With 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook reigns as the number 1 social media platform. Especially if you want to increase the visibility of your brand, no other social media site compares. Because Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform for online businesses, it features a tremendous volume of content, making competition fierce. In vying for your prospects’ attention, it is imperative that you do something to stand out.

As you are about to discover, there are multiple hidden tricks and features on Facebook that could prove advantageous in achieving your goal of enhanced visibility and greater success. Following are some Facebooks hacks that will help bolster your online presence.

Improve Your Facebook Profile

When prospects log onto your Facebook page, the first things they see are your cover and profile photos. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” definitely applies in this case. By nature, people are visual creatures. If you expect serious-minded customers to respond, you never want to add anything boring, blurry, or inappropriate.

Instead, your Facebook page needs some personality and style. To quickly get the attention of your target audience, you want to add interesting, enticing, and professional cover and profile photos. For designing excellent photos, you can use several online tools. Regardless of the photos that you choose, make sure they are high quality, in the correct size for this platform, compatible, and relevant to your brand.

Enable High-Definition Photos and Videos to Enhance Your Content

Although content has always been vital to online success, it is even more so in today’s competitive market. One of the many objectives of having a Facebook page for your business is to engage with your audience. However, if you notice that added photos or videos of a recent team-building event or your employees mingling with customers show up as poor quality on your mobile device, you have to make the appropriate changes.

When promoting your brand on Facebook, you want to avoid uploading blurry or grainy photos.
By going into your account, you can make a few minor setting adjustments that enable the HD upload. You then can share superior-quality photos and videos. To accomplish this, perform the following steps:

• On your mobile device, open the Facebook app.
• Select the main menu symbol in the lower corner.
• Choose “Settings.”
• In the pop-up menu, select “Account Settings.”
• Scroll down and choose “Videos and Photos.”
• Turn on the “Upload HD” feature.

Use Call-to-Action Buttons to Drive More Traffic, Leads, and Conversions

The great thing about using call-to-action buttons on Facebook is that you can direct your audience to another page on that site or an entirely different destination. After uploading compelling photos and videos that provide viewers with insight into the product or service that you offer, you can use a call-to-action button to prompt them to take a particular action.

Ultimately, call-to-action buttons simplify tasks for things like:

• Call Now
• Contact Us
• Book Now
• Use App
• Shop Now
• Watch Video
• Play Game
• Sign Up

You can also customize call-to-action buttons to better match to your organization. As an example, if you have a not-for-profit, you can create a “Donate Now” button. Regardless of which buttons you want to implement on your Facebook page, follow these simple steps:

• On your page’s cover photo, click “Add a Button.”
• Choose the call to action that you want.
• Enter the URL for your website.
• Click “Create.”

When creating a lead or local business ad, you have other call-to-action button options. You can also add a call-to-action button to your page for directing people to your app by doing the following:

• On your page’s cover photo, click “Create Call to Action.”
• Make the appropriate choice.
• Add a website URL.
• Click on “Set up a Link to an App?” in the toggle below.
• Below “iOS Setting,” leave “Website” in the drop-down menu. That way, people get directed to your business site. However, for people using an iPhone or iPad, you need to select “App Add an App Link”in the drop-down menu, which gives you another option for adding a Website or App Store Link.
• Below “Android Setting,” leave “Website” in the drop-down menu so that people get directed to your business site. However, directing them using an Android to your app, you need to choose “App Add an App Link” in the drop-down. You can also add a Package Name and a Website or Play Store Link.
• Click “Create.”

With those steps completed, tracking the number of people who clicked through using a call-to-action button becomes easier.

Using a Single Inbox to Manage Messages from Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger

You may not realize it, but by updating your inbox, you can more effectively manage your business communications in Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Not only will this save you a lot of time, it also allows you to respond to every inquiry using just one app. With this, you can quickly scan for updates on all three channels, thereby avoiding problems associated with a slow response.

Respond to Common Customer Inquiries Using Auto Responses

Another excellent Facebook hack has to do with setting up auto responses, making it easier for you to respond to common customer inquiries. If your business gets a tremendous volume of messages daily or you have a team of professionals who focus solely on providing online customer experience, this option has incredible value.

With the Facebook Messenger app, you can customize automated experiences when communicating with a large number of customers. The other option is Facebook Marketing Partners, which makes it possible for you to handle incoming communication quickly and efficiently via live chats.

View the History of Business Interactions with Facebook Users

When people use Facebook Messenger to interact with your business, you can see their profiles to get better insight into who they are. Therefore, you can provide a more appropriate and customized response. The advantage to this hack is that you can identify local users, as well as determine if they regularly rely on your service, are new customers, or have interest in what you offer.

For viewing the history of a Facebook Messenger user, you would click on that person’s name, which allows you to see both the profile and previous business interactions.

Encourage Better Engagement Using the Request Recommendation Features

Many people have no idea that Facebook offers several excellent business features designed to promote better user engagement. Although your type of business might not relate to the examples provided, these show the incredible value of this Facebook hack.

• Ordering Food – For restaurant owners, customers can order food through a business Facebook page. Using Slice or Delivery.com, a “Start Order” button gets created to facilitate the service. By posting photos of mouthwatering menu options, users feel enticed to click on the button and place an order.

• Scheduling an Appointment – For service-related local businesses, such as doggie daycares, hair salons, and day spas that require scheduled appointments, customers can go to the Facebook page of the company that provides the service to see everything offered. After scheduling an appointment, the customer receives a confirmation via Facebook Messenger.

• Getting a Quote – For a car repair shop, insurance company, and other businesses that offer quotes, Facebook now has a “Get Quote” button located on the top of the page. With that, users can request a quote from the business, quickly and easily.

Promoting User Engagement with 360-Degree Photos and Videos

With this Facebook hack, you provide people with 360-degree photos and videos. Because people feel engaged, this hack benefits your marketing campaign. A perfect example is a real estate agent promoting a home for sale. Instead of providing potential buyers with two-dimensional photos or standard videos that have limited reach and impact, use 360-degree photos and videos to create an in-person experience.

Using a 360-degree video, the Realtor can showcase certain areas of the home, such as the kitchen, outdoor living space, or hearth room with a gorgeous rock fireplace. The response is a higher number of generated leads. Thanks to a relatively new Facebook update, the process of sharing 360-degree photos is a breeze.

• Take a panoramic snapshot of whatever it is you want to promote, using your smartphone, or a 360-degree camera or 360-degree photo app.
• Follow the same conventional process for posting a two-dimensional photo.
• Facebook then converts your photo, making it a 360-degree experience for both prospects and existing customers.

Rely on Spatial Audio for Capturing Sound from Every Angle

Spatial audio is probably one of the most exciting Facebook hacks, which produces a three-dimensional sound associated with a 360-degree video. The goal of spatial audio is to create the same sound that humans hear in real life with the exception that it gets delivered via headphones. Because this incredible option produces sound as someone moves around in the 360-degree video, people have a more realistic experience.

Live Hacks on Facebook

Facebook Live, which is the site’s live-streaming video functionality, makes it possible for your users to broadcast live videos using a smartphone. Even better, this hack works for all pages and profiles using the Facebook Mentions app or an Android or iOS smartphone. Streaming live broadcasts is also possible in Facebook events and groups. Some examples of hacks include:

• Special Effects to Facebook Live Broadcasts – Thanks to innovative technology, you can now improve the level of professionalism on your Facebook Live video and make it multi-layered. You can take full advantage of this hack using the Facebook Application Program Interface (API). This technology allows you to build video streams that mix sources for both audio and video, while also introducing special effects.

• Enable Real-Time Reactions on Facebook Live – Data released by Facebook shows that compared to regular videos, Facebook Live videos get 10 times more comments. The good news is that you can use that feedback for customizing your business content to your targeted audience. With this hack, viewers get to see their animated reactions on top of the video, based on which icons they select, Wow, Sad, Angry, Love, and Ha-Ha. Although Live Reactions appear in real-time and then disappear quickly, they still give other viewers and broadcasters insight into how users feel at various points in the video.

Hacks for Facebook Messenger

While a lot of users rely on Facebook Messenger for sending and receiving personal messages, this app is also an excellent way for your business to build lasting relationships with your customers. Especially when you consider that roughly 5 billion combined messages, comments, and visitor posts get posted each month, you can see this hack’s true value.

While all Facebook hacks are advantageous to your business in one way or another, perhaps one of the most useful of those recently added is the ability to make payments through Messenger. After selecting a product or service that you offer, they check out and pay via Facebook Messenger.

Hacks for Advertising on Facebook

By using advertising hacks on Facebook for your business, you can reach and entice customers regardless of their physical location, whether having dinner with friends, spending time at the office, relaxing at home, working out at the gym, and so on. One way to accomplish involves using claim ads.

An excellent way to grab someone’s attention is by offering a promotion or discount. Because most people love a bargain, this encourages them to take action. Using claim ads for your brand, you can create and then share business incentives. For instance, to offer in-store discounts, you would send people a QR code or barcode. After arriving at the physical store location, they pull up the ad on their mobile device and then present it to the cashier at the time of checkout.

Measuring Results Using Offer Tracking

For tracking the effectiveness of your promotions and offers, Facebook has several measurement tools available. When your Facebook campaign gets viewed, you can use these tools to track the number of people who visit the brick-and-mortar store location. Ultimately, this helps you determine the impact of your marketing efforts, good or bad.

To get ahead of your competition on Facebook, Buzzlogix has the perfect solution. With Buzzlogix Smart Assistance, you can measure results on social media, simplify your social media campaigns, automate tasks, and extract valuable insights while making helpful suggestions throughout the process.

To prevent you from struggling to engage and monitor on social media, Buzzlogix capitalizes on data, allowing you to make well-informed decisions relating to your marketing strategy. Not only can you learn more about your target audience, you can also track brand mentions and progress, identify potential crises, generate comprehensive reports, benchmark your business against the competition, and, ultimately, enjoy a higher return on investment using social media.

More than a dozen wildfires are sweeping across Northern California's wine country.

The fires in Napa and Sonoma counties have killed at least 10 people and destroyed more than 1,500 homes and businesses, the Los Angeles Times reported. More than 100 people have reportedly checked into local hospitals for fire-related injuries or health issues, like burns, smoke inhalation, and shortness of breath, according to CNN.

The disaster has burned more than 119,000 acres, including some the area's scenic farms, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Many ranchers and farmers — along with their dairy cows, chickens, sheep, and goats — have evacuated or are preparing to leave due to the fires.

The effects on the local agriculture industry could be catastrophic.

According to the 2016 Sonoma County Crop Report, the value of the county's agriculture came close to $900 million last year, with wine grapes accounting for more than half of that total. Livestock and poultry accounted for $178 million — Sonoma County farms house 30,000 dairy cows and 35,000 sheep and goats. The area is also home to an estimated 3,000 to 9,000 medical cannabis farmers.

The fires will likely impact wine production in Northern California. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports that although farmers have already picked 75% of the region’s grapes, most of the cabernet sauvignon and merlot crops were still on the vines when the fires started. 

Moving livestock in the affected areas has been no easy task.

The Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa and the Sebastopol Grange in Sebastopol recently announced that they are accepting evacuated livestock. Some ranchers are employing backup generators so that animals can still get water if farmers aren't on hand and the power goes out. Many are also covering the highly flammable hay and only opening select gates so that livestock won't get trapped if a fire comes.

On Monday, Carleen Weirauch of Weirauch Farm & Creamery in Santa Rosa posted a photo on Facebook showing flames raging behind her herd.

"Lord please keep my animals safe," she wrote.

SEE ALSO: Before-and-after photo shows the devastation of fires raging through California's wine country

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The technology landscape is increasingly crowded and there’s no escaping it, regardless of industry. With new technologies emerging left and right, and each department needing different platforms that are essential for their job performance, identifying and selecting which technologies are best can be challenging.

For the life healthcare industry, sales cycles can be long and sellers need a specific set of technologies that will give long-term insights throughout the buyer journey. Buyers often have several touch points—whether that be sales meetings, events, or digital campaigns—and organizations need platforms that, together, stack up to let Marketing and Sales do inbound and outbound marketing, sales enablement, and eventually, to understand attribution.

Here are the top platforms that are needed as part of the technology stack for the precision era:

Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)

When an individual encounters a company’s website, whether it’s through email, social, or web search, the MAP, like HubSpot or Marketo, helps to collect that individual’s information and track the activities that follow. Most organizations will use a lead scoring model to assign a value to the different activities an individual performs, such as clicking links, submitting forms, and attending web events. Once this score reaches a certain threshold, the individual’s data is passed over to Sales, and in cadence, the CRM.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The CRM tool, like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, takes the data from the MAP and assigns the individual—and all the information collected throughout its journey—to a Sales team member based on his or her territory, vertical, or industry. This integration allows Sales to perform the appropriate follow-up actions to engage with a prospect or customer and log these actions within the CRM. Tracking these interactions and using MAP information helps Sales tailor future interactions, but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to providing a contextually relevant, personalized interaction for the individual.

Sales Enablement

When the MAP passes a lead over to Sales in the CRM, sales enablement provides relevant content based on the individual’s characteristics, such as their role, buyer persona, industry, size of company, and more. This allows Sales to access and share the right content, at the right time, in the application where they are spending most of their time (CRM).

Typically, enablement tools can act as an overlay “filter” within the CRM opportunity, automatically serving up the right content based on MAP and CRM data. This helps to track which content is used, and when, so Marketing knows which content is most effective. Furthermore, sales and marketing enablement encourages, and increases, usage within a CRM. Since all activity is captured by an enablement platform regardless if Sales is using a mobile device, email application, CRM, etc., there is no manual data entry and data flows freely between all connected systems.

Email Applications

With many Sales teams utilizing both mobile devices and email to communicate with their customers, it makes sense that Email applications such as Outlook should be integrated into a technology stack. By utilizing a sales and marketing enablement platform, Sales will be able to use individual or opportunity information to suggest content that will help move a deal forward. All Sales must do is type the individual’s name into the “to” field in Outlook. All email activity will then be captured within the CRM, and subsequently, the sales and marketing enablement platform.

Microsoft Office

Similar to a CRM, many Marketing and Sales teams spend the majority of their time utilizing Microsoft Office products like Word or PowerPoint to create collateral and Sales presentations. With a siloed system and the mechanics of saving and uploading to different repositories, mistakes are bound to happen. But by integrating with a sales and marketing enablement platform, documents can be edited, synced, and delivered within the system.

PLM/SAP

Given the complex makeup of healthcare organizations, utilizing compliant technical applications is a high priority. Systems such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and SAP not only help healthcare companies adhere to strict FDA requirements, but also serve as a single source of truth for their products. The same can be said for a sales and marketing enablement platform. Some healthcare organizations utilize SAP as their CRM. Pair that with a sales and marketing enablement platform, organizations can create more efficient processes for all business activities and provide more detailed insights for a complete, data-backed picture of an organization’s well-being.

Analytical Tools

Platforms such as Google Analytics only unlock a certain level of insights about individual activities. Even with an MAP and CRM capturing data, it’s still not enough to receive a complete, holistic view of an organization’s customers. By utilizing sales and marketing enablement as part of a Big Data stack, healthcare organizations will not only better understand their customers, but they’ll be able to further refine and create more effective strategies that will ultimately result in increased revenue.

Think about it this way for a healthcare organization looking to implement new technologies: There is no right or wrong way when it comes to choosing the technologies that are right for your business.

Perhaps your organization only needs to get started with a CRM right now, or even pair it with a Marketing Automation system. Or, maybe you have the CRM and Marketing Automation systems in place, but you want to scale and better measure your efforts with a sales enablement tool.

The most important takeaway is to start somewhere. Don’t delay. Waiting on the perfect plan, budget, and team can do more harm than good. If you’re waiting and doing more of the same, you’re inevitably leaving it up to your competitors to define your relevance.

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Partner and agent models are extremely profitable. Partner types like resellers and referral partners help companies get greater sales coverage in a less expensive and more efficient way than a direct sales model. But for SaaS companies, it can be more complicated. Among the disruptive ripples that SaaS made was the scrambling of traditional partner models. This is a result of many reseller partners not being able to handle the more supportive and relationship-based customer model required by SaaS products, technical roadblocks, and the constant product updates that a more agile subscription service has. So with all of this change, you may be asking . . . What does the partner model look like for SaaS moving forward?

The following are 4 changes that will impact the SaaS partner go-to-market strategy.

1. The position of ensuring customer success moves from the channel partner to the company

With the on-premise model partners took care of the technical implementation of a product but it was then up to the customers to facilitate their own success beyond that. With SaaS removing those technical barriers and instituting reoccurring revenue model, the emphasis is now on the continued building of a relationship and success of the end-customers. SaaS applications have allowed companies to become extremely agile which doesn’t align as well with the rigid reseller model. These partners aren’t necessarily focused on customers after the original sales and many are having trouble conforming to the new SaaS delivery model. These changes make it harder than ever to be successful as resellers and for SaaS companies to grow revenue from the partner channel.

Based on these challenges, more SaaS companies are moving customer success in-house.

Suggestion: Although current resellers and distributors may not be as effective as they once were, they are still in a position to increase your revenue generation and provide coverage. Try enabling them to submit targeted leads that are picked up by your sales team. They can then assist in the sales process and still be rewarded for their efforts. This is the referral partner model which allows you to maintain and increase sales coverage while delivering the customer support of a direct sales model.

2. SaaS companies will have a dedicated team to meet customers rising expectation

Another large factor for customer success moving in-house is the rising customer expectation that they expect their contact to fulfill. Resellers are becoming less dedicated and more polyamorous than ever before. They often don’t have the time or resources to provide that type of support that SaaS end-users need.

That means when something goes wonky as it always does in one instance or another a customer will require a quick to instant response time. Depending on the type of product and its role in a business it could impact a company’s success or stall its ability to move forward. This means that the fix needs to be applied as quickly as possible.

Suggestion: When a customer comes from a partner referral as opposed to being sold by a reseller it ensures a quicker response time since they don’t have to wait for the reseller to have enough time to contact the company, understand the solution & institute a fix. Try assigning a dedicated customer success rep to an account to ensure the providing of proper communication and information in a timely manner to help control the situation and fix the issue.

