I’m not listening to Wiarton Willie – spring is just around the corner. And this year, instead of focusing on the birthplace of dust itself (my home), I’ll be going Mrs. Clean on Google Tag Manager. Join me and make the most of your GTM account with simple account cleaning hacks.

Multiple users, multiple workspaces

If you are sharing your GTM account with other team members or an outside agency, consider using multiple workspaces. Workspaces operate like sandboxes, giving multiple people the freedom to play around with different triggers, tags, and variables.

So what’s the issue with only using one workspace? If two people are working in the same workplace at once, you run the risk of publishing each other’s changes. But by implementing two or more workspaces, you’re able to work in GTM at the same time.

Our game plan going forward? One workspace for our client and one workspace for Stryvers. How should you approach workspaces? Think about GTM workflow. If you have multiple team members working in GTM, think about a setting up workspace for each employee. If you are working with an agency, try our set up. Either way, you’ll be eliminating risk and running a much cleaner process.

Naming conventions will save your life

Okay, that was dramatic. But setting up a naming structure will save serious headaches in the future. Plus, you’ll be setting up your team for a more streamlined approach when it comes to managing GTM accounts.

So where do you start? Set up a naming convention for your triggers, tags, and variables. The more granular you can get with your naming conventions the better. Specifics will ensure you have a system that will scale with your business as you add more tags, triggers, and variables to your account.

We’ll be implementing a naming convention for our tags that’s simple and effective by answering these three questions: What type of tag is it? How does it fire? If it’s a Google Analytics tag, what info will be passed? With this approach, a GA event tag that fires when a contact form is submitted would be titled: GA – Event – Contact Form Submit. On the flip side, an AdRoll pixel would look something like this: AdRoll – Page Load.

Versions deserve some extra TLC

We all love to just hit submit and have Google tell us to sing like no one’s listening, but take some time before hitting publish. Each version should have a version name and a version description. Include the date and a high-level overview in the version name field. Use your description to give a brief overview of what work was completed and don’t forget to include who published the change to the container.

Pro tip: If you are rolling out a bunch of changes at once, save them all individually before publishing.

Folders will make everything better

For the organizationally obsessed, folders are a must. Folders are like pantry shelving: without them you can’t find what you are looking for. You trip over cans of tuna in an effort to get to the cookie jar. It’s simple: if your tags and triggers aren’t organized into folders, get organizing.

Like you did with the naming conventions, ask yourself what makes the most sense for your business. A great place to start is organizing your folders by application (think: Google Analytics, Marketing Technology, and Social Media). Keep in mind that folders in GTM are only one level. You aren’t able to create nested folders and one tag can’t exist in more than one folder.

Clean up your stats

Truth gun: Like any marketer, I’m tempted to have a low bounce rate. But the truth will set you free. Take a deep dive into your GA account and ensure that meaningless event tags aren’t over-inflating your bounce rate. How? Make sure that any tag that shouldn’t be counted as a meaningful interaction is set as a non-hit interaction hit. If you don’t, you run the risk of seriously skewing your data.

As an example, say you’ve set up an event tag to track scroll depth at 25% intervals. Chandler lands on your homepage and at page load 25% of the screen is taken up by your website. Chandler sees the banner but immediately realizes he’s in the wrong spot and Pogo-sticks back to Google. At that point, GTM sends event data to your GA account and your bounce rate for that session is 0%. Your data at that point is skewed in a big way.

Don’t let that happen! Clean it up.

Get your clean on

It’s time to get tidy. You cook better meals in a clean kitchen right? The same logic applies for Google Tag Manager. Once you have a clean account, it will make managing, launching, and analyzing tags that much better. You’ll be more productive and your data will be more meaningful. So go on, get your clean on.

Even the least experienced salespeople admit that getting leads is simple. But it is the real art to turn those leads into buyers.

According to WordStream blog post, a typical website conversion rate is about 2,35%. Although, the top 10% of companies with excellent marketing strategies get 3 to 5 times higher conversion rate. If you are not one of those, you have much space to grow.

One of the secrets of turning a lead into a client is to convince them that your goods or services are exactly what they need. And to achieve that, you must be aware of what they actually need. Yep, simple as that.

To receive more information about your potential customer, strive to bring up powerful open-ended sales questions. More questions lead to greater chances to get valuable information. In addition to putting proper queries, you must motivate your respondents to reply. People are tired of boring surveys leaving them with a “nobody-really-cares-what-I-think” aftertaste.

You should be different from your competitors. Aim at building trust and understanding people and not just convincing them to buy your product or service. Trust is the key to winning those loyal customers you’ve always wanted to have.

In this post, we will cover all aspects regarding open-ended questions for sales that will help you boost the number of your deals.

1. What are open-ended questions in sales?

Here is an interesting observation by Sales Hacker: when your likely customer talks for at least 30% of the time, sales conversion rates improve dramatically. And vice versa, if your likely customer talks less than 30% of the time they spend with you, conversion rates go down.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that you must do all you are capable of doing to make your clients TALK. The best method to encourage them to chat is to display interest in what they have to say. How? By settling proper queries.

Objectives of open-ended questions

Queries which don’t have any special structure and don’t require a candidate to respond in a specific way are known as open-ended questions. They are aimed at motivating the potential buyer to voice what he thinks or feels, specify particular issues, and provide the seller with meaningful information.

Here is an illustration of an open-ended query:
“What was the greatest thing which happened to you last year?”

Most likely, your potential client will say more than one word to respond to this question.

Compare with:
“Did anything special happen to you last year?”

In this case, the reply will be either “Yes” or “No”. It is unlikely that your potential client will say more.

Why ask open-ended questions in sales

This type of queries is aimed at several issues:

• They provide you with a better idea of who your potential customer is;
• They play a significant role when you are trying to establish trust with the likely client;
• They spark meaningful conversations.

However, remember that such questions result in long discussions. Also, they are not good for receiving particular answers from your candidates.

For example, if you want to find out whether your potential client likes reading, you don’t ask what his favorite genre is. You’d better ask:
“How often do you purchase books for yourself?”
or
“Why do you usually purchase books in retail stores/online?”

What information can you collect when asking open-ended questions in sales?

Such queries help sales professionals:

• Explore customer needs;
• Learn the buyer’s objections;
• Build trust and understanding;
• Foresee and minimize risks;
• Create new sales opportunities.

There are certain features which make open-ended questions different special:

• To reply to the query a person needs to ponder and reflect on the issue;
• The reply is based on ideas and opinions, but not facts;
• Open-ended questions usually allow dialogues between the vendor and the buyer.

For example, if you ask “Which result do you expect if you implement this solution?”, most likely, you will not get the answer you’re interested in. Especially, if you are looking for insights regarding timing and budget. You should add some structure, otherwise, your client might talk about things not related to your topic.

Of course, you need some practice to develop the best open-ended sales questions and use them successfully. But once you learn that, you won’t regret spending time on them. Great sales will be a good reward.

When to ask open-ended sales questions?

You can appeal to such queries throughout the whole dialogue with your lead. They work great at the start of your conversation when you get acquainted with your likely customer and need to gain their trust. They are perfect to collect information.

Consider some ideas from Sales Strategy Workshop on when to ask open-ended questions:

• Exercise them whenever you are eager to receive a thoughtful response;
• Exercise them if you mean to receive unfiltered replies;
• Exercise them whenever you are sure that the answer will give you more insights.

Nota bene, avoid appealing to open-ended questions if you intend to sustain control over the conversation with your client.

2. What to do when asking good open-ended sales questions?

The hardest part about running this type of queries is not to turn into a soulless robot. Otherwise, you will ruin the very essence of your dialogue – building trust.

While asking open-ended questions, make sure you:

1. Encourage your potential client to unveil more and do not interpret their answers

Imagine you are interviewing a star or a guru and you’ve got a limited amount of time to talk to them. You are eager to get as much information as possible, so you strive to ask more open-ended questions and encourage your interviewee to chat more. Later, you’ll have time to analyze the answers. But right now concentrate on getting them.

Consider having some scheme of subsequent queries which motivate your likely customer to share more. For example:

• “What was your biggest and/or best purchase last year?” – the question is somewhat general and your candidate might need time to respond;
• “What problems did this purchase help you resolve?” – this is a more specific question;
• “How did you benefit from this?” – even a more specific question which gives you a chance to include your goods or services into the dialogue.

Go from a broad perspective to a narrower one. This will help avoid interpretation and will encourage your customers to provide more information.

2. Show curiosity. No matter what your customer says

Best salespeople are usually good listeners. And they are always curious about other people. This is in their nature.

If you are curious about your customer, they will feel it and will be more likely to share their problems and thoughts with you. Genuine curiosity will help build trust since a client will feel that you care.

Be aware that you will get an opposite result if your customer feels that your curiosity is fake and the only thing you want is to sell them something. Needless to say, you will hardly manage to do that. That is the reason why you should do everything possible to display a real interest in your client. Even if what she says has nothing to do with your goods or services.

3. Make your questions and answers personalized

Avoid being too general when scripting open-ended questions for sales. It is obvious that people tend to chat more when answering personalized questions.

Personalize your questions according to:

• The person’s business (name, amount of people working, challenges);
• The stage of the sales pipeline your customer currently is at;
• The scope of your dialogue (don’t jump to other subjects).

Also, avoid asking the same questions you have already asked in a previous conversation.

4. Remember to stay quiet when necessary

You may think that salespeople are real chatterboxes. Well, not the best ones. Those who sell a lot possess the skill of “strategic silence” or practice the strategy of what Michael Hyatt calls “dead air”.

They keep quiet when necessary and let their clients share more.

For example, your client shares her experience in hiring people and then she stops all of a sudden. Give her some time to think and tell you exactly who she wants to tell. You will be rewarded with worthy information.

How do you understand when to stop? Well, trust your intuition and rely on your experience. Usually, it is better to say nothing than to say too much.

3. What not to do when asking good open-ended sales questions?

Yes, it is necessary to know what strategies to use to master open-ended questions. Nonetheless, it is equally important to be aware of the crucial mistakes which undermine all your hard work. We all know how frustrating that is to labor over something and get nothing at the end all because of a silly error. In order not to find yourself in such a situation, let’s have a look at some typical pitfalls to be avoided:

1. Don’t interrogate your client

Yes, you should have a set of great open-ended sales questions before approaching your potential clients. But please don’t bombard them with those questions without contributing some lightness to the dialogue. We bet you don’t want your customers to get that awful feeling of being interviewed as if by an impersonal automatic caller, do you?

Your client will simply close up and both of you will waste each other’s time. Nobody likes to be interrogated.

An effective tactic is to mix open-ended with closed-ended queries plus add some jokes or unrelated stories. This will make the whole conversation more informal and trustworthy. Help your customer relax and she’ll be ready to reveal to you more than you expect.

2. Don’t give the same comments to each answer you get

It feels just terrible when someone you talk to exclaims “wow!” or “how interesting!” all the time. I mean ALL THE TIME no matter what you say:

“I think this thing is good” – “Wow!”
“I probably need to know more about how it works” – “How interesting!”.

Fake enthusiasm is annoying.

Majority of people will feel that you are not sincere and… they will close up.

It is strongly advisable to listen to all the answers carefully and react appropriately. And it is simple if you are really interested in what your likely customers say.

3. Don’t reply to your own questions

You have probably talked to several customers already. Or you may have your own opinion on the topics you raise in the questions. But remember, when you are talking the whole time, you will only hear yourself talking. And if you are listening, you’ll hear your client, who is more important to your sales.

For instance, you can ask:
“What was the best thing which happened to you last year?” – and then say something like
“the previous customer said the best thing was X”.

Your customer might have a different answer, but once she hears about X, she might also say “X”. The best thing is to keep other opinions to yourself. Give your client a chance to speak their mind.

4. Don’t rush your clients with answers

Each salesperson has their business goals. And we get it, some of those are time-bound. However, no matter what the time-pressure is, it never justifies poor interviews with potential customers.

The costliest mistake you can make is to jump from one question to another and not let your customer say everything she wants. You may lose valuable information and waste a chance to build trust with your client.

Also, people tend to return to previous questions when they have something more to say. Give them an opportunity to do so and a chance to yourself to find out more about your clients.

5. Don’t forget to listen to your client

The most experienced and successful salespeople admit that a huge part of their work is about merely listening to customers.

And we don’t mean simply hearing words. You must learn to listen actively and understand what your client has to say. Stay engaged for the whole conversation. Your client will appreciate that.

Do not underestimate the meaning of listening. Otherwise, you will destroy the very essence of open-ended questions.

Image Source: Center for Creative Leadership.

6. Don’t offer a solution

You may be a great problem solver in life and have a piece of advice for any situation. But when it comes to open-ended questions, you might need to forget about this valuable quality of yours for a while.

You should target at learning about your client as much as possible and (maybe) later offer them a solution.

Besides, if you ignore the impulse to advise at this stage, you might get a better insight on how to help your clients. This will offer a good bonus to your sales.

4. What are the questions you shouldn’t ask?

Let’s face the truth: most of the salespeople are annoying. Their goal is to sell and not to be an attentive listener, eager to help with asking the right questions. And your potential customers are well aware of that. Naturally, they do not want to talk much to salespeople even when they are in need of buying something.

Why? Most often because of the questions salespeople ask. According to the author of “Game Plan Selling System” Marc Wayshak, even a neutral “How are you?” is actually killing your ability to sell.

If you are eager to be different from the majority of salespeople and become one of those that close dozens of deals daily, you’d better avoid bringing “bad” open-ended questions.

Pay attention to these examples of open-ended questions for sales which won’t work well:

1. How much are you willing to spend?

Most likely, you will not get an honest answer. Go with an assumption that your client has the money to buy your goods or services (you just need to convince him to do so).

As Ian Altman claims in his article for Forbes, your best buyer is the one who has already thought of a way out. And once you offer them something better, they will be ready to pay more.

2. What is your worst pain?

Your client may say something like “If I don’t find a solution, I won’t get promoted”. Eventually, the biggest pain is not the fact of not being promoted. It is in the emotions which your customer will experience if he does not get a better position.

3. What do your clients say about the quality of goods or services you provide?

It is unlikely that your potential partner will pamper you an honest answer. Even if his products are not good and you can provide with the simpliest way to change that. It hurts to admit you are not good at something.

4. What kind of goods or services are you ready to pay for?

It is clear that your final idea is to sell. But don’t underline it! Your client will get a feeling that the only thing you want is money and not solving their problem. Show value first.

5. What can I do for you?

That’s another bad question which shows your incompetence. The best way to figure out how you can solve your client’s problems is by settling proper queries. And then give a solution. Don’t give your potential buyer a chance to dictate you what you should be doing for them – this is far from an effective partnership.

6. What don’t you like about our service?

This question is simply amateur. Still, the majority of salespeople ask that. It is clear that you want to know the answer to this question to underline that you are great at solving problematic issues. However, it is better to concentrate on your strengths from the very beginning and present them to your customer without speaking about the flaws.

7. Could you tell me more about your business?

This query shows that you did not even bother to find any info about the customer’s business before presenting them your service or product. Even if you get deeper information (which is unlikely), it won’t help you close the deal. So why don’t you ask questions and encourage sharing instead?

5. False open-ended questions

Asking such questions is the real art. The good news is that you can learn it!

You should master the skill of seeing the difference between real open-ended questions and masked closed ones. These are so-called “false” open-ended questions.

Compare the following:

See the difference?

