistency gets better results in these areas.

Your email design, color, logo placement and overall layout is one of those things where it pays to remain consistent. That’s because we humans are programmed to identify patterns. And our trust quotient goes up when we recognize a familiar pattern.

How it impacts your branding:

Coca Cola is one of the strongest and most powerful brands ever. Since the day its logo was registered, the basic design hasn’t changed much. Check out the image below.

Brand recognition relies heavily upon our ability to recognize patterns. The lesson is simple: spend time designing the email but once you’ve finalized something, don’t alter it without a very strong reason.

How it impacts your sales:

A sale is basically an individual parting with their money in exchange of a product or service they are yet to receive. Surely you realize it requires considerable trust to pay money for a product or service that they are yet to receive.

Consistency is not just about design, it’s also about your value proposition. If you promise great SEO benefits today, better deliverability tomorrow and value-for-money product the day after, it’s going to be very difficult for a prospect to pull out their wallet and pay you.

5. Humanize your emails

Humanizing your emails is one of the best ways of using emails to build a brand and to increase sales. And one of the best ways to meaningfully humanize your emails is using social proof, or evidence of how real people have used and benefited by using your product.

How you leverage social proof largely depends on what you’re selling; a gym, for instance, can show a before-after photo. You can back up social proof by showing ratings your customers have left (“5-star service!”) or by using numbers (“With their expert training, I lost 5 pounds in 9 weeks”).

Alternatively, you can write detailed case-studies of some of your customers and share a link from where your subscribers can download the case studies.

In the above case, the sender asks for the recipient’s opinion, making the email quite appealing and relatable.

How it impacts your branding:

A mechanical-sounding email will be written with one single purpose: sell. That makes your company a faceless company desperate to sell.

Although it may sound cliché, this line is so important it’s worth repeating – customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions. Building relationships with customers makes them aware you’re keen to solve one of their specific problems. It makes your brand human and relatable.

How it impacts your sales:

There are a number of ways of humanizing content. People may see you, for instance, as a drilling rigs company, full of machines and stuff. But if your email can talk about your teams, the narrative shifts from machines to humans.

Your subscribers can see you’re more than a faceless engineering company. That’s one way of humanizing. Personalization and humor are some of the other ways you can humanize your message.

Facebook is a platform that’s completely built on user-created content. If millions of its users were to suddenly stop creating and sharing content, there would be no Facebook. So, they must keep asking you to create content if you fall back.

Yet, Facebook doesn’t ask you to create content because they themselves need it. Instead, they show they’re concerned that your audience hasn’t heard from you for quite a while.

Placing the customer’s priorities over yours is a great way of humanizing your emails.

Summing up

Because it’s easy to begin, some marketers often hurry into email marketing without doing the fine-tuning. Not surprisingly, they fail to get the benefits.

With a systematically laid out marketing strategy, you can use email marketing to build your brand, win loyal customers and increase sales. Begin by asking permission from your subscribers and build a compelling landing page.

Next, create the right welcome email, plan out what you’ll be sending in subsequent emails and remain consistent. Last but not least, make sure you give a human touch to your emails – share stories about your teams, invite feedback and encourage a dialogue to build engagement.

With all this, you’re sure to see your brand become stronger. And a strong brand does one thing very well: it increases sales.

While e-commerce has grown in the past decade, abandonment remains a major issue for online retailers. Case in point: 77% of all online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2017.

For that reason, a well-executed abandonment email strategy is essential for any ecommerce business.

Email remarketing is the process of contacting a lost lead and reintroducing them to the conversion funnel. While there are numerous ways to accomplish this, emails have remained one of the most effective methods for recovering sales.

But how exactly should an abandonment email strategy be organized? In this article we’ll examine best practices for abandonment emails, and the ways they can drastically improve your conversion rates.

The Standard 3 Email Drip

Persistence is vital in a successful abandonment email strategy. While some users may convert after the first email, a series of 3 personalized emails tends to have the highest success rate. By sending 3 messages, you maintain consistent contact that keeps you top of mind without driving unsubscription rates.

There are several reasons to send more than one abandonment email.

1. Customers receive an average of 88 emails per day. It’s entirely possible your first (and even second) email may get lost in the shuffle.
2. Many customers may see an abandonment email, then become sidetracked. Sending multiple emails serves as a reminder to those customers and keeps your brand top of mind.
3. Customers often need to consider a purchase several times before acting. By sending emails, you prompt repeated consideration and drive browsers to become buyers.

While it’s worth noting that each email in a series serves the distinct purpose of recovering sales, smaller traffic segments, i.e. low converting locales, may make sending three emails ineffective.

Let’s take a look at all three emails in a standard abandonment email strategy and the importance of each.

The Purpose of the First Email: Continuing the Conversation

Your first abandonment email should go out about an hour after a shopper leaves your site.

If you wait too long to send your first post-abandonment email, you run the risk of becoming a fleeting thought in your shoppers’ minds. In fact, sending your first abandonment email within 1-2 hours generates 105% more revenue than the same email sent 24 hours after abandonment.

While you may be tempted to send the first email within seconds, this can actually become counterproductive. If a customer simply navigates away for a moment with plans to return, the immediate contact may register as spam in the shopper’s mind.

Your email’s subject lines should match the intent of the email. You can also learn more about creating the perfect preheader here. Sending messages containing the cart contents left behind by a shopper is a great way to nudge customers back to your site. If you’re offering shoppers an incentive to return, make it clear in the subject line. This can boost open rates, recovery rates, and overall campaign performance.

The Purpose of the Second Email: Sending a Reminder

When sending a second email, it’s best to give the customer a chance to respond before sending out the next message. In general, it’s best to wait at least 24 hours before sending a second abandonment email. When a second email is sent 24 hours after abandonment, conversion rates can reach as high as 17%.

The second email should serve as a reiteration of the original message. Since it’s entirely possible that the shopper missed your first message, it’s ok to assume they’re receiving information they haven’t already seen. That being said, you don’t want the email to be a carbon copy of the original.

Strike a tone that indicates their cart contents or an offer will soon become unavailable. If an incentive is provided, adding information about approaching expiration is an effective way to get shoppers back along the conversion path.

The Purpose of the Third Email: Inciting Urgency With a “Last Chance”

Although the third and final email is often the lowest-performing, it’s still responsible for a significant number of conversions. A study from Rejoiner found that 23% of post-abandonment conversions resulted from the last email in the series.

If possible, send the third and final email in the series 72 hours after abandonment. Waiting for this length of time makes it likely that they’ve seen your email and are familiar with the offer.

