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A note from Alice: My friend Keenan always dishes out smart selling advice with a twist, and this post from him about how to ask questions is no different. Asking the right question at the right time with the right tone for the right objective is key to selling. Check out his tips and ideas below.

There is no debate that questions are at the core of selling. There isn’t a sales-guru training blog or sales video channel that doesn’t espouse the importance of questions in managing a sale. That debate has been settled. So, this lesson isn’t about asking questions—it’s about getting better at asking questions.

If there is one thing I notice with salespeople, it is that when it comes to asking questions, they suck at it. Sorry, but you do. Yes, I said you!

So many salespeople suck at asking buyers questions that I feel perfectly OK, telling you, yes you, that you suck at it. The 1% of you who don’t, won’t be offended by the comment. The rest of you need a wake-up call.

Learning to ask questions is an art. It takes time and a commitment to perfecting the craft. If you want to sell better, you have to get better at asking questions. There is no way around it. To be great at selling requires information and the best way to get information is from your buyers. Winning a sale depends on what customers know and don’t know about their organization and the possible solutions and then what you do with that information. Therefore, being a real badass in asking questions will elevate your sales game.

When it comes to questions, there are four factors to asking killer questions you must keep in mind:

1) Tone 

The right tone is critical when it comes to questions. It’s too easy to ask a great question but deliver it with the wrong tone. Tone is fundamental when it comes to asking questions. You have to understand what tone is appropriate, how to use the tone accurately and when to shift from tone to tone. Imagine you are about to ask a tough question regarding a process your buyer built themselves, in which they are very proud. You know the process is why they are having problems, but you have to get the customer to see that. So, you need to ask a number of very sensitive questions relating to the process. If your tone is accusatory, demeaning or even dismissive, you’re screwed. In a situation like this, I’d argue even a confident tone would fail. To win in this type of situation, a tone of humility, openness, suggestion, and deference is required.

Tone is an art. When it comes to asking questions, it’s an art few salespeople even consider, never mind understand. Salespeople often say they struggle with asking more than a few questions. They say they struggle with not feeling like they are interrogating their buyers. The reason they feel this way is because they are not in tune with the buyer and their tone is not aligned with their questions and the buyer’s emotions. Make sure your tone is right and aligned with the questions, the buyer’s emotions and the environment you’re inquiring about.

2) Timing 

Timing matters. Just because you can ask a question doesn’t mean you should. The purpose of asking questions is to get information that isn’t readily available. It’s to get the information you can’t get on the web, or in a Google search. Because of this, you’re going to want to ask personal and sensitive questions that you just can’t blurt out in the very beginning. Asking questions isn’t the objective, getting information is the aim. Therefore, if you ask a question and the buyer is unwilling to answer it or gives you a shallow, weak answer, you lose. You wasted a question. To sell better, you have to understand the timing of your questions. What questions should be asked now and what questions should be asked later? What questions should be asked first and what questions are follow-up questions? Understanding the order and flow of your questions allows great salespeople to establish a flow that takes the buyer on a journey. It’s all dependent on the order and flow of your questions. Not understanding timing is awkward. When timing is off, like anything else, the experience is jolting, difficult to follow and eventually leaves participants feeling uncomfortable. Flow matters when it comes to asking questions, particularly when it comes to doing a kick-ass discovery call. As you work on your question skills, pay attention to your timing. Learn to create a rhythm and flow in your questioning that takes your buyer on a journey. If you can get good at it, the destination will be filled with informational gold.

3) Type 

The type of question matters because you have to know what information you’re looking for. Different types of questions get various kinds of responses. A combination of tone and timing, type questions target a specific content or response. Think about the kind of questions you can ask as you would different types of screwdrivers. There’s flat head, a Phillips head, a Torx drive, a Robertson and an Allen wrench. All of these are screwdrivers, yet they are different types of screwdrivers. The same concept applies to questions. There are personal questions, challenging questions, provoking questions and validating questions.

• Personal questions are designed to get personal information about the buyer, how they feel, what’s important to them, why they did something etc.

• Challenging questions are designed to challenge the buyer. They are meant to make the buyer defend a position, challenge their position on a topic or evaluate a current belief system. Challenge questions are exactly how they sound. They are meant to challenge the buyer.

• Provoking questions are similar to challenge questions; they are intended to drive or provoke new ways of thinking. Provoking questions are informational questions that offer the buyer an alternative to ponder. These questions start with words like, “Have you considered?” or “What would happen if…?” They aren’t exactly challenging the buyer or a something the buyer believes. But, provoking questions ask the buyer to think in a way they haven’t considered. Buyer questions are compelling questions for expanding the conversation and identifying new opportunities. Work on your ability to expand your use of provoking questions. They are excellent at developing the conversation AND position you as an expert.

• Validating questions are meant to validate a position. Validating questions clarify a buyer’s statements, intent, beliefs, and position. Validating questions should be used to make sure you and the buyer are on the same page. Too often we leave meetings or discussions only to find out that the buyer didn’t mean what we THOUGHT they meant. Validating questions ensure that you and the buyer are on the same page and that what you heard is what they meant. Always use validating questions at the end of every sales call to confirm you’re on the same page AND before shifting to a new topic. Use validating questions to stay linked and on the same page with your buyer.

4) Objective 

The objective of your question matters. What information are you trying to get? Too often, salespeople ask questions without being clear about the information they’re looking for. Getting good at questions, means be good at understanding what you’re asking for and why. Why do you want a particular piece of information? Being very precise and calculated in what information you’re looking for from your buyer and why you’re asking for that piece of information is key. Too many times I hear reps ask completely unrelated questions. When reps ask questions or ask for information that’s not aligned with the solution you provide, the role the buyer plays, the environment you’re in or align with the timing of the conversation, everything comes unhinged. Be diligent about exactly what information you’re looking for and the objective of the question. Why are you asking the questions? What information are you trying to get? How does the information/question advance the sales call and the deal? Learn to know what you’re asking for and why.

If you want to get better at selling, get better at asking questions. Learn how to use each of these types of questions as tools to get the information you need to create better solutions and better position yourself against the competition. Learn how to use the right tone, with the right type of question at the time, with the right objective, and you will be amazed at what you learn.

Asking questions is the holy grail of sales skills. It’s where the art of selling resides. Learning to ask questions with an elevated sophistication is how the greatest salespeople separate themselves from the pack. Having phenomenal question asking skills will change your life forever. No single skill can improve your life better than learning how to ask questions better. If you want to get better at selling, learn to be better at asking questions. It’s the holy grail of selling.

Originally posted here.

If you want your sales team to learn how to ask better questions, I can help. Schedule an appointment to discuss with me.

The post What You Need To Know About Asking Questions appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

stokpic / Pixabay

No man is an island. There’s no “I” in team. Teamwork makes the dream work — there are a million motivational quotes out there to remind us that we’re better together. But to ignore the little (and sometimes big) quirks and differences we have with coworkers or business partners ultimately does a disservice to our growing businesses.

Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies these days use some sort of personality inventory to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their employees. This information can be incredibly useful when assembling project-based teams, as well as providing insight on how best to handle management issues and improve organizational communications.

The most popular of these personality assessments is probably the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which classifies people into one of 16 distinct personality types by evaluating their specific combination of four dichotomies, all based on Jungian theory. Those four dichotomies are Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving.

While it’s important to remember these personality types are not always hard and fast and that there exists a spectrum even within classifications, there are some types that seem to naturally work better together. Knowing the personality type of a potential business partner or work teammate can help you to understand how to work with them in a way that maximizes both of your efforts and effectively leverages your unique talents.

Here are a few of the Key Personality Types That Work Well Together

ISTJ + ESTP

ISTJ personalities are ultra-organized problem-solvers who thrive in fact-based work. ESTP is a great balance to this personality, as ESTPs are realistic, analytic thinkers, but also have great people skills and an energy that can take the team’s work and make it leap off the page.

ISTJ makes a great behind-the-scenes powerhouse, while ESTP thrives in the role of entrepreneurship.

INTP + INTJ

Both INTP and INTJ delight in highly conceptual work. If you work in a technical field like architecture or engineering, you may find these personalities to be quite abundant within your staff.

Both are hyper-logical, but INTP brings an intellectual curiosity that drives innovation and INTJ brings that home with their decisive nature and strength in implementation.

ENFP + INFJ

ENFP personalities are deeply caring and outgoing. They thrive in service-oriented roles that make good use of their creativity. They have excellent communication skills as well. INFJ collaborates well with them due to their natural sensitivity to others and their strength for reading people, combined with a drive to create work that has genuine meaning.

ENTJ + ISTP

ENTJ personalities are often the stars of the corporate world. They’re strong, capable leaders who excel at organization and planning. They’re hyper-logical and have expert critical thinking skills.

They mesh well with ISTP personalities, who are analytical and hands-on workers who have a natural strength for problem-solving and respond well to working in a structured and methodical fashion.

ISFP + ESFP

ISFP personalities are the natural-born nurturers of the world. They’re loyal, adaptable and highly sympathetic to the experiences of their teammates. ESFP have a similar love of helping others, but they are more open and energetic, seeking excitement in their work and tapping into their innate resourcefulness to create something that both serves people and creates buzz.

ENTP + ENFJ

Get these two extroverts on a team together and the fire will be palpable! ENTPs are great problem solvers and natural born leaders. They work well with most other types, but pairing them with an ENFJ could take your project to the next level.

Both of these personalities love to work in a group and are great communicators. ENTPs bring tons of energy and ENFJs lend natural charisma.

ISFJ + INFP

Both of these introverted personalities are naturally warm and helpful. ISFJs, though, are extremely skilled at detail-oriented tasks and are effortlessly organized and thorough in their work.

INFPs balance this nicely with their strong communication skills (they’re great with the written word) and their innately inquisitive and creative nature.

ESFJ + ESTJ

These personalities have a lot of overlap but differ in the Feeling vs. Thinking component. ESFJs are very people-oriented and sociable. They thrive on that interaction and being able to fulfill the needs of others.

ESTJs are natural leaders and their “thinking” strengths lead them to be logical, assertive, and decisive, making them a strong backup to the ESFJ.

These are just a few of the many combinations of personalities you may encounter in your business relationships. And while it won’t always be a foolproof method, understanding how your partner or teammate sees the world and what his or her strengths or weaknesses are can be essential to producing a quality work product together.

Amazon’s steady march toward global domination shows no sign of slowing. The Seattle-based behemoth achieved a 27 percent increase in revenue in 2016. Not to mention, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide are from small businesses and entrepreneurs.

To that end, every online seller wants to win the Amazon Buy Box. After all, that’s where 82 percent of the site’s sales take place. Here’s what you need to know to increase your Buy Box share and improve your sales.

What is the Amazon Buy Box?

It’s the yellow “Add to Cart” button (or “Add to Basket” in the UK). Put simply, it’s the holy grail for sellers, because it guarantees high visibility and higher sales numbers.

Why is it important?

Most Amazon shoppers won’t even see your products unless they appear in the Buy Box. In fact, only 18 percent of purchases are made when buyers make the effort to scroll through other sellers and weigh up their options based on price, seller feedback rating and delivery.

How does Amazon determine who wins the Buy Box?

While the company doesn’t disclose specific targets, it is known that its algorithm is programmed to choose the sellers—one, or several in rotation—they believe will offer the best shopping experience, based on factors such as pricing, availability, fulfillment and customer service.

How to become Buy Box eligible

First things first, you need to operate a Professional seller account. Below you will find the minimum scores required for Buy Box eligibility:

-Perfect Order Percentage: 95%
-On-Time Delivery: 97%
-Valid Tracking Rate: 95%
-Late Shipment Rate: <4%
-Cancellation Rate: <2.5%
-Shipping Time: <14 days
-Customer Response Time: 90% of responses within 24 hours

How to improve Buy Box share

Selling at the lowest price does not guarantee you will win the Buy Box—Amazon’s algorithm is a balance of competitive rates, strong metrics and a great customer experience. Here are the variables that have the highest impact on improving your chances.

Fulfillment method
Three options: Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which allows marketplace sellers to store and ship goods from Amazon warehouses; Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM); and Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP), which allows vendors to ship orders from their own centres while gaining access to highly lucrative Prime customers.

FBA sellers are favored by Amazon and are more likely to be awarded the Buy Box than a FBM seller. If you are competing on a product that is FBA, you can price higher than competitors who are FBM on that product. If you and your competitors are FBA, you will need to consider your other strengths.

Landed price
There are two prices on Amazon: the amount you list an item for and the landed price, which is the total cost of an order including shipping and tax. It’s important to research the competition before—and during—your listing and price your goods accordingly. If you sell products with a lot of competition, investing in Amazon repricing software is one of the smartest steps you can take to increase your Buy Box share.

Shipping time
The faster items are shipped, the better your chances of winning the Amazon Buy Box. How fast depends on what the product is, but if you’re competing against two-day shipping, you need to pick up the pace. That being said, don’t make promises you can’t keep. If your actual shipping time is longer than advertised, it will impact your performance metrics.

Order Defect Rate (ODR)
Amazon takes into account negative feedback, chargebacks and A-Z claims over both short-term (1-2 months ago) and long-term periods (1-4 months ago) and scores a seller accordingly. If your ODR is 1 percent or higher, your chances of winning the Buy Box are slim. Moreover, a consistently high ODR may result in the removal of your selling privileges.

Feedback
This is the culmination of all customer feedback (positive, neutral and negative) you received over the last 30, 90 and 365 days, with the most recent comments having the biggest impact on your score. Amazon also takes into account how many reviews you receive relative to your selling history. A feedback score above 90 percent is essential for obtaining Amazon Buy Box share. Increase your seller rating and reduce negative feedback to up your Buy Box game.

Customer response time
Amazon’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) requires sellers to respond to customer queries within 24 hours. A late reply—or worse, no reply at all—will have an adverse impact on your Buy Box chances. Aim to respond to 90 percent of messages to remain in Amazon’s good graces. We have built the only customer support help desk for e-commerce to help you send fast, personalized responses with all the information on your customer and their order right in front of you.

In-stock consistency
Amazon won’t promote your products if you regularly run low on inventory, or have a cancellation and refund rate above 2.5 percent, because you present a threat to the customer experience. You must maintain sufficient stock levels for top-selling products to meet any potential increase in demand.

What’s next?

Now you know what Amazon wants for its customers and what it expects of its sellers. Your next task is to optimize your pricing—that’s where xSellco comes in. Our automated Amazon repricing software ensures you remain competitive 24 hours a day and helps you sell more at higher prices.

With xSellco, you can choose to reprice some or all of your inventory, set simple or complex rules to compete against other merchants and target your rivals. The moment one of your competitors reprices or goes out of stock, we react immediately to help you win the Buy Box at the optimal price and price up incrementally so you make more profit with less effort.

Reach out to our Amazon specialists for a free consultation with your trial

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The internet may be the great equalizer in many ways, but some ways to sell your products online are just more successful than others.

All online marketplaces have pros and cons—and by selling across multiple channels, you can take advantage of the best aspects of each one. But to actually get the most out of each channel, you have to know what to focus on.

Consider selling on Walmart and Amazon. At very different development stages, Amazon and Walmart offer sellers their own unique advantages. Walmart is a smaller marketplace with less competition, so sellers have a chance to stand out in the marketplace before it grows too big. Amazon, on the other hand, is well-established and massive—so while there may be more competition, the marketplace offers sellers the benefit of consistently high traffic.

Sellers need to understand these key distinctions if they want to get the most out of both marketplaces. We’ve created a guide to provide sellers this knowledge—the best selling practices on Walmart and Amazon, divided into three categories: listing items, building a reputation, and managing fulfillment.

Understanding which seller practices are the most critical on Walmart and Amazon will allow you to refine your strategies on each marketplace for happy, loyal buyers and higher sales.

Walmart: A Growing Online Marketplace

Before diving into Walmart’s selling practices, merchants should know that the marketplace doesn’t approve sellers easily. The Walmart selling community is invitation-only for sellers who have a strong track record on other marketplaces. After sellers submit an application, the approval process takes 1-2 weeks, and if accepted, onboarding takes 2-4 weeks.

But getting approved is just the beginning for Walmart sellers. Accepted merchants will need to keep in mind the following practices to successfully sell on Walmart.

Listing items

Walmart sellers can list their product in two ways: they create a new listing for an item that isn’t already on the marketplace, or they share an existing listing with other sellers for an item already being sold.

For merchants selling items that are new to Walmart’s marketplace, here are a few guidelines for creating listings that lead to sales:

• Using SEO keywords in product titles and descriptions. Many buyers will find your Walmart listing by searching through an engine like Google or Yahoo.

If your product listing title and description contain SEO-friendly keywords, potential buyers will be more likely to find your product.

• Using clear, high-quality product photos. Visuals are processed by the brain in less than a tenth of a second, so clear, high-quality product images can quickly convince your buyer to make a purchase.
• Categorize products accurately. If your product is in a category that doesn’t make sense, buyers won’t be able to find your item and purchase it. Follow Walmart’s categorization guidelines to ensure your product is “shelved” in the right place.

Walmart merchants won’t have to create a listing if they are selling an item that’s already offered on the marketplace. In this case, both items are presented under the same listing. For shared listings, getting the most sales is all about winning the Buy Box.

The Buy Box is the first price option that’s presented to buyers for items shared by multiple sellers. It’s premium product exposure since most buyers are going to opt for the initial Buy Box option.

Besides having the item in stock, the qualification for winning the Buy Box on Walmart is competitive pricing, or having the lowest price available on the marketplace.

To win the Buy Box with competitive pricing, sellers should offer free shipping since shipping is considered as a part of the overall price. Sellers should also offer a product price that’s lower than other major online retailers. With the marketplace’s price matching policy, Walmart promises customers that they’ll lower their online prices to match those of major online retailers. While this policy technically only applies to Walmart’s goods and not third party sellers, merchants who want to win the Buy Box will need to also match these prices if they share a listing with Walmart.

With these additional costs, sellers who want to win the Walmart Buy Box should adjust their budget to account for offering:

• free shipping
• the lowest price available online

If a seller typically charges more than the lowest available price, they should calculate how many more sales they will need to make a profit on Walmart.

Building a reputation

Since Walmart has a steep barrier to entry with its approval process, the marketplace has fewer sellers than Amazon. Fewer sellers mean less competition, so merchants can stand out more easily on Walmart.

Still, seller reputation matters on Walmart. Seller ratings and product ratings, for example, heavily influence buyer purchase decisions. These ratings are the first thing a buyer sees when they visit product listings and seller pages, so they heavily influence whether a customer buys from the merchant.

To ensure that customers trust them and will continue to buy from them, Walmart merchants should keep their seller and product ratings as high as possible. If a seller does receive a negative rating or product review, they should resolve the issue with the customer and plan to avoid the problem in the future.

Likewise, sellers have to maintain a positive reputation to ensure that Walmart trusts them and allows them to continue selling. The marketplace has three seller performance standards:

• 90-Day Order Defect Rate <2% : The order defect rate is the number of orders with a defect divided by the total number of orders.
• On-Time Shipment Rate >99% : The on-time shipment rate is the percentage of orders that are shipped by the expected ship date.
• Valid Tracking >95%: The percentage of orders with valid tracking information and scanned for delivery on or before the expected ship date.

Walmart suspends the selling privileges of merchants who don’t meet these standards. To avoid suspension, sellers should regularly check all of their performance metrics on their Seller Scorecard to make sure they’re meeting Walmart’s standards.

[Source]

The Seller Scorecard is located under the Insights & Analytics section of your Seller Central dashboard.

Managing fulfillment

Unlike Amazon, Walmart does not offer a service for fulfilling seller orders. Instead, merchants are solely responsible for fulfillment, including managing shipping, returns, customer service inquiries, and refunds.