When answering the first question, your likely customer may simply say “Yes” or “No”, which is not what you need. But if you include the second question, they will definitely give you an idea of where to lead the conversation.

As you could’ve guessed, the second question is a good example of an open-ended question. While the first one might only seem open-ended but in fact, it is not.

Open-ended questions require your potential clients to think. And the answers will be their feelings, ideas and personal insights rather than plain facts. Such queries encourage your customers to express their opinion.

So, take that into consideration before you ask an open-ended question, as well as make sure your client has no chances to answer with elementary “Yes” or “No”.

In this YouTube video, Fius van Laar brilliantly demonstrates the difference between the open- and closed-ended questions. Also, he explains why using the former instead of the latter is by far a better strategy.

Tips on how to create right open-ended questions

Before we proceed to the list of perfect open-ended questions, let’s have a look at some pieces of advice on how to make them. Asking good opened-questions does not require some extraordinary skills. All you need is patience, persistence and time to learn how to use them appropriately.

To be sure you are doing OK, use specific language when making open-ended questions. Start your open-ended queries with question words like “why”, “how”, and “what”, or phrases as “Tell me about…”Sometimes, they are not really questions, but statements which encourage to give a response. To answer those, your client will need time to think.

Avoid starting your questions with such verbs as “are”, “was”, “did”, “didn’t”, “if”, “will”, “won’t (those work for close-ended questions). Most likely, you will hear a simple “Yes” or “No” which won’t give you any helpful insights. Waste of time!

6. Best 25 open-ended sales questions

By this moment you should possess a clear idea of what open-ended questions are, why you need those, how and when to refer to them. Let’s take a moment to talk about top open-ended sales questions which will help you build trust with your customers, get as much information about them as possible, and close the sale.

Before calling or talking to your likely customers, it is advisable to have a list of open-ended questions for sales you are going to raise.

The best thing is to arrange them according to the structure provided below:

Queries about buying history:

1. What kind of experience did you enjoy when used this type of product?
2. Why did you decide to buy this particular item?
3. How did you buy this item?
4. What measures did you take to cope with these challenges (if any)?
5. Whom did you consult before deciding to make the purchase?

Queries about building trust:

1. How’s your business?
2. How’s your family?
3. What is on your mind?
4. What did you do during your vacation?
5. What do you plan to do on holidays?

Queries to define wants, goals, and barriers:

1. What are you most concerned about?
2. What results do you expect to see/ achieve?
3. What is the biggest obstacle on the way to reaching your goals?
4. Why are you so sure this is the right (wrong) time to change it?
5. What can help you go forward with the project?

Queries to work with objections:

1. What are your thoughts so far?
2. What other issues do you think we should discuss before we go further?

Queries to define the potential effect of your services or goods:

1. If you make these changes, what do you believe the outcomes will be?
2. What will the reaction of your boss be if you find a way out?
3. How will the solution influence you personally?

Clarifying queries:

1. Could you get deeper into this?
2. Can you specify this?

Closing queries:

1. When do you want me to call again?/ When do you want to meet again?
2. How are decisions taken in your company?
3. What do we need to be aware of/ do to do business together?

7. Good questions – good sales

The understanding of your potential customers will strongly influence your sales. The only reliable way to get this data is to motivate your clients to talk about themselves. You should learn to work with open-ended questions. Sales professionals tend to receive more information about their potential buyers and eventually close more deals.

In his vlog, Ago Cluytens is speaking about the importance of the proper open-ended questions and how your business can benefit from asking them. Also, he’s sharing top 5 questions, that he finds particularly effective.

Setting proper and relevant queries help to develop trust and reduce objections. Do everything you can to make your likely customers chat about challenges they face and offer solutions to make their lives better.

Enjoy your conversations with clients and close as many deals as possible!

Originally published at NetHunt CRM Blog.

Four tracks. 50+ sessions. Over 100 speakers. More than 1000 attendees. Less than 12 days to get the few tickets remaining.

Rainmaker 2018 is shaping up to be a truly transformational conference. With so much content to offer this year, we’re going to spend a little bit of time diving into each track to highlight some of the not to be missed gems from the line-up for each track.

We’ve already covered a preview of the Sales Leadership and Strategy Track and today we’ll look deeper into the Sales Mastery and Methodology track. This track, with 11 sessions across two-days, is focused on sharpening the tools that you need to be a great seller and covers topics ranging from call coaching (with live coaching on stage – volunteers anyone?), the importance of storytelling and remaining focused on your buyer’s needs, to open panel conversations around complex sales, promoting diversity in your sales teams, and unpacking why managers do the things to drive sellers crazy.

Here’s a sample of five must-see sessions you’ll want to check out:

1. Dew Point & Temperature: The Science and Technique Behind Making It Rain

Shawn Cook, Chief Sales Officer, Triblio
Wednesday, 3/7 at 1:00 pm

In one of the most creatively original titles for a Rainmaker session, Shawn gets all scientific on us. He’ll reveal the secrets to creating the conditions for rain at every stage of your sales process and moving prospects from Ice to Snow, from Snow to Fog and ultimately from Fog to Rain. I challenge you not to be intrigued!

2. A Leader’s List: The Secret to Becoming a Sales A-Player

Ralph Barsi, Global Sales Development Leader, ServiceNow
Tuesday, 3/6 at 11:00 am

Ralph has led a distinguished career leading successful sales teams and has been a Rainmaker staple for many years. More importantly, he’s dedicated a large portion of this time coaching and mentoring reps to strive for excellence. This session will tackle the philosophical dilemma behind the common question – how do I become a sales A-player? On the one hand, salespeople genuinely don’t know what they need to do, but want to improve their game. On the other hand, deep down, they really do know the answer, but still don’t apply what they know. Come find out what the real answer is.

3. Embrace Diversity: Inclusive Sales Organizations Start With You

Sahil Mansuri, CEO at Bravado, Tina Bean, Founder at Kickfire, Morgan Ingram, Director of Execution and Evolution at JBarrows, and Preeti Pinch, Senior Account Executive at Uberflip
Wednesday, 3/7 at 11:00 am

This very open and transparent panel discussion will dive into the importance of not throwing diversity and inclusion around as buzzwords to be used with little substantive action behind them. They’ll examine the benefits of investing in diversity in your sales team and demonstrate that the future of sales is one that is powered by the best sellers from all walks of life. I’m so proud to have this meaningful discussion receive the attention it deserves.

4. Coaching Counts: Better Teams Get Coached

Scott Leese, SVP Sales at Qualia,  Pete Gracey, Head of Sales, New Business at Aurea Software, Alexandra Kane, Head of Marketing at Chorus, and Justin Hiatt, VP Sales Development at Workfront
Tuesday, 3/6 at 3:55 pm

We all generally agree that coaching can improve teams. Yet it somehow still doesn’t get the attention it needs to be operationalized into our day to day activities. Learn how these leaders approach coaching with their teams, have fueled head-turning growth through their coaching methods, and how front-line reps can be more proactive in receiving coaching to improve themselves as professionals.

5. Not Just For Enterprise: Unpacking The Complex Sale

Julie Mai, Enterprise AE at SalesLoft, Matt Cameron, Managing Partner at SalesOps Central, Matt Gahr, CSO at Chrome River
Tuesday, 3/6 at 2:20 pm

Regardless of the type of organization that you’re selling into, chances are that navigating complex sales processes are a typical obstacle to closed opportunities. The complexity can begin at the prospecting stage and continue through the process of identifying requirements, evaluation of options and execution of agreements. This panel will offer insights on how to effectively approach these stages, how to make the process as easy as possible for your buying team and share real-world stories from the field.

There’s so much more to offer with additional speakers including: Kevin Dorsey, Head of Sales Development and Enablement at ServiceTitan, Milena Flament, Sales Director at SalesLoft, John Barrows of J. Barrows, Steve Richard, CRO at ExecVision, Doug Landis, Partner at Emergence Capital, Matt Amundson, VP Marketing & Sales Development at EverString.

Be sure to check out the full agenda at rainmaker.salesloft.com.

The post Exploring the Sales Mastery and Methodology Track at Rainmaker 2018 appeared first on SalesLoft.

Artificial intelligence is already present in millions of homes in the form of “smart assistants” like Google Home and Amazon Echo. (Google)

In January 2018, both Microsoft’s and Alibaba’s deep-learning software did better than humans on reading and comprehension tests, opening the door to artificial intelligence–based customer service, medical diagnoses, and many other applications. Research and investments in AI have exploded globally in the past year and this is just one example.

Canada is at the forefront of these developments. Canada pioneered research in neural networks and has the world’s third largest AI talent pool, according to consultancy Element AI.

The pace of AI development is fast. And, the global potential is huge and growing rapidly, estimated at $US2.4 billion in 2017, close to double what it was in 2016. Now is the time for Canada to advance its AI technologies and businesses in global markets.

Canada is a relatively small, open economy with social and economic stability. Canada can build on its foundational AI research to lead the development of AI best practises that advance economic and social interests.

Here are four ways Canada can continue to advance responsible AI development:

1. Develop locally, think globally

The image of Canada as mainly producing commodities and manufactured goods is out of date. Canada is actively attracting and developing cutting edge AI, blockchain, and quantum computing technologies and quickly becoming a leading hub for scientific talent. New institutions are supporting them, such as the Vector Institute, the Creative Destruction Lab, and Canada.ai. Canadian-grown startups are tapping into global opportunities in the U.S. and Europe, as well as those in developing markets that are investing hugely in AI—such as China. Canadian AI companies are already gaining from selling into these markets.

2. Address fears head-on

Studies show that AI and new technologies will lead to job losses, though no analysis agrees on how widespread these will be. What is clear is that the phenomenal pace of change will be very disruptive and the benefits of these new technologies will not automatically be shared broadly. Rather than protecting Canadians from technological change, governments, businesses, and educators should actively prepare citizens across all industries to learn how to leverage technology’s benefits rather than fear them. Sweden has adopted one approach putting in place policies that do not protect certain types of jobs, but instead protect and invest in workers to leverage these technologies.

3. Shape the rules for the global AI economy

China has ambitious plans to be the world’s AI leader by 2030 and the U.S. and Russia have also embraced these technologies. Canada can advance leading-edge domestic and international AI policies, leveraging its position as a respected promoter of rules, stability and openness. By being at the global table, Canada has a chance to advance AI policies that improve living standards, promote inclusivity, and advocate for transparent data collection and unbiased algorithms.

4. Welcome people, ideas, capital, and trade

As the U.S. threatens to turn increasingly inwards, Canada is open to entrepreneurs, individuals, technologies, and investments from outside our borders. Canada has a window to attract talent, companies and and foreign investment across a range of AI verticals.

Canada has a unique opportunity to leverage its AI moment globally to shape AI’s future.

Danielle Goldfarb is a Senior Fellow at The Conference Board of Canada. Candice Faktor runs Faktory Ventures, a seed stage microfund investing in exponential technologies like AI and the blockchain.

MORE ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:

• Here’s why we shouldn’t fear artificial intelligence
• How tech firms are racing to perfect conversational artificial intelligence
• Why Google built its first Canadian cloud computing facility in Montreal
• This A.I. can black out sensitive data before making documents public
• Meet Botler, an A.I. chatbot that helps people immigrate to Canada
• This Toronto startup uses A.I. to help lawyers predict trial outcomes
• Canada could be an A.I. powerhouse—if we can halt the field’s brain drain
• Five Canadian tech leaders on what they’re most excited for in 2017

The post Four ways Canada can own the artificial intelligence century appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Even kids understand how a sale works

In this article you'll learn: Sales are not complicated—it’s fluid cycle, not a bunch of steps that you have to take.

Introduction

First, pick the people you know. Lean on them. I expect my family to buy from me. Everyone should work their power base. If your own family or friends won’t buy from you, how are you going to close somebody else?

Don’t overcomplicate sales.

Close the Proximity Between You and the Target.

Just like when you were a kid you said you wanted something from your momma—you closed the distance by coming over and grabbing her leg.

You didn’t ask for a new puppy from across the room. You closed the distance.

That’s how you need to approach your customers. The closer you get, the more deals you’ll close.

Ask Hard Questions

The #1 reason you don't make the sale is that you didn't’ ask for it.

When you’re a kid you say, “Why not momma? Momma. Momma. Momma.”

You asked for what you wanted and you didn’t stop asking...until she said yes and told you to go bother your sibling.

A lot of you think you are asking for the close but you aren’t.

It’s like scratching a car—that’s not a wreck. Mentioning that you might do business in the future is not asking for the sale. “BUY IT NOW” is asking for the sale.

If they aren’t buying, ask the hard questions:

• What else can I do to save the deal?
• Why won’t you buy from me?
• Why aren’t you buying from me today?
• Is it me or the deal?

Don’t Think About Yesterday, Focus on the Future

I had a few wrecks in my life. If I thought about them every time I got on the road I would get in another accident. You have to keep going, keep acting, and never lower your target.

 Only increase activity.

 A lot of you think you’re doing enough but you're not.

 You have to stay top of mind with people. You have to be breaking news.

 Some of you think that your business is different.

 It’s not.

How do you make a happy customer?

You close them. I guarantee that the people that are most unhappy are the ones that you didn't close.

Here's How Simple Sales Are:

• Focus on the sale
• Focus on the close
• Focus on the follow-up

Go after your customers like a little kid begs their mom for a new puppy. Keep asking. Then ask more. Beg if you have to. Never give up.

People underestimate the value of success. It’s a light that people are drawn to. Close the deal so you can be that light for others.

Summary: Billion Dollar Sales Summit

If you want more advanced tactics, if you're ready to take your sales to the next level, watch the Recording of my Billion Dollar Sales Summit at 10XGrowthCon.

This is the best sales conference ever put on in the history of sales conferences.

Be great,

GC

Grant Cardone is a New York Times bestselling author, the #1 sales trainer in the world, and an internationally renowned speaker on leadership, real estate investing, entrepreneurship, social media, and finance. His 5 privately held companies have annual revenues exceeding $100 million. Forbes named Mr. Cardone #1 of the "25 Marketing Influencers to Watch in 2017". Grant’s straight-shooting viewpoints on the economy, the middle class, and business have made him a valuable resource for media seeking commentary and insights on real topics that matter. He regularly appears on Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, and MSNBC, and writes for Forbes, Success Magazine, Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com, and the Huffington Post. He urges his followers and clients to make success their duty, responsibility, and obligation. He currently resides in South Florida with his wife and two daughters.

PatternPictures / Pixabay

No one wants to feel like they’re reaching out to a faceless company; they’d rather feel like they’re reaching out to another human—or better yet, a friend. People don’t think about their relationships in terms of channels, so you don’t want them to think about their relationship with your company that way either.

An omnichannel customer experience provides just that, a seamless conversation with your company where the customer feels recognized by your support team no matter when or how the customer reaches out for help. A great omnichannel customer experience is backed by a well-thought-out omnichannel support strategy that reduces pain points and removes inconsistencies in your customer service. It also requires software that allows agents to move from one channel to the next, maintaining the thread of conversation and providing smooth support interactions. Opening up more channels of support and deciding how to staff them can be daunting, but businesses of any size can provide the kind of omnichannel customer experience that customers now expect from a brand. In fact, offering omnichannel support can help to simplify your operations.

Here are five hurdles an omnichannel solution can help you to overcome.