3. Agile product updates require continual training

One of the beauties and challenges for a SaaS company or product is that they can easily institute product updates quickly and seamlessly. This allows companies to provide more customized products and services while continually improving it. However, this also requires the continual training of resellers on the in-depth technology requirements, benefits, drawbacks, how to use it and how it can apply to different customer types.

This means that resellers need to be able to set time aside to continue to understand product updates at an expert level. This is the only way they can try to provide the consultative services that customers expect goes along with SaaS products and services. Unfortunately, many resellers don’t have the time to keep training or provide the consultative services that enable customers to benefit the most from using the product or service.

Suggestion: Instead of providing continual in-depth training as you would with the reseller model, the referral partner model allows you to update partners on new benefits, its capabilities, restrictions and uses in a succinct, high-level format. Try assigning a sales or success rep to update referral partners regularly so they can correctly relay the benefits to qualified leads but don’t have to have a deeper understanding to sell the product or ensure the success of product updates with customers.

4. More referral partners and less partner monogamy

While we have already said referral partners are an alternative route (and smoother route) for SaaS companies than other traditional partner models, we must take into account that partner monogamy is no longer reliable. As a channel account manager at a large company releasing their own SaaS product said in confidential interview, “You have to have a way to manage a partner that is there for just one deal and no more. Everything you’ve done before is kind of thrown out the window.” Expanding on this he explains that, “One day they might work on a deal with you and the next they will have moved onto a deal with someone else.”

Suggestion: A referral partner program can help manage and scale partner referrals while allowing SaaS companies to continue to expand coverage areas and generate revenue from the channel. Try implementing one to draw sustainable revenue growth from your partner ecosystem while removing the challenges that SaaS products and services create within the channel.

To understand referral partner program performance benchmarks from companies like yourself, download The State of Business Partner Referral Programs.

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There are billions of websites online today.

To say there’s a lot of competition on the internet is an understatement.

Here’s how you can write content that grabs attention when there are so many other distractions that can occupy your customer’s time:

Keep ‘Em Guessing

Early on in my writing career, I took a course from Jon Morrow who’s a highly revered pro blogger and owner of Smart Blogger.

The two most valuable lessons I learned from the course is how to write engaging headlines and how to use subheads to draw attention to your writing.

There are very few new ideas.

Instead, all of us are putting our unique perspective on ideas, services, and products that attract our target customers. When writing content, your headline should qualify your reader and highlight a pressing problem to entice a click.

You can grab a free Cheat Sheet for Writing Blog Posts That Go Viral here which is something I constantly used in the beginning to fine-tune my headlines.

After landing on your content, the audience scans before reading to see if it applies to them. This is where the importance of compelling subheads come in.

If subheads breaking up the text are vanilla or give away all the information about the point you’re making, there’s no reason for people to continue reading and to engage with the content.

Write subheads that relate to your point, but are slightly ambiguous to keep your readers attention.

Back It All Up

Your thoughts, ideas, and perspectives don’t materialize out of thin air.

You became a writer, service provider, or product creator because of life experiences and lessons learned.

People want to know how you’ve arrived at this point.

What have you studied? Where did you go to school? Who inspires you?

Business owners and bloggers that I bookmark all share real-life examples to back up their content. They also provide sources of information for theories discussed.

The extra step of genuinely explaining topics rather than glossing over basic ideas makes a difference.

It may take you considerably longer to write this content, but it can pay off.

Meet People Where They Are

Methods used by people to digest information are always changing.

If you’re having trouble getting attention, you may benefit from surveying your audience to see the method they prefer.

You can even look to yourself as an example.

Where do you check out content the most? What’s the app you open first on your phone?

Do you spend your time browsing YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram more than other websites or blogs?

I found that most of the people in my audience prefer to read blog posts over listening to audio or watching video.

But there’s also a considerable number of people who hardly if ever look at blogs or websites at all.

Instead of clicking on links, they prefer to read or watch content in it’s entirety on a social media platform.

A solution for this is to simply use social media as a place to microblog. Ash from The Middle Finger Project does this beautifully.

Medium is another content platform that has grown in popularity. You can cross-promote content from your own site to Medium to give your work greater exposure.

The point here is, you can write great stuff, but it can fall flat if it’s not wrapped with a pretty bow and put right in front of your target audience.

Write Content That Makes Competition a Non-Issue

The fact that the internet has so many people competing for the eyes of customers can be disheartening.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be an internet celebrity to be a successful business owner.

You just need to create engaging content that people can find. A small loyal following can keep your bills paid and business flourishing.

When it comes to a general understanding of book marketing and sales, most authors don’t associate “discounts” or “free” with generating more revenue.

If done correctly, discounts and freebies can definitely help boost sales.  Support this with other effective book marketing strategies and it will feed your machine.

Up your book marketing game. Learn how you can discount yourself into higher revenue….
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Understanding Price Changes and Amazon

In general, price changes, even small ones, will help to boost your book on Amazon.

Why? Because any kind of change in price triggers the internal algorithm and spikes the book’s sales rank with each purchase.

Even if it’s just a few sales, it keeps the book active in their system. You need to stay on Amazon’s radar at all times. Don’t get complacent.

So I often recommend changing the price of your book semi-regularly.

You should support these price changes with other marketing efforts though, and eBook promotions are a great way to do this.

If you have a publisher be sure to chat with them about your pricing options, you want them to be as flexible as possible so these great book marketing strategies aren’t closed off to you.

The Power of eBook Promotions

Coordinated eBook promotions are a great way to gain new readership and get in front of people you’d never reach through other, often more expensive, methods.

I always recommend doing several of these a year, especially if you have multiple titles.

You don’t have to do big, expensive paid promotions for this to work, either.

Because while it’s awesome to get a Bookbub deal, they’re notoriously hard to get, so look to other sites that are more of a sure thing.

There are also a number of free sites as well and you should for sure take advantage of these once you’ve got your dates and pricing set. Here’s a lengthy list of free options.

All that being said, just because BookBub is hard to get into, it doesn’t mean you should write them off as a lost cause. Keep trying, submit every month, it just takes a few monutes, and eventually you’ll get a yes! Seriously, we see it happen all the time.

How Freebies Can Help

Goodreads giveaways (and ones you host on your site or through a book blogger) are another fun thing you can do to dramatically boost your book’s exposure.

And remember, you can’t get sales without exposure. They go together. So don’t be stingy and limit your book’s potential.

I recommend doing giveaways several times a year. I know one author who does these monthly, giving away one book at a time and really does a fab job of playing it up as a special event.

If you have multiple books, you can do more of these, just one at a time, and it’s a great excuse for staying in front of current fans and drawing in potential new readers.

Permafree Titles & Book Teasers

A lot of authors talk about “permafree” like it’s the holy grail of gaining more exposure on Amazon. To some authors it sounds like a doomed business plan.

But it’s definitely true that having one book free always helps to boost your exposure.

The caveat is, if you only have two books, making one of them free doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But if you have three or more, then making the first book in a series free, for example, can work exceptionally well.

It even works for non-fiction. I have a lot of books published (17 total) and I always make one of the free. Usually it’s an older title that’s still got good content and is appropriate for a broad audience, that introduces people to my work for zero monetary commitment on their part, and they take that opportunity.

Another good option is a teaser book.

It contains the first seven chapters and it states clearly that it’s only a teaser. Meaning, if you do this, be 100% clear with your audience that it’s not the full book. And don’t forget at the end of the book you’ll want to thank folks for reading and send then to the full book with an active link!

Keep it Up

The idea is to always be discounting or giving away something. Always have a promotion in the funnel that gives you an excuse to get people’s attention.

If you have three or more titles, this gets easier. If you have one or two, it may be harder and not ideal to discount one each month. Do one every six to eight weeks.

The important thing to remember is that one discount or giveaway may not knock your socks off and it definitely will be less effective if you don’t support it with some self-promotion on your site, on social, in your newsletter, etc.

Don’t judge any book marketing strategy in a vacuum.

But First, Put Your Book to Work

Before you put any more time and equity into promotion, make sure you have a letter in the back of your book.  Invite readers to contact you. Build your mailing list. Ask for reviews.

Include a clickable link to the book page on Amazon. Include an activated email link so they can easily make these things happen.

Many folks are reading on mobile devices and if you don’t get them to write you or write a review on that first opportunity, you likely won’t get a second chance.

You Can Do This

Yes, discounts and freebies can sound like you’re taking two steps backward.

But department stores have been doing sales for as long as we can remember. Amazon regularly discounts its prices across the board.  Why? Because it works – believe me, everyone wants to make money.

The key is to doing it smartly, and promoting the hell out of your deal. You won’t see Nordstrom keeping their Half Yearly sale under wraps, or Amazon just hoping you’ll stumble across Prime Day.

So grab a calendar and start making a plan!  Need some additional ideas and advice on making the right book marketing decisions?  Contact us today for your very own customized coaching.

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Today’s B2B buyers are wrestling with potentially risky decisions and often-confusing options. We shouldn’t be surprised if they decide to stick with the status quo or choose the cheapest of a set of apparently similar solutions.

I hear a growing number of B2B sales leaders asking: how can we do a better job of identifying and engaging the customers that are most likely to buy, standing out from all their other options, and persuading the prospect to commit to our solution?

Here’s what today’s most effective sales organisations have learned – claiming that you have a better solution isn’t enough: first, you have to show how and why you are different…

Claiming that you are better – in the absence of compelling evidence that is directly relevant to the prospective customer’s specific situation – is a bland and meaningless message.

And because every other competing vendor is inclined to do the same, it does nothing to differentiate your offering from all the other competing solutions, and does nothing to help you stand out from the crowd.

The results are predictable, and frequently painful to sales organisations: because their prospective customers see little contrast between the options available to them, they either defer their decision or go with the cheapest.

THE “VALUE ADDED” MISTAKE

The frequently-adopted strategy of claiming a long list of “value added” features isn’t particularly effective, either: unless these capabilities are directly and specifically relevant to the prospective customer’s situation, they are likely to be seen as adding unnecessary complexity and avoidable cost.

That’s why selling the difference is so important: it enables us to stand out from all the other options our customer might be considering in a clear, compelling and memorable way.

“Selling the difference” has two critical components:

• Establishing the greatest possible contrast between where the customer is today and where they could get to with your help
• Showing how a handful of your most valuable capabilities are uniquely relevant to enabling them to reach this desired future state

Let’s start with the contrast between your customer’s current situation and their desired future state. I referred to this critical concept this in my recent article “Contrast Drives Change”.

MAXIMISING THE VALUE OPPORTUNITY

In this context, selling the difference involves establishing the clearest possible value opportunity in the gap between where your prospective customer is today and where they have concluded (hopefully with your help) they need to be.

Their initial perceptions of the size of this gap are almost always under-estimates. Even if they have already concluded that they need to change, they will inevitably have underestimated the full costs and risks of sticking with the status quo.

Part of selling the difference involves drawing their attention to some of the unrecognized or underestimated implications of their current situation and helping the prospect to fully understand the impact, costs, and risks involved in allowing the current situation to continue.

Here’s why this aspect is so important: behavioral economists tell us that the motivation to invest to avoid a risk or a loss is twice as powerful as the motivation to invest to achieve a gain.

If we only focus on the future upside and ignore the current downside, we miss the opportunity to grasp one of the most powerful levers of change.

PROVING THE POTENTIAL UPSIDE

Turning to the potential upside, the benefits of change are also often either underestimated or (more commonly) more aspirational than tangible. One of the most frequent reasons why apparently attractive projects fail to get final executive approval is that the business case was unclear or not sufficiently credible.

Selling the difference involves working hard to identify and monetize both the costs of inaction and the projected return on investment and economic impact on our prospective customer’s business.

We need to help our customer to recognize all the positive implications of change, and to monetize as many of these projected benefits in as credible a way as possible.

It’s critical that we develop credible business models, case studies, and benchmarks of what has been achieved by other similar customers in similar situations. Without such proof points, we run the real risk that the project will fail to achieve final approval.

DITCH THE KITCHEN SINK

When it comes to the other half of selling the difference – showcasing our features and capabilities – the natural inclination is to attempt to come up with the longest possible list of potential differentiators.

This is usually a completely mistaken strategy and frequently backfires. If we’re not careful, we devalue our uniquely relevant capabilities by burying them in a list of irrelevant features.

Prospective customers discount irrelevant features. They may even wonder why they are being asked to pay for capabilities that they see no current value in, and trigger an attempt to negotiate a proportionate discount.

FOCUS ON THEMES, NOT LISTS

People remember themes, not lists. When we attempt to differentiate our solution, we do so most powerfully by highlighting a handful of truly relevant and thematically related capabilities that it would be hard for the competition to claim with any credibility.

This requires, of course, that our discovery has uncovered the handful of uniquely relevant capabilities that truly distinguish our ability to help the customer address their challenges and realize their opportunities, and that the prospect agrees with our conclusions.

Most of your competitors – at least from my observations – will do a pretty poor job of identifying and positioning their uniquely relevant capabilities. They will often revert to claiming that their solution is “better”.

YOU CAN SELL THE DIFFERENCE

Through a combination of focus and relevant evidence, you can do better. You can show your prospect why they need to change, and why you offer them a better chance of success than any other option.

You can sell the difference. You can stand out from the crowd. And you’ll achieve dramatically better results by embracing a dramatically different strategy to that implemented by your less imaginative competitors.

reneebigelow / Pixabay

Why Being Generous in Your Business Will Result in More Loyal Customers

Have you ever noticed feeling compelled to do something for those who have helped you– even if they haven’t asked you to?

That’s the Law of Reciprocity at work.

This law says whatever you give, whether it’s money, time or effort… that it comes back to you with a tenfold return.

I know for a fact this law works as we’ve experienced it many times over the years. Almost like clockwork, we notice a distinct increase in leads that come in after making a donation or doing something extra for a client.

How Relationship Marketing Incorporates the Law of Reciprocity

Some businesses lead with hard-selling tactics to drive you to buy. This is called “push marketing”. But others, using “inbound or relationship marketing” strategies, have discovered how to put the power of generosity to work in their business.

How do you think your business would change if, instead of TAKING you focused on GIVING? Once you shift your focus to serving others and creating value – it changes everything.

Over time, your generosity creates a reputation that sets you apart and your rate of referrals will increase as well.

So how would you like to have not only more clients but more loyal ones too?

Here are ten ways to be more generous in your business to achieve that:

1. Be a Great Resource. If anyone needs a referral, share vendor referrals of those you know and trust. People will see you as the “go-to” person and come to you for recommendations.
2. Give More Than Expected. Doesn’t it feel nice when you walk into a hotel room and there’s a mint on your pillow? It’s an unexpected surprise.Here’s some ideas to get you started: Provide more value that what you charge. Go the extra mile. Give a surprise gift. Deliver your product or service faster than promised.
3. Provide Excellence. Since your business needs to differentiate itself from your competitors, how about making it your mission to only offer top-quality products and services?This includes customer service too: Respond to all email and phone messages promptly. Give clients uninterrupted attention. Listen to and address concerns are some ways to do this.
4. Serve Others. Zig Ziglar once said “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” And Mary Kay’s empire was built on the premise of achieving success by helping someone else succeed.Many entrepreneurs are in business because they are on a mission to serve others in some capacity. When you live your purpose, you’ll live a life of joy while making a difference.
5. Open Yourself to Receiving. Most of us were never taught how to receive. For instance, how do you typically respond when someone complements you? Do you push back and try to minimize their sincerity?Same thing applies to your business – If you say “no” when clients, money or opportunities come your way, those opportunities will stop coming.

   This means making space in your mind and heart for more. It means accepting money, kindness, complements or assistance that is offered to you. This keeps your flow of abundance open energetically. You give and it comes back to you.

6. Listen to Your Inner Voice. Inner wisdom leads us to those who need our help. Stop, listen and take action on those nudges. Offer your attention, time, and advice in their hour of need.
7. Follow The Golden Rule. I grew up with this rule ingrained into my psyche as a Brownie and Girl Guide. Essentially, treat others the way you wish to be treated – and that includes in business too.When a company treats you right or sells you a terrific product, you feel happy. You feel loyal. You’re likely to buy more from that company. You’re likely to recommend that company’s products and services to friends, family and colleagues.Make it your goal is to have the same thing be done for you.
8. Perform Acts of Kindness. Lift up others. Empower others through a simple word of encouragement and inspiration. Share your vision of what you see is possible for them.This article shares Small Acts of Kindness That Grow Your Bottom Line for some inspiration.
9. Be Genuine. Share yourself openly with those in your network. Let them see the real you. Build warm relationships with people around you. Make them feel special.
10. Practice Gratitude. When your heart is full of gratitude and you put forth effort to show your gratitude, really great things can happen.Make it a practice every day to share gratitude. Who has shared a referral? Who taught you something? Who is your favourite new customer and why? What vendor did a great job on a project?

    Show thanks for someone or something today and watch what happens.

Be Generous and Watch Your Business Grow

There are many other ways you can practice kindness and will see returns tenfold. Go volunteer, be a sponsor, donate funds to a worthy charity or even invest in a business that you believe in!

Remember as a business person we can serve with compassion, kindness, patience and respect. Being a good person not only makes you feel happier but it is also great for business.

So make it your mission to make someone’s day brighter every single day!

Do you have a story to share about someone who helped you that made a difference? Share in the comments section below!

Running your own business is a no easy accomplishment. With a lot of moving parts that you need to keep in check, it can be quite challenging and daunting to operate. But when done right, venturing into your own business can be one of the most rewarding decisions you’ll ever make in your life.

If you’re planning, yet still afraid to take the challenge of entrepreneurship, then worry not because we’re here to help you out. Here are top 10 secrets you need to know to run a successful and profitable business.

The following infographic is followed by a text-version of this post for the visually impaired.

1. Be Persistent

Many startups and even decade-old companies do not survive these days, often through not the fault of their owners. So, before you start your own business, you need to understand that whatever failures that you will encounter will not reflect your self-worth.

