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The deed is done. You’ve accepted a new job and you’re very excited to discover which flavors of Keurig are in the kitchen and who will be your new work BFF (or frenemy). But that initial “I did it!” high can fade if your salary feels flimsy.

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It’s a modern-day truth that getting to grips with local marketing is essential, particularly for new businesses.

While the internet has successfully made the world a lot smaller, it’s also brought along its own set of problems like language barriers and prohibitively expensive international shipping.

Building a name for your business locally, whether by word-of-mouth, paid advertisements or organic social media (more on those later!), is particularly beneficial when you have a physical presence like a bricks and mortar store. However, it can also be a big boon for online businesses as well.

Here are my top five local marketing methods for local marketing newbies as well as a few tips on how to get started with each one.

1. Local SEO

SEO is awesome for a number of reasons: the number one reason being that it enables even the smallest companies with small or non-existent budgets to generate business without spending a dime.

However, when it comes to local marketing, it also has a significant problem associated with it…

Ranking for a term like ’boutique flowers’ is nice but it’s not helpful if 90% of that search traffic happens to be coming from Germany and you’re based in Birmingham.

In this respect, it’s way too easy to get caught up in vanity metrics when measuring SEO results.

Terms like ‘Birmingham flower company’ or ‘flowers in Birmingham’ may not generate such an impressive number of monthly hits, but they’ll ultimately generate far more helpful traffic for your business.

You could also think about creating individual pages – perhaps case studies of events you’ve been a part of or using testimonials from happy customers to avoid looking too ‘copy paste-y’ – for towns, cities or villages that are close to where you operate from. Oh, and positive Google reviews certainly won’t hurt your rankings.

Bonus Tip: Be sure to find a way to differentiate between locations with the same name on your site. After all, ‘flowers in Birmingham, Alabama’ and ‘flowers in Birmingham, England’ are two very different search terms.

2. Social Media

I’m not going to be condescending enough to explain what a hashtag is, but I will point out that many areas have hashtags dedicated to local businesses just in case you didn’t know that already!

NW Design has a solid list of active hashtags, but you can always do some digging to find your own as well.

Look for hashtags like #NorthEastHour and #CheshireHour, both at their most active between 8-9PM on Monday nights, on Twitter. You’ll find both companies and potential customers chatting about services on offer in the area.

As with any promotion on social media, a light touch is required here to avoid coming across as too sales-y. Pursue interactions that have value for both you and your customers.

Think about things like:

• Offers and promotions
• A behind-the-scenes of your business
• Partnership opportunities
• Influencer outreach

If you go in with all guns blazing – ‘WE’RE FROM YORKSHIRE, NOW BUY OUR STUFF!’ – it’s very unlikely you’ll be met with a positive reaction.

3. Mobile apps

When you think of local marketing, you might not immediately think about creating an app. But as you’ll see in this post that I wrote, failing to capitalize on the advantages that a mobile app can offer could be a big fail for your marketing strategy.

From geo-targeted notifications to loyalty schemes and in-app payments (which are often much smoother and more cleanly integrated than those made on mobile sites thanks to services like 1-Click Ordering), there are a multitude of ways in which a mobile app can help boost your local business’ sales.

Image Source: Apptimize

Hiring a developer to create an app certainly can be costly, but that doesn’t mean it has to be. Our drag-and-drop app builder at the App Institute enables you to do all of the above without the need to write a single line of code.

4. Paid ads

Thanks to Facebook’s obsession with tracking every detail about its users (hooray for the erosion of privacy!), companies no longer have to rely on a scattergun approach when it comes to taking out advertising on social media.

Running Facebook Ads that are targeted to users in a particular area is incredibly simple. Facebook Business actually has a really solid guide on how to set everything up. It’s easy to measure, too.

Don’t forget to highlight the relevant geographical area in your ad so users know you’re in the neighbourhood!

Image Source: Facebook Business

You can also run ads and promotions via Google Adwords and TripAdvisor using your location. This means you only pay to put your brand in front of people who will really be able to pay you a visit.

Bonus Tip: This is particularly useful for boosting short-term promotions, such as a limited lunchtime deal, if you’re looking for a way to start the ball rolling.

5. Offline flyering

Just because certain methods of marketing aren’t new and shiny doesn’t mean that they can’t be valuable to your business. Exchanging flyers with local businesses, or paying someone to give them out door-to-door, can end up being a really smart business move.

There’s a reason why it’s the main form of marketing for so many pizza shops and Chinese restaurants. These days, more and more people are committed to buying local, so it can be a huge boost if you have a proven physical presence somewhere. Otherwise, you might have to rely on highlighting that you’re ‘proudly made in X’ on your website for it to have any impact.

While it’s true that traditional methods of advertising like word-of-mouth and local networking are hard to scale, simply asking customers where they heard about you – by perhaps adding an optional drop-down menu in your order process – is a great way to get some valuable insights into how your local marketing approach is doing.

In conclusion

Local marketing may not be as glamorous as international marketing campaigns, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an important part of building a successful business.

I’ve written in previous blog posts about the mindset of ‘live global, buy local’, and it’s one that more and more people are subscribing to in 2017.

Targeting a local audience doesn’t mean that you can’t do all of that cool international stuff as well – but it’s important to establish yourself as part of a community. You could even sponsor a local sports team or set up at a community market.

The tips above should give you a good idea of where to start, but keep in mind that local marketing opportunities vary greatly from area to area. Successfully promoting yourself in a rural town will look very different to doing the same thing in a big city, for example.

Don’t be afraid to get out there, hit the streets and see what’s working!

The jump from salesperson to sales manager is extremely challenging. Salespeople tend to act like entrepreneurs, running their own businesses and maintaining a book of clients. A manager has an entirely different job: Leading, inspiring, coaching, and training a team.

While the first role is self-directed and autonomous, the second role involves collaboration and working closely with others.

Whether you’re a salesperson trying to move up or an executive interviewing a candidate, it’s key to assess leadership potential.

Salespeople, prepare for these. Interviewers, ask these.

Leadership Interview Questions

1) “Tell me about a time you lacked the skills or knowledge to successfully hit a goal.”

This prompt encourages an honest, unrehearsed answer -- unlike leading questions such as, “Discuss a conflict with a coworker and how you resolved it” or “Give me an example of an obstacle you overcame.”

A good response will cover:

1. The situation or task
2. Why the goal was unattainable
3. Lessons learned or results

Here’s an example:

“When I first moved into a closing role, I didn’t hit quota four months in a row. My activity was there -- but honestly, I needed more time as a BDR to get the fundamentals down. I actually asked to move back. It was pretty hard to admit I wasn’t ready. Yet after another four months, my confidence was way up and when I became an AE again, I actually hit or beat my quota every single month for three years.”

2) “How would you describe your leadership style?”

Some managers are hands off. Others like to be in the weeds with their reps. Some are prescriptive about every aspect of the sales process, from prospecting methods and soundbites to objection-handling techniques. Others don’t care how you do your job, as long as you’re meeting your number.

Every style has its place. This question helps determine whether the individual’s leadership style matches company culture and the demands of the role. If the team needs a “tough love” manager to whip them into shape, someone who’s relatively laid back and wants to be her reps’ peer probably isn’t the best fit. But if the team is functioning well, an authoritarian manager will breed resentment and probably damage its performance.

3) “Are there any team members you’ve enjoyed working with in the past?”

As a follow-up: “How would they describe your working relationship?”

A sales manager cannot act as a lone wolf, so it’s a huge red flag if the interviewee can’t think of a coworker. The more important answer, however, is actually the second. Describing herself from her peer’s perspective reveals a few things:

• Is the candidate self-aware?
• Is she empathetic enough to place herself in her team member’s shoes?
• What is her collaboration style like?

To illustrate, here’s a strong response. It’s detailed, authentic, and foreshadows how she’d act as a manager.

“Yes, I really like working with August, another salesperson on the Enterprise team.”

“August would probably say I’m good at giving feedback -- we spend two or so hours every week reviewing calls with each other -- and love celebrating others’ wins and boosting them up when their confidence is down. She’d also probably say I’m a little too easily frustrated. When I can’t immediately fix an issue in my sales process or approach, I’m angry with myself.”

4) “Imagine the CFO assigns a new team quota you know is undeliverable. It turns out, it was calculated based on revenue need -- not opportunities and resources. How would you handle this situation?”

A good leader acts an advocate for his team. He must speak up on their behalf when management is making a bad call and promote their interests. This question delves into a thorny yet unfortunately common issue: What would a manager do when he’s caught in between his team and his boss?

The optimal response would sound something along the lines of:

“First, I’d analyze the data: Average rep performance, territory penetration, stage by stage conversion rates, time to hire, time to ramp, sales velocity, and so forth. Then I’d present my findings to the executives, explaining what I thought was possible given our current headcount and historical performance. I’d propose an aggressive but realistic quota.

If the target wasn’t adjusted, I would come up with a plan to get as close as possible. I’d use sales contests, incentives, and other creative strategies to keep team morale high and hopefully boost results.”

5) “How will you earn the respect of your team?”

Salespeople need to respect their manager to follow her recommendations and prescribed sales techniques. But reps are notoriously independent thinkers -- and earning their trust isn’t quick or easy. Has this candidate thought about how she’ll win over her team?

While potential answers to this are infinite, here are several good ideas:

• Be the first one to arrive and the last one to leave: Reps admire hard work.
• Act as their internal advocate: They need to know you’ll look out for them when pricing is too high, they’re not getting enough tech support, the comp plan needs adjusting, etc.
• Eliminate administrative tasks: Freeing up their time to sell will get you lots of points.
• Give them autonomy: Resisting the urge to micromanage or poach deals will help salespeople improve and ensure they don’t resent you.
• Keep feedback specific and actionable: Nothing is more frustrating (or less helpful) than vague, non-specific suggestions like, “Ask better questions.”

6) “What motivates you in your current role?”

Work changes dramatically when a salesperson becomes a manager. They’re no longer riding the constant high of closing deals or cashing in hefty commission checks. As a result, someone who’s primarily motivated by making money might struggle after the promotion. Most managers actually make less than their reps at the end of the day, which can be a disconcerting experience.

This question gauges how prepared and well-suited the candidate is for the shift. If they reply, “I love winning business,” or “I’m saving up for a house, so that keeps me raring to go every morning,” you may need to delve deeper into their motivations.

A convincing response touches on motivators that’ll be relevant to a manager’s life as well, such as:

“I love the opportunities to help customers,” which would translate into chances to help their reps.

“I’m motivated by the fear I’ll let down my teammates,” which would translate into a desire to lead the team and contribute to the business.

“I’m highly competitive,” which would translate into beating the team’s previous record or outselling another team.

7) “What’s a big risk you’ve taken?”

Once they’ve answered, follow up with, “Did you take any steps to reduce that risk?”

As a leader, this person will have to take plenty of risks. And unlike when they were a rep, they’ll have the fate of many people riding on the results. You need to assess whether they’re A), comfortable with risk, and B) wise enough to prepare.

Take a look at this sample answer:

“When I was 26, I decided to leave my job and start a company with my college roommate. We were selling a new type of phone charger that was three times quicker. While the tech was great, we just couldn’t get costs down low enough to make each unit economical. Fortunately, I’d saved a lot of money so I could try to make this company work. It wasn’t an issue to close shop and find a new job. Plus, I discovered I was great at selling -- which led me into sales.”

Finding a great leader among salespeople isn’t guaranteed. The necessary skills and personality traits are extremely different. To find the best fit, use these seven questions.

How often do you interrupt people? Most of us vastly underestimate our frequency. Maybe you think you do it once or twice per conversation -- when in reality, you’re breaking in almost every time the other person speaks.

This habit will hurt you no matter what you do, but it’s especially detrimental in sales. Your success depends on positive interactions with prospects. You need to earn their trust and respect, as well as elicit key information from them.

If you’re constantly talking over them or cutting them off, both will be much harder.

How to stop interrupting

1. Pause before you speak
2. Write your thought down instead
3. Use reminders
4. Review your calls
5. Stop yourself

1) Pause two seconds

The average person is so excited to talk that they reply as soon as their conversational partner stops talking. However, there’s a good chance they were simply taking a breath or gathering their thoughts. To avoid accidentally interrupting, silently count to two before answering.

It’ll seem like an eternity to you, but the other person won’t even notice. If they’ve got more to say, they’ll say it. If they’re silent, it’s your turn to speak.

2) Write down your thoughts

Worried you’ll forget what you wanted to say if you don’t blurt it out immediately? Jot down your thoughts. Your anxiety will ease up instantly.

There’s one thing to watch out for when using this technique: If you’re going to use your phone or laptop to take notes, give the prospect a heads up so it doesn’t look like you’re ignoring them to text or send emails.

At the beginning of the call, ask, “Is it okay if I take some notes?”

Not only will they say yes, you’ll look extra thoughtful.

3) Put up reminders

It’s easy to forget your goal to stop interrupting. Keep it top of mind by leaving reminders in places you’ll see them again and again, like on your monitor, near your headset, and even on your home screen.

Seeing these throughout the day will keep you on track, especially if you happen to read one during a meeting.

4) Review your calls

As you review your sales calls -- either with yourself, your team members, or your manager -- pay special attention to the moments you interrupt. It’s a good idea to write the specific times down, along with why you interrupted if you remember.

Here’s an example:

5:23: Prospect said they use YSync; interrupted to say they’re an integration partner.

11:42: Prospect started asking question about pricing; cut him off because I thought I knew what he wanted to know. Unfortunately, was wrong.

This exercise isn’t that fun, but it’ll show you just how often you interrupt -- and what those interruptions are doing to your conversations. Being more aware will organically lead to fewer mistakes.

5) Stop yourself

You’re bound to occasionally slip up and interrupt -- especially in the beginning. As soon as you realize what you’re doing, stop and say, “I apologize for interrupting; it’s a habit I’m trying to break. Please continue your thought.”

Over time, your urge to jump in will naturally decrease.

Interrupting others is a bad habit, but luckily, it's possible to stop. Try these five strategies. In a few weeks or months, you'll be relatively interruption-free.

Sending out a clear and inspiring message about your brand is one of the key components of any successful business model, helping to establish a loyal base of customers and attract many more. This not only includes advertising your products and services but also sending out a powerful message about who you are as a company in terms of your values, ethics and ambitions.

Many visitors intrigued by a company and looking to understand what they’re about will intuitively click on the About Us page. This is the platform where companies can provide much more detail about themselves and truly impact on an audience. Perfecting this page is no easy task, however, so Siege Media has come up with a guide to take you through all of the components needed for the ideal About Us page. Their guide also includes 50 About Us page examples to add spark to your design.

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Ingredients to Make the Perfect About Us Page
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Inspire emotions

Studies have shown that customers will go with their emotions rather than simple information when making a decision about a brand or company. Try to awake and inspire emotions in your audience to invoke a powerful response.

Keep it above the fold

The phrase ‘above the fold’ refers to the upper part of the landing page which doesn’t require scrolling down to read. Experts advise placing the most important information above the fold as up to 80% of users look for information in this area rather than scrolling down.

Clear value propositions

Ultimately any visitor to your page wants to know what your brand can do and why you are the best at it. Avoiding too much complication can work out best when it comes to communicating your qualities to an audience. Also keep in mind the point above and keep your value proposition above the fold!

Establish trust with photography

When people see a friendly face they can immediately begin to trust a company. For example, leading company Zendesk has portraits of each company founder along with a story of how they came together, helping to build a bond of trust between company and audience.

Provide important contact information

There’s no use inspiring a potential customer or client if they aren’t able to get in touch with you or find your store. For example, as a retail shop you need to have a clear, easy-to-use map showing exactly where you are along with detailed instructions on how to get there. A recent study showed a whopping 51% of people felt that “thorough contact information” is the most important feature missing from most websites.

Avoid stock photos

A study looked at the difference between stock photos and authentic photos and found a massive 45% difference in page conversions. This is because stock photos can make a brand seem to lack resources and originality, so make sure you take the time to get the right photos for your About Us page.