1. Service levels are inconsistent across channels

If your team is struggling to provide consistent service levels across channels, it’s not a reason to get rid of the channels that lag. It’s easy to prioritize one channel over another because there’s higher volume, or you’ve supported one channel longer than another. Lack of analytics is also often a common culprit, making it hard to take stock of your channels to learn what’s working and what isn’t. With the ability to compare KPI and SLA metrics and service loads across all channels in real time, you can easily make changes. And if you’re unsure how your service levels compare by channel, take a look at your customer satisfaction rating. If it’s lower than your industry benchmark, it’s time to take another look at your channel mix and staffing.

2. Agents are switching between solutions

Each time agents move between systems, whether to staff a different engagement channel in a different tool or to look up customer history and account information, the seconds tick by. There are times when it makes sense to use a battery of products, but increasingly, there’s little need. Providing a fluid and seamless support experience for customers can also mean providing a fluid and seamless backend agent experience.

A solution that’s flexible enough to integrate with your backend systems means less hassle and more satisfaction for your agents. By consolidating to one screen, first-response times go down and data never gets lost or siloed.

3. Context is lost between channels

You may be providing support through multiple channels, but you’re in the dark when it comes to previous interactions and context. Your agents don’t know when someone on the phone has already emailed or chatted with you, or what they did via self-service queries. This adds time to each interaction and is probably frustrating the customer. Instead, by centralizing ticket history in an omnichannel solution, you retain the context of each conversation and can reduce handle time and customer effort. This is especially valuable for businesses supporting mobile-first customers—offering in-app support makes life easy for customers and allows you to automatically pull in device and historical data, which gives agents the context they need to start troubleshooting.

4. Reporting across channels is difficult

Providing support through multiple channels is great, but it gets complicated when you have to pull metrics from multiple systems. Not only is it a drain on time, but comparing reports across channels and attempting to achieve visibility parity can be a logistical nightmare. If this sounds or feels familiar, imagine having a single source of truth for customer contacts, no matter the channel. An omnichannel solution can provide channel metrics in real-time, allowing you to make changes and adjust staffing on the fly.

5. There’s no time to set up a new channel

Piloting or offering another channel of support doesn’t have to mean vetting and implementing a new tool. When each channel is integrated into a single solution, you’ll see rapid total time to value, and will have the flexibility to easily turn new channels on and off. See what works best for your customers and your support team, and shift channel offerings according to customer trends or preferences. Or, start with a single channel and add additional channels as you grow.

Sign of the times

Adopting an omnichannel solution allows your business the agility it needs to handle—and meet—changing customer expectations. With a single solution, you can make changes without disrupting workflows—or the customer experience. In the end, that’s what it’s all about. An omnichannel customer experience is an easy one, removing obstacles for the customer and for your team.

Think direct mail is an outdated sales tactic? Think again. While prospect’s email inboxes are becoming increasingly crowded (78% of consumers opt out of company emails due to sheer volume), their physical mailboxes get emptier. Now's the time for Sales and Marketing to work together to create direct mail prospects can’t help but respond to.

From boxed balloons to 3D puzzles, there's no shortage of creative ways to format your mailers — but the most important aspect of your letter is what you say and how you say it. Below, I'll share tips on writing eye-catching copy, hitting on the most important value props, and completing the mailer with attention-grabbing visuals.

1. Pick your primary message.

… and make it pop. Select one pain point, feature, or benefit, and lead with that message. Bold it, underline it, let it stand alone on one side of your mailer — but make sure it’s clear, concise, and packs a value punch. Here are some examples:

• Benefit: If you’re selling corporate cleaning services, your benefit-centered primary message might be, “So clean, you’ll never send a ‘Tidy your workspace’ email again.”
• Pain Point: If you’re selling HR recruiting software, a pain point-centered primary message might be, “Are you spending too much time hiring?”
• Feature: And if you’re a car salesperson trying to attract customers to your dealership, your feature-centered message might be, “The only five-year warranty in town.”

In each of the primary messages above, I’ve picked one main point to share with the prospect. If they only read one thing on the mailer this should be the copy that stands out and sticks with them. Because of that, I’ve avoided being too clever — a fast way to muddle your message.

To check if your message will confuse your average prospect, ask someone outside your business to read your primary message without context. If they easily grasp what you do or what you’re trying to communicate, you’re in the clear.

It’s tempting to use broad taglines like, “We help you get back to work,” “The five-star service you deserve,” or “The car-buying experience you want.” Don’t do it. Keep your message focused on specific, easy-to-understand value propositions.

2. Educate.

If you're sending the mailer to prospects who aren't familiar with who you are or what you do, capitalize on the moment to educate them. Keep this explanation brief and bulleted, and limit each talking point to one sentence. For example, an educational section about our HR recruiting business might read:

• Step 1: Create a RecruitingWiz account
• Step 2: Enter your job listing
• Step 3: Review pre-qualified applicants in your inbox

You’ve explained how to navigate your online portal and highlighted ease-of-use and benefits of your service (i.e., pre-qualified candidates delivered right to your inbox).

This part of the mailer can also be used to differentiate your product/service. For example, our corporate cleaning company might say:

What sets our cleaning service apart?

• Refrigerator cleanout
• Dishwasher load/unload
• Organization on request
• Plant care and maintenance

We’ve clearly defined what makes this corporate cleaning service different, and because these bullets should be based on common customer pain points, we've provided solutions for challenges we know our prospects face.

3. Limit yourself to one CTA.

Don’t ask for more than one thing. If you do, you risk overwhelming your audience by making them choose which (if any) of your calls-to-action they want to pursue. This mailer should do the thinking for them by leading them easily to a next step.

Instead of our car dealership having two CTAs asking prospects to “Visit our dealership today at [insert address]” and “Visit us online at [insert website]” consider which action will be the most measurable for you and actionable for your prospect. In this case, asking the reader to visit the website is the most realistic next step.

4. Have one offer.

To take that next step, however, your audience needs incentive — usually a promo code or free gift. For example, our cleaning service might offer a free fridge cleaning if the prospect books before the end of the month.

Increase fear of missing out by putting a deadline on the offer. If a prospect must use your promo code by the end of the month, they'll be more likely to act immediately.

Think your customer might have trouble redeeming the offer? Include instructions and a visual aid on your mailer. If you’re offering a promo code at checkout, provide text and images illustrating the process of going to your website, navigating to the checkout page, and entering the code at the appropriate point.

5. Don’t crowd the message.

Also known as — don’t word vomit. We’ve all gotten mailers containing a 30-year history of the company, every possible feature they offer, 18 coupons, and headshots of their 40-person team. Don’t be this company.

Keep things simple and purposeful. Once your prospect picks up the mailer, you only have a few seconds to convince them not to drop it in the recycling bin. Make it easy for them to understand your offer in three-to-five seconds, and do this by adhering to the tips above.

6. Include a testimonial.

Social proof is always a good idea. If you haven’t already, ask well-known, longtime, and/or happy clients if you can include a quote from them in your mailer.

Keep quotes between two and three sentences long, and edit when necessary. Always ensure you choose a quote that actually says something. Sentiments like, “Corporate Cleaners is great! Would highly recommend … ” isn’t as valuable as, “Corporate Cleaners has completely changed our office environment. They’re a cost-effective way to keep employees focused on the work that matters while elevating the first impression clients have of our office.”

Lastly, ensure your testimonial isn’t totally out of the blue. If the rest of your flyer talks about your car dealerships knowledge, unparalleled five-year warranty, and huge selection of new and used SUVs, your prospect might be confused by a testimony from "Liz" who found the motorcycle of her dreams at your dealership.

7. Add attention-grabbing stats.

Has your local business bureau rated you #1 for customer service? Have you cleaned more than 500 businesses this year? Have you decreased customer hiring time by 50%? Include those numbers in your mailer. Numbers break up text and attract your reader's eye. Plus, it's another way to prove your value.

8. Lead with strong visuals.

Ask your in-house designer or go-to freelancer to help with design. Don’t have the budget to bring in outside help? Remember to keep visuals fresh, modern, and personalized. The images on your mailer will be the first thing your prospects notice and the biggest way to save you from the trash.

If you’re using photographs, take and use your own. Custom photography will set your business apart and avoid glazing eyes with cheesy stock photos.

Head out to the lot on a Saturday and ask permission to snap photos of excited customers with their new cars. Hire a photographer to follow a cleaning crew around for an afternoon. Or ask for headshots of the relieved HR professionals providing testimonials for your mailer. These images will automatically present a more interesting, less-spammy piece of direct mail.

Sales Letter Example: Email

Need help drafting an email sales letter? Check out this example from HubSpot's sales team.

Here are some best practices to consider when you're writing your sales letter via email from HubSpot's own Dan Tyre.

• Ask your marketing department for help — High achieving sales teams collaborate with experts who know how to craft a message. If you don’t have access to marketers who can help, you can use predefined templates written by a marketing professional to start a sales conversation. I have seen numerous examples of savvy salespeople spend hours obsessing over a simple introductory email. If you let the professionals develop the correspondence, it is likely to be eloquent, on message, with the right product links and you can study the performance and collect the statistics to the science behind which letter works best from an analytics perspective.
• Use personalization to customize the correspondence — A sales letter is all about the prospect, not your product, services or what you did for someone else. Most prospects are more concerned with how you can help them overcome their biggest business challenges. If you lead with how you can help and the business value you can provide, you have a better shot of getting their attention.
• Keep it short — In the past, you could send a prospect a letter that was a few paragraphs long and they would read some of it. Today, you can send two sentences, two links and they might read it. Anything more than the basics is frivolous and will greatly reduce the potential of me reading it. HubSpot’s Jose Martins shared the following tip: "The idea is to make it short, simple, no games. If they are interested they will reply. The prospect should be the one driving."
• Be easy to find — According to Dan, he puts his contact information front and center. "I put my name and company in the subject line, which I find leads to a better open and click-through rate."
• When appropriate, use video to differentiate your message — This is the biggest innovation since the invention of email. The purpose of a prospecting email is to show value in the first interaction by sharing the research you have done on the prospects needs. Including video in your email does a great job of using modern technology to connect with a business person, show them you are a human being, explain your value and ask for a call to action in under a minute.
• Don't just send one email — Most people get a lot of business email, most of it relatively low value. But a professional salesperson wants to make sure you are helping and breaking through the clutter. Most people rarely respond to the first email they get, but prospects are more likely to respond to the third or fourth email. Dan recommends sending up to four emails over 12 days for the best results.

Sales Letter Example: Direct Mail

When do you just send an email and when do you send a direct mail piece? Email is suitable for most business communications but if you really want to make an impression introducing yourself or your company to a target account, a handwritten or direct mail piece can help you stand out from the competition.

It takes time and effort to send a personal letter, but that is the whole point. If you spend the time and effort to personalize a handwritten note, you are demonstrating your willingness to work extra hard to earn potential business.

Here are a few guidelines for sending a direct mail sales letter:

• Focus on quality — Put your letter on personal or company letterhead, and make sure your pen and paper are top quality.
• Keep it short — Just like email, less is more. Keep the contents of your letter to one page.
• Start with the business value — Your reason for writing a personal letter should be front and center. The goal of the letter is to demonstrate your assessment of the prospect’s problem and to express that you are uniquely qualified to address it.
• Offer value — Provide something of immediate and unique value that shows you understand the industry, location, and business challenges of the person you are connecting with. For example, if you have best practices to share with an interested party you could say, "I am writing to you because we work with a VP of Sales of Manufacturing companies in Arizona who works with multiple overseas suppliers. They are constantly re-examining their supply chains to ensure continuity and I would like to share a checklist of quality suppliers with you."
• Follow it up with a phone call — Don't let your letter end up in a recycling bin and your conversation forgotten. About a week after sending your letter, follow up with a phone call to keep things moving.

If everything old is new again, direct mail just got ten years younger and is ready to show up everyone at its high school reunion. Take an exciting approach to this tried-and-true outreach tactic, and see what it does for your business.

I spend much of my time with senior executives from organizations in, shall we say, not the most glamorous fields: community banks, electrical distributors, heartland manufacturers, and, perhaps least glamorous of all, insurance companies. These executives are rightly proud of what their organizations do, and they can get people like me excited about their plans for growth and change. But they have one huge problem that literally keeps them up at night: Young people find their companies dull and don’t have much enthusiasm for a career in their field. I hear it time and again — How can we compete with Facebook or Google for young engineers? How can we attract digitally savvy marketers against Starbucks or Amazon?

Their challenge, in other words, is to make their “boring” companies “cool” — to persuade 20-somethings to join an organization or work in a field that doesn’t exactly sizzle. It’s a worthwhile challenge — indeed, a make-or-break challenge — but there are right and wrong ways to address it. Two recent articles, both chronicling efforts by insurance executives to make their field more alluring to the young crowd, show the promise and pitfalls of changing an industry’s image. They can help executives in lots of traditional fields think about how to battle for talent.

Let’s start with the pitfalls. A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal notes, insurance companies have to make 500,000 new hires over the next few years, as waves of industry lifers retire. Unfortunately, young people “just don’t want to work for insurance companies,” the Journal reports, which has led some companies to develop brash recruiting campaigns. One midsize company, based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, built a recruiting video around a young actuary dressed as a zombie, to show that “we really like to have fun around here.” At college recruiting events, the company “served huge mounds of freshly cooked bacon” and installed a Ferris wheel at headquarters to entertain newcomers. Meanwhile, one life insurance giant opened an office in New York City featuring “spaces that feel start-uppy,” free beer any time, and weirdly named conference rooms such as “Asteroid Impact” and “Snake Bite.”

I appreciate the creativity, and I’m sure these initiatives are well intentioned, but I fear they miss the point. Young people have lots of access to zombie makeup and cheap beer. What they value is the chance to join companies that make a difference and where the work brings out the best in them. That’s why a giant insurance company such as USAAhas been able to build a passion brand in the marketplace and an energetic workplace. No one would accuse USAA of being boring — it provides vital financial services to active and retired members of the U.S. military and their families and has unleashed a staggering array of digital innovations. Its culture is fairly conservative — more starched shirts than Ferris wheels — but its appeal to young employees is undeniable. Substance matters more than style.

Another recent article, this one in the New York Times, offers a more promising strategy for making a “boring” industry cool. The article describes a program at Butler University in which students experience the intellectual rigors and human emotions of insurance, a field that “lacks sex appeal,” the article concedes. The premise of the program is that the best way to get young people excited about a field is to let them work in that field and see how intriguing it can be. So a group of students runs a company that insures, among other things, the school’s mascot, its collection of Steinway pianos, and the businesses of student-run organizations. The company competes with commercial insurers, which gives students the chance to outthink and out-innovate established players. “If you think insurance is boring,” the Times concludes, “you haven’t really thought it through. The industry is at least partly about the fascinating science of human behavior, from recklessness to neglect and our collective efforts to behave responsibly that never end in total success.”

Butler’s small program makes a big point. In addition to wanting to do work that matters, talented young people want a chance to work with big problems and tough issues. Consider a big bet on young talent made by Big Blue. IBM is hardly a boring company, but for years it had trouble recruiting against internet upstarts. Who wants to work there as opposed to Apple or Google? So it created a wildly successful internship program called Extreme Blue, in which college-age programmers tackle high-stakes projects and work closely with IBM’s most senior technologists. Getting a taste of real life at IBM has persuaded lots of young people to open their minds about a career at this “conservative” company.