Be mentally strong and positive at all time. Establish a plan for the possibility of closing the business and make sure to reflect so you can learn from the setbacks. More importantly, see problems as an opportunity to prove what you can give to your customers, and as a way to further develop your business from the inside out.

2. Create Opportunities

Have you ever asked yourself how some small businesses flourish with opportunities? The answer is that instead of just seeking opportunities, they rather create their own opportunities to prosper! In business or in life at large, opportunities will always be present for those who recognise and pursue them.

From launching a new program, to simply engaging your clients regularly, there are a lot of ways to create more profitable chances. Just open your eyes and widen your approach and you will surely be able to generate bountiful opportunities that will help you achieve your business goals.

3. Understand the Business Know How

Of course, you need to know the nitty-gritty of a business. As stated earlier, a business has a lot of moving parts that you need to know of so that you can have full control or at least an idea of what’s going in and around your business operations.

First, there are key business skills which you need to develop, or be acquainted with in case you want to delegate them to others:

• Strategic Management – Creating a strategic plan for your business and making sure you keep to it.
• Basic Accounting – Which records to keep, how to keep them and how to file them.
• Financial Management – Where to find funds and how to manage it once you’ve obtained it.
• People Management – Hiring your first employee and how to manage them.
• Marketing – How to market your business through traditional channels and digital platforms.
• Sales – How to close a deal and take care of your customers.
• Operations Management – Choosing and managing your suppliers.

4. Unknown to Known – Seek Answers, Get Advice

It’s completely normal to ask for advice if ever you face difficulties in your business. Seeking counsel – from mentors, peers, even your suppliers, and vendors – is an effective way of leading your business. It doesn’t reflect weakness, but reaching out for help can significantly improve your chances for success.

Seeking answers and advice not only improve your knowledge in managing the business but your relationship to other people as well. There are plenty of people who have gone through similar experiences as yours, have had others help them, and they will surely love to share their piece of advice to you as a way of payback.

5. Have the Right Network and Use Your Contacts

Networks are essential for your business since it allows you to connect, share experiences, practices, and more importantly, gain insights and opportunities before your competitors do.

By having the right networks, you can collaborate with your industry peers where you can press each other into a place of greater application of one’s expertise. This results into a guaranteed success for whatever endeavor you’re pursuing, and further development of your skills as a business person.

6. Know When to Quit

Most experienced business people never believed in the cliché “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”. It’s not that successful people never quit, but rather they know when and how to quit. Instead of thinking that the next prospect, customer, or consultant can make all the difference after a series of unfortunate setbacks, successful people know when to step back and move on.

There’s no dishonor in surrender. In fact, quitting allows us to reevaluate ourselves and see new opportunities. Remember: The great ones are not defined by how many times they fall but how many times they get up after falling.

7. Research Your Service Providers Well

In business, you may need support to do the things you want to accomplish. A service provider can help you with that. But in order to ensure they will meet your objectives and help you achieve your goals, it’s extremely important to know a service provider well before you choose one.

Your chosen service provider will be handling tasks and processes which are essential to ensure efficient day-to-day operations. So, it’s important to know if they can deliver quality service and if they are aligned with your business needs. Here are a few things to consider before choosing a service provider:

• Know if they have experience similar to the one you’re planning to outsource.
• Ask for references and work samples/case studies.
• Ask how they are going to maintain a good level of communication with the team members from your side.
• Understand whether or not the company has the technical knowledge and project experience to meet your requirements.

8. Understand Your Customers and Provide an Irresistible Value Proposition

Don’t just venture into business without understanding what your customer’s wants and needs are. Conduct extensive market research first, and upon identifying their wants and needs, as well as their purchase behaviour, you can then create a compelling value proposition for your customers.

Your market research should also help you to tweak your market timing so you can reach them fast and effectively. It should also tell you if your market is big and viable enough to support your business. All of these are crucial to maintaining a cashed-up business in the long run.

9. Know Your Numbers, Know Your Tipping Point

Knowing the detailed numbers behind your business is crucial to achieving success. Even if your business is doing good, your profits will surely get choppy a little bit. With a lot of uncertainties in the market, as well as other factors which could impact your bottom line these days, knowing your numbers is the only way to strategically manage your business’s finances and revenue.

These numbers include, but are not limited to:

• Cash flow
• Net Income
• Profit and Loss
• Sales
• Price Point
• Gross Margin
• Total Inventory

10. Know Your Cost Base

The ‘cost base’ of your products and services are the cost involved in order to produce or deliver them. This is extremely crucial in determining the markup you will include in the selling price of your goods and services. By knowing your cost base, you will be able to determine the optimum markup percentage which provides you with profit margin and guarantees that you will not sell at a loss.

Your cost base might include, but not limited to the following:

• Direct materials
• Direct labor
• Manufacturing overhead.

Another way to run a successful business is to leverage the power of freelancers!

Thinking of attracting more customers through lowering the price point of your goods or services? You may think this will entice new faces to come and make that purchase you hope for. This is not always the best solution to your problems though.

We will assume that you went through all the steps of actually settling down on an appropriate price point that is seen as reasonable for what you are offering. We are not talking about $100,000 apples here, I hope.

Basic Supply and Demand

Let’s look at the supply and demand. When the two are equal, you have a price equilibrium. This means that the inventory you have is all sold. There are no leftovers and everyone who wanted the good has got it.

That can only ever happen in the perfect world, but I am just using this to help make a point.

When you raise the price, the demand typically shifts to the right, leaving you with a surplus of goods. This is not a good thing since you will be left with unused inventory. When the price goes down, the demand shifts to the left creating a shortage.

Using that explanation of supply and demand, we can see that when you lower the price at a certain point, you may be creating a potential shortage and a loss of revenue.

If we take into account price elasticity, if your good is inelastic, your price can actually be increased to a certain point without losing out on potential clients. Take into consideration that inelastic goods are typically known as necessities. If you deal with luxury goods, they tend to be a lot more elastic, meaning price changes affect the demand a lot more so.

Don’t Lower the Cost – Prove Your Worth

You may not be cheaper than your competition. You could even be more expensive than your competitors. That may not always prove to be a disadvantage.

Show your customers what they are paying for. Why should they believe in that price point you have set?

Let them know of your unprecedented customer support. Perhaps a warranty that cannot be matched by anyone else. Inform them of the manufacturing process, maybe where it was made. People will be happy to fork out the extra cash when they are aware of exactly what they are getting when they choose you.

For example, there are many hairdressers places and barbers in my city. The price points are all drastically different but so is the service they offer.

The one I go to is a bit more expensive compared to the other options, but I can justify the higher price point. The service that is offered at my barber cannot compete with any other place I have been to. The people there are happy, the place is vibrant and clean, and best of all they offer me coffee and tea while I get my haircut.

In the end, many places can cut my hair for a lot cheaper, but what they offer is a great and pleasant experience with great results that are hard to beat anywhere else.

Think about that. How can you improve your customer relations and quality of service that would make people happy to choose you, with your current price point.

Price = Value Your Customer Sees

Don’t devalue yourself and your company in hopes of increasing your revenue. Most people associate price with quality and vice versa.

In hope of attracting a larger customer base, some choose the route of reducing prices of their goods, not realizing, in the long run, it may not benefit them at all. Over time, people will just accept you as a lower-priced commodity and even begin associating you to a lower quality good. Don’t turn this into a race to the bottom.

Lower Price – Reconsider It

Lowering the price point is not the solution you’re looking for. You may consider a sale or a clearance to clear out some of the older inventory, but lowering your prices should be your last resort.

What is influencer marketing and how can it benefit your company?

Back in October, Onalytica published a white paper appropriately named ‘The Definitive Practical Guide to Influencer Relationship Management’. The white paper defines what influencer relationship management is and practically, how you can make it work.

Influencer marketing is often mistaken for what we refer to as influencer advertising; paying high-profile individuals with a large following for product placements and social media mentions. As the title of the white paper suggests, we view true influencer marketing as a relationship building exercise.

In this post, we’re going to take you through exactly what influencer marketing is and why every brand should be doing it. We’ve even got an infographic visually summarising all of the glorious information below.

Let’s elaborate - what is influencer marketing?

As we’ve already touched on briefly, the influencer industry is fast moving, evolving, nascent and fragmented - a recipe for making it extremely difficult to define.

Although the industry category and buzzword is ‘influencer marketing’ we focus more on the influencer relationship management approach. This comprises of brands organically engaging with relevant influencers to build long-lasting, authentic relationships. The end result: influencers naturally advocating a brand they genuinely believe in, rather than a transparent, paid for opinion.

The brand-influencer partnerships should be built on an equal value basis- delivering value to your brand, the influencer and both theirs and your audience.  Working with influencers on a paid, owned, earned and borrowed basis.

What this means, is that while paying influencers shouldn’t be a focus, it is sometimes appropriate and effective. The more popular the influencers are, the more likely this is to be their day job and main source of income- you can’t always expect them to work for free right? The key takeaway here is that you should be paying influencers for their time, not their opinion.

In short, there’s no right or wrong definition, so long as there is a genuine connection between you and the influencer and that you are providing value to your target audience.

Why should you be doing it?

Contrary to popular belief, influencer marketing isn’t new

Influencer marketing isn’t the latest marketing craze. It is just a slightly different way of doing things we’ve always done. Brands have always associated themselves with popular individuals, but influencer marketing involves building partnerships and relationships- this is a longer term, more authentic and organic approach.

The rise in social media channels

Since 2006 there has been a meteoric rise in social media and digital channels. Individuals and brands both large and small can publish content at the click of a button. What this means is the sea of content is far larger and more densely populated; consumers are exposed to a higher quantity of posts, decreasing their attention span and information retention- how can you stand out and be seen?

In addition to this, social media has in many cases cut out the PR agency middleman. You can now engage direct with influencers to build relationships and pose partnering opportunities.  Influencers can make a fairly quick assessment and judgement as to whether the brand is aligned to them and their audience, without a huge amount of work.

Brand loyalty and trust are decreasing

With consumers’ shortening attention spans comes an inherent lack of trust and loyalty towards brands. Consumers are trusting logos less and humans more; no longer are they treating newspaper and television adverts as gospel, but they’re trusting recommendations from their peers and even strangers more.

Traditional advertising isn’t as effective

With the above said, traditional advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be. The demise of traditional advertising is down to a number of factors: Ad blocking is minimising the amount of content viewed; there is increased competition for Pay-per-click (PPC) meaning that businesses often out price themselves from the competition and increased media exposure has meant that consumers are more savvy about brands only pushing their agenda.

Influencers can make your voice louder in the noise

In this period of mass content and noise, society has turned to the key influencers they trust to make informed judgements about brands, products and issues. Building relationships with the right influencers can, therefore, be the catalyst to improving brand value and increasing sales. Being associated with the leading influencers gives brands a credibility & trust that they cannot get anywhere else. It is a halfway house between advertising and PR that many brands feel is the best way for them to communicate their messages effectively.  Since the economic crisis of 2008 there is a new found cynicism associated with politicians, newspapers and large brands and this lack of trust makes it hard for brands to get their marketing messages to consumers

Shift from deference to reference

As Marketing Week published back in 2009, there has been an “evolutionary shift from deference to reference; deference being people accepting what they are told and reference being people asking advice from peers.” We are at the “age of emotional proximity”, where peer recommendations surpass all other marketing.

It’s cost and time effective

Compared to social media community management, influencer marketing is extremely cost effective – especially if you are struggling for internal marketing resource. A Forrester research study shows that “6.2% of key influencers are responsible for 80% of the influence in social media”. Engaging with a select group of influencers with the potential to deliver impact across your wider marketplace will deliver the best bang for your buck. Co-creating content with influencers both improves quality and saves time on content creation.

Influencers are experts

Influencers are often consultants, practitioners, and authors in their fields, hence their opinions are highly regarded and influence the marketplace. Brands partnering with industry experts inspires customers, prospects, innovation and cutting-edge technologies through borrowing their thought leadership.

If you want to learn more, click here to download Onalytica’s full white paper on Influencer Marketing.

Thanks to Alicia Russel for sharing her opinions in this post. Alicia is the Digital Marketing Executive at Onalytica, a provider of consultancy led Influencer Relationship Management Software. At Onalytica, she works to educate the industry, while driving inbound leads through social media, SEO optimized thought leadership content and email marketing. You can follow her on  Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

Over the last five years, we’ve seen an evolution in the way B2B marketers are talking about and using social media. We’ve evolved from asking “Should we be doing it?” to “Is what we are doing worth it?” to now “How do I make this really effective channel even more effective?”.

According to a recent study from Oktopost, 79% of B2B marketers believe social media is an effective marketing channel (Oktopost). And for many B2B marketers, LinkedIn is THE social media channel. In fact 43% of marketers say they’ve sourced a customer from LinkedIn (Hubspot).

But could we be doing better? Can we use LinkedIn more effectively?

To help answer that question, Alex Rynne, Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Chris Wilson, Inbound Consultant from Hubspot, provided B2B marketers with an actionable, detailed plan to drive bigger, better performance from LinkedIn tools at last week’s B2B Marketing Forum in Boston.

Four LinkedIn Opportunities and How to Take Them

Linkedin Company & Showcase Pages

LinkedIn Company and Showcase pages are great opportunities to establish and build your company’s identity. It’s a completely free tool that allows your brand to connect professionals with your employees and your brand to share knowledge with your community.

LinkedIn Showcase pages allow you to create dedicated pages for individual brands and are another opportunity to build individual brand identity.

Objectives:

• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Thought leader
• Event Registrations

KPIs:

• Page followers
• Post clicks
• Engagement
• Comments
• Inquiries
• Event Registrations

What to Share:

• Showcase your expertise with large assets like webinars and eBooks.
• Engage with short digestible stats and quotes.
• Illustrate industry savvy with 3rd party content. Alex shares that no one wants to talk to the person at the party that only talks about themselves. 3rd party content shows you’re on top of trends within the industry, creates opportunities for engagement with your audience and helps build influencer relationships.

LinkedIn Company and Showcase Page Action Items:

• Post 3-4xs per day.
• Engage with and respond to followers comments:  Don’t ignore your followers. If they take the time to engage with you, show them your appreciation and build strong engagement by responding.
• Change your header image every 6 months: Chris compares the header image to the front door of your LinkedIn page. Make it attractive and people will want to come in.  Take advantage of the header real estate and switch it up periodically to promote to campaigns or messaging.

Publishing on LinkedIn

According to Alex, over 1 million  unique  publishers  publish  more than 130,000 posts a week on LinkedIn and 45% of LinkedIn readers are in the upper ranks of their industries (i.e. managers, VPs, CEOs, etc.). So publishing content is a great way to connect with key people in your industry and further establish your professional identity.

Objective:

• Thought Leadership

Key Metrics:

• Post reviews & Profile views
• Demographics of your readers
• Likes, comments and shares

What to Share:

Although there is no silver bullet for exactly what and how often you should publish. Alex and Chris shares examples of what tends to work best.

1. Publish when you feel passionate. If you post when you are creatively inspired, about something you care about, this is when your work will be most likely to resonate with your audience and inspire engagement. Content about lessons learned and your professional expertise will be most relevant to your audience.  
2. Crowdsource content. Look at the questions your audience is asking and identify their pain points. This content will undoubtedly resonate.
3. Share relevant, timely content about events or industry news. Tap into the conversations that are already happening by posting an opinion or tips related to something current in the news.

Action Items:

• Publish when you feel passionate (this is listed twice because it is that important).
• Recommended bi-weekly or once a month.

LinkedIn Sponsored Content

LinkedIn Sponsored content allow you to reach a target audience of people who are not already following you.

Objectives:

• Brand awareness
• Lead Generation
• Thought Leadership

Key Metrics:

• Engagement Rate
• Inquires
• Impressions

Best practices:

1. Visual is the new headline. There is so much content in the feed, make sure your content is really eye catching. If you can, move beyond stock photos and do your own photoshoot.
2. Keep it short & sweet. Be mindful of your mobile users and make content easy to consumer.
3. Snackable stats work wonders. Provide your audience with 3rd party validation to backup your message.
4. Variety is the spice of life. Variety allows you to avoid creative fatigue but also see what resonates the best with your audience.

What to Share:

• Webinars
• Content that asks readers to participate i.e. survey, nominations
• Statistics
• Repurposed, straightforward content

Always be Testing:

With the amount of content clutter, testing is a great way to find out what is most likely to work with your audience and make the most out of what you are publishing. Alex and Chris recommend testing anything from word choice (i.e. eBook versus guide), content (inclusion of a stat or benefit), and images (photo or graphic).

Action Items:

• Select a compelling visual.
• Run 2-4 posts per week.
• Run the test for 3 weeks, to ensure you have an actionable result.
• Add URL tracking codes to measure post click actions (site visits and conversions)
• Setup campaigns by audience and make sure you tailor the content to the audience (i.e. managers versus c-suite).
• Shift budget to the audience with the highest engagement rate. Spend your money where you are going to get the most impact.

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn InMail allows you to send personalized messages to the people who matter most to your business. InMail can work even better than email at reaching certain audiences.

Objectives:

• Brand awareness
• Lead Generation
• Program Certification
• Enrollment
  

Key Metrics

• Open rate
• Inquiries and leads
• Event registration
• Program application and brochure downloads

What to Share:

• Webinar an industry event invitations
• eBook launches
• Product one sheets
• Program demos
• Infographics
• Blog subscription campaigns

Action Items

• Keep copy under 1000 characters (but AB test).
• Use a clear CTA in the top right banner.
• Choose a sender that is credible to your audience. If audiences have never heard of your brand before, your open rates will be lower, than if it’s from a person they know.
• Leverage personalization. InMail allows you to add the recipient’s name or other customized information.
• Have a hyperlink early in the body of the message.
• Select a concise subject link.
• Set up A/B test to learn what resonates.

Bonus Opportunity: Linkedin Conversion Tracking:

Obviously, tracking is so critical to reporting the results of your campaigns, but also to optimize and iterate for the go forward.