Walmart offers sellers five shipping options: Value (free), Standard, Expedited, Next Day and Freight.

[Source]

Because shipping costs negatively impact your chance of winning the Buy Box, sellers should opt to offer free shipping, if possible.

Without any fulfillment service by Walmart, sellers need to make sure they have a plan for receiving, processing, and delivering their orders on time.

Inventory management is especially important for sellers to monitor since items have to be fully in stock to win the Buy Box. Sellers who are worried about being able to manage their Walmart inventory should consider using a software to avoid overselling and other inventory issues.

Putting it all together

Here’s a quick recap of essential Walmart selling practices:

• Listing items:
  • Sellers who need to create a listing for their item should increase conversions by using SEO keywords, high-quality product images, and correct categorization.
  • Sellers who are sharing listings with other merchants should aim to win the Buy Box by offering the lowest price and keeping a full inventory.
• Building a reputation:
  • Sellers on Walmart have less competition than Amazon, but still need to maintain their reputation with buyers through product and seller ratings. Sellers should also maintain a good standing with Walmart by meeting their seller performance standards.
• Managing fulfillment:
  • Walmart does not offer a fulfillment service, so sellers should have a plan for receiving, processing, and delivering orders. Sellers who need assistance with managing their inventory and other fulfillment practices should consider using a software, like Sellbrite.

Walmart is not an easy marketplace for sellers to enter, but those who are accepted and follow these practices will enjoy the marketplace’s smaller amount of competition.

Amazon: The Giant, Well-Established Marketplace

In comparison to Walmart, becoming a seller on Amazon is relatively easy. Merchants can sign up as Individual Sellers without a monthly fee or Professional Sellers for $39.99 per month without going through any approval process.

Once you’re signed up to sell on Amazon, here’s what you’ll need to know to stay successful:

Listing items

Amazon sellers have to create a separate listing for their item if they are the only merchant providing the product on the marketplace. Just like with Walmart and other online marketplaces, the main tips for creating listings that convert are including:

• SEO keywords in product titles and descriptions.
• Clear, high-quality product photos.
• Correct product categories.

Products that are already available on Amazon will be placed under a shared listing with other sellers. Amazon sellers on shared listings should aim to win the Buy Box for the most sales. It’s the first section where a buyer can click to order an item, so most customers end up picking the seller in the Buy Box.

Unlike Walmart, the Amazon Buy Box winner is determined not only by competitive pricing and item availability, but also fulfillment and customer service. Amazon doesn’t specify how much they weigh each factor into consideration when picking the Buy Box winner, so sellers should aim to excel in all four areas. Here are a few tips for each category:

• For competitive pricing — Monitor the prices of competitors on Amazon to make sure that you’re offering a lower price. Amazon doesn’t offer price matching, so competitive pricing only needs to be as low as other Amazon sellers, not other online retailers.
• For item availability — Make a reliable plan for inventory management, or use a software to manage your inventory for you.
• For fulfillment — Amazon likes it when sellers provide multiple shipping options so buyers have a selection of convenient and affordable choices. Sellers should also consider signing up for FBA to have Amazon handle fulfillment for orders (more details on FBA below).
• For customer service — Check the Account Health tab under the Performance tab of your Seller Central dashboard to assess the quality of your customer service.

Sellers who constantly improve their strategies in these four areas while also monitoring competitors will be positioned to win the Buy Box.

Building a reputation

Amazon is a much more crowded marketplace for sellers than Walmart. Walmart hosts thousands of sellers, while Amazon hosts over 2 million sellers. With this competition, Amazon sellers have to put in a lot of effort to stand out to buyers.

But just like on Walmart, the easiest way for Amazon sellers to leave a positive impression on buyers is to maintain high seller and product ratings. These ratings are usually the first thing a buyer will see when viewing a product or a seller page, so they heavily impact purchase decisions. We’ve included a number of other ways Amazon sellers can boost their reputation to earn buyers’ trust here.

Along with buyers, sellers have to make a positive impression on Amazon by meeting their performance standards. Without earning and keeping the marketplace’s trust by meeting these standards, sellers aren’t allowed to continue selling on Amazon. The marketplace uses seller performance metrics that are similar to Walmart’s, but require different levels for their standards.

• Order defect rate < 1%: The order defect rate is the number of orders with defects divided by the total number of orders.
• Pre-fulfillment cancellation rate < 2.5%: The pre-fulfillment cancellation rate equals the number of orders that a seller canceled before confirming shipment divided by the total number of orders.
• Late shipment rate < 4%: The late shipment rate is the number of orders with no shipment confirmation by the expected ship date divided by the total number of orders.

Sellers who fail to meet these standards may have their selling privileges removed by Amazon. There are ways to restore your selling privileges if you get suspended, but sellers should aim to avoid suspension by checking their performance metrics and making sure they’re meeting Amazon’s standards.

Managing fulfillment

With the rapid expansion of Prime in recent years, buyers now expect quick and reliable deliveries after shopping on Amazon.

To ensure that customer’s shipping expectations are met, sellers are strongly recommended to sign up for Amazon FBA. With this program, the marketplace picks, packs, ships, and provides customer service for sellers’ orders. If Amazon fulfills any of your products incorrectly, the marketplace takes responsibility for the mistake without letting the incident harm your seller rating.

Though Amazon does charge fees for using FBA, the program also helps sellers reduce costs with its benefits, such as offering free shipping. Besides cost-effectiveness, the program gives sellers peace-of-mind in knowing that their products will be packaged correctly and delivered on-time with exceptional customer service.

Putting it all together

Here’s a quick recap of essential Amazon selling practices:

• Listing items:
  • When creating a product listing, sellers should include SEO keywords, clear and high-quality product photos, and correct product categories to boost sales.
  • With items that are matched to an existing listing, sellers should aim to win the Buy Box for premier product visibility and more conversions.
• Building a reputation:
  • Sellers face a lot of competition on Amazon, so it’s critical that they uphold a positive reputation by:
    • maintaining high seller and product ratings
    • meeting Amazon’s seller performance standards for the order defect rate, pre-fulfillment cancellation rate, and the late shipment rate.
• Managing fulfillment:
  • An easy and reliable way to handle fulfillment on Amazon is by signing up for the marketplace’s FBA program. With FBA, Amazon picks, packs, ships, and provides customer service for sellers’ orders

Amazon may be an easy marketplace to join, but achieving success as a seller means fighting to stay ahead of the massive competition. By following these essential selling practices, Amazon merchants will be positioned to win sales and grow their business on the marketplace.

Which marketplace is right for me?

You’ve heard the successful seller practices for both Walmart and Amazon, but you’re still unsure about which marketplace is best for your seller needs. Here’s a flowchart to help you decide:

Flowchart made with Gliffy

In offering different benefits, the two marketplaces present their own challenges. Merchants who qualify to sell on both marketplaces should compare the pros and cons to their own needs, and figure out which marketplace works for them.

Walmart Strategy ≠Amazon Strategy

Marketplaces are too different from one another for the same tactics to work everywhere. Multichannel sellers have to consider what makes each marketplace unique and adjust their strategies accordingly. For example, Walmart sellers may deal with less competition, but they also face more pressure to offer the lowest prices online. Amazon sellers may be hurt by its high levels of competition, but it’s easier to join as a seller and slightly less price-driven.

To help sellers navigate the different landscapes of Walmart and Amazon, we created this guide. Its listed practices consider the nuances of each marketplace so that sellers know exactly what to focus on to keep customers happy and win conversions.

350543 / Pixabay

You may have heard your manager say “I need my employees here in the office! That’s where collaboration and teamwork flourish!” While in-person interaction is necessary for some organizations, for others it may have added costs and stressors that employers may not have considered. Working remotely cuts costs on several fronts, including real estate, utilities and travel subsidies.

Working Remotely Cuts Down on the Commute

In rural communities or congested cities, traveling to the office can be a thorn in commuters days. While some commutes can be 20 minutes, others can be an hour and 20 minutes depending on traffic and location from home. In conversation with a past client, he shared that his commute from his home in New Jersey to his office in Manhattan could be an hour an a half or more. He was dropped off at the train station, waited for the train, rode into the city and then walked from the station to the office. Then, he did it all over again in the reverse order to get home in the evening. All I could think of when he shared this was all the work he could be doing or all the things he was missing out on with his family since he left before his kids got on the bus and did not get home until dinner was over.

For those employers that allow workers to work from home or from co-working spaces that are more convenient, both productivity and efficiency can be increased. The time they would normally spend in transit is made available to clients or for tending to daily operations. Not having to fight rush hour daily can have positive benefits not only to employees but also to the organization as a whole.

Working Remotely Reduces Stress

Stress suppresses the immune system, which makes it easier to get sick and harder to fight off bugs. “When people are stressed, they get sick. Statistics about remote work show that 82 percent of telecommuters reported lower stress levels, according to one study. That is a good thing not only for remote workers, but for the companies that employ them. The study by PGI found that 80 percent of workers reported higher morale when working from home. In the same study, 69 percent reported lower absenteeism.” Having sick workers only costs the company, whether it is missing work, lack of focus or cost for health care.

Working Remotely Lowers Turnover

A HUGE cost to companies is the loss of talent. Offering remote work options reduced employee turnover, and “job attrition rates fell by over 50 percent,” according to a study published by Stanford University. There is the tangible cost of losing an employee, like the investment in training and skill building workshops, benefits, supplies, etc. that goes into cultivating an employee. However, the most costly loss to an organization is the knowledge that leaves when the employee goes elsewhere. While knowledge has no monetary value, it is easily the most costly loss. Working remotely or from home allows for better work-life balance. Permitting employees to pick where they work best or to choose from a few options increases morale and also shows that management and executives trust the employees to manage their work effectively. Happy employees stay put.

Working Remotely is the #FutureofWork

In 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data show that 23 percent of employees reported doing some of their work remotely. This is up from 19 percent in 2003. Workers also have access to an array of tools that allow them to videoconference, collaborate on shared documents and manage complex workflows with colleagues around the world.

Collaboration and teamwork can flourish outside of a traditional office complex. Employees need to have a good sense of where they work best. Teams need to be on the same page as to how they work together cohesively. The technology to facilitate communication about work has to be tailored to teams’ needs.

To be successful while working remotely:

• Employees need to have a good sense of where they work best
• Teams need to be on the same page as to how they work best together
• The technology to facilitate communication about work has to be tailored to teams’ needs
• Trust between employee and employer must be established

Where do you work best?

I’ve worked with thousands of sales candidates seeking new careers in sales, and those looking for career progress with a new role.

While several questions seem to be timeless favorites of hiring managers, I’ve also seen quite a few changes and trends.

The sales interview questions in this article are the ones you will most likely face in 2023, based on what I’ve observed sales managers asking in the last two years.

And the answers I suggest have helped reps secure the best job offers.

Use this guide to prepare yourself when interviewing for a sales position, and you’re a shoo-in to get the job.

Table of contents

• Top 5 sales job interview questions
• 14 general questions for any sales representative role
• Interview questions for experienced sellers
• Questions to prepare for if you’re new to sales

Related Sales Hacker discussions:

• What are the top sales interview questions you’ve heard?
• Best interview questions?

Top 5 sales job interview questions to know

Panicking about a sales job interview in 15 minutes? This is the section for you.

1. What do you know about our company so far?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know you took time to understand the company and the role before the interview. If they see that you’re unprepared for the interview, they’ll assume you’ll be unprepared for sales calls as well. Not a good look.

Doing this research is a key part of being a great sales rep, but they want to hear that you are interested in what they specifically do. Everybody wants to work with enthusiastic people.

How to answer:

Think of this as one of your first (and best) opportunities to sell yourself, so do your homework!

Look at their website, and ask yourself who they are selling to (what title, what type of company) and what problems they are solving for that person.

If it’s a public company, look up their S-1 filing so you can see how they communicate about themselves to investors.

Connect with future colleagues and managers on LinkedIn, ask them about what it’s like to work there, and look at their social media activity to gather insights about what the job is like day-to-day.

Read reviews on sites like Capterra, G2, Yelp, or Google.

Most importantly: consider your “why” — the thing that motivates you to be who you are. Notice where it overlaps with the mission of the company and point out the similarities. Let them know specifically what it is about their company that is exciting to you.

Example answer:

“I’ve been following some of the sales leaders at your org on LinkedIn and I’ve seen a consistent message across the board: it’s about the people.

It’s about the customers, partners, teammates, and the broader community. It’s exemplified in the way your leadership recognizes those people publicly.

Your mission to change the way companies engage with customers throughout their lifecycle really resonates with me, too. I want to help the sales community rise and adopt the best technology like the one you offer, while contributing to a greater social mission.

From everything I can see, your company provides a great environment to do that kind of work.”

2. Why [insert industry] sales?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know that you understand what you would be selling, and that you have an interest in it. A disinterested SDR can kill a cold call (not in a good way), and an AE who doesn’t have an interest in their solution has little chance of closing a deal.

They’re also trying to make sure they won’t hire somebody who will do shady things just to close a deal.

This question is the hiring manager offering you a chance to highlight your passion and show you’re a trustworthy person.

How to answer:

Know the qualities specific to that industry and speak to why they interest you. For example, tech is known to be fast-paced with lots of growth opportunities, while pharmaceutical sales is more relationship-driven.

Make sure you know your “why” before going into any interview. Did you have a lemonade stand as a kid? Was a family member in sales? Did a class, internship, or club pique your interest?

Don’t be afraid to say you are financially motivated to be in a sales role. This is one of the only careers where your hard work literally pays off.

Example answer:

“I’ve always been a very competitive person and love a good challenge. Even early on, in my schooling days, I would compete in all academic programs (like speech and debate). I loved the process of researching, preparing, and the thrill of competing for the #1 spot.

I believe I’ll thrive in a fast-paced tech sales role and be motivated to hit my numbers and ultimately make bigger commission checks.”

Note:
While this example features an answer for a competitive person, it can be adapted for so many different skills. Think: Creativity, making an impact, partnership and camaraderie with a team, growing in business acumen, and more.

3. Tell me about a time you succeeded or were proud of yourself

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to understand your drive to succeed, and hear about one of your greatest accomplishments.

Plus, if when you get the job, your manager will need to know how to motivate you.

How to answer:

Questions that start with “tell me about a time” indicate that your answer to this question should use the STAR framework:

S = Situation. Briefly describe the situation you were in.
T = Task. What were you tasked with doing in that situation? What was the goal?
A = Action. Tell the interviewer what you specifically did, step by step.

R = Result. What was the outcome?

Remember that you are interviewing for a sales role, so keep your response focused on something relevant to sales. Share a time when you were persistent and it paid off, when you worked hard to knock a goal out of the park, when you accomplished a significant achievement, etc.

If you have data to back you up, that is gold!

4. How have you stayed motivated in a remote world?

Interviewers ask this because:

Many sales teams are still hybrid or fully remote. And it seems like the majority will continue to operate at least in a hybrid environment for the foreseeable future.

The tough truth is that working remote in a sales role is challenging. You lose the energy from being together with peers, you lose overhearing what’s working on someone else’s call, you lose the celebration from the team when someone finally picks up. So interviewers want to know either that you thrive in that environment, you’ve found a way to make it work for you, or you have a plan for it.

How to answer:

Think about what tools you use to connect with people: Zoom or another video software, Slack or another chat software?

Think about the rituals that help you feel connected to your teammates: regular happy hour or coffee chat? Rotating catch-up soons? Coworking with peers in your area?

Think about what motivates you: recognition? Achieving goals? Financial incentives?

Bonus resource:

• How Sales Pros are Adapting to Remote Work (2020)

Example answer:

“Before I jump into my work day, it’s important that I take care of myself first. Instead of rolling out of bed and opening my laptop, I give myself ample time to get ready for the day, do something I enjoy (reading, journaling, walking), and set intentions for the day.

I prioritize refreshing myself during the day as well so that when I’m working, I’m truly focused and bringing my best self to work.”

5. What do you think will be your biggest challenge in your first three months as an SDR (Sales Development Representative) or AE (Account Executive)?

Interviewers ask this because:

This is a chance to show that you know that sales roles are demanding. We often hear sales leaders hesitant to hire those who haven’t worked in a sales environment before, and when we press them, they say it’s because successful sales people know what to expect from the job.

How to answer:

• Acknowledge you know this is a difficult role
• Mention your traits that help you remain positive and bounce back
• Talk about why it is worth it for you to succeed in this role

Resources: 

• A Day in the Life of an Account Executive (AE) (9-min read )
• Everything You Need to Know About Being an SDR (6-minute read )

Example answer:

“I think the SDR role will teach me how to bounce back from rejection. I’ll have to get used to hearing “no” frequently.

I consider myself a very optimistic person and I don’t take criticisms to heart, so while this may be a challenge, it won’t be impossible to overcome. I’m not a quitter, and I always see challenges through to the end, so I will treat this as a learning opportunity that will only make me better and more resilient in the future!”

Common interview questions for any sales representative role

6. Why are you looking for a new role?

Interviewers ask this because:

They are looking for a positive, forward-thinking attitude. They want to see that you have a growth mindset and will tackle the new role with energy and enthusiasm.

How to answer:

Do not talk about why your current situation sucks. In fact, show gratitude for what you learned from it.

Remain focused on the future opportunity ahead of you.

Example answer:

“The past year with my current employer has taught me so much. While I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity, I’m ready for the next big adventure—filled with new learnings and areas for growth.

Specifically, I’m looking for a role where I can learn [XYZ new skills], and work with a team to accomplish [ABC goal].”

7. Where are you in your search?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know how quickly your process needs to move and how seriously you are taking the job search.

How to answer:

Just be honest. If you are interviewing with other companies, if you aren’t, if you got a verbal offer, if you haven’t completed interviews yet — just be honest.

8. Pitch our company to me

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know that you did your homework on their company, and they want to assess your communication skills. Can you talk about the business in a way that makes sense, highlights the value, and avoids buzzwords?

How to answer:

Have a clear, concise pitch statement ready to go.

Example answer:

Try this format:

{Name of company} helps {insert buyer} solve their {insert key challenge the product solves} by {describe the solution}.

Related Discussion: How to succeed at a role play interview as an AE?

9. Walk me through your resume/background

Interviewers ask this because:

They want an easy recitation of your relevant experience so they can start to assess fit. And they also want to see if you can hit critical and relevant points of a story in a short time.

How to answer:

Keep it to 90 seconds.

Spend time on the elements of your experience that are most relevant: A club at school? Athlete? Door to door sales? Lemonade stand? Waitress?

They don’t need to know everything about each role; they’ll just want to hear the skills that you learned that will help you excel in sales.

Example answer:

“In my most recent job experience, I managed the front desk with a busy multi-line phone system. While being responsible for multiple tasks, like greeting guests on arrival and receiving and sorting mail to 100+ employees, I learned how to comfortably handle communications (in person and on the phone) and balance that work my other responsibilities. Before that, I interned at a public relations company and got some great exposure to how businesses position themselves in the market.

It was important to keep a positive attitude even when the external environment was hectic and ensure that the customer and their needs were always top priority. I believe both of these experiences are relevant and set me up for success in the fast-paced role of a customer-facing sales rep.”

10. How soon are you able to start?

Interviewers ask this because:

They might want to get a sense of how serious you are about the role, but this question can also be about simple logistics. They know when they need somebody – they want to know when you’re available, so they can plan properly.

How to answer:

Standard time in the United States to give your current employer is 2 weeks notice. Other countries have different norms, though. In the UK, for instance, I’ve heard of people giving 2-3 months notice.

Regardless, remember that how you treat your current employer is indicative of how you’ll treat them.

If you have another reason that would prohibit you from 2 weeks, be honest and clear. They’ll wait for the right person!

