Reaching out to leads via cold email can be intimidating at first. Your ego is on the line – will your message resonate with the people you want to start a sales conversation with, or will you be rejected or ignored?

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

And it doesn’t work. It never does.

At least not with overwhelmingly positive results. You might get some responses, but if you’re sending untargeted, generic messages, you’re going to have more unsubscribes and spam complaints than appointments set.

And if you do get a response to a generic message, there’s a much higher chance that you’ll end up talking to an unqualified lead. Because they aren’t exactly sure what you’re trying to sell them, you end up sinking more time into explaining the value to them later on.

Plus, it doesn’t take long to damage your IP’s reputation enough that before you know it, none of your messages will get through. Not to mention you’ll be haphazardly burning through your lead list.

The reason overly generic messages fail is because, as humans, we crave specificity — even more so when we’re thinking about spending money, or investing time into starting a relationship with a new person.

Here are three cold email mistakes related to generic messages, and what the sender should have tried instead.

1. Vague descriptors ruin sales conversations

First up, we have an email so vague that you can barely tell what’s being sold:

Hello there,

I wanted to check in to hear more about your marketing software needs at Salesfolk. Do you think we could be of any help?

It’s fairly easy to see why this cold email doesn’t pack a punch. What kind of marketing software is this person selling, and who is it for? What do I stand to gain if I decide to take the time to respond to them?

Instead, this writer should have narrowed in on one specific benefit that’s clear and compelling. If she’s selling a marketing analytics platform, perhaps that benefit might be “spend less time manually crunching numbers in Excel” or “manage your quarterly budgets 2x as fast”.  Both of those benefits are likely to be relatable enough to really persuade someone that they need to respond.

2. Emails with long, boring feature lists turn off sales prospects

Feature lists are some of the most generic things around. It’s like shooting at a target without aiming and hoping, against all odds, that one arrow hits the bullseye and makes a lead go “Yes! That’s a thing I need.”

Here’s one example of a long, long list of services in an already long email:

At least they aren’t using bullet points, but WOW. That’s a lot to take in.

Instead of inundating the reader with a list of clients and a list of the millions of things you can do, just talk about one success story. Keep it short – no more than two or three sentences – and save customer quotes for your landing page.

3. Sending too few follow-up emails leaves money on the table

After careful, data-driven research, we’ve determined that the optimal number of emails you should be sending each campaign is eight. Sending 7 follow-ups sounds simple, right? Just write “Hey, I’m following up, see my previous message, when do you have time for a call…”

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to get you the results you’re looking for.

In fact, sending a bunch of following emails on the same thread that say you’re “just following up” makes you more likely to get spam complaints. And it doesn’t add anything of value to your prospect’s life – you’re essentially standing there nagging them to get back to you.

Every single follow up email you send should contain a unique benefit or piece of information. Not all your benefits will appeal to every single person on your list. Different people in your audience will have different priorities and pain points, but that’s partly why you have eight emails to see what they respond to, since peoples’ taste and situations will vary.  

The best way to do this is by outlining your campaign before you start writing. Here’s a piece of an outline I made for a recent cold email campaign.

Email 1 – Spend more time with guests

Email 2 – Stop wasting your time taking reservations by hand

Email 3 – Lower your per guest cost

For example, Email 3 might be the most popular email in our sequence, meaning it gets the most positive responses.

However, perhaps Email 1 gets fewer responses than other emails, but the people who do respond tend to result in deals that close very fast.  

You won’t know for sure until you test the email campaign and analyze its results. However, the best way to appeal to the most people in your list is by sending a series of emails that focus on different specific benefits, ideas, or pain points.

If you’d like to learn more about how to infuse specific, alluring benefits into your cold email templates, you might want to check out our new Cold Email Crash Course.  

We boiled down everything we learned from thousands of hours spent teaching folks to write cold emails that earned our clients millions in sales into just 10 lessons. Hope to see you there!

The post 3 Cold Email Mistakes That Ruin Sales Conversations appeared first on SalesFolk.

Sales reporting seems like it should be pretty easy—measure what you've done, put it in a spreadsheet, and use it to improve your sales process. Simple.

If only it were true.

Sales reporting is actually really complex. And not approaching it the right way can cause big problems. Unfortunately, most companies don't approach it the right way. They make big mistakes that cost huge amounts of money.

Want to avoid that fate? Then you need to understand which stage of sales reporting you're in:

• Sales reporting stage 1: You don't know what you're doing
• Sales reporting stage 2: You think you know what you're doing
• Sales reporting stage 3: You actually know what you're doing

Think you're in already stage 3? Keep reading to find out and learn what to do next. (Spoiler alert: you're probably not in stage 3 yet. Sorry.)

Sales reporting stage 1: You don't know what you're doing

This is where every company starts. You're just starting out, you've maybe made a couple sales, and you have no idea what you should be reporting on. You might be doing all the selling yourself or you could have a small, initial sales team.

You probably have a simple method of tracking and reporting—it might be a sheet of paper with the number of calls you made today. You might even have a whiteboard diagram of your sales process to get a high-level overview of your pipeline. But that's it.

That's great. That's how it always starts.

You know that sales reporting is important and that it can help you a great deal in moving your company forward. But you have no idea where to start.

At this point, you know that you're clueless. You have to think practically to move beyond the first stage of sales reporting.

If you're still in this stage, congratulations! You have a huge opportunity here. You can prevent your company from getting mired—and spending millions of dollars—in stage 2.

So what's the best thing to do in stage 1?

Invest in a simple tool. Don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a massive sales reporting stack. Close is the perfect tool for companies in this stage (I might be biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong).

What makes it the perfect tool for companies early in the sales reporting process? More than anything else, it generates actionable insights. As we'll see in the next stage, companies often pull a ton of data that tells them a lot of things except what to do next.

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” ― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Close provides activity-driven reporting with the action–quality–conversion (AQC) framework. Which means you can prioritize your sales activities. Our sales CRM doesn't include a ton of information that you don't need.

Here's what Alex Cimpoesu from Clearbridge says about it:

"The overview and comparison reports are great because they allow me to drill down exactly on the metrics that I'm interested in, and not crowding what I'm seeing with non-important information for us. Saves me a TON of time!"

That's what you want to be able to say about your sales reporting tool.

Takeaway: Start with a simple, activity-driven sales tool.

Sales reporting stage 2: You think you know what you're doing

This is the most dangerous stage. If you took my advice and invested in an actionable sales CRM, you can skip right over it. But if you're here because you're already in stage 2, you have some work to do.

Most companies hit stage 2 once they've started expanding. You might have 10 sales reps and an established sales team structure with a director, VP, and managers. You're in the process of getting more sophisticated as a sales organization, and you want your reporting to reflect that.

Where most companies go wrong is that they start generating super-complicated reports around this time. Their curiosity and desire for sophistication get the better of them and they start building a massive, complicated sales reporting system.

But do you really need to know the average amount of time you spend on the phone broken down by every factor you can possibly think of? Will it benefit you to know that you usually spend 15 more seconds on the phone on Wednesdays? Or that you close 2% more deals when you call a prospect within two months of the latest Madonna album release?

No.

And when you start collecting as much data as you possibly can, things get complicated fast. Way too complicated.

“Get rid of irrelevant details so that the essential things and the relationships between them stand out.” - Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associates

This is especially true for growing companies that are starting to connect their teams. If your marketing, development, implementation, and success teams are also gathering, storing, and sharing information, you're going to have an absolute clusterfuck.

Want advice on managing and growing your sales team? Get a free copy of my book The Sales Hiring Playbook.

You might not go completely overboard on the data that you're collecting. But even if you're collecting what seems like a reasonable amount of data, it's probably the wrong data.

By the time you've finished creating your sophisticated model, your business will have changed. Modern businesses move quickly. And after you've set up your sales reporting system, you'll face one of two situations:

1. You're completely overwhelmed by the system and can't extract any valuable insights.
2. You discover that you're not actually tracking the sales reporting metrics you need. Your current system isn't insightful or actionable.

Both of those are bad places to be. So what can you do about it?

Be careful about investing in the wrong tools

Many companies invest in a massive, expensive tool during this stage, thinking it'll solve their problems. But they're almost always wrong.

You should still be working with a simple, activity-driven tool. Those big tools can be valuable, but your company isn't yet at the stage where you can make the most of them. And they take up a ton of your time.

Foursquare's mid-market sales team is a great example.

They were using Salesforce for their enterprise sales, so they used it for their younger mid-market sales team, too. But it was a disaster.

To get Salesforce to work for the team, they had to add third-party integrations for account management, dialing, and CRM connectivity. And how do you think that went?

"The complexity of maintaining this became overwhelming. It just wasn’t working. Rather than making us more productive, it slowed us down."

And it wasn't just the integrations. Salesforce required a totally insane 16 clicks to log a call. After Foursquare switched to Close, it took two. And all of the functions that Salesforce didn't have—outbound and inbound calls, email, notes, and automatic logging—Close came with out of the box.

The sales team now onboards team members faster, runs more efficiently, and has better access to actionable information. Not because they switched to a more powerful tool, but because they switched to a simpler one.

Don't get stuck

Foursquare got lucky. Many companies get stuck in this stage. They build a super complicated system, realize it doesn't actually work, and replace it with another sophisticated reporting process that also doesn't work.

They keep starting over from scratch. And that gets really expensive. It becomes a terrible cycle, and it can cost millions of dollars.

So what's the best thing to do in stage 2?

This might surprise you, but it's actually the same thing you should do in stage 1. Invest in a simple tool that gives you a smaller number of actionable insights. Make sure it works really well for you.

Start using the CRM's API to connect it to your other software so you can pull insights from different teams and platforms.

But above all, keep it simple. I can't tell you how important this is—or how many companies screw it up.

Takeaway: Keep sales reporting simple. Focus on the metrics that really matter.

Sales reporting stage 3: You actually know what you're doing

After a great deal of trial and error, many (though not all) companies make it to stage 3. If you managed to escape the stage 2 cycle, you could be here now. And this is a great place to be.

This is where your sales reporting really takes off. It gives you concise, actionable data. It uses the AQC framework to tell you what's really going to make a difference. It's stable and scalable.

You've passed a many million dollars in revenue and your sales process and structure are matured and scalable.

Don't pretend to be in stage 3

This is a big problem. Lots of companies in stage 1 or 2 think they're in stage 3. And they think they don't need to improve their sales reporting. But that means you're not making the most of your sales data.

So here's what you can do if you want to move from your current stage to stage 3:

If you're in stage 1, buy a simple, action-oriented sales CRM to run reports from. (Again, I'm biased, but Close is a great choice. We specifically made it that way.)

If you're in stage 2, focus on using a great API to connect the data from your various tools. Spreadsheets are your best friends here—they're cheap, easy to use, and you don't need to pay for expensive trainings to make sure everyone knows what they're doing.

After a while, you'll feel confident in your sales reporting system. You'll get actionable insights, put them to use right away, and see their benefits. That's how you know you're in stage 3.

So what's the best thing to do in stage 3?

At this point, you're ready to make the jump to the big leagues. If your reporting kicks ass, and you're getting direct, actionable insights, you can take it to the next level.

Consider buying some seriously high-powered business intelligence software. Then you can really take the data you're generating and turn it into something useful. Some great BI tools in 2019 are:

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful data visualization and BI solution. You can embed Tableau dashboards directly into existing tools like Salesforce, SharePoint, and others.

It’s quite high-priced and there’s a steep learning curve, and getting set up can take quite long.

Power BI

If you're company (and your database) is set up in the Microsoft ecosystem, Power BI can be a powerful and yet easy to use Business Intelligence tool. It's been a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for 12 consecutive years.

Looker

Looker analytics integrate with any SQL database or data warehouse (Amazon Athena, Greenplum, and others) and is completely web-based. Their proprietary data modeling language LookerML is easy to use, and Looker can be implemented quickly.

Companies like Hubspot and DigitalOcean trust Looker with their data.

Periscope

Periscope connects to all popular data warehouses and can be a great choice if you have SQL Analysts on the team.

Takeaway: Take full advantage of your actionable sales reporting insights (but only if you're actually in stage 3).

Be honest with yourself

Like I said, many companies think they're in stage 3 before they actually are. That doesn't help anyone. So be honest with yourself. Do you have any idea what you're measuring? Have you started from scratch a few times after realizing you weren't getting the insights you needed? Can you, right now, pull actionable insights from your data?

Want more actionable frameworks on taking your B2B company to the next level? Get a free copy of From 0 to 1,000 Customers & Beyond!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY NOW

Tyler asks, “How do you prefer to track your channel metrics or content performance metrics? Native analytics? Social Media tools? Combination? Interested in hearing your thoughts!” I prefer to look more at outcomes first, to determine what’s working best. For this, I use custom-coded software that takes Google Analytics data and processes it in a […]

The post You Ask, I Answer: Channel and Content Performance Metrics? appeared first on Christopher S. Penn Marketing Blog.

Only one in eight businesses can be classified as "'sustainable" in 2019, according to new research from distributed energy company Centrica Business Solutions. 

The research, based on a global survey of more than 1,500 businesses, suggests that while the vast majority of respondents don't yet meet their sustainability criteria, doing so should be a major priority. 

In fact, being "socially and environmentally responsible" is now a top three business priority for a large proportion of surveyed businesses, ahead of innovation.

This is a big change from a similar survey conducted two years ago by Centrica Business Solutions, where environmental responsibility ranked a low sixth on respondents' priorities. 

Why the shift?

According to the research, businesses are reporting increased pressure from customers and stakeholders to be more sustainable and environmentally responsible. Customers are exercising their power through their purchasing habits, and organizations are responding by developing products and services that are demonstrably more environmentally-friendly, and also looking for low-carbon energy solutions.

Simultaneously, the challenges and risks facing today's businesses are increasing. Current business models are under threat, natural disasters continue to grow in frequency, and impact and compliance breaches are escalating. To safeguard against these risks, businesses are pursuing a range of digitalization and business transformation efforts. These initiatives are increasing businesses' reliance upon energy, necessitating the search for more sustainable, affordable, and resilient options.

What does it take to be sustainable?

Working with influential analysts and business leaders, Centrica Business Solutions has compiled a Sustainable Business Model, which defines eight distinct characteristics of businesses that are successfully balancing their economic and environmental priorities.

Although many businesses are making good progress in some areas, the research indicates only a small number are meeting all of these characteristics, and suggests much more can be done.

What can be done?

According to Centrica Business Solutions, the way organizations generate and consume energy can have a significant impact on their overall sustainability profile. By choosing more efficient, resilient, and flexible energy options, businesses can be more agile, customer focused and innovative. They can also actively work toward improving the environment, and show evidence of sound, long-term thinking.

Interestingly, this smart approach to energy is already on the radar for 70% of businesses, which recognize they need to be more flexible in terms of how they generate and use energy. Changing views are also leading to a 10% increase in businesses choosing energy efficient solutions. This is paving the way for investment in smart, technology-led energy.

What steps should businesses take next?

Many organisations need to re-think their strategies to reflect these market changes and their attitude to energy to make a direct link between their business and energy strategies. The most successful businesses give a member of the leadership team responsibility for their energy strategy, roadmap and plan, including specific/measurable targets and budget. The most sustainable businesses are energy leaders with a mature approach to energy, viewing it as a strategic asset and an opportunity, not just a cost.

Contact us or read the full research report to find out where your company is on its sustainability journey.

This post was created by Centrica Business Solutions with Insider Studios.

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Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way podcast. Hosts from Sandler Training will discuss impactful information about trending topics and strategic selling. In this episode, Brian Sullivan, VP of Enterprise Selling talks with Marcus Cauchi and Dave Davies about Channel Selling in the Enterprise World.

Listen Time: 43 Minutes

It isn’t easy to become a top performing salesperson. If you are new to a sales role, it can appear to be a daunting task, but I assure you it is not so difficult as to prevent anyone sufficiently motivated from succeeding in becoming a great salesperson.

1. Develop the Right Mindset: The first half of my first book, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, is about the mindset necessary to succeed in B2B sales—and more generally—in any human endeavor. You need to be disciplined, optimistic, other-oriented, competitive, resourceful, proactive, persistent, an excellent communicator, and accountable for what you sell. Get the right mindset, and you have a solid foundation to succeed faster. Learn Anthony's core strategies & tactics for sales success at any level with The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need
2. Acquire the Skill Sets: The second half of TOSG contains the skill sets you need to sell effectively, including closing, prospecting, storytelling, diagnosing, negotiating, business acumen, managing change, and leadership. In part, the speed of your success depends on the time you take to develop these skills.
3. Become a Subject Matter Expert: In Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition, I wrote about a concept I call the 52% Subject Matter Expert, based on a post I wrote here some time ago. It’s essential you know your product, your services, and your solution. But it is even more important that you understand the intersection between your business and your dream client’s business. You have to work to become the person who knows how to produce the outcomes your clients need, the subject matter expert in your field.Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch
4. Become World Class at Prospecting: If you desire to accelerate success, spend more time prospecting. More prospecting means more meetings. More meetings means more time with prospects. More time with prospects means more time selling. There is not a way to improve your ability to sell without spending time selling. Prospecting is the activity that generates sales meetings. If you prospect more, you will succeed faster.
5. Improve Your Business Acumen: You must be intellectually curious about business. You have to develop an interest in how business works, learning the way companies make money, the decisions that business leaders routinely make, and how they think about their strategies. I have written here that business acumen is greater than sales acumen, but I no longer believe that to be true. Instead, business acumen is sales acumen. The more you do to learn how business works, the better your ability to provide sound counsel.
6. Let Your Dream Clients Educate You: Every conversation with a prospect or client is an opportunity to learn. Your clients can and will educate you. If you want faster results, ask questions about what’s important to your clients, and ask them to deepen your understanding of why it’s important to them. Ask them to share with you why they do certain things the way they do them now, and why they don’t do things some other way. Get an education by asking.
7. Write a Professional Development Plan: You cannot learn to sell by reading a book. You can only improve what you are doing when you are selling by reading books. You cannot learn to sell by listening to a podcast. You can only learn how to think about sales in a way that allows you to make better choices when you are selling. No video can teach you to sell. Watching videos can only deepen your understanding of what you might do to improve your ability to sell. Write a professional development plan and take full responsibility for your growth.
8. Steal from the Best Salespeople: The very best salespeople have stolen large parts of their approach from other salespeople. They have copped their best talk tracks, and they have modeled their beliefs and behaviors. When someone is succeeding, there is every reason to deconstruct what they do to apply it in your approach. When a problem has already been effectively solved, you can speed your results by accepting the answer instead of trying to solve it anew.
9. Ask Your Manager for Coaching: To speed for growth and results, ask your manager for coaching. Ask them to join you on sales calls, and ask them to give you feedback on your mindset and your skill sets. Ask them to make you aware of any gaps that would prevent you from succeeding, and ask them to challenge you with questions that cause you to explore different choices you might make. Coaching speeds improvement and results. Ask for coaching.

These nine activities will speed your growth. You will notice that most of the people you encounter in sales are not doing many of these things, even though they could easily benefit from doing so. The decision as to the speed at which you develop is also the decision as to the rate of your results.

The time and effort you put into your development in growth will pay dividends now and deep into the future.

The post 9 Ways for New Salespeople to Find Fast Success appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Prospecting does not have to be as painful or as hard as you think. The first rule is to make every conversation one where you earn the right, privilege, honor and respect to meet with that person again.

Sales and prospecting is not a slimy or ugly activity like some people describe it. I count prospecting and sales as an honor. When you prospect with integrity, you’ll gain customers who have integrity. Sales and integrity go together in the same way that integrity and prospecting do. One of the main reasons why I love sales is because it’s nothing more than having a conversation.

Watch the video to learn more:

 

 

Each sale occurs in three different ways: “repeat,” “get,” and “create.” The “repeat” is a measurement of the quality of the service you provide. The “get” is an indication of your marketing efforts; this is business that simply comes your way. What does this mean? It means that prospecting is about creating opportunities, and that’s what I say that sales is about helping others see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible.

Your time will always be your most valuable asset, so your prospecting process must be efficient. Don’t waste your time by thinking everyone is a lead. This can be a problem for some salespeople when they don’t really know what they’re selling. Always focus on the outcomes that you can help your customers achieve not on what you sell.