So to all of you who are running companies, leading teams, or managing projects far away from digital hotspots: It’s hard to create an exciting or compelling future for your organization if you can’t make what you do exciting and compelling to talented young people. That doesn’t mean trying to mimic the trappings of life in Silicon Valley. It means giving young people a taste of life in your business, and giving them a sense that being in your business will make their life more interesting and satisfying.

Examples are illuminating, whether you're sharing one during a meeting, over an email, on a sales call, giving a presentation, writing a memo, etc. 

But, as you may know, the effective "for example" is hard to find synonyms for despite how often we use it. In this post, we'll go over a list of "for example" synonyms and the best use cases for each one.

1. "For instance ..."

"For example" and "for instance" can be used interchangeably.

• "Our product has several features your reps will love; for instance, they can schedule a series of emails …"

Best For: “For instance…” is best for formal writing. You could use this as a replacement when you explain use cases for your product during initial email outreach to prospects. 

2. "To give you an idea …"

Use this phrase to introduce a use case or example.

• "The right training program will ‘stick' for months and months. To give you an idea, Abel Co.'s sales team's average productivity rate per rep increased by 30% in the first quarter after our workshop -- and it's stayed within two percentage points ever since."

Best For: “To give you an idea…” is useful for informal and formal situations. 

3. "As proof …"

After you make a point, say "as proof" followed by an anecdote or statistic.

• "Unhealthy snacks might be hurting employee satisfaction more than you'd think. As proof, HereNow's eNPS score went up 10 points once we revamped their office ‘pantry.'"

Best for:“As proof…” is useful for informal and formal situations when giving an example that supports your point. 

4. "Suppose that …"

This phrase makes your listener the star of the story, which helps grab and keep their attention.

• "Surprisingly, most salespeople spend the majority of their day on non-selling tasks. Suppose that all the time you currently spend in your CRM could be put toward emailing, calling, and meeting with prospects."

Best For: “Suppose that…” is useful for informal and formal writing to introduce a situational example. 

5. "To illustrate …"

When you want to prove your point, try this expression.

• "Everyone needs a good cybersecurity strategy -- even if you're not in a ‘risky' industry. To illustrate, we just protect a client in the consumer pet space, of all things, from an extremely sophisticated attack that would've taken every single one of their 100 stores offline for hours, maybe even days."

Best For: “To illustrate…” is useful in formal situations. 

6. "Imagine …"

Asking the other person to imagine themselves in a relevant situation makes them likelier to believe you.

• "Imagine every single franchise you own doubled their sales. What impact would that have on your life?"

Best For: “Imagine…” is best for informal situations, like if you’ve already built rapport with someone. 

7. "Pretend that …"

Along similar lines, "Pretend XYZ happened" is another effective alternative to "for example."

• "Onboarding has a huge impact on your retention rate. Pretend new employees could spend their first 10 days learning about your product, team, culture, and customers. What impact would that have on their performance?"

Best For: “Pretend that…” is useful in informal situations when giving an example that sets the scene. 

8. "To show you what I mean …"

If you're using content -- like a customer testimonial, video, blog post, case study, press release, etc. -- to prove your point, this phrase comes in handy.

• "Millennials work harder when they feel they are contributing to a larger purpose. To show you what I mean, here's an article about what happened when we rolled out a ‘Danco Cares' internal marketing campaign."

Best For: “To show you what I mean…” is best for informal situations. 

9. "Let's say …"

"Let's say" is a folksy alternative to "imagine" or "suppose."

• "Let's say you could attract five times more people to your website."

Best For: “Let’s say….” is most often used in informal situations, but can be used formally as well. 

10. "Case in point …"

For the times you've made a bold claim and need to back it up with the perfect example, go for "case in point …"

• "It might sound too good to be true, but simply adding more recycle bins can make your restaurant produce far less trash. Case in point: We put three bins inside Pita Palace's Westwood location and removed one trash bin, and waste decreased by 13.9%."

Best For: “Case in point…” works informally and formally. 

11. "e.g."

This Latin abbreviation (which is always lowercase) means "for example."

• "You have a lot of opportunity to grow, e.g., it doesn't sound like you've optimized your pricing page in years."

Best For: “E.g.,” is best suited for formal writing. The same goes for i.e., which are often used interchangeably. 

12. "Such as ..."

If you need to illustrate a certain point, use "such as " to explain further.

• "Clients who used the Standard CRM saw positive changes for their sales teams, such as productivity increases of 15% and a 40% increase in sales revenue."

Best For: “Such as…” can be formal and informal. 

13. "In particular ..."

Is there a certain section of your message you'd like to emphasize? If so, try using "in particular" to highlight the areas of emphasis.

• "With a custom email sending IP address, your email strategy will reap many benefits. In particular, you'll see an improvement in email deliverability."

Best For: “In particular…” is effective for informal and formal situations. 

With 13 alternatives to choose from, you'll never have to use "for example" again and again ... well, again. To learn more, check out this follow-up thank you email next.

geralt / Pixabay

You don’t have to be a professional copywriter to write a successful sales letter. It’s not complicated, but it does require paying attention to the craft. It may take changing the way you think about your business.

A successful sales letter can make your company. In some cases, it can bring in thousands or even millions in new revenue. You can write a sales letter that draws attention to your business, builds trust and grows accountability. The process is similar to writing a landing page.

A Successful Sales Letter Requires:

A Shift in Thinking – You and your customer have different motives. You are looking to sell and line your pockets. There is nothing wrong with that. You’re in business. Your potential customer is looking for a product or service that solves their problem and provides value.

Writing a successful sales letter means stepping out of your shoes and writing from your customers’ perspective. Show them that you understand their problem and empathize. When you perfect this approach it helps to build trust and strengthen relationships.

High Emotion – We all tend to think of ourselves as rational buyers, but the truth is emotion is what sells. People buy when they feel fear, pride or envy. They want to buy when something gives them comfort. This sounds corny, but it’s true. You aren’t selling a product or service, you are selling how it makes your customer feel. You are selling the benefit and the experience.

Humor can be used to disarm your customer. Fear can be used to generate a reaction as well. When you learn how to properly stoke emotion, you can sell more.

Persuasion Tactics – It’s not enough that a potential customer reads your sales letter and likes what you have to say. That’s a good start, but a successful sales letter transcends this stage, and persuades your reader to take action. This is an important stage.

Passive forms of appreciation won’t grow your bottom line. While it’s true they may take action at a later point, the goal is to get them to buy. It’s to present your offer as the most effective solution to their problem. To do that, you have to be convincing. Think back to those five-paragraph essays your high school English teacher used to make you write. Channel that kind of energy into your letter.

Laser Focus – It’s true that a long-form sales letter can be 1,500 words or longer, but that doesn’t mean they ramble. They stay on point and convey your message. They grab attention up front with a powerful headline and lead. From that point, they keep readers engaged until the end.

Your message must be spot on. If you ramble or go off subject, you give your readers an opportunity to file your letter in the garbage. Be conversational, but be direct. Tell your reader what’s in it for them and keep them on the hook. It’s the only way.

Conclusion

Do you have what it takes to write a successful sales letter? One that engages your readers, builds trust, and sees results?

You increase your sales.

Which is something most of us want to do. Unfortunately, there is misalignment between sales and marketing at most companies. Because of that, there are never enough leads to fill the pipeline full enough to hit or exceed quota.  

According to CSO Insights, only 54.6 percent of sales professionals produce enough revenue to meet their quota. There are many reasons but one of them is that they don’t have enough qualified leads.  

Ask Yourself

Is there a disconnect between your sales and marketing team when it comes to the definition of a lead?

Is your sales team leaving MQLs unanswered and complaining that those are not leads? 

Are your prospects still getting bombarded with marketing emails even though they are in conversations with your salespeople? 

Do your salespeople need more leads? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it may be an indication that your sales and marketing are not aligned. So, what should you do?  

Align Sales and Marketing in 3 Steps

Sales and marketing need to agree, align and collaborate. That means that they need to map out the buyer journey together and determine where their roles intersect now and where they could intersect more effectively. 

Step 1: Agree 

Agreeing on the definition of target market is critical. Once you have agreed on what type of companies you want to sell to, it is easy to figure out who the buyer personas are and build messaging that will be useful in every stage of the buying process.  

Step 2: Align 

The people you want to sell to, don’t know you exist yet. When sales and marketing align the messaging to build awareness, everyone has the right language to use when describing how you solve problems. If you have a great value proposition the messaging is built from that. That way marketing has great messaging for emails and social media and salespeople have great messaging to use when talking to prospects.  

Step 3: Collaborate 

Once people you want to sell to know you exist, you need to determine if they are interested. Both sales and marketing play a role here. Building a plan together leads to salespeople having more conversations with buyers. This is where the real magic happens. Our salespeople need to have more conversations with qualified buyers, that’s how we increase sales.  

Learn more about how to align your sales and marketing team! Watch our FREE webinar on the Sales Experts Channel. 

The post This is What Happens When You Align Sales and Marketing appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

New marketing technologies like Uberflip make it increasingly easy to track content consumption beyond just clicks and downloads. This functionality not only generates additional insights for marketers as to just how much of their content prospects are actually reading, but also enables more sophisticated lead qualification methods, for example: granting higher lead scores when an individual prospect reads more than say, 80 percent of a white paper.

But what if the insight gained from these technologies is unwelcome news, namely that people are downloading, but not actually consuming, marketing content?

On LinkedIn recently, one sales executive opined that anecdotal evidence (i.e. feedback from his team) suggests that no-one reads his company’s white papers and, he concluded, this rendered the entire purpose of content marketing moot.

So, does it matter if your white papers or ebooks or case studies are downloaded but not actually consumed? My answer: no, it doesn’t.

Just to be clear – to the extent that customers and prospective customers DO actually read your content, gain valuable information from that content, and think more highly of you and your company because of it, all the better. However, in the context of demand generation, it matters very little whether they read it or not.

Remember: to be effective, demand generation content should appeal to, and generate engagement from, a prospective customer looking to solve a pain, problem, or issue that your company, product or solution can address. Think about that for a moment. It matters much less that the prospect reads that content, or upon reading the content, is more inclined to do business with your company. What matters is that the content delivers information of value of a type that appeals to someone to whom you can ultimately sell.

One of the primary reasons that so many B2B companies develop and publish content that is little more than a brochure in sheep’s clothing (besides the fact that too many product managers are writing white papers) is that marketers believe demand generation content needs to sell. It doesn’t. In fact, I’d argue that, to the extent your content doesn’t sell, describe, or even mention your product, the greater its perceived value and the more effective it will be in generating leads.

By all means, develop content that addresses a genuine problem, one that the right prospects are eager to address, and one that qualifies those prospects as potential customers for your company. But don’t despair if evidence shows few of those prospects actually read it. The more important thing is that they downloaded it in the first place.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

If your idea of content marketing stops with blog posts, your marketing goals may be in trouble. Okay, so that may be a bit extreme, however, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of producing and distributing blog posts on a consistent basis.

Many businesses forget to truly optimize the buying experience with their content or provide context-based information to prospects based on where they are in the sales process.

By aligning content to the sales process, you can get better marketing (and sales) results and I’ve got a few tips to help you get started.

If you believe that content is crucial to a successful marketing campaign, why would you abandon content during certain key sections of the buyer’s journey? More importantly, if your prospects are interested enough in your content to download it, why would you stop giving it to them once they become leads? If you are not using content as a way continue communication you just may be losing qualified prospects in your pipeline.

A Real-World Example of Content Alignment

I recently worked with a member-based organization that wanted us to focus on creating blog posts to drive awareness of their brand and mission.

As part of our discovery process, I encouraged their team to talk about their sales goals and how their current sales and marketing process was supporting those goals.

Here’s what I learned:

• The recruiters (sales reps) were completely overwhelmed with the number of leads that had been interviewed and accepted into their program.
• There was a list of over 1,000 people that had gone through a majority of the sales process but weren’t being closed as members or communicated to in any way.
• The team of six recruiters simply didn’t have enough time to communicate with all of the accepted applicants.

So what did we do to help close the gap in the sales process?

• Step One: Together, we carefully crafted email campaigns on behalf of each of the six recruiters to help them automate communication to the applicants assigned to them.

  The emails within the campaigns included a variety of different blog posts, downloadable content, and videos. By choosing content that was best aligned with their current stage in the sales process, we were able to send more relevant messaging that resonated with where the prospects were in their journey to making a final decision.

• Step Two: If an applicant interacted with any one of the emails, the correct recruiter was notified so he/she could interact with the warm lead. This allowed recruiters to easily understand who the top 10-20 leads were to focus their attention on while the other roughly 100 leads assigned to them were being automatically nurtured by the marketing team. Pretty cool, huh?
• Step Three: By narrowing the focus of the sales team, they were able to identify the prospects that were most likely to convert and spend their time nurturing those leads personally.

This entire process helped the organization close new business because it was specifically aligned to the gaps in their sales process compared to creating more blog posts to drive awareness.

That example wasn’t meant to say that blogging is ineffective. In fact, we still produced and distributed awareness-level blog posts for this client. However, it’s important to remember to take a deeper look at the overall buying journey your leads are going through, identify content gaps in your sales process, and prioritize the creation of content to fill those gaps.

So how do you figure out where the gaps exist?

How to Identify Your Content Gaps

Simply put, you need to figure out what you have and what you don’t have in terms of content.

The biggest challenge? It can be really difficult to recognize where your gaps are if you aren’t sure what you are trying to accomplish. Hopefully, the example above will help provide some context so that you can take an audit of your existing sales process.

Here are a few questions that will help you get started as you begin to audit your sales and marketing process:

• When a sales qualified lead gets passed along to a sales rep, what is the sequence of events that a rep completes to follow up with that lead?
• What happens if that rep doesn’t get ahold of them after going through their sales sequence?
• Are there any places where qualified prospects fall into the abyss of your contact database without a notification or process to follow up again in the future?
• Are your highly-qualified contacts getting specific communication based on their previous actions or are they getting email blasts meant for contacts at any stage in the buying journey?
• Do you have an email campaign with helpful resources, based on actions that a specific lead has taken, that is triggered by an unsuccessful sales sequence?

Spend some time with your sales and marketing team trying to answer these types of questions. Make note of all the areas where leads are falling through the cracks and not getting the correct communication. These will be helpful as you move into a lead management audit.

Once you’ve identified your sales and marketing process, it’s important to think about what content your audience is looking for. Here are a few questions to help you identify what content you might need:

• What questions are your prospects asking before they even know about your product or solution?
• What solutions are they already looking for?
• What solutions do they not even know exist?
• What pain points are your ideal customers looking to solve?
• What hurdles do they need to overcome before they will make a purchasing decision?
• What are their barriers to making a final decision?

By simply answering these questions you’ll start to uncover a ton of potential content topics that will help you better align interesting, helpful and unique content to your sales process.

What’s a Lead Management Audit?

Start with a whiteboard, and at the top, record all of the ways you generate business leads. For example, it may include things like:

• Blog/newsletter subscriptions
• Content offer downloads
• Prospecting
• Tradeshows
• Consultation/demo requests
• Applications
• Purchased lists

Next, take each conversion opportunity that you have and ask “What happens next?” Or, better yet, “What should happen next?” Keep asking those question until you build out something like this.

When building this process out, the most critical branches aren’t always the most obvious. It’s easy to say, “After an appointment is set, the lead is transferred to outside sales.” It’s harder to get your group to determine what happens if an appointment isn’t set.