For a subject line, an excellent word try to use the word “expire”. If you’re using an incentive, tell the visitor their “offer is about to expire.” This can get last minute shoppers to purchase with a discount while they still can.

While urgency can unquestionably work, avoid overplaying your hand. Unless your offer will truly never meet their inbox again, don’t exaggerate the importance of the offer. This not only makes a brand seem desperate, it makes the user more likely to unsubscribe from future emails.

Furthermore, remember not to antagonize the customer for not acting. While a non-converting shopper is frustrating, remember to keep a pleasant tone even as you invoke urgency. This is supposed to be a friendly reminder – not a dire warning.

Sending Three Emails Creates a Foundation for Success

When it comes to abandonment email campaigns, 3 really is a magic number. A successful abandonment email campaign will have an overall conversion rate of 20-30%, though highly successful campaigns can top 40%. In addition to boosting conversion rates, three-pronged abandonment email campaigns have the capacity to raise average order value and improve customer lifetime value.

By sending a series of strategically planned emails rather than just one, you empower your business to more effectively engage customers, continue the conversation, and recover conversions.

Your cost structure as it relates to the Business Model Canvas is closely related to your value proposition. A company’s cost structures represents the specific costs that the business will incur while operating under a particular business model to create and deliver the business’s value proposition, as well as maintaining its customer relationships all have costs to the business. These costs have to be allocated across all product or service offerings to minimize costs.

A company’s cost structures can be calculated after it considers the key resources, key activities and key partners it will require. For a vertically integrated business, such as one of the big six Japanese Keiretsus who are able to allocate their fixed costs from one business unit to another business unit, these businesses control all the key resources, activities, and its partner business units to pick which industry it wants to dominate. For the small business owner, however, the best option when it comes to understanding cost structures is to look at the contact area between the company and its customers, buyers, and suppliers using Porter’s Five Forces model.

At its highest level, cost structures are either cost-driven or value-driven.

Cost-driven structures

Cost-driven structures are focused on keeping costs or expenses down.

Companies that embrace a cost-driven structure use automation or outsourcing to keep internal costs low, resulting in competitive pricing. Operational excellence is often at the core of the business model of cost-driven structures and are exemplified by Walmart and McDonald’s. Since margins are small, a business that is cost-driven has to rely on economies of scale and scope to achieve satisfactory returns.

Economies of scale represent cost-saving that a business enjoys as it grows. For example, a larger company like Walmart benefits from volume discounts on the items it purchases, resulting in lower costs per unit.

Economies of scope represent cost savings that a business enjoys as the scope of its operation grows. For example, a large online retailer like Amazon used its market leadership in online book delivery to expand into other consumables.

Value-driven structures

Value-driven structures are focused on providing more value or revenue through premium offerings or services.

Companies that embrace a value-driven structure use customer intimacy and high-end components to create premium products. Customers that buy value-driven products and services are less price-conscious, and value quality, performance, and convenience over price. Nordstrom and Rolex are examples of companies that have value-driven structures.

Operating Leverage

Another element of a company’s cost structure is the ratio of fixed to variable costs they have and are known as Operating Leverage.

High variable-costs relative to fixed-costs have less upside reward, but also less downside risk. In contrast, low variable-costs relative to higher fixed-costs have high upside rewards, but have substantially higher downside risk if break-even volumes are not reached.

When considering cost structures, you should consider what your most important costs are that need more attention, and which have less impact on the quality of your product or service. You should also consider which key resources and activities are the most expensive and whether you benefit from moving up or down the value chain.

Do you understand your cost structures?

There is also a FREE Podcast Series we offer on Applying the Business Model Canvas

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For more detailed information on how to apply the Business Model Canvas to your business, check out my book:

Applying the Business Model Canvas, A Practical Guide For Small Business

 

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a big undertaking—as many marketers who have kicked off pilot programs will tell you.  Among other things, it involves leveraging data to gain account insights, using paid media to conduct contact discovery, and making cross-channel engagement a priority. 

But to ensure your ABM strategy is successful, there’s one thing you need above all else: a revenue team. This should be a group composed of sales, marketing, and other professionals who regularly interact with prospects and customers to create consistent, meaningful experiences. 

After all, delivering exceptional experiences over the lifetime of a prospect or customer, throughout the buyer’s journey, is what modern marketing is all about. 

And by building a strong revenue team, you can create better experiences that turn prospects into customers and customers into powerful brand advocates. 

Here are three valuable tips to help you build a revenue team and bolster your ABM strategy: 

1. Agree On Everything Up Front

The most important part of any relationship is communication. So, when you’re trying to align sales and marketing, make your expectations and boundaries clear from the start. 

Before you do anything, get your stakeholders together to decide on the rules of the game: What qualifies as a lead? What determines account engagement? How do you share information? Where should you invest resources? 

Nail down these guidelines early and you’ll find it much easier to get your once-disparate departments headed in the same direction. 

2. Ensure Fluid, Continuous Handovers

So, marketing and sales are no longer at opposite ends of the dancehall. Instead, they’re dance partners. But how do you decide who takes the lead?

Business is no longer a straightforward affair, where marketing drums up interest and hands off leads to sales, and then sales closes deals. Rather, today’s prospects move back and forth between different stages of the funnel. 

This means your sales and marketing departments need to get used to seamlessly switching roles and must reach a consensus on who’s driving the relationship at any given time. To make this easier, it’s crucial that you provide everybody on your revenue team with complete visibility of the entire customer journey. Of course, for that to happen, you need quality data. 

3. Consolidate Your Tech And Step Up Your Data Game

For your marketing and sales groups to form a truly strong and effective revenue team, you must ensure your data is accurate, up to date, and seamlessly integrated. 

Everyone on your revenue team should be on the same page from day one by pulling from a common database that combines marketing behavior and sales data. A customer data platform is key, but you also need unified data to provide a holistic view to make customer-driven decisions. To make the most of your centralized data repository, you need to educate each department on what your data means. 

Make sure marketing intimately understands the sales process and how sales uses data to close deals. And see to it that sales knows how marketing measures awareness, acquisition, scoring, and qualification. 

Shared Pipeline. Shared Responsibility. Shared Success. 

The structure of marketing and sales functions each owning separate portions of revenue is outdated and impractical. Marketing can never truly drive revenue without sales. And selling without marketing support, although doable, is incredibly painful. 

These two departments have always been reliant on each other. By bringing them together as a unified revenue team, you’re empowering them to perform at their best. 