Show the positive not the negative

72% of customers would rather read about what a brand can do for them, rather than what it could help you avoid. Keep your focus on the positive that your company can offer and you will find a similar positive response in your audience.

A call to action

Research has suggested that a call to action at the bottom of a page can boost conversion rates by up to 300%. This call to action can often prove the difference between a customer still undecided and one who has made a firm decision.

Include happy clients and customers

There is little better to vouch for a company’s quality than a record of pleased customers and clients. Including a section of positive reviews or publishing testimonials is an excellent way to communicate to people that your customers’ well-being is the priority for your company.

Videos attract interest

People in the modern age are so used to seeing videos and images everywhere that they are much more enticed by video clips as opposed to text. A survey conducted by Forbes found that 59% of senior executives would rather view video content instead of text, while younger generations have also been shown in studies to much prefer video content.

Finding the right solution for you

As with anything, it’s important to put these principles into context, as not all of these will work for all companies. Despite this, having a well thought-out strategy behind your About Us page rather than simply filling it up with information will put you in a good position to create the best possible page.

Related reading: 5 Best Blog Design Examples for Inspiration

How will AI change strategy? That’s the single most common question the three of us are asked from corporate executives, and it’s not trivial to answer. AI is fundamentally a prediction technology. As advances in AI make prediction cheaper, economic theory dictates that we’ll use prediction more frequently and widely, and the value of complements to prediction – like human judgment – will rise. But what does all this mean for strategy?

Here’s a thought experiment we’ve been using to answer that question. Most people are familiar with shopping at Amazon.  Like with most online retailers, you visit their website, shop for items, place them in your “basket,” pay for them, and then Amazon ships them to you. Right now, Amazon’s business model is shopping-then-shipping.

Most shoppers have noticed Amazon’s recommendation engine while they shop — it offers suggestions of items that their AI predicts you will want to buy. At present, Amazon’s AI does a reasonable job, considering the millions of items on offer. However, they are far from perfect. In our case, the AI accurately predicts what we want to buy about 5% of the time. In other words, we actually purchase about one out of every 20 items it recommends. Not bad!

Now for the thought experiment. Imagine the Amazon AI collects more information about us: in addition to our searching and purchasing behavior on their website, it also collects other data it finds online, including social media, as well as offline, such as our shopping behavior at Whole Foods. It knows not only what we buy, but also what time we go to the store, which location we shop at, how we pay, and more.

Now, imagine the AI uses that data to improve its predictions. We think of this sort of improvement as akin to turning up the volume knob on a speaker dial. But rather than volume, you’re turning up the AI’s prediction accuracy. What happens to Amazon’s strategy as their data scientists, engineers, and machine learning experts work tirelessly to dial up the accuracy on the prediction machine?

At some point, as they turn the knob, the AI’s prediction accuracy crosses a threshold, such that it becomes in Amazon’s interest to change its business model. The prediction becomes sufficiently accurate that it becomes more profitable for Amazon to ship you the goods that it predicts you will want rather than wait for you to order them. Every week, Amazon ships you boxes of items it predicts you will want, and then you shop in the comfort and convenience of your own home by choosing the items you wish to keep from the boxes they delivered.

This approach offers two benefits to Amazon. First, the convenience of predictive shipping makes it much less likely that you purchase the items from a competing retailer as the products are conveniently delivered to your home before you buy them elsewhere. Second, predictive shipping nudges you to buy items that you were considering purchasing but might not have gotten around to. In both cases, Amazon gains a higher share-of-wallet. Turning the prediction dial up far enough changes Amazon’s business model from shopping-then-shipping to shipping-then-shopping.

Of course, shoppers would not want to deal with the hassle of returning all the items they don’t want.  So, Amazon would invest in infrastructure for the product returns — perhaps a fleet of delivery-style trucks that do pick-ups once a week, conveniently collecting items that customers don’t want.

If this is a better business model, then why hasn’t Amazon done it already? Well, they may be working on it. But if it were implemented today, the cost of collecting and handling returned items would outweigh the increase in revenue from a greater share-of-wallet. For example, today we would return 95% of the items it ships to us. That is annoying for us and costly for Amazon. The prediction isn’t good enough for Amazon to adopt the new model.

That said, one can imagine a scenario where Amazon adopts the new strategy even before the prediction accuracy is good enough to make it profitable because the company anticipates that at some point it will be profitable. By launching sooner, Amazon’s AI will get more data sooner, and improve faster. Amazon realizes that the sooner it gets started, the harder it will be for competitors to catch up. Better predictions will attract more shoppers, more shoppers will generate more data to train the AI, more data will lead to better predictions, and so on, creating a virtuous circle. In other words, there are increasing returns to AI, and thus the timing of adopting this kind of strategy matters. Adopting too early could be costly, but adopting too late could be fatal.

The key insight here is that turning the dial on the prediction machine has a significant impact on strategy. In this example, it shifts Amazon’s business model from shopping-then-shipping to shipping-then-shopping, generates the incentive to vertically integrate into operating a product-returns service (including a fleet of trucks), and accelerates the timing of investment due to first-mover advantage from increasing returns. All this is due to the single act of turning the dial on the prediction machine.

Most readers will be familiar with the outcome of companies like Blockbuster and Borders that underestimated how quickly the online consumer behavior dial would turn in the context of online shopping and the digital distribution of goods and services. Perhaps they were lulled into complacency by the initially slow adoption rate of this technology in the early days of the commercial internet (1995-1998).

Today, in the case of AI, some companies are making early bets anticipating that the dial on the prediction machine will start turning faster once it gains momentum. Most people are familiar with Google’s 2014 acquisition of DeepMind – over $500M for a company that had generated negligible revenue, but had developed an AI that learned to play certain Atari games at a super human performance level. Perhaps fewer readers are aware that more traditional companies are also making bets on the pace the dial will turn. In 2016, GM paid over $1B to acquire AI startup Cruise Automation, and in 2017, Ford invested $1B in AI startup Argo AI, and John Deere paid over $300M to acquire AI startup Blue River Technology – all three startups had generated negligible revenue relative to the price at the time of purchase. GM, Ford, and John Deere are each betting on an exponential speed up of AI performance and, at those prices, anticipating a significant impact on their business strategies.

Strategists face two questions in light of all of this. First, they must invest in developing a better understanding of how fast and how far the dial on their prediction machines will turn for their sector and applications. Second, they must invest in developing a thesis about the strategy options created by the shifting economics of their business that result from turning the dial, similar to the thought experiment we considered for Amazon.

So, the overarching theme for initiating an AI strategy? Close your eyes, imagine putting your fingers on the dial of your prediction machine, and, in the immortal words of Spinal Tap, turn it to eleven.

The ideas here are adapted from our forthcoming book “Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.” (Harvard Business School Press, April 2018)

It’s easy to fall into a rut with your creative content. When you stick to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, it can put you on the fast track to stale content—especially when it comes to design. One of the most exciting things about content marketing is that you have the freedom and flexibility to tell your brand story in a lot of different ways. That means exploring entirely new types of creative content and tweaking what you have to make sure you’re getting the most from it.

But if you churn out infographic after infographic with the same design style, or your visual tweets all follow the same template, then you definitely have room to grow. This is especially true for static content. Your content is fighting for attention, so breaking the mold and trying a new creative approach is not just eye-catching; it might be game-changing.

5 Creative Content Formats to Try

There are lots of ways to upgrade your design and add a dash of something different. Sometimes that means trying an old-school style in new ways or using creative tools to make something exciting and different. If you’re not sure where to start but want to give your design team the greenlight to try something new, here are five of our favorite ways to mix it up.

1) Papercraft

This old-school art still feels new in modern iterations. (Trust us, this is not your grade-school origami.) Beautiful paper art can create a sense of childlike excitement, tell stories in unique ways, and generally delight viewers. You might incorporate papercraft into fun social content, videos, infographics, or more.

It’s important to use this art appropriately, however, as it can still be perceived as novel or fanciful. But if your message matches, then go nuts.

Example: We have some very talented papercrafters in house, and they’ve helped us experiment more with our creative content. One year we used a short papercraft video to announce that we were headed to South by Southwest. It was a fun way to show off our personality while delivering what could have otherwise been a mundane message.

2) Photography

Stock photography makes most of us wince. But photography certainly has its place in content marketing. While stock photography is boring, generic, and often just plain bad, custom photography can add an enticing element to content. Whether it’s used in infographics, visual tweets, or e-books, playing with photography is a great way to mix it up.

Example: We used stunning marine-themed imagery to reflect the vibrant, energetic brand persona of insurance company Pacific Life.

Even stock photography can be creatively used, as this infographic we created for Captora proves. The landscape photography turned data visualization adds interesting variety to an infographic that could have been simply illustrated.

3) Stop Motion

If all your videos follow the same format or aesthetic, you might consider mixing it up with some stop motion. (It’s not just for Tim Burton.) It’s especially useful for microcontent—think GIFS, in-feed ads, or short videos—or occasions where movement will help you stand out. But because it takes more time to produce, you might want to experiment with some small stuff first.

Example: To wish everyone a happy Fourth of July, we created a simple little stop-motion video for our Instagram (bonus points because it also featured a papercraft popsicle).

Happy Fourth of July!

A post shared by columnfive (@columnfive) on Jul 4, 2016 at 7:01am PDT

4) Tactile Data Visualization

We are huge fans of data visualization—in every iteration. But we are especially excited by unique presentations. Charts and graphs are useful to help you interpret data, but they are often presented in the most simple, straightforward manner. While there’s nothing inherently wrong about that, it is a missed opportunity to let those data visualizations enhance the narrative (as all good design should).

There are many clever ways to craft data visualizations, but one of our favorite is to create tactile visualizations that, when photographed, can be added to both static and dynamic content.

Example: We created a unique annual report for krochet kids intl., a conscious clothing company. To help tell the brand story and create a unique aesthetic, we created data visualizations with thread, then photographed, animated, and incorporated them into the interactive report. This level of detail made the report more visually appealing and reinforced the brand’s mission.

5) Time Lapse

Sometimes the creation of something is just as compelling as the final product. That’s why time lapse is so exciting. Whether it’s a work in progress, the building of a project, or an experiment, we’ve pretty much all watched a few seconds of a time lapse just for the fascinating movement of time.

For content marketing, time lapse can be an awesome way to bring people into the process. You might give them a peek at a new project or use it to shape a narrative.

Example: We used time-lapse for our own brand video, where we hand-crafted words with different materials to spell out our values.

We also collaborated with Microsoft to create a mural timelapse in a brand video showcasing Internet Explorer.

Challenge Your Creative Boundaries

No matter how you decide to mix it up, always work to educate your team, follow best design practices, and figure out ways to provide the most value in your content.

Ecommerce sellers have more potential buyers at their fingertips online than any mom-and-pop store can hope to gather. But this doesn’t mean sellers should market to as many people as possible.

Instead of advertising to a large, indefinite group of people, ecommerce sellers have to target specific audiences. When marketing is directed towards specific customer types, it resonates with buyers in a way that makes them feel more connected to your products and your brand.

Targeted marketing begins with identifying the distinctions between your buyers. Once sellers can determine the unique types of customers within their larger audience, they can cater their marketing to each group’s needs.

A tried and true method of sorting out your customer base is creating buyer personas. Building these generalized archetypes of your average buyers ensures that you understand them well enough to engage them and motivate them to purchase.

To help sellers start building their customer characters, we’re going to explain what to include in buyer personas and how to create them for your ecommerce customers.

What is a buyer persona?

Buyer personas are created by companies and represent fictional examples of their core customers. Businesses use these personas to make key marketing decisions, like what their messaging should be, what marketing channels they should use, and how much they should spend on acquisition efforts.

Here are a few examples of buyer personas:

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Most sellers only need 3 to 5 buyer personas to cover the different groups in their customer base. With too many personas, the profiles become more indistinct and more difficult to use constructively.

What information should I collect?

To create an accurate picture of every customer, buyer personas need a balance of both quantitative and qualitative insights. We’ve divided these insights into four categories: demographics, psychographics, online presence, and financial value.

Demographics

Demographics are objective identification factors that help to explain who your customers are. Here are suggested demographics to identify for each buyer persona:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Education level
• Job title
• Career industry/field
• Income level
• Relationship status
• Family size

These demographics provide the basic data needed for each persona, but sellers can always dig deeper with demographics, such as detailed job and company descriptions, to create even more specific profiles. For example, if you’re a home goods online retailer, you might want your buyer personas to note if your core customers are homeowners or apartment renters.

Psychographics

Psychographics are measurements of customers’ habits, attitudes, and interests that help to explain why they might make a purchase. Here are a few psychographics a seller might include in a persona:

• What are the goals of buyers in this persona? How can your product help them achieve these?
• What are their concerns? How can your product help solve them?
• What are their values?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What are their objections to your product?

Because psychographics are subjective, they might seem less useful. But these psychological aspects of your buyers are critical because they represent what your core customers actually care about. You can craft value propositions that are more effective by speaking to your core customers’ psychology.

Online Presence

Data about how each buyer persona interacts with technology informs presentation strategies for marketing. For instance, this data can help you pick the best social media channels to advertise on or help you decide whether your ads should be mobile-friendly.

Here are a few examples of online presence data you can collect when building a buyer persona:

• Where do buyers from this persona typically find information online?
• What are their favorite social media channels?
• What is their preferred form of communication?

With online presence information, sellers can make sure they’re getting their message to the right people in the right places.

Financial Value

To measure whether your marketing efforts are effective at converting your targeted groups, you should include a lifetime value (LTV) to customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio in each buyer persona. LTV indicates the projected revenue a customer will generate during their lifetime as a customer, and CAC measures the cost needed to secure a new customer.

The ratio of LTV to CAC is important because it indicates how well you’re set up to be profitable. The industry standard in software-as-a-service companies is an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 or greater—this is also a good benchmark for ecommerce companies. If any persona’s ratio falls below 3, sellers should consider ways they can improve retention for these customers or how they can lower the costs of acquiring them.

How do I collect this information?

To gather the necessary information for your buyer personas, you’ll need to use a variety of tools and resources. Here’s a recommended list of resources based on each category of information you’ll collect:

Demographics

• Google Analytics — If you have a web store with Google Analytics installed, you can use the tool to see visitor demographics. It’s found under the demographics section of the audience tab and it tracks the age and gender of your site visitors.

[Source]

You can also track the location of your site visitors under the Geo section of the Audience tab.

• Facebook Audience Insights — If you have a Facebook page for your business, Facebook Audience Insights is a great tool for understanding the demographics of your target audiences. This tool indicates the following demographics: age, gender, lifestyle, education, relationship status, job role and household size.

[Source]

You can choose to view these demographics for the people who have connected to your Page or Facebook event, or people in the Custom Audiences you’ve created.

• Order history — Collect demographics of core buyers from your web store’s order history. Track the accounts with the most purchases and use the demographic information in their orders, such as their location and gender.

Psychographics

• Surveys — Psychographics require personal information, so the best way to collect them is by directly asking core customers about their values and interests with a survey.

[Source]

If you have trouble getting responses, try incentivizing these surveys with a gift card or discount.

• Google Analytics — Using cookie data from other sites your visitors have been on, Google Analytics can track the interests of your web store visitors.

[Source]

Google Analytics even lets you sort these interests by ecommerce conversion rate, so you can easily match these interests to your core customers.

Online Presence

• Google Analytics — Google Analytics measures the online presence of your site visitors. Under the technology tab, you can view which browsers and networks your visitors are using.

Under the mobile tab, you can also view the devices your visitors used to access your site.

Once you know how your top visitors are accessing your site, you’ll want to make sure that your advertising is compatible with the technology they’re using.

• Consumer reports — Consumer reports, like Nielsen’s social media report, can be a great resource for identifying how your top customers are using technology.

[Source]

You can use the reported demographics in these studies to infer what technology your top buyers might be using.