Do we cease communication with that prospect because they didn’t answer the phone when we tried to call? While the answer is probably clear, many companies don’t set up a process to make sure those leads circle back to the salesperson.

Remember that not all of the hard work has to fall on the shoulders of the sales. If your sales team has tried multiple times to connect with a prospect, it might be time to try a different tactic. This is where sales sequences and marking workflows really shine.

Content Marketing + Sales Support

By leveraging regular, relevant content with timed (and automated) communication, it becomes easier to gather intelligence and insight on which prospects are really interested in your products and services and which contacts in your database just want to be left alone.

Content marketing allows your sales team to be armed with reasons to connect with your audience without always shoving your product or service down their throat when they aren’t ready.

If you don’t have a great arsenal of content, go to the list of questions above and start creating content that will help support your sales team. If it helps, start by creating a piece of content for a specific contact or use case and then see how you can adapt it for other use cases.

Conclusion

Aligning powerful content to the sales process is one of the most effective and repeatable ways to get results. It takes hard work and effort, but you’ve got to start somewhere, so don’t get discouraged if you’re far away from where you want to be in terms of content and sales alignment. Take it one day at a time and always measure the impact of your campaigns.

What’s your most effective piece of content in helping to drive new customers for your business?

geralt / Pixabay

You’ve spent hours prospecting and have finally found a potential client. After a few calls they seem interested so you setup an in person meeting. Things are going great, the deal is coming together, and you can already taste the commission. Then, at the last minute they decide to go with one of your competitors instead.

This scenario is all too common in sales. This is why it’s one of the toughest positions in business. You have to be able to brush off rejection and move on to the next prospect. While there’s no way to guarantee success in sales, there are definitely ways you can increase your chances of closing prospects.

Here are four sales hacks you can use to improve your conversions:

Teach Prospects Something New About Your Industry

When you’re pitching prospects for the first time it’s imperative that you come off as knowledgeable. Nobody wants to do business with someone who sells without substance. First and foremost you need to know your industry like the back of your hand. This one may sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many salespeople lack basic knowledge about their industries.

A great way to convey your knowledge is to try and teach your prospect something new during your initial conversation. For example, if you work in the payments industry you can help them understand some of the regulatory hurdles of partnering with a payments provider. It shows you’re willing to go the extra mile to help them understand the industry and that you’re very knowledgeable about the space.

Emphasize Stellar Customer Service

One of the best ways to outshine your competition is to provide standout customer service. It’s common for sales people to get overwhelmed with clients and forget about their new prospects. This leads to late or missed follow-ups, and a lack of overall communication in general.

If you aren’t using a CRM software to manage clients and prospects you should at least use a spreadsheet to keep track. This way you can see who to follow up with and when. When you follow up make sure you personalize everything and be respectful. A simple please and thank you can go a long way in sales.

Automate Your Scheduling

Time is money. That said, every client or potential client respects someone who is efficient with their time. A great way to be efficient around your time is to automate your scheduling.

If you haven’t done so already you should utilize a calendar application to manage your scheduling. This way you can eliminate any back and forth between you and the prospect to book your meeting.

Book Lunch Meetings

When you finally get the chance to meet the prospect in person you should always try and book a lunch meeting. When meeting at a restaurant it puts you and the prospect on equal terms. It removes most work-related distractions and allows you to truly connect one on one. In addition, it gives you a flexible time frame for the meeting. If you meet at an office there’s typically a hard stop and the conversation typically stops after business is done.

At lunch you can use any extra time you have to connect with the prospect on a personal level. People love to do business with people they know and trust. Lunch meetings are a great opportunity to accomplish exactly that.

The four sales hacks above are only a handful of tips that will help improve your conversions. If you’re struggling to close deals I strongly suggest one or all of the tips above. You won’t be disappointed.

StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay

Small businesses have been eyeing a bigger share of the market. Sadly, every new marketing style seems to favor enterprises with a big budget. Nonetheless, there are new subtle practices that young startups can use to get ahead of the pack. Consider some listed below to grow your bottom line this 2018.

1. Separate your brand from your name

What ails young entrepreneurs is fame without money. It can be frustrating when everyone knows your name yet your account is in the red. That is the problem that many creative and budding entrepreneurs face. Instead of marketing yourself, market your business. For artists, writers, bloggers, and fashionistas, if you are not getting an opportunity to market your products, then a show is not worth your time.

Think about this, P Diddy is not the brand Ciroc is, and not many people might know Larry Page, but everyone knows what Google is. So if you have been caught up in trying to make a name for yourself, it’s time for you to stop. Start making a name for your goods and services.

2. Home Teas

As a small startup, you don’t have to chew more than you can swallow. Set out to eat into the market bit by bit. One way of doing that is by having tea parties at home where you invite potential clients in your niche. It shouldn’t be a struggle to make sales in the comfort of your living room if you network with an industry veteran to assist you in this. They will introduce you to a ready pool of market.

3. Get media contacts and make news

Business moguls know how to leverage media relationships. If you ask them, you will find out that they don’t write a check for every media mention their brand gets. Why not try the same? Know a successful blogger and have him/her on speed dial. Journalists, on the other hand, are always fishing for stories. You have an opportunity to provide that by engaging in CSR activities; you can volunteer to clean the streets or fight for a worthy cause. How do you get media contacts? Most writers leave their email addresses below their stories on the papers. That’s a great place to start. But you can choose to be an active citizen and participate in social events in your communities, that’s where you will run into members of the press.

4. Tell the story behind your brand

There are so many businesses offering the same services today, and now customers want to associate themselves with brands that inspire confidence. You can easily do that by telling your brand story. How you conceived the idea, what sparked your interest in that niche and what problem you aim to solve? A powerful brand story is a leverage you need to get a share of the corporate market in 2018. We know that Steve Jobs started Apple computers from a garage in his home and that Ali Baba founder Jack Ma got rejected from Harvard 10 times. What’s your story?

5. Try out video reviews

As mentioned earlier, the current generation is tickled more by video than by literature. It’s time to give your reviews a revamp. At this point, you must have realized that reviews are more impactful than direct adverts online. You can take a notch higher with video reviews and explainer videos about your products and services. Make the videos brief, informational and fun. If you can, get an influencer to feature in the video. That’s how you will increase the footfall to your business this 2018.

geralt / Pixabay

6. Get into live streaming

Live streaming on social media can be what it takes to take your business from the red. There is a new generation of consumers that live in the cloud. They are intense content consumers with an affinity for interactive videos. Facebook video is a great tool to start with a live video for your small business. The video streaming function can allow you to target a specific audience. What’s more, you will be seeing the reactions live in form of emoji’s floating on the screen during the stream.

Successful businesses use live streaming to showcase products and interact with their target communities. For the music niche, live streaming is an indispensable tool. Teasers, limited offers, insights, special events, office tours- there is so much to do with a live video. And another thing, don’t limit yourself to one channel. There is Instagram, YouTube and many others that will help you amplify your brand with the power of live video.

7. Use Google Business Photos

It’s a founded on the 360-degree photo concept. You have to upload your photos in JPG or PNG format to Google listings. The idea is to give your customer a virtual tour of your business without them having to click many links on your site. This feature enables businesses to be listed on Google searches together with their street view, directions, and products and services. It also works wonders with SEO.

8. SMS short codes

It’s time you got that 4 or 6-digit number to subscribe customers to your SMS program. Once you get people subscribing to your shortcode, you can hit them up with offers, coupons, and promotions by way of text message. SMS peer to peer protocol is impactful and affordable. All you have to do is come up with a campaign keyword, and find an SMS provider to host this service. Once customers opt-in to the campaign, wherever they are you can be sure to reach them on their phones with your business.

9. Blog like a millennial

The demand for information and content exceeds supply. Every new year we have new internet subscribers and that should mean good news for your business. Despite the prevalence of video, many people still have the time to read blogs. Psychology 101 states that information search is a vital step in the customer buying decision. The best thing about blogs is that they enable you to be elaborate. You get to talk about your products and services in details. To influence the market with blogs, write in a way that resonates well with your clients.

Use your blogs to stimulate emotions. Consider using memes, slang and any other thing that will get you at the top of your customers’ minds. Big brands are big on emotions with their TV ads. You can even pull a page from their book and do it better online.

Use any of the above hacks, or all of them and your gross turnover will grow by leaps and bounds this 2018.

Here is a secret most HR people won’t ever admit to without a few drinks in them: exit interviews don’t count for sh*t.

In the first place, many organizations don’t bother doing them at all, or they leave it to the manager (you heard that right) to have a conversation before the employee leaves. In other cases, only people who are leaving voluntary get an exit interview, and then, only the full-time folks with more than a few months on the job. Tragically, the interviews that do happen are done by junior people working with a form.

What we have, then, even in a fairly big firm, is a very small number of data points from a very unrepresentative sample of the departing population. If I put my marketing hat on that looks like a pile of anecdotal nothingness that sheds little insight on the health of the brand, nor offers any direction for improving it.

When customers quit our brands, we are all over them to figure out why, to win them back and to make sure we stay on their radar. We have focus groups, surveys, save teams, discounts and, occasionally, shameless bribery. Woe betide the marketer who is letting too many of those RGUs slip out the door.

What’s an RGU? Why, it’s a revenue generating unit, aka a customer, often a real person. Guess what other RGUs you have that you’re losing and not dealing with? That’s right, your employees.

Someplace in the finance department the Keebler Elves are tracking the productivity of your workforce, and that metric rhymes with revenue per employee. That’s a real thing. If we marketers are accountable to the company for revenue, we really ought to be considering the impact of internal RGUs, aka employees, aka humans, who are leaving.

Just as we would if there was a ton of churn in our customer base, we should be having a conversation with these people shortly after they escape, and finding out why, and seeing what it would take to bring them back (if you want them back; as with customers, not everyone is worth hanging on to).

We should further be segmenting those folks into a few other groups. There’s the ones who stand a chance of getting an exit interview, those tenured, full-time people who jump ship voluntarily, but there’s also these folks:

• People who leave in the first weeks or months
• Contractors and temps
• Candidates who turn you down
• People you fire

In most organizations nobody is even thinking of talking to these people, and that is a giant miss.

Cheque Please!

We like to pretend the “probation” period in our organization is so we can get a good look at you in the full light of day and then decide if you’re worth keeping. Some employers actually withhold benefits and vacation until that weird period is over, and most will tell you they can terminate your ass for any reason during that time. But here’s the thing most of us don’t consider: in today’s labour market, the one on probation is often the employer.

There are lots of reasons new employees leave, like a dream job that comes along just after they sign on with you, but I’m willing to bet that someone who has gone to all the trouble to be interviewed, reference checked, onboarded and trained is intending to stick around long enough to have the granola bar in their desk go stale.

In marketing, early customer churn is a very, very big deal indeed. It usually means there’s either a competitor at work or a dismal customer experience. Sometimes both. We find out by, that’s right, asking. We do surveys, phone calls, focus groups and the occasional rescue mission for these customers because they represent a high LTV (lifetime value) that hasn’t yet been recognized against the cost of acquiring them. The same is true of those employees who are heading for the exit in the first six months or so. Something either looks much better on the other side of the fence, or the experience is so awful they would rather be unemployed than come to work each day.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to expect these people to have some interesting and valuable insights about your employer brand, the value proposition, the workplace, their manager, the role and the culture of the company.

Just Passing Through

Another group that never gets an exit interview is the temporary workforce. This includes temps you bring in for a few days to cover a vacation, right up to consultants who may spend weeks or months hanging around while they work on a project.

Here’s why I think they are particularly interesting people to speak to. First, they come in with very little prior information (unless they’ve been there before). Unlike your full-time employees, they probably didn’t go through a full recruiting process, multiple interviews and checks. They likely got a call one week and showed up the next. In marketing, we love talking to consumers who have little to no prior impressions of a brand or category because they don’t drag a bunch of agendas and subjectivity along to the conversation, so can be a bit more insightful about what their expectations might be. The same kind of conversation can be had with your contract folks.

For example, they are relatively immune to the local politics, have little investment in the culture or subculture of their workplace, and likely no emotional attachment to their supervisor or colleagues. This gives you a fairly neutral point of view, even taking into account that they may want to work with you again, and so aren’t likely to unload a ton of negativity.

Another thing I just love about temporary folks is their invisibility. People simply forget they’re there. They sit in their cube or their corner and the day-to-day drama unfolds around them, but rarely with them. I’ve often found they are privy to information (and gossip) that eludes many managers and HR people. They also watch, with detachment, how teams work, how managers manage, how leadership is regarded, what are the mutually loathed corporate policies, who’s getting bullied, what other departments are being nice and not nice, top things to gripe about and so on.

Thanks Anyway, But No

Marketers spend a lot of their tme worrying about the sales funnel. Who’s in the funnel, who should be in the funnel, who’s where in the funnel and, critically, who just bounced out of the funnel and why. Of particular interest are the customers who fall out just ahead of the purchase or who suddenly cancel immediately after. Big alarm bells there.

There should be similarly big alarm bells when we have people who have gone all the way through our recruiting funnel and suddenly leave. That can be the semi-finalist candidate who just doesn’t show for an interview, or it can be the preferred candidate who turns down the offer.

Marketers want to understand if it was a better offer from a competitor, a sudden case of cold feet about a change, a terrible review on Yelp or an experience that didn’t feel quite right. For candidates, we also want some intelligence on why they went all that way with us only to say goodnight in the taxi.

It may be a better offer, in which case, you want to know if it was more money, better location, better fit or what have you. But it could also be they did a bit of last-minute due diligence on Glassdoor or Google, or they shot a note to their network asking for input and were dissuaded by the crowd. Remember, Millennials are all about the network’s opinion. It could be that the last person who interviewed them scared them sh*tless, or kept them waiting for 45 minutes, or was just woefully unprepared.

If brands are built on the way experience meets expectation, then you may have a big problem at the bottom of your recruiting funnel, and you need to figure out what it is.

Fu*k You Very Much

Even for marketers there are some RGUs (aka people) we just need to part company with. They’re simply too much maintenance, too whiney, too unpleasable, or just too unpleasant to keep on the customer list. Mostly this takes the form of ignoring them until they go away, pricing them out of the database or, occasionally, simply firing them.

For employees, the same process is called termination and it sucks no matter how it happens, nor how deserved it may be. But make no mistake: whether a customer or employee jumps, falls or is pushed away from your brand, it’s still a brand experience and it still matters in the larger scheme of things.

Severance packages are an exercise in employer branding, as is the way in which your brand parts company with employees. Which is why it’s a bit baffling that we don’t do exit interviews with the people we fire.

I know, I know, they’re not going to be all sunshine and roses about the company that just turfed them out, and that’s ok. We can hold off for a few weeks or months until the anger dissipates a bit and there is some chance they will be philosophical. We can also control for anger in the way we design the survey and weight the responses. The idea that nothing good can come from this cohort is a bit ridiculous, if you consider all their experience with your brand prior to the not-so-great dismount.

Plus, just in case you were wondering, they may not be talking to you, but they are sure as hell talking about you. To their friends, to their family, on Glassdoor, Indeed, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on. That’s not a conversation you want to be surprised about.

Starting the Conversation

If you’re getting a bit worried that all this follow-up is going to keep your intern busy, you can relax. The last person who should be doing this stuff is the HR team. Marketers figured this one out ages ago, mostly because we’re really pretty lazy, but also because it turns out that people will say all kinds of things to strangers they would never say to you.