Chris outlines the steps for setting up LinkedIn conversion tracking:

1. Use a Google Analytics tracking code for easy set up.
2. Assign a Conversion value: If you don’t know this, create an estimate based on product value and close rate .
3. Tie it all together: This way you can show clear value, nice argument for executives that you need more value.

Don’t do Social Campaigns, Make Every Campaign Social

Using a tactical plan like the one Alex and Chris shared will allow you to really harness the power of LinkedIn. Once this happen, you can truly integrate social into all of your campaigns in order to engagement with your audience and accelerate the impact of your content.

Interested in other LinkedIn related tactics? Find out everything you need to know about LinkedIn’s new native video feature.

Disclosure: LinkedIn is a TopRank Marketing client.

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Let’s address the elephant in the room:

Attending conferences, seminars, and conventions cost a pretty penny. And if it’s not a local event, adding airfare, accommodations, and more to the mix means you’re probably looking at several thousand dollars spent to attend.

However, the experience can be life-changing and well worth the money if you’re intentional with your time.

I’ve learned valuable lessons after attending a few conferences that are helping me get a better return whenever I invest in live events.

Don’t Get Caught up in the Hype

The energy at conferences, conventions, and workshops is often indescribable.

Everyone in attendance has similar goals and are sharing ideas. It may be one of the very few times throughout the year when you’re around people that actually “get you.”

Sit back and bask in the energy, but also think about how you will apply the theories you learn. Jot down actionable takeaways that you can implement as soon as the event ends.

A plan of action is what keeps the momentum going after you leave the conference and are no longer on a high from being with peers.

It will also help you avoid the dreaded “what do I do now?” conundrum where you’re inspired without direction, and so nothing gets done.

Make a “No Ifs, Ands, or Buts” List

Conferences usually go by in a blur of mixers and workshops. The event is over before you know it. Come up with a bucket list of things you must do before it ends to maximize your time.

Keep your list in your back pocket. Run through it a few times per day to make sure you’re gaining the most from your experience.

Some bucket list items may include:

• Meeting someone you’ve been dying to meet
• Asking a burning question at one of the workshops
• Masterminding with a group of peers about a problem you’re having
• Creating a mastermind of people who can hold you accountable to goals after the event
• Connecting with a vendor or sponsor that you want to form a partnership with

Don’t be afraid to add or remove items from your conference bucket list as you meet people and learn new information.

Be a Night Owl (at least for a Few Days)

You may want to skip this tip if you’re someone who needs a solid eight hours of sleep to be coherent in the morning.

I’ve found some of the best conversations at conferences happen in the evening and after hours when you sacrifice some beauty rest. Less structured parts of the event are times when you can really get to know people.

Don’t skip off to bed right away when the scheduled events of the day are over. Hang around the lobby bar or restaurant and order a few evening snacks instead.

Final Word

Conferences, summits, and other live events can be a game changer for business owners. They’ve been a game changer for my business because of the things I’ve learned and people I’ve met.

However, just showing up to a conference doesn’t mean it’s going to pay off. You have to go with a game plan and be willing to apply what you learned to get your money’s worth.

You know this article format.

A glance through Content Marketing Institute’s recently published posts, Growthhackers Must Read articles, or BuzzSumo’s most-shared marketing content from the past six months makes it clear – one blog post framework seems to be winning:

How (Company You Know) Is Doing (Something) to Achieve (Positive Result)

CMI posts included Smackdown Content Marketing Secrets From the WWE, How GE Gives Recruiting Content a Personality Lift, and How Health Catalyst Gets Results with Ungated Content.

GrowthHackers had How GrowandConvert Got 10k Hyper-Targeted Visitors in 3 Weeks, How Slack Generates 100,000,000 Website Visitors, and How Grammarly Quietly Grew its Way to 6.9 Million Daily Users in 9 Years.

What’s happening? I thought “being different” was crucial in driving content marketing success. Why are some of the best content creators publishing the same type of article over and over? And why are these articles so damn popular?

Being different with your content isn’t always the best model, advises @JDScherer.
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Why this content model works

Let’s examine this article model from beginning to end.

Brand name recognition

Back in 2015, Nielsen wanted to determine why people purchased specific products. What did it find? Was it urgency, testimonials, color?

Nope. It was brand name.

SurveyMonkey found something similar in 2013, uncovering the fact that 70% of consumers first click on search results from “known retailers.”

When MarketingExperiments tested this hypothesis, it found that a branded page outperformed a non-branded one by 40%.

When I see headlines such as How Moz Used Adwords to Drive 1,000,000 Visitors or How Shopify is Building a $389 Million Brand With Content, I’m attracted by the inclusion of a brand which I believe knows what it’s doing and I already trust.

Rob Wengel, senior vice president and managing director of Nielsen innovation in the United States, has said that “recognizable brand names signify quality,” which is separate from that brand delivering quality. For a reader, recognizable brand names signify a greater understanding, a source of information they can learn from and trust.

Influencer involvement

This type of article also succeeds because of the relationship between author and subject. If I can get a recognizable brand name to champion my article, I’m halfway to viral.

And what have they got to lose? These articles are, by definition, exploring how awesome these companies are. They’re literally saying, “If (brand) does it, it must be worth trying.” The brand gets external links, a huge trust boost, and an increased brand awareness it probably doesn’t need (but never hurts).

Inherent trust

I can write about the need to A/B test your landing pages all I want. You’ll read the article and say, “Just another best-practice article,” and move on with your day.

But if I write, “We A/B tested click pop-ups over landing pages for our gated content and saw a 44.3% average increase across nine campaigns,” you’re far more likely to pause and say “Maybe I should give this A/B testing thing a go.”

This article model does just that.

On some level, every modern content absorber is fighting for reasons to move on to the next piece. An article headline that details a real-life example and impact, though? At the very least, the reader knows that the strategies being discussed worked.

An article headline with an example of a brand readers trust goes a long way to getting clicks. @JDScherer
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Proven format

Many of you have seen this graph from SerpIQ from a couple years ago, which breaks down the “best” article length.

Rand Fishkin, as he’s wont to do, debunked any “ideal” article length in a Whiteboard Friday in August, but the facts show longer articles tend to:

• Get more social shares
• Rank better in search results
• Receive more comments
• Receive more backlinks (and that stat’s from Moz, Rand)

No, long doesn’t mean better. Some topics need only 500 words. But in this article model, long form is necessary to take readers on a step-by-step walk-through. This type of article doesn’t have a headline like The Complete, 20,000-Word Guide to Facebook Ads. Its headline reflects its function – the strategy a trustworthy company is using to find success, with actionable takeaways you can implement today.

The best authors using this article model aren’t just presenting readers with the walk-through of another company’s strategy, they’re presenting those strategies with ways the readers can implement.

5 steps to use this article model

The best part of writing these articles is that they write themselves more often than not. I wrote one focused on Shopify’s inbound funnel and simply followed it down. My headings were the strategies I was exposed to (from SEO to content upgrade and a webinar campaign). My images were screenshots from that funnel, and my actionable takeaways were based on what I was seeing them do.

To create your own content using this article model, follow these five steps.

1. Identify an innovative company or thought leader

The most challenging part is determining what business to target. Once you get that down, the rest of the article follows a path set by them, not you.

Here are a few guidelines:

• Identify a business that doesn’t feel too out of reach. Avoid mega brands such as Apple, Coca-Cola, or Salesforce, as it’ll be tough for your reader to relate to the strategies they’re implementing.
• Identify a business implementing innovative or interesting strategies. It should be doing something worth writing about. Your article will be harder to write (and less interesting) if you pick a big brand name that isn’t doing something exciting.
• Target a business doing something interesting related to your business. There’s no point in getting people excited about a strategy that doesn’t relate to your business.

Here a few suggestions of companies doing interesting things you may want to consider in the B2B and SaaS space:

• Buffer
• Drip
• Groove
• Moz
• Shopify
• Shutterstock
• Stamps.com

And here are some ideas for the B2C industry:

• Basic Outfitters (new but doing cool stuff)
• Airbnb
• Clearly
• Groupon
• GrubHub
• Havenly (new)
• The Honest Company

2. Start your research

Explore the company’s sales funnel. Start with the first possible touchpoint. Try a search or display advertisement, a blog article, a press release, etc.

As you proceed through the funnel – from ad or article to lead generation to email marketing to sales prompt, take screenshots. Your article will be framed by that funnel.

If your content is about a process, take screenshots at each step, advises @JDScherer.
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TIP: If you look into a single facet of the business like the type of content being published or a particular tactic’s role in the sale funnel, be sure go sufficiently in depth for your reader to understand the details.

3. Reach out to a representative

You want the company on your side before you publish your insight and observations about what it does. And, if possible, you want information from the company. Try something like this:

Hey [first name of contact],

Hope this finds you well. I am (your name) and was talking to your colleague, (name), and she mentioned you were the one behind (specific strategy you’re writing about). I’d like to congratulate you on putting together one of the most innovative marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen.

Your (specific strategy) would be an awesome topic for an article I would like to write. I would appreciate it if you would have the time for an interview to walk through what you’ve done and inspire other marketers to do something similar. Would you have 15 minutes this week to jump on a call so I can ask you a few questions about the thinking behind the strategy and if it’s performing for you guys?

I look forward to hearing from you! 

If they don’t have time for a call, send over a few questions and ask if they have time to respond that way. And if they don’t have time for that, write the article without their involvement, but share the link once it’s done. You’ll still get the bump from a recognizable brand name in your title and the brand will have been made aware your article is being published.

TIP: You also could use the word “interview” in the headline to indicate the brand’s direct input in the post – How (Recognizable Company) is Doing (Specific Strategy) to Achieve (Positive Result): An Interview with (Company Representative). Just be sure to still include actionable takeaways, don’t publish a transcript of your call.

4. Go a step above with design

Your article ideally will be at least 2,000 words and broken into several sections. As a result, a table of contents will help readers navigate.

You can format an automated table of contents within your article. The easiest way is to add a bit of html in the back end (don’t worry, it’s super simple).

Copy this HTML into the top of your article beneath your intro:

<h2 style=“text-align: center;”>Table of Contents:</h2>
<hr>

<ul>
  <li><a href=“#a”>Strategy #1</a></li>
  <li><a href=“#b”>Strategy #2</a></li>
  <li><a href=“#c”>Strategy #3r</a></li>
  <li><a href=“#d”>Strategy #4</a></li>
</ul>

And then, before each of your section headers, add “<a name=“a”></a>“ or <a name=“b”></a>, etc. At the bottom of your article, include this JavaScript:

<script>
  setTimeout(function () {
    var anchorlinks = document.querySelectorAll('a[href*=“#”]');
    for(var i = 0; i < anchorlinks.length; i++) {
      anchorlinks[i].setAttribute('target', '_self');
    }
  }, 1000);
</script>..

5. Promote to specific influencers

BuzzSumo research of 100 million articles uncovered some interesting stats about influencer outreach:

• One influential share equaled 31.8% more total social shares.
• Three influential shares equaled about 50% more total social shares.
• Five (the magic number) influential shares equaled about 400% more total social shares.

5 influencer shares = 400% more total social shares according to @BuzzSumo #research via @JDScherer.
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Note: BuzzSumo defines “influencer” as someone whose tweets are retweeted two times on average.

If you need assistance creating an influencer list, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo. After you create an account, click on the “most shared” tab and search for articles on your topic. Within those results, click “view sharers” to see and then add to a new influencer list.

Research the influencers before you reach out to them to better learn whether they might be interested in content similar to what you’re doing. Follow them on social media.

Then reach out to the influencer. Don’t go in cold. Nobody (and I’ve been “cold emailed” enough to know) likes being approached by someone who has just filled in the blanks of an obvious template sharing a recent article and a request to promote it. Personalize the outreach.

If the influencer follows you on Twitter, send a direct message mentioning that you just wrapped up an article that you think they’d be interested in, and that you’d appreciate their thoughts on a specific element of it.

If you can’t direct-message the influencers, send a tweet tagging them. Try to find an email address. Reach out through LinkedIn InMail. If you reach out to 20 or so influencers with personalized requests, you should yield the magical five social shares to amplify your shares 400%.

Final thoughts

This article model — in which the author identifies a recognizable brand doing innovative stuff and then analyzes that stuff, breaks it into bite-sized pieces, and presents it as doable with proof in hand — is a model predicated on that number of rule of content: Better content does better.

Who knew?

Any questions, or just want to chat about creating good content? Start the conversation in the comments.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Want to learn more about how the companies you trust are doing content marketing for big success? Subscribe to CMI’s daily newsletter.

 Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Why Content Creators Are Using This Simple Article Format to Draw a Bigger Audience appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

For enterprise technology deals with price tags of six digits of more, 20 people may be involved in the customer buying process and that makes it difficult for B2B marketers to identify the buyers that they need to target. With so many individuals to target and many perspectives and needs to fill, how can B2B marketers create a managed, repeatable process for customer acquisition that is both efficient and effective?

The first thing best-in-class B2B marketers do is break down the customer buying process into stages. B2B marketers then focus on the primary persona at each stage of the customer buying process in order to create content that attracts and engages qualified prospects. By doing this, meaningful and relevant conversations regarding the desired business outcome can occur.

Depending on the size, location, industry and maturity of one’s organization, the number of stages in the customer buying process will vary. Below is an example of a six-stage enterprise customer buying process and the role/title that usually drives each stage.

Stage #1 – Determine the Desired Outcome for Your Organization

Typically business outcomes are a strategic decision that are directly aligned with a company’s objectives. As a result, CEOs, CIOs, IT executives, and LOB executive management tend to own this stage of the B2B technology purchase process.

Stage #2 – Document Technical Requirements

Documenting technical requirements is all about figuring out if what functionality is required to deliver the desired business outcome. This step requires documenting capabilities, functionality and the IT infrastructure in which the solution will reside. At a conceptual technical level, the CIO or other IT executives will take the lead. At the operational level, IT staff and engineers tend to document the details required.

Stage #3 – Evaluate Vendors, Solutions and References

Evaluating vendors is the natural extension of determining the technical requirements. This step requires understanding what is under the hood. IT staff and engineers will end up implementing and supporting the solution so it’s obviously key to win them over. In addition to the IT staff and engineers, IT management must also be convinced as they are the ones responsible for ensuring the technology is properly implemented and the desired business objectives are achieved.

Stage #4 – Recommend a Vendor, Select a Solution and Agree Upon an Implementation Plan

In terms of who chooses a technology solution, there can be some variation. In some cases the CIO or IT executive management will make the call if they have solved the problem before and have a solution in mind, or if they have a trusted partner (vendor, consulting partner, etc.) or if a peer provides a recommendation. However if the technology or business problem is new and the CIO and IT executive staff do not have a history of solving the problem, they may rely on their IT management or staff (as the perceived experts on the topic) to recommend a solution.

Stage #5 – Gain Internal Support for the Business Outcome, Solution and Implementation

Regardless of whether the technology works or does not work, if an organization refuses to change its behavior (i.e. modify systems, processes and people’s work rhythms) any solution will fail. It’s not about being the smartest person or being right, it’s about motivating people to act. This stage in the customer buying process is usually managed by the CIO, CTO, IT executive or IT management.

Stage #6 – Authorize and Approve the Purchase Decision

Two situations are typical at this stage of the customer buying process:

1) There is a budget for the proposed solution; or

2) The technology solution is not budgeted

In either case “It ain’t over till it’s over,” to quote Yogi Berra. The CEO, CFO CIO and sometimes an IT executive can authorize and approve the decision based upon the size of the budget and signing authority (as a budgeted line item, as a budget reallocation or as a budget addition). However, financial conditions, organizational changes, competing technology projects and changing priorities can rail or derail a technology purchase.

In order to be successful, B2B marketers must understand the customer buying process to produce content that is fully aligned with each persona at each step in the buying process. The right content also has to be in the right format, on the right channel and served up at the right time. The best B2B marketers do not think about each stage as separate and discrete steps, but rather as a continuous process whereby the personas in one stage can help sell the next stage.

<< DOWNLOAD the Content Marketing Planning Model Now >>

Believe it or not, there are upwards of 2,100 digital currencies being traded in the world right now, with a combined market cap of nearly $150 billion, according to Coinranking.com.

Obviously not all of these cryptos will survive. We’re still in the early innings.

Last month I compared this exciting new digital world to the earliest days of the dotcom era, and just as there were winners and losers then, so too will there be winners and losers today. Although bitcoin and Ethereum appear to be the frontrunners right now, recall that only 20 years ago AOL and Yahoo! were poised to dominate the internet. How times have changed!

It will be interesting to see which coins emerge as the “Amazon” and “Google” of cryptocurrencies.

For now, Ethereum has some huge backers. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), according to its website, seeks to “learn from and build upon the only smart contract supporting blockchain currently running in real-world production—Ethereum.” The EEA includes several big-name financial and tech firms such as Credit Suisse, Intel, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase, whose own CEO, Jamie Dimon, knocked cryptos a couple of weeks ago.

Will Bitcoin replace gold?

Lately I’ve been seeing more and more headlines asking whether cryptos are “killing” gold. Would the gold price be higher today if massive amounts of money weren’t flowing into bitcoin? Both assets, after all, are sometimes favored as safe havens. They’re decentralized and accepted all over the world, 24 hours a day. Transactions are anonymous. Supply is limited.

But I don’t think for a second that cryptocurrencies will ever replace gold, for a number of reasons. For one, cryptos are strictly forms of currency, whereas gold has many other time-tested applications, from jewelry to dentistry to electronics.

Unlike cryptos, gold doesn’t require electricity to trade. This makes it especially useful in situations such as hurricane-ravished Puerto Rico, where 95 percent of people are reportedly still without power. Right now the island’s economy is cash-only. If you have gold jewelry or coins, they can be converted into cash—all without electricity or WiFi.

Finally, gold remains one of the most liquid assets, traded daily in well-established exchanges all around the globe. Every day, some £13.8 billion, or $18 billion, worth of physical gold are traded in London alone, according to the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). The cryptocurrency market, although expanding rapidly, is not quite there yet.