• Surveys — Just like with psychographics, online presence information can be easily gathered with surveys. When asking about potential marketing channels, like social media networks, be sure to not only ask what channels your core customers use but also when and how often they use them. Knowing this, you’ll know which channels are popular enough to target and when ads should be placed on them.

Financial Value

To calculate your LTV to CAC ratio, you can use these basic LTV and CAC formulas.

LTV takes the value of how much the customer spends on average and multiplies that value by how often they spend and the average customer retention time.

CAC takes the total marketing cost of acquiring customers divided by the number of customers acquired in a set time period.

What if I just started my online business?

If you just started your online business and don’t have enough customer data to create personas, start by looking at your competitors to make inferences about your core customers. You can use software like Similar Web to analyze competitors’ web traffic.

[Source]

You can also check out your competitors’ social media pages to see which consumer types are the most responsive to their posts.

How do I apply this information?

A buyer persona gives you a close-up of your best customer. Using personas, sellers can engage their identified customer types with marketing that is relevant and useful for each group. As you collect this information, put it all together to build comprehensive pictures of your different buyer types.

The demographics, psychographics, and online presence information in buyer personas should inform your messaging and marketing channel choices. Knowing who their core customer is and what they care about with this info, sellers can improve their marketing strategies with questions like:

• What are the most used marketing channels for this buyer persona, and am I using these channels enough?
• Based on what this persona cares about, do I think my stated value proposition will resonate with them?

The financial value information of each buyer persona should be used to determine whether your marketing strategies are leading to profits or losses. If a persona’s LTV to CAC ratio is too low, sellers can work on decreasing the costs of their acquisition efforts or improving their retention strategies.

As your buyer persona process gets more sophisticated, you can define each profile by preferred selling platforms such as:

• Amazon
• Walmart
• eBay
• Your company website

This will help refine your marketing strategies even further. You can begin to ask questions like: Do my Walmart customers respond well to email discounts? Does my Amazon persona use Facebook more frequently than my Ebay persona?

[Source]

Once personas have been connected to selling platforms, sellers can brainstorm ways to save money by comparing each persona’s LTV:CAC ratio to the costs associated with using each platform. For example, a seller whose Amazon buyer persona has a low LTV:CAC ratio might consider temporarily not paying for Amazon FBA until their Amazon persona’s ratio increases.

Aim for the bulls-eye, not the whole dartboard

Marketing campaigns motivate purchases when they speak to a customer’s specific needs and wants. Sellers who try to reach as many customers as possible will find that their marketing efforts are too directionless to resonate with buyers. Instead of focusing customer outreach on quantity, sellers can use buyer personas to develop targeted marketing strategies. By knowing who their core customers are and what they care about, sellers can engage their buyers to encourage conversions.

You may think that going faster speeds things up, compresses sales cycle times, and gets things done. When it comes to human relationships and complex decisions, going faster will mostly work against you, bringing the results you want to a screeching halt.

If you want to close deals faster, you need to do impeccably good work at every stage of the sales conversation, controlling the process, and delivering enough value to secure the next commitment. You are training value every step of the way. When you skip steps and fail to take care of your prospective client’s need in a race to the finish line, you disconnect from them and leave them behind.

Fast is slow.

You want your sales force to get better, but you don’t want to spend your time training, developing, and coaching them to their best performance. Instead, you tell them to go close deals, and you go and close their big deals for them. Actually, you are closing those deals for you. In doing so, you never develop your salespeople, they never improve, and you never make the difference you might have made.

Haste, meet waste.

You have time for whatever you believe is important. It is easy to believe that you don’t have time to do what is right and necessary, believing that you can bend the rules of the universe to your will, if you act with great urgency, and if you want something badly enough. This is to misunderstand nature, which has some fairly rigid rules. Reality is rather persistent, and your desire for fast results does not prevent the need to plant seeds in the Spring in order to produce a harvest in the Fall.

I once heard it said that “Nine pregnant women cannot produce a baby in one month.” Most of the results you need require an investment of time, and without that investment being paid in full, those results are not forthcoming. There is no substitute for doing the work necessary, and the truth of the matter is, you don’t have time not to.

The post You Don’t Have Time Not To . . . appeared first on The Sales Blog.

There’s a debate in the United States about whether the current measures of health care quality are adequate to support the movement away from fee-for-service toward value-based payment. Some providers advocate slowing or even halting payment reform efforts because they don’t believe that quality can be adequately measured to determine fair payment. Employers and other purchasers, however, strongly support the currently available quality measures used in payment reform efforts to reward higher-performing providers. So far, the Trump administration has not weighed in.

The four of us, leaders of organizations that represent large employers and other purchasers of health care, reject any delay in payment reform efforts for the following three reasons:

Even imperfect measurement and transparency accelerate quality improvement. One set of measures often questioned is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and others in value-based payment programs. These indicators measure surgical complications and errors in hospitals, which is critical given that one in four hospital admissions is estimated to result in an adverse event.

Insight Center

PSIs remain among the most evidence-based, well-tested, and validated quality measures available. CMS uses many in its value-based purchasing programs. Use and reporting of PSIs through AHRQ’s Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System has measurably improved quality. For instance, CMS reported a reduction in inpatient venous thromboembolisms (VTEs) from 28,000 in 2010 to 16,000 in 2014, meaning that 12,000 fewer patients had potentially fatal blood clots in 2014.

In addition to using quality measures in payment programs and for quality improvement, making measures public is key to accelerating change. “If transparency were a medication, it would be a blockbuster,” concluded a multi-stakeholder roundtable convened by the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute in 2015. The foundation’s report cited the Leapfrog Group’s first-ever reporting of early elective delivery rates by hospitals in 2010, which galvanized a cascade of efforts to curtail the problem and thus reduce maternal harms and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions. This was effective: The national mean of early elective deliveries declined from a rate of 17% to 2.8% in only five years.

Using measures improves measurement. Providers and health care executives sometimes point to flaws in their medical-record and billing systems as a main reason certain measures shouldn’t be used. As they see it, their performance on the measures isn’t the issue; it’s their medical records or billing coding that’s the problem. They believe these internal systems should be fixed before measures that use this information are applied in payment formulas or public reporting.

But use of these measures is often necessary to break logjams in correcting the health care industry’s long-neglected weaknesses in data-quality control. Indeed, many of the nuanced imperfections providers criticize were only uncovered by public reporting, which revealed unexpectedly poor performance for some providers, prompting them to research the medical records to find out the reasons.

Even rough measures make a big difference when they are publicly reported. For instance, New York State’s release of surgical mortality data for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures jump-started the movement to define and more carefully collect much stronger measures of CABG outcomes, and today we have many advances in cardiac care and its measurement.

In the New York example, the success in generating ever better measures — and more importantly, achieving ever better outcomes for patients — came about because providers made the changes that saved lives, and they deserve all the credit for that. A thorough, respectful process for building scientific and stakeholder consensus around measures has been orchestrated by leaders like the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Purchasers are committed to partnering in the development and refinement of excellent measures while we advance transparency and payment reform alongside that work.

Returning to fee-for-service is not an option. Given the widely acknowledged waste, heavy costs, and quality-of-care issues produced by the fee-for-service system, the fact that there are rough spots on the road to value-based payment is hardly a justification for slowing down reform. If converting to a more sensible payment system were easy, it would have been done a long time ago.

The change to performance-based payment and market share requires tenacity and patience. Current quality measures may have rough edges, but stakeholders have worked hard to steadily improve their validity and reliability. Employers and other purchasers, such as those involved in our organizations, must work with forward-thinking colleagues in the health care system to continually improve the measures that publicly signal value. It will be a learning process for providers and purchasers as long as we’re guided by a spirit of transparency.

Whatever the risks of imperfect measurement, America’s first priority must be to eliminate avoidable suffering, mortality, and waste in its uniquely costly health care system. We hope that the Trump administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will continue to recognize what our members see clearly: delaying payment reform is not an option.

VANCOUVER _ Condo and townhouse sales in Vancouver are firmly in a seller’s market, while the market for detached homes is edging toward a buyer’s market, new figures from The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver suggest.

In September, the sales-to-active-listings ratio was 14.6 per cent for detached homes, 42.3 per cent for townhomes and 60.4 per cent for apartments, according to the REBGV.

“Downward pressure on home prices does occur when the ratio typically dips below around 12 per cent for a constant period,” said Jill Oudil, board president.

For instance, that could mean during a particular month there are three sales for 25 active listings.

“When there is a downward pressure on prices, it becomes more of a buyer’s market,” she said.

The opposite happens with upward pressure on prices and the creation of a seller’s market, when the ratio stays above 20 per cent for several months, the REBGV said.

“I think it’s just a bit of a changing market right now,” Oudil said, adding more house hunters are looking at condos and townhomes due to affordability issues, which reduces the number of people looking for detached homes.

The MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver was $1,037,300 in September, up 10.9 per cent compared with a year ago.

The demand for condos and townhouses helped push the number of sales in September 13.1 per cent above the 10-year historical average for the month.

There were 2,821 homes sold in the region last month, according to the board _ up 25.2 per cent from 2,253 in Sept. 2016. Detached homes made up 30 per cent of last month’s sales.

Sales slipped 7.3 per cent from the 3,043 homes sold in August.

 

The post Vancouver’s detached homes edge toward buyer’s market as condos favour sellers appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn has certainly positioned itself as the number-one professional networking site. In fact, with LinkedIn now owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn released data in April claiming 500 million users. With these giant numbers, it’s no surprise that most businesspeople find themselves on LinkedIn. But how can you stand out from the crowd and make your LinkedIn profile produce desired results? Here are five simple tips to enhance your LinkedIn profile.

1. Custom URL

It is extremely simple to do, but it’s a step that people tend to skip right over. By default, LinkedIn provides members with a randomly generated URL. This can be changed, and the URL can be made much more search-engine-friendly. In addition to the SEO benefits, there is a significant personal branding bonus. Once you edit your LinkedIn URL, it will look something like this: linkedin.com/in/[yournamehere]. This custom, personalized URL can now be used in things like business cards, email signatures, presentations, and conversations. Keep in mind that these URLs are available on a first-come, first-served basis. So, you may have to tweak the URL with different variations of your name.

2. Summary

This is your opportunity to explain who you are and go beyond the basic resume fluff. Put some thought into how you and your organization add value, and use the summary as your elevator pitch. Think of the words that prospective buyers or industry partners will use to search for someone with your expertise, and work this into your content for added SEO value. If you’re a salesperson at a car dealership, you should consider including “car sales,” “vehicle sales,” and “car dealership.” Many times, people utilize LinkedIn’s advanced search capabilities to fill a need for their company or organization. Optimizing the keyword usage will maximize your exposure. With that in mind, it’s equally important to let your personality shine through.

3. Fill Out Your Profile Completely

Your LinkedIn profile is so much more than an online version of your resume. It’s an active, ever-changing opportunity to showcase your work and skill set. If you do a quick search of your current LinkedIn connections, chances are, you will find a significant percentage of users have profiles that are incomplete. You will find users who have many of their recent job titles and positions included, with brief descriptions—or no descriptions—of what this position entailed or how these users added value to the marketplace. Adding more detail to your profile will increase your chances of showing up in searches. Keep your keywords in mind, but do not force them into your text. As a basic guideline, consider adding four to six bullet points to each job that you’ve held.

4. Adding Multimedia to Your Profile

Profiles with work samples, photos, videos, and SlideShare presentations certainly stand out. A common question I am asked is “I do [insert job function here] for a living; how do I show a work sample in this industry?” Certainly, this is a valid concern and may not seem obvious at first. The key is to think outside of the box. Maybe you were featured in a case study because of your excellent work on a recent project. You could take a screenshot of this and display this in a section of your profile. Maybe you saved one of your clients more than a million dollars last year by implementing a new project management solution. You could display a graph or chart showing the amount of money saved by one of your customers. If you are in a sales function, you could develop a short slide deck that shows the products/services that you provide. You could show what you can offer if a customer chooses to do business with you. These are just a few examples, but the key is having something. We live in a very visual society, and providing viewers of your profile with a little more than plain text will go a long way. For information on how to add work samples to your profile, click here.

5. Relevant Certifications, Skills, and Education

As a member of the LinkedIn community, you are surrounded by individuals who are there for many of the same reasons as you. Be sure to add your certifications to your profile that have contributed to your professional journey. Listing your educational institutions will provide you with opportunities to network with fellow alumni. People have school pride, and it can open many doors or help secure a new relationship.

Go Get It

Whether your primary goal on LinkedIn is to explore new job opportunities or find a vendor partner to assist with an upcoming project, it’s critical that you put your best foot forward. Following these simple steps to enhance your LinkedIn profile can put you in a great position to achieve these goals.

For many growing professional services firms, new clients are a critical part of meeting business growth objectives, and tapping personal networks is no longer enough. Today you have to find and woo strangers–get on their radar, engage, and often educate them a bit–before you have a chance for a meeting.

In sales and business development, this is called prospecting. It isn’t easy, and it can eat up a lot of time with unproductive activities.

Here are 8 secrets, tested over time, that will accelerate your firm’s prospecting efforts and put you in front of the people you want to meet.

One: Take the time to clearly define your ideal client

Although we may not like to admit it, new business prospecting–even for high value, highly complex products and services–is a numbers game. The more qualified potential new clients you reach, the more new clients you’ll ultimately have. And the fewer unqualified people you waste time with, the more time you have for those qualified clients.

All business development professionals worthy of the title arm themselves with the basics—usually industry, size of company, geography, and title. But taking the time to go a little further can allow you to weed out poor prospects long before you spend much time chasing them.

For example, does the financial health of a company have an effect on whether or not they’d be a good client? How about the types of experience they have on staff? What about a willingness to outsource?

Your ideal client definition should help you quickly and easily identify those with high potential as well as those you want to avoid.

Two: Get to know your prospects

Once you’ve defined your best prospects, do your homework. With all the information publicly available, there’s no excuse for not learning what drives the individual.

Depending on who in an organization you are targeting, you can find valuable information on the company website and blog, in LinkedIn profiles and, if the company publicly owned, in government filings. Even looking at job descriptions on a site like indeed.com can give you useful insight into the responsibilities, challenges, and priorities your prospects are facing.

Armed with that info, you can tailor your outreach and increase your ability to get your prospects’ interest.

Three: Don’t expect partners to prospect

Asking busy, high-dollar partners and others like them to spend time cold prospecting is not a good strategy for a whole raft of reasons. For one thing, they probably aren’t very good at it. For another, it isn’t a great use of their time.

It’s best to focus Partner involvement on current clients or strategic account efforts or until it’s really needed—later in the business development process. Assign someone else to do the low-value stuff.

Four: Prove your value before asking for a meeting

To use a well-worn analogy, getting a new client requires some dating before you propose marriage. You must give your prospect a reason to want to meet with you, and that reason must be important to them—not to you.

When you’re outbound prospecting, on average only 3% of the people you contact are actively looking for what you’re providing. Another 7% are open to hearing about what you offer and 30% know they don’t want it. The majority–60%–either don’t know they need what you have or they aren’t sure how your offering is relevant to them (source).

You’re going to have to educate them.

Paving the road with valuable content and non-salesy messages give prospects a chance to get to know, like, and trust you. They’ll be much more receptive to a meeting suggestion once that happens.

Five: Use multiple communication channels

Sticking with a single method of communication reduces your chances of success because different people respond better to different types of communication. Some prefer email, others are more apt to return phone calls, and a growing number are responsive to contact made through social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Pick just one and you could be eliminating those who prefer the others.

Multiple touchpoints also strengthen your standing in the mind of the buyer. Robert Cialdini, author of the best-selling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and its follow-up Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, tells us “anything that draws focus to itself can lead observers to overestimate its importance.”

In this use, “overestimate” is not a bad thing. Within reason, the more your prospects see you and your company in a good light, the more important they will think you are, and the more open they will be to your messages.

Six: Look good on social media

A 2014 study of professional services buyers found that 59.9% of them check providers out on social media as part of making a purchasing decision (source). That number is undoubtedly higher now.