Example answer:

“I’d like to give my current employer two weeks’ notice, so I don’t leave my team in the lurch. I’m sure you can understand. I’m available to start immediately after that.”

Or

“I’d like to give my current employer two weeks’ notice, so I don’t leave my team in a bind. It’s also very important to me that I start this new role with a clear mind, lots of energy, and free of distractions in my personal life, so I’d like to ask for a week in-between roles.

If that’s not feasible, I can be flexible. I’m eager to get started.”

11. What is most important to you in your next company?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to be sure you are a great match. As much as you want to show you are a good fit for them, they want to be sure they are a good fit for you.

They might also be trying to get a sense of your thought process as you search for a new role. Did you apply because you were just “throwing spaghetti at the wall,” or did you see something about their company that specifically drew you in?

How to answer:

Again, be honest. Come up with two to four things that are truly important to you in a working environment. They don’t necessarily need to be things you already know about the company to which you’re applying.

Maybe they reference workplace culture, tools that are available, management styles, access to resources, etc.

Example answer:

“It’s important to me that I’m part of an organization that aligns around a shared mission, and that it shows in my interactions with colleagues in other departments. I’m also looking forward to being part of a team where everybody holds high standards for themselves and those they work with.”

12. Tell me about a time you failed.

Interviewers ask this because:

They are looking for the ability to reflect, assess, and plan.

They are looking for someone who is humble and has self-awareness.

How to answer:

Choose an actual failure. Sometimes someone will choose something that is not a failure because they think it makes them look better—cue eye roll.

Talk about what you learned from it and specific actions you’re taking to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Example answer:

“Once, when I was working with a client on an important project, I told them I’d be finished in 3 weeks time. But in reality, it took me 4 weeks to finish.

In hindsight, I knew that I should have underpromised so that I could overdeliver. After that experience, I would manage expectations appropriately from the onset of a new client project and always set a time that’s more than how long I know it will take.

Most of all, I stay in frequent communication with the client so they know where we’re at with the project. Sometimes things come up and I’m not able to meet expectations, but communicating early and often has helped me avoid issues.”

13. Tell me about a time working with another was challenging.

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to be sure they are bringing someone onto the team who knows how to resolve conflict productively. Drama slows a sales team down.

How to answer:

Share not only the challenge, but also how you came up with a solution and what you learned from it.

Be careful not to throw anyone under the bus—that’s not a good look.

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough: The answer you give should never be a long wind-up to “and then I was right.” Show that you are open, adaptable, and driven to find the solution, even if it isn’t yours.

Example answer:

“A colleague and I were working together on a challenging project and had frequent differing opinions about the direction of it. My colleague would go to others in the organization to get their input on the project, and would not include me in the conversations.

At first, I thought my coworker was trying to cut me out of the project. After giving it some thought, I decided I needed to talk to my colleague and explain my concerns as plainly as possible. I discovered that they were not, in fact, trying to exclude me from the project, but felt unqualified to be working on it and wanted to get advice from others on how to proceed.

I suggested that we go together to get advice. The advice we got from others helped us collaborate more effectively and finish the project.”

14. Over the last several years, have you been working from home or from an office?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to understand which environments you’ve worked in.

Workplaces are in flux right now all over the world. Some are back in the office, others are fully remote. Some offer certain days of the week in office, others offer certain teams to be in the office. Some require vaccinations, and some require masks.

How to answer:

Don’t be afraid to be honest about your preference, but if being flexible is an option, make sure they know that.

If you know you will only succeed in an office or working from home, it is important to talk about it upfront.

15. If working from home, what have your biggest challenges been?

Interviewers ask this because:

The shift to working from home has been tough for everyone, especially sellers. They want to know if you can be presented with a challenging situation and how you made it work.

How to answer:

Keep it positive. Share real challenges you overcame (again using the STAR method) — and also how you resolved them.

Example answer:

“After many months of working from home, it became a challenge to feel as upbeat and motivated as I did when I was in the office. Something that helped me overcome this was creating things in my day that differentiated work from home. For example, I used to have a commute. Now that I don’t, I take a walk around the neighborhood and listen to a podcast in the morning to simulate that old routine.”

16. What made your best manager your best manager?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know if they’ll be able to offer you a situation where you can thrive.

How to answer:

Be specific! Name one or two specific things your manager did to help you reach your goals at work. Maybe they set aside time to help you develop a new skill, frequently gave helpful feedback, or never let a win go unrecognized.

Think about what matters most to you and let it shine through in your answer.

17. What would your previous employer say about your work?

Interviewers ask this because:

Self-awareness is an important quality in sales, and understanding how you are perceived by others matters.

How to answer:

Keep it positive and specific.

For example, instead of saying “I’m really great,” you could say, “They’d say I’m really great at pumping up my team members.”

Then, tell a story with specific examples and keep it relevant to the sales role you’re applying for.

18. Why should we hire you?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to hear if you’ve been listening and understanding.

How to answer:

First of all, if you don’t feel crystal clear on their expectations, it’s okay to answer this question with a question of your own to make sure you are on the same page.

Once you understand the expectations of the role, this is another huge opportunity to sell yourself! Show you have been listening by calling out specific items that matter to them, and noting why you in particular have those attributes or experiences.

Think about what makes you unique and share it. This is a great chance for you to shine a light on your strengths and how they align with the needs of the business.

Example answer:

“I know that you’re looking for a team player—someone who can work well with, motivate, and encourage others. I also know it’s important to your team’s success that each member has experience selling in this industry.

I’ve been known as a cheerleader on my previous teams, and I’ve been selling successfully in this industry for X years/months.”

19. Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to see the level of your seriousness and ambition.

How to answer:

If you have a clear and detailed career/life plan, amazing! Share your answer, including what excites you about this path, the challenges you foresee, and how you plan to overcome them. (This gives you the bonus opportunity to highlight your problem-solving skills.)

If you don’t have everything figured out yet, that’s okay. Find at least one thing to talk about. Make it clear and crisp. Illustrate what excites you and what you’ll need to do to accomplish your goal.

Pro tip: “Financially independent” is a totally respectable answer — but the onus is on you to lay out your plan to get there. Otherwise, you might come off as a pie-in-the-sky dreamer who doesn’t want to work.

Related: How to Become a VP of Sales by 25

Interview questions for experienced sellers

20. Tell me about your current (or most recent) team

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know you are a team player and work well with others. A high-performing salesperson isn’t worth having on the team if they’re a jerk, or negative.

How to answer:

Quickly share the structure of the team. What roles are there? Who does what?

You can also share some team rituals that are important to you — whether it is the weekly team meeting where you aligned on goals for the week, or the fact that someone was always ready to help out on one of your deals.

21. What technology are you using to support your sales efforts today?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to see the overlap between the team’s current tech stack and what you’re accustomed to. This will help them get a sense of onboarding and training needed, as well, should the interview process move forward.

How to answer:

Do not share every single software you’ve ever used. Just focus on sharing the core sales tech that has made the biggest impact on how you do your job.

It’s ok if your answer is just a few items long, don’t feel pressured to give a lengthy answer here.

22. Are there any recent technologies you’ve learned or heard about that are particularly exciting to you?

Interviewers ask this because:

A natural sense of curiosity is a critical criteria for being a strong seller, and wanting to learn about technology that helps us improve shows that curiosity. It also shows that as buyer needs and preferences change, you are ready to meet them where they are.

How to answer:

Share one, what it does, and why it matters to you.

23. What is your current (or most recent) quota?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know if you are coming from a similar or very different sales environment. Our SDRs set 20 meetings a month, but when I interview someone who sets 6 a month (no shame, their ideal customer could be very different from mine), I know we might have a bigger gap to fill.

How to answer:

Be honest. Show you understand the structure by being succinct in your description.

24. What has your attainment looked like?

Interviewers ask this because:

All sales teams are under pressure to hit their goals, and that means they need to focus on bringing on top performers. If they’re bringing on someone with a less than stellar record, they want to know why.

(Truthfully, there’s some debate about whether hiring managers should even ask this question, but we’ll leave that for another day.)

How to answer:

And be honest here, too. It’s easy to fact check!

Share learnings or “a-ha” moments you had from not attaining goal.

And it’s ok to explain situations that are less than ideal, but be careful that you don’t sound defensive or like you’re making excuses. For some of these stickier questions, you may want to practice with a friend first!

Whatever you do, don’t blame anyone else. And please be specific about how often you did or didn’t meet quota.

Example answer:

“In 2021, I hit quota three out of four quarters. I missed quota in Q1.

I had enough pipeline at the beginning of the quarter, but I was counting on closing a deal that ultimately didn’t come through because my buyer’s boss stepped in at the last minute with a change of direction.

I learned two really valuable lessons from that miss.

First, I learned not to count my chickens before they hatch. I also learned to improve my discovery process, specifically with how I identified members of the buying committee. I may not have been able to change that person’s mind, but if I had seen it coming, I could have given myself time to develop more pipeline to make up for the gap.”

Related discussion: How to answer quota attainment question during interview?

25. Tell me about a creative tactic you took recently to book a meeting?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to see proactivity when it comes to meeting goals. Sellers who do things by the book, the same way every time, often lose steam, burn out, or lose effectiveness over time.

How to answer:

Share a new channel you tried, a new message you tried, a new style of outreach.

And explain the outcome!

26. How, if at all, have you used generative AI in your sales role?

Interviewers ask this because:

In April 2023: It’s likely the sales org at the company is trying to wrap its mind around generative AI. They may be looking for someone with a strong passion or opinion to lead sellers from within.

More generally: Sales excellence requires you to constantly be learning and adapting, seeking advantages and efficiencies wherever possible.

How to answer:

Share your experience, including any tools you’ve used, and how.

Questions to prepare for if you’re new to sales

Related discussion: How do you hit the ground running as an SDR?

27. What is it about getting into sales that interests you?

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know you know what to expect, and that you’re in it for the long haul. They want someone who will fully commit to the role and take their team up a level.

How to answer:

Be specific and elaborate about why you’re drawn to sales.

Don’t be afraid to mention financial opportunity — that is a huge reason many people get into sales.

Use it as an opportunity to showcase your strengths and why you are a good fit for your first sales role.

Stay away from things like “I like building relationships” and “I love people” — those are said all the time and won’t make you unique.

Example answer:

“My aunt is in sales, and does very well for herself. She has been able to send my three cousins to college, and live comfortably. I like the idea of a career that allows me to live the life I want and provide for myself.

I also like the idea of being in control of my fate. I know that in a sales career the outcomes I produce are directly related to the work I put in.”

28. What about your past experience would make you good at sales?

Interviewers ask this because:

Career-switchers and college grads often can bring fresh perspectives to the sales field. In fact, most people sort of “fall into” sales, so you’re not alone if you’re using past non-sales experience to help get you your first sales job.

And they want to see if you have relevant experience that can transfer to sales.

How to answer:

Listen for the interviewer mentioning what makes a good seller on their team, and and show you are actively listening by showing how your past experiences align with those qualities.

Think about classes, clubs, or elements of previous careers that will relate to a sales role.

Stay positive!

Have you used these in a job interview? Is there another question you’d like to see answered? Comment below!

The post Top 28 Sales Job Interview Questions and Answers: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Successful sellers are moving beyond the adversarial approach to negotiating. Winning the sale today requires a consultative style. In the end, the relationship between the buyer and seller strengthens winning the sale today and tomorrow.

On October 30th, Miriam Abbey, Richardson Senior Training Consultant will present a webinar on Winning the Sale without Thinning the Sale: Negotiating with the Modern Buyer, and we would like to extend an invitation for you to join us.

The webinar topics will include:

• Strategies and countermeasures needed to control and guide negotiation and successfully shape the perception of value to increase deal size, reduce discounting, and attain a higher win/loss ratio
• How sellers can avoid resorting to concessions by using questioning that converts inflexible customer demands into needs
• How sellers can influence the customer’s receptiveness to the value of a solution with “priming,” which, in turn, maximizes the scope of the solution

The webinar will take place on October 30th at 1:00 p.m. EST. If you are interested in attending or think that your colleagues may be interested, you can register here.

The post Join Us For a Webinar: Negotiating With the Modern Buyer appeared first on Welcome to the Richardson Sales Blog.

422737 / Pixabay

My son turns eleven today. We are all set to celebrate as we always do – our kids love the traditions that come with birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, college football, and too many other events to mention. The house is decorated exactly the same for every birthday. I’m told they love it that way. There will be a special dinner, as always.

All this tradition and consistency got me thinking. My children certainly love new things and surprises: new adventures, trips to unknown places, crazy experiences. And still, for a handful of personal milestones, they seem to want- to need- something familiar and dependable. Certainly, that is to be expected. New experiences bring excitement, anticipation of something unknown, and the possibility of “total awesomeness” (which, I have to imagine, is what the kids are saying nowadays.) Those traditions, the patterns sought out by their own brains, bring them a sense of stability, safety, and comfort.

The Value of Consistency in Our Professional Lives

Our professional development trajectory, by definition, is based on forward progress and constantly pushing into new territories. As in our personal lives, most of us are excited about those new experiences, as they present us new opportunities to be challenged and to grow. And it is that growth that we (as professionals) see as the greatest similarity between our personal and professional lives. We achieve that growth when we step outside our comfort zone and attack those new, exciting, frightening, exhilarating opportunities.

Does this mean there is no place for traditions, standardization, same-ness in our professional life? I’d like to propose three areas where – for most of us – having those familiar and repeatable touchstones can be critical for our success.

Area(s) of Expertise

I’m not here to argue against learning new approaches and technologies. For most professionals, it is essential. IT developers, medical personnel, and engineers rely on their access to innovation and technical training. Artificial intelligence and augmented reality are pushing more industries to be creative and leading edge. Even in industries such as entertainment and sports, those not embracing inventive approaches are fighting a losing battle for viewers and fans. And yet, this drive for innovation does not negate the need – by most professionals – to bring a certain level of expertise to their work. This expertise, be it product or service knowledge, network connections, leadership qualities, or project management stills, comes from years of professional experience. It comes from trying and failing, from continually looking for ways to improve, and from going through all the joys and pains that come with a career trajectory.

A Mentor

Maybe I’ve watched too many movies with gray-haired, wise gurus. I can’t help but think that finding magic rings, playing impossible broom-riding sports, or wielding laser swords would be less successful without those elder advisors. So, why don’t these movie heroes patently dismiss the possibly out-of-touch advice of these folks? Mentors, real or imagined, formal or informal, are people we hold in high regard. They bring expertise and experience, most importantly, where we have little or none. Our mentors know our personalities and our tendencies – our typical reactions to challenging situations, our strengths and weaknesses and our overall development trajectory. In many cases, this individual (or individuals) will know where we came from, what is in our past that makes us who we are. All those insights and observations, that our mentors provide us, help to keep us grounded and help to build us. Perhaps both, even at the same time. Most importantly, these critical people in our lives understand – professionally and personally – what is at stake for us as we grow in our positions.

Our Support System

In a way similar to our mentors, those key people around us are critical for insight, guidance, humility, motivation, and 50 other components of how we become who we become. Our family, our close friends and colleagues, provide many benefits to us as we grow professionally. They accept us in spite of our failings. They know how to encourage us. They provide safety and comfort – just like those traditions I mentioned earlier. You would be hard-pressed to find personal and professional success stories that don’t involve multiple instances of influence, acceptance, support, care and love from any one of several family members, close friends and colleagues. On the contrary, even the most innovative and leading edge superstars of our times refer frequently to their spouse, children, college roommate, et al. when listing the keys to their success. Even in Hollywood, the most remembered Academy Award speeches seem to be those where the star tries desperately to share their list of close supporters, as the orchestra urges them offstage.

In Closing

I can’t stress enough that the point here isn’t to stop learning, growing, and disrupting. I’m a huge proponent of just those things and have written about this before. Rather, how can we best find the balance between innovating and stretching, but still balance those with focused effort around those characteristics that form the bedrock of our professional life. The best approach, for some, is to weave the two together. Working on building innovative approaches and solutions into our expertise along the way. Finding mentors who not only know us, but seeking additional mentors who can help us hone in on our innovation journey. And finally, making sure that we stay closely connected to our close-in support system, being intentional and focused about growing and maturing our professional network.

Image via MarketingProfs

To open up the 2017 MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, Chief Content Officer Ann Handley shared a challenge for attendees to keep top of mind while at the conference (in addition to tap dancing, but more about that later):

#1 – Find Your Squad

This has been a running theme for the B2B Marketing Forum for as long as I can remember. Because the conference is capped at around 1,000 attendees, you actually have the opportunity to run into some familiar faces during the conference.

Even if you traveled to the event with members of your own team, it’s important to make the effort to meet new people, “your people”. I’ve been lucky to meet some really amazing people at conferences and continue to be in contact with many of them to this day.

We were fortunate to have a team at MPB2B that included myself, Lee Odden, Alexis Hall and Dan Rasmussen. This is a theme that resonates very well with us as we are constantly looking to add new members to our squad at TopRank Marketing in the form of new team members, industry influencers and prospective clients.

#2 – Go Outside Your Comfort Zone

It doesn’t matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert, there will be situations that push you outside of your comfort zone. It could be walking up and starting a conversation with someone you’ve never met, interviewing one of your marketing heros, or for me, speaking on stage at my favorite conference to a room full of smart marketers.

Often, once you do make the effort to step outside of your comfort zone you quickly find that you’re actually having fun and wish you would have taken strides sooner.

These two challenges posed by Ann Handley led our team to push ourselves at this conference and align very well with some of our core values. Below is a recap of how we found our squad, went outside our comfort zones and learned as much as we could in an action packed three days.

Celebrating Squad & Comfort Zone Queen Ann Handley

If you’re like most marketers, Ann Handley’s squad is one that you want to be a part of. Ann is a genuinely kind, warm and incredibly smart individual that I feel lucky to know. But don’t take my word for it, see what some of today’s top B2B marketers had to say:

And if I thought that I stepped out of my comfort zone at MPB2B, it didn’t even come close to Ann taking the stage and tap dancing her little heart out in front of 1,000 marketers:

Spending Time with our Squad

Marketing events present a great opportunity to spend time with the marketers that you love and respect the most. We were fortunate that many of these people were at MPB2B last week.

The first night we were lucky enough to spend some time with our squad from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (who also happen to be a TopRank Marketing client). This group of marketers are some of the most talented and driven people I know.

Thanks for the memories!

On night two, TopRank Marketing hosted a VIP event that included some of our amazing clients, friends and top influencers at the conference.

Thank you everyone for taking the time out of your slammed schedules to share some drinks, eats and conversation with our team!

Sharing Smarts with Fellow Marketers

Events present the opportunity to learn from some of the top marketing minds in the industry. And since we know not everyone was able to attend MPB2B, we set out to capture some of the top insights from the conference. Below is what we uncovered:

Why to ROI: Proving the Value of B2B Influencer Marketing

Even though B2B marketers have begun to explore influencer marketing further in recent years, they’re still struggling to prove the ROI of these efforts. In his session, TopRank Marketing’s Lee Odden shared 5 essential steps for driving ROI with B2B influencer marketing.

Look to your left and right. Those people are influential about something. @leeodden
Click To Tweet

Everything You Need to Build a LinkedIn Marketing Tactical Plan

While the majority of marketers believe that LinkedIn is THE social media channel for business, many are struggling to implement a LinkedIn strategy that garners results. These takeaways from LinkedIn’s Alex Rynne and HubSpot’s Chris Wilson will help you get closer to success.

Don’t DO social campaigns, make every campaign social. @amrynnie
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If You Only Had $1k to Invest in Content Marketing, How Would You Spend it?