I will admit, though, that bitcoin is energizing some investors, especially millennials, in ways that gold might have a hard time doing. The proof is all over the internet. You can find a number of TED Talks on bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, but to my knowledge, none is available on gold investing.

YouTube is likewise bursting at the seams with videos on cryptos.

Bitcoin is up 350 percent for the year, Ethereum an unbelievable 3,600 percent. Gold, meanwhile, is up around 10 percent. Producers, as measured by the NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index, have gained 11.5 percent in 2017, 23 percent since its 52-week low in December 2016.

Discover investing opportunities in high-quality gold miners!

Look Past the Negativity to Find the Good News

The news is filled with negative headlines, and sometimes it’s challenging to stay positive. Take Friday’s jobs report. It showed that the U.S. lost 33,000 jobs in September, the first month in seven years that this happened. A weak report was expected because of Hurricane Irma, but no one could have guessed the losses would be this deep.

The jobs report wasn’t all bad news, however. For one, the decline is very likely temporary. Beyond that, a record 4.88 million Americans who were previously sitting out of the labor force found work last month. This helped the unemployment rate fall to 4.2 percent, a 16-year low.

There’s more that supports a stronger U.S. economy. As I shared with you last week, the Manufacturing ISM Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to a 13-year high in September, indicating rapid expansion in the manufacturing industry. Factory orders were up during the month. Auto sales were up. Oil has stayed in the relatively low $50-a- barrel range, which is good for transportation and industrials, especially airlines. Small-cap stocks, as measured by the Russell 2000 Index, continue to climb above their 50-day and 200-day moving averages as excitement over tax reform intensifies.

These are among the reasons why I remain bullish.

One final note: Speaking on tax reform, Warren Buffett told CNBC last week that he’s waiting to sell assets until he knows the plan will go through. “I would feel kind of silly if I realized $1 billion worth of gains and paid $350 million in tax on it if I just waited a few months and would have paid $250 million,” he said.

It’s a fair comment, and I imagine other like-minded, forward-thinking investors, buyers and sellers will also wait to make huge transactions if they can help it. Tax reform isn’t a done deal, but I think it has a much better chance of being signed into law than a health care overhaul. 

SEE ALSO: The 'mother of all bubbles' is keeping gold relevant

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone 8 or iPhone X — here's why

Recently, a VP of sales told me about the way he views the dynamic between inside and outside sales. Inside sales is the drumbeat, a highly predictable sales organization whose consistency enables outside sales to swing for the fences. I never heard it expressed quite this way, but I do think there’s some truth to it. To prove it to myself, I ran a Monte Carlo simulation for hypothetical startup.

Monte Carlo simulation uses probability to show how things might evolve for this theoretical business. Each team has a 20% chance of closing a lead. The inside team has a 5% chance in months one and two, and a 10% chance in month 3. The outside team has a 5% chance in months 6 through 9 each.

The inside team books $50,000 annual contracts and the outside team books $500,000 annual contracts. Quota for the inside team is $750,000 per year and for the outside team is $1 million per year. Both teams attain quota. In this model, the bookings capacity of each team is the same at $3 million. This implies 4 inside reps and 3 outside reps.

The chart above shows nine different evolutions of a startup with an inside sales team and an outside sales team. The scenarios can be quite different even if the probabilities are the same across them.

In scenario one, the inside sales team is pretty consistent through month 14, but then falls to zero in month 15. It hits a high close to half million dollars worth of bookings in month 8. In scenario two, the inside team carries the company through month 13 and the outside sales team finally closes two deals in each of the last two months. In scenario five, the outside sales team books more than $1 million in month 10, and another $2 million over the course of the first 15 months.

The variety in the scenarios is striking. Contrast the success of the field sales team in scenarios 5 and 7 with scenarios 2 or 1. They feel like very different organizations, don’t they? Even if they are playing the same odds.

If we sum the bookings by team over the first 15 months, we can see that differences more plainly. In the first four scenarios, the inside team books substantially more, up to three times the bookings of the outside teams. But in scenarios four and seven, the outside teams outperform.

Said another way, the standard deviation of the outside team’s performance is three times greater in this model than the inside team. It’s just more variable because the number of leads is smaller and the sales cycles are longer. This variance reinforces why faster sales cycles are a competitive advantage.

Because inside sales teams attain more predictable bookings, even at the small scale, it makes sense that many SaaS startups began with inside sales. More predictable bookings means a shorter time to figuring out how/if we go to market math will work. Also, it helps teams refine and perfect their sales playbooks quicker. Field teams have higher upside, but also higher downside. They are just more variable, at least in the simulation. Reality is more complex

The best situation for start up is to have both. By having a steady drumbeat of inside sales bookings and complementing it with the substantial potential upside of outside sales bookings, a SaaS startup can grow consistently and benefit from all the virtues of predictability, while benefiting from the tremendous bookings capacity of an outside team. In this way, the inside team hedges the variance risk of the outside team.

Editor’s note: Because email marketing continues to be one of the most used and most effective cornerstones of content marketing, Jodi Harris updated her 2015 article.

Think of a well-executed email strategy as the backbone of a successful content marketing program. It’s an essential structure that supports your various content efforts and is the best technique for building a subscriber base – which is critical for achieving value from your content marketing program.

Just how important is the email channel? Consider this: 93% of B2B marketers report using email to distribute their content, according to CMI/MarketingProf’s B2B Content Marketing: 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America research. And, perhaps even more importantly, 74% of marketers who use email consider it to be the most effective distribution channel for their content.

But, just like most things in the world of content marketing, email is not a set-it-and-forget-it tactic. Media trends, informational needs, and consumption preferences evolve; and people change careers, upgrade their devices, develop new interests, and discover new obsessions. If you aren’t prepared to maintain the effectiveness of your email content to ensure that your experience is always viewed as fresh, useful, and personally relevant, your once essential resource can transform into a fly-like nuisance that won’t stop buzzing in your reader’s inbox – keeping it from performing to its full potential.

Email is not a set-it-and-forget-it tactic, says @joderama. #emailmarketing
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If you are looking to evaluate the fitness of your email content, CMI’s original 7-Minute Email Workout infographic is a great quick-start guide on how to test the strength of your e-newsletters and fine-tune your delivery strategies at all levels of experience – beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

<p><strong>Please include attribution to contentmarketinginstitute.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<p><a href=’http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/08/email-workout’><img src=’http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/CMI_Email-FINAL-Infographic_7.23.15.jpg’ alt=’7-minute Email Marketing Workout’ width=’997px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<p>

Of course, it never hurts to go the extra mile when it comes to enhancing the impact and performance of your email efforts. Here, I revisit my original article on the topic and add some fresh tips and takeaways from a few of CMI’s most trusted email experts. I also share some new examples to inspire you to branch out and get creative in how you use this channel to build and maintain your vital audience relationships.

Build a strong list

Your email content won’t do your business any good if you aren’t reaching the right people – or reaching enough of them to drive your content marketing strategy forward. Fortunately, there are plenty of techniques at content marketers’ disposal when it comes to attracting consumers who will be delighted by your email offerings.

Your email content won’t do your business any good if you aren’t reaching the right people, says @joderama.
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As Aaron Orendorff explains, email list-building techniques typically fall into one of three main categories:

1. Options – exclusive content offers, forms, and various types of button ads to tempt readers to opt in to hear from you regularly

2. On-site techniques – landing pages, pop-ups, and other types of sign-up notifications to alert your site visitors to your subscriber-only assets

3. Off-site techniques – Social media fans and followers can join your subscriber list without having to interrupt their social experience on sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Medium.

The most profitable online click is subscribe, says @iconicontent. #contentmarketing
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For more details on each of these techniques, check out Aaron’s visual checklist:

Example: Salesforce’s sign-up forms

Salesforce takes a multistage approach to build its email lists. For instance, it initially attracts blog subscribers with a simple two-field form that clearly outlines what they are opting to receive:

The company also uses more detailed forms that require additional audience information in exchange for higher-value assets, such as its industry reports. The longer forms provide additional marketing benefits for Salesforce. They are used as a preliminary step toward customer qualification (i.e., identifying high-quality leads) and help the company to better tailor its outreach to the needs of individual consumers.

Craft meaningful, compelling messages

Once your subscriber list is filled with consumers eager to hear from your business, you need to take steps to ensure that they like what they receive. Sujan Patel reminds us that this boils down to creating email content that your recipients will want to read. Of course, this means your content needs to be well-written and focused on their interests (rather than your company’s); it also means you must deliver on the promises made to your email subscribers – including publishing on a consistent, reliable basis, and avoiding unwanted surprises and not bombarding them with content they opted out of receiving.

To make sure all your bases are covered, follow Sujan’s top recommendations summarized below:

• Only send emails when you have something of value to say.
• Keep your messages simple, focused, and concise.
• Write great copy – or hire a professional writer to do it.
• Go easy on sales-y messages.
• Allow subscribers to customize the types and frequency of the messages they receive.
• Invest in creating a well-thought-out design that will grab your readers’ attention from the get-go.

#Emailmarketing tip: Allow subscribers to customize type & frequency of message, says @SujanPatel.
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Example: The 21-Day Self-Care Challenge

Nonprofit organization Move to End Violence issued a challenge to its audience members to become more impactful and strategic change agents by incorporating sustainable, mindful practices – like exercising self-care – into their everyday lives. According to the website, what started out as a short-term email campaign that invited social change-minded activists to receive one self-care tip a day for 21 days became a wildly popular ongoing content initiative – helping to grow Move to End’s email database from 400 to 11,000 subscribers in just over a year.

Segment your list for increased relevance and impact

As a smart marketer, you surely recognize how important it is to create content that targets a particular persona – the audience member who will benefit most from the insights you plan to share. This is particularly true for email content, given how discerning today’s consumers are when it comes to allowing marketers to penetrate the inner sanctum of their inboxes. Remember, as CMI founder Joe Pulizzi always says, if your content is meant for everybody, it won’t end up benefiting anybody.

If your #content is meant for everybody, it won’t end up benefiting anybody, says @joepulizzi.
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By segmenting your subscribed audience by known interests and communication preferences, you can deliver an email experience that’s more personally resonant as well as relevant – something that, according to Andrea Fryrear, will increase the likelihood that the recipient will do something with that content, such as sharing it.

Delivering #email content that's resonant will increase likelihood the recipient will share it. @andreafryrear
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How do you gather the insights you’ll need to accurately characterize and categorize your email subscribers? Andrea recommends asking a few targeted questions at the start of your subscriber sign-up process to gauge their top priorities and engagement preferences:

• How often would you like to receive emails from us? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?
• What particular topics are you interested in?
• What kinds of content interest you the most? Text? Video? Infographics?

Example: Eventbrite

According to Eventbrite’s Mark Walker, the company recently updated its newsletter to personalize event picks based on the recipient’s stated preferences and order history. Not only does this technique increase the likelihood that recipients will find Eventbrite’s content to be relevant, the emails are algorithmically generated – so they can easily scale to target all subscribers regardless of how they are segmented.

Surprise and delight your recipients

Once you incorporate segmenting capabilities into your email program, you can adjust your email content in all sorts of ways – including how you get your messages to stand out from all the other emails your subscribers receive on a given day.

For instance, as Mathew Sweezey points out in his presentation at Content Marketing World 2016, your subject line and sender details (prime email real estate) are the only pieces of information readers have to quickly determine if an email is worthy of their attention. As such, he recommends customizing this valuable bit of real estate to speak to the recipient’s current stage in the buying process. Here are his guidelines for achieving this:

• Stage 1: This audience is asking generic questions. They may not even know the keywords in that space. If they see a vendor’s name in the prime email real estate, they know the email is from a marketer. In the prime email real estate, don’t include keywords or brand names.

• Stage 2: This audience is looking for social proof to support their research. Use the subject line to give them ammunition to get support from others. In the prime email real estate, use a keyword or brand name, but not both.

• Stage 3: This audience wants to be assured that they have researched all the viable options before they make a decision. In the prime real estate, use a keyword and brand name.

Subject line and sender details are prime #email real estate – make them count, advises @msweezey.
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Example: Xerox’s Get Optimistic

When the marketing team at Xerox was looking for a way to differentiate its messaging from its numerous competitors, the big, audacious idea it came up with was optimism. It started a biweekly email campaign targeted to CIOs called Get Optimistic, which provided a look at the future of technology, business, and the world through an optimistic lens. This e-newsletter quickly grew in popularity, leading the marketing team to expand it into a full-fledged print and digital content initiative – Chief Optimist Magazine – which has reportedly helped the company generate over 1,000 new sales appointments and more than $1 billion in pipeline revenue.

Nurture your subscribers on an ongoing basis

Email newsletters may be one of the best ways to build and communicate with your target audience, but, as Gini Dietrich pointed out during CMI’s ContentTECH virtual event, there’s a potential flaw to consider: “New subscribers only see your new emails. They don’t see anything that came before it.”

To quickly help your subscribers – new and old, alike – get better acquainted with the value your business provides, consider creating an email drip campaign. As Stephanie Stahl explains, a drip campaign is a progression of pre-written marketing emails sent automatically on a set schedule or directly triggered when a reader takes an action – like signing up for an e-book on a particular topic, or registering to attend a conference or webinar your business is hosting. Below are some of the forms this useful technique can take:

By crafting a series of messages customized to address a topic or purpose, marketers can nurture their subscriber relationships and increasingly earn their trust. However, Gini cautions, unless you are certain the subscriber data is accurate, you need to be careful about using it to personalize an email. “Good personalization can help you convert. Bad personalization will actually kill your efforts,” she warns.

Good personalization can help you convert. Bad personalization will kill your efforts, says @ginidietrich.
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Example: The Start-up Sales Success Email Course

CRM provider Close.io created a drip campaign to deliver a free course designed to help start-ups get better at sales. At the bottom of the first email, a testimonial from someone already enrolled in that same course is included. What Sujan Patel points out is that testimonial doesn’t push (or even mention) Close.io’s products. Instead, the testimonial reinforces the value of the course, consequently addressing a key question (potential objection) that subscribers are most likely to have – is the course worth continuing with?

Click to enlarge

Measure and optimize

The above tips and guidelines will take your email content efforts far. But, as Jessica Best contends, you aren’t truly ready to unlock your “email rock star” badge until you are prepared to do two things:

• Accurately measure the returns on your marketing investment – not just opens and clicks
• Understand how to maximize your content assets and email framework

#Email rock stars measure returns on marketing investment, not just opens and clicks, says @bestofjess.
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Jessica recommends calculating email return on marketing investment (ROMI) by taking the amount of revenue a campaign generated, subtracting your expenses for creating and delivering that campaign, and dividing the result by your expenses. (She also suggests visiting the email marketing ROI website for a simple calculation tool that comes in handy for this task.)

Once you understand your baseline email ROMI, Jessica offers the following high-impact ideas for optimizing, enhancing, and amplifying your email content:

• Look for ways to automate and extend the email experience, such as delivering your welcome message as a series of customer-nurturing (i.e., drip campaign) emails.

• Ask for the referral: While sometimes this amounts to no more than a new subscriber or lead, it can also mean a purchase under the right circumstances.

• Use motion to move your audience: Not only can including animation and relevant motion effects in emails add emotional appeal to your messages, it can drive up response rates up to threefold, according to Jessica.

• Take advantage of video: While embedding a video in your email messages simply doesn’t work well in the inbox setting, there are ways to get around that. For example, you can offer text about why readers might be interested in watching and link to the full video.

• Make email a two-way conversation: Use your email content to convey how receptive your company is to hearing from its audience by encouraging subscribers to ask questions and offer their feedback or even inviting them to take a detailed user survey.

• Tell a great story: Even some of the most seemingly mundane of businesses can harness the creative muse and deliver an emotionally resonant experience through this marketing channel.

Example: Noodles & Company

Fast-casual restaurant Noodles & Company created a full-blown campaign to support email sign-up referrals, offering a chance to earn entries for its Travel the World sweepstakes. According to Jessica, the restaurant received almost three times the number of new email address sign-ups in one month as a result of the campaign, which also led to a 200% increase in monthly sales.

Conclusion

Don’t overlook the value that email offers for strengthening your brand’s relationship with customers and prospects. Email may no longer be a shiny new tactic on the content marketing scene, but with the right strategy and a little upkeep, it still packs a powerful punch.

Got a great email content example to share? Let us know what we’re missing out on by posting in the comments.

Want help in improving your content marketing program every day? Sign up today for the CMI newsletter (or weekly digest.) (And feel free to give feedback on our email marketing format about what works or doesn’t work for you.)

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Deliver Emails That Will Increase Reach, Impact, and Subscriber Satisfaction appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Every so often, salespeople do some really shady shit.

It’s not always easy to catch them in the act, but if you value transparency like we do, there’s a good chance you can stop fraudulent sales activity before it’s too late.

We’ll get into the practical steps in a minute, but first I want to share an insane story from Ryan Shank, founder and CEO of PhoneWagon.

Not long ago, Ryan hired a sales rep to schedule demos. The rep’s only job was to cold call prospects and set appointments. He’d get a commision whenever prospects showed up. Pretty simple stuff.

One day, the rep reached out and said, “Hey, I’ve got a demo for you. He called in early.”

Ryan jumped on the call but, after a few minutes, it was clear that the demo wasn’t going anywhere. The prospect didn’t seem to know anything about marketing. He couldn’t even answer simple questions like, “What campaigns are you running?”

After some back-and-forth nonsense, the prospect abruptly hung up.

Nothing about the call made any sense

For one thing, who calls in early for a product demo? 

More importantly: the prospect should've been able to answer Ryan’s simplest questions. He had a legitimate marketing title. But even if the prospect knew nothing— if he’d somehow managed to land a job without knowing a single thing about marketing—how and why did the sales rep qualify him for a demo?

Ryan went into Close.io to figure out what was going on.

The first thing he noticed was that, at some point, the prospect’s email had switched from a work account to a personal account. When he tried pulling up the call activity between the sales rep and the prospect, he couldn’t find one call within Close.io. There were a bunch of call notes, but not a single tracked call. No recordings. Nothing.