When you reach out to potential new clients, they come looking for you and they will often draw a first impression from your profile and your own status updates. (Read why executives need a great profile.) An incomplete profile and lack of activity can turn them off. Worse, it’s an easy jump to your competitors’ profiles.

So polish your profile, post interesting, relevant, and useful status updates and reach out one-on-one to your prospects. They’re often much more willing to respond to social media outreach than any other type.

Seven: Spoonfeed your value proposition

Professional marketers, sales, and business development people are trained to think in terms of features and benefits, but these alone require a mental leap on the part of the buyer–a leap that buyers can be too busy to make.

For example, The Conversion Company develops, among other things, social prospecting systems for professional services firms. One of the features is “Do It For You” implementation. The benefit is a consistent stream of well-defined prospective new clients filling your sales pipeline while your best business development reps and partners work on other things.

But what’s the actual value to you? Would you rather I tell you–or make you figure it out for yourself?

To get from the features and benefits to the value you’re offering, just keep asking yourself: “so what?”

Eight: Give it time

Overall, the average number of touches required to secure a meeting has been getting higher and higher year after year while the number of attempts sales and BD people are willing to make doesn’t go up.

Sounds like a good opportunity, doesn’t it?

The most successful business development pros don’t stop after one or two attempts.

I recently had a conversation with a BDR Manager and she said something that every Inside Sales team is feeling right about now: the game is evolving quickly, and it’s a challenge to keep up.

[I’ll pause until you stop nodding your head.]

Even though you have to evolve your style of play to stay in the game, the basics don’t change. As far as the basics go, we advocate a pretty simple approach to sales mastery: mindset, process, and skills. Nail those, and you’re the sales equivalent of a quadruple black belt.

When we talk about process, one essential component is activity levels. Namely, your team has to maintain a certain level of activity to give yourself the best chance of success. This allows for rapid skill development, constant feedback loops for coaching and improvement, and more opportunities to succeed. In other words, the right level of activity means you have a chance to hit revenue, profit, or ROI goals.

In the words of the great basketball coach John Wooden:

“In my coaching I informed every player who came under my supervision that the outcome of a game was simply a by-product of the effort we made to prepare. They understood our destination was a successful journey – namely, total, complete, and detailed preparation.”

There’s something else you should know about activities: they’re tangible. Your SDRs may not know how to drive $950k in additional revenue, but they definitely know how to make 50 calls and send 50 emails every day. Your SDRs can’t action revenue or meetings, but they can take concerted and steady action on daily activities.

Now, you might not know where to start in translating your goals into activities. There are three main ways you can approach this, and each answer a slightly different question.

Setting Daily and Weekly Activities for SDRs

Question: How many daily activities do my SDRs need to hit their meeting goals, and for me to hit my revenue goals?

This is the gold standard. Going back to the “process” part of sales mastery, setting daily and weekly targets is something that your SDRs can actually do and track on their own. There’s no mystery.

Serena Williams had a big goal in mind – win Wimbledon, or the US Open – but she couldn’t just do that. To become the greatest tennis player ever to live, she needed to practice first. And she couldn’t practice winning a major tournament.

Instead, she practiced forehands, backhands, and drop shots. She practiced footwork and serving. She practiced her reaction time to opponents’ serves, and she improved her conditioning. She understood the skills and activities required to have a chance at winning Wimbledon.

Your SDRs are no different. Using an activity-based approach tells you what your SDRs need to do to be successful, and it tells them what they need to do to make a million dollars (they can dream, right?). Setting activities also allows you to vet and track your critical metrics like close rates, reply rates, and touches required to reach a yes/no from a prospect.

This calculation is a little complicated, but it’s well worth the effort. You can grab a free copy of our calculator here if you’d like an answer in 30 seconds. Here’s a look at how it’s set up:

What to Do

• Set the number of daily and weekly activities you need from your team. You have to do it!
• Grab our free calculator – no email address required – and punch in your own numbers to find out how many activities your team needs to execute.
• Check your activity numbers against benchmarks so you’re not expecting too much or too little of your SDRs. Julianne Sweat from Outreach.io suggests about 140 activities per day, spread across 50 calls, 65 emails, and 25 “other” activities like social selling.
• Choose daily and weekly activities. We prefer to set daily outreach activities, weekly number of prospects added, and monthly meeting quotas.

What Not to Do

• Don’t treat your activity number as “set it and forget it.” Make an educated guess about where to set your activity goals, then check in once a month to see how your team is tracking. Make adjustments.
• Don’t give daily and weekly activity quotas without an explanation, and don’t make your goals unrealistic. It’s demoralizing if your team can’t achieve their goals.
• Err on the side of setting your goals slightly too low. That way you have room to move up while building small wins and morale.

Determining ROI per SDR

Question: Based on the quota set today, what is the return on your SDRs acquisition efforts?

Instead of backing into a quota, you might be wondering what the return is on the quota you’ve currently set for your SDRs. All you need to know to figure this out is your current quota, the fully loaded cost of your SDR, LTV, gross margin, and the conversion rate of initial meetings to closed opportunities.

Here’s an example of how you might set it up:

What to Do

• Use the ROI per SDR calculation if you’re interested in measuring the financial return on your SDR team.
• Plug in the best numbers you have on gross margin, LTV, and initial meeting to close (including only the historical data from your SDR team, not inbound leads or other lead sources).
• Understand that you’ll have some imprecision in your data, but the tool can help you make decisions about realistic benchmarks for your team. That includes top performers, under performers, or even providing a data point on whether to expand or contract your team.

What Not to Do

• ROI isn’t a good calculation if you’re in rapid acquisition mode. If your strategic mandate is acquiring as many customers as possible, ROI may not be the right calculation for you.

Meetings for Target Returns

Question: How many meetings does an SDR need to get to pay for herself, or create a 100% or 500% return?        

If you’re looking for a specific return, you might be wondering how many meetings your SDRs need to set in order to hit it. The advantage of this approach is you can quickly see what it will take for your SDRs to pay for themselves, and it’s a great tool for hiring decisions, too.

The limitation of this approach is that it doesn’t consider how realistic the meeting targets are, so you’ll have to use your judgment here.

Here’s a peek at how we set it up in our calculator:

What to Do

• Use this calculation if you’re not sure where to set your meeting quota and you want to target a specific return.

What Not to Do

• As tempting as it is, don’t just pick the highest number and make it a requirement. Your quota should be based on what’s realistic so your SDRs have the best chance to succeed.

Being Inaccurate Is Okay

The first time you go through this exercise, you’re going to be inaccurate. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Just the opposite – you’ll have much more information than you had before you started the exercise.

More importantly, accuracy requires calibration. Start with the best information you have on hand, then check in monthly to see how things are progressing. It’s okay to update as you go, and you may even learn that your Inside Sales team is kicking so much butt that you should double your headcount in the next 6 months. Wonderful!

And if you don’t want to take the trouble to build this calculator yourself – it’s a pain, I can assure you – feel free to grab a copy of our calculator. Just make a copy of the doc and enter your own data to get the answers.

And remember:

1. Your SDRs can’t action a revenue goal or “get a meeting,” but they can hit daily and weekly activity levels.
2. Set and track your activity levels based on your revenue goal or desired return. Check in monthly to see if they need to be adjusted.
3. Compare your activity goals against industry performance benchmarks to keep them realistic.
4. Practice makes perfect – or at least closer to perfect. Starting with activities ensures an adequate and consistent level of practice across your team.
5. Track your performance metrics – conversion rates, open and reply rates, LTV – so you can get more and more accurate with your activity levels and their yield.

Happy hunting (and farming)!

The post How To Set Sales Goals For Your SDRs & Determine Their ROI (Free Calculator Included) appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Guest Post by John Sturrock

The importance of an efficient sales team should be evident whether the company deals in distribution or wholesale. This is because the sales team is what links the products to the customers.

The clients could be separate individuals or whole other companies. Whatever the case, their purchases are directly related to the sales team performance.

Hence, any company worthy of flourishing should carefully measure their sales team’s performance using KPIs and metrics.

The following are some useful key sales metrics one could use to gauge where their sales team needs improvement. This could help a business expand better and smoothen out the wrinkles in their sales department.

 

7 Key Performance Indicators for Sales Teams

 

1. The Opportunity-Win Rate

The opportunity-win rate is a key sales metric that measures the opportunities for sale. It then identifies how many of these opportunities actually become sales.

A sales team usually has several leads on their potential clients. If they do not let these opportunities go to waste, it means they are performing well.

Hence, it is important for a company to look at the chances taken and the chances missed by a sales team. This keeps them on their toes and ensures that potential sales aren’t slipping away.

 

2. The Volume of Sales by Product Line

This particular sales metric focuses on the different kinds of products a company has. Almost every company has separate lines for their product range.

For example, a company may deal in hair care products. This means they would have to look at the sales team’s performance in the shampoo line, the hair spray line, etc.

Another example could be a company who only provides shampoo. However, they could divide up their measurement by looking at the volume of sales in different areas.

With this metric, the company tracks these different lines and sees how the sales are going. The information thus collected is a valuable asset for the product development and research team, as well as a measure of sales performance.

 

3. The Percentage of Sales Team Members Achieving Goals

This key sales metric is a bit on the higher level. It requires looking at the sales team as a whole, and also the individual members within it.

There are always certain members of a sales team who achieve their sales quota, maybe even more. Then there are other members who struggle in doing so. A company can use this information to its advantage.

One does this by looking at the percentage of a sales team that does manage to achieve their goals. After this calculation, it becomes easier to pinpoint the areas that are lacking something.

The company could then focus on what they need to do in order to bring this percentage up. This could be working on the motivation of a certain employee, or increasing the marketing budget.

Finally, this sales metric also helps a company realize how realistic their sales quotas are. If the sales team is performing poorly, it is not always the fault of the individuals. The quota itself may be too large to handle.

 

4. The Length of the Sales Cycle

The amount and volume of sales aren’t the only metrics one should use to measure their sales performance. The time span it takes for an opportunity to become a sale is also of great importance.

Obviously, the shorter a sales cycle is, the better it is for any company. A sales team should hence have as short a sales cycle time as possible. If it is too long, it can be costing the company quite a bundle.

This metric hence directly measures the efficiency of a sales team as well as the quality of their sales leads. When it comes to the individual sales representatives, a company should look at who is the quickest in closing deals.

The average length of the sales cycle is also an important sales metric related to this one. This average should, as a rule, be as steady as possible. Sudden plunges or peaks are worthy of investigation.

 

5. Deal Size Per Salesperson

The deal size per salesperson, especially the average, is a very useful key sales metric. One can use this to track the individual performance of the sales team members.

If one wants, they can take this metric to a higher level. The revenue goals and lead quality evaluation would also signal the performance of a company through this metric.

Lastly, a company could also see whether they’re targeting the correct consumer base or not. If the deal size per salesperson is consistently too small, there might be some basic mistake. Rectifying this could create a significant improvement.

 

6. The Quote-to-Close Ratio

The quote-to-close ratio involves a comparison between the quotes sent out and the deals that are closed. This is in relation to the numbers of quotes and closed deals involved.

What this ratio does is accurately indicate whether one is targeting the correct market or not. Many times, a company may make the expensive mistake of targeting the wrong customers.

When one can pinpoint just which sector of the market to target, their sales revenue can go way up. For example, a company marketing large trampolines to adults rather than kids can sell a great deal more than before.

Additionally, when this ratio is used to measure each member of a sales team, it can reveal several valuable factors. These include the individual’s performance, efficiency within the closing process and many other aspects of the sales team.

 

7. Performance of Products

Apart from the sales in different product lines, product performance is also a good key sales metric. This helps to track which are the best-selling products. This makes the sales and marketing decisions much easier.

When making use of this metric, it is best if a company accounts for the activities of different departments. The sales could be directly affected by the marketing team efforts or seasonal activities.

 

Wrap-Up…

While these general metrics are invaluable for use in any industry, there are also exceptions to these measures. The results from these metrics would depend on how many deals a company is closing within a month or a year.

These metrics should all be tracked for several months, and then used to reach a conclusion about sales team performance. This makes it easier to make decisions about automating processes or making other changes.

 

Author Bio

John Sturrock is an Online Marketer, Writer and Blogger. In addition, he is also a longtime corporate employee who is also skilled at online dissertation help. He has a passion for digital marketing.

The post [Guest Post] 7 KPIs To Keep Tabs On The Performance Of Your Sales Team appeared first on SalesDrive, LLC.

Diversity in the workplace has been an issue since the civil war. Fast forward to 2017 and a lack of diversity in the workplace remains an issue.

In fact, a recent survey by Career Builder found that only 35 percent of women feel confident that compensation is dispensed equitably between the genders.

As U.S. demographics continue to change alongside a rapidly evolving global economy, the business argument for diversity has never been stronger, and that is especially true in the sales industry.

That’s why we put together a list of the top 4 benefits of a diverse sales team and explain how it will help you boost revenue this quarter:

1. Diverse sales teams connect better with customers

One wrong word can kill a sale. So it is critical to get it right when approaching leads from different walks of life.

While it is true that a homogenous sales force can be effective, the addition of diverse sales reps and leaders who understand different lifestyles and cultures can only have a positive impact.

In fact, the Harvard Business Review found that a sales team with a member who shares a client’s ethnicity is 152 percent more likely to understand that client than another team member.

2. Diverse sales teams have access to more A-players 

A recent HBR study found that a cloud-based software company would have had 2 million dollars more in revenue if they met their sales hiring goals.

Simply put, finding salespeople who achieve quota year after year is problematic for most organizations. That’s why it’s so critical to search beyond your usual network. When you start looking at candidates with different backgrounds you widen the talent pool and increase the probabilities of finding a sales superstar.

3. Diverse sales teams overcome groupthink 

When you put people with similar backgrounds in one room, they are likely to come up with similar solutions based on their shared experiences. Groupthink is the kryptonite of success.

A diverse workforce helps to foster an environment where varying points of view can be freely shared among employees. And this theory has been proven to lead to “outside the box” thinking that stimulates innovation and market growth.

4. Diverse sales teams attract the very best

Great people, regardless of their background, are attracted to great working environments. When businesses maintain an inclusive culture, A-players are far more likely to want to join the organization.

This is especially true with Millennials, a group that will make up most your sales force over the next 10 years. Per the Census Bureau, millennials are now the largest and most diverse generation in U.S. history – made up of 42 percent minorities and more women working than any other generation. Most organizations now talk about being diverse, but millennials demand it.

 

As U.S. demographics continue to shift and the global economy continues to evolve, sales leaders need to adapt their hiring processes to include more diversity.

 

The post 4 Reasons a Diverse Sales Team Will Boost Revenue [Video] appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Your local business is under intense pressure.

It’s the nature of running a local business – you’re fighting for a large slice of a small pie. Your customers have an abundance of options, both online and offline.

You’re looking to elevate your standing in the community, because it’s an important part of running a local business. You know that improving your standing in the community makes it much easier to attract, win, and keep customers.

Sure, you could do it on your own, but success is far more likely if you have a team.

At this point, we run into our first problem

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We’re not sure how to mobilize other local businesses. If you’re like most people, you don’t know how to work with other businesses to elevate your standing in the community.

You probably know it’s important.

But the ins and outs of getting that done? The details are hazy at best.

It sounds complicated, difficult and messy. Why would other businesses want to work with you? Won’t they want to set things up so they come out on top?

Why would your competitors work with you? Do you even want to work with competitors?

Right about now the objections and fears are swirling around, am I right?

Not only is it in your best interest to mobilize other local businesses in the community, it’s also inevitable. If you’re part of a local community, you’ve already interacted with other businesses in your area.

What if these local businesses were eager to send you customers?

What if you elevated the standing of local businesses so much so that they jump at the chance to help you in the future? Sounds incredible, doesn’t it?

How exactly do you go about doing that?

It’s easy.

Use this elusive formula to manipulate your way into local businesses

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That word, manipulate. It sounds incredibly yucky, I know.

And it is yucky.