Limited budget, time and resources are a struggle that all content marketers face, no matter the size of their organization. In his presentation, GE Digital’s Chris Moody shared quick tips for advancing your content as well as a breakdown for how a limited budget of $1k could be spent for maximum impact.

There is no excuse for us not to be data driven marketers. @cnmoody
Click To Tweet

The Netflix Experience: Create Binge-Worthy B2B Content

One of the top objectives for many brands today is to find a way to get audiences to binge on their content. But, creating binge-worthy content takes effort. See Ardath Albee’s top tips for creating content sure to keep your audience coming back for more.

Change the way a buyer thinks about a problem & they’ll look to you for more. @ardath421
Click To Tweet

Learn How to Connect Actions to results Using Marketing Attribution

Marketing activities that aren’t tied to results make it difficult to prove value. BrightFunnel’s Dayna Rothman shows how marketers can turn the buyer journey into a science by properly leveraging data and analytics.

Always keep testing and optimizing! @dayroth
Click To Tweet

In addition to his session covered above, Lee also participated in a panel about the convergence of ABM and Content Marketing. This panel provided great insights on how brands can reprogram organizational tactics to create a more focused, hyper-personalized approach to ABM.

On the final day of the conference, I took the stage for the first time at MPB2B to discuss scrappy B2B creativity hacks with my panelists Nick Westergaard and Andy Hunt. As this was the last session on the last day of the conference, we decided to make our session interactive and answer the audience’s most burning questions about B2B creativity.

Image via @michaelnob

Who are the 50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers From MPB2B?

As is tradition, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden gathered the marketers speaking at the B2B Marketing Forum and ran them through Traackr to see which ones ranked highest related to B2B marketing. Want to see who made the cute? Read: 50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers 2017

Coming Soon: Marketing Expert Interview Series

While at the B2B Marketing Forum, Dan Rasmussen and I had the opportunity to interview seven leading marketing experts on everything from their journey into content marketing, to what they predict as the future for content marketers.

Subscribe to our blog today to get first-access to this exciting new interview series!

Thanks for an Action-Packed Event!

Thank you to Ann and the entire team at MarketingProfs for putting on a first-class event. We can’t wait to see what next year’s conference in San Francisco holds!

If you were lucky enough to attend this great event, what was your top takeaway?

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | Making B2B Marketing Gold: A Look Back at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum #MPB2B | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post Making B2B Marketing Gold: A Look Back at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum #MPB2B appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Sunil Sharma says it’s time for accelerators to share data on whether the model works.

In an empty office in the downtown Toronto building that will become home to Techstars LLC’s first foray into Canada, managing director Sunil Sharma is contemplating an important question.

Temporarily putting aside the hundreds of applications from startups from around the world that want to join the accelerator’s first Toronto cohort, he’s inclined to tear down all the glass-walled offices lining the floor, so that the winning companies can work together in one large, open space. But first, an employee of the building’s management pops in with an even more pressing matter.

“Are you guys gonna have beer on the floor?” he asked. “You’re allowed to, but some people don’t want to.”

• Techstars to launch Toronto accelerator, lured by 'incredible ecosystem'
• After nine years, the MaRS Phase 2 tower is finally full and open for business
• Montreal startup Element AI nabs US$102 million in investments for expansion

“Oh no, we want beer,” Sharma said. “And I want to bring cold brew in, too.”

Sharma is not the only one offering beer, trendy open-concept offices and other amenities in an effort to attract and then nurture successful startups. Plenty of governments and private investors are also pouring massive amounts of money into accelerators, incubators and innovation hubs in the hopes of launching the next Uber Technologies Inc. or Airbnb Inc.

In Canada, such success stories are rare. The biggest tech winners, such as Shopify Inc., have come from outside the incubator and accelerator system. Research suggests top-tier, internationally renowned accelerators such as Techstars give their startups a meaningful advantage, but it’s less clear whether other models are worth the time and money.

Sharma believes all these types of organizations can have benefits, especially the classic three-month accelerator style fuelled by private-sector funding. Everyone’s interests are aligned when investors take equity stakes in startups participating in accelerator programs, he says.

“We think it’s a two-way street. We have to earn our equity in these companies,” Sharma said. “It’s needed to have a Techstars model in Canada, just as it is in many other countries. I think you’ll start to see more.”

The basic idea behind accelerators and incubators is to identify companies with the potential for massive growth, provide them with office space and connections, and hopefully help them grow faster than they would have otherwise.

The risk, however, is propping up mediocre companies that would fail in the free market, thereby siphoning revenue away from competitors and stunting their growth.

Over the past year, Canada has seen a flurry of both public and private investment in incubators, accelerators and tech research hubs. 

For example, Montreal-based research hub and incubator Element AI in June raised $135 million from major tech companies including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. 

Royal Bank of Canada, Magna International Inc. and Bank of Nova Scotia announced contributions to another $5-million fund for incubating artificial intelligence startups called NextAI in January. 

Shopify’s Ottawa offices on Elgin Street. Shopify found its success outside of the tech accelerator system.

And the federal government is taking applications for $950 million in seed money to create research and innovation “superclusters” across the country, in the hopes of nurturing Silicon Valley-like regional hubs of startup activity.

The Justin Trudeau Liberals have made innovation a key part of their policy agenda, with $1.18 billion earmarked for skills and innovation in the 2017 budget.

On Tuesday, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains announced nine finalists for for the federal government’s supercluster funding, focusing on such areas as manufacturing, artificial intelligence and ocean technologies.

The superclusters idea isn’t new: National Research Council Canada has been funding similar regional “technology cluster initiatives” since the early 2000s.

A 2010 NRC evaluation of the performance of its technology clusters determined “a number of challenges remain” when it comes to helping companies located there grow, cautioning “expectations regarding firms should remain realistic.”

The report cited scarce investment capital, insufficient incubation space and expensive technology as among those challenges.

John Stokes, a partner at Montreal-based venture-capital firm Real Ventures, which has invested in Techstars and Element AI and runs the accelerator FounderFuel, said he’s waiting to see how the supercluster strategy plays out before passing judgment.

But he sees a win-win situation when it comes to making private investments in accelerators.

Founders get capital early in their life cycle, support and the brand cachet of the accelerator, while investors streamline the scouting process to take bets on emerging technologies.

“It allows you to deploy both money and support in order to help companies on their path to hyper-growth success,” Stokes said. “From an investor point of view, it is powerful.”

In Canada, however, privately funded accelerators that take an equity stake in startups are relatively rare.

Incubators and innovation hubs — which provide office space, resources and mentorship, but don’t typically take equity or culminate in a graduation “demo day” for investors — are much more common, and most of them are supported by taxpayer dollars.

A prominent innovation hub is Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, a government-funded charity that aims to help companies grow by providing them equipment and subsidized rent in a location right next to major hospitals and universities.

The organization was the focus of controversy a few years ago after its new 20-storey tower needed to be bailed out by three government loans, but those loans have been repaid.

In addition to startups, MaRS houses major companies such as Facebook Inc. and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in the hopes they will forge partnerships with smaller companies under the same roof.

Salim Teja, president of venture services at MaRS, said the innovation hub’s track record speaks for itself, with MaRS-supported ventures raising $785 million in 2015 and generating $398 million in revenue.

“Government is really trying to catalyze partnerships between small companies and large companies to really focus on creating real value in the marketplace and solving big, important problems,” Teja said. “We hear often from VCs that companies that have gone through programs like ours are much better prepared for success.”

A man participates in a virtual reality demonstration at the MaRS discovery district in Toronto. MaRS is a prominent government-funded innovation hub.

Of course, anecdotal evidence from venture capitalists is not the same thing as hard evidence. That MaRS discloses the revenue and funding generated by participating companies is unusual, since most Canadian startup supporters prefer to keep such metrics to themselves.

MaRS published a report on Canadian accelerators in 2013 and came to the conclusion that “little is known how well accelerators actually perform.”

Accelerator directors interviewed by the report’s authors cited a lack of resources as the main reason for failing to track the performance of alumni startups, but there were other reasons, too.

The report quoted one accelerator director whose response when asked if he or she would consider publishing results in the future was, “When they’re good.” It quoted another director who was concerned data showing poor results would make it harder to receive government funding.

Sharma, who is also chair of the board of the Canadian Acceleration and Business Incubation Association, said the organization would gladly accept public funding to collect such data. He said it doesn’t make sense to pour funding into entities that are supposed to support startups without measuring how those startups fare.

“I just believe there should be a real rigour and analysis of this,” Sharma said. “By now, there should be so much data available, it should be analyzed in a very serious way about what are the outcomes and how does it trace back to the financial support.”

For founders, there’s no question that a prominent accelerator can provide a serious boost. Montreal-based bus rental startup Bus.com parlayed its graduation from FounderFuel into acceptance at San Francisco’s Y Combinator, widely considered the top accelerator in the world.

Bus.com chief executive Kyle Boulay said the relationships he built at Y Combinator and FounderFuel helped him raise a US$5-million Series A round in April. He said he regularly recommends accelerators to other entrepreneurs.

“For first-time founders such as myself and my co-founder, it’s always a really big asset to work closely under people who have done it before,” Boulay said. “The startup mountain is a very difficult one to climb.”

Stokes, the Real Ventures partner, said he welcomes government action to help make it less difficult to climb that mountain. He said it’s important for governments to show they support entrepreneurship, but, so far, publicly funded incubators and hubs haven’t posed much of a competitive threat.

“As a taxpayer, I would love to be concerned about the competition” Stokes said. “That would mean the government money is being used in a way I think is very impactful.”

Financial Post

cbrownell@nationalpost.com

Twitter.com/clabrownell

In sales fast is slow, and slow is fast. The central idea here is that moving faster than your client, putting the transaction above the relationship and their needs slows you down. So does skipping steps and doing sloppy work.

That said, there is no reason to take more time than is necessary to do anything. You do not benefit from taking longer than is necessary to create and win opportunities, and your clients do not receive greater value by your dragging out the process and preventing them from getting better results now.

If you can create new opportunities faster by spending more time prospecting, it makes sense to do more of that work now to pull those results forward in time. You gain nothing by taking more time to do what might be done in less, especially when it comes to building a pipeline.

If you can compress the sales cycle by controlling the process and gaining the necessary commitments without allowing that process to be slowed down by your lack of intention, then you move results forward in time for both you and your clients.

There is something else that you must do to pull results forward. You must be highly effective. You have to develop your mindset and skill sets to improve the work you do for and with your clients and prospects. You must develop the business acumen and situational knowledge to be more valuable to your clients, and to produce that value for them sooner, as early in the process as possible. You have to be someone who is trusted, and who can make recommendations that allow the people you serve to stay connected to you as you help them move forward to a better future state.

Most of all, you must be conscious of time. If you want to make a difference, you have less time available than you believe. It is enough, but only if you invest it wisely.

The post When to Move Fast appeared first on The Sales Blog.

This fall, college seniors across the U.S. are making a choice that will shape the rest of their lives: which career to pursue after graduation. It’s a breathtakingly complex decision, involving trade-offs among prestige, job security, quality of work life, and compensation.

Yet these career choices affect not only the students themselves but also the rest of society. Economic research increasingly indicates some professions have “spillovers,” meaning that the social value of an individual’s work can be much higher, or much lower, than that individual’s compensation. The job market does not account for all social value.

Some spillovers are quite large. Given how much good teachers raise the eventual incomes of their students, we calculate that spillovers from teachers are twice as large as the salaries teachers are paid. The benefits from medical research are even larger, amounting to over one-fifth of total income in the U.S. On the other hand, some sectors involve “zero sum” endeavors, in which profits come at the expense of other market participants. Examples include excessive litigation or financial traders trying to beat the market.

Spillovers jam the signals in the economy, misdirecting talented students. This can lead to severe misallocations of the talent pool — arguably a nation’s most valuable asset. Recent work in macroeconomics indicates that when economies fail to allocate assets to their best uses, growth slows and incomes stagnate. Although economists have long focused on policies that promote the acquisition of human capital through education, the efficient allocation of the resulting talent is just as important.

What policies can encourage talented workers to choose socially beneficial careers? Our recent paper, “Taxation and the Allocation of Talent,” studies this question. Going back to the work of noted British economist Arthur Pigou, economic experts have advocated subsidizing activities with positive spillovers and taxing those with negative spillovers. Our paper applies this idea to the allocation of talent. To calculate spillovers of different careers, we draw on several studies that estimate the effect of work in various occupations on the economy at large (see our paper for details, or this write-up).

We consider two different types of tax policies. In the first, the government amends federal income tax rates overall such that lower-paying, positive-spillover jobs seem more appealing on an after-tax basis. (More on how this works in a moment.) In the second, the government taxes (or subsidizes) some professions more than others. For instance, teachers could face a different tax rates than lawyers. Although some sectors do currently receive subsidies, the notion of widespread profession-specific taxation represents a much more radical departure than reformed income tax rates.

To evaluate these policies, we use data on the occupational choices and incomes of U.S. workers. Our data shows, for instance, that 18% of multimillionaires work in finance, while only 1% of them are professors and scientists. Moreover, career choices are highly sensitive to changes in compensation; as salaries in finance professions rose sharply from 1980 to 2005, the share of workers in investment banks, hedge funds, and similar financial establishments more than doubled. We fit an economic model to this data, which allows us to estimate the likely impact of these policies on the economy.

We find that the first (and more modest) policy of adjusting income tax rates would do little to spur economic growth. The idea here is that raising top tax rates would encourage workers to choose lower-paying jobs, and in some cases that might translate into more workers choosing more-socially-valuable professions. But, by our estimates, few of these workers would choose high-spillover jobs, such as medical research. Instead, many of them would become entertainers or enter sales — careers that may be more flexible or enjoyable, but for which there is little economic research suggesting large social spillovers. Furthermore, raising top rates could encourage multimillionaire scientists to work less hard. Although few in number, these scientists are extremely productive, generating much of the total social spillovers from research.

In contrast, the second, more radical policy — imposing profession-specific taxes — could grow the economy dramatically. Such taxes directly incentivize workers to enter professions with the highest social spillovers.

Does this mean governments should overhaul their tax codes to introduce different rates for different jobs? We see two reasons why doing so works better in theory than in practice. First, precisely defining occupations would be very difficult, especially with trillions of dollars of tax revenues at stake. It is easy to imagine a new cottage industry of accountants and lawyers devoted to exploiting ambiguities in these definitions. Second, profession-specific tax rates create opportunities for profession-specific lobbying. The resulting tax rates might favor sectors with the most political clout rather than the largest spillovers.

Instead, we advocate addressing spillovers on a case-by-case basis outside of the income tax. Most positive spillovers come from two professions, teaching and research, that already receive much of their funding from governments. In the U.S., for example, higher funding for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation could raise the salaries of scientific researchers, while merit pay for teachers could draw more of our best and brightest to devote their talents to educating the next generation. These policies could spur economic growth far more than many current tax reform proposals.

A typical day in the life of a content marketer is somewhat like this: get into work, log in, grab a cup of coffee and, on a good day, get straight down to business to create top trending content that grabs thousands of eyeballs. On a bad day, you’ll often find us tearing out our hair, trying to figure out what makes for content that people actually want to read. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The trick is to take off your marketing hat and think like a consumer while brainstorming for relevant content. This seems counter-intuitive, but if you take a step back, you’ll see that people really want to read about things they care about or more often than not: top trending topics. That is the (not so) secret behind creating content that converts.

Then there’s the small matter of finding content that’s relevant to your industry—and the near-constant influx of content on every social channel doesn’t always help matters. So, what do you do? More importantly, how do you ride the wave of a top trending topic before it starts trending? We all know serious content production can’t really happen overnight. In this blog, I’ll share three easy steps to identify trending content.

Step 1: Use Your Audience

The first step is to find out where your audience hangs out. Is it Reddit? Is it Twitter? Imgur? While looking for top trending content, it’s essential to bring all the knowledge you have about your audience to the table and use every bit of it. That’s what Asos did for their Winter 2012 campaign which won them a —one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon advertisers and marketers—and additionally, a cool £5m in sales. They were well aware that the process of “getting ready” was a big deal for their target audience and they harnessed this fact to draft a highly successful campaign.

We can’t all be Asos, but we definitely know where to look for information that can help us formulate campaigns that do wonders for our business.

There are several free social media monitoring tools online that you can use to find ideas for content such as Google Trends, RiteTag, and TweetDeck. At Talkwalker, we use our very own Free Social Search tool to identify trending topics that have the potential of becoming the next big thing for our target audience.

Let’s take a look at another brand, Anastasia Beverly Hills for example. This makeup brand has an outstanding social authority and a bunch of top trending hashtags for the makeup/cosmetics category. If I’m looking to find the next prominent hashtag or marketing campaign, I can do a quick search on my own hashtag, in this case: #anastasiabeverlyhills.

I can scroll down to related topics and identify a couple of emerging hashtags—in this case, #wakeupandmakeup and #makeupartist—and draft my next marketing campaign based on my findings. I can also target Instagram as my primary marketing channel because 97.5% of my social activity is happening there.

Voila! I have now outsourced my content brainstorming to my audience.

Step 2: Stay Relevant, Stay (Top) Trending

The most important thing to keep in mind when drafting a piece of content is relevance. It’s vital to understand the difference between what customers want to read and what we, as marketers, think they want to read. Lines get blurry after several rounds of editing which in the end produces content that doesn’t add value to the readers’ lives and most definitely doesn’t make it to the top trending category. Most readers really just want to read content that is useful—something they can apply in their daily lives or even better, their   Airbnb understood this and used it in their brilliant #livethere campaign from last year. They leveraged the fact that the millennial traveler doesn’t just want to tick things off their bucket lists—they want to experience a place like a local when they visit it.

Thus, Airbnb Experiences was born.

Note that Airbnb didn’t launch Experiences until last year—illustrating that timing (and relevance) really is everything.

Step 3: Keep it Simple

Content should be easily digestible. Period. You want to make sure that people don’t have to re-read sentences and paragraphs to make sense of what you’re trying to say. It works even better if you’re able to present your information in a relatable and humorous manner. You want your readers to be nodding along to your content as they read it because that’s what’s going to ensure that they keep reading till the end, and click on that CTA button you strategically placed. For a good example of this, take a page out of Kissmetrics’ book—not only is their blog content informative, but it’s also easy to understand and is genuinely useful for anyone who wants to learn more about marketing. They leverage the importance of segmenting and targeting your audience. Their content flows like a conversation, and unless you’re very, very sleepy, chances are you won’t stop reading, even though it’s long.

For an example of keeping it simple, that relates back to my first example for Anastasia Beverly Hills, something along the lines of a 2-3 minute #wakeupandmakeup brow challenge for make-up artists would be a good option.

Once you’ve figured out what the next big viral wave and top trending topic(s) could be and have designed your content and campaigns around it, it’s vital that you keep riding it until it dies down. This means outreach and influencer marketing should be added to your strategy as well. After all, content is only as good as the number of eyeballs it grabs, and a little help from influencers combined with lots of tracking and analysis doesn’t hurt.

Ultimately, good content and a high converting blog boil down to just two things: identifying top trending topics that your readers are talking about (or are likely to talk about shortly) and delivering crisp, informative content that resonates with them.

Do you have a formula for identifying trending topics? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

The post Three Steps to Identify Trending Content appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

While there have been significant strides in providing frontline clinicians with quality information, these clinicians still lack the tools they need to play an active role in controlling the costs of the care they provide. To date, only small steps have been taken at most health care systems (for example, clarifying the costs of specific tests during the test-ordering process), and new clinical analytics systems that offer better insights into costs and efficiency often aren’t integrated into day-to-day clinical care. Worse, discussions at health care organizations about how to increase “overall value” too often degenerate into conversations about cost reduction, with participants forgetting that delivering value means both improving outcomes and lowering costs.