And don’t feel pressured to craft your team solely of individuals from sales and marketing. Adding support, development, and other siloed departments to the mix can only help to enhance the experiences you deliver to prospects and customers. 

The post Meet The Revenue Team: The Key To Successful Account-Based Marketing appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

As a salesperson, you know the importance of leads, but have you thought of all the ways to leverage those leads to make your life easier?

Senior Research Director of Marketing Operations and Demand Generation at Forrester, Kerry Cunningham brings a unique marketing perspective to this episode of the Hey Salespeople podcast and shares actionable advice about how marketing and sales can work together to make sure no lead is left behind. 

Jeremey and Kerry discuss everything from inbound leads and account-based marketing to the advantage that a sales rep exuding calm confidence has. 

Listen to this episode for answers to questions like:

• Why should you have a best friend at work?
• How are false negative leads like a terminal disease? 
• What are the four principles of account-centric teleprospecting? 
• How do you start a conversation with an inbound lead?
• What is Kerry’s secret to feeling more comfortable selling?

Listen here, and keep reading for some of the highlights from this episode below.

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False Leads

Jeremey: False negative and false positive leads are both costly things. The false negative is rejecting a viable prospect at the top of the funnel. The false positive is allowing non-viable prospects through the screen.

Kerry: That’s right, and they’re not equivalent in my mind. Allowing a false positive through is not good. That’s what salespeople will complain about a lot and it shows up in poor lead conversion rates and all of that. So definitely not good. We don’t want to have those kinds of leads up the system. But I think of false positives as a disease that’s treatable with medication. You can improve and live a nice life.

False negatives, on the other hand, are a terminal disease that you can cure. If you don’t take action on it, it’s going to kill you. False negatives mean that there’s revenue to be had, but you’re not going to have it. Your competitors are. That’s not a sustainable business model. Getting that balance right is important.

I think you’re paying the utmost level of attention to people who come to your website and say, ‘I’m interested – have somebody call me,’ is very important. I would still run that through the filter of: ‘Is that person who wants to have a conversation with you? Do they work in a company that could actually buy your stuff? ‘

I’ve got four principles for account-centric teleprospecting, and that’s the first one. It’s the only reason to ever call somebody or ever email somebody is that somebody works in a company that could buy something from you, and is capable of implementing the thing that you buy. If they aren’t, then they’re not worth spending time on. If they are, then there are a few of the other principles that we could talk about apply to them.

Four Principles of Tele-Prospecting

Kerry: Number one is if that person is worth calling. If the lead is worth calling, it’s because they’re in a viable account for you.

The second is that if they’re in a viable account for you, chances are they’re not the only person who’s going to be involved in that buying process. They’re not the only person you’re going to have to sell to, as an organization. You should know what that looks like. What is that buying group or buying committee in your prospects? What do your customers look like? Is it two people? Or is it five people? Is it six people? Do you have multiple buyer personas that you’re consciously attracting to your website that you have content for etc?

That’s a really important thing to understand. Because if we just decided that we’re only calling this guy because he works in a company that we care about, we know that this person isn’t going to be working alone if they’re going to buy something from us.

Then the third principle is if you know that it’s an account you care about and you have this signal that there’s something going on there, does it make any sense to just try one person and give up? My third principle is, no, it doesn’t. It probably results in a lot of false negatives.

We wouldn’t necessarily go down the list and try everybody in the company until you find somebody who’s going to talk to you. There should be at least a couple of different buyer personas, types of people inside that organization, that can help you understand whether they’re in the market for the kind of thing you sell and whether you’re going to get to compete for that business. Leaving after trying just one is probably is not the right thing.

You can always use some prioritization to decide how much effort you apply. That’s the fourth principle. For any given account, there’s an optimal range of effort that you should apply. It’s not one or two calls, and it’s not unlimited. For high-value accounts, where somebody just come to your website and said, ‘contact me,’ if they don’t pick up the phone after three attempts, you’re not going to stop.  You’re also going to try to find somebody else to talk to.

For lower value account, probably going to do the same thing. Maybe you’re not going to apply as much effort before you take a no response. If you have signals in the form of inbound leads, or even just web traffic, the approach can’t be to follow up on the like a lead like any other lead. It has to be, ‘we need to understand what’s happening in that account, are they going to buy something like what we sell? Do we get to compete for that business?’

Calm Confidence

Jeremey: What do you look for in a successful tone for a telesalesperson?

Kerry: Confident but not cocky. You have to sound like you know what you’re doing and you belong in the conversation you’re having. If you don’t know the people that you’re calling – especially if you’re an SDR  calling VP of Engineering or something – you have to talk to them about their business. 

It’s not like you’re going to know more than they do, but you have to feel like you belong in that conversation, and that you serve a purpose there. That purpose is to connect that person’s business issues with your solutions. You’re not going to solve the problems for them in that conversation, but you’ve got to step into that conversation saying, ‘I’ve got something to offer you. That thing I have to offer you is not something you’re going to buy today, but we’re going to find out whether our solutions might be a fit for your business problems.’

That’s the approach that we take. I would say to our reps, ‘you’re the doctor who walks into the examination room, and you’ve got a job to do. By the end of this 92nd conversation, you need to understand what the issues are.’

Jeremey: Quite interestingly, some of the best sellers I’ve seen are people who have a moderate pace, not a fast pace, that tend to talk on the softer side. To me, moderate and soft conveys calm confidence. If you just throw a smile on top of that softer, more moderate tone, then you get calm confidence. You can fake it till you make it on that.

Kerry: Yep, I think that’s absolutely true for somebody in an SDR role. Especially when you’re early in your career. You have this tremendous opportunity to talk to people you would never otherwise get to talk to. You have that chance in this job, and a chance to learn continually.

The way you do that is by getting into conversations with these folks if you’re curious and you really want to know what is the situation inside that company.

“Do you have a business problem that we solve? What does that look like? Let’s figure out whether our solution could offer important value to your company.”

If that’s your approach, you can have that calm confidence. If your approach is, ‘I’m hoping that you’re going to like the thing that I say’ … I don’t know how you could possibly be calm and confident.

If you can be curious, you can get those objections that were there all the time out of the way. If you continually get battered over the head with the same thing, it’s going to have an impact on your wellbeing. When somebody answers the phone and you get an objection, deal with it. Address it. Don’t hope it goes away – it’s not going to go away.

Say, ‘look it sounds like I caught you at a really bad time,’ or, ‘am I the 35th salesperson who’s called you today?’ Whatever it is that allows you to say, ‘I belong here, I recognize that you weren’t expecting my call and you may have other things to do. Totally fine.’