Most marketers use third party survey companies or even just Survey Monkey or other online polling software to talk to the departing RGUs/customers/people. It’s fast, affordable and it gives insights into the market brand they just can’t get anywhere else.

I think it’s time HR got out of the exit interview process, except to ask permission to follow up later with a survey or a call. Most people will say yes, even the negative ones, and just like your friends in marketing you’ll end up with actionable brand data and pretty slides.

If you’d like more information about how to set up post-employment conversations and other employer brand stuff, let me know and I’ll share some tools.

This specific section of your LinkedIn profile unlocks the keywords needed to make sure potential employers and prospective clients can “find” you on the platform.

If you want to get any meaningful value or traction from LinkedIn, it’s critical that you start with a profile that’s already optimized.

(In fact, I have an entire copy-and-paste LinkedIn profile template you can download right now to build out your page properly.)

And, as you polish up your profile on LinkedIn, it’s about being clear, concise and having the right keywords to ensure potential employers, business partners and prospective customers can “find” you on the site.

LinkedIn = Google Search For Professionals

With 530 million members in 200 countries, LinkedIn is essentially the world’s largest search engine for professionals.

Because the platform saves and indexes every piece of data you post and share on the site (from where you live to your job title and so on), it is easy to reverse-engineer a search in order to find someone on LinkedIn that you want to hire or do business with.

For example, if I need a Business Coach, I merely type the phrase “Business Coach” into the search box on LinkedIn and am greeted with thousands of Business Coaches from around the world who I can connect to and potentially hire.

Even more, LinkedIn allows me to filter my search results based on where those Business Coaches live, where they went to college and so on.

How Would Someone “Find” You on LinkedIn?

Say you live in Minneapolis and need a plumber to fix a broken sink. If you don’t have one off the top of your head that you know well, you might take to Google and type in “Minneapolis Plumber” or “Plumber Services Minneapolis” to find a vendor or service provider.

The same applies on LinkedIn.

Hundreds of millions of professionals search the platform every single day for content, training and people to help them solve a problem or meet a need.

LinkedIn’s internal Search Engine is the nexus for all of this activity, and whether or not you show up well when someone searches for the product or service that you offer depends on how well you’ve set up your profile and utilized keywords.

The first step in doing things correctly is thinking like a prospect would.

For example, if you’re a Business Coach, would someone wanting your services type in a phrase like “Productivity Ninja” or “Leadership Guru?”

Or would he or she type in “Business Coach” or “Business Coaching?”

Too many professionals on LinkedIn are trying to be clever and cute instead of clear and concise with their profile pages and professional headlines.

This is a big mistake!

When it comes to your LinkedIn profile page, you need make it simple for people to understand who you are (job title) and what it is you do (list of products or services).

Not only will this type of approach clear up any confusion with the audiences you serve and the ways you serve them, it will also help LinkedIn surface your profile when people are using certain search terms to find someone who does what you do.

How To Find the Right Keywords on LinkedIn

The best (and easiest) place to find out what keywords and search terms are most popular on LinkedIn is inside the “Skills” section of your profile.

To do this, go into your LinkedIn profile, find the “Skills” section and click on “Add a New Skill.”

Once you do, you’ll be able to start typing in skills you want to be known for. As you type in certain words, LinkedIn (just like Google Search) will provide a drop down menu of suggested keywords or search phrases related to the words you’re typing.

That is a great indicator of what words or phrases are going to be most popular and most often searched as it relates to your profession, job title or services you offer.

Even more important, the more skills you list on your LinkedIn profile, the more likely you are to get “found” on the platform.

“Listing five or more skills on your LinkedIn Profile can lead to up to 17 times more (profile) views,” LinkedIn shared in a recent blog post. “This means the next time someone is searching for your particular skill set in graphic design or event planning, for example, you have a better shot of showing up in their results. Showcasing your skills can be the start of new conversations and opportunities.”

Getting More Visible on LinkedIn

If you haven’t already, spend some time not only polishing up your LinkedIn profile to be more clear and concise, but also adding in the right Skills and keywords throughout. Include them in your LinkedIn headline, job titles and summary description areas.

Don’t go overboard, and use keywords in the right context, and this will give you the best possible opportunity to get “found” more easily on the world’s largest platform for professionals.

There is something people call aggressive that isn’t something that should be attached to that word. People who are generally more averse to conflict believe that this behavior is aggressive when it is not. Instead, what they deem as aggressive is nothing more than dealing with challenges directly.

Let’s say you have a client that always asks you for a discount (this is a very poorly disguised hypothetical). You don’t believe you should have to discount your pricing because you create value in excess of your competitor’s pricing. Regardless of what you believe, your client always asks you for a better price. This is what you might call a systemic problem, because it continues to happen over and over and over again . . . like a giant cable knit sweater.

One choice is to try to defend your pricing and your model on every call, repeating the same pattern from week to week. By avoiding a bigger conversation, you eliminate the risk of making your client unhappy by asking to change the nature of your relationship from one that is transactional to one where you create greater value—and one in which you are entitled to capture a little more value for doing so. By making this choice, you avoid the potential conflict and a potential negative outcome that might come from broaching the subject. You also leave the problem unresolved.

A second choice is to ask to have a conversation about your relationship and the value you create beyond the product. By asking, “Can we talk about how I can best serve you and why it makes sense for you to buy from me even if our price is a little bit higher than our competitors? I want to make sure I am serving you and make sure you know that I will take care of, even if I don’t always have the lowest price?” Now the cat is out of the bag, and we can now give it a name. Let’s call it “reset.”

By dealing directly with a systemic challenge, you can work on a systemic solution. Instead of leaving the issue unaddressed, you address it, and you work towards a resolution. This is not aggressive, nor does it have to be. You can choose to enter this conversation in a way that is playful, professional, and one in which no one feels that you are being aggressive.

The post Dealing with Conflict Is Not Aggressive appeared first on The Sales Blog.

This 2018, it is worth looking at integrating webinars into your internet marketing plan — if you haven’t done so. Webinars are an effective tool in raising brand awareness or influencing customer decisions. “Live webinars appeal to many as it creates a forum for interaction without having to travel,” says Kelly J. Waffle, director of account strategy for Marketo.

Indeed, they can be used to create an instant connection, nurture leads, build online relationships, and present the value of your products or services without asking for money in return. But in order to accomplish these things, you need to build webinars that are compelling enough to get participants to convert.

Are you ready to learn how to make one?

Step 1: Focus by segment

Begin with your segments and customer personas. And then build topics around these factors. This tactic will help you avoid throwing a webinar that covers a blanket topic and then hoping someone from the audience will become a customer. Your themes should be targeted to the right type of consumer to ensure that your message gets across.

A demand generation firm I am familiar with crafts each a separate session for key decision-makers like CEOs, marketing directors, and IT managers. Sometimes it groups together C-suite leaders according to industry. Whatever you start with, choose a structure you are comfortable with, as it also takes time, energy, money, and bandwidth to prepare for a single webinar.

Step 2: Tap a partner

Once you’ve come up with a lineup, consider tapping a third party or an industry expert. Partnering with another individual or startup that complements your strengths is a good starting point. For instance, you may be an expert in SEO and know someone who is specifically winning in deploying backlinks. The two of you can teach SEO fundamentals with a focus on link building.

Inviting a client you have successfully worked with is another option. Through this webinar, you are providing would-be clients with social proof. They will see that your product or service works and possibly make you an expert in your field. At the end of the session, you can offer a bundle that will benefit both you and your partner.

Step 3: Design an engaging session

Polls, group chats, and Q&As not only spice up a live webinar. They actually help keep your audience engaged until the end. Dishing out interactive/visual content also gets their attention. Depending on your output from step 1, you can now outline the content. Write a script if this will help you track things.

Make it last a little over than one hour, dedicating the first 30-40 minutes discussing 3-4 points. And then you can spend the last 20 minutes holding a Q&A. If you are already talking to participants who are likely to make a purchase, you can insert a call to action before or after the Q&A portion.

Step 4: Map out the experience for the audience

Set up important markers from the registration page to email reminders. Envision how a person will experience the process of signing up for your webinar. According to the State of Webinars 2018, a report by ClickMeeting, 32% of its attendees last year joined via their mobile devices. Make sure that your landing pages and email messages are mobile-friendly. If you have the budget and bandwidth, conducting the webinar on your mobile app or website allows you to have greater control over the event.

Let facts guide you in making any decisions concerning this step. Check out this infographic by ClickMeeting, derived from the State of Webinars 2018 report, to learn more about useful trends and up-to-date information.

Infographic by ClickMeeting

Step 5: Drive traffic to your signup page

Now the harder part begins. Determine which channels will you use to drive traffic to your registration page. Using paid channels such as AdWords and Facebook Ads is a fast and effective way to gather signups. At the same time, blasting the information on social media works. If you can are doing guest posts, then maximize the space and opportunity as well. Having a partner webinar producer also increases your chances of reaching out to more people because the promotion efforts are automatically doubled.

How do you know if a prospective customer will care about the sales email you send them? It helps if you’ve sketched out who your ideal buyer is before ever drafting that email.

These days, you need a crystal-clear idea of your ideal buyer and the ways your business can actually help them or add value to their lives.

But the old stereotypes of Marketing Mary or Procurement Pete are outdated and frequently inappropriate. Instead, anyone in sales or marketing needs to learn how to craft a buyer persona—that is, a detailed description of your ideal customer and why they’re qualified to buy from your company.

In this video, I explain why buyer personas are so important and how to create one to build up a strong prospecting list.

The post The Success of Your Sales Email Depends on How Well You Know Your Ideal Buyer appeared first on Salesfolk.

Content marketing has really taken off in the past couple of years. It was already a formidable force online, but now it has become something that pretty much every brand has to be aware of. And you’ll find that your clients will need to be in the game too. It’s going to get bigger.

We’ve put together 10 facts about the phenomenon that we think your clients would be interested in. It’s all compelling stuff, and it shows just how content marketing is going to grow this year.

Buyers like it

There was a time when advertising, big and brash ads, was the way forward if you wanted to grab a new client or contract. That has changed. Now, overwhelmingly, buyers in companies want to see expertise through articles, posts and richer content. If they see this being done on a regular basis by a brand, they’re more likely to want to purchase.

What this means is that brands (including your clients) need to have a full content strategy that covers all areas of content, and feeds the audience with what they want.

Original written content is still viable

It’s easy to jump on a trend or two, and it’s actually exciting, especially when new content formats arise. Remember when infographics became huge? Everyone started coming out with new infographics, some of which didn’t even make sense.

While trends are fun, what’s interesting to note is that the popular brands out there, and the bigger brands, are busy creating original, high quality written content. And it’s being appreciated by audiences.

That original written content is getting longer

And it’s a good thing. Written content used to be short and sweet, just enough to avoid Google not finding it. Then, people started to realise that having long, involving and intelligent content was the way forward.

Expect longer content to be the norm. Written content is still kicking it, but it has to be long, well-structured, and useful. These aren’t your throwaway blog posts, they’ve got to add real value.

Video will blow the world away

While written content still has a place, and a very solid place at that, video cannot be underestimated. It’s estimated that by 2018, over 70% of Internet traffic by consumers will be based around video. They’re watching a lot of video, and they’re using video to make buying decisions.

Whatever phase you’re working on, whether it’s awareness or conversion, you’re going to have to crank up that video budget.

The biggest stressor is engagement

This kind of makes sense. All your client really wants is engagement. This also happens to be one of the major stressors that content marketers and digital agency employees have. Every time they create content, the biggest issue is whether or not it’s going to create engagement, and therefore justify the work done.

Content (good content) builds confidence

We know, it’s a bit of an obvious point. But it’s amazing how many people still feel this isn’t right. If you concentrate on creating the very best content for your clients, you’ll find a corresponding rise in audience sentiment. Sentiment is literally a measure of what your audience feels about you.

Trust is there for everyone to enjoy, but a brand has to earn it. So the next time a client queries the value in uploading a post every week to their blog, just talk about the confidence it is building.

The more you blog, the more you gain

This is a really important aspect of content marketing, a brand that is doing well generally has a high quality blog that is building influence online.

The really good news is that most internet users read blogs. That is excellent news for any brand that is creating a blog alongside all it’s other marketing efforts.

The history of blogging is full of brands that simply did not create enough posts to make things worthwhile. Research has shown that once you hit the sweet spot in post numbers, you can expect your traffic to grow, and therefore your engagement (because you’re creating incredibly useful content).

That sweet spot? It’s between 50-100 posts. Just crank out that blog goodness and you’ll soon see an accompanying rise in engagement, and leads.

Sometimes a small increase makes for big gains

With blogging this is especially true. If you’re able to produce four great blog posts a week, compared to one a week, you’ll see a huge increase in traffic. It kind of builds up over time, but feeding that growth with a consistent frequency of posts makes for big gains.

It’s proof that if you just switch your game up a little, the end result is fantastic. And your clients will love you for it.

Images in posts and articles are the only game in town

Research has shown that images need to be in every piece of content you create (unless it’s video, where you have plenty of images). Articles, posts and updates that contain images gain massively compared to those without. Silly question, but are you ensuring all content for your client has images, all of it?

You’ve been marketing your brand on Instagram for a while now, and you’re confident that you have the basics covered.

You’ve mapped out a cohesive Instagram marketing strategy to ensure that your efforts are actually moving the needle for your brand. You’ve done research on the best hashtags to use for your business. You’ve even switched over to a business account.

What now? With those nuts and bolts under your belt, what else can you do to make the most of Instagram and reach a wider audience?

If you haven’t already tried your hand at Instagram influencer marketing, there’s no time like the present. Influencer marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that could be just the secret to take your brand’s Instagram presence up a notch.

Why Instagram Influencer Marketing is Effective

According to Linqia’s The State of Influencer Marketing survey, a whopping 94% of respondents who use influencer marketing believe it to be an effective tactic.

But, why? What makes influencers so powerful? Well, there are a few reasons why influencers can heavily contribute to your marketing success on Instagram.

First, Instagram influencer marketing provides the opportunity to organically reach customers that would have otherwise been totally untouchable. When you consider the fact that the usage of ad blockers surged by 30% in 2016, consumers are becoming increasingly tough to reach.

Instagram influencer marketing gives your brand the opportunity to get out in front of those people in a way that’s more natural and conversational, and far less pushy and salesy.

Secondly, Instagram influencer marketing doesn’t just enable you to reach those people—it also helps you convert them into customers.

In fact, 81% of consumers state that social posts from friends and peers (ahem, influencers!) directly impact their purchasing decisions.

Needless to say, those conversions can have major benefits for your brand. A 2016 study from TapInfluence and Nielsen Catalina Solutions discovered that influencer marketing generates 11 times the ROI of traditional digital marketing.

There are plenty more statistics and studies out there that illustrate why influencer marketing is such an effective tactic on a variety of platforms. But, what about Instagram in particular?

As it turns out, Instagram is one of the best networks you can use for your influencer marketing efforts.

2016 research from SheSpeaks pointed out that Instagram was the second most popular social media platform for influencer marketing—right behind Facebook.

But, as Instagram’s active daily users continue to increase (while Facebook struggles to keep up, particularly with the younger generation), we can venture to guess that statistic is dated and that Instagram is bound to take the top spot for influencer marketing—if it hasn’t already. Believe it or not, Instagram influencer marketing doubled in 2017 alone.