In 2016 the Scottish National Health Service (NHS Scotland) piloted an approach to value improvement that took both cost and quality into account and turned the management of value into the basic task of the point-of-care manager. Value ceased to be a side initiative or something driven solely by top-level finance and executive leaders.

The “lean accounting” method for measuring real, unallocated costs used came from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and one of us (Brian). IHI had partnered with him to combine a version of lean accounting that had been used in manufacturing with a point-of-care management system.

The overall approach included three foundational elements:

• a simplified method to understand quality, cost, and workforce capacity on a weekly basis
• a visual management system to present and analyze this data regularly, engaging the entire team and linking measures to active, ongoing efforts to make improvements to cost and quality
• a daily, point-of-care communication method to support continuous improvement through practices such as huddles and staff coaching

The approach was pilot tested in two successive stages over a one-year period at Raigmore Hospital, the largest hospital in the Highlands region of Scotland. The methods were tested in a single respiratory medical unit in Stage 1, then implemented in four cardiac units in Stage 2, and are now being rolled out throughout the hospital in Stage 3. In each successive stage, results began to emerge within two to six months of initiation of testing. Early-stage planning is under way to introduce the methods in other regions in Scotland, beginning in 2018.

The following tools constitute the basic building blocks of the value-management system.

The box score. Point-of-care teams use a “box score” (see the example below) that brings together a parsimonious set of three categories of measures onto a single page:

1. Five or six performance measures (quality metrics such as length of stay or readmission rates) show unit-level performance against organization-level strategic goals.
2. Measures of staff capacity explicitly track direct care (time spent with the patient), indirect care (time spent on non-patient-facing tasks), and available staff time (the remainder).
3. Financial measures report variable costs broken out by a few major categories (including supplies, drugs, and staff) along with revenue and margin measures.

The clinical team works together with finance and quality-measurement staff to update this box score every week.

The visual management board. This links the box score to a small set of targeted improvement projects (see the example below). The board presents graphical displays (run charts) of key metrics derived from the box score, enabling frontline teams to monitor performance over time, identify key gaps in performance, and describe local project-based initiatives to improve cost or quality of the local system. Teams usually select five or six measures from their box score for further analysis. The team presents a run chart for the measure below the box score, a Pareto analysis showing key drivers of variation, and charters for projects to improve performance.

A routine, in-person reporting and communication approach. A management-communication approach is then used to integrate these tools into daily work and engage the local team in continuously tracking performance and implementing improvements to reduce costs, increase quality, and better utilize staff capacity.

Insight Center

This includes conducting brief daily team huddles and more thorough weekly huddles around the visual management board to update the box score, review measures (including the factors contributing to performance), discuss improvement projects, and address any barriers to progress. Together these tools and management approaches empower frontline teams to utilize insights from the continuous flow of data, logically prioritize the implementation of targeted initiatives, and deliver more sustainable improvements.

Implementation of the approach included coaching on the fundamentals of improvement work (plan-do-study-act methods), help in assembling the initial box score, coaching during initial weekly team huddles in front of the visual board, and advising on individual improvement projects flowing from the performance analysis. After an initial period, local coaching and facilitation capabilities were developed at Raigmore Hospital to facilitate the spread and scale-up of the approach system-wide.

Thus far, results are promising. The respiratory unit — the earliest pilot unit, which started work several months in advance of the others — has seen a reduction in patient falls (achieving the greatest number of patient days between falls ever on the ward during the project); improved staff satisfaction (with nearly all staff consistently self-reporting themselves as satisfied at work each day); and a 15.1% decline in cost per patient seen (see the exhibit below). Cost reductions were due to increases in productivity, along with reductions in drug waste and per diem nursing costs.

Other teams have also seen progress. The cardiac intensive unit has seen fewer inappropriate admissions — ensuring that high-intensity beds and resources are available for patients that truly need them. Another unit has eliminated hundreds of pounds in drug waste and changed its overall approach to stocking materials such as angioplasty balloons (for example, making cheaper versions more readily accessible to staff than more expensive versions). The cardiac catheterization lab has begun to reduce downtime periods when the lab was staffed but wasn’t operating (due to lack of physician availability or patients) by addressing demand for elective procedural services in the community. Finally, one medical unit has identified and begun to address high rates of falls, which resulted in increased length of stay and corresponding costs.

This testing in NHS Scotland has taught us several lessons about the approach to managing value in a busy health care environment. First, point-of-care leaders, if armed with information about costs and quality, can improve both.

Second, strong point-of-care leaders determine success or failure. Each team should have two leaders who take ownership of this work. At least one senior nurse, or a similar role, will need to ensure timely data updates and spearhead improvement efforts while working to engage other staff. Another leader should support the first leader, facilitating huddles when the other leader is absent.

Third, many health systems expect that a value-management system with cost information in close to real time will require a sophisticated data analytics capacity. We have not found this to be necessary. Sophisticated analytics usually overwhelms the capacity of the front line to make improvements. What is needed is actionable data: just enough information about cost, supplied in close to real time so that staff can act on the data and make improvements. Data that is two to three months old challenges human memory and makes useful change very difficult. Collaboration with data and financial staff can make weekly updates feasible without significant additional work. Automating the data collection and reporting is needed, however, to roll out the approach across the full hospital and ultimately across the entire health system.

Fourth, many clinical teams expect a focus on costs to alienate or demoralize staff and turn off physicians. We have not found this to be the case. In fact, staff in the initial units reported greater job satisfaction as they gained more control over their financial performance and were less subject to what they perceived as arbitrary austerity measures. Physician buy-in and support were obtained through a focus on improving clinical performance on the service units. That resulted in fewer falls, better adherence to guideline-based care, and fewer instances of patients being admitted to the wrong service units (for example, routine patients to intensive care, or surgical patients to a medical ward).

Fifth, executive buy-in means there should be an executive-level visual management board, box score, and huddles. This executive dashboard should draw from the unit-level visual management boards, creating a consistent and coherent system of performance management.

Above all, these methods offer point-of-care teams a powerful set of tools to identify trends, manage costs, increase efficiency, and better utilize staff capacity. The engaged teams at Raigmore Hospital have felt a new sense of empowerment since the introduction of this approach. Some participants say that without the value-improvement approach, they would never have had a clear understanding of how money is spent or an opportunity to do anything about it.

Leaders in the health system to which the acute hospital belongs agreed that one of the most significant benefits of the method included improved multidisciplinary communication and problem solving. “We have moved on from sterile debates about budget overspends based on out-of-date information to dynamic discussions about reducing next week’s costs based on this week’s information,” says Nick Kenton, the board-wide director of finance during the initial project roll-out.

Too often, value-improvement efforts start at a conceptual level in the organization or with sweeping austerity measures. While these steps may be effective at times, they come with consequences and may not be the swiftest or most sustainable solutions to financial pressures that are widely felt across the world’s health systems. The value-management methods described here have created sustainable systems that more broadly engage clinical staff, and they should serve as a foundational step as health care organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere work to deliver better care at a lower cost.

In sales fast is slow, and slow is fast. The central idea here is that moving faster than your client, putting the transaction above the relationship and their needs slows you down. So does skipping steps and doing sloppy work.

That said, there is no reason to take more time than is necessary to do anything. You do not benefit from taking longer than is necessary to create and win opportunities, and your clients do not receive greater value by your dragging out the process and preventing them from getting better results now.

If you can create new opportunities faster by spending more time prospecting, it makes sense to do more of that work now to pull those results forward in time. You gain nothing by taking more time to do what might be done in less, especially when it comes to building a pipeline.

If you can compress the sales cycle by controlling the process and gaining the necessary commitments without allowing that process to be slowed down by your lack of intention, then you move results forward in time for both you and your clients.

There is something else that you must do to pull results forward. You must be highly effective. You have to develop your mindset and skill sets to improve the work you do for and with your clients and prospects. You must develop the business acumen and situational knowledge to be more valuable to your clients, and to produce that value for them sooner, as early in the process as possible. You have to be someone who is trusted, and who can make recommendations that allow the people you serve to stay connected to you as you help them move forward to a better future state.

Most of all, you must be conscious of time. If you want to make a difference, you have less time available than you believe. It is enough, but only if you invest it wisely.

The post When to Move Fast appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Scott Galloway, professor of Marketing at NYU Stern and the author of "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google", explains how Amazon's "Type 2" investments are the key to its incredible success. Following is a transcript of the video.

Scott Galloway: So people ask what Amazon's core competence or advantage is, relative to the other members of the four and it comes down to storytelling. And that is Jeff Bezos' essential rap has not changed in 15 years and it's a pretty intoxicating visionary rap, where they're gonna invest massively across some consumer truisms that aren't perishable: value, convenience, selection, speed. 

And the marketplace keeps bidding up the stocks. As a result, they have access to cheaper capital than any company in modern history. Amazon can now borrow money for less than the cost of what China can borrow money. As a result, they are able to throw up more stuff against the wall than any other firms. If the phone doesn't work, if it fails, if auctions don't fail, it's a speed bump for them, whereas, other companies will probably be either put out of business or see their stock cut in half.

Some Plan B investments that had worked, they launched a company based on their own infrastructure and storage needs called "AWS" that now everyday, adds the entire capacity that they needed when they launched it for themselves internally, and is the number one share leader and what is the most profitable, fastest-growing business in tech to cloud with triple the share of the number two, Microsoft. This year, Amazon will spend $4.5 billion on original television content, second only to Netflix, who increased their budget to $2 billion when they heard Amazon's footsteps behind them. 

Amazon can go into non-core categories and show up and be dominant in record time because they have access to cheaper capital. Effectively, this company is playing unfair and winning.

Join the conversation about this story »

Whenever a potential client tells me that they believe their sales people have a “closing” problem, I can be pretty confident that the problem actually lies elsewhere. There are a bunch of reasons why the macho “always be closing” mantra no longer works in B2B sales.

Buyers are far more sophisticated nowadays – and they are very alert to any attempts to manipulate them or to bounce them into a decision that they are not ready to make. There are a number of factors behind this, not least of which that significant buying decisions typically require the consent of a number of actively engaged stakeholders, and not just a single decision-maker.

And if the heroic close relies on a one-off, never-to-be-repeated offer, most buyers believe that the same offer (or a better one) is likely to be available next quarter, as well. They will make their decision in a timeframe that suits them, and not that of an increasingly desperate sales person…

That’s why most “closing problems” have their roots far earlier in the sales process, and often reflect a series of missed opportunities to secure their commitment to move forward with us to the next stage in their buying decision process.

MOST "CLOSING PROBLEMS" ARE ACTUALLY OPENING PROBLEMS

In my experience, most failures to close a winnable opportunity are rooted in how the sales person opens the conversation with the prospect, how they qualify them, and how they seek to advance the opportunity from stage to stage.

I want to give credit to Anthony Iannarino for developing this theme in his excellent “The Lost Art of Closing”, in which he identifies that successful sales outcomes are usually the consequence of a series of progressive commitments on the part of the prospect.

AVOIDING AGREEABLE MEETINGS

How many times have you asked one of your sales people how their latest meeting with a prospective customer went, and heard the response that they had a “good meeting” – but when you probe them, you find that:

• The customer did not actually commit to do anything new or different as a result of the meeting
• The sales person could not identify a single piece of learning that might cause them to review their deal strategy
• Every one of the agreed actions (assuming there were any) were things that the sales person agreed to do
• At least the sales person wasn’t thrown out of the prospect’s office or the call wasn’t summarily terminated by the prospect

It’s hard to justify the conclusion that these sorts of meetings are typically anything other than a horribly unproductive waste of both the sales person and the customer’s time.

COMMITTING VALUABLE RESOURCES

Our goal – in every customer interaction – must surely be to emerge with the customer having agreed to make a commitment, no matter how small, that requires them to expend some valuable resource, whether it be their time, information, or their political capital.

And if we can’t achieve that – if we can’t be confident that a genuine exchange of value has taken place – surely we should seriously requalify whether both we and our customer should continue to pursue the opportunity.

Successful sales processes – and effective buying processes – result from a series of intentional commitments on the part of both the prospective customer and the sales person that advance both the buying process and the sales process.

NO COMMITMENT = NO PROGRESS (AND MAYBE NO DEAL)

If these commitments are not forthcoming, we should be very concerned. If our current contact is not able to make a meaningful commitment, it is likely to mean that they are not someone who can drive the project forward within their own organisation.

If they are unwilling to commit their time, it is likely that they do not regard the issue as being critical or that they do not regard us as a credible solution. If they are not prepared to introduce us to other stakeholders, they are probably either not in control or are over-controlling.

If they are not prepared to revise their thinking about what a good solution would look like in the light of the insights we have brought to them, they are likely to be either going through the motions or are treating us as “column fodder” against an already established preference.

THE POWER OF INCREMENTAL COMMITMENTS

We’re not going to turn this sort of situation around with a heroic close. By far the best way of closing a deal is for the close itself to be the cumulative consequence of a series of incremental commitments on the part of our prospective customer.

Next time you review the outcome of a sales conversation, I urge you to apply the test of “what valuable commitment did our prospect actually commit to do as a result of this interaction (and did they actually follow through)?”

Having nothing more than an agreeable conversation fails this test. Emerging with an unbalanced series of actions that are all down to us fails this test. Not learning anything that causes us to refine our opportunity strategy fails the test.

WHAT'S YOUR BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME?

Now here’s the unfortunate thing – most sales interactions fail this test. It might be permissible for the occasional interaction to be no more than an agreeable conversation. But if the majority follow this pattern, it’s an inexcusable waste of everyone’s time.

So here’s what I urge you to do: before every significant prospective customer interaction, determine what - as a best possible outcome - you want them to commit to do. Be sure to have a fall-back, less onerous commitment in reserve.

And make sure that you earn the right to obtain that commitment from them by sharing something that is likely to be of value to them upfront. That way, you’ll have a lot fewer merely “agreeable” conversations, and many more effective ones.

And you won’t have to rely on heroic closes…

IF YOU LIKE THIS, I'M SURE YOU'LL ALSO LIKE...

• Revisiting the Buyer's Journey
• The Fundamental Principles of Value-Based Selling
• Sell the Difference!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, home of the Value Selling System®. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now works with a growing client base of tech-based B2B-focused high-growth businesses, enabling them to systematically establish their distinctive business value in every customer interaction.

The fastest, surest way to nail your quarterly number is iterative testing and learning.

Consider last quarter’s deal outcomes, for example. That’s fresh data just begging to be put to good use, and Win/Loss Analysis is the best way to do it.

In this article, I offer 24 ways to ace your Win/Loss — so you increase conversion from first touch to close by learning from last quarter’s deal outcomes.

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

― Warren Buffett

Think Ahead

First, decide which deal type is the highest priority for Win/Loss analysis, how you’ll measure the improvement (eg win rate, or other metric) there, and which deal type is the next highest priority.

1. Start at the end: Is your goal increased win rate overall, or in one high priority target market (eg enterprise buyers), or against a key competitor? Keep this desired outcome in mind as you decide which decision makers to recruit, what to discuss with them, and which internal stakeholders should be involved.

2. Measure the results: Benchmarks for Win/Loss Analysis are strong; Gartner analyst Todd Berkowitz found “up to 50% improvement in win rates.” But because running a Win/Loss is a significant part-time effort over 6-8 weeks, I recommend measuring and reporting your own cost/benefit. Set a goal, decide what metric (eg SQLs, win rate, etc) you’ll use to measure results, and schedule a meeting a few months out to present the results.

3. Win/Loss Analysis works best when it’s iterative: Revise your program based on the results you achieve, and opportunities to improve win rate in other deal types. In fast moving technology markets, I recommend using the interview technique I describe below to get a yearly baseline, and then digging into your CRM quarterly to update the more dynamic data (eg competitive presence, competitive win rate, buyer feedback on new features you introduce, etc).

Recruiting Decision Makers

Recruiting decision makers is the wildcard, so I give it a wide berth (2-4 weeks) in my targeted 6-8 week project schedule.

1. Begin by listing the key characteristics of the decision makers you’re targeting: Decision makers in twenty deals (10 won, 10 lost) that have closed in the past 90 days is a good starting point. While it’s sometimes necessary to go back further than 90 days, interviews will be less vibrant, as the buying experience isn’t fresh. When your goal is more specific than increasing overall win rate, for example increasing win rate in the enterprise segment or against a key competitor, include those criteria.

2. Advanced “stage” of discussion is important to include in your criteria for Closed-Lost participants: This ensures the participant was seriously interested and can provide detailed feedback from the evaluation. Opportunity stage definitions vary, but I think a good rule of thumb is to select deals that at least made it to the point of proposal being submitted.

3. The vast majority of clients will appreciate your interest, with the only exception being when you’ve exhausted their goodwill with too many requests for feedback, references, etc: I begin recruiting with a very short email (2-3 sentences), describing our goal of learning from the buyer experience and requesting participation. Win/Loss interviews are typically 30 minutes long, by phone, so that’s the ask. As a third-party consultant, I ask a company executive to send the first email, to establish my bona fides.

4. Since decision makers in Closed-Lost deals will be harder to recruit, begin with them. My intro email to these decision makers includes two inducements. I clarify that the interview’s purpose is to learn and improve the buyer experience; it is not sales related. I also offer an incentive, in the form of a gift card or donation to a charity of the participant’s choosing. I offered Engineering decision makers $100 for a 30 minute interview on a recent project.

5. Perseverance pays off. Successful recruiting typically requires multiple touches. Calling shortly after emailing, or vice versa, is helpful, even though it seems overbearing. I email each prospective participant up to 3 times, changing subject line and body each time. A recruiter I’ve worked with suggested this, and it works.

6. Use a research recruiter. [Shortcut!] Consider contracting with a research recruiter to email and schedule participants. This offloads the two most time consuming pieces of the recruiting process. A recruiter will cost you $250 per person recruited, give or take.

Interviewing Decision Makers

The topic of a Win/Loss interview is the buyer experience, everything from the first thought of switching products to the day a deal was signed is fair game.

1. While the list of potential topics is long, cap the interview at 30 minutes. For a product sold to Engineering management, I covered topics such as company demographics (eg legacy solution type, development methodology, release cadence); trigger of the evaluation (eg, who suggested making a change and why, what solution was suggested, stakeholder reactions); how new solutions were discovered, and the initial reactions to them; how solutions were evaluated (eg, pros and cons; price and pricing model; the roles and input of others on the eval team); the solution chosen and why.

2. As a general rule, I believe it’s particularly important to dig into trigger. Buyers are busy like everyone else, and have usually been dealing with the challenges of the status quo setup for a while. Why is the buyer spending time talking to you now? Clearly you want to identify the trigger patterns in your deals, to target and qualify in opportunities containing triggers you most often win, and preferably close fastest.

3. As I plan how deep to go into each topic during the 30 minute call with each decision maker, I find it helpful to consider how a Win/Loss will be operationalized. For example, if we’ll be using the Win/Loss findings to update a Buyer Persona, I’ll want to review the current Persona, and consider whether each of its topics should be included in the interview.

4. Write an interview script, or “discussion guide.” A discussion guide ensures interviews stay on track and on time, cover all essential topics, and questions are phrased in consistent language. Rehearse it, tracking the time it requires, to ensure you can cover everything in the allotted time.

5. Think of yourself as a documentary filmmaker. Having a filmmaker mindset helps as you write the interview script, and introduce the interview that way to buyers. I’ve begun using this approach and find it quickly puts participants at ease with sharing detailed information. I picked up this “we’re filming a documentary” metaphor from Bob Moesta, one of the creators of Jobs To Be Done.

6. Use the Jobs To Be Done timeline to visualize the events leading to a purchase decision. I use the stages in the JTBD timeline (eg, Passive Looking, Active Looking, Deciding) to frame my interviews and discussion guide.