Deal with the reality of it. When we think we’re going to turn every prospect into a buyer, when we attach our life’s worth to whether this conversation goes well, you can get pretty far off-kilter. If you’re curious and if you just think about those things that are going to come up all the time and just try to get them out on the table and get them over with, then you can have that calm confidence.

THERE’S A LOT MORE AFTER THIS! Listen to the full podcast for more on leveraging leads

---

If you have a passion for the art and the science of sales, are looking to further your career, or just want to hear some great, practical tips, ‘Hey Salespeople’ is the podcast for you. Subscribe so you can follow along as Jeremey interviews the brightest minds in modern sales to bring you immediately actionable advice. Listen and subscribe here.

 

Here’s how leading companies align their organization with a sales focus to achieve exceptional revenue growth.

Finding it tricky to manage your pipeline? In this episode of Inside Sales, I shared some quick tips that can surely boost your sales management. Keep reading to find out more. RELATED: 5 Strategies For More Accurate Sales Forecasting In this article: How to Manage Your Pipeline with Ease The Hockey Stick Effect Determining Your Sweet […]

The post How To Manage Your Pipeline & Forecast Call appeared first on The Sales Insider.

If you’re an independent contractor or freelancer, you’ll love having the ability to set your own hours and rates. You may also find it a little awkward to negotiate with clients and ask for more money. Knowing how to ask clients for a higher rate is not something we grow up learning about.

Most of us are happy to land our first job at whatever hourly rate or salary our boss deems worthy. But when you work for yourself, you will constantly be challenged with the task of having to ask clients for a higher rate whether you’re seeking a raise or need to increase your prices to match the difficulty of the work.

It takes practice and a winning strategy to help smooth out these conversations you’ll have. Here are some easy ways to smooth out the process with existing clients.

Prove Your Worth

If you want to feel more comfortable with being able to ask clients for a higher rate, focus on proving your worth and overdelivering on value. Set yourself apart from other freelancers if you want to get paid more by going the extra mile and delivering exceptional work.

If you’re able to get your clients certain results and help them reach important business goals and milestones, this can make it easier to ask clients for a higher rate. When you’re clients are successful and doing well, they can have more wiggle room to pay you more. Not to mention, you can very well earn your rate with the quality you deliver and attention to detail.

Give a Reason

When I ask clients for a higher rate, I sometimes offer a specific reason so the request doesn’t seem to come out of left field. In the past, I’ve taken on projects where I’ve quoted something or agreed to a rate with a client only to find out the work was much more than I’d anticipated.

Instead of continuing to accept the lower pay, I’d invoice for the initial project but mention that I’d need to raise prices for similar projects in the future. Be sure to explain how your process was broken down and identify the additional work you did if you feel it deserves a higher rate.

If you have any other reasons for requesting a higher payment, be honest with clients and communicate that to them.

Tell, Don’t Ask

This may seem very bold, but you can always simply tell clients that you’ll be raising your rates instead of asking for permission. Remember, you are your own boss and can choose to raise rates as you see fit.

One thing you can do is initiate a rate increase once a year and give clients plenty of time in advance to approve it or end the contract. Due to inflation, the rise of the cost of living, and tax increases, you should be raising your rates every 12 months or so anyway.

Realize that some clients may not be able to afford your rate increase and that’s okay. Losing a client or two may open up more time and energy to pursue new clients who can afford your new rates.

Summary

Don’t feel bad or awkward when the time comes to ask clients for a higher rate. If the new rate is earned and seems reasonable, it will be received well by clients and well deserved. Also as a general tip, seek to work with clients who will pay you well for what you’re worth and have your best interest at heart.

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Two virtual reality (VR) companies, Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) and Osso VR, recently announced details on their efforts to transform doctor training, with the two focusing on surgical training in particular:

• OMS is rolling out its VR training platform to assist with medical education at the Oxford Simulation and Teaching Resource center at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxfordshire, UK — a teaching institution for Oxford Medical School.
• And Osso VR released results from a recent Osso-funded validation study conducted at the David Geffen Medical School at UCLA, which demonstrated participants who used the company's VR surgical training methods performed 230% better than their traditionally instructed peers, as measured by the Global Rating Scale (GRS) for surgical performance.

Here's what it means: VR and mixed reality solutions are being deployed across healthcare sectors, demonstrating a great deal of potential use cases. 

Extended reality tech — an umbrella term encompassing VR, augmented reality, and mixed reality — has been implemented in 38%of hospitals, per a 2019 Accenture report. 

Among these early moving hospitals is Cedars-Sinai, which found that patients experienced a 24%reduction in pain after being exposed to calming VR experiences. And at UK-based St. Mary's Hospital at Imperial College London, surgeons are using Microsoft's HoloLens to project mixed reality maps onto a patient's body in real time to assist with lower limb reconstructive procedures.

The bigger picture: VR in healthcare remains in its infancy despite widespread interest, but I (Zach) think investing in VR tech to train doctors is a valuable investment right now, considering it's likely the tech will soon become a commonplace in clinical settings.

Not much data exists to determine best practices for VR use scenarios — but engaging doctors with virtual experiential learning is likely to save hospitals time and money in the long run. 

We're still in the early stages of VR's move into healthcare, and without definitive evidence that VR disruption can bring clinical improvements, many care providers may feel uncertain about its place in their organization. However, nearly every major tech company is already invested in a first-party extended reality platform, and the global AR and VR healthcare market is set to grow at an annual rate of 37% from 2017 to hit $5 billion in total value by 2023.

This makes it likely that the tech will evolve to be a common tool in healthcare with big-name tech companies looking to find strong growth areas for their devices.

And the operating room is where the tech seems poised to have the biggest impact. Between 35% and 45% of operating rooms in the world are projected to be integrated with at least one AI or extended reality solution by 2022, per a 2019 Frost & Sullivan report.

For instance, Royal Philips and Microsoft announced earlier this year that they were collaborating to build Azurion, an extended reality platform for the second generation of HoloLens devices, to provide physicians with valuable patient information and internal patient imaging in a heads-up display during the minimally invasive procedures.

Early studies like those from Osso VR would indicate that not only does VR training improve surgical results — but investing in VR training could also be a way to future-proof operations and staff by getting doctors comfortable with the extended reality tools they're likely to encounter in the very near future.

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Warren Buffet famously said, “The more you learn, the more you earn.” And if “there’s no better way to learn than to do,” second best might be to learn from the triumphs and challenges faced by others. 