Manipulating people, regardless of the reason, is yucky. It’s almost always a terrible thing to do and the consequences almost inevitably lead to disaster.

So, why am I telling you to be manipulative?

Because we’re focused on manipulating things, never people.

Manipulation isn’t immoral or unethical when we manipulate things. Let’s look at how Dictionary.com defines manipulation.

No surprises here, right?

When we hear the word manipulate most people think of definition #1. If we’re manipulating people, if we’re behaving in an unfair or unethical manner, that’s immoral, unethical and gross.

We’re all on the same page here, right?

Our formula is going to be focused on the manipulation of things, and of circumstances. This formula is the main driver, the basis, for how you’ll get local businesses to work with you in the community.

The formula goes like this:

1. Create X dollars of value for local businesses.
2. Capture Y percent of X.

It’s deceptively simple.

Let’s unpack this a bit so we’re clear on exactly what we’re dealing with.

• You’re creating value for the local businesses around you
• These local businesses could be complementary or competitors
• The value you’re creating is defined by these local businesses, not by you
• It’s tangible or it produces tangible results (e.g. more customer traffic, sales, leads, connections, etc.)
• You’re tapping into a portion of the value you have created
• By serving others first, you serve yourself

This isn’t the usual approach most people take.

Find a target, then harass them relentlessly

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This is the unhealthy model most people follow. They find someone they think will give them money, zero in on the specifics of what they want, then they pounce. They pursue their targets until it works or it doesn’t.

When it works, they get money. When it doesn’t, they move on, repeating the cycle with their next target.

How do I know?

We’ve all seen it.

Let’s say you’re on Twitter and you receive a new follower. What’s the first thing that happens after you accept?

You’re hit with the ask,

The sales pitch,

Or high-pressure request.

If we’re inexperienced we may respond to a few of these at first. But, what happens after the 15th request? We stop responding.

Will local business owners think you’re selfish like all the others?

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Or, will they view you as a Godsend, an invaluable ally they’d be lost without?

If you’re trying to mobilize other local businesses and raise your standing in the community, you’ll need to do two things well.

1. Create X dollars of value for local businesses and the community.
2. Capture Y percent of X.

The community probably won’t care about what you’ve done to help local businesses (unless it’s done on a wide scale and somehow benefits the community). Same with local businesses.

So, the goal here is for you to serve them, to create lots of value for both.

How do you go about doing that?

Step #1: Segment your audience

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You can’t be all things to all people. You’re going to have to find the areas where you can make the most impact. This typically means you’ll have to operate within a specific sphere.

A good place to start would be topics or areas that complement your own.

· Running a restaurant? You can serve local businesses like farmer’s markets (and the individual sellers), grocery stores, local farmers, food co-ops, etc. As far as serving the community goes you could focus on staples like the Salvation Army, local libraries, office parks, police and fire depts., grocery stores, government offices and local food pantries.

· General contractor or skilled tradesman? You can serve local businesses by teaching and training real estate investors, first time homebuyers, real estate agents and small custom home builders. You can serve the community by working with local municipalities/government, individual homeowners and real estate professionals.

· Managing an agency? You can serve local businesses by serving non-profits, business incubators, investors, networking clubs, chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, etc. You can serve the community by working with local government agencies, quasi- government institutions and the occasional random businesses.

· Managing a team of salaried professionals? You can serve local businesses by reaching out to entrepreneurs, non-profits, established businesses and investors. You can serve the community by serving historic community elements, local government, and the indigent.

Can you see the common theme here?

You’re serving those who are most likely to recognize and understand the importance of your work. They recognize the value you bring to the table, so they’re more likely to appreciate it.

Step #2: Spy on local businesses and your community

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The goal here isn’t to be invasive. It’s not about sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong – doing that would make you a creep, which is the last thing you want, right?

No, what we’re looking for is intel.

We need lots of detailed information from local businesses and segments of the community. You’re trying to find information in five distinct areas as it relates to your business and your realm of expertise.

You’re looking for information on your target’s…

· Desires. This seems straightforward enough – what do they want? Until you realize your targets may want something that will cause harm to themselves or to others. You’ll need a clear understanding of both sides of the story.

· Goals. This is the expressed outcome in specific or tangible terms. “I want to increase X by Y percent” or “I want to sell X amount of Y by this time next year.” Knowing your target’s goals gives you the ability to work backwards from that goal, creating an environment where they’ll get what they want sooner.

· Fears. Are your target’s fears legitimate or unfounded? Can you provide some kind of insurance or protection against their fears? This could be as simple as explaining why their fears are impossible/untrue.

· Frustrations. Are there roadblocks or obstacles preventing your targets from getting what they want? Can you help remove those roadblocks? Do you have someone in your network who can remove these roadblocks for them?

· Problems lead to failure, destruction, pain or disaster. These are issues that, left unresolved, metastasize into something that leads to ruin. Do you have information that can solve their problems? Do you know someone who can solve their problems? Can you provide a solution to relieve some of the pressure from these problems?

These five areas are actually one.

They are opportunities for you to create X dollars of value.

When you have your intel, you’re ready to make your pitch or offer. Here’s an important thing to keep in mind; what you’re offering to your local business and your community is outcomes.

Also known as results.

Here’s the big problem with results.

The more amazing your results, the bigger the potential payoff or value created for your targets, the less likely they are to accept your offer.

Wait, what?

You read that right. The more amazing your offer, the less likely people are to believe in it.

That’s because there are actually two types of results. You need both to produce the value and payoff you want.

1. Conventional results. Providing value in a small way, going above and beyond and performing well in general. You’re credible, helpful, productive, etc. Adding value in small ways demonstrates that you’re (a.) trustworthy and (b.) you have strength of character.

2. Transformative results. These are results that make things better for your company, other local businesses and your community as a whole. It can be as simple as sharing knowledge, expertise, or connections. It can be as detailed as a joint venture or partnership.

Conventional results, (more specifically your character) act as the fuel for transformative results. Local businesses and community influencers aren’t being mean when they distrust you or blow you off.

They don’t have the fuel they need to trust you.

Step #3: Start with conventional, transition to transformative

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If you’ve done your homework, you know about the desires, goals, fears, frustrations and problems of your targets. You know the concerns the local businesses and your community have.

Now it’s time to get to work.

Running a restaurant? You can serve local businesses and the community by:

• Buying produce from local farmers, co-ops, grocers and butchers.
• Providing trustworthy local businesses with access to key influencers and connections.
• Offering cooking classes at the local library, giving people in the community a chance to get to know you.
• Partnering with local farmers, co-ops, grocers and butchers to supply food banks and shelters with food.
• Catering food and creating care packages for local government, police and fire depts.

General contractor or skilled tradesman? You can serve local businesses and the community by:

• Providing monthly training and education, showing real estate investors how to choose the right property.
• Showing real estate agents how to salvage deals with distressed properties and hidden defects.
• Providing homeowners with free repair alerts for common/major problems and do-it-yourself instructions.
• Sending real estate professionals a monthly list of distressed/condemned properties and problem areas.
• Connecting homeowners with professionals who can show them how to reduce their property taxes.

Managing an agency? You can serve local businesses and the community by:

• Providing non-profits, business incubators and clubs with a limited set of pro-bono work.
• Offering business incubators, networking clubs, chambers of commerce members free mentoring.
• Providing local government and institutions original research on the struggles local businesses face.
• Offering pro-bono work/mentorship to small-to-medium organizations with influencer status.
• Publishing a quarterly list of local up-and-coming businesses to investors, filled with key metrics they can’t get on their own.

See the conventional to transformative transition?

You’re far more likely to get a yes when your introduction focuses on a small, low-risk offer that’s easy for local businesses and community members to say Yes to.

There’s another problem though.

How do you transition from conventional to transformative?

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You get your foot in the door.

You create a small low-risk offer that’s easy for local businesses and community to get behind. You connect local businesses with the community, placing them in a place of honor wherever and whenever you can.

If members of the community are raving about the amazing food at your cooking class, you talk up the farmer’s market/local farm that provided the produce.

You under promise and over deliver.

As you wrap up your work with local businesses and the community, you use the formula to create another offer. An offer that increases the value you’re providing but also requires a bit more trust.

Then, you under promise and over deliver again.

Use this strategy to leapfrog your way up the ladder. As you continue to serve, your status and standing in the community continues to rise.

There’s no need to fight for a large piece of a small pie

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Local businesses are under intense pressure.

It’s the nature of running a local business – most are fighting for a large slice of a small pie. Customers have an abundance of options.

You’ll get a large piece of the pie because you’ve mobilized local businesses and your community. You have the formula to elevate your standing in the community.

Serve your customers.

Create conventional and transformative change and you’ll find the pressure of competition is replaced by the pleasure of cooperation.

Most organizations have their own successful internal sales teams. But it can be a challenge finding and hiring the right people, developing the best strategies, choosing the right technology, and implementing changes that deliver better-qualified leads and sustained growth. While partnering with an outside firm used to be a privilege for the few, today organizations of all sizes can take advantage of such services to grow their business.

Back to Basics

Conventional wisdom tells us that when things become overwhelming, it’s wise to go back to the basics. Doing so can strengthen your organization’s foundation and help you make informed decisions on how and where to best spend your time and resources.

Most sales managers are familiar with the most basic of all sales equations:

Effort x effectiveness = results

Yes, it’s true that new technologies have made marketing life simpler, but the sales world itself has gotten a bit complicated. Not that long ago, a sales rep would use a landline phone to call a prospect and, hopefully, close a deal. In the digital sphere, life can be more difficult. Even scheduling an appointment takes more time and effort.

The basics of a successful sales strategy include:

Researching, investigating, and identifying your target audience.

Showing prospective customers you understand their needs and pain points.

Knowing how to communicate in a way that nurtures prospects and ensures they are armed with the right tools to make an educated decision.

But what if you lack the internal resources to achieve your sales goals? Joining forces with a high-quality lead development and sales service company may be the way to go.

Evaluating Options

Many businesses wonder if it makes sense to bring in an outside firm to help with generating leads and closing deals. Often the answer is yes. Having your internal team handle everything means housing, training, managing, and maintaining an infrastructure that supports your sales goals. Does your organization have the necessary resources to handle that?

It’s worth exploring the benefits of using a third-party firm that has a passion for selling and the expertise to drive results. At Invenio, we analyze your internal sales approach and determine which strategy is most appropriate to generate qualified leads and close deals for your specific business.

A specialized external sales force can outperform an internal sales team that lacks the resources a firm like ours can provide. We do it by offering a customizable skill set that adds value and results to your already existing sales strategy. By allowing an outside firm to handle inside sales, your business:

Saves time by not using your sales team to make cold calls or qualify the right leads. They’re then freed to build relationships with existing customers, which makes them more effective and productive to your bottom line.

Uses its valuable resources in the most cost-efficient way. Cold calls, appointment setting, and lead acquisitions all eat into your team’s time. An outside firm eliminates the need to hire and train multiple new reps.

Can take inside sales to the next level by adding quality and quantity to your existing sales team.

As with most things in life, getting back to the basics can be the first step to more effective sales. An external partner can be the ideal way to expand your sales reach and effectiveness while hitting your numbers in record time. There’s no better way to generate growth and achieve a measurable return on investment.

How often do you say the wrong thing and kick yourself later?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone – we all end up with a chronic case of foot-in-mouth from time to time.

However, the words that you use to communicate with your prospective customers could have a serious impact on whether you make a sale.

People might not read everything they see. In fact, 27% of adults in the U.S. didn’t bother to pick up a book in 2014, but everyone likes to scan when they need information. In fact, we’ve evolved to be able to process information at lightning speed. We can tell if we want to buy something just by glancing at a few syllables on a screen.

Unfortunately, just as the right words can encourage someone to convert for your business, the wrong words could send your leads screaming in the opposite direction. Knowing the difference between successful words and “danger” words could help you to prevent the wrong phrases from murdering your marketing strategy.

Danger Word #1: “Submit”

“Submit” looks so innocent when it sits at the bottom of your page in a pretty CTA button. However, there’s danger lurking in that curvy “S”.

Submit is synonymous with the concept of “submission” – and therein lies the problem. Unlike the kinky sexual exploration indicated in everyone’s favorite erotic novel, this form of submission refers to yielding your cash or attention to someone superior.

In other words, if you ask someone to “Submit” something, you’re basically telling them to agree to the fact that you’re better than them – and therefore deserve their money, contact details, or whatever else you’re asking for.

It sounds dramatic, but it’s a proven issue. HubSpot looked at the conversion rates of around 40,000 landing pages and found that when CTA buttons included the word “submit”, the conversion rates associated with them dropped significantly.

If you want to create an instant good impression with your marketing strategy, leave the submission to the bedroom and remember that the best CTAs should be specific and actionable. That means starting with a verb and pointing out what value you’re going to give to your visitors:An example would be: “Click here for your FREE EBook”.

For instance, Lyft asks you to turn miles into money, and encourages you to “become a driver”, indicating a positive forward step in your life.

Source: lyft.com

Danger Word #2: Your

“Your” is both a good and bad word to use in copy at the same time.

The copy that’s written on most websites should be in the second person (you, your) – that’s a good thing. It means you’re speaking directly to your audience rather than talking about yourself or drawing attention to some mythical “he” or “she”.

Most copywriters learn to use “you” instead of “they” when they’re explaining the benefits of a particular service or product. However, it’s important to remember that “your” doesn’t fit everywhere. When you’re focusing on a Call to Action, or your aim is to convert visitors at a specific point in your copy, switch to the first person.

In other words, while “your” isn’t as dangerous as some of the words on this marketing strategy list, the best way to design an incredible call to action is to use “my” instead. For instance:

• Start my free trial now
• Build my traffic today
• Set up my new business!

Source: meetedgar.com

Above, Meetedgar uses the “my” technique in their call to action, with the text “start my free trial”. This instantly makes you feel like you’re claiming something that’s yours, rather than being asked to purchase or agree to something.

Danger Word #3: Free

You’d think that using the word “free” would automatically increase conversions. Who doesn’t love the opportunity to stock up on some free stuff?

Unfortunately, while free trials, samples, gifts, and whatever else you have to bribe your audience members with can be a great way to generate interest and engagement, there are exceptions to the rule.

The first issue with using “free” in your marketing strategy, is that it can trigger some spam filters when you’re sending emails. In other words – your customer never sees your incredible offer because his or her email client assumes it’s too good to be true and sends it to the spam abyss.

The second problem with using “Free” in your conversion copy, is that too many businesses use that word when they mean something completely different. It’s not a free product if your customer has to buy thirty dollars’ worth of merchandise to get it. Don’t trick or mislead your audience into thinking they’re going to get more value than you’re offering. This leads to mistrust.

Source

Spotify tells you exactly what you’re getting. Yes, you get a free trial, but you also know that you’re only getting it for “free” for thirty days. There are no illusions or attempts to trick you into getting more than you bargained for.

Danger Word #4: Spam

Most of the time, when you’re referring to spam in your marketing strategy, you’re talking about those piles of annoying emails your customers are overwhelmed with every day (not the can of mystery meat). Chances are that your prospects receive literally dozens of emails a day – and only a handful of those are from people and companies that they care about.

Since spam is such a pain in the backside – you’d think that reassuring your leads that your messages aren’t spam would be all you need to do to enhance conversions, right? Wrong.

Using the word “spam” in your content, even if it’s in the sentence: “This definitely isn’t spam”, is proven to make your leads feel more apprehensive about doing business with you. It’s like going up to a TSA agent the next time you take a flight and saying “I’m definitely not holding a bomb in my backpack.”

Your best bet is to simply avoid negative words altogether. Instead, stick to positive messaging to encourage your leads to take the risks that turn them into conversions.

Danger Word #5: Save Time & money

Though “Save time and money” is something you assume every customer wants to do, that doesn’t mean those words have a place in your conversion copy.

While there’s nothing wrong with bringing attention to your value as a business in your marketing strategy, one of the worst things you can do is use vague, lazy selling. In other words, you can’t just tell your prospects that you will save them money and time – you need to tell them why you will do that and how you will accomplish it. Otherwise, it means nothing.