One great exercise that I share often is create a list of all the outcomes that you help your customers achieve. From your list, determine what type of person will most benefit from the outcomes that you offer. Once you clearly know your outcomes, you can begin to narrow down who it is that you want to target. This takes your funnel from wide to narrow.

When you have fewer prospects, you’ll be able to invest more time into the relationship with each one. When you spend more time together, their level of trust in you will increase. Furthermore, the level of trust you build will determine how much they’ll pay you.

Focus your prospecting not on what you share but on the questions you ask. The three types of questions I like to include are short questions, commitment questions, and follow-up questions. Each time you engage a prospect, your objective is to gain a micro-commitment from the prospect that allows you to move the process forward.

One technique I like to follow is what you see on every bottle of shampoo: rinse and repeat. These two words are as essential to prospecting as they are to washing your hair. You must be willing to repeat the prospecting process over and over but each time with a new message. Once is not enough! The frequency will vary based on what you sell, how people buy and who is your customer.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results

• Scaling a startup is an exciting time, but one that is also fraught with challenges.
• Many founders wonder how to grow a business that's still relatively new, so we asked entrepreneurs, investors, and management professors for their best practices.
• The experts advised hiring to fill the gaps in your skillset and prioritizing company culture. Outlining your strategy in a business plan can boost your odds of success.
• Visit BI Prime for more stories.

When it comes to scaling your company, "there is not a one-size-fits-all approach."

That's according to Deepak Hegde, associate professor of management and organizations at New York University. Hegde also directs Endless Frontier Labs, which helps technology and science startups scale.

(One alum is Analytical Flavor Systems, a machine-learning and artificial-intelligence platform that predicts individual taste profiles that's now being leveraged to design boutique bread flavors.)

For one startup, Hegde said, scaling might mean locating a large-scale manufacturing facility to get a product out to wider markets. For another startup, scaling might mean hiring a sales team.

Whatever your company's challenge, you'll need a customized plan of attack — plus the willingness to experiment.

One of the trickiest parts of scaling is transitioning from founder to people manager. Early on, said Alexi Robichaux, cofounder and CEO of the career-coaching platform BetterUp, "it's about you versus the world."

As your company grows, you've got to build an effective team to help you tackle key challenges.

We asked Hegde and Robichaux, plus several other founders, entrepreneurship researchers, and executive coaches, to outline the fundamentals of growing a business. Read on for their best practices — and the most common pitfalls to avoid.

Start planning to scale as early as possible

Formal planning might seem antithetical to the move-fast-and-break-things version of entrepreneurship. And while more research is needed to prove truly conclusive, studies of thousands of startups indicate that having a business plan can boost the odds of success.

One study, published in 2017 in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, looked at data from more than 1,000 entrepreneurs in the US between 2005 and 2011. The researchers compared pairs of founders who were otherwise identical, except one wrote a business plan and the other did not.

As it turns out, planners were 16% more likely to succeed than non-planners. (Success was defined as the point when monthly revenues had exceeded monthly expenses for six out of the past 12 months.)

Hegde explained why having a business plan can attract investors. "In order to scale, you need money," he said. "But in order to get money, you need to show proof of scalability."

The plan is (part of) that proof. "Scaling really is about planning," Hegde said. "It requires thinking maybe two, three, four, five years ahead, rather than simply thinking about how are you going to do the best pitch to sell your first customer or your first VC."

A solid strategy is to build a minimum viable product for that would be scalable with the right resources. Then show investors that any money they put in "can be deployed in ways that can meaningfully help expand the markets, or the customer base," and so on, Hegde said.

Know why you're scaling in the first place

Approach scaling with intention.

That's what Hint did. Since 2005, Hint has marketed naturally flavored beverages. It's become a staple at Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook. More recently, Hint expanded its product offerings to include sunscreen and deodorant as well.

Hint founder and CEO Kara Goldin has explained to Business Insider the logic behind this expansion. Her goal from the outset was to solve consumers' health problems — whether through safe, affordable sunscreen or nutritious, tasty beverages.

In both cases, Goldin said, she realized that there were tons of options on the shelf but that people had no easy way to tell which was the healthiest choice. And even if they could, it would probably be out of their price range. Hint could change that.

Remember, too: You're not obligated to scale your business. And it's best to figure out your ambitions around scaling before seeking venture capital.

For Hint, scaling has meant reaching roughly 190 employees after 14 years and snagging John Legend as an investor.

Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, previously told BI that one of the first things VCs evaluate is market opportunity, i.e. how big your business can eventually get.

It's perfectly ok to build a $20 or $30 million company — but it might be hard to convince a VC to partner with you on that.

Hire to fill the gaps in your skillset …

"As a founder, you are so used to doing everything yourself," Hegde said. "Your startup becomes your baby."

That mentality can lead to a few mistakes — namely, trying to do much yourself or micromanaging the employees you bring on.

The truth is that no founder is skilled at every aspect of running a startup. Typically, founders are talented salespeople: They can convince a VC to invest, a job candidate to join the team, and a customer to sign up.

That doesn't necessarily mean they'll be a good manager — which, if you ask Cat Hernandez, an operations partner at the venture-capital firm Primary Ventures, is fine.

"Let's assume that your business grows really quickly and you have hundreds, if not thousands, of employees at some point," Hernandez said. "Your job is to set the strategic direction of the company and, yes, be able to drive a leadership team."

"Some parts of that require you to be a good manager — but if you know that's not your core skill, hire people [who have it]," she added.

… and do it sooner than later

Don't wait to build out your team until you're comfortable delegating responsibility. Do it now!

Christine Beckman, the Price Family Chair in Social Innovation and Professor of Public Policy at USC Price, conducted research that found the most successful entrepreneurs hired for specialized roles — say, an operations expert or a marketing expert — early on.

"They set it up right from the beginning, rather than trying to go back in time and fix systems and processes that were put in place at the beginning, but no longer work as the company has grown," she said.

Beckman analyzed the executive team members at nearly 2,000 startups, plus how long it took those startups to raise capital and to go public.

She discovered that founders who try to do everything themselves wind up "trying to cover more functional areas than they necessarily have expertise in" and "slowing things down because there's a bottleneck of decisions needing to go through these general managers," Beckman said.

The founders who hired specialized talent were more successful because they saved the entire team time and effort.

Steve Martocci, cofounder of GroupMe as well as CEO of the music-creation platform Splice, learned this lesson the hard way. "I waited too long to hire an assistant," Martocci wrote an email to Business Insider.

"In the early stages of building the company, I always felt guilty about the expense, because at that point I was so focused on the product that it seemed okay to go without [an assistant]," he said.

"But as the stakes got higher, I started missing important meetings that had a material impact on the company," Martocci added. "Having since hired an experienced assistant, I can attest to the significant value that she has provided me, and by default, the company."

Learn to delegate

So you've hired some new team members. The next step is letting them do the work they signed up for.

It's not as easy as it sounds.

To Robichaux, cofounder and CEO of BetterUp, it's about deferring to people with more specialized skillsets.

"If you're a really good early-stage founder, you're probably a high performer who's a really talented individual contributor in some vector," he said. "You may not be good at everything, but you're good at programming, you're good at product, you're good at sales. That only gets you so far."

As your startup grows, he noted, you have to get comfortable managing a team that's more high-performing than you are individually.

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has explained why delegation can be difficult (for new managers in general, not just founding CEOs).

Successful people typically advance by proving over and over again how intelligent they are. They're inclined to do the same once they're in a leadership position — even though that can backfire.

The biggest challenge for new managers "is not always winning," Goldsmith previously told Business Insider. Instead, they learn to position others to do the winning for the organization.

Prioritize company culture — and tweak where necessary

"Culture" might seem like a fuzzy concept, but Hegde emphasized its importance. He said founders should make sure the people they bring on are aligned with their culture — even if they don't yet have a section of their website that outlines the company's mission statement and values.

Another common mistake is "not subtracting when you add," said Ethan Mollick, associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"The things that made you successful early on aren't always useful later," he said, such as all-hands meetings (a.k.a. all-staff meetings), which might not be helpful or even feasible once the company reaches 500 employees.

Other misadventures in scaling have played out in the examples of startups like WeWork and Away, each of which struggled to balance their unique company culture with extraordinary growth.

For WeWork, the party-like atmosphere that may have appealed to the earliest team-members appears to have hurt the company's attempt to go public. Business Insider spoke with current and former employees who described non-stop work requirements amid an alcohol-fueled, highly sexualized environment.

Revelations about WeWork's culture — in addition to its financial health — devastated its reputation with investors and the public, and led some employees to worry about their career prospects with other companies.

And for Away, the luggage startup's VP of people and culture told Business Insider that the leadership team prioritized employee experience, and was developing sophisticated HR practices for such a young company.

But less than a week later, news broke that the high-pressure work environment led former employees to accuse the company of bullying and harassment. The resulting scandal led cofounder Steph Korey to step down from her role as CEO.

Scaling, in so many ways, is about adapting to the organization you've created.

Accept that you need to take care of yourself first

Somewhat counterintuitively, your top concern as a team leader is … you. And Robichaux said that's where most founders go wrong.

"We think our job first and foremost is to take care of other people," he said, when in fact "your No. 1 job as a leader is to take care of yourself."

Justin Kan, the founder of Twitch and Atrium, recently shared about his firsthand with the challenges of entrepreneurial mental health.

"You can be burned out no matter how successful you are, and you can be unhappy no matter how successful you are," said Kan, who sold his first startup for $1 billion.

The stress trend is a national one: a 2012 Gallup poll found that entrepreneurs were more likely than other workers in the US to feel worried and stressed.

That doesn't mean you invest in self-care at the expense of the company's well-being. That also doesn't mean you take a monthlong vacation while your company's imploding.

By taking care of yourself, Robichaux means getting "in a good mind space" and having "the emotional resources to be compassionate and not snap at someone."

It's why Robichaux prioritizes physical workouts as well as mindfulness exercises in his schedule.

"That is more important than looking at this other document at 11 p.m. That is more important than getting someone feedback late at night," he said.

If Robichaux doesn't make time for exercise and mindfulness, he's operating from a "faulty foundation and everything will suffer."

SEE ALSO: The first-time founder's ultimate guide to pitching a VC

SEE ALSO: A Columbia professor who has taught MBA students for 15 years says graduates no longer aim for Goldman Sachs or Google. Here’s what today’s top talent want to do with their degrees.

SEE ALSO: The cofounder of GroupMe was 27 when the text-messaging platform sold for $85 million just a year after launch. Now, he’s raised $107 million for a music startup that could make him even more successful. Here are his lessons for pitching, leading, and building a company.

SEE ALSO: An employee-coaching startup used by Airbnb and LinkedIn just raised $103 million in a Series C round

Join the conversation about this story »

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Today and tomorrow I am moving. Tomorrow I am leaving the house I have lived in since 2001 for a new—and very different–house a few miles away. I am not sentimental about houses, even the one where I raised my three children.

I am, however, sentimental about books. Yesterday I packed 300 books or one column of eight shelves of the infamous shelves in my office, the office you see in my YouTube videos. It took me a few hours, and during that time, I handled each of the books, reminding me of how much I loved some of them.

Between two books, I found the Vietnam Primer by Colonel David Hackworth. When he took command in Vietnam, he wrote down what a soldier would need to know to survive. The small, thin, paperback book is personalized and autographed to me, and last I checked it was worth $1,600. It’s worth more than that to me, and I bought it after reading Hackworth’s Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts, many years ago. These two books are about leadership, and they both helped me recognize the value of leading by teaching people the practical and tactical strategies they need to succeed.

In 1995, I was browsing new arrivals in Barnes & Noble, when I noticed a provocative title: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History. The author was Howard Bloom, the former head of the Bloom Agency, and the publicist for Prince, ZZ Top, Heart, Aerosmith, and almost anyone whose name you know from the 70’s and 80’s. The book is about memetics or how we get infected with our ideas and beliefs. I started emailing Howard, and we have been friends since that time. I attended his 76th birthday party last Friday in New York City.

There are five books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the options trader who predicted the recession in 2008 and a brilliant philosopher. The books are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes, and Skin in the Game, a collection he calls Incerto. I have read or listened to Antifragile 4 times, and I will read or listen to it again, as the primary lesson about benefiting from adverse events is a crucial idea for our time. The ideas here might be called post-traumatic growth syndrome, an amazingly useful concept.

When I was thirteen years old, my father gave me a copy of G. Gordon Liddy’s autobiography Will. My copy is autographed by Liddy, who served something like 5 years for breaking into the Watergate Hotel. Liddy was afraid of everything as a child, and he systemically addressed each of his fears, one by one, willing himself to become something he was not. The books shaped my beliefs, and like many other books, it showed up in my life at the right moment.

There is Patton: A Genius for War by Carlos D’Este, one of my favorite books, and the one that caused me to buy and read Patton’s Papers, an enormous two-volume set of all of Patton’s letters and diaries. Patton’s strong bias was to always be on offense, something worth applying in sales. There is a stack of Stephen Covey, a pile of Tom Peters, and a stack of Peter Drucker, all of which I read a long time ago, and all of which left a mark.

I once wrote a post called “An Autobiography in Books.” Packing my library, to me, is like someone else looking through a photo album. So much of my beliefs and my thinking can be traced to what I have read and studied.

Now for the bad news. My new house has no bookshelves. I loved the house enough to buy it, but was stunned to walk through a house that had no books. After we move in, the first order of business is to build a wall of shelves upstairs in a cool room outside my new bedroom.

You’ll have to wait to see what we do in my office, as there is no way to build bookshelves there, but I have an idea and a vision.

What books shaped your thinking and your beliefs?

The post Packing Up My Library appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition contains a chapter about Capturing Mindshare or, put another way, shaping the lens through which your dream client views their business, their challenges, and their opportunities. The framework in that chapter is designed to allow you to identify and leverage the trends that are already impacting your dream client’s results—or soon will be. It’s also designed to provide you with the implications of maintaining the status quo in the face of what are almost always systemic challenges.

After the concept of Level 4 Value Creation (strategic value), the chapter on Capturing Mindshare is responsible for the second most responses over email and social channels. The responses can generally be divided into two very different categories.

Capturing Mindshare Works

The first category of emails share success stories on how creating a context for a conversation works better than a lot of other approaches for creating new opportunities. The salespeople who send me these emails have used their insights to provide a strategic view of the client’s business as it pertains to what they sell. They are also using the idea of an executive briefing and the talk tracks in Eat Their Lunch to schedule more meetings.Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

The second category of emails that find their way to one of my inboxes might best be described as concerns about sharing trends, analysis, views and values, insights, and recommendations. Many of these notes are concerned about insulting the client, believing the client knows more than they do about the trends that impact their business. Others suggest they shouldn’t share their analysis or their views and values, that being too bold an approach. When the case being made is about changing something more strategic than swapping out their competitor’s product to buy theirs, they worry about having the right to make those recommendations.

Here is how you might think about overcoming your fear of sharing your insights, ideas, views and values, and recommendations.

What Do You Know

When you study the trends that create challenges and opportunities for your dream clients, you are undoubtedly going to find your clients are tracking some of those same trends, which is why the framework contains implications and views and values. You don’t need to have an executive briefing built exclusively on novelties. While there is value in novelties when you can find them, the trends and factors that would cause your client to change don’t need to be a surprise.

Part of what you are doing by providing a sort of executive briefing is demonstrating that you are tracking these trends—and that you understand the implication for your client’s business. If you do this well, you will have established infinitely more credibility with your client than the salesperson that begins the conversation with eight slides about their company. You are demonstrating you belong in the room and that you know enough to have ideas worth exploring.

You can very easily open the conversation by saying, “I am certain you are tracking some of these trends, and I’ll be interested to hear how these things show up in your world.” There is no reason to assume your dream client knows nothing, and you can learn much from your clients as you do this work, strengthening your approach.

New World Approach vs. Old World

There are old approaches to sales that have outlived their usefulness, which is not to say that they may not be useful again sometime in the future. One of those approaches is to avoid answering a client’s question by asking questions about their question. The idea here is not to lock yourself into something with which the client might disagree. When you are trying to compel change, you need a better approach.

There is an enormous misunderstanding of what “consultative selling” means. While it includes the avoiding of hard sell and high pressure tactics, that is not enough by itself to make one consultative. A consultative approach also includes good questions, something else that contributes to the approach, but is also inadequate without something more. The word “consultative” means to give recommendations and advice, requiring you to share your views, your values, and your recommendations.

If you have not done the work to develop your view of your client’s world, their systemic challenges, the implications of doing nothing, it will be difficult for you to be consultative. If you don’t have views on what the right response would be and the changes the clients would make—even if they don’t choose you—you make it difficult to be perceived as consultative. If you don’t have values that suggest that you have good reason to prefer this choice over that one, it is difficult to provide advice.

A Word for Young Salespeople

If you are a young salesperson, I want to offer you two ideas here. First, you may not yet have the business acumen and situational knowledge necessary to do this work that you will after you have worked in your role for awhile (I hope you have the intellectual curiosity to learn about your business and your client’s business). That said, you need to know a couple things.

Even though you may not know something, inside the four walls of your company, there are salespeople and leaders who do. They have the experience, and they have the views and values and recommendations. Ask to spend time with them, join them on sales calls, and ask questions about what they say and do to accelerate your acquisition of business acumen and situational knowledge.

Also, do the work to read, study, and compile your own briefing (see Chapter 2 of Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition). The time you spend thinking about your client’s challenges and the trends that are impacting their businesses, the faster you will be consultative. Know that nothing is beyond your capabilities if you are willing to give it your time and energy.

The post Overcoming Your Fear of Sharing Insights appeared first on The Sales Blog.

One of the top priorities for any community has got to be health care. After all, what is the point of housing, infrastructure or schools if people aren’t alive and healthy to use them? But the question of where a hospital should be located within a community is a different matter. Just last month, Daniel Herriges of Strong Towns wrote about Windsor, Ontario residents and businesses fighting to keep their hospital in town instead of seeing it relocate to a rural area at the edge of the city.

In Utica, New York, though, a photo negative of the Windsor story is playing out—demonstrating that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Utica’s proposal for a new downtown hospital pits several desirable goals against each other: accessible health care, a revitalized downtown, and a healthy tax base to support city services.

But these goals don’t have to be at odds—if the city and the hospital in question are willing to reconsider their preferred location. And in doing so, they should start with our favored mantra: #DoTheMath.

Utica, NY

Lying in the center of Upstate New York, Utica is the biggest city between Albany and Syracuse, and it serves as the healthcare hub for three counties in the area: Oneida, Madison and Herkimer. The Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS) and the City of Utica plan to meet the area’s increased healthcare needs with a new 373-bed hospital in downtown Utica. Central location and “revitalization of downtown Utica” are cited as top reasons for choosing the specific location.

The proposed site comprises over 1.2 million square feet (over 28 acres) in the Columbia Lafayette Neighborhood. Adjacent, and occupying an additional 1 million square feet, is a proposed entertainment district called the U District, with plans for a casino, beer museum, mini-farm of hops, and shooting range. The hospital plan and the U District have been linked Both plans feature generous surface parking and the demolition of several buildings the city has labeled “blighted.”

Nothing is particularly glamorous about the neighborhood as it stands. Multiple historic structures are sitting vacant—including buildings the city of Utica actually owns, whose value is depressed by the city’s own apparent decision to treat them as “blight” instead of renovating them. One might assume the area is not worth much—and that these mega-projects, which will create many jobs to grow the local economy, have got to be a boon to this location, right? Wrong.

#NoHospitalDowntown

A fiery organization called #NoHospitalDowntown has brought the flaws of this location to light. BetterUticaDowntown is another group with the same mission: to change existing hospital plans in order to give Downtown Utica a genuine chance at revitalization and save a valuable neighborhood. Both groups have reason to fight.

“A self-contained hospital campus would punch a hole in this up-and-coming area, separate growing neighborhoods and significantly reduce the potential of downtown Utica as a whole.”

For starters, the proposed site would wipe out over 40 business and property owners in an area worth saving—the historic Columbia Lafayette Neighborhood. Once gone, the hospital would be no real comparison to what exists in terms of the economic impact on the immediately adjacent neighborhood. It’s a popular belief that more downtown jobs will yield more traffic to local businesses by “activating” the surrounding streets, but Strong Towns member Arian Horbovetz, specifically addressing the Utica hospital issue, has written about how hospitals are not “activators” of this sort; they tend to be very self-contained and do not financially enrich the surrounding area.