Frustrated and confused, he checked out other leads for evidence of recent communication. He started listening to voicemails left by prospects, but something didn’t sound right. Each call—from Dave, Chris, and Anne—sounded a little like the sales rep. They used the same phrases, had the same familiar drawl, and after periods of inactivity, they all wanted to schedule demos immediately.

After listening to a few of these voicemails, Ryan realized that the rep was leaving voicemails for himself.

While using a voice changer.

He created bogus email addresses to set appointments and called from mass numbers.

But here’s the craziest part:

That first demo call? The one that raised Ryan’s suspicions?

That was the rep, too.

The dude faked a technical demo with his own boss. The founder and CEO of the company. All to get his numbers up.

The whole story is insane. If you want to see it unfold in real time, check out the video Ryan posted a few weeks ago:

Manage your sales team more effectively. Download the Ultimate Sales Management Toolkit right now!

Why do some salespeople cheat the system?

There are plenty of reasons, but it all comes down to greed, desperation, opportunity, and pressure. Salespeople have to perform—there’s no way around it. And when things aren’t going well, some reps just don’t have the strength of character to work their way out of a bad month.

They start looking for shortcuts, like:

• Fake activity: They report a certain number of calls or emails (or a certain amount of time spent prospecting) without doing any real work.
• Bad opportunities: They talk to prospects who aren’t really interested in the product, they don’t qualify them correctly, or they make false promises.
• Stolen leads, opportunities, and deals: They feel like their leads aren’t any good, so they try to steal prospects away from other salespeople.
• Bad closes: They close deals that shouldn’t be closed. They’ll often say something like, “If you give me your credit card number right now, you’ll have 60 days to cancel before you’re charged.” Sales reps essentially pretend that prospects are fully committed when they’re still on the fence. They might even charge the prospect, which complicates the situation further.
• Straight up fraud: They fake leads, contracts, and credit cards. You know, real criminal shit.

Here’s why this garbage really hurts: not only are you paying out commission and bringing on bad customers, but you’re also forecasting successes—to your team and your investors—that aren’t actual successes. You’re planning your future around bullshit numbers. You’re projecting growth when, in actuality, these customers are going to churn hard.

So what’s the best way to catch fraudulent activity?

Prevent it from happening in the first place

Be deliberate in your hiring process. Emphasize character, not just sales ability. Do background checks and backdoor background checks. Call people not on their reference lists. See how they worked with others on their team. Call former customers and ask about their experiences with that salesperson.

Ask candidates if they own a voice changer.

In short, take your time. We’re super thorough when we hire salespeople and (knock on wood) I’ve never had someone steal from me in fifteen years.

Encourage transparency

Every sales rep’s activity is an open book. There are no secrets.

Create a system in which you can review calls and emails regularly. You’re all working toward the same goal—to grow your business. No rep should operate on their own little island.

Trust but verify

This is especially true when you bring on a new sales rep. Join prospect calls. Review their emails. When they close a deal, make a quality call to the customer and say, “Thanks again for your business. I know you talked to [new sales hire], so I wanted to learn more about that experience. Have we done everything we can to treat you well and set you up for success?”

If all of the feedback is positive, you can ease off a little. Instead of checking in every week, check in monthly or quarterly. No matter how much you trust a person, always verify that they’re still doing things the right way.

When you catch someone committing fraud, what should you do?

Don’t react immediately. But don’t dwell on the situation either.

Collect as much evidence as you can. Try to determine whether this is a pattern of behavior or an outlier. Check out their call and email activity. Check in with prospects and customers. Take a day or two to really do your homework.

Then, put together an action plan. What if you’re right and something shady is going on? What might happen if you confront them and they admit to fraud? What might happen if they deny any wrongdoing?

Compile a termination checklist, just in case your suspicions are verified. And make sure there’s clear communication (emails, activity data) that proves why you need to take action. If the fraud is crazy enough, you might even want to reach out to your lawyer.

Eventually, you should calmly sit that person down—ideally with a third party in the room to witness and/or moderate—and say, “I noticed some weird stuff going on, so I looked into it further. Here’s the data I’ve gathered so far. Can you explain this to me?”

Don’t make any accusations. Don’t get emotional. Just provide the facts as you see them.

There might actually be a good explanation. We’re all wrong at some point. If that’s the case, apologize to the sales rep, thank them for providing context and clarity, and ask how situations like this can be prevented in the future.

But if the sales rep can’t give you a good explanation—if they don’t remain calm or provide any context that changes the situation—then you need to let them go immediately. No second chances. I don’t care if they’ve worked for you for 3 weeks or 3 years.

Even if you believe people can change, you can’t keep them around for two reasons:

• This second chance is probably more like a fourth or fifth chance. It’s just the first time they’ve been caught.
• By letting them stay, you’re sending a signal to everybody in the company that you don’t like this activity, but you’ll tolerate it.

In the end, part ways gracefully and call an immediate meeting with your team. Explain what happened, how it happened, how you caught it, and ask them for feedback on how to prevent this kind of bullshit in the future.

Set a strong example. Fraud won’t be tolerated.

The team will appreciate your honesty and transparency. They’ll trust you. And they’ll know that you’re a strong founder, CEO, or sales director. You’re a leader. You’re somebody that will protect them from salespeople who work against your team, your company, and your customers.

Get 7 free templates to manage (and scale) your sales team. Download the Ultimate Sales Management Toolkit right now!

Download the Ultimate Sales Management Toolkit

Leads are screwing up our sales process (But not why you might think.)

Not because we don’t have enough leads, or the quality of our leads aren’t good.

Not because our sales process has been turned upside down to get leads even faster (although all true, yes?) 

Not even because our death-match staring contests with marketing over lead quality and follow up are escalating.

Seriously, when did you learn to sell Marketing? (and be honest Sales Leaders, how much credit do your reps really give the lead score?)

Leads are screwing up selling in that salespeople have now actually forgotten how to sell.  

Too Many Leads Have Made Your Reps WORSE At Selling

We’re giving reps so many leads that it’s faster, easier, and hell, probably actually smarter to ditch the hard ones to make time for the next cherry.

And we’ve just brought in a whole new generation of reps who don’t know life before twenty fresh inbound leads per day.

Unfortunately, they probably never will know how to sell.

(Hint: these are the kids spamming you on LinkedIn.)

Before you quit reading and decide that I’m a no-good marketing sympathizer who’s handing marketing a huge compliment by saying we’ve become too dependent, read this story and see if you:

1. Might agree with me, and…

2. Might even spot some of these tendencies on your floor.

A small online technical training company in FL gives their BDR (this is Lead Gen, SDR, Biz Dev to some friends) Team lists of companies to outbound call, uncover opportunity, and pass to an inside/outside ISE. Because their industry is industrial, they will often break in through an industrial or tech role like maintenance engineer, shift manager, etc.  

Their new rep (let’s call him Ben) shows me his lead list (hundreds you guys, he’s scrolling and scrolling here) and explains that these seventeen that he’s highlighted are the ones that he is working. Why? Because Ben used to be a production engineer and he has good luck breaking into the leads with that title listed.  

OK my trusty team of readers.  What did he do right?  Total props for finding his “In”, yes?  

And what is going to happen to those OTHER 300 leads without that title listed?  

Bingo.  

Let’s be clear on 2 things:

1. Every one of those leads HAS a production engineer in the company; it’s just not listed on the lead (and may have a different title).
2. If the Ben on your team hasn’t targeted a lead for some reason, it will likely get the three-voicemail throw away and you’ll be giving him 300 more on Monday.

And what COULD we be doing with this list? I’ll tell you what Ben’s boss hired us to teach him:

1. Find out what the account is potentially worth before even trying to find the right DM. We call it sales qualification – using any live body to score revenue potential (not lead buying potential).
2. Prioritize Ben’s list with the big potential on top (not the rep’s favorite title or home state) and call “A” potential leads 15 times and “C” potential 3 times
3. How to go and get the production engineer’s name, title, and direct dial number

Guys, Ben set his lead list on FIRE. There’s a strategy in place, he’s excited about uncovering A’s, and he’s lighting up the phone finding contacts and working the list instead of going through the voicemail motions just to get his next list to cherry-pick.  

And yes, the results spiked. By the end of the month the team nearly doubled the number of qualified leads passed and accepted. I can’t wait to see what happened to lead spend.

You’re going to love this next example. Give your guys inbound leads?  

I spent a few days on the floor of a massive internet tech company with their inbound team. These guys get so many good calls a day that the top guys have basically just learned how to not pee for a workday. Wish I was kidding.

If they’re 3 min into a call that is slightly annoying what have they learned to do? You got it. They ditch the caller and get the next one.

It’s like watching the old ladies in Vegas who spin the reels again and again and don’t even watch the slot machine to see the result.

They’re addicted to the pull, the HOPE that the next caller will be triple 7’s.

And naturally they’re randomly rewarded (the strongest form of behavior modification) so the addiction is set.

As leaders we’ve been so concerned with getting them the good leads that we forgot to teach them what to do with them!

Once again, we fall into the trap of buying our sales teams stuff that would have made us superhero reps when we were reps.

But the hard truth is that we don’t have a lot of superhero potential on our teams anymore.

The war for sales talent is too great and these guys have never really had to learn sales.

It’s like what they say about pretty people not having to try hard in bed. We’ve made reps lazy and entitled by surrounding them with leads they can cherry-pick to quota.

I call it the…

“Silver Platter Syndrome”

So why is this a Syndrome and not a celebration?  Because quota attainment is going down folks.

Check out CSO Insights numbers:  

Ability to attain quota:  63% in 2012.  57% in 2016 (CSO Insights)

Forecasted deals won: 47%

The number of C-level execs that say the rep added value to the process: under 20%.

We’re not meeting goals, we can’t predict what will close, and our customers would rather do it without us.

As an industry we are LOSING you guys!

And I see a direct correlation in the decline of sales ability with the increase in lead spend and marketing-driven (and customer-driven) sales. 

Too Many Leads Wasted? Here’s How To Diagnose (And Treat) Silver Platter Syndrome With Swift Action!

Maybe we all see it and I’m just the only one who’s saying it.

Maybe we all don’t want to see it. So don’t take my word for it.

Here’s how to diagnose Silver Platter Syndrome on your sales floor:

What percent of opps in stage one began as leads? Are there ANY that reps self-generated?

How do reps determine who to call first on their list?

How many touches do leads get before they are trashed / recycled? How is this managed?

When you listen to a call, does the rep ask at least 5 sales questions? Do they try to close?

What are you spending to generate these leads and what’s your current ROI or % closed (or however you measure it. Has it gone down?)

So copy and paste this next part into your calendar for a week from now OK?  Because once you go out and investigate this, you’re going to have a serious OMG moment that I hope sounds a lot like,

“Holy hell!  LB was right!!  I have to take ACTION!  Silver Platter Syndrome will NOT stand on my floor!”

5 Specific Steps To Cure Silver Platter Syndrome

1. Reduce lead flow. Don’t cut it all at once, the poor babies will starve.
   • If there are only 30 inbound calls, I might not hang up on this one until I’ve really tried…
2. Hire more heads if you can’t slow down the engine.
   • You’ll lose a few reps who don’t like to share their leads – good riddance.
3. Implement lead management rules + inspection.
   • No Ben, you can’t have more leads until you finish working the ones you have!
4. Install sales qualification.
   • It’s different than a lead score and your rep scores it himself so he’ll actually believe it
5. Get them some sales training (why yes, I’d LOVE to help you with this thanks for asking).
   • Sales qualification, capturing new contacts, asking questions, closing… they need it all!

Agree? Disagree? Is Silver Platter a syndrome or a celebration?  Give me your thoughts and share your stories!

The post Silver Platter Syndrome: A New Disease That’s Plaguing Your Sales Process appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Pixabay

If there was one golden rule to ensure success with Account Based Marketing, it would be this: Silos don’t work. In an account-based world, landing the biggest, highest-value accounts can only be achieved when all revenue-generating disciplines are closely aligned.

Silos are easy. Sales and Marketing have historically operated in their own way, with their own goals, culture and values. But as the way our buyers make decisions evolves, our businesses have to follow suit and move beyond this old-school infrastructure. In truth, disconnected Sales and Marketing operations only leads to inefficiencies, broken systems and problems at every level.

“It’s easier to work in silos. You just don’t make as much money.”
–Peter Herbert, Terminus

We’ll dispel the myth that sales and marketing can achieve optimal account-based results when they work independently, and provide tangible steps for working on this pervasive problem.

The Waste of Misalignment

If Marketing embraces ABM without deep alignment with Sales, the result is a set of isolated tactics that render themselves useless. Ad retargeting, direct mail pieces, or even field events are only moderately successful without full participation and enthusiasm from the entire revenue team.

On the flip side, when Sales works a high-value account without support from Marketing, the result is a rogue set of reps generating their own account targeting, and writing their own emails (if you’re a marketer, like me, you probably just cringed a little). They also likely need to double the volume of their rogue efforts in an attempt to improve productivity, usually at the cost of quality.

“ABM is a strategic business initiative. If it’s only sponsored by Marketing, it becomes a campaign.”
– Jeff Sands ITSMA

7 Real Strategies to Achieve the Promised Land

This topic is written about ad nauseum – and for good reason. It’s easier said than done, and many companies are currently in the process of figuring it out. While there’s no silver bullet, there are a set of strategies deployed by executive leaders that can help get their sales and marketing teams on the same page.

1) Stop talking about leads and start talking about accounts

I know, this strategy sounds counterintuitive. After all, marketing has been measured for years now on the quantity and quality of the leads they’ve been asked to deliver to sales. We’ve developed a plethora of acronyms to measure this delivery – MQL, SAL, SQL, and the like.

These metrics, under the traditional demand generation model, put a huge amount of priority on casting a wide enough net to reel in as many individual leads as possible, especially through inbound methods.

However, even the best, most optimized lead handoffs occur between Marketing and an Account Executive – not a Lead Executive. Sales, at the end of the day, closes an account – not a lead. See the problem?

Consider implementing a new metric to move the conversation to a different level – Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) Our definition for an MQA is “A target account (or discrete buying center) that has reached a sufficient level of engagement to indicate possible sales readiness.”

While MQL relates to one lead, the MQA is for entire accounts that are ready to go to sales. Think about the difference between fishing with a net and fishing with a spear.

2) Foster communication with joint office hours and regular meetings

We’ve heard horror stories about management deciding to physically separate Sales and Marketing because they can’t get along, or the ever-present problem of each department talking about each other behind their backs.

Is this middle school? Even the best SLA can’t help a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship.

Like a good marriage, communication matters. In an episode of Andy Paul’s sales effectiveness podcast, Bridget Gleason (VP of Sales for Logz.io), describes how she’s been able to create an open conversation and dialogue between Sales and Marketing.

“My team and I are very involved in the marketing planning process through continual meetings with demand generation, branding, content, and product managers. They’re part of my time just as I’m part of their team. We also have weekly joint sales and marketing office hours, which is a time for people to come and ask questions. We feel it’s important for them to ask us together as a team. What affects marketing affects sales, what affects sales affects marketing.”

At Engagio, our sales and marketing teams meet weekly. We’ve also seen examples of teams who hold bi-weekly scrums or standup meetings. Then, every quarter, executive leaders from each team review progress against shared goals, and make small adjustments to items like SLA or metrics.

Maintaining a continuing conversation is a necessary part of ensuring ongoing alignment, because as the market changes, what buyers need changes. What Sales is learning needs to be fed back to Marketing, and vice versa.

If the wide receiver on your football team never talked to your running back, you’d be in trouble. While the run game is much different than the pass game, if you want to be a real threat on offense, both need to be working together.

3) Hold Marketing accountable for some level of revenue responsibility

We agree with how Matt Heinz (President of Heinz Marketing) puts it, “You can’t buy a beer with an MQL.”

As he argues, it’s important for marketers to embrace revenue responsibility. What really matters to the organization is the closed deal.

“To change [marketers’] objectives, change their compensation. If the sales team at the end of the month and the end of the quarter is grinding it out to hit their number but the marketing team’s at the bar celebrating because they hit their retweet goal, then something’s misaligned.”

4) Document what each team does within the sales process

If sales doesn’t understand what marketing does all day, and marketing feels the same about sales, the problem is a severe lack of empathy. The symptoms of this are broken processes and a critical lack of trust.

In their book Aligned to Achieve, Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin explain, “Alignment takes a good deal of understanding each other’s roles, challenges, and actions. Both sales and marketing rely on the other for high performance.”

By documenting an overview of the sales process, that is, how buyers buy from you, you can help Sales and Marketing gain an understanding of their distinct roles within the shared framework, and working towards a common goal.

Peter Buscemi, go-to-market strategy advisor, recommends on his Four Quadrant blog, to “document the steps in the sales process so it is clear what is to happen and when. The steps identified in the sales process should also be included in the salesforce automation system, serve as the framework for sales enablement deliverables and be the footprint that marketing aligns to the customer buying process to facilitate the development and execution of an integrated demand generation plan.”

He continues, “A demand management best practice is for sales and marketing to mutually agree on where a solid vertical line should be drawn in the sales process continuum to document where marketing and sales have primary responsibility… marketing will run lead on certain tasks that are mutually agreed upon and will be accountable for those steps, just as sales will be accountable for the steps after the hand-off.”

5) Set clear and consistent definitions

At the outset of an Account Based Everything program, developing the right criteria for your target accounts is paramount. This is an ideal test of the current state of your Sales and Marketing alignment, as it dictates whether your teams are on the same page.

Your ability to map out a list of target accounts depends on how each department defines their Ideal Customer Profile. Get this wrong, and nothing else you do with Account Based Everything really matters. This definition is the foundation for the whole program. If each team has a different perspective, you’ll miss major opportunities, waste resources (time, headcount) on the wrong accounts, or both.

To help mediate the discussion, leaders from Sales and Marketing should discuss together the following questions:

1. Where have we sold most effectively in the past?
2. Which kinds of accounts have proven most profitable over time?
3. Which sub-industries do we work with today?
4. What characteristics are most predictive of sales success?
5. What attributes make for the best fit with our product?
6. What traits should rule out an account?
7. What kind of accounts play best to our unique strengths?
8. Which accounts do we already have an advantage in?
9. What accounts deliver the most value (including strategic value)?