Working With Influencers: The Dos

Now that you’re adequately convinced of the power of Instagram influencer marketing, that’s not all you need to know. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the do’s and don’ts to ensure you approach and collaborate with influencers in the best way.

Let’s kick things off with some best practices you should implement when working with Instagram influencers.

1. Think About Your Messaging

Influencers will play a role in your overall marketing strategy on Instagram. That means that—in order to really maximize that opportunity—you need to be clear on your goals and your messaging before ever starting that relationship.

Doing so will help you find the right influencers for your brand (more on that in a minute!), while also ensuring that they create the right type of content that actually serves your purpose.

It’s tempting to think that you’re trapped in a box when it comes to Instagram influencer marketing. If you’re a health and wellness company, you need to work with fitness and nutrition influencers, for example. Or, if you’re a cosmetics brand, you need to approach the beauty influencers.

However, things don’t need to be so black and white. Ask yourself a couple of important questions:

Is there a specific campaign you’re aiming to use influencers for—whether it’s a launch of a new product, promotion of an upcoming event, or something else?

What overall message are you attempting to get across through those marketing efforts?

For example, HP Australia utilized influencers to promote their new HP Spectre laptop.

Partnering with influencers in the technology space would’ve been an obvious fit. However, HP wanted to add to the sleek and stylish vibe of their new product. To do so, they flipped the script and worked with fashion influencers instead.

Image Source

See? It wasn’t the most obvious fit. But, going that route added greatly to their overall goals and messaging for that specific product launch.

Take the time to think through those items for yourself, and you’ll have a much easier time finding the right influencers and providing them direction on the type of content you’d like to see.

2. Find the Right Influencers

There are thousands and thousands of influencers on Instagram—which is awesome, but it also makes it challenging to zone in on the right ones that would be the best fit for your brand. It often fits that old “needle in a haystack” cliche.

In an article about Instagram influencers for Social Media Week, author Gareth O’Sullivan explains that there’s some criteria you should keep in mind when finding the right influencers. These include:

• Shares high-quality content on a regular basis
• Authentic and interacts with their audience
• Sticks to a specific theme and style that relates to your brand
• Has a large following that is both active and engaged. A good like and comment ratio is ideal.

Obviously, it’s simple to tell whether or not an influencer has a large following—that number is directly at the top of the profile. Figuring out engagement, however, can be a little more complicated.

To help with that, use a free tool like Phlanx Engagement Calculator. Simply enter the Instagram handle of an influencer, and you’ll be met with their engagement score—as well as the average number of likes and comments they get on each of their posts.

Here’s a peek at what that looks like, using my own Instagram handle as an example:

When it comes to actually finding influencers to work with, there are plenty of online platforms, tools, and agencies you can use to separate the wheat from the chaff (way more than we could possibly mention here). Here are a few favorites amongst marketers:

• Famebit
• Upfluence
• NinjaOutreach

If you want to go the free route? There are ways to do that as well—including just a plain, old-fashioned Google search.

However, the best method is to use Instagram to search for various hashtags that are relevant to your brand. The research results will have the top-performing posts toward the beginning. Click through those, and you’re bound to find some Instagram users with large, engaged followings that you could reach out to.

3. Build a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

Whether you’re planning to work with two influencers or 200, the age-old advice of building solid relationships holds true. The more you can foster a bond between your brand and Instagram influencers, the more successful you’ll be.

That means skipping the cold call approaches that involve blanketing the world in the same generic, “We want to work with you!” emails and direct messages. Influencers—particularly those who get a lot of interest from many different brands—are sure to ignore those.

Instead, take the time to do your research and get to know that influencer. Begin following him or her on Instagram, and like and comment on any new posts. That way, when you finally do reach out after some time, you’ll already have established some name recognition.

When you do get in touch with an email or a message, keep the following things in mind:

1. Make it Personal: Remember the same form letter isn’t going to work for everyone. Begin your message by including a personalized detail—which could be as simple as something you noticed on that influencer’s Instagram account:

Hey Taylor,

Loved your recent post about your trip to the Maldives. I hope you had an awesome time—the scenery looks unreal!

2. Explain Your Brand: Influencers likely aren’t going to agree to work with a brand they know nothing about, and you don’t want to make any assumptions that the influencer is already intimately aware of what you do. Make sure you explain your brand in enough detail so that the influencer can decide whether or not it’s a fit with what he or she typically promotes:

I’m reaching out on behalf of 123Fit, a stylish fitness tracker for busy professionals. At 123Fit, we’re all about healthy lifestyles—but, that doesn’t mean we like the look of those clunky fitness tracker bracelets! So, we set out to revolutionize wearables in the fitness industry and spent years developing our sleek design that looks just like a real piece of jewelry.

3. Talk About Your Campaign: Explaining your brand isn’t enough. You likely want to work with this influencer for a specific initiative, so make sure that you make that clear as well:

We’re releasing a brand new tracker design in rose gold on March 1, and are working with various influencers to spread the word ahead of the launch.

4. Explain Where the Influencer Fits in: This is where you can appeal to that influencer’s ego and share the details of why you think he or she is a great fit for your particular campaign:

With that said, we love the content that you post on Instagram. Your balance of both fitness and fashion perfectly embodies our brand.

5. Make the Request: This is the point when you get specific and explain exactly what you’re looking for from that influencer. That will be important information to help them decide whether or not this is an opportunity that works for them:

I’m wondering if you would be interested in promoting our brand new fitness tracker on your Instagram account. We would ask that you post one Instagram photo ahead of March 1. If you’re interested, I can pass along additional details about the content style and the messaging.

6. Emphasize Value: The best relationships are mutually beneficial, which means you can’t be the only one getting something out of this arrangement. In your first message, make sure you highlight what the influencer will get for agreeing:

If you’re interested, we have a budget of $300 per sponsored Instagram post. Additionally, of course will send you a complimentary rose gold fitness tracker and will share your post on our own account.

Cap off that message with a friendly “goodbye,” encouragement for them to ask any questions, and the details of how to get in touch with you, and you’ll hopefully have a reply from that influencer sooner rather than later.

4. Empower Influencers With Information

Nothing will destroy a relationship with an influencer faster than making them waste time digging for the information they need to create a quality post for your brand.

While you never want to limit their creativity (more on that in a moment!), you should be prepared to empower them with the need-to-know details for their post.

Where would you like to be tagged—in the photo or in the caption? Is there a hashtag they should use? What is the name and the specifications of your product? When and where is it available? Is there a discount code they should be promoting?

Having all of that ironed out ahead of time will save both you and the influencer a ton of headaches, and also empower him or her to answer any questions and truly be an informed advocate for your brand.

TIP: Before you launch an influencer campaign, consider creating a short video or guide that contains all of those details—so your influencers always know exactly where to get the information they need.

Working With Influencers: The Don’ts

Those best practices will help you establish some solid bonds with influencers in your niche and industry.

But, what about what not to do? Here are three things you should absolutely not do when collaborating with Instagram influencers.

1. Don’t Limit Their Creativity

There are reasons that you want to work with those influencers. They’re masters of their crafts, and they know the types of content that best engage their audiences.

It’s smart to arm them with information and appropriate expectations. But, don’t take that to mean that you can limit their own creativity. Give them the breathing room and flexibility to create content that serves your brand but also fits their own aesthetic.

Not only is this important for getting the very best content out of your agreement (seriously, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what influencers come up with!), but it also improves your relationship and increases the chance of that influencer wanting to work with you again.

In fact, in a Crowdtap survey, 77% of influencers said that they’d be more likely to partner with a brand more than once if that brand gave them some creative freedom—it was the top factor on the list:

Image Source

2. Don’t Neglect the Rules

Think there are no rules when it comes to using Instagram influencer marketing? Think again. The FTC monitors social media to ensure posts are complying with guidelines and regulations.

Yet, very few are good at following those rules. Research shows that 93% of celebrities on Instagram have broken FTC guidelines.

You’ll want to do your own research to ensure you’re up to speed on all of the various rules and regulations you need to abide by. However, Ana Gotter provides a great breakdown in her post for AdEspresso:

• Influencers must actually try or use a product or service before promoting it.
• Influencers need to disclose their relationship with the brand. You’ll see this done in a variety of ways, including using hashtags like #sponsored or #ad.
• Influencers should be honest. If they had an awful experience, they can’t say the opposite—even if they’re being paid.
• Brands shouldn’t use influencer campaigns that don’t allow influencers to disclose a partnership or relationship with the brand—such as paying people to “like” their posts.
• Disclosures of partnerships should appear before the fold (which means before the “click to read more” button would appear). The disclosure should appear prominently within the first few words of the caption if influencers aren’t using the sponsored post feature.
• Disclosures should be both easily noticed and understood.

That’s a solid overview. But, remember to roll up your sleeves and do your own digging to ensure you’re complying with the rules.

You don’t want to end up in any hot water. So, make this your golden rule: When in doubt, just ask.

3. Don’t Obsess Over Numbers

When you’re looking for Instagram influencers to work with, it’s tempting to only focus on the ones with the largest followings.

However, keep in mind that number isn’t everything (particularly when buying followers is a real thing). And, micro-influencers (generally considered to be anyone with fewer than 100,000 followers) can also make a huge impact for your brand.

As Dhariana Lozano explains in a post for Social Media Today, there are three solid reasons that micro-influencers are just as worthy of your attention:

1. Niche Audience: They tend to focus on a more specific audience and, as a result, have much higher engagement rates.
2. Connection: Because they don’t have an overwhelmingly massive following, their audiences tend to view them as more genuine and feel a greater connection with them (which can also increase engagement!).
3. Availability: Those influencers with millions of followers are being approached by brands all of the time. Micro-influencers will be thrilled with the opportunity to collaborate and build their own presence (and, bonus, they’ll probably be cheaper too!).

Making the Most of Instagram Influencer Marketing

We’ve covered a lot in this post—including the impact of Instagram influencer marketing, how to find and reach out to influencers, and how to improve the relationship with the influencers you do find.

We’ll cap things off with one final note: Instagram Influencer marketing is powerful, but it’s still up to you to maximize it to your advantage.

When an influencer creates a post, make sure to share it to your own account. You’ll get curated content for your own feed, while also strengthening that relationship by demonstrating to that influencer that you both are in this together.

In short, utilizing Instagram influencer marketing is a win-win. So, get out there, find some influencers, and prepare to take your Instagram presence to the next level.

Maialisa / Pixabay

If you think that e-mail marketing has become a dated marketing tool, you’re not alone. But whilst technology and web marketing in general may have evolved enormously, some of the old standards are just as relevant.

It is of course extremely easy to overlook the power and potential of traditional marketing tools and strategies like e-mail, with so many new and forward-thinking alternatives to focus on. Nevertheless, when you take the time to study and consider a few statistics with regard to e-mail marketing, it becomes clear that email marketing is uniquely powerful, accessible and lucrative platform.

Here’s a quick overview of just a few recent findings, facts and quite fantastic statistics to show just how great email marketing still is:

1. Email account growth

According to a roundup of figures from The Radicati Group, the total number of active email accounts in the world as of 2013 was approximately 4 billion. Last year this exploded significantly beyond the 5 billion mark. That’s an increase of over 1 billion e-mail addresses in no more than three years, confirming the on-going acceleration of the medium’s importance.

2. Ever increasing email volume

It’s common to assume that other forms of communication have to some extent replaced, or at least taken the edge away from e-mail. The reality however is quite different – Email Marketing Reports published data to suggest that close to 250 billion emails are sent each and every day. Or to put it another way, that’s another e-mail sent every 0.00000035 seconds.

3. A fantastic ROI

One of the key arguments routinely voiced against e-mail marketing is that it simply doesn’t have the same kind of ROI as other digital marketing efforts. Studies from emailexpert however appear to argue otherwise, having discovered that on average, every single dollar invested in professional e-mail marketing leads to a return in the region of $44.

4. Mobile marketing

The mobile revolution is providing businesses and marketers alike with extraordinary new opportunities to reach their target audiences.The Radicati Group reports that at the last instance the total tally was totted up, there were close to 900 million active mobile email users on a global basis. Not only this, but we also reached a point in time where approximately 50% of all emails are accessed via mobile devices, rather than desktop.

5. Constant customer interaction

Further research carried out by ExactTarget discovered that worldwide, well over 90% of consumers access their email accounts every single day. In the overwhelming majority of instances, the consumers in question interact with their email accounts on multiple occasions every day.

6. One up on social marketing

It’s an incredible finding, but a study carried out by McKinsey & Company came to the conclusion that when it comes to securing new customers in the first place, e-mail can be 40 times more powerful and effective than Twitter and Facebook. This is of course not to cast any shadows on the power and potential of social media – it is simply a reminder of how extraordinary e-mail marketing can be.

7. Powers of persuasion

For those who have fallen into the assumption that e-mail marketing simply isn’t persuasive enough, it’s time to rethink things quite seriously. When the people at Convince and Convert carried out a large scale survey, it found that close to 45% of all consumers polled had purchased at least one item having first received a promotional email.

8. Effective customer updates

E-mail marketing also apparently has an edge over social media in another important area as well. When asked by researchers from the Nielsen Norman Group, a full 90% of consumers said they prefer to receive newsletters by e-mail, rather than via their Facebook accounts.

9. Incentives are king

In terms of why consumers choose to join mailing lists in the first place, almost three in every four stated that they do so in order to access special offers and discounts. By contrast, little more than 8% said they sign up purely due to their interest in a brand.

10. Outstanding customer conversions

In terms of those all-important conversion rates, McKinsey & Company again sing the praises of e-mails and e-mail marketing in general. When compared to social media, email conversion rates are not only known to be up to 300% better, but the actual value of the conversion itself is on average at least 50% higher.

11. The preferred marketing method

Last but not least, Direct Marketing News reports that when it comes to reaching out and generally keeping in touch, approximately 50% of all consumers prefer using e-mail communication to contact brands and businesses, over and above all other forms of communication across the board.

Is e-mail marketing dead in the water? Not a chance – it’s never been more relevant.

Whether you own your own business, run someone else’s, are responsible for an entire department or just have to pack 60 hours of work into a 40ish hour work week – I feel your pain.  Don’t you wish there was a hack for that?

No matter what industry you’re in, my guess is that your workday is a little like mine. There’s never enough time and no matter how carefully you plan – unexpected fires end up dominating your day. Combine that reality with the pressures of demonstrating ROI faster and probably with fewer people and a stagnant budget; it is even more daunting.

But that’s not even the greatest source of pressure. I’ve been in business for almost 30 years and the pace of change just keeps getting faster and more disruptive. We’re moving so fast that I don’t even think we realize how dramatic the change is. Facebook has only been around since 2006. The first iPhone made its debut in 2007. Forget all of the other changes we’ve experienced. How have just those two introductions influenced your work and your life?

And guess what – it’s only going to get more disruptive and faster.

Let’s review. You’re doing more. You’re being interrupted more. You’re expected to deliver more ROI and faster, please. Oh yeah, and the world is spinning faster and faster while you try to do all of that.

If you want to have any chance of winning the game, you need to change the rules. I know I’ve had to do that to juggle running a couple of companies, serving 100 clients and producing as much content as I need to do. Here are some ways to hack your work day that help me and my team make it all happen.

Claim YOUR day: One of the best changes that have come with this work evolution is the recognition that there is no such thing as 9-5, and everyone has an optimal work window. At MMG, we have people who start at 7 am and people who roll in closer to 9:30 am. We all know when we’re at our best, and we’ve figured out how to allow everyone to work at their peak times and still honor all of the collaboration we need to do every day.