The key to great sales is to find those little ingredients in your business that make you unique and awesome. You want to show your audience that you can do something special for them – not simply give the same vague promises everyone else does. Avoid the generic stuff – be something different.

Source

In the Renegade Diet example above, the author gives you the “how” and “why” by offering the benefits right away (gain muscle and lose fat). In addition, the CTA is clear with the text “get immediate access” and the person who clicks knows exactly what to expect on the other side.

Protect your Conversions

At the end of the day, the best way to create killer CTAs and improve your conversion copy is to test everything you write for your marketing strategy. The more you test, the more you’ll learn about which words your customers respond to best.

Still, the words I’ve outlined above should give you at least some guidance into what to avoid, and what to be cautious about when crafting your sales message.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett spends most of his day doing it.

Bill Gates swears by it.

Mark Cuban spends three hours of every day on it.

There are few practices more consistently proven to directly improve your life (and selling abilities) than reading.  

Researchers have found that reading helps prevent stress, depression, and dementia, while also enhancing confidence, empathy, decision-making, and overall life satisfaction.

Not only that, but reading the right books can lead to higher income and more meaningful careers.

Tom Corley, author of Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, found that in almost all cases, people who make more than $160,000 a year read for self-improvement, education, and success. While those with an annual income of $35,000 or less read almost primarily to be entertained.

Books are modern-day mentors. They’re like having unparalleled access to the greatest minds of our generation and generations past. Which is why it’s so important to carve out time in your day to sit back and plow through some pages.

To help point you in the right direction, we combed the must-read lists of some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, as well as the team here at Close.io, to put together our list of the top 31 sales books of all time.  

Want a few more sales books? Download 7 Close.io books (along with email templates, sales scripts, and more) for free right now.

But first, here’s how to get the most out of reading these sales books

While it’s easy enough to talk about what to read. It’s just as important to understand how to read. And no, I’m not saying I think you’re illiterate! It’s simply that it’s all too easy to get into a book, rip through the pages, and come out on the other end saying ‘what did I just read?’

To get the most out of the sales books we’re suggesting below, you need to understand why we remember certain things and forget others.

When it comes to reading, we can think of memory as being made up of 3 factors:

1. Impression: Have a specific goal in mind before, or read the ending first
2. Association: Connect what you’re reading to ideas and theories you already know
3. Repetition: Engage with the material after you’ve finished reading by writing a high-level overview or talking about it with your team

You need to engage with all of these in order to remember what you’ve read and be able to use it later on. And while there’s lots of practical ways to make sure you’re hitting all these points while reading, the key is to simply remember that you’re reading for a reason. Take notes in the margin. Highlight passages. Talk about what you’re reading with people at work or at home.  

Reading with intention like this will make sure you’re not just flipping pages and will actually have something actionable when you finally get to the back cover.  

Now, let’s get into the sales books!

The Essential Sales Books

These are the sales books that every salesperson at any level should read. They cover the basics of what it is to sell, how to negotiate, the psychology of pitching, and more.

1. To Sell is Human

Why you should read this book: Daniel Pink is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post best-selling author who completely destroys and disproves every outdated stereotype about sales in this fantastic book. If you want to understand the modern sales landscape and the psychology of selling anything, pick this one up.

Key Quote: “Anytime you're tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you're doing and upserve instead.”

2. Everybody Lies

Why you should read this book: What if you knew what your sales lead was going to do before you ever spoke to them? The internet has led to such a proliferation of data that we can predict behaviors based on everything from what sports you like to who you voted for. In this sales book, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz digs deeper and offers up revealing truths about how we think and feel as humans.  

Key Quote: “First, and perhaps most important, if you are going to try to use new data to revolutionize a field, it is best to go into a field where old methods are lousy.”

3. Blueprints For A SaaS Sales Organization

Why you should read this book: This is the book that redefined how SaaS sales teams are built. Inside, authors Jacco van der Kooji and Fernando Pizarro distill their decades of combined experience building high performance SaaS teams into a set of highly detailed instructions that will allow sales leaders to design, implement and execute all around sales plans.

Key Quote: “Get the model right in order to avoid losing time. Time is the only resource you can’t replace, and in today’s fast-moving market your competitors are quick to leap ahead of you and cash in on the market you and your marketing dollars created.”

4. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Why you should read this book: Understanding how people are influenced is such an incredibly important part of sales, and Dr. Robert Cialdini is the expert. Influence is the classic text covering the psychology of why people say "yes". And more importantly, how to apply these understandings in your business.

Key Quote: “The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.”

5. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

Why you should read this book: One truly great pitch can make your career. Which is exactly what author Oren Klaff, who used his own unique pitching method to raise over $400 million, proves in this fantastic book. Klaff takes a scientific approach to the pitch, outlining the key points every great pitch needs to hit and how exactly to do it:

• Setting the Frame
• Telling the Story
• Revealing the Intrigue
• Offering the Prize
• Nailing the Hookpoint
• Getting a Decision

Key Quote: “No pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.”

6. Never Split the Difference

Why you should read this book: Want to up your negotiating skills? Who better to learn from than a former international hostage negotiator for the FBI. Chris Voss highlights the hard skills and practical principles that helped him save lives, and will help give you an edge in any negotiation.

Key Quote: “Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.”

7. Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale

Why you should read this book: In the world of sales, Zig Ziglar is the giant whose shoulders we all stand on. His pioneering book puts a laser focus on the all-important close, providing hundreds of examples of how to close and questions to ask yourself before you go in for the ‘yes’.

Key Quote: “If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.” 

Sales Books on Management

If you’re managing a sales team or are a founder running point on sales, knowledge is your best friend. These books cover the nitty gritty of managing a sales team as well as the psychology of management in business.

8. Cracking the Sales Management Code

Why you should read this book: If you’re sick of high-level advice and are ready to dig into the specifics of how a high-functioning sales team works, this is a must read. Authors Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana provide the foundational knowledge of what drives sales performance, including:

• How to choose the right processes for your own team
• Which metrics you can "manage" and which ones you can't
• How to prioritize conflicting sales objectives
• How to align seller activities with business results
• How to use a CRM to improve the impact of coaching

Key Quote: “Hiring the right salespeople, deploying them in the right way, targeting the right customers, and selling the right products is the only formula for long-term organizational health.”

9. The Ultimate Sales Machine

Why you should read this book: As a sales manager, one of your most important roles is not just to identify strategies and opportunities, but to get rid of ones that don’t work. Chet Holmes’ book shows you how to focus in on the strategies that are working and systematically improve areas of your business in just an hour a week.

Key Quote: “The one who gives the market the most and best information will always slaughter the one who just wants to sell products or services.”

10. SPIN Selling

Why you should read this book: It might be a few decades old (which means prepare for some outdated references), but the fundamentals presented by author Neil Rackham in SPIN are those that every sales rep needs to know. SPIN, which stands for Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff, turned selling from an art to a science and is a playbook for closing large, complex sales.

Key Quote: “People do not buy from salespeople because they understand their products but because they felt the salesperson understood their problems.”

11. Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions

Why you should read this book: If you don’t know the difference between training and coaching, your sales team will never truly excel. Keith Rosen’s award-winning book looks at the specific methods you can use to not only coach your best performers to get the most out of them, but how to create a culture of coaching at your entire organization. A must-read for anyone who wants to inspire and create a more positive working environment.

Key Quote: “If you do not have a defined process that moves your people forward so they can achieve greater results, then what is it you are managing?”

12. The Art of War

Why you should read this book: Sure, it’s nearly 2000 years old, but Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu’s classic is still the authority on how to handle conflict in the best way possible. The strategies in this book have been applied to everyone from ancient military leaders to modern day politicians and executives.

Key Quotes (we couldn’t pick just one): “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”  

Sales Books on Effective Leadership

Buffett, Gates, Cuban. These avid readers are some of the most influential and inspiring leaders of our generation. These books will help guide you on your own path to greatness.

13. From Impossible to Inevitable

Why you’ll want to read this book: Authors Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin use examples from Zenefits (which skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million in two years) to Salesforce (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company) to describe their 7 Ingredients of Hypergrowth:

1. Nail a niche
2. Build sustainable systems that creates a predictable pipeline
3. Make sales scalable
4. Figure out how to double your deal size
5. Make sure you can do the time
6. Embrace employee ownership
7. Define your destiny to make a difference

Key Quote: “Your primary goal should not be to close a deal, but to help your “customers” solve problems and realize success.” - Aaron Ross

14. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Why you should read this book: The metaphor of sales as a battlefield might be overused, but it’s an apt description of how we feel when the stakes are high and we know the competition is always around the corner. That’s why this book, written by two celebrated SEAL veterans (Jocko Willink and Leif Babin), offers so many incredible insights on leading a sales team—and is actually one of my most recommended business books of all time. Extreme Ownership details the mindset and principles that enable the SEALs to succeed and has been used by everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies,

Key Quote: “The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.”

15. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Why you should read this book: To grow and succeed, we need to believe that we can grow and succeed. Simple right? Yet, how many times have you or your team missed a target or lost an account and thought ‘it was just meant to be?’ In this book, psychologist Carol Dweck drills into the core of having a growth mindset, and how you can inspire yourself and your team to be better than they are today.

Key Quote: “We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”

16. Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

Why you should read this book: Author, entrepreneur, and investor Tim Ferriss’ latest dive into what creates greatness is a monstrous 650-pages of advice from 200+ business gurus including Tony Robbins, Derek Sivers, Daymond John and many more. If you want to be a great leader, Tim lets you learn from the best—regardless of whether or not you're in sales.

Key Quote: “When 99% of people doubt you, you’re either gravely wrong or about to make history.”

Keep an eye out: Tim's got another promising book in the works right now, called Tribe of Mentors, coming out in November, 2017.

17. Never Eat Alone

Why you should read this book: If the son of a small-town steelworker can network his way to a Harvard MBA and features in Forbes, then I listen to him. In this  sales book, author Keith Ferrazzi takes all the negative, soul-sucking drudgery of ‘networking’ and outlines how to build connections that matter and get you what you want in life.

Key Quote: “Real networking is about finding ways to make other people more successful.”

18. Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Why you should read this book: From who we choose to spend our time with to what brand of toothpaste we buy, our emotions are behind every decision we make. Based on answers from over half a million people. Dr. Travis Bradberry shows ways you can develop and grow your emotional intelligence and become more in-tune with the needs and wants of everyone you’re selling to.

Key Quote: “Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.”

19. Ender’s Game

Why you should read this book: Why is this sci-fi novel on the US Marine Corps’ reading list (And on our list of sales books as well)? Orson Scott Card not only tells a fantastic story of futuristic war, but sneaks in some of the best lessons on leadership, teamwork, and empathy—keys to any successful sales team.

Key Quote: “If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.”

20. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Why you should read this book: Any organization can explain what it does. Some can explain how they do it. But very few can clearly articulate why. This is the focus point of Simon Sinek’s brilliant book. When you’re selling, understanding the why behind your product gives you a leg-up on the competition. It lets you answer questions that go deeper than the surface and prove to your prospect that they need what you’re selling.

Key Quote: “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

Sales Books for Learning Key Life Lessons

Reading shouldn’t just be about being better at your job. It should be about personal growth and building a better, more successful life for yourself. These sales books cover the spectrum from growing your mental fortitude to learning how to treat people in a respectful manner.

21. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Why you should read this book: There’s a reason this book is so well-regarded in both business schools and personal development circles. Stephen R. Covey has created a guide on living a good, meaningful life, understanding and empathizing with everyone you meet, and setting real, actionable goals (and sales goals, for that matter). If you’re in a slump or need motivation, pick this one up.   

Key Quote: “Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).”

22. Rejection Proof

Why you should read this book: Sales can at times feel like a series of rejections. And without the mental fortitude to push through, they can quickly pile up and weigh down your motivation. Luckily for us, the author of this sales book, Jia Jiang decided to go through more rejection than most people can handle, and wrote this book describing the secret of successful asking, how to pick targets, and how to tell when an initial no can be converted into something positive.

Key Quote: “Is your dream bigger than your rejections? If it is, maybe it’s time to keep going, instead of giving up.”

23. Sell or Be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life

Why you should read this book: As salespeople, it’s often hard to separate the work we do every single day from the rest of our lives. When you’re ‘always on’, it can be hard to tone it down and stop selling to everyone in your life—which author and serial entrepreneur Grant Cardone knows all too well.

But why should we try and turn off the selling in the first place? This sales book takes the traditional idea of selling and puts a fresh spin on it by applying sales techniques and philosophies to every facet of your life, from your career to your love life.  

Key Quote: “No person will ever gain true power and stature in the world without the ability to persuade others.”

24. How to Win Friends and Influence People

Why you should read this book: Yes, it was written in the 1930s. Yes, it’s sold more than 15 million copies and is still being taught today. As the title suggests, Dale Carnegie’s bestselling (undercover) sales book teaches you how to effectively work with other people, how to become a better manager, leader and connector. But more than that, it teaches you how to genuinely get along with people and live a happier, more successful life.

Key Quote: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

25. Wherever You Go There You Are

Why you should read this book: There’s no doubting that working in sales is an incredibly stressful life choice. Yet while some of us choose to put our head down and power through the long, tense days, author Jon Kabat-Zinn thinks we can live a better, more meaningful life through meditation. This isn't directly a sales book, but if you’ve been ‘hearing about this mindfulness stuff’ for a while now and want to try to improve your life, lower your stress, and perform better with the time you do spend at work—this is a great place to start.

Key Quote: “You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.”

26. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Why you should read this book: Attention and focus are our two most precious resources in our distracted world. Especially in sales, where you constantly need to be looking for leads, researching the market, and understanding your competition, it can be easy to get swept away by distractions. This book by author and Georgetown professor, Cal Newport, changes that. Deep Work is part inspiring stories, part actionable advice on how to build a proper attention-strengthening regime and become a master in your field.

Key Quote: “Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”

27. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

Why you should read this book: First off, it’s got probably the best title of any business book out there. Secondly, Mark Manson’s bestseller is built around the core argument, backed by academic research, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn “lemons into lemonade,” but on learning to stomach the lemons better. It’s about setting realistic expectations for ourselves. Embracing our fears, faults and uncertainties to begin finding the courage, honesty, responsibility we seek.

Key Quote: "Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame."

Books on the Future of Sales

You might think that a book is the last place to look to the future, but big, life-changing ideas are often hidden within well-read tomes. These sales books look at some of the greatest ideas of how to build and grow an influential sales team (and a company in general).

28. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Why you should read this book: Based on a study of thousands of sales reps across many industries, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson found that the best don’t just build relationships, but challenge them. This is one of those unique sales books that takes what you fundamentally think is at the core of sales and flips it on its head. But more than just theory, where Challenger excels is in pinpointing the exact techniques that work so well, and presenting them in a repeatable and teachable way.

Key Quote: “What sets the best suppliers apart is not the quality of their products, but the value of their insight—new ideas to help customers either make money or save money in ways they didn’t even know were possible.”

29. Winning with Data

Why you should read this book: If you keep hearing about how your sales team needs to be data-driven, but still have no idea what that means, venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz’s book gives a crash course on what the term means for you and your business, and how to transform your team or organization into a data-driven culture.

Key Quote: "...Illusion of validity fools us into believing that gathering more data will help us predict the future better."

30. The Sales Acceleration Formula

Why you should read this book: Every business wants to grow, but how many have actually scaled their sales team effectively? The Formula provided by Mark Roberge here is a step-by-step guide to using data, technology, and inbound marketing to build a massive, scalable, and productive sales team and propel your company to success.

Key Quote: “What is the most important goal the company needs to achieve? Customer count? Profitability? Customer success? Market share? New product distribution? New market penetration?” Then ask yourself, ‘How can the sales compensation plan be aligned with this goal?’ Do not underestimate the power of the compensation plan.”

31. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Why you should read this book: If you haven’t read Hooked, your competition has. And they’re using it against you. Nir Eyal’s book does more than just explain why people love certain products more than others. It gives you a 4-step process based on years of research and countless interviews on how to build a system that brings users and customers back over and over.