Just considering the purpose and nature of a hospital supports both statements. Hospital employees are not likely to eat lunch or dinner at a local restaurant near the hospital: their high-stress jobs result in a different lifestyle. Also, sick patients and visitors are probably not looking to go shopping or have a beer at a local brewery after their hospital visit. Hospital users are not likely to spend money in the surrounding community. The notion that this hospital is a slam-dunk bet to revitalize downtown is simply false.

Building a hospital in the proposed location also comes at a high opportunity cost. The areas surrounding the Columbia Lafayette Neighborhood have recently begun to blossom, promising even higher future values for the chosen site. To the east, Genesee Street is one of the city’s most exciting places with local restaurants, cafes and pubs. A couple blocks north on Genesse is Handshake.City. Also called the “Backyard of Downtown Utica,” this grassroots effort builds community and revitalizes the city through incremental development on unused property. Lastly, a few blocks west of the neighborhood is Varick Street. With FX Matt Brewing Company and Adirondack Distilling Company, this street is full of life, especially in the evening. A self-contained hospital campus would punch a hole in this up-and-coming area, separate growing neighborhoods and significantly reduce the potential of downtown Utica as a whole.

#NoHospitalDowntown realized that an alternative location is a better financial decision and better for the downtown atmosphere. They asked geoaccounting firm Urban3 to run the numbers and allow math to make an unbiased case for the best hospital location.

#DoTheMath

Urban3 specializes in telling an impartial story with data in situations such as Utica’s. Ironically, Joe Minicozzi, AICP, principal at Urban3, relates to the #NoHospitalDowntown cause on a personal level.

Minicozzi’s Uncle Joe owned and operated Roman’s Pastry Shop before it was obtained through eminent domain and leveled for construction of the fort.

Growing up just 12 miles away in Rome, New York, Minicozzi saw a similar situation play out in his hometown and is all too familiar with the damaging end results. In 1973, the city chose to rebuild Fort Stanwix as a national monument on roughly 15 acres in the middle of Downtown Rome. 

Minicozzi’s uncle lost his pastry shop in a two-story, mixed-use building to eminent domain in order to construct the fort. Other valuable buildings shared the same fate. Minicozzi said this event left a lasting impact on him which affects his work today.

While this is a relevant and valuable lesson for MVHS and Utica, it would take more than a story to convince them to relocate the hospital. Urban3 allowed the data to find a new site using the most important factor: a central location.

The hospital will serve three distinct areas: Utica, Oneida County and the three surrounding counties previously mentioned. Urban3 found the population centers of each area. Figure 1 shows each center on a map along with the center of these three points. The figure also displays existing hospitals St. Luke’s and St. Elizabeth’s.

 

Figure 1. (Source: Urban3)

 

If the hospital must serve and be easily accessible by all areas, St. Luke’s is situated in an advantageous position: closest to the population center of Utica yet in the direction of the other two centers.

St. Luke’s Hospital

A redesign of St. Luke’s tweeted on June 7, 2019. (Source: #NoHospitalDowntown)

St. Luke’s Hospital has the space to grow into a bigger hospital as well. There are roughly 10 acres of surface parking, much of which could be condensed into a parking garage. Vacant land to the west and north both provide additional avenues for growth. #NoHospitalDowntown shared a redesign concept of how the St. Luke’s campus might be redesigned to accommodate the new growth.

At just three miles and 10 minutes from downtown by car, St. Luke’s seems to be the ideal location for the MVHS to grow. However, Urban3 did not stop there. They provided another alternative.

Alternative In-Town Location

If proximity to the Utica population center and a downtown location are musts, Urban3 found an alternative that fits both criteria.

Figure 2 shows the Utica population center with a circle around it using the distance to the proposed site as its radius. This means anything inside the circle is then closer to the population center of Utica. A hospital needs a large piece of land; is there one available within this circle? Urban3 found that the Hannaford Plaza shopping center is an 18 acre area lying within the circle.

Figure 2. Click to view large image. (Source: Urban3)

The shopping plaza, which may be considered a financial hotspot to the city, pales in comparison to several buildings in the proposed site in terms of value per acre (VPA). According to Urban3, Hannaford Plaza has a VPA of under $600,000. Meanwhile, in the Columbia Lafayette Neighborhood, just two buildings sit at $770,000 and nearly $4 million. What’s more: these two buildings are widely unmaintained and underutilized. No fancy retail stores or big investments provide aid. Imagine what small scale, incremental developmental could add to Columbia Lafayette.

The Math Doesn’t Lie

MVHS and Utica unfortunately have not taken action on the points brought up by #NoHospitalDowntown, BetterUticaDowntown or Urban3, but one thing is for sure: the math doesn’t lie. And it is crucial to understand exactly what the math says and what it does not say.

The math does not say we must always build a hospital outside of the downtown. That may be the specific solution in Utica, but this is no one-size-fits-all solution, nor should it be the take-away. Again, our profile of Windsor, Ontario drew a very different conclusion—also based on some hard data. Hospital location relative to downtown is less important than understanding the value of existing land and knowing the opportunity cost of constructing a hospital.

What the math reminds us, though, is that traditional development is the key to strong towns. Multistory, mixed-use buildings are gold. Even the unmaintained, underutilized buildings along Columbia Street beat out a shiny shopping mall when it comes to value per acre. Traditional development that utilizes flexible spaces and incremental growth is what built these places. Now that they have been abandoned, we have the opportunity to take them back and return to traditional development patterns.

Additionally, historic districts are gold. It would be ideal if we didn’t need to discuss “revitalizing” a downtown because it is already in top condition, but the opposite is true in many American cities. With this existing circumstance, we need to salvage the greatest asset that exists in many towns and cities: our historic neighborhoods. 

In Utica, using an alternative hospital location keeps alive the possibility of salvaging a historic neighborhood with amazing potential. Does anything threaten the historic parts of your town or city? If so, #dothemath and see if you can’t demonstrate the area’s current and potential value. It could help you fight to keep the history—and financial well-being— of your home alive.

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• What's the boldest thing you've done to get a job?
• Five business leaders were asked this question, and their answers (some more extreme than others) reveal daring approaches to landing that dream career.
• For instance, CEO Sharran Srivatsaa interviewed for a position 39 times before he finally got it.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. 

Applying for a competitive job? Sometimes it pays to take risks. Here are the boldest things these business leaders and advisors in The Oracles did to land a job or client.

SEE ALSO: 7 highly successful leaders share the top advice they wish they could go back and tell their younger selves

1. I wrote a $25,000 check

Years ago, I was already established and wanted to work with a famous business icon. When I learned that he occasionally offered mentoring, I decided this was my chance. I emailed his assistant, who told me it would be $25,000 to get started. I sent the money as soon as I could scrounge it together. He called the next day and said he couldn't believe that I sent the money without meeting or speaking with him. 

I flew to meet him a week later. He told me to write a sales letter and call him the next afternoon if I finished it. I called him an hour later, and he rushed over. He reviewed my work and asked why I paid him so much when I already knew how to do the work. I explained that I just wanted to work with him on a business deal. He told me that I was crazy, and we went on to do many deals and make a lot of money together. When someone creates a paid channel to access them, seize the opportunity. You never know what might happen!

—Roland Frasier, principal of 30 businesses, including War Room Mastermind and Traffic & Conversion Summit; host of the "Business Lunch" podcast; connect with Roland on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram

 

2. I showed up at the HR office unannounced

When I graduated from college, I decided I wanted to work in New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago. I bought three plane tickets and had 90 interviews. When I say interviews, I mean I was also interviewing the companies. Ultimately, I decided I was into journalism and Time Inc. was the place to begin my career. 

I looked up the head of human resources and showed up at his office. I now realize how crazy that sounds; but at the time, I just thought I was being proactive. His assistant asked me if I had an appointment and I politely said no, but I really had to speak with him. Against all odds, he invited me into his office, and I had my first job working at Time magazine soon after.

—Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of  Hint Inc.; creator of The Kara Network, a digital resource for entrepreneurs; and host of the "Unstoppable" podcast; follow Kara on Twitter and Instagram

3. I visualized getting the job

When I first read about visualization in the book "The Secret," I thought it was nonsense. However, after visualizing myself drinking a cup of coffee and getting a free lunch when I was homeless, and both of my visions materialized, I became a believer in the technique. So, I aimed for a job. I visualized how good it would feel to get paid, have a bed to sleep in, and shower daily. But I didn't just sit around and wait — I took action. I started asking around town about job openings. On the second day, I landed a job as a marketing executive.

I realized that there is a connection between what we visualize in our minds and the reality we create with our actions. Through visualization, we can strengthen our brainwaves and connect what we desire with our physical ability to achieve it. This may sound unrealistic and even a little crazy. I thought so too at first. However, once I understood the power of visualization, I couldn't stop myself from dreaming in full color.

—Andres Pira, real estate developer, founder, and CEO of Blue Horizon Developments, and author of "Homeless to Billionaire: The 18 Principles of Wealth Attraction and Creating Unlimited Opportunity" (available on Amazon and Kindle); follow Andres on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube 

4. I interviewed for the position 39 times

After I earned my master's degree, I wanted to work on Wall Street. Almost everyone I spoke with told me two things about getting a Wall Street gig. First, get ready for a grueling and stressful process. Second, it is nearly impossible to get a job with Goldman Sachs, so don't even bother. 

So, naturally, I set my sights on Goldman Sachs. I had no idea what was in store. It took 39 one-on-one interviews in multiple cities to get the job. That doesn't include phone calls, coffee meetings, lunches, dinners, and my favorite: being thrown out of a managing director's office. There were times I thought they were doing this just to see how long I could stay in the game. That was a pivotal experience that taught me endurance and has helped me become a better entrepreneur.

—Sharran Srivatsaa, CEO of Kingston Lane  and mentor to top entrepreneurs; grew Teles Properties 10x to $3.4 billion in five years; follow Sharran on Instagram

5. I gave away $20,000 of my time

Always lead with value. A few years ago, I wanted to get to know a particular real estate influencer I admired and take over his marketing. So I sent him an awkward Facebook message. My offer was simple: I would give him $20,000 of marketing and related services for free. My goal was to get results and earn an endorsement from him. 

I helped him transition to the right kind of deals and taught him how to buy directly from homeowners in a competitive market the correct way. He profited over six figures, invited me on his podcast, and emailed his followers about me. We are still friends today, and his encouragement is one of the big reasons I started mentoring. Talk about a win-win!

—Ryan Dossey, real estate broker and investor who owns more than 125 rental units across the Midwest; founder of Call Porter and Ballpoint Marketing, and partner at Stewardship Properties 

Want to share your insights in a future article? Join The Oracles, a mastermind group of the world's leading entrepreneurs who share their success strategies to help others grow their businesses and build better lives. Apply here. 

For more free business insider advice, follow The Oracles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Online reviews are my go-to for everything.

Whether I’m exploring a new city and searching for a good restaurant, looking for reliable home services, or a new ecommerce store to shop from — I browse online reviews before making a decision.

I trust online reviews as much as I trust a recommendation made by a friend or family member.

Recently, I had to hire a plumbing service for my home. I Googled ‘Plumbing services near me’ and, rest assured, a long list of results showed up. I chose one which had a four-star rating with customers raving about the excellent service. What was even more impressive was that the plumbing service had responded to each review, whether it was good or bad.

It does make a difference when I see others reviewing a business, and the business taking the time to thank their customers for a good review, and acknowledging and responding to a bad one.

And it’s not just me.

How important are online reviews?

A Local Consumer Review Survey shows that while 86 percent of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 89 percent of consumers read business’s responses to reviews.

Online reviews help you get more visibility, and in turn, more business. However, many small business owners struggle with either getting more reviews or dealing with negative ones.

Yes, reviews come in all forms — good, bad, and ugly. But one cannot deny the fact that reviews are important. Sometimes negative reviews can be as useful as positive ones.

So, what’s the best way to get great reviews?

To put it simply, the best way to get great reviews is by providing an excellent product or service, and a consistently great experience.

Customers today want to review businesses that offer them an unmatched experience. Whether you are an ecommerce store, a physical store or provide services — customers recognize good service and want to tell others about it.

Using the right way to get more reviews will, in turn, influence the buying and hiring decisions of your customers.

Is the fear of negative reviews holding you back?

A lot of small business owners admit that, while they know reviews are important and get them more visibility, it’s the negative reviews that they are afraid of. Not knowing how to deal with bad online reviews stops them from asking customers to review them.

Negative reviews can be overwhelming, but they’re not necessarily damaging.

Think of them as feedback that helps you improve. Negative reviews only become damaging when you ignore them, don’t acknowledge them, or let them bring you down.

A negative review is an opportunity to engage and communicate with your customers. Let them know that their opinions matter and you’re willing to work harder to improve their experience. Your customers will appreciate it and be able to filter through aggressive reviews because they understand what you really offer.

Take a look at this restaurant’s response to a negative review on Yelp, showcasing that every customer’s opinion matters:

Example of a negative review and response from business.

Different ways to get more reviews

There are multiple platforms where customers can leave reviews. These include social media pages, business listings, directories, and even your website.

Before you start drawing up a plan to get more reviews, it’s important to know and understand the policies of each platform and what their position is regarding soliciting reviews. For example, Yelp advises businesses not to ask for reviews, while Google My Business encourages businesses to grow positive Google reviews.

Make sure you know the policies that apply to your business and adhere to them.

One of the simplest ways to encourage people to leave a review is to demonstrate your presence on different platforms. Online, you can use your website, social media pages, and marketing emails to let customers know which platforms to use.

Offline, you can put up window clings, award certificates, or other printed material to show customers where you are featured. You can use icon buttons of review pages, snippets of reviews from other customers, and even add links for people to go review or read the existing reviews.

Use emails to get more reviews

Email marketing is an effective way to ask your customers for reviews. Sending an email when customers are most engaged — right after a purchase, a visit to your store or service completion — is the best way to get more reviews.

Using email automation you can ensure that customers immediately receive an email asking for a review right after an interaction.

Here are two examples of review emails:

Review request sent via automated email.

Another review request email.

How NOT to get reviews:

When building out your emails to ask for reviews, here are some things you should never do:

• Pay someone to write a review for you
• Force someone to write a review for you
• Give incentives in exchange for a review, like a discount or bonus
• Send a blanket email to your entire list asking for reviews

Get noticed and grow with online reviews

Customers turn to online reviews to make decisions. The more reviews you have, the more visibility and business you will generate.

Delivering excellent customer service is the best way to ensure good reviews. Don’t be afraid of negative reviews, instead use them as an opportunity to engage with your customers and let them know you value their opinions.

Using emails to ask for reviews, when customers are most engaged with you, will help you garner more reviews that are effective.

Ready to get more reviews? Start by reading all your existing reviews, across platforms, and responding to them.

Unicorn marketers are rare — so rare that I’ve only come across a few in the wild.

Some of these unicorn marketers were consultants.

Some were part of an in-house marketing team.

A few of them were marketing executives.

All of them had five things in common.

I’ve explained before that modern unicorn marketers have a blend of hard skills and soft skills.

But what do they do with that colorful cocktail of unicorn marketing skills?

These five things.

1. Unicorn marketers expect explosive results.

When I talk about unicorns people think I’m talking about magic.

Let me be clear about something. Marketing is not magic.

But unicorn marketers do expect to get insane results (borderline magic) from their marketing efforts.

Some might call it delusional, but these marketers truly believe that they will win the marketing lottery.

In 2008, I was hogging Panera Bread bandwidth and inhaling way too many diet Cokes, while coming up with a business plan.

It looked like this:

While the 2008 economy was imploding, I was devising plans to skyrocket my not-yet-created business from $240k to $26 million in revenue in three years.

“HA HA HA!”

I was talented at drinking diet cokes and mooching Wifi, not at pioneering startups, let alone startups with a multi-million dollar annual revenue.

But explosive results often come when you believe that they will.

The whole theory behind unicorn marketing is pretty simple.

It holds that 98% of marketing efforts fall flat.

Only 2% of efforts get results — and that 2% of results drives most of a company’s clickthroughs, views, shares, conversion rates, and revenue.

This 98% and 2% data isn’t arbitrary, by the way.

It’s the result of relentless content testing that I did at my previous company.

That 2% — that’s unicorn stuff.

And that’s what unicorn marketers believe is going to happen.

But it’s not magic.

It stems from something else.

2. Unicorn marketers will try anything and everything.

Donkey marketers — creatures that are content to hoe their row — get siloed about their marketing.

They think, “Okay, I’m an SEO. So I’ll do SEO stuff. I’ll optimize the metadata and alt-tag the images, that’s what I’ll do.”

But a unicorn marketer — creatures that prance in fields and poop rainbows — they don’t see boundaries, don’t hoe rows, and don’t believe in silos.

They try anything and everything they can conceive of.

The donkey thinks, “But, wait, you can’t do that. That’s not really a thing, and I don’t think …”

The unicorn replies, “I’m going to try it anyway.”

The more things they try, the greater chance they have of discovering that 2% sweet spot where unicorn results bloom.

I’ve seen unicorns do things that seemed absolutely stupid. But as you can probably guess, those were the things that got genius results.

Heck, I’m personally taking a major gamble on Facebook messenger marketing right now, a marketing channel that didn’t even exist a couple of years ago.

Some unicorns have done things that could hardly be described as marketing. But results don’t care about labels.

And the not-sure-it’s-even-marketing moves turned into millions of dollars in revenue for their companies.

And, that’s what really matters — results.

3. Unicorn marketers obsess over results.

Unicorn marketers can be hard-headed. They’re not into following rules or abiding by some playbook.

All they truly care about?

Results.

Donkey marketers dot every i and cross every t, hoping that by following someone’s rules, they will achieve marketing success.

They measure success in terms of quantitative output — 3 blogs per week.

But unicorns?

They run roughshod over these arbitrary rules.

They think outside the box, color outside the lines, toss the manual (pick your metaphor) they do random stuff.

I don’t care how smart you are.

I care about whether or not your relentless efforts produced big results.

In this game, the only thing that matters are outcomes.

Eventually, something works. And that’s the unicorn moment.

It’s the results that they’ve been angling for all this time.

If following the rules isn’t giving you results, write some new rules.

Anyone who parrots some marketing method is anti-unicorn.

It’s not that unicorns spit on rulebooks and disparage boundaries.

Instead, unicorns believe that a method is only justified when it returns results.

And when it does, they know exactly what to do about it.

4. Unicorn marketers repeat their unicorn moves until they stop working.

If you’re expecting results, trying everything, and addicted to results, then you will find your unicorn growth hack — something that will blow up with eye-popping results.

When you find that one thing, do it again.

And again.

And yet again.

Until it stops working.

This is the way of the unicorn. Unicorns make unicorn babies.

If a donkey marketer does something remarkable, there will be a round of high-fives and back-slaps, and then it’s onto the next thing on the content calendar.

Unicorn marketers, on the other hand, know they’ve unlocked a unicorn hack. And when they do, they double down on it.

Repurpose the content.

Keep promoting the asset.

Maintain the ad configuration.

Launch a webinar.

Turn it into an infographic.

Make a video about it.

Produce deep content on that single subject.

Replicate the heck out of your unicorn hack as long as it keeps delivering results.

5. Unicorn marketers are just donkey marketers pretending to be unicorns.

Here’s the dirty secret that most unicorn marketers won’t tell you.

They’re actually donkeys. And they’re pretending to be unicorns.

If you strap a unicorn horn onto a donkey, it sort of looks like a unicorn, right?

A lot of unicorn marketers are strapping on their proverbial unicorn horns because it makes them look like a unicorn.

Once they look the part, they act the part.

What does this mean in real life?

It sounds cliche: Fake it till you make it.

I did this in the early days of my first startup with a few simple and inexpensive hacks.

Sure, my company didn’t have the legacy of an IBM or the reputation of a Microsoft, but I knew how to read social media algorithms and generate real traffic to my company’s content so we looked big.

I pretended that my company was a unicorn by promoting our content to audiences in the millions.

The massive awareness I achieved was the catalyst. It transmogrified a donkey into an actual unicorn.

Real people, real clickthroughs, real conversions, and real revenue started pouring in, and I knew that the donkey act had produced a unicorn reality.

Sometimes, acting like you are a unicorn is the best way to become one.