For all you future Buffets out there, the following sales blogs represent the best-of-the-web when it comes to sales content. You’ll hear from other sales leaders and discover the tips and techniques they use to sell more, faster, and better.

Now, bookmark these sites.

Visit one or two of them at the start of each day.

Pick up some new techniques, hacks, or approaches.

Then, get on with your day and crush your sales goals. 

Let’s begin.

The top sales blogs (in no particular order) :)

1. Sales Hacker

Sales Hacker shares the latest sales tips and tactics, including strategies from top experts in the industry plus killer lead generation, outreach, and negotiation techniques you can implement today.

They not only publish new blog posts often, but also provide useful content such as podcasts, webinars, online courses, sales training, videos, eBooks, and more. Sales Hacker covers a wide range of topics and publishes content in a variety of formats—so, no matter how you prefer to consume your sales content they’ve got you covered.

Read this post: Sell like an entrepreneur: The simple mindset shift that wins more deals

Excerpt: “Professional sellers who think like owners of their territories take more accountability for their outcomes and success, no matter what’s going on around them. They find a way, every time, to make their number. In doing so, they usually create higher value for their clients, higher margins for their organization, and maximize their commission checks. If you’re a sales leader, think about your team for a moment.”
Read more >

2. Close Blog

We're slightly biased on this one, but we're committed to sharing fresh sales advice at least once a week here on the Close blog. Our CEO Steli Efti shares his sales and startup knowledge to help you master the art of sales. From improving your sales techniques to managing the most complex sales objections, he covers it all.

In addition to valuable sales content, we’ve got downloadable sales books, templates, checklists, scripts, and more. He holds nothing back.

Get a head start today by downloading all of Steli’s books and resources for sales reps, managers, and founders for free.

Read this post: Master the sales follow-up with this proven formula (Tells you exactly when and how to follow-up for maximum results)

Excerpt: “It's easy to focus on the initial contact. The first meeting. The email you've sent to someone important. You reach out to someone and then feel good about yourself. You've done your job, you've pitched and reached out. You've asked for a meeting/call/etc. Now all you have to do is sit around and wait for them to respond.

And that's the problem—you have no follow-up hustle.”
Read more >

3. Sales Gravy

Jeb Blount, sales acceleration specialist and bestselling author of Fanatical Prospecting, shares thousands of free articles, videos, podcasts, tips, training, and advice from the top sales experts on his blog.

Read this post: Leadership is human

Excerpt: “Organizations of all kinds regularly send their people to leadership-development training. spending literally billions on training current and future leaders. 

Yet studies, data, and our research through interviews indicate that the state of leadership in the workplace is atrocious.

Why? Leaders at all levels fail at the interpersonal side of leadership—they forget or ignore the fact that leadership is personal.”
Read more >

4. SalesFolk Blog

If you’re looking to improve your sales email skills, the SalesFolk blog has you covered. They provide cold email examples (and not just the good, but also the ugly), suggestions, and new ideas. 

They even have a category called “Hall of Shame” where they share the worst prospecting emails (ouch!). Just ensure you don’t make the same cold email mistakes.

Read this post: 3 cold email mistakes that ruin sales conversations

Excerpt: “If you’re selling to a broad range of titles and industries, it can be tempting to aim for the most generic message possible that could appeal to anyone on your list. Instead of narrowing down your audience and your value propositions, you pick the broadest reasons why someone would choose to buy your product or work with your company.

And it doesn’t work. It never does.”
Read more >

5. InsideSales.com Blog

The InsideSales.com blog is a great resource for a variety of sales roles. Updated often, they share how-to’s, essays, and articles on all things sales and marketing.

Read this post: [Infographic] 8 skills every top performer should have

Excerpt: “What makes a Zig Ziglar, Grant Cardone, David Ogilvy, or Dale Carnegie?

What separates the good from the truly great? And what sales techniques will help reps get more business, handle objections, and have better overall sales conversations?

We made a list of the sales skills of the best sales reps, and you know what? Talking people into buying things wasn’t high on the list.”
Read more >

6. CloserIQ Sales Blog

CloserIQ’s network of more than 30,000 sales leaders share their sales strategies straight from the trenches. As a sales recruitment firm, their blog is perfect for sales managers and recruiters with content focused on hiring top sales talent and sales operations.

Read this post: 7 interview questions to find rockstar sales reps

Excerpt: “When hiring for a rockstar sales fleet, the interview questions can make or break you. Add these magic bullet questions to your next round of sales interviews and you’ll find the reps that will thrive. You’ll also know which candidates should be shown the door.”
Read more >

7. OpenView Venture Partners Blog

OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture firm with experience in investing and building sales teams for early-stage software companies.

On their blog, they share insights and actionable advice for  sales managers—including using metrics to ramp up your sales team, selling to enterprise customers, product-led growth, and more.

Read this post: Rethinking the product demo for product led growth

Excerpt: “Remember, customers are trying to make an informed buying decision in the shortest time possible. Is your process optimized to help buyers quickly experience your product’s “aha” moment? Or are you expecting in-trial customers to complete what amounts to an implementation process before they can begin to see the value of the product?”
Read more >

8. Predictable Revenue Blog

Aaron Ross, award-winning and bestselling author, has spent years teaching companies how to double or triple (or more) their sales. On the Predictable Revenue blog, he and his team share the latest B2B sales trends.

Recent topics on this sales blog include cultivating confidence, growth secrets, and the power of long-term goal setting.

Read this post: The key to getting your first 10 customers isn’t sales — it’s product

Excerpt: “In addition to speaking with as many potential users as possible, there are other methods of ascertaining the effectiveness and necessity of your product. For example, I suggest employing the always illuminating toothbrush test, which, simply put, means understanding how many times your users log into your product each day. Is it twice per day (the same amount of times they’d use a toothbrush)? If so, you’ve likely hit on a pretty powerful need.”
Read more >

9. Jill Konrath’s Sales Blog

Sales thought leader Jill Konrath is always searching for the freshest sales strategies. Then, she shares her findings with the world.

Discover how to speed up your sales and win more business, as Jill combines first-hand experiences and sales tips like a pro. Her most recent topics are focused on value propositions, conversational sales, and keeping competitors out of reach.

Read this post: Is your value proposition strong enough?

Excerpt: “Clearly articulated value propositions can be used to develop highly effective phone or email messages that highlight your buyers’ primary issues/challenges and the key business results your product, service or solution addresses. They can also be used to create buyer-centric presentations, customized proposals and spot-on marketing initiatives.