In addition, both parties should be mindful of firmographic and technographic criteria, as well as intent and engagement information to identify in-market and highly engaged accounts.

6) Use the same data and technology

Even the best laid plans can get thwarted by a lack of appropriate account-based technology. Integrated systems help to encourage aligned departments.

To foster alignment, implement an account-centric data infrastructure, for example lead-to-account matching, which enables leads (historically owned by Marketing) to roll up to accounts (typically owned by sales teams.)

Without this capability, a company could have thousands of individuals within a database who work at target accounts and customer accounts, but have no way of connecting them to the right company. Leads could get routed to the wrong owner, could be improperly scored or nurtured, and sales’ overall productivity decreases from time spent cleaning up this data problem. There are many tools and technologies to choose from within the Account Based technology market ecosystem.

In addition to the right L2A capabilities, Sales and Marketing teams should model accurate pipeline metrics. For example, to reach a particular pipeline goal, what % needs to come from Marketing? Your goal should be for Sales and marketing to come to the table knowing exactly what’s expected of them to hit your organization’s revenue goals.

7 ) Share account-level insight

The entire account-based strategy depends on doing your homework and learning as much as you possibly can about target accounts (and key buyers at those accounts) so you can maximize your relevance and resonance within each.

Marketing teams have always been adept at gathering competitive intelligence. It’s part of our DNA as a function. They can apply this same knowledge and use of listening tools like Mention.com or BuzzSumo to help their sales counterparts gain insight for breaking into key target accounts.

They can further help Sales gain a better understanding of particular accounts and the key buyers at the table by following them on social channels, and by engaging influencers at the right times. This team is also skilled at paying attention to trigger events that could cause a target account to actively seek a solution.

After all, #1 reason an enterprise buyer makes a purchase decision is your proficiency in their market, according to the ITSMA. Marketing can help Sales position your organization as an expert in your space, by providing them with the appropriate insights.

Ready to reach for the promised land?

To summarize, an account based strategy works best when all revenue-generating disciplines are closely aligned. Sales and Marketing leaders have to help their businesses move beyond the old, stale problems of finger-pointing and the blame game. As this article clearly shows, we’re learning more every year about what helps to bring these two teams together to drive revenue growth. It’s up to practitioners to do the hard work, and reap the benefits.

It’s no secret that filling or finding a sales role can be a difficult task. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best sales job boards to help you find that new candidate or a new role for yourself.

According to Monster, 93% of employers are doing some form of hiring in 2022 (up from 82% in 2021). Meanwhile, job seekers are more sensitive than ever to the hiring experience, with 73% of applicants saying they would only apply to a company with similar values to theirs (Glassdoor), and 64% of applicants reporting that they would share a negative hiring experience with family and friends (Retorio).

With that in mind, these sales job boards should come in handy now more than ever to find or fill that sales position.

Table of Contents

Best Sales Job Boards

Non-Sales Job Boards

Sales Job Boards

1. Rainmakers

Rainmakers is an excellent place to source quality candidates or get matched with an ideal company. We like it because employers can search through candidate profiles that match their preferred skills and abilities, and job seekers can create a profile and let the offers come to them.

2. SalesJobs.com

As the nIts, there are lots of sales jobs to be found on salesjobs.com. In fact, it is one of the largest and oldest sales employment sites around.

3. SalesHeads.com

SalesHeads has an extensive database of sales openings from over 200,000 companies. If you need to find a candidate or a role, SalesHeads is one you shouldn't skip.

4. AA-ISP Inside Sales Career Center

American Association of Inside Sales Professionals is an excellent choice if you are looking to hire or get hired in inside sales. We love how simple it is for candidates to upload their resumes and get connected with potential employers.

5. SalesTrax

SalesTrax was founded in 1998 but was recently acquired in 2020 and relaunched with a focus on tech sales. If you are looking to hire top tech talent, look no further than their tech sales job board.

6. TheLions

TheLions was initially focused on advising Sales Talent, but has since expanded to include other roles within the tech and startup umbrella. If you need more hands-on assistance in hiring than searching a job board on your own, TheLions team is there to help. They also offer executive search.

7. The Ladders

If you're a sales executive looking for a higher-paying job, The Ladders is your pot of gold. It’s a job board specializing in $100K+ jobs and promises you access to 20,000 recruiters and more than 200,000 jobs.

8. DADOMATCH

It doesn't get much better than free! Employers post jobs for free on DADOMATCH, so there's no reason not to give it a shot. We also love that it is integrated with major job advertising platforms like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, SimplyHired, and others.

1. Craigslist

What can't you find on Craigslist? Business development and sales jobs are broken out into their own separate category, so there's no need to search in the broader database.

2. LinkedIn

When you click on a job listing on LinkedIn, the social media site will automatically show you if you have any connections who work for the company. You can also see who posted the job, and take a quick look at their profile to stealthily introduce yourself. No one likes a cold open, so we love that LinkedIn allows you to leverage your connections for referrals.

3. Indeed

Indeed aggregates a stunning number of jobs from all over the internet, with job postings in the millions. What we like: Indeed is free for job seekers and offers reviews of companies by current and former employers

4. AngelList

Want to work at a startup? AngelList is for you. Create a profile, easily filter sales jobs, and find early-, mid-, or late-stage startups that interest you. We love AngelList's clean and modern UI.

5. Glassdoor

Glassdoor gives sales job seekers reviews and insights on roles and companies before they need to submit a resume. Best for: hirees who are conscious of company culture and finding a good fit. They also have a great mobile app.

6. Monster

Monster is one of the original online job boards, helping connect candidates and employers for over 25 years. Monster features a friendly and easy-to-use interface combined with a top-notch database of job openings and candidates.

7. Mashable

Mashable is known as one of the largest independent online news sites focused on digital culture and technology. Their job board is excellent for sales professionals looking to work in the digital space.

8. CareerBuilder

With over three million jobs posted monthly, CareerBuilder helps you find the right sales job. Get started by searching for your industry and location of interest, which features both US and International listings.

9. Dice

If you're looking to work in Tech, you’ll love Dice. Not only does it have thousands of tech jobs to choose from, but it also provides personalized salary estimates and custom job notifications. Best for: tech companies and candidates looking to link up.

10. Google Job Search

It's a no-brainer that the world's strongest search engine has a formidable database of job postings, scraped together from all across the web. What sets Google Job Search apart is of course its superior search functionality. Your next sales job could be just one Google away.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

422737 / Pixabay

Technology plays a large role in how brands interact with customers today. From social media to wearables, marketers and consumers now have access to new exciting ways to communicate. Now that so much can be automated, businesses have more productivity tools than ever, but technology has also made brands more efficient. Using analytics, the most innovative tech companies can monitor customer interactions with their campaigns and adjust their efforts to respond in real time.

Tech Companies as Game Changers

But advancements in technology bring pressure to compete. Businesses must remain ahead of the game to win customers in a marketplace where companies now have access to instant information on how audiences are responding to their efforts. Here are a few tech companies that are changing the way the industry approaches marketing.

CrowdOptic

CrowdOptic’s sensor technology has already made news for its ability to determine the GPS coordinates of certain objects. But marketers love the airborne camera system’s ability to analyze information and deliver data.

When built into other products, CrowdOptic could offer valuable insight into how customers interact at events and gatherings. One notable use of this was the company’s partnership with L’Oreal at Canada’s Luminato Festival.

Attendees saw the power of the tech at an art exhibit during the festival that showed where people were aiming their smartphones at a given time.

AnyRoad

Event ticketing is the perfect gateway to initiate individual relationships and gather data on attendees, but the industry has fallen behind in this area and still sees ticketing as a one-dimensional reservation tool.

Millennials are far more interested in experiences than things, yet few brands understand the impact of their branded experiences. AnyRoad is innovating event ticketing for the new generation of eventgoers, while simultaneously allowing marketers and operations teams alike to leverage their events to organically grow their brands.

The registration process is refreshingly simple for visitors, while event staff are able to trade in their legacy ticketing systems for a proper ERM (Experience Relationship Manager). Experiential marketing has always been one of the most engaging tools available to brands. Now, the industry can fully leverage those experiences.

Marketo

Sales and marketing professions can waste hours each week chasing down the wrong leads. Lead generation tools like Marketo help brands avoid that wasted time by delivering qualified leads. With a database of contacts that are likely to take action, marketers can then send messages that get results.

Campaigns can even be segmented so that customers only get information related to their demonstrated interests. As a result, the traditional spray-and-pray method of marketing and advertising no longer works with customers who expect customized messages.

Google

Few companies have changed the way businesses connect with customers like Google has. The company is constantly striving to improve the user experience. This means refining search results to incorporate location and variants to the keywords a person enters.

In other words, when you enter a set of words, the search engine will deliver location-based results as well as find results similar to the keywords entered. The end result is an intuitive search experience that makes it easier for customers to find what they need, which makes life better for everyone involved.

Dovetale

Influencers can quickly amplify a brand’s message simply by posting to their built-in audience. But finding the right influencers can be challenging. Dovetale uses image recognition software to pair brands with influencers who align with their products or services.

Marketers from tech companies simply upload an image and choose the audience size they would prefer an influencer to have and the service delivers a list of influencers. Brands can then use that information to reach out to influencers and offer free products or services in exchange for a review.

Uber

Ridesharing service Uber has revolutionized public transportation. However, they also continue to alter how businesses market to customers. This is especially true with a new campaign that lets businesses pay for a customer’s ride to their establishment. The program, which is being tested in limited markets, is billed as pay-per-ride, rather than pay-per-click.

Uber incorporated it into its Offers promotion, where the company partners with various retailers to encourage customers to make purchases in exchange for a discount. A free Uber ride may sway a customer to choose one great restaurant or local attraction over another.

This type of marketing could be the beginning of a new way for marketers to reach customers online.

Tech companies are consistently pushing the boundaries of marketing, coming up with new, exciting ways to reach customers. By keeping an eye on innovators in the tech space, brands can monitor changes in marketing and shift their approach.

In any organization,

improving begins with open, frank discussions around crucial questions, like these:  

• Why do we have to change? 
• Why should we do this all alone? 
• Why should we do this in addition to other work? 
• What if sales problems are not caused by us?  
• Why is this important to the organization?  
• What are objective measures of performance? 
• What could the future be like with this approach? 

Obviously, such conversations may not be easy. And although change can be perceived as threatening, it also presents possibilities. Do your salespeople know the possibilities? 

Rather than jumping in with kaizen events or whatever, it pays big dividends to learn how sales and marketing people are thinking. They typically do not see the company (or the customers) the way other employees do, and with good reason.  

A process excellence initiative is an opportunity to reframe everyone’s perspectives in the context of evidence and data. This creates opportunities to improve the productivity and quality of work life.  

Recognizing the Wealth Businesses Generate  

Businesses create wealth for owners, employees, and customers alike. Unfortunately, if you don’t recognize what wealth is in the first place, there is a lot that can – and does – go wrong!   

Some people think wealth comes from money. To them, a high income, inheritance, or possessions seem like the source of wealth. However, this places the cart before the horse. That’s because money is merely a means to something else. It is a consequence of wealth, not its cause. It has the power to create or destroy, depending on the person who wields it. Just check out the six-o-clock news for examples of what happens to people when money is used without purpose, respect, rationality, education, or experience.  

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish,
but it will not replace you as the driver. 

Ayn Rand 

So, if money does not cause wealth, what does?  

Wealth is the accumulation of value. Take a moment, and think of all the value – the results and effects a business creates! 

People working together form relationships. They can achieve a wide variety of ambitions. The discipline required generates respect for themselves, as well as respect from others. It provides security, and opportunities to learn and gain experience. It can provide a meaningful purpose in life. 

And yes, of course, work provides money, and all those things require money. But wealth is the accumulation of those values. The ability to create value causes money, not the other way around.   

Now ask yourself, “Where does your ability to create value come from?”   

It should be clear that neither values, nor wealth come from possessions, the school you went to, the job you currently hold, TV appearances, or anything else that is outside yourself.  

Instead, the ability to create value and wealth comes from how you are built on the inside. It is how you face to your situation, whatever it is. Your ability to create wealth comes from your assumptions, from how you choose to think. You have within yourself the means of making your life better, no matter how good or bad your situation is at any given moment.

The company you work for is a platform, a canvas on which values can be accumulated. However, each person in the business must create the values – and the wealth – they want for themselves. At every moment, they choose whether to focus on something, consume a resource, or pursue a goal – or not.

Individual employees rarely have a complete picture of the context. For them to create the maximum amount of wealth requires a rigorous process of thought. And that is the point of process excellence initiatives .

Process excellence, properly implemented, teaches people how to think. Its purpose is to make it easier for the business to create wealth – for the customer, for the employees, and for the business owners.

Yes, that includes money. Tons of it, in fact. But the money is only a byproduct of people working together to make the world more like it could be and ought to be.  (This is the reason process excellence ought to be the highest priority of every senior executive.) 

Wealth Creating Roles and Assumptions of Salespeople and Managers   

If you are a salesperson, let’s examine some assumptions you might have about the role you play:   

• Salesperson’s Attitude:
  Are you out to PROVE how good you are, or IMPROVE how good you are? 
• Salesperson’s Value:
  Are you a passive servant, dependent on the customer, or are you a proactive independent equal? 
• Salesperson’s Method:
  Do you spend most of your time talking, pushing, closing, or listening, inquiring, and facilitating? 
• Salesperson’s Thinking:
  Is it more important for the customer to know about you and your offers, or for you to know about them and their objectives, strategies, and issues? 

Most importantly, what actions should you (as a salesperson) be taking to live up to what you think?  

Sales managers have huge influence over their teams when they “walk the walk” instead of just “talking the talk”. Let’s examine some of the assumptions managers might have about the role they play: 

• Manager’s role:
  Are you a boss? Or are you a coach? 
• Manager’s attitude:
  Along for the ride? Or are you an investor? 
• Manager’s approach to problems:
  Avoid them, and hide? Or treasure them, and learn from them? 

• Manager’s relationship to authority:
  Unquestioning? Or honesty, catchball? 

Most people want things to be better, simpler, easier, faster. Process excellence taps into these natural instincts, if managers foster the principle of “Respect for People.”  Managers can do this by: 

• Always being interested in what their people think  
• Always asking them why 
• Challenging salespeople to define their terms more clearly 
• Encouraging them to find a way to do better 
• Making sure they show you what they learn 

Saving Salespeople’s Time 

A medical device company struggled with a low close ratio – lots of selling time wasted. They learned to define their qualification criteria in a more precise way that used numbers. This enabled them to gather data on current and past deals. Statistical analysis revealed startling ways to improve: 

• Numeric ranking prioritized sales opportunities better than the old gut-feel approach. 
• Forecast accuracy exceeded 90%. They knew which accounts to prioritize, and which to walk away from. 
• Sales attention focused on the small number of criteria the data showed had the highest decision-making impact. It was insight they did not have before. 
• Productivity increased. Salespeople had more productive time to spend, and they knew how to spend it.    

Making Sales Easer 

A national accounts team struggled to bring in big new accounts. Developing a sales value stream map forced them to acknowledge something uncomfortable: When the biggest customers insisted on buying direct, their company did not realize the magnitude of service issues the distributors handled.   

To face this reality, the team created a hand-off process and hired an inside salesperson for national accounts. Within six months half the account manager’s time was freed up to work on what they really wanted to do – bring in big new accounts.  

Conclusion 

Changes like these cannot be accomplished based on opinion or edict. It requires people to reframe their perspective based on evidence and data. Critical thinking skills lead to careful experiments. Learning from experiments leads to a more satisfying and productive work environment.  

This can only happen because of the principle of “Respect for People”. This principle recognizes that the only thing we have direct control of is what happens between our own ears. As leaders and managers who wish to influence others, it is between our own ears that we must begin.  

No longer can sales managers be the ultimate closers. Instead, they must focus on developing their people. And to do that, they must walk the walk of learning what their people think as well as why they think that way. They lean how their people think the work could be done, and ought to be done.  

That is how big opportunities emerge to create more value and wealth for employees, the customer, and for the business simultaneously. And THAT is a change for the better in any business. 

I’d like to thank Kim Sawyer for his contributions to this article. You can read more about values and wealth in business at www.thewealthsource.com/blog.

The Inbound Sales Methodology attracts the prospects to you who fit the profiles of the customers you can serve best. The primary goal is to create a selling experience that helps prospects choose your products and services. The ultimate goal is to delight these buyers so that they become your promoters.

The initiative in sales has shifted to reflect the power of buyers in the digital age. Marketers and sales teams can respond and thrive in the new order by embracing the framework of the Inbound Methodology, in which (for marketing) you attract, convert, close and delight buyers and transform them into promoters for your brand. The Inbound Sales methodology borrows from Inbound Marketing but lays out its sales outreach method to engage the modern buyer with the identify, connect, explore and advise stages of engagement.

Traditional Selling Falls Short in this Digital World

Cold calling and direct mail shots were effective when mass-market selling was the only option. This traditional approach to selling no longer impresses buyers, and they have the power now to dictate how the process proceeds.

The buyer-centric philosophy of the inbound sales methodology means that customers will have done the majority of the work to understand the suitability before they reach out to you. Buyers now come to the table armed with information.

Old style outbound selling is perceived as a pushy, expensive and ineffective process. Inbound selling is a much more efficient allocation of your most precious resource, your people, because it engages prospects on their terms.

Whereas the traditional sales process was transactional and driven by the priorities of the seller, inbound selling creates the experiences that solve for the customer. As the seller, you work to educate and support your buyers as part of the experience while leveraging digital assets that address the buyer’s needs.

The Buyer’s Journey Renewed for Sales

As the balance of power favors buyers now, it is vital to understand the experience from their perspectives. The customer experiences the stages of awareness, consideration, and decision, i.e., the inbound marketing Buyer’s Journey.

In the simplest terms, inbound as a concept means focusing on solving the pains, frustrations, and goals of individual buyers. The inbound sales strategy transforms your relationship with buyers in light of the greater confidence that they bring to it.