Key Quote: “There are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.”

What'd we miss?

These sales books contain some of the best research and insight into building, managing, and leading a successful sales team.

But they also cover ways to live a better life. Be happier. And battle the inevitable stress and rollercoaster of emotions that comes from working in sales.

Yet it’s important to remember that reading isn’t a quick fix solution. It’s a long-term, life-changing practice that you need to commit to in order to see results.

So instead of treating this like a sales book summer reading list, treat it like a starting point on your journey to a better life and a better career.

Did we miss your favorite sales book? Share with us below in the comments.

For even more great sales books, download your free Startup Sales Resource Bundle right now. Get 7 Close.io books—yep, 7— along with email templates, sales scripts, and more.

Download the Startup Sales Resource Bundle

If the DC and Marvel franchises have taught us anything, it’s that one superhero may be great, but a team of superheroes coming together is a force to be reckoned with (and box office gold).

When it comes to account-based sales, your sales heroes may be ready for action. But the most effective account-based strategies require efforts from additional players on your marketing team.

Marketing provides an innovative approach that help to break through the monotony of common sales tactics. Instead of simply sending out emails and making phone calls, marketing builds personalized content for accounts or targets cold leads with specific ads that can boost connection rates and bring in more deals.

For this edition of Sales Tips, we’ve invited Eric Martin, Director of Marketing Programs, to talk more about how marketing and sales teams can work together to achieve account-based sales success.

Hi I’m Eric Martin from SalesLoft. I’d like to talk to you today about how marketing can help set an account based revenue organization up for success. In traditional teams sales and marketing work in siloed environments. To practice what we believe many of our marketing goals are actually tied to sales performance. For example, we’re responsible for helping sales create pipeline and target accounts. We found that as marketers we can better serve the sales team by proactively supplying them with ideas. We quickly test these ideas to determine the activities that best drive engagement.
I’d like to share three successful ideas we’ve used to support our sales organization. My first tip is to arm sales reps with clear, consistent messaging that they can use when they’re reaching out
to their target accounts. For example, we’ve created team cadences for SalesLoft that are targeted for each persona involved in the buyer’s journey. By supplying sales with persona targeted messaging
we’ve seen measurable improvements in response rates. The second way we empower our sales organization is by creating personalized content. Custom landing pages, ads, and personalized video bringing unique and creative touch to your cadences. We’ve seen success by delivering all of these tactics to our top tier accounts. We create custom landing pages with personalized videos that help the rep
connect directly with the prospect. In our testing, relevant messaging can actually double the rate of engagement with your prospects. Prospecting a new business is much easier when that prospect is
familiar with your company. To warm up cold prospects, we specifically target our advertising toward cold accounts. While it sounds simple, brand recognition helps. When prospects say I think I’ve seen this company somewhere, it’s much more powerful than you think. For top tier cold accounts, we tune our ad messaging for the company’s mission and business model. This helps drive engagement on top of brand recognition. What tools help us do this? We use Terminus to deliver ads to our target accounts. Also, we use Triblio to personalize messaging on our website to drive engagement. Thanks for watching. I hope you learned a few tips that can help you better understand how marketing can support a modern sales organization. Feel free to drop a note or comment below if you’d like to talk more about this.

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Want to learn more about effective sales strategy? Download your free copy of our latest eBook and start landing larger clients, earning more revenue, and enjoying more sales success.

The post Aligning Your Marketing and Sales Teams for Account-Based Success appeared first on SalesLoft.

Last year Social Media Examiner asked more than 5,000 marketers about social media and how they use it to help them grow businesses. When asked about its benefits, 89% of marketers said it was effective at increasing brand exposure, 75% said it increased website traffic, and 68% said it helped them develop more loyal fans.

Just 66% said it was effective at generating leads, and 51% said it improved sales.

That’s a huge discrepancy between the ability to increase brand exposure and drive sales – but why?

Surely if social media is succeeding in boosting brand awareness and driving traffic, sales should follow, right?

Unfortunately, marketing wins rarely happen this easily. To drive leads and sales you need to be getting your brand in front of the right people and consequently, driving qualified traffic to your site.

We’ll talk you through a few hacks that can increase the impact of social on your bottom line in a moment, but first let’s set the scene by talking about the process a customer goes through before they convert.

Pre-internet, customers generally shopped by visiting a store and interacting with a salesperson – particularly if their knowledge on what they were buying was limited. This meant that sellers were typically involved in and had some control over the buyer journey.

Today’s buyer is much more independent, and they rarely, if ever, reach out directly to a company for advice.

Here are a few statistics that help put into perspective how autonomous today’s buyers are:

• 81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.
• Half of shoppers spend at least 75% of their total shopping time conducting online research.
• By 2020, 80% of the buying process is expected to occur without any human-to-human interaction.

Knowing that buyers are not going to approach us, what can we do to ensure our marketing is nurturing the type of people that are most likely to buy from our business so that when they are ready to buy, they come to us, and not one of our competitors?

Social media intelligence agency Social Strategi works with a company called Mom’s the Word – a fashion brand for expectant mothers that believes “clothes shouldn’t have an expiration date” (in other words, their clothes are designed to be worn beyond pregnancy).

Mom’s the Word approached Social Strategi with the goal of doubling their online revenue via social. Needless to say, this meant devising and implementing a social media marketing strategy that focused on driving relevant traffic to the website.

To do this they:

1. Profiled the brand’s existing audience using social data, audience affinities, and tribe analysis.
2. Looked at and leveraged the brand’s competitors’ audience data.
3. Decided what types of data would be most effective at improving marketing performance and reducing costs.
4. Used a unique combination of dashboard data, audience insights and intelligent targeting to provide maximum ROI on all paid acquisition channels.

As a result, Mom’s the Word tripled their website traffic:

And in less than 4 months, doubled their gross sales:

Let’s take a look in more detail at the process Social Strategi followed, and how you can apply their tactics to your own marketing.

1. Gather customer insights

Look at your customers and ask yourself – who’s happy and who isn’t?

Reach out to these customers and ask them why they do or don’t like you. You can do this over social media or email, but you can also learn a lot about your customers by analyzing how they behave on your website.

What products do customers keep coming back for?

How often are customers failing to complete their purchase, and why?

Is the checkout process too long-winded? Are there distractions on the checkout page that are driving people away from the site (voucher code boxes are often guilty of this)? Are you surprising customers with excessive delivery fees at the last moment?

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and run through the checkout process yourself, then ask some impartial friends or family members to do the same. What, if anything, tripped you (and them) up?

Follow this with some A/B tests and as above, ask your customers why they’re not completing purchases. Implement exit pop-ups and abandoned checkout emails that inquire as to why customers didn’t check out, and encourage them to come back.

Finally, use this information to optimize your site for conversions so that when you’re driving traffic from social media to your site, you’ve maximized the chances it will convert.

2. Pay close attention to your fans on social media

Make use of all the information your social platforms share with you about the people that like your page or follow you.

Facebook in particular now offers some awesome data to business users, as part of the Facebook for Business suite. You can get this information in the Audience Insights section.

To leverage this information, begin by searching for your page name here:

You can then view information including the demographics of your audience, their activity on the site, their purchasing behavior, and other pages that they “like.”

Bear in mind that the number of likes your page has affects how much information you can access. If you’ve only got a few hundred followers (or fewer), the data available to you is likely to be very limited.

Another way to use Audience Insights is to search for your industry or phrases related to it.

You’ll then be able to view that same data for all Facebook users that have expressed an interest in your industry (bear in mind that you can filter the results by gender, age, and location).

This information should prove invaluable for informing all your marketing channels, including, of course, social media. What you can also do here, however, is create lookalike audiences that look and feel like your own audience, and target them on Facebook.

To do this, use the Insights tool as described above to create an audience you want to market to.

You then need to name your audience:

And finally, click “Create Ad” (top right of the page) to begin creating an ad campaign.

3. Pay attention to consumer insights

What topic is your audience talking about, what are their pain points, and what language are they using? Use these insights to talk to your customers in the language they use.

Don’t assume, however, that just because you work in the industry, you understand the issues facing your target audience – even if you, yourself, fit the demographics of your audience. No two experiences are the same so it’s important you do your own research.

You can use social media for this.

Just above we talked about how you can use Facebook Insights to find out what pages people related to your industry like. I’d encourage you to visit these pages and see what’s being posted, what people are responding to, and what they’re saying (of course, you should be paying close attention to interactions on your own social profiles, too).

Beyond this, forums and other online communities (Quora and Reddit are the big ones) are invaluable sources of information.

Sign up or subscribe to relevant forums and communities and visit them regularly. Better yet, become an active participant in them. The more you go where your target audience goes, the easier it will be for you to talk to them in their language about their interests, and the better the results you should be able to get from your social media marketing.

4. Look at your competitors’ insights

Facebook Insights lets you learn more about the people who like your page, as well as the people who have expressed an interest in your industry. You can also get this same information for your competitors’ pages.

To access this, just search for a competitor in the interests box (it’s the same box you used to search for your industry). You can then create ads that target people who have liked a competitor’s page.

Bonus tip: you can target multiple competitors (or interests) at the same time.

Beyond this, there is lots of value to be gained from looking at your competitors’ social media efforts and how their audiences are responding.

What are they posting? What’s working and not working for them? Pay close attention to what they’re doing and tweak your strategy accordingly.

5. Look at your own dashboard

Often, marketers can get so caught up in what other people are doing that they neglect to pay much attention to their own data. Don’t be like them. Look at your own analytics – they’re telling you stories you’ve likely ignored.

Where are your customers coming from? Which channels are sending the most traffic? Your ideal channel might be Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or something else – I can’t tell you this, but your website analytics can.

Of course, to figure out which channel is going to send you the most traffic, you have to test each one in equal measure.

Mom’s the Word did this. They began by running campaigns on lots of different platforms, and after a while they noticed spikes in traffic coming from specific channels. They then dropped the channels that weren’t generating an ROI, and focused more heavily on those that were.

That said, bear in mind that traffic is really only a vanity metric. You shouldn’t let it dictate business or marketing decisions, at least not in isolation. Instead, pay attention to which channels are driving traffic that converts. That’s where you want to focus your efforts.

What tactics do you use to maximize the revenue you generate through social? Comments are below, if you have a moment to share your secrets:

On the fifth and final episode of this UpClose Podcast Series with Dayle Hall, SVP of Marketing at Lithium Technologies, we discuss the “love story” between marketing and sales. This podcast series showcases The 5 Most Influential Topics for B2B Marketing, and includes one episode each on influencer marketing, data overload, digital customer experience, and the state of social engagement. On this episode, you’ll discover what’s possible when aligning marketing and sales, leading the two to work superbly together toward common goals.

Start with the C-Suite

Bringing marketing and sales together has to start with the C-Suite. The more value marketing demonstrates, the more buy-in and therefore more budget you’ll receive. Lithium incorporates the c-suite first by looking at it through two lenses—revenue and reputation—both of which include social media marketing.

• Revenue: Social can be used to link demand generation efforts to the sales pipeline.
• Reputation: Social media helps to build a brand’s reputation. Having a known and consistent presence and voice on all channels enhances the reputation.

Getting the C-suite to lead by example is powerful. Dayle points out that John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile is a brand advocate and very active on social media. He clearly understands the importance of social media and stays on top of the brand’s reputation with a social command center.

Incorporating Sales into Your Content Strategy

Content marketing should benefit the sales organization the most. It may seem challenging to think about engaging the sales team in your content strategy, but the truth is, the collaboration will immensely enhance your efforts. Lithium’s marketing team works closely with sales to assess specific themes and campaigns that will drive traffic from the top to the bottom of the funnel. They look at the different formats, styles, and channels to configure the appropriate blend for the prospective customer.

B2B brands should strive to make it easy for sales to participate, providing them with inspiration and training on content sharing in social channels. Lithium Technologies enables their sales team by providing basic and more in-depth content around customers and their successes with Lithium products.

Data should be tracked and reported to all stakeholders involved—the C-suite, marketing, and sales. Sharing data that matters to the sales organization is essential to portraying results and builds respect between marketing and sales. Lithium holds the mindset that “our number is your number.” Marketing and sales have aligned goals that look at what’s in the pipeline and what’s closed. Shared dashboards that include reporting on both add transparency and visibility depicting combined efforts.

B2B Brands Who Have Effectively Paired Up Sales and Marketing

Many previous Social Business Engine guests are from brands that have aligned marketing and sales. ANSYS, Indium Corp., and Deloitte are three with a highly technical employee base. The marketing teams at these companies have educated employees on how to engage with content as a brand ambassador.

Taking a closer look at Deloitte U.S., they’re a global provider of financial, tax and audit services. Their billable employees are their most trusted ‘business development people.’ In 2012 Deloitte was selected to be the Official Professional Services Sponsor for the U.S. Olympic Committee for the Summer Olympics in London. The company wanted to tap into employees’ social networks and started by providing messaging to thirty pilot participants.

Leadership recognized the impact of this small group’s efforts and encouraged the expansion of this program into a company-wide (in the U.S.) Ambassador Program. The program grew to 7,000 employees in the U.S. alone and approximately 50% of website traffic from social media comes from their employees.

Thomson Reuters is a provider of news business services and information for professionals in finance, law and other B2B disciplines. They recognized the need for their sales staff to develop trust and influence with content, largely through LinkedIn. Their social selling strategy started with alignment in content marketing. Knowing your content is the best possible thing you can do to elevate yourselves as salespeople.

Thomson Reuters’ Global Learning Center works with employees around the world on improving their LinkedIn profiles. The goal is that once they’ve gotten the hang of LinkedIn and start to see results, they’ll be inspired to share more content and engage more as a brand advocate.

What used to be considered an unlikely pair – marketing and sales – is now a perfect match. This episode reveals best practices to help B2b brands achieve marketing and sales alignment and brings together the four previous episodes in this UpClose Podcast Series sponsored by Lithium Technologies. To learn more about The 5 Most Influential Topics for B2B Marketing, listen to the complete series and download the Journal.

Lithium Technologies helps brands navigate the sometimes overwhelming world of social media marketing and management, social customer service, online communities and social analytics. A leader in the space, they’re guiding brands to build trust with their clients while delivering top-notch customer experiences. Dayle leads the charge at Lithium Technologies on all strategic marketing initiatives.

There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast. You can click the Listen Now button at the top of this page…

Or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through iTunes or Stitcher.

Healthcare marketers have unique challenges—but also unique solutions. One channel that is often overlooked by other marketers can be beneficial to those in healthcare: the phone. Check out the infographic to see how. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Update 9/25/2017: This piece has been updated to include 20 project management tools, and now includes screenshots of each tool.

I live in Washington, D.C., which means two things. One is that I spend an inordinate amount of time brunching, navigating through networking events, and living a life of “Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” The other is that my city is swarmed almost every weekend with tourists who misunderstand how D.C. works. Stand to the right if you’re not walking up the escalator! Stop pausing in the middle of the street to take pictures of trees! And most importantly, stay away from my local dive bars.

D.C., luckily, has a host of awesome and hidden bars that have yet to make the lists of tourist destinations where I can enjoy their excellent service and food without having to worry about overcrowding.

I feel similarly about a lot of project management software.

The old standbys tend to be great—I’m talking about software options such as Microsoft Project, Wrike, and Atlassian—but sometimes it can feel like bigger companies have so many users that their “personal touch” is lost.

As a software hipster, I’m always on the lookout for underground project management tools that have yet to make it big—especially free project management software, which is great for small businesses and individual users. Check out my findings below, where we’ll cover:

• Agile software
• Gantt software
• Task management software
• Time-tracking tools

Free Agile software

While there’s a host of wonderful Agile project management software available on the market, my bet is that you haven’t heard of these. But they’re worth a look.

1. Hansoft

Need a program that can run different project management methods depending on the project? Look no further than Hansoft, an Agile planning tool that can also handle SCRUM, Kanban, and Gantt scheduling.