Conclusion

Unicorn marketers are made, not born.

The characteristics I described here can be learned, built, and formed through diligence, hard work, and time.

Granted, this article is not about the tactical methods that unicorns use. It’s about the mindset of a unicorn — what they expect, how they try, why they obsess, and what they do to achieve unicorn status.

I write it, think it, read it, or say it every day — be a unicorn in a sea of donkeys.

My hope is that I’ll find more and more marketing unicorns in the wild.

Originally Published on Inc.com

No matter how hard we work to cover it up or deny it, as humans, we are very much driven by our “primal brain.”  Sellers already buy into this when they agree that “people buy on emotion, (primal brain), then rationalize it, (logical brain).”  No emotion is more powerful than fear; one of our greatest fears is the fear of missing out.  This same cause/effect reaction presents itself in other human interactions, where sellers can leverage these triggers and the buyer behaviour they lead to.  If you want to gain a quick understanding, check out Neuromarketing, by Patrick Renvoisé & Christophe Morin.  They highlight several ways we can use this in sales.

Act Now

Another ‘action trigger’ is scarcity.  The fear of going without, running out, not getting any, is one of the strongest emotions we carry.  We look at hoarders, knowing it is just an exaggerated form of an instinct we all have.  This is highly visible in the consumer space and no less prevalent in B2B.  Time-limited offers or features, I bet you all have a ‘good through date’ on your proposals.  The potential of not having – drives decisions and actions.

Understanding the premise, however, does not always lead to the right execution.  We need to create a fear of missing out on the right things.  Most sellers try to create a reaction around missing out on their product or specific features of their product.  Unfortunately, the segment of the market this resonates with and would lead to action is small.  Usually, buyers who were already committed to making a purchase and were feature and price shopping.

The Real World

With disengaged potential buyers, entrenched in the Status Quo, the above approach to scarcity is a waste.  We have to find something else to focus on to create the same sense of loss.  The further these buyers are from a decision point, the more important this is.  Your focus has to be those things they are dealing with now, not down the road when they go to selection mode.  Especially for economic buyers who will never directly deal with what you are selling, more often they interact with the output.

Your focus should be on things they see as being scares in their world.  Be that time, productivity, risk or protection from risk, financial and more.  How we communicate the change in their world is vital, as it will never be our product or service that will be scared, it will usually be the output.

Explore All Sides

Remember to explore things in ways that speak to both company or personal factors.  Professional, like a promotion or just a better/easier way of getting things done.  Could be personal, like actually making the first three innings of little Tyler Jr. little league game.

The key to this buyer is that you can reduce a three-day production process to 2.75 days, not the mechanics of how you do that.  You are giving them the most scares resource on the planet, time.  Most sellers stop here, do an ROI calculation, then sit back.  We need to take the extra step of helping the buyer see the difference.  Remember, if you called them, they were happy with things as they are, you need to give them a reason to change, even when it may not initially make sense.

For example, I worked with one finance professional, small business loan specialist, who was able to write loans at 5 -7 points above prime.  He worked with clients to look at the overall impact of the funds received from the loan, not the cost of the loan.  He showed them how they could finance more significant growth than the premium differential.  With the loan, even at these perceived prohibitive rates, they were able to increase revenues by over 25%, increase margins, and earn 13% ROR, rather than nothing “because the rate is too high.”  The pull of what they would miss out on was greater than the absurdity of the loan rate.

This takes practice, but as with most things, it is science, not rocket science, just need to practice.

Scarcity of Conviction

There is something that most of us could use more of, is conviction, the commitment to do or follow through on what we say.  We talk about the Status Quo, and there is a host of factors, but net result is inaction.  People are good at not acting, and it’s easy.  Scarcity is a good counterbalance to that as well.  We have all faced situations where a buyer was engaged and involved, agreed to move forward, but a few minutes of being back in their environment changes all that.

Tying scarcity to a business function or common task allows you to not only introduce something specifically relevant to them.  But each time they do the task, use the output or interact with what you discussed; they will be reminded of what they “are missing out on.”

Remember, scarcity is a tool, not a weapon.  If you use it to scare people, you will succeed and scare them.  But if you can intelligently paint a better alternative, you could get them to think, which is always a good first step.

The post The Fear Of Missing Out appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Whether you are running a Google search campaign, Google remarketing campaign, or Facebook Ads campaign, all ads must point to a destination. There are many options out there. You could point to your homepage or a standard service or product page on your existing website.

You could custom code a landing page designed specifically for the campaign. You could use a pre-built landing page template on a platform like Unbounce or Hubspot. Or, you could point to a microsite or one-pager.

Each option comes with its own pros and cons. Leading to your homepage takes zero additional resources, but it will likely lead to a low quality score and high bounce rate. A microsite might serve the topic perfectly, but it will take time and resources to develop.

Often, we see a hesitation to invest in custom landing pages. Especially when first starting out and before proving ROI, many campaigns lead to standard service or product pages. Even well-designed pages still won’t have the same impact as a landing page specifically engineered to drive conversions from paid ads.

In this blinded case study, we are going to look at one local campaign that saw a dramatic increase in conversion rate and slashed cost-per-acquisition (CPA) with the simple switch of changing the destination from a standard service page to a custom landing page.

CTR and Conversion Rate improvements after implementing new ads and landing page

The Campaign

The campaign we are going to spotlight is a branded search campaign run on Google Ads. A branded campaign is one where you bid on variations of your brand’s name. This can allow you to own additional real estate and control where users land on your site (versus the organic listing, which will likely be your homepage).

Before

The Landing Page

Previously, the branded campaign was leading to a service page representative of the most common service offered. As a service page, it has a lot going for it. It has a clean and clear layout, detailed and specific content, and intuitive navigation. There are multiple calls-to-action (CTAs) directing people to their preferred form of communication (call, email, fax, store visit). It loads quickly and works well on mobile.

Wireframe of previous destination page – a service page on the main website

The Ads

The existing ads were standard search ads. They hit on a couple key value propositions and were supported by extensions that highlighted the company’s longevity, service record, convenient location, and more. They include mention of the company’s policy for free on-site estimates and 24/7 service.

The ads didn’t take advantage of some of the more recent features, like responsive search ads.

The Stats

The branded ad campaign itself was performing nominally well, but it was a relatively low conversion rate (3.36%) and relatively high cost-per-acquisition ($24.60) that triggered us to give the campaign a closer look.

With branded campaigns, there is an expectation that you can acquire leads for a much lower cost when compared with generic keywords. For one, the cost of bidding on your own brand name will be much lower (sometimes pennies on the dollar) since there’s less competition. Second, users who search your brand name are much more primed to convert as they’re likely at the bottom of the sales funnel and ready to take action.

Expected conversion rate and CPA will vary dramatically based on industry, market, and even seasonality. In this particular situation, we expected to see a conversion rate above 5% and a CPA under $20.

The branded campaign had the following statistics:

Google Ads metrics before the optimizations

After

The Landing Page

We used a landing page layout that follows best practices for driving conversions:

• Prominent and clear headline tailored to match the keywords in the ads (this increases quality score)
• Prominent contact form with a clear call-to-action
• Clear value propositions supported by trust factors like accreditations, reviews, and testimonials
• Clear summary of main services
• Images of real work and products (not stock)
• Contact information including phone number and address (further trust factors)
• Consistent keyword use in the URL, title tag, and H1

We took existing content from their website and wrote new content where needed for clarity or to better reflect value propositions.

Wireframe of the new optimized landing page

Originally, the page had some additional elements which were further refined by the paid ads team to increase conversions. For example, the page originally had a link back to the main site at the top of the page. We removed this because it could interfere with the primary goal, which is for users to convert on this page. We also removed links to more gallery pictures and links to review sites for the same reason. The content stayed, but the outbound links were killed in the name of conversion.

We originally had a file upload field on the form, but it had no text indicating what it should be used for, and could potentially be a barrier for users to complete the form. We added a simple instruction: “Upload a photo of your project below:” to make the expected action clear.

After additional rounds of Q/A internally and approval from the client, the page was ready to launch.

The Ads

We paused the under-performing ads and wrote two new versions. One was an expanded text ad with better copy and better keyword use. Expanded text ads were introduced in 2016 and allow you to occupy more real estate in the search engine results page. Advertisers are afforded an additional headline field and two 90-character description fields.

The other was a responsive search ad. This feature was rolled out last year. As WordStream’s Mark Irvine explains, “Unlike traditional search ads, where you write headlines and descriptions together to create 1 static ad text, when writing a Responsive Search Ad you can write up to 15 different headlines and up to 4 different descriptions. Collectively, these headlines and descriptions can be arranged in 43,670 different permutations.”

We didn’t go quite that far, but we did put together 10 of the most compelling headlines and four rich descriptions.

We also reviewed the existing extensions and added new ones where needed. Extensions supplement your ad with additional information, whether it’s a map pointing to your location, your phone number, links to pages within your site, or text promoting your unique value propositions.

We enabled or optimized the following extensions:

• Sitelink extensions
• Call extension
• Location extension
• Callout extensions
• Structured snippet extensions

The Results

The new ads and landing page had an immediate impact. Within two weeks of launching, they earned the following metrics:

Google Ads metrics two weeks after optimizations

In just two weeks, we had cut the CPA in half and generated a 4x improvement in conversion rate. We also generated almost as many conversions in two weeks as we had in the previous three months combined. Most interestingly, the CTR actually dropped. A slightly smaller percentage of searchers were clicking on the ads, but they were four times more likely to convert when they did.

Since the launch of the new ads and landing page in February 2019, the new campaigns have generated the following results:

Google Ads metrics four months after optimizations

All told, the new campaigns have resulted in a 21% better CTR, dropped the CPA in half, and nearly tripled the conversion rate.

Lessons

When running campaigns, it can be tempting to hit the ground running. Why spend time and money building a landing page when you have a perfectly good website to use? While these results may not be replicated in every situation, the methods used here are completely transparent. There were no fancy tricks, no advanced bidding strategies, no complex remarketing funnels.

If you are running any paid ads campaign, whether it’s on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or another platform, evaluate the landing page you plan to use. Does it truly represent the product or service you’re advertising? Is it easy and intuitive for users to complete the intended action? Will it maximize your ROI? If you can’t confidently say yes to all of the above questions, you should consider upgrading to a targeted landing page instead.

Whether you choose to build from scratch, customize a template, or use a service like Hubspot or Unbounce, you can expect to see better metrics and more conversions. It is an investment that more than pays for itself.

Transcript of How to Win Your Clients in Bulk written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused e-commerce brands drive more sales was super targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook, and Instagram marketing.

This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Jeanna Pool. She’s an Author and Speaker, and she’s created a course and a coaching program called Clients In Bulk that we’re going to talk a little bit about today. Jeanna, thanks for joining me.

Jeanna Pool: Thank you, John. It’s great to be here.

John Jantsch: For the last, I don’t know, decade, we marketers have been talking about, first it was internet marketing, and then now we call it digital marketing. Everybody who has figured out how to run Facebook ads is now a digital marketing expert, and teaching other people how to do that. One of the things that really intrigued me of course about your current work is that you are actually suggesting that people get all their clients offline. How is that possible?

Jeanna Pool: Yeah, crazy huh? Especially when I own an online marketing agency. Yeah. Yeah, John, I built my entire agency. I’ve been in business going on about 17 years, and I built my entire business completely offline, even though all my clients, we do online marketing. What I really preach, and teach, and practice myself is, man, let’s be honest. Online marketing is competitive. It’s uber, uber competitive. As we continue down this path of, just like you said, everybody does Facebook ads, everybody’s an internet marketer, everybody’s a digital marketer. The competition is getting bigger and bigger, and harder and harder. That’s why I really, really love offline, because there’s not many businesses doing it. You can really signup clients very fast, and much less work, and much cheaper offline than you can with a lot of this online stuff.

John Jantsch: Well, and there are a lot of industries, niches we might call them, that they really get a lot of their information still offline as well. I mean, there are definitely the people that live online, but there are maybe older school, more traditional brick and mortar businesses that they’re not really looking, or they’re not going to necessarily find somebody online are they?

Jeanna Pool: Well that’s true, certainly. Every single niche, and I’m from Texas so I niche instead of niche, but every single niche out there has an association, or a trade show, or a conference, or an industry type of publication, or group. Certainly, that’s a tribe. That’s where the niche, and the people in the niche gather, and look for information. Yeah, I mean let me be very clear. Online marketing works, it absolutely does. I’m not saying that. But what I’m saying is, if businesses today are not incorporating offline in addition to all the online things, they’re truly missing out, John. Again, the competition is so, so much smaller than online.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I’m glad you made that point because that’s one of the things I’ve been saying, and have continued to say. I mean, I started my business before we had any online things. I had to help people learn the offline ways to build their business, and as the online things came along, I think a lot of people just accepted, or believed I should say, that, “Oh, we got … that’s marketing now.” As opposed to, “Hey, what if we thought about integrating these things? What if we thought about how having a Facebook presence could help you meet people in your community?” I think the people, the marketers that I think really get it, and that’s why it’s so easy for me to kind of take aim at the pure online marketers is that, I think the marketers that really get it understand that you get the most success by integrating offline and online. I’ve been saying that for a dozen years now.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah, absolutely. John, you know, if we look at what the highest converting sales method on the planet is, I mean you know the answer to that. It’s face to face selling, and it always has been, and it always will be. That’s why I love incorporating offline marketing, because you can sell, and build the know, like, and trust factor so much faster face … excuse me, face to face offline, having a conversation with a real person in the real world, than you can online.

Jeanna Pool: I mean, certainly it can happen online, and it does happen. But, it’s just so much richer, and faster, and more effective when you have real conversations in the real world with people.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I have a model for the customer journey I call The Marketing Hourglass. My stages are actually know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. Kind of the whole idea behind those, is that you move people, your marketing is to sort of move or guide people through those stages. I built my entire practice years ago by speaking. I called it speaking for leads.

Jeanna Pool: Yep, mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Jantsch: The reason I found it so effective, and that obviously I want you to talk about because that’s what you’ve been preaching and teaching as well is that, somebody could come to know you there. They like what you’re talking about, after 40 minutes they trust that you have the answers, and maybe you give them some way to try what it might be like working with you, or buy from you. I mean, you move people very rapidly through all of those stages, which it’s very difficult to do in a series of emails, or landing pages.

Jeanna Pool: Correct, yeah, absolutely. There is such a form of authority about being onstage, whether it’s front of 100 people, or five people, it doesn’t matter. When you’re on stage, when you’re the one teaching, when you’re the one presenting, you are the expert, you are the authority. It really, John, it shortens the sales cycle because, you’re essentially selling without selling. You’re sharing your knowledge and expertise, people are falling in love with what you’re talking about. They’re getting, just like you said, to know, like, and trust you so much faster. If you happen to make a pitch onstage, it’s just a natural type of a sales process of, “Hey, you want some help? You want me to help you, and you want to work together on this?” It just makes selling so much easier because you’ve got that authority, and that know, like, and trust factor.

John Jantsch: The offline in person, and I’ll kind of short circuit persons learning here. Your clients in Bulk Program, you talk about trade shows, and small seminars, and networking events. They’re all, the thing you have in common is you’re going to be face to face with folks. Let’s talk about this idea of small seminars, because I’ve always loved that one. How do you go about, what are some of your kind of favorite ways to go about using that as a sales technique?

Jeanna Pool: Yeah, so that, just like you mentioned, that is one of the three keys in the Clients In Bulk Program. Here’s the thing, when somebody hears small seminar, a lot of times, John, they think, “Oh my gosh, I have to get 100 people in the room.” Not at all. “Or, 50 people in the room.” No, not at all. I’m talking about really small seminars, so I’m talking like three people, five people, eight people in the room, and I really am a proponent of niching your services, and niching what you’re going after.

Jeanna Pool: Maybe you get three real estate agents in the room, and you do a half day seminar, so maybe three or four hours. Again, you teach your knowledge and expertise. Let’s say, we mentioned Facebook ads, and everybody doing Facebook ads now. Let’s say that you have a Facebook ads agency, and your niche is real estate agents. Get three, five, six real estate agents in the room, teach really great info on Facebook ads that’s going to help them. Don’t hold back, don’t be one of those chuckle heads that’s like, “Hey, you want all my secrets? You gotta buy my stuff.” No, no, no. Teach them really great stuff, charge for the small seminar. I definitely say everybody needs to charge for the small seminar and not do it for free. Then, you simply make a very non salesy, simple pitch at the end, and you’re going to signup clients on the spot.

Jeanna Pool: Again, it’s that authority. They have learned great stuff from you. They’ve fallen in love with your knowledge and expertise, and it’s the next step for them to get help, from who? From you, because you’re the one that taught them what they need to know to move forward.

John Jantsch: A lot of people kind of do that, I get that question all the time. “I don’t want to give away all the secrets.” I think the fact of the matter is, there aren’t really that many secrets.

Jeanna Pool: Exactly.

John Jantsch: All they really want to know is that you know what you’re talking about-

Jeanna Pool: Yep.

John Jantsch: … So demonstrate that, I think, is a great way to look at that.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah.

John Jantsch: All right, and I agree with your point about charging a little money. I mean for anything, there’s so many free things today that people have devalued it-

Jeanna Pool: Yep, correct.

John Jantsch: … If nothing else, it just becomes sort of a qualifier, if you will, that somebody’s … if they’ll invest $47, $497, whatever the price is, then they probably are looking for a $5,000 solution.

Jeanna Pool: Correct, correct. If they can’t invest that, that is totally okay. They’re not a qualified person for you, so it’s totally fine. That’s why, yeah, free seminars, free talks, that kind of thing. Those are good, like you mentioned, John, for getting leads. But, that makes it much, much harder to upsell. It’s what I call a bridge too far. If you’re doing, let’s say, a small seminar that’s free, and you’re pitching a 3,000, $5,000 program, that is a very big leap for someone to go from free, to that big of a jump.

Jeanna Pool: When you charge, and you charge appropriately, and then you pitch a package that’s appropriate to the niche because that’s a huge secret, you gotta pitch a package that’s irresistible, that they can say yes on the spot, right then and there, that’s where you signup multiple clients at one time, and clients in bulk.

John Jantsch: Well I work with a lot of Marketing Consultants, and the reality is they are solopreneurs. They’re not looking for 100 clients, they’re looking for maybe six more, you know?

Jeanna Pool: Yep.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of times people lose sight of that fact, that spending time face to face, doing the three people in the room that two of them become clients, is a much better use of your time than trying to generate hundreds and hundreds of subscribers, or whatever method that you’re doing. I think that, that’s the number one thing, is you have to look at what you’re trying to do overall from a goal standpoint.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah, yeah. My big thing, John, is I work once, and signup enough clients to last me a year. I have signed up 26 clients in one single weekend, and I did no other marketing the rest of the year. I’ve signed up 10 clients in a day. I’ve signed up eight clients in a week, and so on and so on. That’s the way that I love to work, because when you go offline, you’re not having to dial 100 times, right? Smiling, and dialing, and cold calling. You’re not having to send out 5,000 cold emails to maybe get one client this month, and then another client two months later, and that kind of thing. To me, that’s really hard.

Jeanna Pool: I would rather do a small seminar, or do a trade show, or do a very specific type of networking event in my local area, signup eight, 10, 12, 15, 20 clients, and be done. Then, all I have to do is fulfill the work, make them gloriously happy with what I do, and then referrals come in.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and then it allows you to focus on them as opposed to having to look up and think, “Hey, I haven’t been doing any marketing for a while.

Jeanna Pool: Exactly.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening, and understanding cues from your customers. This allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages. There’s powerful segmentation, email auto responders that are ready to go, great reporting. If you want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships, they’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday. It’s a docu-series, a lot of fun, quick lessons. Just head on over to Klaviyo.com/BeyondBF, Beyond Black Friday.

John Jantsch: So, I got 10 people in the room and I gave them a great education, and they love it. What’s the secret to getting them to go, “Oh, I want to pay you money now.”

Jeanna Pool: Heck yeah.

John Jantsch: Because, I think a lot of people get the idea of educational content. But, then there’s that, there’s how do you fill that gap between the really kind of schlocky approaches that you see from the stage-

Jeanna Pool: Right.

John Jantsch: … To like maintaining your integrity, but still making sure that somebody understands how they can get more value.