Personas Provide Focus For Inbound Sales

The inbound sales methodology employs personas as part of the framework to focus and direct your content assets to match the buyer’s journey. A persona is a profile that captures the essence of the most likely candidate to purchase your products and services.

With well-defined personas to guide your marketing and sales process, your prospects will find you by searching the web and social media. Your carefully crafted personas will enable you to deliver valuable information so the right prospects to find you.

Knowledge Rebalances Relationships

Your buyers have more information than ever before; they can research your company online as quickly as you can for them. Your contact can also investigate you personally, and since trust is essential to successful inbound selling, it means that your online reputation is precious.

The inbound selling best practices are designed to work congruently toward providing a positive sales experience for the buyer; it means selling in the way that reflects the customer’s buying process while delivering value with each and every touch.

The Inbound Strategy Transforms What It Means To Sell

While inbound marketing and sales work together to enable prospects to find you, it is still the job of your sales team to help the buyers through the decision stage of their journey and the closing and delight stages of the inbound process. Adopting the inbound sales methodology means transforming the way you target accounts. Sell to the leads that fit the personas that need with your offerings.

Salespeople still have an important role in the process. Research by Hubspot.com shows that, while customers are much better informed than they were ten years ago, they often have gaps in their knowledge that only your sales team can fill.

To maximize the value your sales process adds, transform the way you prospect accounts. Research your buyer diligently, so that you know who they are as an organization. Embody this empathetic approach by building rapport with your contact as a person, know who they are and speak their language to build a relationship. At all times be helpful. Businesses are no longer B2b or B2C, they are H2H (Human to Human)! While the buyer goes through the Inbound Marketing stages of Awareness, Consideration and Decision, the Inbound Sales representative should:

• Identify the right prospects among their leads and targets
• Connect with them by providing value with each and every outreach touch attempt
• Explore their needs during the connect call
• Advise them about how to solve their problem as they build a relationship with them

This inbound sales approach demonstrates to your prospects that you are different, more than a traditional salesperson. The inbound sales methodology requires that you be a listener and educator as part of your interactions. The trust you create from this type of engagement will earn you the right to ask for the business you earned.

Modern Buyer Image Copyright: 123RF Stock Photo

Inbound Sales Image Copyright: Hubspot

StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay

Marketing is what leads to sales in your business. The better you are at marketing and sales techniques the more money you make. The key is to have these things become second nature over time.

In this article, I’m going to share some quick marketing and sales techniques you can start using today. But first, a word about systems.

Pre-Work: Know your end goal.

Before implementing any of the sales and marketing techniques I’m about to share, you need to have an end goal. In other words, start with the end in mind.

The first thing you need to figure out is what you are selling. Once you have that figured out you need to make sure you have your payment processing system in place. When both of those are ready, then you can start using the sales and marketing techniques in this post.

Technique #1: Show proof.

Perhaps the easiest and most effective way to increase sales is to show proof that your service or product works.

For example, a student in my group coaching program quit her job and landed a huge client as a result of the program. I took a screenshot of her announcement and immediately used it for marketing. I posted the screenshot on Facebook and in the caption I directed any interested parties to apply for the program.

I also did a story about it on Instagram that pointed to the appropriate link where people could apply for the program.

One screenshot of social proof and two social media platforms. The result? People were signing up to hear more about the program.

Technique #2: Document instead of perfect.

A student in my group coaching program found an excellent article by Gary Vaynerchuk where he talks about the need to document on social media.

According to the article, most people worry about perfecting everything. This actually ends up being counterproductive in the end. While you’re busy trying to be perfect, someone with less skill is marketing and making more money.

That’s why an effective sales and marketing technique is to simply document your business and your life. For instance, I went to my coworking space to get some work done and it turns out a major celebrity athlete was filming something there.

What did I do? I documented the entire thing. This gives followers a peek into my life as an entrepreneur. I go work and end up meeting an athlete.

Technique #3: Start emailing your list.

Out of all the sales and marketing techniques in this post, this is the one you can probably do as soon as you finish reading this.

Email your list, people. Your subscribers are leads. They won’t know what’s going on unless you email them and let them know.

I can’t tell you how many business I owners tell me they have thousands of emails on their list but they never email. This makes absolutely no sense to me. They opted into your marketing, so start marketing!

Final Thoughts

By using these three simple marketing and sales techniques, you’ll start increasing your sales numbers in no time. Don’t be shy about the amazing work you’re doing!

Choosing the Right Marketing Channels for Your Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

As of October 2017, there are roughly sixteen marketing channels available to us.

Businesses need to get very, very good at getting clients in just a few of these channels. Trying to master them all is not only extremely hard to do, it is also the fastest way to get stuck in the idea of the week rut. You need to discover the channels that are relevant to your audience and focus solely on those.

A business may need to go through a trial and error phase to figure out which channels can produce sustainable growth.

Here are your channels to choose from:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This includes on-page SEO and off-page SEO tactics aimed to help you bring in organic traffic from search engines.
2. Referral Marketing – This includes intentional word of mouth activities, viral tactics, and intentional referral generation (should be a must for any business).
3. Speaking Engagements – I’m always telling people just how valuable speaking for leads is. This includes speaking engagements at events such as industry conferences. Note, you don’t need to get paid for the speaking engagement itself for it to be worthwhile. If you do it right, you’ll be walking away with leads that will pay you more over time than just one speaking engagement would.
4. Content Marketing – This includes publishing, optimizing and sharing educational content that draws search traffic, links and followers.
5. Public Relations – This includes activities aimed at receiving coverage in traditional media outlets.
6. Online Advertising – This includes the use of pay-per-click platforms, social networks, display ads and retargeting.
7. Offline Advertising – Yes, this can still be a powerful marketing tactic. This includes advertising in offline print and broadcast outlets such as magazine, TV, and radio.
8. Sales Playbooks – This includes the creation of specific actions aimed at mining, generating, nurturing and converting leads.
9. Email Marketing – While people may give up social media from time to time, you’ll likely not hear people say they’re giving up their emails. Using targeted and automated email campaigns based on conversion actions is a great way to get your message to the right people.
10. Utility Marketing – This includes the creation of useful tools that stimulate traffic, sharing and brand awareness.
11. Influencer Marketing – This includes the practice of building relationships with individuals and outlets that can influence pre-established communities.
12. Partner Marketing – This includes co-marketing activities that run in collaboration with strategic marketing partners.
13. Social Media Marketing – This includes the act of building engagement on established platforms and networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as targeted industry platforms.
14. Online Events – This includes events such as webinars, demos, and workshops conducted using online tools
15. Offline Events – This includes events such as workshops, demonstrations, seminars, trade shows, showcases and customer appreciation events
16. Community Building – This includes the intentional act of building and facilitating a community around a shared interest or topic related to the organization’s industry

Now that you have a better understanding of the channels available to you, look at your business and determine your most effective channel. Be mindful that you don’t mistake the success of one channel for another. For example, if you convert all of your leads via personal sales calls, it might be tempting to say that sales is your most important channel. However, if all of those appointments come about because people find your website when they search, then SEO or content might actually be your most effective channels currently. Bottom line, be sure to attribute the right efforts to the right channels.

Why do I recommend that you do this? It’s far easier to generate more leads in a channel that’s already proven effective than it is to jump in and explore new channels.So this would suggest that once you find a channel that’s driving leads, you should expend a great deal of energy finding more ways to leverage this channel, rather than simply accepting that you are receiving all the leads you can.

This applies to cross-channel leverage too. For example, if referral generation is your greatest lead channel then you should consider tactics in other channels like content or speaking as ways to enhance your referral generation channel.

Each of these tactics could be stand-alone initiatives, but with a channel leverage mindset, they make up an integrated playbook of support.

Once you analyze your current business channels and begin considering new ways to grow, you can create a list of potential projects you plan to test in your channels of choice.

When brainstorming potential channel tactics to try, first map out three or four of your biggest objectives for the upcoming quarter. From there, tie trackable goals to each objective. You should be able to get some focus on tactics that might actually help you achieve your defined goals. At this point, you can probably identify some candidates that would make good projects to test.

There are many variables that go into determining what projects to test. Look around and see what’s working for others, ask your team to weigh in, network your ideas with strategic partners. Competitors can also be a great source to generate ideas.

You’ll want to test and fail fast so you can move on and succeed even faster. Here’s the key – spend time before you test to design the project so that you know what you are trying to do and how you are going to measure it.

Marketers often get a good idea and then try it without any way to know if it worked or not. You’ve got to be precise in what you think will happen, how it will happen and how you know if it happened. You’ve also got to A/B test, which is very easy to do these days given the number of tools available.

The point of all of this is to identify bets that pay off big so you can double and triple down on those and drop the others.

When you do this repeatedly you start to find the best channels for profit and you can start to play in those few channels like a champ.

Lastly, take the winners and find the best way to document and delegate. By doing this, you can free up more time to strategize on ways to make new, informed bets.

Keep a running log of all of your tests to help you stay focused on what works as well as learn how to get better at creating new ones. Once you get this system down, continue to operate it and evolve.

What marketing channels work best for your business? How did you decide to go with those channels?

A recent McKinsey report found that while 84% of corporate executives think innovation is key to achieving growth objectives, only 6% are satisfied with the innovation performance of their firm. That’s quite a mismatch. It’s hard to imagine that a success rate that low would be tolerated in any other business function.

One reason for the paltry performance is that while other business areas, like sales or finance, are considered to be core functions, innovation is often considered to be something that’s “nice to have” rather than essential. Even if executives try to prioritize it, innovation often gets crowded out by more “urgent” short-term pressures.

Another pervasive reason is that senior executives are trained as operators, not innovators. And there’s a fundamental conflict between innovation and optimizing an existing operation. While the execution of a conventional strategy lends itself to linear progress and clear benchmarks, innovation often proceeds by S-curves, moving at a slow crawl until it explodes at an exponential rate. To close the gap, we need to treat innovation differently than we do normal operations. Here are four things leaders can do.

1. Don’t Get Trapped in Your P&L

For any business to succeed over the long term, it must earn a return that exceeds its cost of capital. That’s why good managers put so much focus on measuring and managing return on investment (ROI) as a basic operational practice. It is through continuously making incremental progress in lowering costs and increasing revenues that firms achieve competitive advantage in their industry.

Yet every enterprise is essentially a square-peg business waiting for a round-hole world. Unexpected changes in technology, customer preferences, and regulation can disrupt even the best-run operation. When that happens, traditional practices will only lead to getting better and better at things people care about less and less.

That’s why successful innovators prepare for irrelevance long in advance. IBM research, for example, has consistently made breakthroughs in a number of fields long before their commercial value became clear. Google’s X division was set up as a “moonshot factory” to pursue opportunities unrelated to its current business. The data giant Experian set up its DataLabs unit to work separately from its operational divisions.

None of these have defined revenue or profit goals, because their purpose is to explore new opportunities that can’t be quantified. Nevertheless, in researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that these exploratory efforts provide excellent ROI over the long term. In the public sector, return on basic research has been estimated to be between 30% and 100%.

2. Focus on Problems, Not Ideas

Another common misconception about innovation is that it is about ideas. It’s not. The truth is nobody cares about what ideas you have. They care about what problems you can solve.

While brainstorming about ideas can be helpful in an operational context, because problems are front and center, for innovation identifying a meaningful problem is half the job.

That’s why the organizations that are able to innovate consistently — over a period of years or even decades — develop a systematic and disciplined process for identifying new problems outside the normal operational content. Among the organizations I studied this took varied forms, but the underlying principle remained consistent.

For example, Experian DataLabs meets with customers to “find out what’s giving them agita” and then typically comes back with a prototyped solution within 90 days. IBM Research, on the other hand, focuses on “grand challenges” that take years or even decades to solve. Google’s “20% time” acts as a human-powered search engine for new problems.

Whatever way you choose to go about it, what’s essential is that the process involves true exploration. If you pursue problems that you know about already, you are unlikely to travel far from your current operational model.

3. Classify the Problem Before You Decide on a Solution

A third common issue that organizations run into is that they treat innovation as a monolith and limit the strategies available to them. They say “This is how we innovate, this is our DNA,” failing to recognize that different types problems require different solutions.

In my book I offer an Innovation Matrix, which I’ve described previously. It helps to classify problems according to how well the problem itself and how well the domain of capabilities to solve it are defined:

For example, when Steve Jobs set out to create the iPod, he defined the problem as “1,000 songs in my pocket,” which specified a hard drive of a certain size and capacity. It was also clear what capabilities were needed to solve the problem — that of a hard drive manufacturer. Once Apple found the right supplier, the iPod was a fairly standard problem to solve.

Other times, however, one of those elements is missing. For example, today energy storage is a big, well-defined problem, but it’s devilishly hard to solve and requires an open approach like that of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research. Procter & Gamble’s Connect + Develop program and the Innocentive platform apply similar approaches. In other cases, like that of Airbnb and Uber, great value can be unlocked by identifying a new problem for existing solutions.

With some problems, such as curing cancer or overcoming climate change, neither the problem nor the domain is well-defined, and a more exploratory approach is required. Often, this is thought to be only for large enterprises with billion-dollar budgets, but there are a number of strategies even small firms can employ to access world-class research.

4. Build for the Few, Not the Many

Typically when firms are evaluating investments they look for large addressable markets. That’s good operational practice, but with a truly new innovation it often leads to failure. New ideas, almost by definition, are not well-understood and tend not to perform very well. So instead of seeking out a broad class of customers, you need to build for the few, not the many.

Consider the case of Google Glass. When it launched as a consumer product, it was a disaster, inspiring a huge backlash against the “glassholes” who bought them. Today, however, the device is gaining traction as an industrial tool and is proving effective at improving productivity, safety, documenting procedures, and training for new tasks.

That’s what Experian DataLabs means by finding out what’s giving its customers agita. When there is a pressing problem, people are willing to adopt even an imperfect solution. So instead of nitpicking with the prototype, its customers are happy to collaborate and improve them. Often, one customer with a “hair on fire” use case can be better than thousands with a mild interest.

An old marketing adage is that you need to find the right customer at the right time with the right offer. In a similar way, to close the innovation gap you need to find the right problem and apply the right combination of capabilities to solve it. Innovation is not operational excellence. It’s messy and nonlinear. Nevertheless, it’s what leads to business growth.

You have spent months creating your list of personas. You’ve given them all names and painstakingly vivid (and hopefully, useful and relevant) details, such as how large the team is that they manage, or how often they are on a plane. The question is, what comes next? How do you actually humanize these personas, find them in the marketplace, and target them appropriately?

The answer lies in using technology to create segments, and tailor your marketing to each persona by assigning it a segment. Segmentation is the practice of dividing your database into identifiable groups for the purpose of tailoring your marketing and communication to your target audiences.

Here are 3 steps to mastering a personalized approach to marketing, all stemming from the research and work you did as you developed personas.

1. Map Personas to Segments

Most B2B companies have a set of personas usually developed by product marketing teams to understand and add context to the buyer. A persona can be very detailed, containing information on his purchasing authority, pain points, and motivators. However, to be able to target personas and make personas actionable, you need to map them to the data you have in your engagement platform. Here are some examples of important attributes of your personas and the corresponding data field you can reference:

This exercise will also shed light on opportunities to enrich the data you already possess. One way to get more information directly from your website visitors is to use progressive profiling, a technique where each time someone comes to your website, she sees a different form, with each form asking for incrementally more/new information. Progressive profiling not only provides your sales and marketing teams with more information to target and tailor their approach but also results in higher conversion rates with shorter forms. Additionally, consider using data enrichment vendors to gather inferred information such as tech stack used by companies, or other firmographic data.

2. Score Segments Based on Attributes

This exercise will also shed light on opportunities to enrich the data you already possess. One way to get more information directly from your website visitors is to use progressive profiling, a technique where each time someone comes to your website, she sees a different form, with each form asking for incremental information. Progressive profiling not only provides your sales and marketing teams with more information to target and tailor their approach but also results in higher conversion rates with shorter forms. Additionally, consider using data enrichment vendors to gather inferred information such as tech stack used by companies, or other firmographic data.

Here are some commonly used attributes:

• Demographic: industry, company size, geography and seniority level
• Behavioral: website engagement, event attendance, and webinar registrations

For example, your decision-maker personas may be more inclined to download content assets focused on driving ROI compared to your practitioner personas, who may be more interested in content on day-to-day productivity. Hence, downloading those content pieces should be scored higher than others if you want your sales team to prioritize decision-makers. Personas who are later in the buying cycle should also be scored higher based on their actions- for example, requesting product demos.

Many engagement marketing platforms have the capabilities for setting robust and complex scoring systems. At Marketo, for behavioral scoring, we start by determining the buying stage as well as the investment needed for certain interactions (e.g. reading a blog post vs. attending an event), before we decide on a score

3. Apply Your Segments and Scoring to Marketing Programs

With all the setup processes behind you, it is time to start targeting and engaging your customers and prospects with relevant information. Here are some channels that you can tailor your messaging to reach your target audiences:

• Email marketing: a great way to make personalization happen at scale is through dynamic content. Marketing automation platforms, like Marketo, enable users to easily set up segmentations and tailor emails to the chosen segments within a single program.
• Content syndication: Today, marketers are able to layer intent data on top of attributes like job title and company name. New technologies in this space look for an increase in research on your product and signal when and what customers want to hear. This enables marketers to increase relevance, drive more engagement, and ultimately generate more conversions.
• Display advertising: Targeting audiences through Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and several other advertising channels have become more and more precise in the recent years. Marketers are now able to target by granular firmographic and behavioral data, as well as measure the results accurately.

Segmenting, like personas, will be unique to your business and will depend on your industry, company function, and prospects. It is important to remember that personas and segmentation go hand-in-hand. The latter should stem from the former. So, even if there are different individuals or teams working on each, they need to be working together. Following this structured and systematic approach will foster greater alignment, higher quality leads and an integrated approach to marketing.

Have you encountered any challenges creating personas or segments? What strategies have you used in the past? I’d love to hear about your strategies in the comments.

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