7. Benchmark the buying experience. For the solution ultimately purchased, I ask each decision maker to rate her satisfaction with the buying experience. The average customer satisfaction (CSAT) rating for competing solutions, as well as ratings for the “no decision” case, provide built-in benchmarks for our own buying experience. I also ask decision makers why a rating was chosen, and what could be improved.

8. Find out what’s causing those lost decisions. In a 2016 survey of 675 companies, CSO Insights found that 23.8% of opportunities being forecast resulted in no decision. This amounts to a lot of lost time. When you find “no decision” outcomes in Win/Loss interviews, dig in to understand why. By enabling SDRs and Account Reps to spot these opportunities and potentially qualify them out, they’re better able to allocate their time. In my projects, I’ve found a common cause is a weak trigger to the evaluation, but “no decision” outcomes can also be caused by internal resistance and insufficient risk/reward.

9. Record your interviews and get transcripts. On a Mac, use Apple’s free QuickTime Player to record VoIP (eg Skype, Google Voice) and landline calls. To get the audio into my Mac from a landline phone, I use an iMic and Sandman’s Recording Adapter. For transcripts, TranscribeMe’s First Draft service is $0.79 per audio minute, and I’ve found rates as low as $0.33 per audio minute using Upwork.

10. Take notes! I use a piece of scratch paper to scribble quick notes during each call that I can reference later in the call.

Analyzing Data & Presenting Findings

Code and count. For each major topic discussed during the Win/Loss interview (eg, triggers, competitors evaluated, pricing), I recommend a code and count method to analyze the data.

1. Find the main themes in buyers’ responses to each topic. Begin by reviewing a sample of the responses on a topic to identify the main themes and give each a name (eg, “Recent change in Dev/Eng”). Then review all the interview transcripts to code each response. Note that responses can be coded to more than one theme. Finally, count the number of decision makers who used each theme. Clearly, using a spreadsheet makes it much faster to code and count the data.

2. Build a win-loss record for each theme. Count the number of times each theme has appeared in won deals and and the number of time in lost deals. For example, you may find a 7-1 record for deals that included the trigger “Recent change in Dev/Eng.” Clearly a trigger that’s associated with winning 7 of 8 deals is something you want to factor into your list building, and update your sales qualification questions to flag these high likelihood buyers.

3. Use a SWOT diagram to summarize your findings, especially competitive opportunities and threats, or in a market segment.

4. Schedule a Buyer Workshop. Use a workshop to engage sales and marketing stakeholders in their own analysis/synthesis of the buyer data, before presenting the project lead’s analysis. Analysis by an expert group has been proven more accurate than analysis by an individual expert. The group methodology also gives participants ownership of the findings and their operationalization. In my Win/Loss projects, I use affinity diagramming, also known as the KJ Method.

5. Operationalize the Win/Loss analysis, while it’s top of mind. Consider adding this to the agenda of your Buyer Workshop group, too. Create rough drafts of new tools or update existing ones.

Something we missed? Let us know how you run win/loss interviews in the comments section below.

The post 24 Tips for a Winning Win / Loss Analysis appeared first on OpenView Labs.

What’s your sales team’s current RFP close rate? Whether or not it’s as high as you’d like, you may be surprised to hear that Ganesh Shankar of RFPIO states that “the common win rate for RFPs is less than 5%.”

Following these numbers, for every 20 proposals the average vendor sends, only one will be successful. And with many companies investing 20-40 hours into each RFP response, that’s a lot of wasted time and money.

For example, suppose you have an Inside Technical Sales Rep completing RFPs for your team, and this rep earns a salary of 50 thousand dollars annually (roughly equivalent to 24 dollars per hour).

If the average size of your proposals is 25 thousand dollars and you successfully close one proposal out of 20, you’ve gained 25 thousand dollars in net new business. But you’ve also lost an average of 30 hours for each of the other 19 proposals. 

At an average hourly rate of 24 dollars, that’s a loss of 13,680 dollars (before taking into account opportunity costs, overhead and other variables).

Though it’s unlikely you’ll achieve a one-hundred percent closed-won rate, reducing the number of unsuccessful proposals sent saves your company both time and money.

In this article you will find a list of suggestions and best practices to help Sales Leaders improve their sales team’s RFP close rates.

Have a “Go/No-Go” Opt-Out Point

Here’s a really simple way to improve your RFP close rate: only apply to projects you’re likely to get.

Imagine a batch of 20 RFPs. In it, maybe five will be a good fit for your company. The other 15 are either bad opportunities or projects you’d have to stretch to complete, in terms of project fit or resources required to submit an RFP.

• If you apply to all 20 and win one, your close rate will be 5%.
• If you weed out the 15 that aren’t a good fit and win one of the remaining five, your close rate will be 20%.

Not only have you upped your close rate, you’ve also saved all the time and money you would have wasted on inappropriate proposals.

Adam Boyd, in a LinkedIn Pulse article, describes it this way:

“Not all RFPs are created equal, and you don’t have an equal shot at winning them all. Know when to say, ‘This isn’t in our wheelhouse, and is too expensive a use of time to pursue.”

For example:

• If you apply to all 20 and win one:
  Your close rate will be 5 percent and you’ve earned 25 thousand dollars in net new business. You will have invested 600 hours (30 hours per RFP) and 14,440 dollars (24 dollars per hour). Your RFP productivity rate (total new business divided by amount of work hours) is 42 dollars per hour.
  
• If you weed out the 15 unfit proposals, apply for five and win one:
  Your close rate will be 20 percent and you’ve earned 25 thousand dollars in net new business. You will have invested 150 hours and 3,600 dollars. Because you were more selective, you RFP productivity rate is now $166.67 per hour.

Developing an in-house checklist or scoring system for evaluating RFP opportunities can help you determine where your opt-out point lies. Bob Lohfeld, CEO of Lohfeld Consulting Group, suggests asking the following seven questions to filter RFPs accordingly:

1. Do we understand the customer’s mission and the work to be performed?
2. Do we have a solution that will help the customer achieve its mission and contract objectives?
3. Do we have a relationship with this customer through meetings or prior contract performance?
4. Do we know who we are competing against and can we beat them?
5. Do we have a teaming strategy and can we get the right subcontractors?
6. Do we know what price we need to bid to win and can we achieve it profitably?
7. Do we have a compelling win strategy?

If you’re concerned about missing out on potentially-good projects, consider the advice of Sales Benchmark Index’s Principal, John Auer:

“In some cases, opting-out can actually be a more effective differentiator than participating in the RFP.  For example, prospects may show their hand and confess they were looking forward to your proposal. If this is the case, you’ve just learned a valuable piece of information that could very well result in a win.”

If you don’t receive such a confession, you’ve saved time; but if you do, you’ve gained valuable insight into whether or not the RFP will be an effective time investment. It’s a win-win.

Work from a Proposal Template

As you pare down the number of RFPs you’re actually responding to, you can save even more time by developing a proposal template. This will minimize the amount of time you spend “reinventing the wheel” to develop every response.

You won’t be able to anticipate every Q&A you’ll encounter ahead of time. But developing stock copy for your executive summary and adding new Q&A responses to a central document – which you can draw from again in the future – can trim huge amounts of time off your RFP process.

For example, working from a template cuts the average time required to complete and submit a proposal from 30 hours per RFP to 10 hours. This time decrease would increase your RFP productivity rate to 500 dollars per hour (based on the metrics provided at the beginning of the article.

To calculate your RFP productivity rate, use the formula below:

Net new business amount / (number of RFPs x total hours worked)

Use a Non-Traditional Response Process

That said, just because you’re working from an RFP proposal template doesn’t mean your responses have to come across as formulaic. A non-traditional response process can minimize the burden of RFP completion on your team members, while also helping your company stand out from other applicants.

According to Mike Drapeau, Partner at Sales Benchmark Index:

“Think George Costanza. Remember the episode when he did the opposite of everything his instinct was telling him to do and the results were off the charts? That is the approach you should use in developing your RFP strategy. Conventional wisdom is dead wrong.

So what does a non-traditional response process look like? Possible ideas include:

• A highly-abbreviated executive summary section that eliminates corporate navel-gazing in favor of prioritizing value statements targeted to recipients.
• Calling out requirements that are missing from the RFP (likely because they were overlooked by a procurement committee) to quickly establish expertise.
• Offering extremely-detailed Q&A responses that are likely to exceed competitors’ proposals and impress companies with their comprehensive nature.

Another non-traditional RFP response option comes from Board Studios, which offers three suggestions for incorporating rich media into your RFPs:

• Create a simple mini-site that shows off your USP and answers key questions.
• Use infographics or professionally-designed process-flow images in your proposals.
• Produce an explainer video in lieu of your executive summary.

Some industries – tech companies, for example, versus more staid banking and legal services – may be more receptive to the use of new media than others. But don’t be afraid to experiment by pushing boundaries. Standing out may be enough to get your proposal the close read it wouldn’t otherwise receive.

Think about how proposals are typically handled in your industry, and then – like George Costanza – consider doing the opposite.

Build Relationships Before RFP Responses

In most cases, you aren’t allowed to contact company representatives to make a personal appeal during the RFP process. That’s why it’s important that you continually invest in expanding your network before the process begins.

Companies need to know who you are before they receive your proposal. According to data gathered by The Seibert Group, 40 percent of your success comes down to your pre-RFP sales efforts:

“You must be actively selling to the buyer in the 12 to 18 months before the RFP is released. If they don’t know you before the RFP, your chances of winning are low.”

In practice, this means actively networking with future prospects, using both direct and indirect approaches. Cold calls and an active presence at industry events are important, but you may also find it helpful to use content marketing, social media marketing and other campaigns to build thought leadership around your company.  

Stephanie Czajka, Project Manager at the Weidert Group, suggests that:

“The more you’re already present in prospects’ eyes because of your content, the more your company will be included on buyers’ “short lists.” In digital terms, you can think about this as a search process. When prospects are looking for answers to their questions related to your business, they’ll query Google, and if your content article shows up, then they’re more likely to read about you, and you’re more likely to be included on their short list.”

Further, Czajka argues, transforming your company into a respected thought leader through proper inbound marketing may remove the RFP from the equation entirely. “In cases where an RFP is optional, the buyer will naturally move to the subjective choice of a trusted advisor or resource.”

Simply put, if a buyer needs a vendor but decides not to proceed with the RFP process, the thought leadership you’ve built around your brand will make you a natural candidate to fill the spot.

Monitor Your RFP Success Rate

Regardless of which of the above strategies you choose to implement, one of the best things your sales team can do is monitor the metrics surrounding your RFP process.

Specific variables to track include:

• Amount of RFPs received
• Number of RFPs responded to vs. opted-out of
• Number of RFPs closed
• Value of closed RFPs vs. value of unsuccessful RFPs
• Average amount of time required to complete RFPs

The data you gather here can play a role in improving your close rate, if you use it effectively.

Suppose you notice that from Q1 to Q2, your number of closed-won projects fell from 30 to 20. If, at the same time, you’ve tracked the total number of hours invested into each proposal and found that it too decreased from 20 hours per RFP to 10 hours, this is a signal that you need to invest more time into your proposal process.

Proposal analytics programs may be useful in identifying these types of trends. But even choosing to run your calculations by hand will put you ahead of competitors who aren’t as invested in monitoring their RFP metrics.

Be Smart About RFPs to Boost Your Close Rate

Success with RFPs comes down to approaching the process more thoughtfully than your competitors.

Use the data at hand to your advantage as you experiment with non-traditional RFP strategies and ongoing networking. Your 5% or less close rate will quickly become a thing of the past.

The post How to Improve Your Sales Team’s RFP Close Rate appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Unique Value Proposition

The unique value proposition (UVP) of a company should be exactly what it sounds like. The first thing the public sees and learns about your brand.

These short, but effective statements will guide both your customers and your team to understand the core values of your company. The benefits of having a highly refined UVP go beyond sales, and become something that drives an organization to future success.

Not that these phrases don’t have lengthier definitions, but this post is to help you figure out your unique value and convey it as a proposition.

Another post goes over brand positioning (i.e. Moore’s Positioning), essentially, whittling down your unique value proposition into one memorable dynamite statement.

But a unique value proposition does have to convey something powerful in a short amount of time.

The clever genius of each of them is that they don’t actually sell the products directly. They sell action, better quality of life, magic/nostalgia/adventure, and refreshing feelings (respectively).

The “textbook” definition of our term in question is:

Unique Value Proposition (also called Unique Selling Proposition): The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition. (Source)

Frankly, we’re not sure it’s good enough. If you take a look at the real life examples we will provide and the definition, something is missing — the consumer!

If you’re trying to sell something, that means that someone has to be buying. That’s exactly what Walmart, Disney and the rest of the big companies know. They all make revenue from things like cheap generic products and high-priced admission tickets.

But they sell things like value (Walmart) and magic (Disney). Making your potential clients a key element of your UVP.

Now, let’s get into the steps for creating yours.

“Your customers are the judge, jury, and executioner of your value proposition. They will be merciless if you don’t find fit!” — Alexander Osterwalder

Step One: List Off ALL of the Benefits/Functions of Your Product

You know your product(s) best and it’s time to list it all out. Get it all on the table.

You won’t necessarily convey everything to the market. In fact, you’re likely not going to show many of these positives at all.

Picture a beautiful sculpture.

It all starts with a bulk product. A lump of clay, a block of wood, or some other medium that will be taken from and tweaked until only the intended result remains. All of your benefits may be the starting point, but there is a work of art that lies beneath that will hit the eyes of your prospects in a way that helps you get them to buy.

To be honest, there isn’t much we can teach you here. That said there is a warning.

Warning: Make sure that you don’t list any of your features as more or less important in this phase. It’s your customer base that should determine which parts of your offerings they like best.

Once your personal list is complete, include the team to get a large all-encompassing list, then proceed.

Step Two: Consider Your Buyers

As a B2B company, the primary factor in understanding your buyers is to know which companies are likely to become clients. Next, you’ll need to know who it is that makes the decision within those companies.

There are two things you’ll need to look at to get familiar with your buyers.

1. Firmographics: These are things that help you identify the right company to convey your unique value. Things like: industry, company size, revenue, geography.
2. Demographics: These attributes belong to the decision makers within the organizations that fit your firmographic picture. Things like age, gender, title, and responsibilities.

The Best Place to Find this Data

So many guides exist on finding your ideal buyers and niching down. Most of them are pretty good. But they all have one thing in common that is the best (and potentially only) tip to finding your best clients.

Look at your current buyers.

If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, you may have a pool of clients to give you some insight into how you sell and how people buy. Call them and find a few things out, including:

• Which customers were easy to sell? Why?
• Have any clients referred you to their colleagues? Why?
• Who seems to enjoy your work the most and have the fewest complaints?

Once you have a decent amount of knowledge, it’s time to pick out the attributes (firmographics and demographics) that these great clients have in common.

Doing this should give you a couple of target industries. Now you’ll have the inspiration to help you sculpt that clay into your UVP.

Notice: Our second module was a detailed look at developing an ideal customer profile. For a complete “how-to” please refer back to this section of the course.

Step Three: Find the Most Useful Benefits/Functions (for Your Buyers)

The clay is on the turning wheel and your ideal buyer is in your mind to help you be inspired. It’s time to start cutting away.

Break out that huge list of features along with your new client profiles and buyer personas. It doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but there could be a few benefits that you thought were “key” which may not be on the top of the list of your buyers.

Reminder: This is why you need to get on the phone with buyers and ask plainly why they bought. They’ll tell you and it may be a shocker.

Uber’s Unique Value

We all know that Uber is disrupting the Taxi industry, but if you look closely, that’s not really their competition. What are they competing with?

Misconception.

From the site’s web copy, we see a story of what their ideal clients are concerned with and it’s not a fight against the machine of Taxis. It’s about proving their value and convenience. There are tons of benefits and cool things about getting an Uber.

• Be honest, it’s cool. You want to ride up somewhere in a car with a personal driver.
• Great for special occasions, too. Weddings, parties, etc…
• A fantastic alternative to drunk driving. There have been studies that prove and disprove this, but it’s a way safer bet to get an Uber.

But, these aren’t the reasons why people download the app. All the pages of the site tell the story of speed, ease, and value.

Uber UVP #1: Hassle-Free and Fast Riding

Uber UVP #2: Affordable Pricing

Moreover, the site is very focused on these two points. Here’s a screenshot of the homepage, just below the fold.

Key Takeaway

Uber-Focused (pun intended): The site is streamlined, yet large. If you want to find intricate details about the company, you’re going to have to go to the footer menu (which is quite large). Other than that, it’s focused on those two UVPs.

Not every single positive attribute of their brand and service.

Step Four: Fine Tune and Cut it Down

There’s a lot of clay on the ground by now, but there’s still too much left on your masterpiece UVP.

Now, it’s time to use finer tools and begin to sculpt the details of your unique value proposition in a way that communicates its worth to your target audience.

Essentially, you’re trying to get it down to one good paragraph. And we don’t mean, “Meh, that’ll work.”

It has to be what your company does for its customers summarized in a way that makes people understand the brand in a few short sentences. Doing this will dramatically improve the buying cycle and the power of the sales team.

Moreover, it’s the UVP that will impact many future decisions including:

• Website Copy: Expanding that paragraph where necessary to explain things further.
• Product Updates: Once you understand how your brand intersects with its customers, changes become easier to see and implement (also more successful).
• New Products/Services: Similar to updates, entirely new products, features, and services can increase your company’s revenue with a good UVP understanding.

Just take a look at the homepage copy of Uber (screenshot below). A few short paragraphs that convey the two biggest sales points of the company — convenience and affordability.

Here are the ways to fine-tune your own research into a smooth UVP statement.

Multiple Drafts, Multiple People

You’ll likely have a lot of movement early on. Deciding which personas to target, which of their pains to speak to, and how to convey those things in as little language as possible. That’s perfectly ok!

It’s a fluid process.

Have multiple members of your team come up with multiple drafts. Piece together the most effective language and have a few different versions to split test over time. Testing can happen through email marketing (checking the response), web copy, or even in your sales presentations.

Ask for Honest Feedback from Colleagues and Customers

Send your top 3 options to colleagues, people in your mastermind, and even your current customers to see how it hits them. It’s important to get input and feedback at every stage of this process.

If you’re relying on your own intuition and not research, there is no way to forecast results.

Those in similar industries or who use the products will be able to provide feedback from a place of experience. Use it.

Hire a Copywriter

Once you have your 2-3 versions of your unique value proposition, it may be time to bring in some help. A copywriter isn’t going to know which features your customers like most, but if you’ve done this research, a skilled wordsmith will be able to convey it in a way that makes people feel the way you want them to about your products/brand.

If you’re bootstrapping it’s not 100% necessary, but it’s not a waste of money to pay a qualified, well-referenced copywriter to really make your value stand out.

Step Five: Make a Promise

Promises are the power of the proposition. They are infused throughout our Uber example. Even statements like, “Always On, Always Available” are promises themselves.

In fact, it’s impossible to have an effective UVP without promising your prospects that you can accomplish the things that make you unique. It’s a huge key to the level of influence you have on prospects.

Let’s look at the three styles of promise in Uber’s unique value proposition language.

Matter of Fact

“One tap and a car comes directly to you. Hop in—your driver knows exactly where to go. And when you get there, just step out. Payment is completely seamless.”

Just tell them what they’ll get when using your stuff. Don’t preface it, don’t explain yourself, just say it. This copy reads like a bullet-pointed list, but it conveys the value of their brand so well. It’s an extended version of the next type of promise.