Let me be clear though. There is not one single value proposition that rules them all.”
Read more >

10. The Make It Happen Blog

Ready to make it happen? John Barrows, a sales trainer to the world’s fastest-growing companies, is a valuable sales resource for leaders looking to accelerate their revenue teams.

His sales-related blog posts are engaging and unforgettable. Learn through his personal experiences in sales—including topics like how John knew he was going to lose a $200k deal and 11 sales tips he learned after getting drunk in Vegas and buying a timeshare (sounds fun!).

Read this post: 5 voicemail tactics to get more callbacks

Excerpt: “Voicemails should be part of any overall contact strategy that includes a mix of calls, e-mails, social selling and other ways of getting your message in front of the right target prospect. If your contact strategy includes quality and relevant messaging each time it increases the chances of someone responding. They may not call you back from your voicemail but if they see (e-mail), hear (call/voicemail), see, hear different values of your solution they may eventually reach back out. The question isn’t whether or not to leave voicemails, it’s how do you leave good voicemails?”
Read more >

11. Bonus! The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarino

Author of The Sales Blog, Anthony Iannarino, is a reputable speaker, author, and sales leader. His sales tips are straightforward and refreshing, making his style of writing easily digestible and practical.

Read this post: The three most important metrics in sales

Excerpt: “Everything is important, but not everything can most important. When it comes to metrics, more is not always better. There are, however, some metrics that tell you much about your sales results—and your challenges. These three metrics in sales can tell you a lot about what you need to know to improve.”
Read more >

Follow each of these sales blogs and positively impact the way you approach selling. 

Now, go on. What are you waiting for?!

Want to take your sales game even further? Download our free Startup Sales Resource Bundle for valuable templates, checklists, scripts, and books.

DOWNLOAD THE STARTUP SALES RESOURCE BUNDLE

Did you know the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20%?

What if I could help you beat that statistic, raising your probability to 20% or more?

It is possible — if you understand the problem and adopt the simple solution I’ll share with you in just a minute.

First, the problem…

To be honest, this isn’t anything you don’t already know. You experience it in your own inbox every day.

You see, people’s inboxes are more jam-packed than ever before, and tons of it is junk. If a subject line or message doesn’t stand out, it gets ignored. If an email even remotely resembles bad outreach emails, it gets deleted. No questions asked.

The solution is clear: You have to stand out. You have to do something unique. And that’s just what I’m going to show you in this article.

Keep reading to learn how to use a custom landing page and hyper-personalization with your email marketing strategy, so you can beat the bland, copy-cat emails that fill your prospects’ inboxes.

Why an Account-Based Marketing Style Wins

Account-based marketing is the idea of treating each prospect or target client as a market of one.

With custom landing pages, you’ll be doing exactly that.

In traditional inbound marketing, you are putting out content and marketing messages in attempts to wrangle a few sharks in a sea of minnows.

The problem is there are four million blog posts published per day. Inbound for high-level targets just ain’t gonna happen.

While it can work, and it can be extremely cheap, as a lead conversion tactic, it’s not very effective. You end up losing a lot of leads that could have (or should have) converted.

On the other hand, account-based marketing allows you to deeply personalize the marketing content a prospect receives. And personalization is more important than ever: 281.1 billion emails are sent daily.

Personalization can skyrocket email open rates to increase closing potential by 28%.

Audience targeting works.

But I know what you are thinking: how the heck am I supposed to personalize hundreds to thousands of landing pages for prospects?

Fortunately, you don’t need to go that deep on standard leads.

Instead, you just need to personalize landing pages based on audiences, sub-types, and interests.

Let me show you a few examples of this in action.

Three Examples of Stellar Custom Audience Landing Pages

When you send leads an email, how do you stand out? What aspects of that email provide value beyond a generic sales pitch in hopes of landing a demo or even a sale?

If you can’t answer that, it’s time to rework your strategy.

Thankfully, this one strategy is rarely used (making it unique) and takes very little work. But, be sure you do your competitor research to see what ad/outreach copy your competitors use to help you differentiate:

(Image Source)

Slack is a prime example of this. Currently, Slack is an extensible program that just about anyone can use. They have a wildly diverse target market that simply can’t be targeted with basic ads or outreach campaigns.

Their prospecting emails can’t just say “use Slack to communicate with your team.” While that’s a basic summary of their service, it’s not personalized whatsoever.

Instead, they take a vastly different strategy, personalizing email campaigns and landing pages for common audience segments, like IT:

Source: Slack IT Page

And engineering:

Source: Slack Engineering Page

Which lead conversion approach would you prefer if you were an engineering professional?

1. A generic landing page that says “use Slack as a team workspace”
2. Or a landing page with laser-focused messaging targeting exact pain points like “deploying workflows faster”

I think you know the answer.

And Slack isn’t the only one doing this. Freshdesk, a help-desk software, is another prime example of audience-based landing page customization. Similarly, Freshdesk targets niche markets with personalized copy and examples, like universities:

Source: Freshdesk University Page

They even go so far as to provide testimonials from customers within that space, further personalizing the messaging to fit their target market.

Now that’s a custom landing page. One of the best out there. They then repeat this process for other segments like healthcare, e-commerce, and more:

Source: Freshdesk Healthcare Page

Evernote also personalizes their prospecting by directing leads to specific landing pages curated for their audience segment:

Source: Evernote Premium Page

For their premium plan, they target office workers and startups with powerful task tools and project management.

For their basic plan, they target a broader market as a generalized note-taking application:

Source: Evernote Basic Page

So, how do you replicate this strategy without hiring a developer to produce expensive custom landing pages? How do you do it without bogging down the design and development team?

Let’s take a look…

How to Create Custom Landing Pages For Prospects (At Scale)

Did you know that only 50% of B2B companies have a properly optimized and responsive website? I get it, creating custom landing pages can seem like a ton of work. In reality, they can be spun up within a matter of hours for a campaign, even without a custom developer or bogging down your staff.

There are a few different ways to go about developing custom landing pages with your email marketing services.

Here are two of the easiest ways to get started as soon as possible.

Option 1: Use a Website Builder

If you don’t have a custom developer, using a website builder is likely your best bet.

Some good examples of website builders are SiteBuilder, Wix, and Weebly. Using one of these top website builders is one of the quickest and easiest ways to build an online presence for your brand. These services allow you to run quick pages that exist solely for the purpose of your campaign.