Jeanna Pool: Exactly, yeah. Perfect, perfect question. There’s a couple of secrets here. Number one is, go in with the mindset of you’re going to give big value. What I mean by that is, guys, teach your knowledge and expertise so truly if the person leaves and they don’t buy what you’re selling, they can still get success from what you have taught them. That keeps you from being a chuckle head, and I promise you when they get stuck, and they will because this is not their expertise, they are going to come back to you at some point when and if they need help. That’s number one.

Jeanna Pool: Number two is, you have to make an irresistible offer. John, in Clients In Bulk and in my course, I spend a ton of time on what I call irresistible offers, because a lot of people think, “Okay, I’m going to pitch my services. Yeah, it’s irresistible. Oh but wait, I didn’t sign up anybody.” Well, truly your offer has to be so irresistible that it is absolutely a no brainer for somebody to sign up. They have to think, “I would be crazy to pass this up.” It has to be deadline driven so they leave, they miss out. Maybe it’s a special price, maybe it’s some special things that you don’t offer at any other time. Have some bonuses in there that again, make it irresistible. It also has to be a special fee that’s nowhere else available right now.

Jeanna Pool: A lot of people are like, “Oh, Jeanna. I don’t want to discount my services,” and all that kind of stuff. I get that, but the thing to move the needle, and the thing to make people say yes right then and there is, everybody loves a deal, okay? If you can make an irresistible offer with bonuses, and special things thrown in, and a special fee, or special payments, or things like this. John, that makes people say, “You know what? I want this, I want this right now. It’s a no brainer, I get it, yes. Sign me up.” I’m telling you, 26 clients at one time, 16 clients at one time. This is how I sign all these clients in bulk, is these irresistible offers.

John Jantsch: Now, does this approach require you to have a $3,000 package or something? I mean, I’m thinking about-

Jeanna Pool: Absolutely not.

John Jantsch: … Because I’m thinking about the Marketing Consultant whose kind of like, “Well, we have to see what you need, and then we’ll figure out what it’s going to cost.” I mean, how do you deal with that kind of … Because again, there are a lot of people out there selling courses, and packages, and things-

Jeanna Pool: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Jantsch: … But, there are certainly a lot of people that aren’t.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah, yeah. That’s a great question, and John, I’m glad you brought this up because I see a huge mistake that a lot of Marketing Consultants, and a lot of agencies make. That is, they only want to sign and sell these big packages, so these 6,000, 10,000, $20,000 packages. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the time that it will take to close someone into that is longer. You have to do a proposal, you have to do a evaluation, and an audit of what they need, you have to go back and forth with contracts, and, “Oop, add this, remove that.” Right?

Jeanna Pool: I recommend, and I teach my students start with a package to where one client, patient or customer in the niche that you’re talking to, pays for the entire thing. If you’re talking to a room of massage therapists let’s say, and let’s pretend that a massage therapist is going to make $1,000 from a client in a year, sell $1,000 package because one new client will pay for it for a year. That’s irresistible. Then guys, you can always upsell them, right? You can always throw jet fuel on it, and make it a bigger package. But, the big mistake I see, John, is people try to sell these ginormous packages. That doesn’t work as well. Start a little smaller, you know?

Jeanna Pool: I have students that sell $500 packages, $1,000 packages, and they’re selling like 18 people in the room, just like clockwork. Be careful about just saying, “Okay, my package is 3,000 bucks.” Again, the key is that if one client, patient or customer can pay for the package that you’re pitching, that’s a no brainer. Why wouldn’t I do that? I get one, and I’ve paid for it. I’m ROI positive.

John Jantsch: You mentioned trade shows [inaudible 00:18:25].

Jeanna Pool: Yes.

John Jantsch: Now, I’m immediately thinking, “That sounds expensive. I’ve gotta have a booth, and there’s a fee to get in.” I mean, so how do you make those pay in the same ways? I mean, the seminar’s great. You can sometimes do those for nothing.

Jeanna Pool: Yep.

John Jantsch: But, the trade show, you might have to put some skin in the game. How do you make that pay?

Jeanna Pool: You really want to look for niche specific trade shows. A big mistake that people mistake is they go to kind of general trade shows, okay? There’s many of them in our industry, John, marketing. I won’t mention them, but you guys know of these big ones, right? Those are expensive, and what you want to do is you want to look at more niche specific.

Jeanna Pool: Another thing is, don’t be afraid to go in your searching, to page five, or 10, or 15 on Google because you’re going to find really wonderful trade shows that are very affordable, that they don’t know how to market themselves, right? If you just do a Google search and you come up with page one or page two and you’re like, “Holy cow, these are $5,000” or whatever. Keep digging, because I’ll tell you, I have some found very affordable trade shows looking five, six, eight, 10 pages deep because marketing’s not their thing. They’re just a niche specific industry, they’re having a trade show, there’s going to be two or 300 people there. The intent is great, because it’s all about business building, and you can find some really, really good bargains.

Jeanna Pool: Another thing too that a lot of people don’t realize is, everything … let me say it this way, almost everything in a trade show, is negotiable. Don’t be afraid to ask for some negotiation room of, “Hey, can we tweak this if we remove this? What does that do to the fee if I add this?” And so on, don’t be afraid to negotiate. Now, they may say no, but I have definitely been able to negotiate some things, different fees, different packages, different bonuses, with the trade show host, if you will. You just have to be aware of it, and you just have to be not afraid to ask.

John Jantsch: When I first started speaking, and again I was willing to speak for free because I was just trying to get in front of audiences, and build some credibility, and frankly nobody was doing it then, you know? That was 25, 30 years ago.

Jeanna Pool: Sure.

John Jantsch: I would, even though I wasn’t charging a fee, I would tell people my fee was $2,500 because then I had something to negotiate with.

Jeanna Pool: Yes.

John Jantsch: Even if it was, “I want the list of attendees at the end of this,” or something, that’s … I was willing to trade my fee even though I really wasn’t charging a fee. I’d tell people that all the time. I’ll tell you the other thing I tell people is, put it on your website. You don’t have to be somebody who wants to be a professional speaker for your career, but act like one. Build out, get a video of yourself, put it on … You know, “Here are my topics, here’s what so and so said about my speaking,” because even if you’re doing your own kind of private seminars, it gives you a lot more credibility. Because today, we go check that person out, you know? If I’m going to go sit in the room with this person whose going to talk to me for half a day, let me go find a little bit about them. Have that on your website.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah. Let me just say too, John. When you find the right trade show, let me give you an example. One of my students, they wanted to break into a brand new niche. They own a marketing agency, they were kind of burned out a little bit on the niche they were working with, and they wanted to try a new niche. They went to a trade show in Tupelo Mississippi and you’re thinking, “Oh my goodness, really? That’s kind of a strange place to have a trade show.” But, they broke into a new niche, they got seven clients and in one single week, made over $43,000 just by looking at kind of some different angles. Not a Las Vegas trade show, right? But a smaller event, in a smaller town, and they just blew it up, right? That completely changed their business, built the credibility. Now, they’re known in that particular niche overnight.

John Jantsch: Jeanna, tell us where people can find out about your course, so if somebody’s listening thinking, “Okay, I want to go deeper here.” Because I know you have not only the training, but you have templates, and PowerPoints, and all kinds of stuff that people can start using right away. Tell us about where people can find out about that.

Jeanna Pool: Yeah. The easiest thing is to visit ClientsInBulk.com. Just like it sounds, Clients In, I-N, Bulk, B-U-L-K, dot com. Yeah, there’s a free webinar, and on that webinar I tell everybody and teach everybody how I signed those 26 clients in 48 hours, and then yes, the course covers the three keys that we talked about. So, niche specific trade shows, doing your own small seminars, and a very specific type of local, low cost networking. Yeah, there’s over $10,000 worth of done for you templates, so booth templates, and fliers, and marketing materials, and all the things that you’ll need for your both. Slides for your pitch and your offer, and your … I even have presentations. If you’re like, “Hey, I want to do a small seminar, but what do I talk about?” There you go.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well Jeanna, thanks for stopping by the show. I know you’re out there in Colorado where I end up quite a bit, so maybe I’ll run into you out there on the road sometime soon.

Jeanna Pool: Fantastic, John. Thank you so much, and I wish all of your listeners outrageous success. Thank you so much.

Summary List Placement

When it comes to scaling your company, "there is not a one-size-fits-all approach."

That's according to Deepak Hegde, associate professor of management and organizations at New York University. Hegde also directs Endless Frontier Labs, which helps technology and science startups scale.

(One alum is Analytical Flavor Systems, a machine-learning and artificial-intelligence platform that predicts individual taste profiles that's now being leveraged to design boutique bread flavors.)

For one startup, Hegde said, scaling might mean locating a large-scale manufacturing facility to get a product out to wider markets. For another startup, scaling might mean hiring a sales team.

Whatever your company's challenge, you'll need a customized plan of attack — plus the willingness to experiment.

One of the trickiest parts of scaling is transitioning from founder to people manager. Early on, said Alexi Robichaux, cofounder and CEO of the career-coaching platform BetterUp, "it's about you versus the world."

As your company grows, you've got to build an effective team to help you tackle key challenges.

We asked Hegde and Robichaux, plus several other founders, entrepreneurship researchers, and executive coaches, to outline the fundamentals of growing a business. Read on for their best practices — and the most common pitfalls to avoid.

Start planning to scale as early as possible

Formal planning might seem antithetical to the move-fast-and-break-things version of entrepreneurship. And while more research is needed to prove truly conclusive, studies of thousands of startups indicate that having a business plan can boost the odds of success.

One study, published in 2017 in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, looked at data from more than 1,000 entrepreneurs in the US between 2005 and 2011. The researchers compared pairs of founders who were otherwise identical, except one wrote a business plan and the other did not.

As it turns out, planners were 16% more likely to succeed than non-planners. (Success was defined as the point when monthly revenues had exceeded monthly expenses for six out of the past 12 months.)

Hegde explained why having a business plan can attract investors. "In order to scale, you need money," he said. "But in order to get money, you need to show proof of scalability."

The plan is (part of) that proof. "Scaling really is about planning," Hegde said. "It requires thinking maybe two, three, four, five years ahead, rather than simply thinking about how are you going to do the best pitch to sell your first customer or your first VC."

A solid strategy is to build a minimum viable product for that would be scalable with the right resources. Then show investors that any money they put in "can be deployed in ways that can meaningfully help expand the markets, or the customer base," and so on, Hegde said.

Know why you're scaling in the first place

Approach scaling with intention.

That's what Hint did. Since 2005, Hint has marketed naturally flavored beverages. It's become a staple at Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook. It has since expanded its product offerings to include sunscreen and deodorant as well.

Hint founder and CEO Kara Goldin has explained to Business Insider the logic behind this expansion. Her goal from the outset was to solve consumers' health problems — whether through safe, affordable sunscreen or nutritious, tasty beverages.

In both cases, Goldin said, she realized that there were tons of options on the shelf but that people had no easy way to tell which was the healthiest choice. And even if they could, it would probably be out of their price range. Hint could change that.

Remember, too: You're not obligated to scale your business. And it's best to figure out your ambitions around scaling before seeking venture capital.

For Hint, scaling has meant reaching roughly 190 employees after 14 years and snagging John Legend as an investor.

Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, previously told BI that one of the first things VCs evaluate is market opportunity, i.e. how big your business can eventually get.

It's perfectly ok to build a $20 or $30 million company — but it might be hard to convince a VC to partner with you on that.

Hire to fill the gaps in your skillset …

"As a founder, you are so used to doing everything yourself," Hegde said. "Your startup becomes your baby."

That mentality can lead to a few mistakes — namely, trying to do much yourself or micromanaging the employees you bring on.

The truth is that no founder is skilled at every aspect of running a startup. Typically, founders are talented salespeople: They can convince a VC to invest, a job candidate to join the team, and a customer to sign up.

That doesn't necessarily mean they'll be a good manager — which, if you ask Cat Hernandez, a partner at early-stage firm The Venture Collective, is fine.

"Let's assume that your business grows really quickly and you have hundreds, if not thousands, of employees at some point," Hernandez said. "Your job is to set the strategic direction of the company and, yes, be able to drive a leadership team."

"Some parts of that require you to be a good manager — but if you know that's not your core skill, hire people [who have it]," she added.

… and do it sooner than later

Don't wait to build out your team until you're comfortable delegating responsibility. Do it now!

Christine Beckman, the Price Family Chair in Social Innovation and Professor of Public Policy at USC Price, conducted research that found the most successful entrepreneurs hired for specialized roles — say, an operations expert or a marketing expert — early on.

"They set it up right from the beginning, rather than trying to go back in time and fix systems and processes that were put in place at the beginning, but no longer work as the company has grown," she said.

Beckman analyzed the executive team members at nearly 2,000 startups, plus how long it took those startups to raise capital and to go public.

She discovered that founders who try to do everything themselves wind up "trying to cover more functional areas than they necessarily have expertise in" and "slowing things down because there's a bottleneck of decisions needing to go through these general managers," Beckman said.

The founders who hired specialized talent were more successful because they saved the entire team time and effort.

Steve Martocci, cofounder of GroupMe as well as CEO of the music-creation platform Splice, learned this lesson the hard way. "I waited too long to hire an assistant," Martocci wrote an email to Business Insider.

"In the early stages of building the company, I always felt guilty about the expense, because at that point I was so focused on the product that it seemed okay to go without [an assistant]," he said.

"But as the stakes got higher, I started missing important meetings that had a material impact on the company," Martocci added. "Having since hired an experienced assistant, I can attest to the significant value that she has provided me, and by default, the company."

Learn to delegate

So you've hired some new team members. The next step is letting them do the work they signed up for.

It's not as easy as it sounds.

To Robichaux, cofounder and CEO of BetterUp, it's about deferring to people with more specialized skillsets.

"If you're a really good early-stage founder, you're probably a high performer who's a really talented individual contributor in some vector," he said. "You may not be good at everything, but you're good at programming, you're good at product, you're good at sales. That only gets you so far."

As your startup grows, he noted, you have to get comfortable managing a team that's more high-performing than you are individually.

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has explained why delegation can be difficult (for new managers in general, not just founding CEOs).

Successful people typically advance by proving over and over again how intelligent they are. They're inclined to do the same once they're in a leadership position — even though that can backfire.

The biggest challenge for new managers "is not always winning," Goldsmith previously told Business Insider. Instead, they learn to position others to do the winning for the organization.

Prioritize company culture — and tweak where necessary

"Culture" might seem like a fuzzy concept, but Hegde emphasized its importance. He said founders should make sure the people they bring on are aligned with their culture — even if they don't yet have a section of their website that outlines the company's mission statement and values.

Another common mistake is "not subtracting when you add," said Ethan Mollick, associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"The things that made you successful early on aren't always useful later," he said, such as all-hands meetings (a.k.a. all-staff meetings), which might not be helpful or even feasible once the company reaches 500 employees.

Other misadventures in scaling have played out in the examples of startups like WeWork and Away, each of which struggled to balance their unique company culture with extraordinary growth.

For WeWork, the party-like atmosphere that may have appealed to the earliest team-members appears to have hurt the company's attempt to go public. Business Insider spoke with current and former employees who described non-stop work requirements amid an alcohol-fueled, highly sexualized environment.

Revelations about WeWork's culture — in addition to its financial health — devastated its reputation with investors and the public, and led some employees to worry about their career prospects with other companies.

And for Away, the luggage startup's VP of people and culture told Business Insider that the leadership team prioritized employee experience, and was developing sophisticated HR practices for such a young company.

But less than a week later, news broke that the high-pressure work environment led former employees to accuse the company of bullying and harassment. The resulting scandal led cofounder Steph Korey to step down from her role as CEO.

Scaling, in so many ways, is about adapting to the organization you've created.

Accept that you need to take care of yourself first

Somewhat counterintuitively, your top concern as a team leader is … you. And Robichaux said that's where most founders go wrong.

"We think our job first and foremost is to take care of other people," he said, when in fact "your No. 1 job as a leader is to take care of yourself."

Justin Kan, the founder of Twitch and Atrium, recently shared about his firsthand with the challenges of entrepreneurial mental health.

"You can be burned out no matter how successful you are, and you can be unhappy no matter how successful you are," said Kan, who sold his first startup for $1 billion.

The stress trend is a national one: a 2012 Gallup poll found that entrepreneurs were more likely than other workers in the US to feel worried and stressed.

That doesn't mean you invest in self-care at the expense of the company's well-being. That also doesn't mean you take a monthlong vacation while your company's imploding.

By taking care of yourself, Robichaux means getting "in a good mind space" and having "the emotional resources to be compassionate and not snap at someone."

It's why Robichaux prioritizes physical workouts as well as mindfulness exercises in his schedule.

"That is more important than looking at this other document at 11 p.m. That is more important than getting someone feedback late at night," he said.

If Robichaux doesn't make time for exercise and mindfulness, he's operating from a "faulty foundation and everything will suffer."

Karan Singh, the CEO of the mental-health app Ginger, said he realized during his early days as an entrepreneur that there was "a cult of the startup" among founders that prized a hardcore work ethic above all else.

"The startup defined you," Singh told Business Insider. "It was your epithet. It was how you introduced yourself. It was how you described who you were."

Singh told Business Insider he manages his mental health by meeting with a group of other founders once a month to talk through the  stresses of running a business.

"If you are dealing with something that you feel might be challenging, I think it is also very therapeutic, to just talk about it," Singh said, "to talk openly about what you're going through, and to be to be open about that with your colleagues, to be open about that with your friends, with your partner."

SEE ALSO: The first-time founder's ultimate guide to pitching a VC

SEE ALSO: A Columbia professor who has taught MBA students for 15 years says graduates no longer aim for Goldman Sachs or Google. Here’s what today’s top talent want to do with their degrees.

SEE ALSO: The cofounder of GroupMe was 27 when the text-messaging platform sold for $85 million just a year after launch. Now, he’s raised $107 million for a music startup that could make him even more successful. Here are his lessons for pitching, leading, and building a company.

SEE ALSO: An employee-coaching startup used by Airbnb and LinkedIn just raised $103 million in a Series C round

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

For more than a decade now, many in sales have been neglecting what may the single most crucial activity necessary for producing sales results. That activity is prospecting, and it is what is required to open new relationships and create new opportunities. No deal is closed without first being opened, and I have written here that “opening is the new closing,” to make the point that it is now what is critical to success. If you want success, you need to build the prospecting habit.

How did we get to a place where salespeople don’t spend their time prospecting? The reasons are many and varied, but two stand out above the many others, and they deserve much of the blame.

How Prospecting Was Lost

First, sales managers have not held their salespeople accountable for prospecting. In many cases, sales managers know that poor sales managers focus only on activity, and many of them have worked for managers who wanted only more activity. Because they don’t want to be that manager, they don’t hold their salespeople accountable for prospecting. Others don’t believe they should have to talk about activity at all.

Second, and something that made the lack of accountability and an even larger problem was the concept once called “social selling” by its proponents. The chattering class on LinkedIn sold the idea that inbound was greater than outbound, that the world had changed, and that only Neanderthals used the telephone. This anti-cold calling fever laid waste to a generation of salespeople, all who believed the lie that they could create more opportunities with less effort if they spend enough time on the social channels.

Those of us who knew better pushed back against the seductive lies of con artists, picks and shovel dealers (those who would sell you the tools you need to succeed in the gold mine, and who are also the only ones getting rich while you spend your time in an empty mine), and charlatans. As we predicted, social lost its allure, its results being far less than promised. We are still working on bringing accountability back into fashion.

How You Build the Prospecting Habit

If you want to create more—and better—opportunities, you need to prospect. Your willingness to be proactive and professionally persistent in the pursuit of your dream clients is the determining factor when it comes to your sales results.

The following steps will help you develop the prospecting habit.