Concise

“Tap a Button, Get a Ride”

This is the kind of statement that sells to those who don’t like to waste time. There really isn’t much more you need to stay. It’s this statement that falls into the “Moore’s Positioning” level, but that’s another post.

Bold

But what if we don’t have a driver? What if it takes them 15 minutes to get there? What if, what if?

These are a few of the things you may have considered when you read this very bold promise. Sure, there’s a risk that someone will have an unrealistic expectation in their head about this promise and never use the service again.

That said, this does bring up an important point about your promises. Make sure you account for them.

Uber has everything tracked so well that you can see who your driver is, where they are, and how long it will take them to get to you. So, if a user taps that button, they’ll be “in the know”. It’s not like ordering a pizza and then getting the old “30 minutes to an hour”.

Uber lets users be as informed as they want to be, which helps them make such a bold promise.

Ensure that you can do the same with your promises and be bold.

Are You Unique Enough Yet?

Every company is unique. It’s just that most don’t do a good enough job of conveying their differences and finding a core group of clients to appreciate their value.

If you follow the steps outlined in this post, your unique value proposition will emerge. You can then refine this as you go and exploit it to really take your messaging to the next level.

What’s your unique value proposition? Let us know in the comments or on social! We’d love to hear it.

Much like stats are the key to understanding a team’s performance in baseball, sales statistics can unlock your sales team’s potential. In my career, I’ve learned that the most effective sales strategies are built on understanding market dynamics and current trends.

Staying informed about key sales statistics is crucial for top-performing salespeople to prospect effectively, conduct thorough research, engage in well-received outreach, and improve their conversion rates.

I’ve compiled 94 essential sales statistics to help you achieve a higher success rate in 2024, including great insights from a HubSpot survey of over 1,400 global sales reps, managers, and leaders.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Sales Prospecting Statistics
• Sales Follow-Up Statistics
• Sales Closing Statistics
• Inside Sales Stats
• Sales Email Statistics
• Sales Call Statistics
• Sales Performance Statistics
• Sales Career Statistics
• Sales Technology Statistics
• Remote Sales Statistics

Sales Prospecting Statistics

Sometimes, finding prospects is the hardest part of sales for new sales reps. I always recommend that reps start building a network to help them find more leads. Prospecting is where the work starts, whether through referrals, cold calling, or social selling.

1. Most prospects (96%) research companies and products before engaging with a sales representative (HubSpot).

2. 71% of prospects prefer independent research over interacting with a salesperson (HubSpot).

3. 63% of sales professionals conduct cold outreach (HubSpot).

4. 37% of sales representatives produce the most leads from phone calls during cold outreach (HubSpot).

5. 72% of sales reps use social media to find new prospects, with Facebook (38%), Instagram (31%), and YouTube (29%) being the most used channels (HubSpot).

Sales Follow-Up Statistics

Reps often hear, “You’ll never make a sale if you don’t ask for the sale,” on the first day of sales training. Follow-up and asking for the sale is vital for every salesperson. Let’s look at the good and bad of sales follow-up statistics.

6. 82% of sales professionals see building strong relationships as the most crucial and rewarding aspect of the sales process (HubSpot).

7. 36% of sales managers think follow-ups sent to high-quality leads is the most important tracking metric (HubSpot).

8. 30% of sales managers consider the number of proposals sent the most important productivity metric (HubSpot).

9. 32% of sales managers count emails sent as their most crucial productivity metric (HubSpot).

10. 60% of customers reject an offer four times before buying (Invesp).

11. 80% of successful sales take five or more follow-up calls (Invesp).

12. Nearly half of all salespeople (48%) never make any follow-up attempts (Invesp).

13. 44% of salespeople give up after a single follow-up attempt (Invesp).

14. The first follow-up email can increase reply rates by an impressive 49% (Belkins).

15. The ideal number of follow-ups for optimal results in a B2B outreach campaign is two emails (Belkins).

16. Pausing for 2 and 5 days before sending a follow-up to a cold email yields the best outcomes (Belkins).

17. Cold email outreach campaigns using three email rounds typically generate the highest reply rates, averaging 9.2% (Belkins).

Sales Closing Statistics

Over the years, I’ve learned that personalizing customer interactions heavily influences buying decisions and response rates. Improving the quality of interactions will boost your closing rates.

18. The average sales close rate in 2023 was 29% (HubSpot).

19. The average sales win rate in 2023 was 21% (HubSpot).

20. The median deal size in 2023 was $4,000 (HubSpot).

21. The top methods for building rapport on a sales call are being attentive and engaged (38%), finding common ground (29%), and researching the prospect before calling (25%) (HubSpot).

22. 42% of B2B sales pros say researching a prospect's company to determine its challenges and opportunities is the most effective way to make the sale (HubSpot).

23. 45% of sales reps attempt to up-sell the prospect, with understanding the prospect's needs and goals being the most effective closing strategy (31%) (HubSpot).

24. 48% of sales professionals offer free options to prospects, with a free trial being most effective for conversions (50%) (HubSpot).

25. 25% of sales professionals say social media content helps them win the most deals (HubSpot).

Inside Sales Stats

No one wants a modern-day boiler room with unrealistic sales quotas, but your sales staff must be actively engaged in efficient selling techniques. With multiple decision-makers involved in most sales (especially with B2B buyers), you can’t afford to get stuck in neverending games of voicemail tag. Your team needs to streamline its sales process.

Image Source

26. Sales representatives dedicate only two hours daily to active selling (HubSpot).

27. Administrative tasks take up an hour of sales representatives’ time daily (HubSpot).

28. On average, five decision-makers are involved in every sale (HubSpot).

29. 62% of sales professionals believe their organizations are taking fewer risks in 2023 compared to 2022 (HubSpot).

30. 70% of sales professionals reported budgets were under greater scrutiny in 2023 (HubSpot).

31. 28% of sales professionals say lengthy sales processes are the primary reason for prospects backing out of deals (HubSpot).

32. 72% of company revenue is generated from existing customers, while 28% comes from new customers (HubSpot).

33. 24% of high-performing sales teams emphasize a culture of trust among representatives, compared to only 13% of underperforming teams (HubSpot).

34. 52% of sales professionals utilize sales enablement content, and 79% consider it crucial for closing deals (HubSpot).

35. Sales professionals incorporating sales enablement content in their approach are 58% more likely to exceed their targets (HubSpot).

36. Only 30% of sales professionals believe their sales and marketing teams are closely aligned within their company (HubSpot).

37. Just 34% of prospects are very knowledgeable about the company the sales professional represents (HubSpot).

38. Fewer than a third, 32%, of prospects are very knowledgeable about the company’s products and services (HubSpot).

39. Only 25% of prospects do significant research before taking a sales call (HubSpot).

40. 56% of sales professionals believe prospects will use generative AI to help them justify purchase decisions (HubSpot).

41. 52% of sales professionals believe generative AI can help them identify objections and address issues (HubSpot).

42. 53% of companies experienced longer sales cycles in 2023 (Lightspeed).

43. 48% of sellers struggle with effectively communicating value to potential customers (Prezentor).

44. 76% of sales leaders plan on investing in content creation initiatives (Prezentor).

45. B2B organizations don’t use 65% of the sales content they produce (Prezentor).

46. The content provided directly influences 95% of B2B purchasing decisions (Prezentor).

47. 40% of sales teams face challenges from lengthy onboarding processes (Prezentor).

Sales Email Statistics

Email marketing sometimes replaces cold calling, but without the emotional cues from voices, sales teams need an entirely new skill set to handle email selling well. Every part of the message must be carefully crafted, and teams need automation tools to help them track email follow-ups and responses.

48. 33% of people open or discard emails based solely on the subject line (SuperOffice).

49. 70% of salespeople only send a single email to a prospect (Invesp).

50. Subject lines with seven words have the highest open rate at 46.2% (Regie.ai).

51. Outbound email body copy with 144 words creates the highest reply rate at 2.7% (Regie.ai).

Sales Call Statistics

Even in our digital world, cold calls are effective for reaching out to new sales leads and for lead generation. I’d much rather my team make cold calls than be stuck on administrative tasks.

52. 37% of salespeople say that cold calls are the most effective form of cold outreach (HubSpot).

53. 31% of sales managers say total sales calls are a key productivity indicator (HubSpot).

54. Between 4:00 and 5:00 pm is the best time to make sales calls (Callhippo).

55. Wednesday is the most effective day for calling leads (Callhippo).

56. Between 11:00 am and 12:00 pm is the second-best time to call prospects (Callhippo).

57. Making sales calls within an hour of receiving an initial inquiry yields the best results (Callhippo).

58. Mondays and Friday afternoons are the worst times to call prospects (Callhippo).

Sales Performance Statistics

Like baseball, I use stats to monitor and benchmark my team's performance. Conversions, sales lead generation, and retention are just some of the data I use.

59. The average sales win rate is 21% (HubSpot).

60. The average sales close rate stands at 29% (HubSpot).

61. 91% of salespeople engage in upselling, which contributes an average of 21% to company revenue (HubSpot).

62. 87% of sales professionals practice cross-selling, generating an average of 21% of company revenue (HubSpot).

63. Among sales managers, 43% believe CRM usage is one of the most important productivity measures (HubSpot)

64. 38% of sales managers think sales tools offer the most crucial metrics (HubSpot).

65. Scheduled meetings are the most important productivity metric, according to 29% of sales managers (HubSpot).

66. 19% of sales professionals believe using generative AI tools for product research will greatly improve their business's performance (HubSpot).

67. 41% of sales professionals leveraging AI use it to understand and respond to prospects’ emotional sentiments (HubSpot).

68. Only 38% of sales pros currently using AI for sentiment analysis think it is very effective for recognizing buyer sentiment (HubSpot).

69. Sales management tools (27%), sales engagement and productivity tools (26%), and sales prospecting tools (25%) have the highest ROI (HubSpot).

70. 81.2% of respondents believe the lack of flexible payment options hindered closing deals (Capchase).

71. 42% of companies experienced a decrease in win rates over the past 12 months (Lightspeed).

Sales Career Statistics

Leadership is vital to any team’s sales success and job satisfaction.

72. 68% of sales managers train and coach their team (HubSpot).

73. Of the sales managers who coach, 68% use internal training sessions (HubSpot).

74. 90% of sales managers believe that a positive sales culture is important to a sales rep’s job satisfaction (HubSpot).

75. 82% of sales professionals believe building relationships and connecting with people is the most rewarding part of their job (HubSpot).

Sales Technology Statistics

Nothing will replace people in sales, but by utilizing automation tools and emerging technology, I can help my team work more efficiently.

76. 81% of sales leaders think AI can help reduce time spent on manual tasks (HubSpot).

77. 45% of sales professionals are overwhelmed by how many tools are in their tech stack (HubSpot).

78. 52% of sales professionals saw an increase in B2B customers using self-serve tools compared to the previous year (HubSpot).

79. 63% of sales leaders believe AI makes it easier to compete in their industry (HubSpot).

80. Sales professionals who provide self-service tools to buyers are 47% more likely to exceed their targets (HubSpot).

81. 66% of sales professionals believe AI helps them better understand customers and provide personalized experiences (HubSpot).

82. Adoption of sales enablement tools by sales professionals in the United States increased by 20% in 2023 (HubSpot).

83. 1 in 4 sales leaders believe they have too many tools in their tech stack (HubSpot).

84. 29% of sales professionals believe streamlining their tech stack would improve efficiency (HubSpot).

85. 78% of salespeople consider their CRM effective in enhancing sales and marketing alignment (HubSpot).

86. 69% of sales leaders plan on investing in prospecting technology (Prezentor).

Remote Sales Statistics

Encourage your sales reps to stay active on LinkedIn to cultivate their network and enable another channel for remote sales.

87. 48% of sales professionals use email and phone for remote selling, with 38% using social media and 31% using video chat (HubSpot).

88. 27% of sales professionals say phone calls are the best for remote selling, while 24% prefer social media (HubSpot).

89. 56% percent of sales professionals say that remote selling has made it easier to sell (HubSpot).

90. 21% of sales reps agree that remote sales are somewhat more effective than in-person sales (HubSpot).

91. According to sales professionals, the most effective tools for remote selling are sales prospecting tools (27%), sales management tools (26%), sales engagement tools (25%), and sales productivity tools (24%) (HubSpot).

92. 80% of B2B sales are conducted virtually (Prezentor).

93. 61% of sales leaders planned to automate their CRM software in 2023 (Prezentor).

94. For 21% of sales professionals, remote selling is one of the biggest changes in the industry (HubSpot).

Sales Statistics Takeaways

The data clearly shows that the sales industry is evolving quickly with the implementation of remote sales and AI tools. They’re here to stay, and thousands of sales professionals are leveraging them to drive the sales processes.

Embracing remote selling and social media enables us to reach a wider audience, while AI tools and automation make prospecting and follow-ups more efficient.

But even with the new tools out there, building customer relationships is still priority number one — so embrace technology that makes life easier, but don’t let it get in the way of creating relationships.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

We’ve talked a lot best practices for converting website leads. One of the main things we see companies take for granted in the sales conversion process is responsiveness. When an inbound lead comes in or a prospect emails your team, how your B2B marketing and sales team handles that lead often determines whether your firm is able to convert that lead.

In this blog, we examine why it is imperative that your sales team responds to any and all sales inquiries within 1 business day.

Your Sales Process Sets the Tone

For a prospective client, the most accurate preview of a company’s service delivery is the sales process. If the sales process is easy and the sales team is responsive, typically that’s how the customer sales team will be too. Even though sales and customer service are two distinct departments, most of the time the overall company culture and values are consistent.

Similarly, if the sales process is confusing and clumsy, it’s likely that the service delivery will be sub-optimal also. As a B2B marketing and sales team, you want to be as responsive as possible since this is a prospect’s first impression of your company. This is why it is critical that all sales inquiries are replied to within 1 business day!

Here are other reasons why this is so important:

1. Head Start: If your B2B marketing and sales team replies 24 hours before the competition, your company already has a head start in closing the deal. While the competition is initially responding, your sales team is already at the proposal stage. Fair or not, prospects tend to favor the company that is quickest to the close.
2. Make It Easy: This may seem harsh but prospective clients are inherently lazy. A prospect does not want to put forth that much effort to get quotes and they shouldn’t have to put out much effort. They expect the companies in consideration to be the ones to “jump through hoops.” By replying quickly to sales inquiries, you are making it as easy as possible for a prospect to do business with you.
3. Positive Impact on Price: If your B2B marketing and sales team practices responsiveness, then that typically positions your brand as organized, efficient, and experienced. This builds credibility with the prospect, allowing you to price higher for your services. Additionally, by being the first to respond, your proposal will become the benchmark to which other proposals are compared.

Woody Allen’s famous quote “80% of life is showing up” applies to the 1-day email responsiveness rule. If your sales team shows up before the competition, there’s a great chance you will win the deal.

Today’s letter is going to be a delish treat for EVERY copywriter standing cold and stiff in the face of micro-blogging trend sweeping over the interest.

To put this into context, let’s start with a little statement by Nicola Mendelssohn, who leads Facebook’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa:

“The best way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at us, actually is video. It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually the trend helps us to digest much more information.”

What about us, writers?

Well, she did have an advice for us.

Start writing for video.

Or, are we as writers doomed?

I say utter bollocks!

Ha-ha … I see some cheerful hooting and clapping at the back, but most of you evidently are not convinced yet.

When 55 percent of people on internet watch videos and even the very word “video” in the email subject line shoots up the open rates by a whopping 19 percent (that’s huge in copywriting world), you have every right to feel scared, my friend.

Is the art of writing really on the decline?

No, absolutely not.

I will start by talking about a simple fact (or let’s say an undeniable truth) first.

Tell me…

What do you think is the most powerful weapon you got?

What have the likes of Cicero, Antonius, Lincoln and Obama in common?

Did they take mind-blowing pictures that spoke more than a thousand words?

Did they present us with heart-warming animated videos?

No, their most potent secret weapon was WORDS.

The Power Of Language

Only words have the power to weave magic on human minds. And nothing else.

And as you can guess already…

Writers yield the power of language.

Whether it’s a novel, a magazine editorial or a video sales letter, it’s always the words of a writer shining through in all its glory. Words are integral to almost everything we do, and that’s how deeply entwined is the art of writing in our daily lives.

And behind every informative podcast or highly engaging video, there is someone, unknown, unsung or forgotten, typing furiously on the MS Word document in his dark, dingy room. (For the curious ones, mine is small but well-lit )

Frankly speaking, I don’t care whether eight out of ten 18-to-49 year olds watch YouTube in an average month or that Snapchatters share 10 billion videos a day.

From a copywriter’s perspective, it doesn’t mean a damn thing.

You know why?

For the sole reason that while pictures and videos can entertain us, they CANNOT sell.

For sales, you need hard-hitting “words” rooting into your audience, working a deep, subtle and frankly, unstoppable influence on them.

Think about any photo you liked very much. You were probably standing in front it appreciating its mesmerising beauty. “God! How beautiful” you gasp out. Totally understandable because we all have been there.

But step back now. Did you even think of buying something at that moment? Anything?

Of course, not. You were just soaking in the value of that piece of CONTENT.

That’s right. It’s only content—nothing more that.

How about those awesome animated pictures on YouTube? Heck! Since we are talking of animated videos, let’s borrow the very best from the shelf.

How about the recent The Beauty and The Beast? Such a lovely production! I love cartoon movies, and I fell in love with this one. In case you are wondering, no, it didn’t influence me to purchase anything. It just “entertained” me. Read that again. It ENTERTAINED me.

Neither the most beautiful pictures nor the most amazing animated productions force me towards a sale. No, even if the hero of the movie washes his clothes with Tide powder, it does not coax me to buy it.

Beside that picture, you need a little punch line that gives you the push towards the sales funnel.

Inside the video, the narrator’s script gradually takes you through the buyer’s journey to the point of no return.

Even if we forget about the selling part, I will point your attention to the most singular flaw of a video. It’s that a video is essentially a “movie”. It doesn’t come as a collection of single pages. Unlike a book where you can tear off a page and make sense out of it, you cannot do likewise in a video. A video is a sequence of moments. These moments constitute the proper context without which there exists no meaning in disintegration.

Citing Robin Hardman in her blog post:

A video organizes the information for me, in a way I may not want it organized, forcing me to wade through a lot of stuff I’m not interested in without being sure I’ll find the information I do want. I want a piece of text that I can search, skim, or read end to end, as I please. I want to control the pace, not have someone else’s idea of pacing fed to me in video form.

(Of course, you want to control the pace, honey. I understand If she is reading this, hope she doesn’t mind the joke.)

As one of the popular content marketers today, Ann Handley, says, “Sometimes you want sprinkles. Sometimes you don’t.” True that.

Liraz Margalit, a web psychologist at ClickTale, wrote that watching a video and reading an article are different “cognitive functions.”

Along the same lines, Phil Rosenthal wrote in the Chicago Tribune that reading demands one’s cognitive system do more heavy lifting and requires committed engagement, she said. Watching video is largely passive and is quicker to make an emotional connection.

And just know that howsoever technology improves or new content formats emerge, reading as an event will not perish. Because it’s hardwired inside us.

We read not because we choose to. We read because it makes us complete as a human being. And if reading exists, writing needs to exist too. Do you now see how the whole universe is connected?

Look, as a consumer, speaking from my POV, I do all. I read. I listen to podcasts. I watch videos. Everything.

Some things are better understood when read gradually in minuscule byte form.

Some things are better experienced when they are accompanied with a lot of visual action.

Some things are better absorbed when listened through the headphones alone.

To sum up, in terms of selling products and services for businesses, writing is simply NOT a choice.

You just cannot do without it.

And even outside the practical realm of marketing and sales, you, as a writer, are a creator in your own right. You create art with words in print.