And these sites are perfect for launching landing pages for a few reasons:

1. They are extremely cheap to get started (pennies to the dollar).
2. They have drag-and-drop building + duplicate page abilities to scale your campaign.
3. They take zero coding knowledge.
4. You can customize the pages with dynamic elements like video, audio, podcasts, and more.
5. They make it easier than ever to start a blog and integrate it into your site.
6. And they’ve got countless free themes and customization to match your branding.

With a website builder, you can design and customize landing pages instantly using pre-built themes that you can simply tweak to fit your company branding. Case in point: this travel hacking blog.

The great thing about website builders for quick landing page development is the themes. For example, if you want to target medical professionals, there is likely a theme for that.

Want to target lawyers? There is a theme for it.

If you want to spin up campaigns ASAP, there is no better option.

Compared to custom development of landing pages for segments, you are paying almost nothing.

When it comes to your landing pages, they don’t need to be fancy development pages that cost a fortune. Using tools like heatmaps, you simply start to assess what factors on your page are performing (and underperforming):

(Image Source)

With the information these tools give you, you can tweak buttons, placements, and calls to action to improve your results. And with your landing page builder’s drag-and-drop functionality, making those changes is simple.

In short, you can make dramatic landing page changes without waiting on a developer or paying a fortune each time.

Option 2: Go Big With Custom Development

If you have the time and money, custom development is always an amazing option. You can build beautiful back-end fields that help you streamline landing page development for multiple target audiences.

Source: Moz Message Match Post

BuzzSprout excels at this, using templated pages and tweaking simple copy changes to fit new audiences, like new podcasters.

With this approach, you can maximize your custom development without creating thousands of pages and running costs too high.

Custom development of landing pages is often done with conversions in mind first, which can lead to big boosts in your overall sales. But, they often take far longer to develop and cost much more than a simple building tool.

With custom development, time constraints can sometimes be a plus, too. They keep you from trying to scale too fast for your own good. Plus, it gives you time to do some competitor research to see what tactics and landing page offers your competitors are giving.

Either way, you can’t go wrong with creating custom landing pages for your prospects.

Master Your Messaging

Custom landing pages need to be simple, targeted, and to the point.

Just like we saw with Freshdesk and Slack, your audience targeting needs to be laser-focused.

No generic messaging about how your products and services save them money. Instead, you need to speak directly to their needs and specific pain points, even calling out their segment.

For instance, check out these specific questions you should address, customized to each target or segment:

(Image Source)

Start by addressing your audience immediately and giving a short elevator pitch customized to their needs.

Optimizely does this perfectly, targeting Microsoft as their market:

(Image Source)

Below the headline, they craft a simple, yet effective value proposition:

Optimizely makes it easy to test and personalize your website or mobile app.

Their calls to action are based on acquiring more knowledge, rather than a direct and immediate sale:

Learn more. Test it out.

Instead of hard-selling, they aim to educate and show why Microsoft needs their product.

Aim to get the messaging on your landing page right, so you can improve your close rates.

Bringing It Full Circle

Thanks to some of the best email marketing platforms like Convert Kit or Get Response, it’s easier than ever to engage with your audience. However, as we’ve seen, email conversion rates are abysmal at best.

To have good results with email, personalize each email. Try to provide real value by focusing your offer directly towards customer pain points.

That means you’ll need to target your emails too — splitting them up into deeply niche audience segments.

Take notes from companies like Slack, Freshdesk, and Evernote, who are growing year over year through tactics just like this.

If you need to use a website builder, you can spin up pages like these in just minutes with zero web development background.

The point is to do it. Don’t let technology get in the way. Leverage the tools available to you to build custom landing pages that work in tandem with your emails. Whether you’re running cold campaigns or warm, this will send your email conversion rates sky high.

The post Custom Landing Pages: The Unlikely Answer to Low Email Lead Conversion appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Ecommerce and social media have fundamentally changed the average customer journey. Purchasing power, user reviews, and information about products and services can all be accessed online.

As a result, it’s getting harder and harder to reach prospective or even current customers with traditional marketing tactics. Email marketing allows companies to access, convert, and nurture customers who don’t answer their phone and don’t pay attention to billboards or the daily onslaught of digital ads.

Get started with this brief guide to email marketing. We briefly cover all of the basics, from what it is and what it does to how to do it well and how to know whether it works.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is the use of automation, email software, and customer data to send mass commercial emails to potential and current customers.

There are many different types of email marketing tactics and templates, each one designed to achieve a specific commercial outcome. For example, an email from your favorite clothing company advertising a new product is designed to generate sales. On the other hand, a company’s email marketing goal may be to improve brand awareness. In this case, you might receive a link to an inspirational story on that brand’s website.

On a high level, however, email marketing is designed to establish, grow, and nurture a profitable relationship with a target audience.

Why use email marketing?

Email is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to accomplish the following goals throughout the sales process:

• Grow brand awareness
• Find and engage with prospective customers
• Drive leads further down the sales funnel
• Close a deal or make a sale
• Improve customer retention

Before looking at email templates or scheduling a meeting to discuss email delivery cadence, carefully consider what you want to achieve with the emails you plan to send. And remember: Email marketing works best when it’s part of a larger marketing strategy. So as you consider the many ways connecting with prospects and customers via email may help your business, keep in mind the tactics you’re already using and the ways email marketing can help support them.

Grow brand awareness

The key to any company’s growth is getting people to talk about and recommend your services or products to others. So how do you do it via email?

Davidson & Company found that the key to a successful brand awareness email was finding out what resonated the most with their customer base. With this knowledge, the company could provide customers with truly valuable resources on a consistent basis, nurturing trust and engagement. Additionally, they found that humanizing their brand helped them connect with their customers on a deeper level.

Below are some effective email marketing tactics for growing customer trust and humanizing your brand:

1. Send what your readers want to read.

What are their main pain points? What resources would offer true value to your customers? Keeping your readers engaged with your brand is all about sending them content they want to read about: updates on industry trends they follow, stories that inspire them, etc.

The more appealing your content is to the reader, the more likely they are to share it with others.

2. Give your readers a reason to trust you and click through.

The key to building a trustworthy relationship with your customer is assuring them that you have their best interests in mind. A great trust-building email tactic is to frequently send your customers valuable information, without trying to sell anything.

Not only are people more likely to open emails from trusted sources — even when the source is a brand! — but they’ll also be more likely to stay loyal if the relationship feels mutual. Send free ebooks, templates, and resources to show your readers that you care about them, not their money. They’ll click through.