• Make Prospecting Primary: Selling is made up of two major outcomes: 1) Opportunity Creation, and 2) Opportunity Capture. If you are going to capture opportunities, you must first create them, as natural a law as the one requiring you plant in spring if you would reap a harvest in fall. Because Opportunity Creation is the critical first step in sales results, it has to be your primary focus. Prospecting has to dominate your time and your energy.
• Block Time: If you don’t make time to prospect, other tasks, projects, and distractions will consume your time. The best way to ensure you have time to prospect is to block time on your calendar and hold it sacred. The more time you spend prospecting, the more opportunities you will create, and the more opportunities you create, the more you will win (all things being equal). Blocking time to prospect on your calendar is a commitment you make to yourself—and your future self. You should treat the commitment to prospecting as sacred as a commitment you make to meet with a prospective client—as it is what allows you to schedule those meetings in the first place.
• Get Past the First 10 Calls: The first cold you make is always the hardest. The second call is easier to make, even if only slightly so. But once you have gotten into the rhythm, it gets easier. That usually happens after about ten calls, eight of which are going to be voice mail. The eleventh call is when you start to get into your groove, but you can’t get there if you don’t keep dialing. After number eleven, calling turns into nothing more than a game, and your resistance will subside.
• Use Prospecting Cadence: The phone is the single best and most effective medium for scheduling appointments, but it isn’t the only tool available to you. You can follow up with an email, and if you share something useful, you can begin to be known as a value creator. Just don’t ask for an appointment over email; instead, tell your dream client you will try them back. You can also connect on LinkedIn, as long as you don’t pitch the client. Instead, give them your number and tell them they can call you should they ever need anything (you are going to call them again later anyway. As you string these touches together, you are professionally persistent in your persist. A cadence keeps your activity high and focused, improving your results.
• Keep a Scorecard: Track your habit by keeping score. When I started in sales, I tracked a few metrics. I tracked how much time I spent on the telephone pursuing meetings. I tracked how many dials I made, even though I didn’t have anyone to report them to (my efficiency). I captured how many times I had a conversation where I asked for a meeting and how many meetings I booked (my effectiveness). By keeping score, you hold yourself accountable. If you want success, hold yourself accountable for your results so no one else will ever have to.

Selling, in large part, is about prospecting, the creation of new opportunities. Those who believe and behave as if sales is what happens after you create an opportunity are mistaken. The sooner you develop the prospecting habit, the sooner you will produce better sales results.

The post How to Build the Prospecting Habit appeared first on The Sales Blog.

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

Hiring salespeople is an exciting time… it often means you’re ready to (or in the process of) scaling your business!

However, it can also be quite a daunting task — one that I see trip up many businesses and resulting in painful mis-hires and blown opportunities.

I typically see this happen for one main reason: Startups often think (consciously or subconsciously) that scaling or building a sales team is as simple as “getting bodies in the door yesterday.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

The reality is not all salespeople are created equal (and neither are startups). Just because a rep has amazing sales numbers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good hire. What they had to do to achieve those numbers may be totally different than what they’ll have to do to be successful with you!

So how do you know which salesperson is the right hire for your business?

The answer starts with YOU. The key is to do an intentional deep dive on your business and evaluate your needs before you begin recruiting.

Here are 7 questions to ask yourself about your business that will help you differentiate between a candidate who will serve your business best and one that won’t.

1. What Is Your Mission?

This might seem like a strange place to start, but just about every sales candidate we speak to cares deeply about selling something they believe in.

And as Simon Sinek so astutely points out, “People buy from those who believe what they believe.”

So if your reps don’t believe in what they’re selling, how will your buyers?

“The first sale happens in the heart of the salesperson.”

That’s why one of the most important things you can do is to make sure you’ve firmly established your vision and mission — and can articulate it in a compelling way during interviews (including examples of how to back it up).

This will act as a magnet. It will draw the salespeople who love what you do to join the mission and will repel those who don’t.

RELATED: The Secret To Sales Success – Sell What You Love

And this is critical because when you hire people who want to be there, it will boost engagement right off the bat — something a study by Gallup showed to result in a 22% boost in productivity.

2. Which Market Are You Targeting With This Role?

There is a big difference between selling to the SMB, Mid, and Enterprise markets. And knowing how to differentiate experience in each (as well as which you’re selling to) is absolutely critical.

Hiring an Enterprise Account Executive is very pricey — and overkill for a business that’s selling to the SMB market.

It’s like using a sledgehammer when all you needed was a rubber mallet.

The same applies to the Enterprise market. Hiring an SMB rep (even a good one) will likely have them way out of their element and not create the results you’re after.

The mindsets and skillsets are simply different.

What’s the difference between Enterprise, SMB, and Mid-Market?

Most of the ways people differentiate and define these markets has to do with deal sizes, sales cycles, etc. But the truth is, these things don’t really tell you what you need to know to be successful.

These are the definitions that will:

“Enterprise sales is all about fitting a custom solution for a single large buyer, where SMB is about finding lots of smaller buyers who are a good fit for your existing product.

Mid-Market is somewhere between the two. Deals in this segment sometimes require customization and are largely differentiated from the other two on deal size and complexity.”

Understanding these differences is key. It affects the way the person you’ll hire will need to sell to be successful.

RELATED: Key Differences Between Enterprise and SMB Sales Processes

Will they need to focus on optimizing for a volume-driven approach, which is needed to be successful in the SMB world? Or will they need to prioritize deep discovery to find the perfect solution that enterprise buyers require to make a purchase? Or do they need a mix of both on deal sizes that are somewhere in the middle?

The skills associated with each approach are different. So be clear on which market you’re going after and the approach your hire(s) will need to take to be successful!

3. How Much Selling (If Any) Has Been Done So Far? What Have You Learned?

This will depend on whether you’re starting from square one (i.e., this is your first sales hire) or not. If you’ve got a team and you’re looking to expand, you can skip to question #4.

If it’s your first sales hire (or you’re still trying to get your first hire right)…

If I’m honest, most startups hire salespeople too soon.

In fact, I regularly advise early-stage founders to do the selling themselves rather than utilizing my services… even in the enterprise market.

This quote from a founder explains why:

– Edith Harbaugh, Co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly (via HeavyBit)

Simply put, the more selling you do before you hire someone, the easier it is to hire the right person to take the process and scale it up:

• You’ll have a better grasp on your market and ideal buyer (since you’ll have interacted with them directly)
• You’ll have a better understanding of what it takes to sell your product (since you’ve done it yourself)
• You’ll know what specific abilities a person you hire needs to have (because you can compare their experience to yours)

I know doing it yourself sounds intimidating (especially if you’ve never done it before), but it is possible and it does pay off in the long run.

RELATED: The Founder’s Dilemma with Sales

Can you hire someone to do it for you?

Sure. But it means you’ll have to look for someone with that specific skill set and track record of success doing so.

Scaling is not as simple as getting bodies in the door… there are processes and systems that have to be built in order to have a high-functioning, high-growth sales organization.

So if you’re going to hire someone to do it for you, they have to be adept at building out things like:

1. Your go-to-market strategy
2. Your process and “playbook”
3. Recruiting

Fair warning: It’s not cheap to do it this way. In my experience, people with these skills are pricey (think VP of Sales).

So you’ll also need to make sure you have enough runway to support the business while you’re building out your sales process. Revenue won’t be coming in right away and you’ll have to pay salaries as your new hire develops the sales function!

RELATED: B2B Sales Outsourcing Is Dicey. Here’s How to Do It Right

What if it’s not your first sales hire?

No matter where you are in the process of building a sales team, the key is to assess:

1. Where you are now
2. What’s been done up until this point
3. Where you want to go

And then find the person that has the right skills to connect the dots. Below are the specific things to think about that will help you do this.

4. What Kind of Deal Sizes Are You Working With?

As deal size increases, so does the complexity and sales cycle (typically).

So you’ll want to know what kind of deal sizes to expect in order to find someone who is the right match in a candidate. They should have a proven track record of achievement with the deal sizes you need.

However, there’s still more to consider… namely, what did they have to do in order to close those deals?

It’s just as critical to understand what actions they took to achieve their success in order to ensure they have the specific skills to be successful with you too…

Because, frankly, not all deals of the same size are created equal!

Here are some of the specific activities you need to consider to make sure that the experience of the person you’re talking to matches what you’ll need them to do once they join your team.

5. What Specific Tasks Will This Hire Need to Accomplish to Be Successful?

If you haven’t defined what success looks like for your hire, do that first. What KPIs should they be focused on? What is their quota? Why?

Then, you’ll need to think about what they’ll have to do to achieve it based on everything we’ve talked about so far:

1. Do you have a clear picture of who your buyer is yet?
2. Have you mapped out your total addressable market or will they have to do it?
3. Do you have a strong inbound system of leads for your sales hire to get to work on right away? Or an SDR/BDR that is doing it currently? Or do they have to generate their own?
4. What about collateral? Talk tracks? Your tech stack? Will these be in place when they arrive or will they have to build them?
5. How do you demo? Do you have a process for doing that or do you need to build one?

Each of these is important to consider as you’re looking for someone to hire. And you’ll want to ensure whoever you hire has experience doing the things you need them to.

6. What Kind of Support Team Do You Have in Place?

Studies show it is anywhere from 5x–25x more expensive to get a new client than it is to keep an existing one. So it’s important to have a strategy for retaining your clients once the deal is closed!

How will you continue to support your buyers once they are on board? Do you have a customer success team/rep in place to ensure this happens?

If not, your sales hire will likely have to do that themselves!

Additionally, in the enterprise market, you’ll need to make sure your product team can support the customization of your product for your buyers (I’ve never seen a product that was a perfect fit for an enterprise buyer right out of the box).

Otherwise, it’s going to be very difficult for anyone you hire to sell your product!

7. What Kind of Sales Culture Do You Have?

Culture is the number one thing that candidates we talk to (from CRO’s all the way to AE’s) want most in their next role. So finding a match here is critical.

However, I see a lot of startups assess culture fit by “finding someone they’d like to grab a beer with.”

This isn’t what I’m talking about.

Real culture fit is about an alignment of fundamental beliefs (as they tie to your mission), your leadership, and whether you’re aligned on how to approach the task at hand.

It’s tricky to define and I can’t do it for you here. Only you know what it’s like to work within your company and what kind of person will fit there!

But the key is to take time before you begin recruiting to define what values you actually live by within your organization (not just the ones that sound good).

Then ask questions like these below in interviews to see whether there is alignment or not:

• “What are you most proud of in your career? Why?”
• “Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a team member… what happened and how did you handle it?”
• “What role did your team play in your success at [PREVIOUS COMPANY]?”

The way they answer questions like these will give you a good sense of their values.

Wait… What About “Industry Experience”?

This might surprise you, but if I’m being totally honest, specific industry experience is less important than you think — even though it tends to be where most people look first when they’re hiring.

Don’t get me wrong…

Having industry experience (and a network to go with it) is a great thing to have. It will help you get a quick start.

However, it’s much better to hire someone who knows how to sell and has a proven track record of achieving the results you desire in the environment they’ll face with you.

Someone who knows how to sell can learn a new industry. Someone without the right sales skills to match your needs will never get off the ground.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot to consider here, and it’s easy to lose track of it all when you actually start interviewing candidates.

So the best advice I can give you is to take some time before you ever start to recruit… and use what you’ve discovered to build a system that helps you evaluate the candidates you’ll be interviewing consistently.

My weapon of choice for that is a hiring scorecard. You can learn all about it in this article I wrote for Sales Hacker — including a base template to start from.

Above all else, remember that making the right sales hire is about understanding your landscape, what your sales pipeline and process look like today, and the desired results that define success for the person you’re hiring.

Let these guide your evaluation process and you’ll be set up for success!

The post 7 Critical Questions to Ask Yourself BEFORE a New Sales Hire appeared first on Sales Hacker.

It’s pretty easy to find marketing applications for Twitter, but what about sales applications for the little blue bird?

Are there any — besides the fluffy and non-specific things, like “engage with leads,” that we hear about all the time?

Actually, yes! Twitter can be a very powerful nurturing tool for lead prospecting. And we thought there should be a fluff-free process you could implement to use Twitter to connect with prospects at a higher rate.

Here’s how you or your sales reps can use Twitter to warm up prospects, build rapport, establish thought leadership for your company, and ultimately connect with prospects that turn into paying customers.

Step 1: Discover Who Your Prospects Are

The first step to lead prospecting on Twitter is to research your prospects on this social media channel. You need to know who they are on Twitter and what they’re talking about.

There are a couple of ways to do this:

• You can simply take your existing prospect list and search for them on Twitter.
• You can type relevant keywords into Twitter’s search function to find possible targets.

From there, you can follow them and/or add them to a Twitter list for easy organization and tracking.

RELATED: The Most Comprehensive Guide To Social Selling You’ve Ever Frickin’ Seen

If you use a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, you can automatically search for the Twitter handles of your contacts when they convert as a lead.

In HubSpot, for instance, this information automatically appears on each contact record. You can then create and export a list of your leads with known Twitter handles — segmented out by sales rep — to give your team a list of contacts relevant to them.

From there, you can find your leads in Twitter and either follow them or create a list of leads to track.

Step 2: Start Tweet-Talking to Your Prospects

Lead prospecting on Twitter starts with engagement. But engaging with prospects in a meaningful way is sometimes easier said than done.

RELATED: Sales Engagement: The Intersection of Sales and Science

The key to doing this effectively is to remember that Twitter is simply another channel of communication. That means:

1. The conversation should sound natural.
2. The conversation should be about your prospects, not you.

Sure, mentioning your prospect in a tweet will get you noticed, but the difference between being engaging and annoying boils down to what that message is about.

Here are a couple of tactics to consider:

1. Don’t abuse the @mention.

I repeat, don’t abuse the @mention feature. Mentioning someone on Twitter is a great way to get them to notice you since your tweet will show up in their stream, but you want to make sure that they’re noticing you for the right reasons.

Ask yourself: Are you offering them something valuable that’s relevant to them? If you haven’t talked to them in real life before, be sure to include why your message is specific to them.

For example, “@HubSpot I downloaded your free email template offer,” is relevant, but there’s no context.

This one, “@HubSpot Can we schedule a time to talk more about the product I’m selling?” is all about you. Think again if you think you’re going to get a response.

RELATED: 8 Updated B2B Sales Prospecting Strategies To Think About NOW Before You Start Another Quarter

2. Retweet their content with discretion.

Similar to when you’re at a cocktail party, if you simply repeated everything someone else said, it would get boring (not to mention annoying) pretty fast.

When you retweet something a prospect says, add to the conversation by offering an additional insight or posing a question.

Be helpful and relevant. Make sure that you’re retweeting things that you’ve actually read and found it to be valuable — especially because they could follow up on that in a future conversation.

Here’s an example from Pete Caputa to give you an idea of a natural retweet that’s based on context:

3. Subscribe to their blog.

Subscribing to a prospect’s blog is a great way to find out what’s important to them and learn about what they’re working on.

One tip for doing this if you use a Gmail account: Use a “+” sign in your email address when you subscribe and route those messages into a separate folder. This is a little-known trick that makes organizing your emails super simple.

For example, I subscribe to blogs using juliette+blogsubscriptions@gmail.com so that I can organize those messages in a separate folder by setting up a filter. Then, when I have a block of time, I can read all the articles in one sitting.

Step 3: Transition From Twitter Conversations to Real Conversations

Goal #1 in lead prospecting is to convert each lead into a customer. Often, one of the steps on the path to doing that is establishing a good connection, whether it’s over the phone, email, or in a face-to-face meeting.

RELATED: How To Write The Perfect Sales Email

One of the great things about using Twitter in your prospecting process is that it gives you a window into what’s important to your prospect and what’s on their mind at any given time.

By utilizing Twitter lists, you can quickly scan what your prospects are saying each day to look for opportunities to start conversations — either online or over the phone.

By offering them relevant and valuable content, you can help establish yourself as a thought leader and stay top of mind for when they’re in their buying process.

That way, when you do speak with them offline, you’ll be able to have a richer conversation based on their needs and how you can provide them with value.

Do you use Twitter, or other social networks, in your sales process? Share your tips on integrating social media with sales in the comments!

The post Lead Prospecting on Twitter: Try This 3-Step, No-Fluff Process appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Ever since marketers were hired to help with the online presence of brands, content has been a hot topic. The creation of content that works has never been as challenging and competitive as it is right now. If brands aren’t on top of their game in this area, the consequences are pretty immediate. However, content still has it’s issues. One of those issues is the question of whether or not less is more. Or, in other words, is it better to create fewer items of content that are of a high quality, or a number of items that are just ok?

Sounds a little weird if you’ve been doing what you do for years. Your particular formula is probably working out just fine for you. But the question does need answering. Content will always be important, but the low barrier to entry for content does mean that everyone is doing it. So knowing how important quality is could well be an advantage to your brand.

Is content still important?

Content is probably more important now than it ever was. It differentiates massively, so that a consumer who sees low quality content will most likely bypass that for higher quality stuff, even if that high quality content is behind a paywall.

Content has saturated the Internet over the last few years. There is so much of it that it’s hard for consumers to wade through the noise to find stuff that is relevant to them, and professionally created.

What is good content?

That’s a good question. Content has to be a number of things before we can call it ‘good’ content. However, the overriding ‘thing’ it must be useful. If a piece of content isn’t of some use to the reader there is no point in reading it, or listening to it, or whatever you do for content. Customers are searching for meaning and connection. If you can’t give them this they will simply go elsewhere.

So is less…more?

Yes it is. And then it isn’t, at the same time. If your brand is capable of producing stunning content on a daily basis, then go for it. Otherwise, plan out your content schedule and make sure you can serve it with the same level of quality every time. If you can’t, it won’t last for long.

Essentially, your aim should be quality content every time you produce content. Whether this means three pieces a week or thirteen pieces a week, only you will know what kind of frequency will work.

So we suggest treading some kind of middle ground, with content frequency that is right for your resources, and right for your audience.

Some ways to make sure this happens:

Always create content that connects. This is a kind of litmus test for quality content. If you are able to create content that is suited to the requirements of your audience, you are already winning. If it’s not aligned to the image you have of your audience (which has been cultivated via extensive audience research) then don’t create it. At the same time, all content should be a part of a conversation. Talk to your audience, treat them well. Ask them questions. If they think you’re talking to them and not at them, they’ll engage.

Don’t throw in a ton of content every week. If you can, then you need to tell us all how to. Content can be a nightmare if there is too much of it. And by tossing content in like you don’t care, you’re just going to become annoying as a brand. It also looks mighty desperate too. Instead of being the annoying person at the party, send out content on a regular basis, or even when it feels right. You’ll find that your audience will respect you more if you’re creating stuff that is meaningful, every now and then.

Be consistent. You have to have a content calendar that gives you a clear view of what you’re aiming for every week. A good content calendar allows you to plan out certain content elements for certain audiences, ahead of time. And your audience can tell when you’ve planned out content. The calendar will also allow you to be consistent. And even if this means content twice a week, you’ll know it’s quality content.

And timing?

There is a bit of an issue with timing. Generally speaking, you should know when your audience is awake and aware and wants to see content. Using a service like Locowise can help in this area. Our predictive metrics service can give you a clear path on when your audience is around and most likely to consume content. There’s no need to play a guessing game any more.

And that predictive aspect also means that you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by knowing exactly when to post.

Content is still king. If you produce value and you maintain consistency, you can even get away with a couple of pieces a week. And yes, if you’re not getting anywhere near your KPIs with thirty pieces a week, stop it.

Respect your audience, and give them what they want, and when they want it.

 

Before I started researching the content for this article, I thought that email was going to be a critical channel for B2B content marketing. But what I found wasn’t exactly what I had anticipated.

Some of the most surprising findings came from The State of B2B Email Marketing report, released earlier this year. It found that 59 percent of B2B companies DID NOT use email marketing. That’s a bit shocking…To say the least.

Credit: The State of B2B Email Marketing report.

Emails are an important communication channel as well as a lead generation channel in B2B. Even still, a lot of companies choose to avoid it to communicate. Let alone nurture, and sell to their audiences.

Ever since I’ve found this amazing stat, I wanted to discover the reasons preventing B2B businesses from using emails.

I’ll share my findings in this article. This, along with five research-based B2B email marketing techniques to help you increase the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns.

Why Do So Many Companies fail to Capitalize on B2B Email Marketing?

Let’s make one thing clear from the start: email marketing is hard because you have to follow a lot of rules and be aware of the quickly evolving best practices.

To be able to improve the performance of your marketing with emails, you have to have a documented strategy that outlines the types of emails to send out, content calendar, and many other things. The importance of having a documented strategy is hard to overstate since it provides that much-needed vision and ensures consistency.

However, when we dive into research, we discover that only 37 percent of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy necessary to manage the email effort as well.

Credit: Content Marketing Institute.