Know your cycle: You don’t have the luxury of not doing your best and most important work when you’re at your best. So you need to know when that is. And odds are, you have different ideal zones for different types of work. You need to take into account two distinct factors. When is your output at the highest level and when are you the most efficient with the work?

Make a list of the top 5-8 tasks you perform on a regular basis. Email, meetings, ideation, writing, etc. Then, spend a couple of weeks trying to do those tasks at different times of the day. Monitor/record your outputs in terms of both quality and speed. Look for patterns and then build a grid that shows when you should ideally do what. You won’t be able to honor it every day. But if you can three days out of five, you’ll be stunned at the increase in the volume and the value of your work.

Shape your schedule: If you don’t allocate and protect your thinking time, your trend tracking time and your vision creation time – it will never happen. You’ll never have a day without a fire. You’ll never have a day without too many emails. Whether it’s a full day a month or blocks of time every week – put it on your calendar now and protect it.

If you want to be at the top of your game, you’re going to have to give yourself an edge. Give these hacks a try and let me know if they’ve helped.

The post Hack your work day appeared first on McLellan Marketing Group.

Even the most seasoned technology sales professionals need to develop social selling best practices – but they can take years to develop. That’s what makes conversations like this one so powerful. In this episode, Bernie Borges explores the best practices of some of SAP’s most seasoned and successful sales professionals. You’ll hear social selling tips from Account Executive Alex Hunter, Gaston Edreira, Business Development Specialist of SAP Hybris, Neil Howarth, also of SAP Hybris, Account Sales Executive Georgia Rita, and Phil Lurie, VP of Sales Technology.

The tips and success stories these SAP team members share demonstrate what is possible when good social selling practices are consistently applied. Be sure to listen all the way to the end to hear some of their most encouraging social selling successes.

Social Selling Best Practices Depend on Quality More Than Quantity

One of the most practical aspects of the conversations featured on this episode is that Bernie asked each of the participants to share their favorite social selling best practices. As they did, a constant theme that rose to the surface was the power of meaningful social engagement, not the amount of content shared on social media. Their stories illustrate how significant it can be to a future sales opportunity for a sales professional to pay attention to the real needs of those they’re trying to reach and make themselves an asset.

This example is one of the outstanding tips these five members of the SAP team share on this episode. Their experience along with the success they have attained demonstrates that the SAP approach to social selling is a model any B2B brand can follow.

The More Relevant And The More Personal, The Better The Connection

When it comes to applying the very best practices in social selling, it begins with a mindset that understands the goal is not, first of all, to secure a sales conversation with a buyer. The first level goal is much more personal than that. The SAP sales team understands that there are real people behind each transaction, individuals who have particular interests, desires, and needs.

That perspective is key to being able to truly add value to the person through social by discovering those needs and making an effort to be helpful. It’s that kind of genuine interest that sets the stage for the SAP salesperson to propose business solutions to the prospect down the road. The more relevant and the more personal the salesperson can be in attempts to connect with the prospects they want to meet, the more attention they can get. Learn more insights like this from these outstanding sales professionals from the SAP team, on this podcast episode.

Consistency, Relevance, Value: The Trinity Of Social Selling Best Practices

Much of what makes the SAP global sales team successful when it comes to social selling is their implementation of these three principles: consistency, relevance, and value. Let’s look at each of those in turn.

Consistently sharing great content in the social feeds of a prospect gives that person time to become familiar with the salesperson and the expertise they possess. When that content is relevant to the prospect, it demonstrates that the salesperson has taken the time to learn about them and to take an interest in the things they are concerned about. That sets the salesperson up to add valuein ways that matter to the prospect.

This triune way of approaching social selling has proven to be a hallmark of the SAP team’s success. You can hear these three principles expressed over and over by the five participants in this conversation, in a variety of ways. Take the time to listen and learn. The insights shared on this episode have many anecdotes to back them up – you can learn the principles and see the proof all in one episode.

Featured on This Episode

• SAP
• Alex Hunter on LinkedIn
• Gaston Edreira on LinkedIn
• Neil Howarth on LinkedIn
• Georgia Rita on LinkedIn
• Phil Lurie on LinkedIn

Outline of This Episode

• [0:48] The top two best-practices in social selling from Alex Hunter
• [3:02] Gaston Edreira’s best-practices for social selling
• [5:19] The best practices for social selling Neil Howarth likes most
• [7:00] Social selling best practices from Georgia Rita
• [7:45] The first things SAP teaches new social sellers on the team
• [8:59] Social allows you to find out information and be a resource first
• [10:52] LinkedIn engagement over time: a powerful social selling best practice
• [12:42] Watch for needs prospects have that you can help to meet
• [15:06] The biggest lessons-learned in using social selling strategies

Resources & People Mentioned

• Ep 1 in this series: Social Selling Impact! Why Managers Should Encourage Social Selling
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Google Alerts
• The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr

eBooks are the best giveaways if you’re looking to build a strong relationship with your customers. I’ve been writing about sale funnels and new startups for a very long time. And, my observation has recently pointed something important from a marketers and customers point of view. And usually we, the marketers forget the basics about giving free incentives to our subscribers. Further, signing up for a newsletter to get free EBooks is another simple method to get your customer’s interests spiked.

Why An eBook?

Amazon initially launched the idea behind an EBook subscription. People nowadays don’t have time to actually visit a library or buy a book to read. Digitally-shaped revolution has taken things at a faster pace, and also simplified availability. Hiten Shah, the CEO of Kissmetrics beautifully stated that “Having a childlike curiosity will get you more target oriented results, not only in marketing but also in real life”. So, the curiosity is the key to get people interested. If your customers are not charmed, chances are, that they won’t visit your site again.

Here Is Your Cheat-Sheet

Free incentives have always been the priority of your customers, as well as a boost for your brand’s image. Most probably, you know about it or are considering to use this free bait in your future or current campaigns. But, chances are still there that most of you don’t know how to do this awesome trick. It will not only boost your subscriber’s list but also get you spot-on traffic. So, here are my 4-best-tricks to get you started.

Camouflage MarketPress Coupon Code

Most probably, you’re using MarketPress, so you can easily use the coupon option to get more subscribers. It’s a simple method of adding two plus two. Offer a free EBook as a downloadable product on your newsletters and use your website as a platform. To make it more curious, add a code and share with your customers, which can be sent to them in an email. Or, simply use the coupon code on your welcome email for the first-time subscribers. You can also add some discount offer within the purchase of a particular product or service and beautify the deal as well.

Cloud-based EBook With Cloud Storage

This is my favorite and the easiest method to drive more result oriented traffic to your website. You simply have to use any cloud-based app or software to do this tactic. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Mega etc. can be used for this purpose. CEO of Softwarekeep, Ronnie Teja, says that “You just have to embed the link to your welcome email by using the public file sharing URL. However, to generate more traffic towards your website add free EBook takeaways in your first-time subscriber listings”.

Use Downloadable Page

A lot of the top marketers are using downloadable pages to drive traffic to their websites. Many also quote this as an awesome way to generate repeat traffic. So, if they are doing it, why not you? There are no hard-and-fast rules applicable to this option either. You simply have to ask your developer to create a page to host the link to your free file. Then, the next step is to embed the link on the page with your uploaded file and share it with your welcome email. See Simple!

Go To Password Protected Links

Your EBook is your treasure. And, you don’t want to just give it away for a free sign up. There is no curiosity here. Only simple mumbo-jumbo. So, why will people think it as an important giveaway from your end? So, here is my tip, password protect the uploaded file link and use it when a first-time subscriber initially signs up for your services or newsletters. You can share the password in the welcome email separately to also build personalized conversations. This way, you get a two-way help. You get to personalize with your customer as well as build more strong leads.

Free Incentives Are Your Best Friends

There are thousands and thousands of reasons that I can write and the article will go on. But, my initial thoughts on writing this piece was to see how you can build strong brand image but also target more subscribers. Cold email marketing is generating results over a period of months, but with this strategy, you can target a more specific audience. Think about it as your sales funnels final impact to aim a more interested group of consumers. There are other methods to generate results too, but I’ve shared the ones I’ve tried and tested. So, do write to me and tell me more about your ebook giveaway approach.

A good sale begins with a qualified lead.

Recently, lead generation and lead qualification have been hot topics in both the sales and marketing worlds. While both camps have taken these charges under their wing, in reality the process of identifying and qualifying leads is a unique endeavor of its own that is vital to the health of any business. The following is a list of the basic tenets of a successful lead generation and qualification campaign:

1. A Thoroughly Researched Target Market: Think of this step as the backbone to any prospecting campaign. Unless you’ve thoroughly researched your target market, even the most well-executed campaigns will fail because they will be targeting the wrong people.

2. A Well-Defined “Ideal Buyer Persona”: Taking the time to conduct market research is paramount, but those companies who take it a step further to create and define their ideal buyer persona (or avatar as is popular to say these days) fare the best in their lead-generation or prospecting campaigns. That’s because creating an ideal buyer persona that is detailed and specific will help you craft a sales message that resonates with your entire target market.

3. A Killer Message: The biggest mistake most businesses make when crafting their introductory message is to create one that is nothing more than a list of their product or service’s features. The foundation of any lead generation pitch needs to be about how your offering will help your prospect.

4. Specific Qualifying Criteria: Sales teams really want a lead that is ready to purchase immediately. However, finding this type of lead is almost impossible. So, creating a set of qualifying questions to ask interested prospects is the next best thing.

5. Expert Calling Techniques: Many companies put their sales team in charge of their prospecting campaigns but this is not always best practice because the skillsets of a great prospector aren’t necessarily that of a great seller. Plus, you’ll burn your sales team out. The following is a short list of expert calling techniques:

• A good phone voice, friendly and clear.
• A positive & resilient attitude.
• Comprehensive note taking.
• Ability to think outside the box.
• Ability to multi-task.
• Measure and track everything.

6. Expert Emailing Techniques: Some companies question whether to cold call or cold email. The most successful ones do both. The following is a short list of expert emailing techniques:

• Keep it short.
• Give it a compelling subject line.
• Offer one call to action (tops two).
• Send it at varying times until you find the sweet spot.
• Use landing pages and dedicated phone numbers to help you track the success of your emails.
• Measure and track everything.

7. Targeted Snail Mail: Never, never, never send out a mass mailing. It’s a waste of money and will most likely only be seen by the trash can. However, it cannot be denied that people still like to feel and touch things. If a prospect seems truly interested in your offering, then an eye-catching mailer with a personal note attached will go a long way towards helping you land that client.

8. Someone in Charge: While this last piece might seem basic, it is so pivotal to the success of any campaign that it couldn’t be left out of the list. The best lead-generation managers are ones who can see the big picture. They see how all the pieces fit together into one coherent, forward-moving campaign and they can tweak and move those pieces around as necessary.

There are a lot of moving parts to a lead generation and lead qualification campaign and each one is important. Each element contributes a great deal to the overall success of the campaign. Prospecting is an investment in both time and money. You can’t afford to get any one step wrong, so if you’re going to invest, you must invest all the way. On the flip side, a well-executed campaign can increase your bottom line significantly, making the investment more than worth it.

Hit the phones! Hit the phones! Hit the phones! 

That’s the message sales professionals have heard for years when it comes to generating more business. Pick up the phone and call more leads. Pick up the phone and follow up with old prospects. Pick up the phone and ask for referrals.

Traditionally, picking up the phone meant dialing a number and speaking to someone on the other end of the line. But in a world where our mobile phones have become a key part of our day-to-day lives, the phone is no longer just a device for speaking—it gives us all kinds of special powers.

Want to learn more about turning prospects into paying customers? Get my book The Follow Up Formula!

And one of those powers is the ability to communicate through text.

A 2017 report called The State of SMS quantifies the staggering power of text messaging for business. The report estimates that 7 billion text messages will be sent this year, and 90 percent of them will be read within three minutes. And by 2020, 48.7 million people will have opted in to receive text messages from businesses.

If you’re like me, numbers like this catch your attention.

In fact, it’s numbers like this, along with feedback from our customers, that led us to integrate SMS functionality directly into Close.io. We believe that salespeople should adapt to the times, and the times are telling us that SMS needs to be part of a sales professional’s toolkit.

Here are a few reasons why your sales team should embrace SMS:

SMS creates a personal connection

For years, people thought SMS was too informal for business interactions. But since the vast majority of conversations today happen through text, the reality is that SMS is simply a more personal way to connect with someone—including a professional connection.

You can use SMS to build trust with potential prospects and forge a connection that lasts. The opportunities to strengthen a relationship are varied, and growing by the day, from a simple “Happy Birthday” text to a photo of you and the team working on the client’s project.

An important thing to keep in mind when embracing SMS as a sales tool is your tone. When we interviewed HouseCall Pro, who increased their close rate by 15 percent using SMS, they shared some insight on this topic:

“It’s important to have a different text voice that matches your use of SMS. If you are doing demo confirmation and “transactional” texts, then keep it professional and to the point. If you are using it for post-demo follow up and you’ve built up rapport with the Customer, then feel free to text more like you would with friends.”

You’re not going to want to text someone as soon as they submit their contact information on your website. You’re ideally going to try and schedule a call or exchange a few emails before making the leap into an SMS exchange. Once that initial relationship has been established and a connection created, it’s at that point where you can start to text.  

A more unique way to follow up

As mentioned earlier, 90% of text messages will be read within three minutes of receipt. If you’re waiting for a prospect to send you an approval or confirm a meeting time, a simple SMS nudge is a great way to accelerate the process without seeming too aggressive.

Here’s a sample text you could use: 

Hey - Just want to make sure you saw the email I sent with my schedule.

It’s short. It’s concise. And it gets the point across that the recipient should probably get back to you sooner rather than later.

Get specific answers quickly

One of the best use cases for text messaging is getting answers more quickly than you could by phone or email. If you’re building a proposal for a potential client and realize halfway through that you forgot to ask them a simple question, no worries—you can send that question via text.

Because we’re all so connected to our phones, it’s likely the prospect will see your question pretty quickly. And since we don’t view SMS the way we view email—as a distraction—you could get your answer in seconds. 

That said… With great power comes great responsibility.

You need to be thoughtful about when you're sending text messages as they might set off a loud alert. You don't want to disturb a potential client during the weekend or late at night when they're asleep. 

You can NOW track your text messages in your CRM

For years, organizations feared that using SMS for sales would result in a loss of valuable data. With good reason—the information that changed hands was often untrackable. 

Not anymore.  

Our SMS integration in Close.io is as straightforward as our built-in calling and emailing integrations. You can send an SMS with one click to any SMS-enabled number within the U.S. or Canada using your existing Close.io phone number. Incoming SMS messages show up in your Close.io inbox and activity feed just like new emails, tasks, and missed calls.

Here’s a look at the SMS function in action:

 Wrapping things up

As more millennials hit the workforce, we’re believers that SMS will become a sales staple. A significant portion of the population already embraces text messaging over phone calls. So if you want to reach the next wave of buyers, it only makes sense to meet them where they are. 

What do you think? Are you still not sold on SMS as a sales tool, or have you already embraced SMS for building relationships with your prospects and leads? We’d love to hear from you!

Want more actionable advice on how to engage prospects in the conversation and move the sale forward? Download a free copy of The Follow-Up Formula!

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