3. Humanize your brand to connect with customers on a deeper level.

It’s nearly impossible for a real person to feel connected to a faceless, corporate business. Make your brand more accessible and relatable by featuring the faces behind the company.For example, avoid sending emails from a generic address like support@company.co. Instead, use a real employee’s name in the {from} and {signature} field.

Another idea is to add a small headshot of that employee in the signature line to put a literal face behind the name. Additionally, if you are including product photos in the body of your marketing emails, consider using shots that feature real employees using and making those products.

A writer at Mark Growth said it perfectly: “You want to be a business that people like. And to do that, you need to show them that humans are at the forefront of your business.”

Find and engage with prospective customers

A prospective (or cold) email is a marketing tactic designed to start a conversation with a potential customer in the hopes that it will lead to a sale. The first stage of a cold email campaign is the identification, research, and qualification of prospects.

This process can be streamlined by using CRM (customer relationship management) software to segment, score, monitor, and track prospects — all in one organized place.

Once you have a list of qualified leads, it’s time to start crafting your prospecting/cold email campaign. Sales Hacker recommends starting with a four-piece framework they call SP30:

• Situation: What is the situation a potential customer might face that your product or service would fix (e.g., a broken AC unit)?
• Problem: What problem does the above situation cause? By identifying the problem (hot, sleepless nights), you can appeal to the emotional aspect of your customer’s pain points.
• Third-party success: Talk about a success story where you helped a third-party customer solve a similar problem. Make sure to include why your company’s solution is better than anything offered by your competitors (e.g., better turnaround and lower cost).
• Offer: This is your CTA (call to action). The goal is to start a conversation with the prospect. Ask if they are free for a quick 15-minute phone call, or offer a free demo.

In addition to the SP30 framework, it’s important to consider best practices for subject lines, opening lines, word count, format, and more.

Want to know how effective your prospective emails are? Take the quiz!

Drive leads further down the sales funnel

Once you have captured the attention of leads and intrigued prospects, the next step is to engage and drive them through your sales funnel. This type of email campaign will most likely vary, depending on the customer’s position within the funnel. For example, you wouldn’t want to send a blast of promotional emails to a top-of-the-funnel lead, because it might seem too aggressive too soon and could cause you to lose a customer.

Regardless of customer position, follow these tips when drafting a funnel-driving email:

1. Experiment with subject lines. How can you best capture the attention and intrigue of your customer?
2. Personalize your opening lines. Avoid generic opening lines by using engaging phrases like, “I loved your blog post . . .” and “I was excited to hear about . . .”
3. Keep it short and sweet. Emails between 50 and 125 words tend to get the best response rates, at just above 50%.
4. Include a clear CTA. Don’t make your reader guess. Provide clear direction for the customer to keep the conversation going.

Crazy Eye Marketing, LeadFuze, and several others recently sat down with us to talk about which strategies and formats have worked best for them.

Email marketing best practices

You know why you’re using email marketing. Your goals are set. Your North Star of customer retention or brand awareness is clearly in view. It’s time to start thinking about the words on the page. Or the screen, as it were.

While there are many different types of email marketing campaigns, they all share a common set of “best practice” rules. Stick to these no matter what message you’re conveying. Each will help you gradually build meaningful relationships with your target audience.

1. Personalize by including a snippet of information specific to the customer.

Remember the importance of humanizing your brand? Personalizing each email is just one way to connect with your reader.

Customers are 75% more likely to purchase services or products from brands that recognize their name and remember information about them. While highly personalized emails are not as scalable in a large marketing campaign, they can be incredibly useful for closing deals with high-profile clients.

Personalization on a scalable level, however, can be achieved with email services such as Mailchimp. Merge fields and templates are used to auto-populate information, such as the first and last name of a customer — perfect for personalizing mass-scale email blasts.

2. Create a sense of urgency and FOMO.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a powerful force, and not just for the social-media obsessed. Consumers young and old are more likely to try a service or product that everyone else already has. Appeal to your prospects’ FOMO with data like, “1,000 customers have already signed up for our free trial.”

Sense of urgency is another form of FOMO that is highly effective at driving sales. Customers are much more likely to quickly act on an offer or sign up for something if they feel time is running out. After all, no one wants to miss out on an incredible deal!

3. Talk less about yourself and more about your customer.

Consumers care about what your product or service can do for them. The quicker you can get your readers to the, “aha” moment, the better. When writing an email campaign, focus less on talking about who you are and why your company is different. Instead, market your service or product by explaining how it will make the customer’s life better.

A great way to do this is to create an email campaign that addresses the main pain points of your target audience. Identify a common situation or problem your customer deals with, and explain why your product is the solution.

4. Make promises you can keep.

It can be tempting to use click-baity subject lines and wording to improve your open or click-through rate, but don’t do it. The quickest way to lose a customer is by tricking them or lying to them. The body of your email should align with whatever promise or offer you make in the subject line.

Additionally, whatever CTA you use in the body of your email, make sure the corresponding landing page quickly and thoroughly delivers.

Finally, don’t feel like you have to reinvent the wheel. Set yourself up for success by looking at what kind of subject lines have worked for other companies, and why.

Key email marketing success metrics

Email marketing is an iterative process, so try not to get overly discouraged if a campaign flops. In fact, those flops are often the most insightful.

CRM software and automated email platforms are useful tools that use built-in dashboards to provide key email metrics and insights from your campaigns. Testing and analyzing your campaign data on a regular basis will help you identify what’s working and what isn’t, as well as how to adjust strategy accordingly. Below are three common email metrics for measuring a campaign’s success:

• Open rate: This refers to the total number of opened emails, expressed as a percentage of the total number of emails sent. A positive open rate is indicative of an engaging and successful subject line.
• Click-to-open rate: The click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the percentage of people who click through to your website after opening your email. A high CTOR means the body of your email was engaging and well written for your target audience.
• Reply rate: An email marketing campaign’s reply rate is highly revealing in terms of its success. A high reply rate helps you determine how much your content resonates with your target audience.

Most email marketing platforms will feature a dashboard for recording and analyzing key metrics, including open rate, bounce rate, click-to-open rate, and more. These metrics offer valuable insights for all aspects of an email campaign. For example, open rate helps you identify whether or not your subject lines are engaging enough. The CTOR is indicative of how well the email copy itself is performing.

Email marketing for the win

There is perhaps nothing more valuable to a company than a direct line to prospective and current customers. It doesn’t matter whether your goal is lead generation, brand awareness, sales, or customer retention — there’s an email marketing strategy or template to help get you there.

And remember, successful email marketing is a product of constant iteration and learning. A flopped campaign is simply an opportunity to grow and to learn about your customers.