The Research

Evidently, 25 percent of B2B marketers don’t even have a content marketing strategy. Which means their B2B email marketing effort? Well, if they use emails, of course – is mediocre, at best.

However, many plan to develop a strategy within a year, which suggest that more B2B businesses realize the importance of emails as a marketing channel as well as being consistent and organized about it.

Another important factor that defines the effectiveness of email marketing is the frequency of the campaigns. Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula on how many emails you should send within a specific time period, but some research findings can help.

For example, it’s a known fact that sending too many emails is a sure-fire way to make subscribers feel overwhelmed. In fact, a study by Marketing Sherpa found that “too many emails in general” and “too many emails from a specific company” were two of the top three reasons why people unsubscribe from newsletters.

According to the abovementioned State of B2B Email Marketing, the companies sent one email campaign every 25 days. While this may work for some businesses, don’t forget that the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day in 2018 was about 281 billion.

This means that chances are pretty high that your subscribers receive tons of emails every day, so if you choose to send one email every 25 days, they are likely to forget about your company very quickly.

So, to quickly summarize these findings, we can safely assume that many B2B businesses fail at email marketing because they lack the knowledge of the most effective practices and techniques that maximize the selling potential of the approach.

With that in mind, let’s review five B2B email techniques that can increase the effectiveness of your digital marketing effort.

1 Have a Documented Strategy

As we already know, having a documented strategy is a strong precursor of success here; in fact, the above-mentioned Content Marketing Institute report discovered that 62 percent of the most successful B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy compared to only 16 percent of the least successful ones.

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62% of the most successful B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.

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Not only having a strategy contributes to being consistent here, but it also helps B2B businesses to be organized. For example, you can give a specific purpose to emails that you send out to your subscribers:

• First-month emails: share knowledge of common issues faced by leads
• Second-month emails: share tips on how to deal with those issues
• Third-month emails: demonstrating why your company is the best to help with those specific issues with case studies etc.

Now we’re talking! This simple strategy provides some organization to your email campaigns and allows to nurture leads properly.

2 Define a Frequency of Email Campaigns

We’ve touched on this specific topic above, and we know that many B2B businesses send out only one campaign every 25 days. This might very well be one of the main issues preventing them from increasing their sales, but I won’t give you a lot of specifics here because they depend on your industry, niche, and product or service.

The best advice that I can give you here is to take a cautious approach and test your campaign and start with one email per week. We cannot risk getting your emails lost in overfilled inboxes, so try this frequency and go from there.

3 Use a Personal Name for a Sender Name

What sender name do you use in your emails? The research suggests that it’s the most important factor when it comes to increasing open rates; in fact, a Super Office survey found that 64 percent of emails subscribers were likely to read an email because of who it was from.

Credit: Super Office.

Since it’s easier for people to connect with other people, not companies, this finding was expected.

What was unexpected, though, was that The State of B2B Email Marketing discovered that 89 percent of B2B companies send their emails from a company’s name!

Credit: The State of B2B Email Marketing report.

Clearly, they are not doing a great job at encouraging their subscribers to open emails because people respond better to people, not things like companies and departments. The best way here is to use a technique like this.

The below email comes from Business Insider Intelligence, a premium subscription service created for business executives and leaders. As you can see, the name of the sender is included in the sender name field as well as in the body of the message (along with an image of the person).

This is way better than receiving an email from a company name, agree? In many cases, it would be a better decision because it makes the email look more trustful, so be sure to test how emails send from your brand name and from a personal name perform.

4 Write Compelling Subject Lines

One of the most important things to get right with B2B email marketing? The subject line. The reason is pretty simple: your subscribers receive a lot of emails and often, a subject line is the only thing they read, so making it as enticing as possible is a must.

Standing out from the rest of the message in an overfilled inbox is tricky. Some brands even go for capitalizing subject lines to get noticed, but this is a bad idea since using all caps is like screaming at the receivers.

There are a number of good techniques here. So let’s review some of them and give you some examples.

The first technique is to describe the benefits to the receiver. For example, here are a couple of messages from well-known B2B companies that follow this approach.

As you can see, they let the receiver know about the content inside the messages by describing the benefits it provides them (also take note that both of them use personal names as senders).

Another technique is to write a subject line that catches a reader’s attention with something they don’t expect to read. For example, the following line is a good example of that.

A lot of people would like to know this, right? So, such a curiosity-based subject line would be a great way to encourage your recipients to open the message and learn more about what you have to offer.

5 Audience Segmentation

This is quickly becoming one of the most important techniques in both B2B and B2C email marketing because it increases the relevance of email content to receivers, which is something they appreciate (irrelevant emails go to the spam folder or simply get ignored, obviously).

If you segment your subscribers, for example, by interest, you can create emails that they will be more willing to open and read. For example, many B2B businesses make a big mistake by sending their sales-related content to the entire lead base, which means that all of them get the same offers.

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Instead of sending sales-related content to the entire lead base, try sending this content only to those who are interested in it.

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That’s not a good idea, obviously, since every business has unique needs and goals. So, instead of doing that, try sending sales-related content to those who are interested in it. To identify these individuals, you can segment your subscribers based on the following:

• Industry. This one is obvious: you won’t get a lot of business by sending offers that are irrelevant in terms of industry.
• Website behavior. Take a look at what pages a subscriber visited (product pages, landing pages, etc.)
• Position in a company. It may not be the best idea to send an offer with an IT infrastructure security solution to a head of HR, agree?

By doing so, you’ll increase the relevancy of your emails to subscribers, which will dramatically increase the chance of selling something to them.

Conclusion

B2B email marketing is hard. You have to follow so many rules. And pay attention to so many things. Which may be one of the reasons why a lot of B2B businesses don’t even use this approach. However, avoiding a marketing technique with the highest ROI of $43 per $1? Simply not a good way to develop a business in 2019.

Hopefully, these techniques will help you to rethink your approach to email marketing or enhance your existing techniques to improve sales.

The term “customer experience” usually conjures up images of individual customers in retail or other business-to-consumer (B2C) environments.

I am often asked about business-to-business (B2B) as a separate experience. After speaking on overall customer experience themes, for example, audience members will approach with the B2B questions:

• Why should we care about customer experience in B2B? It’s totally different than B2C!
• Our end users are often not our customers, per se, since they aren’t the decision makers and bill payers. So, who, exactly should we design a customer experience for?
• Our customer list doesn’t include names of individuals, it includes lists of large corporations! How do any of the CX ideas you discuss apply to us?

I’d argue something that can seem a bit counterintuitive. B2B relationships with customers are often MORE personal than those in B2C.

How can that be? Consider how large-scale business relationships work!

A potential customer becomes aware of a brand, but probably doesn’t understand the full potential of how the brand could help her business.

This means the potential customer does some research, perhaps reaching out to their network.

According to Salesforce’s 2018 Trends in Customer Trust report, 93% of customers are more likely to recommend a company they trust over those they don’t. This means trust building has to start immediately.

I’ve facilitated a number of business-to-business customer advisory board sessions and other meetings with customers. It’s not uncommon to hear the decision to engage with a B2B provider was based on a specific person’s name.

So when I’ve asked, “why did you first reach out to ACME?” It’s not uncommon to hear several customers answer “Brad” aka a top salesperson.

That’s a personal relationship from the beginning.

But then what? Some sales cycles in B2B reach epic timelines of months or years between start and sign-on-the-dotted-line status. That’s when the relationship with Brad or Barbara the sales leader from Company X really matters.

There are frequent check-ins, maybe a golf game, or perhaps a holiday gift basket for good measure. And while Barbara or Brad are aiming to earn the business of ACME Corporation, they are dealing directly with Jeff or Jill who work there.

It’s as human as it gets.

After all this personal relationship building in sales, something dramatic shifts in the relationship.

Jeff and Jill are suddenly working with a new team. There might be a deployment team, an onboarding specialist, an account manager, a customer success team and a compliance officer thrown in for good measure.

These become real relationships, too, and even if Jeff or Jill aren’t the ones interacting with these Company X teams every day, their teams are. This means the complaints of what’s not working with Company X go directly to Jeff and Jill.

It’s still personal.

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How are you supporting your long-time clients with better outcomes and innovative ideas? Don’t save the best stuff for your new clients only.

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So consider the customer experience design from Company X’s perspective.

Much of B2B experience design is based on traditional business plans and how the organizational chart looks. Traditional business planning is focused almost entirely on sales and marketing.

How can we let the right customers know about our brand? How can we sell to the most of them?

And while it’s logical from the Company X perspective to move a customer from a sales team to a client team once the sale is made, it’s not all that logical for the customer.

After months or even years of turning to Barbara with questions or concerns, now Jeff has to determine what category of question or concern he has and then navigate the team structure to know who to call. It’s a lot to ask of a new customer.

Yet it happens…all the time.

Want to know what your business can do to improve B2B customer experience? Here are a few ideas.

1. Remember it IS personal, even though it’s business.

Your clients are people who work for companies.

It’s important they feel recognized and heard throughout the relationship, not just during the wooing of sales.

2. Communicate proactively more than you do today.

I can almost guarantee this will improve the experience for your B2B.

In business, we often avoid communications completely instead of sharing “I don’t know yet” status or something negative. Your clients want to hear from you when it matters.

This is a key part of building trust, but a lot of company cultures don’t support this. Build a culture where it’s ok to communicate negative status updates because that’s the truth, and truth is rewarded, not punished.

3. Your culture matters more than you might think.

Cultures of blaming, finger pointing and general territorialism hurt customers. They get caught in the ego-driven shenanigans and their businesses suffer.

Create a culture where working together on behalf of your customers is the number one goal. Let your different departments collaborate and support one another for better experiences.

4. Build trust as an ongoing activity.

Just because your customer is paying their bills on time doesn’t mean they feel like things are great. Neglect and apathy kill these long-term relationships more than something going horribly wrong.

Just like any relationship, creating real moments that provide value matter way beyond the courtship. Design proactive positive moments throughout the customer journey, not just when they become a customer.

5. Show loyalty to your customers, don’t just demand it from them.

A common refrain in B2C experiences is that companies today don’t show any loyalty to their customers. That’s why it’s so frustrating when you see the “new customer” deal but don’t qualify as a long-term customer.

The same frustrations happen in B2B relationships. How are you helping your customers deal with their business challenges? How are you adding value to them? How are you supporting your long-time clients with better outcomes and innovative ideas? Don’t save the best stuff for your new clients only.

Yes, there is disruption in our world today with robots, automation and robust technology that can make us feel like we’re living in a less-than-human world. But for the foreseeable future, people still have to run things. Humans have to make the decisions that matter and businesses are simply organizations with lots of people in them.

Let’s make B2B more about the people involved and less about the brand name in our client portfolio.

We’ll all be better off for it.

Even with the adoption of tools for internal communication, like Slack, external business communication is still done mostly via email — including following up with prospects. A sales follow-up email is a delicate dance with the recipient. While you don’t want to fill up a prospect’s inbox with annoying messages, you do want to effectively get their attention.

The right message at the right time can make the sale. Check out the following sales follow-up email examples, and use cases for each one.

1. A trigger event occurred.

A trigger event is anything that suggests someone is considering your product/service. Maybe you notice that a prospect has signed up for your product’s free trial or your company newsletter. Or maybe you see that the prospect has opened another email you sent.

Whatever the case, quickly reach out with a sales follow up email to introduce yourself and offer something of value to the recipient.

Subject Line: “Looking for more information?”

Hi [Contact Name], I noticed that you signed up for our free trial. I have some resources that are great for getting started with [Your Company Name]: Resource 1 Resource 2 Resource 3 Also, please let me know if you have any questions or can’t find a certain feature. I’d be happy to help. Best, Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Subject Line: “[Prospect Name] [Your Company Name]”

Hi [Contact Name], I hope all is well. I wanted to take a moment to talk about a big problem facing the logistics sector and how I can help you with [Pain Point]. Would you like me to set aside some time to go over any questions you may have? Would Monday or Tuesday work for you? —- Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Tip: Following up right after a trigger event provides the perfect opportunity to naturally start a conversation with a prospect. And instead of just contributing to the clutter in your prospect’s inbox, offer information or freebies that can help them improve their business.

2. The intro has been made.

Almost 50% of reps never follow up with prospects. Whether you met the prospect at a networking event or they reached out, send a message as quickly as possible and further gauge their interest in your product/service.

If you’re sending a sales follow up email to someone you met at an event, do it one to two days afterward, while you can still recall what you may have learned about him or her and their level of interest. And here is a good rule of thumb for any follow-up email: Don’t overwhelm the reader with too much text. Be direct and summarize your main points.

Subject Line: “As promised, more info about [Your Company Name]”

Hi [Contact Name], I enjoyed talking with you at [Event Name] and appreciate your interest in [Company Name]. As promised, I am sending information about [something specific you discussed at the event]. From my experience at [Your Company Name], I know that [Pain Point] is difficult for startups like yours. [Your Company Name] has worked with X number of companies to overcome these issues. I believe we could help [Prospect Company Name] do the same. Would you be interested in a call to discuss your company’s needs in-depth? If so, would [Date, Time] work for you? I look forward to hearing from you. Best, Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Subject Line: “Thanks for your interest!”

Hi [Contact Name], Thank you for reaching out. I would love to share more details about our product and how it matches [Prospect Company Name] needs. Is [Contact Number] the best way to reach you? Best, Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Tip: Make it easy for prospects to respond to your requests for meetings. For example, include a link to your calendar or a scheduling tool like Calendly.

3. You’ve led a call or demo.

During your call or demo, give a reason to follow-up with the prospect and continue the conversation. For example, if the prospect asks about a certain product feature, answer the question, but let them know that you’ll provide more info via email. Provide more value than just a generic email saying “Checking in” or “Touching base.”

Subject Line: “Here is more info on [Specific Feature]”

Hi [Contact Name], I enjoyed our conversation earlier. I am excited about the possibility of working with [Prospect Company Name] and assisting with [Pain Point]. As promised, attached is additional information about [Specific Feature]. Please let me know if you have any questions. Also, feel free to give me a call at [Your Number]. Best, Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Hopefully, your meeting went well with the prospect. Take that positive tone and carry it over into your follow-up email (send right after your interaction). In it, outline next steps, and provide a clear CTA. What do you want the recipient to do? Make sure it’s clear.

Subject Line: “I enjoyed speaking with today!”

Hi [Contact Name], Thanks so much for the call earlier today! I learned a lot about [Prospect Company Name], and I think there’s potential for doing something together. If you’re interested, I can schedule a demo on [Date, Time]. Please let me know if you would like to move forward. Best, Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Even if your call or meeting went well, you might not hear back from a prospect immediately. Try picking up the phone instead. If you are sent to voicemail, send another follow-up email immediately.

Subject Line: “Sorry I missed you”

Hi [Contact Name], I just tried calling you to [Give a reason for your call]. I’ll try back again on [Date, Time], but feel free to give me a call back on [Your Number] before then. Thanks for your time! Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Tip: Take notes during your interactions with the prospect. You can use these notes to personalize your follow-up emails and mention the details you discussed.

4. You sent the quote.

Following up with a prospect after sending a quote can be intimidating. It’s the moment of truth after all — will they or won’t they commit to your product or service? Be direct but not pushy. If you gave a verbal proposal, send a follow-up within 24 hours. If you sent it via email, wait a couple of days.

Subject Line: “Any questions?”

Hi [Contact Name], I wanted to follow up and check in on the quote I sent on [Day], which covered the features we can offer [Prospect Company Name] to help you improve [Pain Point]. Can I answer any other questions? I look forward to hearing from you. Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Subject Line: “Proposal recap”

Hi [Contact Name], I’m following up to see if you received my quote outlining the features and price of our product/service? As a reminder, our software package would include: Feature Feature Feature Price Do you have any questions? I look forward to hearing from you! —- Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Tip: Remind the prospect of the tangible benefits they’ll receive if they purchase your product/service.

5. Only crickets have responded to your last email.

If you hear only crickets after sending a follow-up email, don’t be discouraged. Waiting for replies takes patience. Maybe they missed your past emails or are on the fence about your offer. Send your prospect a reminder.

Subject Line: “Still interested?”

Hi [Contact Name], I haven’t heard from you since I reached out on [Date, Time]. I wanted to reach out again and check your interest in our product and improving [Pain Point]. Let me know if you have any concerns. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions. Best, —- Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

If worse comes to worst and you haven’t received a response to your third follow-up, try the following message to create a sense of urgency.

Subject Line: “Close your file?”

Hi [Contact Name], Unfortunately, my company is cleaning our sales pipeline. Since I haven’t heard from you, I assume that you are no longer interested or don’t have a need for [Your Company Name]. If that is the case, is it OK to close your file? If you are still interested, what would be the next step? I appreciate your help. —- Tyler Smith Account Executive – Chicago XYZ Company

Tip: Your sales email subject line matters. As with the examples above, craft your subject line to grab the reader’s attention, especially if they haven’t been responding to your other emails. Shorter subject lines (no more than 50 characters) are typically more effective.

Be strategic with your sales follow-up emails

A great way to keep track of each sales follow-up email is through your CRM. For example, Sell’s CRM allows you to send your emails directly through the platform and categorize responses. It also helps you avoid sending embarrassing duplicate emails. You can use follow-up templates on the platform or insert your own so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

In addition, use CRM integrations like Mailchimp to analyze the best time to send each email. The best send time will depend on your audience (we recommend customer segmentation to source this info), but a Mailchimp study found that the optimal send time peaked at 10 a.m. in the recipients’ time zones. Experiment with sending your sales follow-up emails in the mornings.

Combine the tips with the examples above to follow up with prospects like a sales pro!

Most of us receive a paycheck, so it’s easy to assume compensation packages are pretty black and white. Some folks are hourly, some are salaried, and depending on what role they play, others receive bonuses or commissions based on their performance. Simple, right?

Not so much. As Katey Maddux, founder and CEO of Millennial Accounting, writes in her recent employee compensation and benefits guide, “When it comes to employee compensation, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.” If there were, companies wouldn’t be paying out millions of dollars each year in fines for misclassifying workers.

But classifying employees isn’t just important on a legal level. Similar to providing good benefits, paying employees the way they want to be paid feeds back into employee happiness and well-being.

Determining the right compensation package

Generally, when compensation is being negotiated, the employee sees whatever plan the employer has historically applied to that position. And some positions do have to receive compensation a certain way in order to be compliant with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

But not all positions are so rigid, which means employees may have an opportunity to negotiate and request a compensation plan that better fits their strengths and work style. And best of all, by offering some room for negotiation, employers can reward employees for their hard work and loyalty by honoring their requests. Here are the three most popular types of compensation packages and a few notes on who might be most attracted to them.

1. Straight salary compensation

Salaried employees are paid a set annual amount, and provided that amount is more than $23,660 per year, they do not receive overtime pay. Typically, salaried workers have more flexibility to work outside the office, and since they don’t typically record their hours each day to get paid, many also have the luxury of setting their own schedule (within reason).

From an employee perspective, salary compensation really only makes sense if

• The position doesn’t often require more than 40 hours of work a week.
• The annual sum is more than the employee would typically make in a year if they were hourly.

Who wants it: According to Maddux, salary compensation most often appeals to individuals who aren’t involved in direct sales. Rather, good candidates for salary compensation might be those who “work in teams, spend a lot of time on projects, or whose performance is difficult to measure.” It appeals especially to individuals who would rather their pay be based on the work they do with others than the work they do on their own, and to people who want stability and a set paycheck each month, regardless of how busy they’ve been.

Who doesn’t: Employees who thrive on competition and get inspired by immediate financial incentives will likely find salary compensation unfulfilling. It’s also not a great bargain for employees working in industries where 50-hour weeks are a fact of life.

2. Salary plus commission compensation

For those who waffle between wanting security and wanting compensation that reflects their individual contributions, salary plus commission compensation is the best of both worlds. Not only do individuals receive a set annual salary, but there’s potential to take home more each paycheck, depending on how the commission is calculated.

“The commission can include (but is not limited to) a percentage of personal sales, a percentage of team sales, bonuses, or overtime pay,” writes Maddux. “These plans often include a straight salary income for training periods or during low seasons.”

Who wants it: People in sales and leadership positions are usually drawn to this type of compensation package because it rewards them for their growth and performance. For employees who are routinely asked to hit aggressive goals, getting some amount of commission for hitting those goals is imperative to feeling valued and motivated.