It will exist as long as we exist.

Thumbs up to writers…everywhere.

We are immortal. We live forever.

TeroVesalainen / Pixabay

The way you react internally to an angry response to your cold outreach email probably depends on your personality. For some, it’s part of the job and no number of curses or insults can affect us.

Others feel indignant — they believe in their product, and the angry response almost feels like an insult. Others still get the same awkward feeling as when you wave at someone who doesn’t wave back.

But no matter what your internal reaction is to an angry prospect response, it’s critical that you and your entire sales team get on board with a uniform plan of how you respond externally. A solid plan of action for negative responses will ensure three things:

1. That your reaction doesn’t escalate the situation, turning a simple negative response into a negative online review (with damaging effects for your sales efforts).
2. That you capitalize on any potential for turning the negative viewpoint around.
3. That you use the negative response as a data point for further optimizing your sales efforts.

Your action plan for dealing with angry cold responses should include two facets: how you will (or won’t) respond to the prospect and how you’ll change outreach going forward.

Step 1: To Respond or Not to Respond

Not every negative response to your cold outreach emails should get a response back. In fact, sometimes responding back will only further incite the recipient.

Do Not Respond To …

Abuse: If a prospect responds with profanity or outright abusive language, it’s best to avoid escalating the situation. Even a response of “sorry” could send the person reeling as to why you’ve shown up in their inbox again.

The exception here would be if the recipient requests a response as in “Tell me how you got my email” or demands to be notified of being unsubscribed. Then, respond politely with the information and assurance that the person has been unsubscribed (and be sure to actually do so). Keep it short and avoid language with even a whiff of a pitch.

Do Respond To …

A Challenge: Some negative responses will include a challenge, for example, “I’ve read terrible things about your company online. Try to prove them wrong.” You should always take on such a challenge, showing you stand behind what you’re selling and have nothing to hide.

Be respectful when you do. You can turn a negative into a positive simply by saying something like “I’m glad you’re doing your research.” It might also be helpful to draft up a list of answers to frequent objections or addressing any negative comments in online reviews. That way, everyone can easily insert them into a response email and stay in sync.

Maybe Respond To …

Not Interested: If you get a polite “not interested” response, don’t give up. Send a polite request for feedback as in, “Thanks for letting me know. If you have a moment to tell me how I could improve (Does this offer not make sense for your/your company? Was my tone off?) I’d truly appreciate it. If not, I understand and thank you for your consideration.”

Angry “not interested” responses are a little trickier. It’s important to read between the lines of why you got that response. Were you totally off the mark with who you emailed? Was your copy far too heavy on the pitch? Maybe the prospect has gotten a dozen emails from your competitors in the past month or maybe they’re just having a bad day.

Read between the lines and practice a few scenarios with your team. A simple “Thank you for letting me know. I won’t email you again.” ends the interaction in your favor. But you also want to avoid inciting someone who is already fed up with your appearance in their inbox.

Step 2: Every Response is a Lesson Learned

Depending on the industry, you can expect anywhere between a 12 – 23 percent open rate and a 5 – 13 percent click rate on your cold emails. So by the time a prospect even is in a position to respond, you’ve weeded out the majority of your leads. That’s why every response from the most enthusiastic yes to the angriest no should be analyzed and used as a learning experience for future campaigns.

First, you need to ensure you have a system in place to categorize responses. You could use specific tags in your CRM so that you can track how many responses share similar questions, objections, or attitudes. Then, map out a plan.

If you get a lot of “not interested” replies …

Perhaps your targeting is off. Revisit where you’re sourcing your leads from, as well as how you’re segmenting them. If the former seems to be a problem, you may need to reconsider how you find leads.

If you’ve got the right people in place, but still are getting “not interested” replies, you may need to rethink your message. Segmentation by audience is key — you can’t expect small business leaders to respond in the same way as an enterprise level leader. Create buyer personas, define which personas which leads belong to, then build tailored campaign copy for each.

If you get a lot of angry replies …

Any cold campaign is going to get its share of angry responses. With 205 billion emails sent every day, you’re occasionally going to be the email that tips the scales on someone’s tolerance threshold. So don’t go and change your entire campaign just because of a few outlying responses.

The key is to look at the angry responses in relation to other engagement metrics. Did they increase when you recently changed copy? Are they too high in relation to positive responses? Do all the angry responses share the same root complaint? If the answer to any of the questions is yes, it’s time to look at your campaign. Listen to what your prospects are telling you, then study the copy, the leads, and the offer.

Once you’ve identified where you’ve gone wrong, test, test, and test again. Using both quantitative and qualitative data to constantly refine your campaigns is the key to cold outreach success and fewer of those stomach-turning angry responses.

You’re using a top inside sales CRM. You’re prospecting and qualifying leads with LinkedIn. You’ve read every ebook, guide, blog post, and infographic about inside sales that you can get your hands on.

But for some reason, you’re still finding the process of turning a lead into a customer to be grueling and uninspiring. Your emails aren’t getting responses. Your follow-ups are falling flat. You’re even pondering whether you need to start touching up your resume for a new job entirely.

What gives?

Well, there are plenty of things that could be slowing down your inside sales team:

• You’re selling a product that isn’t ready for the market
• You’re selling too early instead of nurturing a lead
• You’re not focusing on the customer
• You’re in a saturated market
• You’re selling a product with a bad reputation
• You’re in a very price-sensitive market
• You’re selling something that is no longer wanted

And the list could go on…

But the great thing about inside sales is this: Whatever is holding your team back might not be a big issue at all. In fact, it’s very likely that you just need an insight or two to get back on track.

You might also need free templates, scripts, and ebooks. Download the Startup Sales Resource Bundle today!

Here are six of the most interesting—and powerful—inside sales insights that you can use to drive results.

You’re competing with 100 other emails each day

The great thing about technology is that you can reach nearly anyone. The bad thing about technology is that everyone else can reach nearly anyone, too. Consider what this means for your buyer’s inbox:

An average buyer gets 100+ emails a day, opens just 23%, and clicks on just 2% of them. [Source: Tellwise] #salesfacts

- Colin Longren (@ColinLongren)

Your buyer’s inbox is filled with emails from other sales professionals, colleagues, managers, and more—clearly, you have to stand out. That’s why it’s so important to create subject lines that are more likely to be opened:

 
New hires are itching to buy products & services

According to DiscoverOrg, 80% of decision-makers who spend at least $1 million on new initiatives do so in their first 90 days. Thus, it’s important to establish a system for tracking the movement of current connections and potential prospects.

One of the best LinkedIn sales hacks is using Sales Navigator to notify you when specific leads change their job titles or move to a new company.

The ideal email length is 50–125 words

According to recent research, emails of 50–125 words yielded response rates at or above 50%. This makes sense, as more buyers are reading their emails on the go. Keep your emails short (but not too short) and sweet, quickly communicating your key points and making a request if necessary.

Related: Five short email templates that you can steal

When selling to large companies, you’re not selling to one person

Account-based sales are all the rage for a reason.

According to Gartner, in a firm with 100–500 employees, an average of seven people are involved in most buying decisions. That’s seven people who need to believe in the story you’re telling and the idea that you can solve a problem. That’s why it’s so important to keep your company's name and story in the eyes of your prospects as much as possible. You want to build an army of internal champions.

Staying top-of-mind with an entire account can be done by adding different people who work at the target company as connections on LinkedIn. Another great way to stay top-of-mind is to take advantage of LinkedIn’s online advertising suite. From sponsored posts to sponsored InMail, there are plenty of opportunities to leverage LinkedIn to stay top-of-mind.

Most inside sales reps struggle with lead quantity & quality

Over the last few years, the folks at InsideSales.com have been surveying inside sales reps to better understand their challenges. While other challenges have risen and fallen in the eyes of reps, year after year, the challenge at the top of the list is lead quantity and quality:

This information is important because it means you’re not alone.

If you’re struggling with the quality of the leads coming in the door, recognize that this is an issue many reps struggle with. It’s on you to help marketing deliver higher quality leads or to better understand the leads you do have so that you can sell them on how your product or service can solve their problem. The relationship between the sales and marketing department needs to be constantly nurtured, and each needs to understand what the other is dealing with.

The best inside sales teams make a commitment to training

The more you learn, the more you earn.

It’s a simple concept, but so true. The best inside sales teams don’t spend all their time sending emails and leaving voicemails. The best inside sales teams also invest heavily in their professional growth.

CSO Insights recently released a report on the relationship between sales coaching and sales reps achieving quota. The study found that at companies where salespeople felt their management’s coaching skills exceeded expectations, 5% more sales reps achieved quota than at companies where coaching skills simply met expectations, and 10% more achieved quota than at companies where the coaching skills needed improvement.

That’s why it’s so important to invest in education long-term.

Whether it’s seeking out a coach or simply signing up for a sales course, investing time and resources into sharpening your sales skills will help your team close more deals in the long run.

Are you committed to your own professional growth? If so, download the Startup Sales Resource Bundle right now. Get templates, scripts, books and more!

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Episode 180 features Miki Goyal, Chief Technology Officer at TimeTrade. Miki leads TimeTrade’s software engineering organization where his focus is leading the company’s product roadmap for their market-leading cloud appointment scheduling platform. On this episode, we discuss how TimeTrade is enabling automated appointment setting using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities.

In case you’re not familiar with TimeTrade, it’s a customer engagement platform fueled by AI powered intelligence. They connect people to their customers and prospects making it easy for them to schedule a meeting. Their appointment scheduling platform is used by banks, retailers, service organizations and tech companies to make connecting with customers easier and more efficient.

Integrating AI Into TimeTrade

TimeTrade recently announced the integration of Salesforce Einstein into their product. Einstein creates a lead score and determines probable actions to take. Once a lead score hits a threshold, an appointment request is automatically sent. TimeTrade enables automation to ensure lead follow up doesn’t fall through the cracks.

The appointment request can be anything from an email to a voicemail to a chat. Looking at email as an example, TimeTrade would email your contact with something like this: “Hi (firstname), this is Sally at (yourcompany). Please schedule an appointment to discuss _____. Here’s my availability…” There are options for personalization as the sender sees fit.

TimeTrade and AI in Action

The first use case in B2B sales, as mentioned above, is the use of lead scoring to create more efficient engagement with prospects and customers. Miki points out that it can also be used for keeping up with renewals, support tickets, and help to identify and minimize churn. By detecting churn signals, it brings up the opportunity to create proactive marketing campaigns.

Another way to use TimeTrade for B2B sales is with missed calls. If you don’t answer a call and it goes to voicemail, TimeTrade Voice can answer and book the appointment for you.

In addition to B2B sales, TimeTrade is also used by companies who work directly with consumers. Miki refers to this as “B2B to C.” Best Buy’s Geek Squad, for example, is powered by TimeTrade. Through the platform, customers can schedule appointments via the website, phone, text, IVR, or Chatbots. Customers on the service side of B2B to C use their product for onboarding new customers. I.e., if someone buys a new phone and an appointment needs to be scheduled for training.

A Full Spectrum View of AI

Looking to the future, Miki predicts a spectrum of changes and that AI will become a commodity. He says that AI will start to lean more towards predictions of future circumstances and how to prevent them, as opposed to merely reacting. He also mentions how engagements will continue to evolve, with less and less human involvement.

Miki also states that AI will fully own the transaction with deep learning. This has already started with Alexa and will only become more ubiquitous in the coming years. AI is transformational and will change the way people operate and engage.

Bernie’s thoughts….

I’m stepping up my coverage of advanced technologies used in marketing and sales, especially those using artificial intelligence and machine learning to help brands understand how they can use digital strategies to compete and win more business. Episodes such as this are not meant as an endorsement of the product covered here.

Brand Positioning Statement: A Guide to Creating and Owning Yours

Let’s do a little brand positioning statement “word association” to get your gears turning.

Just Do It.

Save Money. Live Better.

The Most Magical Place on Earth.

I’m Lovin’ It.

Have any trouble identifying who and what is being sold in those phrases? No?

That’s because these giant corporations understand the importance of — and have worked hard to develop their own — short taglines, elevator pitches, and catch phrases. How do they write something so powerful that makes the world practically memorize it?

All great brands OWN their positioning.

These taglines above aren’t (necessarily) the brand positioning statements of the companies, but they are (we assume) derived from very detailed and well-crafted unique value propositions and brand positions.

We’ve started by defining the target market. Next, we got more specific by defining our ideal client. Then, we took a look at how our product lines up with those factors to form our unique value proposition.

Now, we’ll dive into developing your own brand positioning statement by boiling it all down into one super sleek pitch for your brand. After all, a brand positioning statement is like your brand’s elevator pitch. To be used in places like web copy and cold email.

Hopefully, you’ve done all of the research to be in the right place, talking to the right people. Now you (or your reps) just need the right thing to say.

“Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” — Jeff Bezos

What Is a Brand Positioning Statement?

If you do a Google search for the term “brand positioning statement”, you’ll notice several methods to develop one. The method we recommend using was developed by a man named Geoffrey Moore (called “Moore’s Positioning”).

His template is incredibly helpful in really getting your positioning concise, but it will help to re-go over some of our terms from the earlier positioning portions of our course. Here are the three things we’ve gone over:

• Target Market & Competitive Landscape: The two basic components every B2B organization must know in order to garner sales growth are their customers and their competitors. Our first module was a deep dive into this subject.
• Ideal Client Profile: Moving deeper than a specific industry is among the other factors companies have. Their size, revenue, and the roles of the decision makers all play a role in defining your ideal client. The second module covers this at length.
• Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Making a clear distinction between yourself and the competition comes by understanding which of your features appeal to your ideal clients. This happens best when a brand creates a UVP. This is covered in module three.

If your Brand Positioning Statement is the finished product, each of these items are the ingredients that are put together and cooked down to get it.

Now, onto Dr. Moore’s template.

• For: Who are your target clients and industries.
• Who: The most prominent pain point or problem of those ideal buyers.
• Our product is a: A vivid, yet short description of the solution.
• That provides: This is where the unique value goes, cut down into a pithy statement.
• Unlike: Just a quick mention of competition for reference.
• Our product: The key difference between you and the other company vying for your prospects.

A quick look at this framework and you probably understand how all of these modules are fitting together.

A well-conceived brand positioning statement allows you and all the members of your team to clearly communicate at all levels of your organization.

Boil It Down Further

While we do suggest to have a detailed brand positioning statement like Moore’s, you can also create an abridged version that will help get a different nuance. Using more than one template will help gain perspective and really hone in on the value you can provide and to whom it will be provided.

A simplified version can help you identify potential clients that are more likely to become devoted and loyal to your brand.

One of the more simple examples:

• Core Client: Who are the 20% of clients that make up 80% of your business?
• Value: What’s the one statement that personifies why those 20% of customers love you?
• Promise: How can you convey that thing in a promise to your prospects?

5 Steps to Develop a Dynamite Brand Positioning Statement

Step One: Write Some for Your Favorite Brands (or Competitors)

One of the best ways to do this is to practice on some of the most well-known brands in the world and work backwards.

Let’s try a couple using both of our templates.

Example of Moore’s Positioning: Disney Parks “The Most Magical Place on Earth”

For: Middle and upper income families.

Who: Work hard, need an escape and want to provide their children a memorable experience.

Our product is a: Completely immersive parks that transports people to a different place.

That provides: An experience that comes with everything you and your family need to enjoy vacation; all on the same property.

Unlike: Universal Studios

Our Product: Provides more than an amusement park. We transport guests to a different (magical) world altogether.

Example of a Concise Positioning Statement: Slack “Where Work* Happens”

Core Client: Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with collaborative teams.

Value: A messaging platform that allows users to bring together all of the common software tools together in one place for ideal teamwork.

Promise: Improve communication and get more done.

Try reverse engineering the slogans of your favorite companies or those in a similar industry. There are likely many benefits to doing this with your competitors as well. Make a list of the two or three companies closest to your market and see what they offer that’s unique.

Step Two: Boil Down Your Ideal Client Profile

You know the company size, revenue, and key individuals that you need to target. All of this information belongs in your ideal client profiles (ICP) and buyer personas. That said, most of it can be stripped down for your position statement.

The “Who” or “Core Client” doesn’t need to be “American metal fabricators doing between $10-$20 million annually and with less than 100 employees”. It can be, but that’s not the point of this exercise.

Instead, it may be something along the lines of, “U.S. based SMB manufacturing companies”.

Step Three: Boil Down Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

Very similar to step two. Your UVP helps you target a few things:

• Why people buy your stuff over the other companies.
• Elaborate your uniqueness as a product/service/company.
• Tell that story across all the platforms of your brand.

The things you pull from your UVP mainly consist of the key benefits of your products and the expressed pains of your ideal clients.

A UVP of Uber may be, “One tap and a car comes directly to you. Hop in—your driver knows exactly where to go. And when you get there, just step out. Payment is completely seamless.”

However, in a brand positioning statement, it may be:

For: Travellers who need reliable transportation.

Who: Don’t want the hassle of buses or taxis.

Our Product is: a fairly-priced ride, arriving in minutes at the push of a button.

Make sense?

Step Four: Take a Shot at the Competition

Doing a mock brand positioning statement for your competitors really comes in handy here. You know who you’re up against, but you may not have taken the time to figure out exactly why someone would want to use your company over “them”.

For this, you’ll need to know two things:

1. Who they are (not too difficult)
2. Why you’re better (may be slightly more difficult)

Pro Tip: If there isn’t a large difference between you and your competitors, use the niche you’ve selected to make one. Rework your web copy, change your sales presentations, and even change the product to be the best in [insert your product’s industry] that’s built for [insert your target market].

Step Five: Write and Rewrite

A noun change here and a different verb there can go a long way to making your brand positioning statement “click”.

Changing the language and working all your info into a few drafts will help you feel more comfortable with the process. The finished product needs to be something that you’re comfortable with sharing at luncheons, sponsored events, and anywhere else where someone may ask, “So, what’s your company do again?”

How It’s Sales

To build a highly functional lead infrastructure, it takes precision. A great brand positioning statement will help you gather better leads and do it faster. All while communicating more effectively with prospects.

But it’s not the whole picture. There are actually four basic things you’ll need to have a laser-focus on your lead generation methods. Here’s a brief look at each, as well as further resources to help you develop each.

1. Target Market & Competitive Landscape

Researching and choosing a target market can lower the number of leads you have to track, while increasing the number of sales you make. Knowing how competitive your industry is can help you develop better products and pivot efficiently, thus increasing sales efficiency.

Further Reading: Great piece from Crazy Egg on how to find your target market.

2. Ideal Client Profile

Target markets help you figure out who wants to buy and how you can better serve them, but now it’s about finding who’s buying right now. To do this, you’ll need to figure out who you are most likely to impress and where to find those specific buyers to target. A target market helps you a little, an ideal company profile helps you a lot.

Further Reading: Our post on the subject, which you can find right here

3. Unique Value Proposition

Now that you know who you’ll be talking to, it’s time to start figuring out how to interact with them. The UVP helps with all communication including: content marketing, email, and web copy. But it’s also very helpful in determining how your company will interact with outbound leads, or moreover, how qualified leads will interact with you.

Further Reading: Another one from the LeadFuze blog, specifically on finding your UVP.

4. Brand Positioning

This is the final dish that comes out after you throw all the other ingredients in the crock pot and let them simmer down. The brand’s position is vital and must be known and kept central in all marketing and sales efforts. It will help your reps know who the company is and what the products can accomplish in a quick and easy statement.

Further Reading: Six more tips via Entrepreneur on this very subject.

All of these elements come together to create a laser-focused sales message that your entire team can and should wrap themselves around.

Will you tweak things? Of course.

But everything you change should be calculated, documented and tested. Are you ready to position your brand and products and take your revenue to the next level?