Who doesn’t: Employees who aren’t comfortable in competitive environments likely won’t appreciate any type of commission compensation package, unless their commission rewards team or company success. On the flip side of that, employees who thrive on competition and individual performance recognition may not be fully satisfied by this type of compensation. These could be more drawn to a commission-only structure, where the commission rate is higher and the take-home is potentially well above a typical base salary or hourly rate.

3. Straight hourly compensation

Hourly compensation is generally nonexempt, meaning employees must also receive overtime pay anytime they work more than 40 hours in a week. Some states have additional overtime laws, including ones where employees receive time and a half for any hours worked beyond eight in a day.

Typically, hourly employees are associated with entry-level positions or low-paying jobs. This generalization leads managers to sometimes label hourly employees as expendable. But this perception isn’t always correct. In fact, for some employees, hourly compensation is much more desirable than salary compensation, particularly when there’s a chance to earn overtime or double time (in the case of California).

Who wants it: If commissioned employees are most motivated by money, hourly employees might be most motivated by time and flexibility. Maddux writes, “Employees who have seasonal or fluctuating availability, like students or people with children, benefit from the flexibility that comes from hourly compensated positions.”

Hourly workers might also appreciate this compensation style because of the overtime pay it affords. Just as a commission compensated employee can count on an extra sale to pad their paycheck, an hourly employee may be able to work a few extra hours to take home some extra cash.

Who doesn’t: Employees who value stability over flexibility will likely find hourly compensation lacking, particularly if the number of hours they’re scheduled to work changes from week to week. In addition, many hourly employees have fewer benefits, particularly if they’re part-time. This could impact how much they have to pay for health insurance or how much PTO they get in a year. Individuals who have to pay for their own insurance, or who are responsible for others’ health insurance, may find hourly compensation inadequate without a robust benefits package to go alongside.

The role of compensation in rewarding employees

There are at least nine different compensation types. The aforementioned three barely scrape the surface. What’s important here, though, isn’t how each compensation type is different but rather what’s to be gained by the employees included in it.

Companies looking to reward employees for a job well done might consider giving them the benefit of choice, when possible. For some employees, taking home the same salary every week, regardless of hours worked, has a lot of appeal. For others, the prospect of taking home occasional overtime is more alluring.

A manager’s job isn’t to know exactly what motivates every person on their team. But by giving people the option to choose how they’re compensated, employees are empowered to work—and earn—in a way that makes the most sense to them.

Are you looking for fun ways to reward your employees? Check out Achievers e-book: “How to Incentivize the Modern Workforce.”

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is important for almost any company – accountants, restaurants, lawyers, etc. It’s even more important, though, for SAAS companies.

This is due to the nature of relying on recurring revenue being generated by new customers. While upselling and cross-selling can be a part of the business model, the real cash is in constantly acquiring new customers. And not just that but acquiring them for the lowest cost possible. There is a reason you don’t get a sales guy going door-to-door selling the next big ERP. It is just too expensive.

This increases the importance of having a website that (when good traffic is sent to it) converts. In other words: conversion rate optimization matters.

SAAS companies don’t need to just grow, they need to grow significantly year-over-year. If a health insurance company grew 20% year-over-year, investors and owners would be happy. According to a study by McKinsey, a SAAS company growing at that rate would have a 92% chance of ceasing to exist within a few years.

“Even if a software company is growing at 60 percent annually, its chances of becoming a multibillion-dollar giant are no better than a coin flip.”

~ McKinsey

This rapid growth trumps even margin:

*https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/grow-fast-or-die-slow

Clearly, if such growth is necessary for survival and the best way to achieve this growth is by creating a lead generating machine, then your SAAS company can’t afford not to do conversion rate optimization – and do it well. The question is, how do you start?

Know What You Are Working Towards

The first step in conversion optimization is to understand what the goal is and what you will be optimizing towards. And to do that, it is necessary to know what pricing strategy you are going to use. Are you using the Freemium model? Pay as You Use? Limited Time Free Trials? The pricing model you choose will then drip down into the goals you have for users that land on your site. Maybe that is a 30-day free trial, a demo, or limited use of the software.

“Doing conversion optimization for your SAAS company before clearly defining your goal is like being handed a black box and being asked to ‘fix it’.”

~ Jon Anderson

Knowing the conversion points is not enough, however. Along the same lines, it is necessary to add some metrics to the goal. The best way to do this is by working up the funnel. Start with the net number of new customers needed each month to hit the overarching goals for the SAAS company overall. To get to X new customers you will need X leads, coming from X visitors to the site requiring a X% conversion rate to get there. The efforts and strategies required to get from a 2%-2.2% conversion rate are much different than what is required to get from 1.1% – 2.5%.

“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

~ Jeff Bezos

Funnel Transparency

Sometimes, knowing where you want to go is the easy part. The part that often requires a bit more technical expertise (and likely additional software) is getting those numbers in the first place. After all, how can you tell when you reach your destination without first knowing where you are?

The more data you have, the more information you have to not only track your progress towards goals, but also (and more importantly) the more insight you have into where the snags in the funnel are. Are users landing on the demo page but not filling out the form? Are they scrolling right past significant CTAs? Below are a few different types of tracking that can be utilized as a part of your campaign. The depth and detail of information required will depend on your goals.

Site Analytics: The most basic analytics you will need are things like time spent on different pages, bounce rates, and other visitor behavior metrics. If you are an advanced user, you can even set up funnel analytics and goal tracking in these tools.

Tools: Google Analytics, Clicky.com, Kiss Metrics

Heatmapping: With many basic analytics tools you can’t see much detailed information about what users are actually doing on the page. Heatmapping allows you to see where users are clicking, how far down the page they scroll, etc.

Tools: HotJar, Lucky Orange, Crazy Egg

On-Page Surveys: If you ask a panel of website experts what they think you should change about your site, you will get a list a mile long. While that is very useful information, why not just ask users directly? Many tools allow direct customer feedback that gives you direct access to the people on your site.

Tools: Qualaroo, Webengage, Survicate

Session Replays: What is better than asking users what they think about your CRO optimization? Seeing what they actually do. This can get a bit big brother-y, so pay close attention to the regulations around this, but it can be a great way to get honest data.

Tools: Clicktale, HotJar

This is an incomplete list, but it should get you on the right track towards having the data you need to make informed decisions.

Note: Before you start your conversion rate optimization campaign, make sure you have benchmarks and know your current site performance and user behavior. Without that, how will you tell if optimization techniques actually led to improvements?

A/B Testing

Whew! Finally, you have everything set up to track your data and a good understanding of your customer journey. Now, it is time to really get into the meat of what conversion optimization for SAAS companies looks like. In its simplest form, CRO is simply a process of identifying problems in your conversion funnel, hypothesizing solutions to the problem, testing those solutions, and measuring the results. Then…. repeat.

1. Identify Problems

The first step is to figure out where in the funnel users are getting stuck. Are they filling out half the form? Are they not getting to the conversion page in the first place? Does one of your primary pages have a high bounce rate?

First, look at your funnel you set up (based on the goals you set up previously). Are there certain stages within it where your conversion rates drop off? Look at the pages on your site that are built to move users through that stage and work your way through the different analytic systems you have set up. Pull all the data you have on them, and highlight the behavior causing the problem (e.g. not clicking a CTA, leaving the page entirely, scrolling up/down looking for missing info, etc)

2. Hypothesize Solutions

Now that you have established a problem, identified where the problem is happening, and looked through the data around the behavior, start to hypothesize solutions. This will most often fall into two categories: design and content. Things like changing the color of buttons to make them pop more, reworking the value proposition or offering content to make it more palatable, changing the order of content to more cleanly work through the buying process, etc. The options are endless.

Keep in mind, then making changes, don’t just change everything about the page and hope one of your changes improves results. It may improve results the first time, but why? If you don’t know why then (1) you can’t learn a lesson and implement it on other parts of your site and (2) you don’t have a clear path forward for the next change. For example, start with changing the content in a CTA button then shift over to button design changes once you find the best text variation.

Conversion optimizations success lies in many small iterations proven to take you one step forward. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

3. Test Hypothesis

Once you come up with the ideas for how you will solve the problem in the funnel, implement the change. This is where you will start using different technologies to carry out the changes.

4. Measure the Results

Give the test substantial time to show results, then pull the data to figure out what worked best. Did one of your tests lead to an increased conversion rate or at least behavior indicating positive progress towards the bottom of the funnel? Great! If not, great! That just means you have another piece of information to then base future decisions off of. Collect (and track!) all this data and implement the winner into your core.

5. Repeat

Unfortunately, conversion rate optimization for SAAS companies is not a one-and-done project. It is an ongoing process of being neck-deep in data, watching user behavior, and making incremental improvements leading to a growth in customers using your software.

Identify, hypothesize, implement, measure, repeat.

Following the previously mentioned steps should give you a good overall understanding of the process behind implementing conversion rate optimization for your SAAS company. 1,500 words can’t serve as thorough training in such a complicated and important subject, but it will at the least get you started in the right direction.

That being said – it is not easy. You need a team with a solid track record of deep expertise in subjects like web development, design, messaging, UI/UX, and more. Do you have that many nerds at your disposal?

Episode 6 of the Hey Salespeople podcast features a lively discussion between Jeremey Donovan, SalesLoft’s VP of Sales Strategy and self-proclaimed sales nerd, and Keenan covers everything from the right approach to sales training to when to break up with a prospect.

Keenan was born selling. As Chief Antagonist at A Sales Guy Inc, he’s showing others how to find the same success in sales. In this unfiltered interview, Keenan unapologetically calls it as he sees it.

Don’t miss the segment about what is broken in our approach to sales training. It’s undeniable that most sales education focuses primarily on the close. But why aren’t we doing more training about the beginning of the sales process?  Keenan argues that the sale is won or lost at the beginning, and explains the consequences of that approach.

Listen to this episode for answers questions like:

• Why should you focus on the problems vs. features?
• How is being in sales like being a doctor?
• Should you have different solutions based on the root cause of the problem?
• Is it ever appropriate to fire a prospect? (Hint: You can’t fix everything.)
• Why won’t Keenan hire a salesperson who says their motivation is money?

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Partial transcription:

Jeremey:  Welcome to the Hey Salespeople Podcast, where we focus on delivering immediately actionable best practices for sales professionals. I’m your host, Jeremey Donovan from SalesLoft. Today, it’s my great pleasure to have as a guest, Keenan. Keenan, welcome to the show.

Keenan: What’s up, man? Looking forward to it.

Jeremey: Okay, you’re definitely gonna raise my energy level cuz I have boring corporate dude voice. This should be a blast.

For those who don’t know Keenan, he is the CEO of and he likes to describe himself as the Chief Antagonist of A Sales Guy. You’ll find out why pretty soon. He’s also the author of a book that I just finished reading and really thoroughly enjoyed, despite having read basically every sales book on the planet. His book is called Gap Selling, and I highly recommend it.

You can pretty much find Keenan everywhere. If you browse the pages of HBR, Forbes, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, and probably many more, I’m sure I would lose track of it. But he is all over the place. Welcome, Keenan.

I always start with a couple of questions to help people get to know you a little bit better. The first question is, what’s your favorite sales or leadership book of all time?

Keenan: Execution by Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan.

One of the things that’s really important to me – and depending on who you ask and when you ask, I’m really really good at it or I suck at it – but I focus on self-awareness constantly.

Really evaluating who I am – did I do a good job, did I not do a good job? I’ve done it my whole life in my relationships and work as a leader, everything. When I was younger, I realized that all of these great ideas, and I was like a little Labrador Retriever running, we can do this, we can do this, we can do it. But I had a hard time actually getting shit done.

I remember I was in a bookstore. And I was very keen on this idea that I struggled with – execution. And there was Execution. And so I got it. And it was amazing. It changed my life. Because now and I think it changed my selling as well. Because if you remember how it went down, it forces you to basically asked how to everything? How are you going to do that into my new detail? And when I started changing my mindset and looking at everything, like that’s great, but how does that get done? How are we going to do that? How’s it going to happen? It just changed my whole perspective on how to execute and how to break problems down. And I uncovered problems. And it just changed who I was as a person.

Jeremey: I remember when I read that book, I just like probably everyone, I feel like I had this great business idea once every so often, right? once a year, once every couple of years. And then you become so protective of that idea. But I think reading that book made me realize that those ideas, indeed are just a dime a dozen, right? There are so many ideas. And it truly comes down to execution in every way. Right? Not just product marketing, sales operations, everything.

Keenan: Relationships, partnerships, friendships, planning a vacation, everything.

Jeremey: Are you a big planner? Will you just go in and show up? I like to do this thing where I just basically book a flight somewhere. And I book a flight back and I just figured out in between,

Keenan: I’m in between. So no, I’m not a big planner. But at the same token, the certain things I’ve realized by being too reactive, it makes life difficult. So I’ll plan the trip. I just got back from Ecuador. Right. I planned that in December, all I did was got the flights, new the hotels, so it looked like a framework. And you were I was going and when you when I was leaving, and I knew what I wanted to see. After that I figured it all out after

Jeremey: Folks are probably chomping at the bit to know what was your favorite sales book?

Keenan: I would say it was The Challenger Sale because I am not a fan of tactical selling tips. I think they’re all stupid, right? I’m not a fan of sales books that really aren’t sales books, but they’re like productivity books within themselves and sales books.

Jeremey: It’s a repackaging of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People into a sales format, right?

Keenan: I find most sales books to really not offer much value. A lot of people asked me for a long time, are you gonna write a sales book or you gonna do sales training? I wanted to, but I didn’t feel I had anything unique yet. I hadn’t taken all my ideas and productized them and organized them to sit down and say, ‘Okay, what do we have here?’

Until I did that, I wasn’t going to write another sales book. I am not going to do this unless I can offer something unique that isn’t out there. Now, obviously, there’s nothing that’s truly new, right? But I knew that there were a lot of things missing in social. Finally, I sat down one day and I went through all my writings. I went through everything I’ve been teaching, I got through everything I was working with my clients. It was no small effort… and I’m usually not that. I don’t work that hard.

Jeremey: I’ve written a couple of books myself. I know that writing is a blessing and a curse. Indeed, some days you are able to organize your thoughts very effectively. On those good days, it feels wonderful when you’re in a state of flow. But on the bad days, it is a pain.

Keenan: Oh, truth. So that’s why I did it. That’s why I love the challenge. So the original question. It was a sales methodology; a set of ideas based on data and facts about what sales people were actually doing. It also highlighted some things that I wasn’t paying attention to.

Jeremey: I have a love-hate relationship, I guess, as many people do, with The Challenger Sale book. One is because there is not enough tactical in there, but I can appreciate it if you don’t like the super tactical stuff. For me, the big takeaway is it’s teaching you to take control. But you mentioned Challenger a few times in Gap Selling.

One thing that you mentioned was that people who are Challenger sellers are basically extremely direct. You didn’t use the word aggressive. Do you think to be a successful Challenger seller you have to have the Keenan-style of in your face?

Keenan: No, not at all. If you listen to me on a call, I’m not really in your face. I am when I’m on social because I have to get your attention. You don’t know me, I’m not sitting across from you. I have to do something that’s going to capture and hold you.

When I’m talking to you on the phone, we’re in a meeting. I’m direct, but I’m not aggressive. You don’t need to be. I think in one of the chapters, I talked about the different types of questions. One of them is provoking questions and provoking questions as a way to challenge your question and the way you’re thinking.

Another way to do it is to just challenge them when there are inconsistencies. You don’t have to be aggressive. Let’s say you’re selling a gym membership. Someone says to you, ‘I’m 75 pounds overweight. My doctor told me I’m close to diabetes.’ Then you say, ‘Great, I can help you with training. I can help you in the gym.’ And they say, ‘I don’t know; it’s too expensive.’

You don’t have to be aggressive to say, ‘I’m confused. You said your life is terrible. You said you’re unhappy. You said you’re almost gonna have diabetes. I’m confused why you think 80 bucks a month is too expensive.’

Jeremey: Something I thought was actually one of the more novel ideas in the book, which is how to handle objections. That almost every sales trainer, or even everybody’s manager, basically says, ‘You listen, you acknowledge, you empathize, and then you ask clarifying questions.’ Once you’ve clarified, then you respond, and then check in at the end to make sure that the objection was handled. You have a bit of a different approach, but it does rely on some of those questions. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Keenan: I always say the sale is won or lost in the beginning, hands down, end of discussion. And unfortunately, most sales trainings and education focus is too far in the middle and the end. The reason being is this: if I can figure out why you’re trying to buy, the impact of the current environment on you, how it’s negatively affecting you… whatever those all those reasons are. When I get to the end, and you challenge – a particular lack of a feature or you challenge the price, your push back – I don’t have to overcome your objection. I have to get you to recognize why your objection is stupid.

I should see an objection coming. If I understand all of that stuff I just shared with you – we talked about in the book, current state, future state, and the five elements underneath them, the physical and literal, the problem, the impact, the root cause, and the emotion. If I understand that in depth, I should have gotten my ass out weeks or months ago. It allows me to qualify the value of impact that I can deliver. If I’m still in the game, I know that I can deliver for you the outcome you’re trying to get.

Therefore, when you come up with an objection, to me it means you misunderstood something. I just have to challenge you back. That’s why it’s important that you’ve explained the problem to me, not me explain it to you.

Jeremey: I think it actually is quite brilliant to actually throw their ultimate end objective back at them when they launch an objection at you. I do think that’s a super effective thing.

You just previewed a little bit of what your definition of gap selling is. Can you go into that in a little bit more depth?

Keenan: We were talking earlier about why it took me so long to write the book and why I didn’t offer sales training or anything. I didn’t want to just be another has been, didn’t want to put something out there that looks like everybody else’s. And I was looking for that hook or that trigger. I knew my stuff was different. But it’s hard, right?

It finally hit me that traditional sales training is not layered on top of the psychological way in which we make decisions. We make decisions to change. That is, at the end of the day, at the core of all sales is a desire or the thought of change.

So let’s break down. What does change mean? Change means I want to move from where I am today to a new place. And every single time we buy something – whether it’s a pack of gum in the store or it’s an enterprise ERP system for a $7 billion company – it’s still change.

If we’re going to be changing, we’d better build a sales methodology that mirrors someone’s change process, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, and the psychological elements that come with that. When you’re looking to change or looking to buy something, what’s the first thing you do? You either consciously or subconsciously evaluate where you are today. You’re like, ‘I don’t like this, this hurts, I’m tired of doing this, this sucks, it takes too long, it hurts, it’s painful.’

You start spending all this time evaluating where you are. Then somehow, some way you start comparing that to who you could be. ‘Man, it would be nice if I could get this done faster. It would be nice if I could make that happen. It would be nice if…’

All this stuff is in the future state. Between those two is a gap. The bigger the gap, the more money you’re willing to pay, the more effort you’ll put into it, the greater the impact it will have.

So I was like, ‘Well, shit, if that’s how people buy consciously or subconsciously – then we better build a selling methodology that mirrors that.’ And that’s what Gap Selling is about.

Jeremey: One of the biggest issues with even being able to do that is the ability to get people to trust you enough to share that much information with you. How do you start the sales process in order to gain that trust?

Keenan: I talk about a term called product-centric selling versus problem-centric selling. If you run a search term ‘problem-centric selling,’ I think me or A Sales Guy own the entire phrase. No one really thought about this.

When you look at your company’s sales trainings, they’re product-centric, They bring you in and they teach you about the product. I argue no, no, no!

Teach them about the problems your customers and buyers are having in their business, the ones that you actually solve. Your product only solves a handful of major business problems.

THERE’S A LOT MORE AFTER THIS! Listen to the full episode for the rest of the conversation between Jeremey and Keenan.

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

George Brontén of Membrain is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to the latest trends affecting complex B2B sales. His team have developed a next-generation approach to CRM that tackles the challenges and constraints that are causing more than 50% of B2B sales people to miss their quota targets.

I recently recorded a short video interview with George that covers 3 key sales questions that every CEO should be able to answer:

• How can I be sure that I know what's really going on in our pipeline?
• How can I assess the true leadership potential of my head of sales?
• How can I spot the little white sales lies that sales people tell?

You can watch the full video (it's under 3 minutes) by clicking on the link below. Be sure to let me know what you think...

Can you relate to the challenges? And do my recommendations make sense? Drop me a line if you'd like to learn more about putting them into practice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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