Price: Free for up to nine users

2. iceScrum

Beyond its adorable name, iceScrum is a free and open source Agile solution for teams of any size. You can take advantage of their local option for free, and it runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac!

Price: Installed option is free. The web option starts at 9.90€ (roughly $11.80 USD) a month.

3. PROJECT in a box

Based in the U.K., PROJECT in a box is built around PRINCE2 methodology, so it is best suited for users in Australia, England, and parts of Canada, where PRINCE2 is the standard project management certification. The free Community Edition includes a project planner tool and document management.

Price: The Community Edition is completely free to download.They also offer five different paid products.

4. Scrumpy

As far as free and open source Scrum tools go, Scrumpy raises the bar by providing long-term story views and running entirely on Java. This is a locally-installed software made for Product Owners.

Price: Completely free.

5. Taiga

This gorgeous free and open source tool offers what most paid Agile software provides: backlogs, Kanban boards, task management, sprints, and QA.

Price: Public projects are completely free; there are five tiers of paid plans for private projects.

6. YouTrack

YouTrack excels at reporting. Need a burndown chart? QA reports? Issue distribution reports? Timeline reports? YouTrack has it all… for free.

Price: Free public projects for ten users and 5GB of storage. Plans for private projects start at $20/month.

Free Gantt chart software

If you’re more of a Waterfall project manager, check out these free Gantt chart software options.

7. Gantter

Have an enterprise-level team in need of some free Gantt software? Check out Gantter, which can be hosted with smartapp.com, Google Drive, Google Apps, or even locally. “You can think of it as a web-based Microsoft Project,” according to Gantter’s web site.

Price: Free unless locally installed for $9.99.

8. Ganttproject

Ganttproject is entirely locally hosted software for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It offers Gantt, Resource Load, and PERT charts, and integrates with Microsoft Project.

Price: Totally free.

9. ProjectLibre

Okay, ProjectLibre might not be quite so hidden, but it’s a fantastic alternative to Microsoft Project—so celebrated that it won ComputerWorld’s “Best of Open Source” software award. ProjectLibre was actually built off of OpenProj’s code base when that open source project was abandoned in 2012.

Price: Zilch. They also have a paid cloud version “coming soon,” according to their website.

10. Tom’s Planner

This gorgeous, cloud-based Gantt tool is all about the drag-and-drop—this software is so easy to use, you could teach a five-year-old Gantt in about 10 minutes.

Price: Free for personal use; starts at $9.95 month for 20 project schedules.

Free Task Management software

There are lots of great free task management software options out there—but I’m sure you’ve heard of a lot of them. Check out these alternative options hiding from the mainstream.

11. Efficient To-Do List

Efficient To-Do List is a simple task management app with some additional features such as task prioritization, progress tracking, and color labeling.

Price: Efficient To-Do List has a free edition with unlimited tasks. The Professional Edition, which adds data sharing, subtasks, attachments, and more, is $23.96 after a 30-day free trial.

12. Fleep

Fleep is a task management app for mobile, browser, and desktop built around a team messaging tool. You start conversations with your teams, and then create, assign, search, and track tasks alongside those conversations. It also has a file drawer for sharing attachments, a bunch of integrations, and a public API for additional customization.

Price: Fleep has a free version with unlimited messages, conversations, teams, and integrations, and 5 GB of file storage. The Business plan, which adds administrative controls, custom branding, premium support, and 45 GB of additional file storage, is €5/user/month (about $6).

13. MeisterTask

MeisterTask is as feature packed as it is visually pleasing. Offering task relationships, lots of integrations, instant messaging among team members, and even a free mobile app, MeisterTask is a steal.

Price: Unlimited users and unlimited projects for zero dollars and no cents.

The Pro Plan, which adds workflow automations, project groups, search and statistics, priority support, and more, costs $8.33/user/month.

14. Producteev

Producteev is intuitive, it’s collaborative, and it does everything you want a task management app to do—without overloading its users with useless features.

Price: Nothing. The Pro plan, for $99/month, adds personalized support and custom branding.

15. Twproject

Twproject doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it does a lot of stuff. Now in its sixth iteration, Twproject can handle task management, project management, team management, issue tracking, time tracking, budget management, and document management.

Price: Twproject is free for unlimited projects and records for up to five users.

Free Time-Tracking software

Sometimes, billable hours are the most important part of a project. For freelancers and small business owners, check out these intuitive free time–tracking tools.

16. Due

Are you a freelancer looking for a free time–tracking app that does more than just track your minutes? MakeSomeTimeDue offers invoicing, making it easy to translate your time to a paycheck. It also integrates with Basecamp for project management, and you can custom brand your invoices.

Price: Due is free, but you pay a 2.8% transaction fee when accepting payments on your invoices.

17. Kimai

Kimai is a completely free and open source time–tracking solution that can run even when you close your browser. It’s made with the whole team in mind, and testimonials agree that it’s “super easy to use.”

Price: Goose egg.

18. RescueTime

Download RescueTime to your computer and get going—this free time-tracking software logs your every movement on your computer and uses that data to ship out weekly reports.

Price: Free for the basic version— a substantially upgraded version with more reports and filters is $9 a month.

19. Slimtimer

Clock in, clock out, share your hours, and break them down by task. It’s that simple. Oh, and as a bonus, Slimtimer offers reporting features so you know how everyone on your team is spending their time.

Price: Nada.

20. Toggl

Toggl is a little more well-known than the other time-tracking software, but it’s still worth mentioning. Built for teams, just touch and go to start tracking and reporting on your time.

Price: $0 for the basic version for up to five team members—which should suffice for most.

What is your experience with free project management tools?

There are so many hidden and awesome free project management tools out there that it would be impossible to name all of them in this list. What did I miss? Did you have a good experience with the software mentioned above? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Twitter recently announced that it is testing the possibility to write longer tweets, up to 280 characters instead of 140 currently. Let’s summarize the announcement and why businesses should pay attention to this new feature.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter himself announced the change:

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

WHY THIS MOVE?

The limit of 140 characters is a strong limitation for some languages and not others.

For instance, Japanese, Chinese or Korean language characters can convey more information, which means a need for less characters overall.

The same tweet in different languages.  (link)

Lucky you if you have never experienced it. Twitter did its homework and their “research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese”. (link)

 

 Will this generate a more satisfying experience and lead to increase of adoption? That is what Twitter is hoping: “when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting – which is awesome!” (link)

WHY IT MAY MATTER TO YOUR BUSINESS?

 The test only concerns 1% of users for now. Yet, if you are connecting today and still see the 140 characters countdown, do not be sad: links and articles about different hacks and tips are flourishing. Also, there is always the possibility to create long threads by replying to oneself, so that the tweets appear in a series.

 Yet, it will be interesting to see if, in the long run, this native feature will have an impact on publishing, engagement and overall growth in the Twitter community; especially in countries where Twitter is not a trend, such as Germany where Twitter is far behind in the top social networks…

Source: eMarketer

… but the announcement generated curiosity. It may be too soon to check adoption levels, but it is definitely something worth monitoring.

Top 5 countries where the announcement made more coverage on the first 24 hours after the announcement (Sysomos Search).

HAVE BRANDS STARTED USING LONG TWEETS?

 Yes, the happy few – and the less fortunate too – were keen on showing creativity.

Here are some of our favorite brand tweets so far.

Imagine what we could do with 280 characters pic.twitter.com/oxyLqMF7wn

— Burger King (@BurgerKing) September 27, 2017

Burger King, imagining a bright future.

This account has been asked to test Twitter's new 280 character limit, but as a 100-year-old brand, we believe our fans most enjoy traditional tweets with brevity, so we declined. We hope to continue to provide a fun, positive place to discuss MoonPies moving forward. Thank you.

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) September 27, 2017

The sass is high with MoonPie.

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┻┳| •.•) This is a bad idea.
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— Mariners (@Mariners) September 27, 2017

#badidea Twitter.

How much pre-call research do you need to do to be effective in your prospecting? Frankly, it’s a really loaded question, with answers all over the place.

Some argue you need to research deeply, learning as much as you can about the company and the individual as possible, becoming well informed about them and their business so you can be relevant in the conversation. I’ve always tended to default to this answer–but it’s largely driven by my target prospects, which tend to be C-Level Executives of very large corporations. It’s hard to reach them, so I want to make sure I make the best use of our time.

Some salespeople claim they have to do similar amounts of research, but often, I actually think it’s an excuse for call avoidance, rather than preparation. When I see the research they are doing, it doesn’t seem focused and purposeful, so I wonder, “What are they trying to learn?” Inevitably, these salespeople make calls, not as many as they should, and I sometimes wonder how they are leveraging their research as I listen to their conversations.

The majority, seem to default to the other end of the spectrum, they do no research at all. They are calling from some meaningless list, but they have no idea who they are calling and whether they are even in their sweet spot. Those calls are always easy to detect, “May I speak to the person responsible for ……” Or, “Google, Microsoft, and GE get huge value from our solutions, we think you can to” C’mon, we’re a small company, you should know that, if anything talk about the small companies or consulting companies that are leveraging you solution. But again, these people haven’t taken the time to understand who we are and what we do.

Some calls get a little further in my prospecting screen, they have a good opening, but then start to talk about the value we might get from their solution. I have to give them credit, at least they aren’t pitching the feeds and speeds of our product. But, I ask them to pause, I ask, “What do you know about our company and what we do?” Some are honest enough to say, “I don’t know, can you tell me?” Some, you hear their fingers on their keyboards, try to guess or give a quick answer when they get their search results.

So there are these two extremes to preparation and research. One is very deep, purposeful research and the other end is doing nothing and just letting it rip!

Clearly, except in certain cases (like our company’s), truth is somewhere in between. The amount will vary based on who you are calling, how you create the best first impression, and how you maximize your impact.

But here are some thoughts to be more effective doing just the right amount of research.

1. Never, never make a call outside your sweet spot! This is the biggest time/reputation waster. Just randomly dialing numbers off some purchased list means the majority of people you may be calling will never be a customer, nor should they be if they aren’t in the sweet spot. If you are dealing with leads from marketing, make sure marketing has narrowed the leads to only those in your sweet spot (I’m hard-pressed to understand why they might ever do anything outside the sweet spot, anyway. At least you know the prospect you are talking is likely to have the problem you are the best in the world at solving. It may not be a problem for them right now, but there is likely to be some “connection,” just because they are in your sweet spot.
2. Group your calls by industry/persona. If financial services, manufacturing, and pharma companies are in your sweet spot, and you are calling on VP’s of development, CIOs and CFOs, group your calls to similar companies/personas. For example, start with financial services CIOs, then CFOs, then VPs of development. Then move to those in manufacturing, then move to those in pharma. The reason to do this, is the people in the same role in the same industry are likely to be facing similar issues. For a fairly small amount of research, you are likely to hit on issues they may be interested in. Here again, marketing and product management need to be equipping you with some basics, for example, what are the issues CIOs in financial services face and how do we help them. The reason for grouping them, it’s simply easier to remember and you get smarter as you make or calls to that group.
3. (1) and (2) require virtually no research. They require knowledge about the issues and problems, they are likely to face, but lay those requirements on marketing and product management to equip you so you are prepared for those conversations.
4. If you want to ramp up your impact, do a little preparation about the specific company and individual you are calling. It’s not much more than a few minutes, but go to the individual’s LinkedIn profile. Learn a little about them and their background, Go to the company website, learn a little about what they do, if they have an investors page, read the last few press releases on the page (e.g. earnings announcements, etc.). Just this simple research gives you much better insight into the individual and the company, enabling you to have very informed and relevant conversations with them. Clearly, if you are making hundreds of calls a day, it’s tough to do this so at least default to (1) and (2). But many salespeople aren’t making that high volume, so they can and should take a few minutes to do just this basic research before a call.
5. Then there are those calls that may require much more research. Not necessarily hours, but more than a few minutes. Typically, these are very senior executives, and you want to maximize your impact and the impression you make on those calls. More importantly, you have to feel confident that you can hold up your end of the conversation. As a result, you want to research and prepare.

The right amount of research—well it depends. But none is not the right answer, and extensive/deep is only in some very special cases. For the most part, the answer is somewhere between those extremes.

Online services are everywhere. It’s rare to find an organisation that hasn’t been told how they could improve their customer service and make efficiency savings by moving more of their services online.

There’s plenty of evidence of the realistic, tangible efficiency and customer experience gains available from the successful introduction of online services. Don’t worry, this article isn’t going to criticise your multi-channel, omni-channel, channel shift efforts. Take heart, you’re on the right track!

However, as any Premier League soccer player knows, there’s no cheering from the crowd if you turn around and stick the ball into your own team’s net.

How can you ensure that your organisation’s actions don’t lead to ‘own goal’ service delivery failures that will leave your online self-service business case (and personal reputation) in tatters?

Translate the sales brochure spin into real-world benefits

Firstly, let’s remind ourselves of the benefits promised by the sales and marketing people advocating for their particular technology product.

Online service is great for the customer. Access is faster, more convenient and available from anywhere in the world, 24×7. As long as your customer can get onto the internet, they’re able to get things done on their terms – any time, any place, anywhere.

But it’s not just good for customers. Organisations investing in online services can reduce their costs too. Moving customer contact from more expensive telephone, face to face and good old snail-mail post to e-mail, web, app and social media service channels allows organisations to cut staffing and business process costs. In the sales and consulting jargon, you’ll hear people raving about the benefits of “channel shift.”

Here ends the marketing leaflet promises from < insert your choice of omni-channel product vendor here >. For readers who hold salespeople in the same regard as politicians (remember that old joke – “How can you tell if they’re lying? Because their lips are moving”), contain your scepticism. These benefits can actually be achieved in the real world!

Build a realistic business case – trust, but verify

The thing about any benefits case is that it’s based on assumptions. During implementation, these assumptions must apply to your individual circumstances if your benefits case is to be anything other than fiction that would make J.R.R. Tolkein proud.

If your situation doesn’t fit with the way that product XYZ must be used in order to claim the benefits promised, you’ll find that part of the sales pitch is actually going to deliver next to nothing for your organisation. Never has the “trust, but verify” wisdom of former US President Ronald Reagan been more applicable.

Let’s illustrate this by looking at my recent experience of renewing insurances. My insurer has taken online service delivery to heart. One month before my insurance renewal is due, I receive a cheery e-mail encouraging me to renew online. I’ve had three of these e-mails in the last few weeks, as different policies all renew at roughly the same time.

Here’s what this simple three-step renewal process involves. I’ve added some business case notes of my own to help illustrate the benefits case for online service.

Service delivery step	Customer benefits case	Insurer benefits case
1. Send customer renewal notification by e-mail. Include a downloadable document and link for online payment by credit card.	+ Advance notification of renewal 1 month before the due date giving time to pay + View renewal document online, at my own convenience + No postal delays + No wasted paper to recycle at home + Ability to shop for better deals with other insurers online whilst renewing at a time convenient to me + No annoying sales phone calls disrupting my evening at home or workday – Dis-benefit: Answers to why my premium/excess has risen so much this year unavailable online requiring a phone call, or shopping around	+ Advance notification of renewals to prompt early payment. + Reduced postage costs using e-mail not paper + Call to action to online payment (step 2) – Dis-benefit: Technology investments to manage automated e-mail from CRM or Policy Management system(s) – Dis-benefit: Some customers unhappy with renewal terms may churn without sales staff being able to discuss with them or offer retention deals
2. Pay policy renewal online by credit card	+ Payment any time by credit card + Convenient 24×7 access, faster than queuing in a call centre + Reduced risk of forgetting to renew and leaving house/car/family uninsured	+ Immediate payment by credit card improves cashflow position + Increased interest earned on payments received early + Reduce costs of achieving policy renewals through prompt customer payment + Reduced contact centre call volume (and hence staffing costs) by online payment – Dis-benefit: Cost of implementing online payment gateway, linked to customer policy
3. Instant notification of cover with downloadable policy documents	+ Reassurance of instant cover backed up by a written policy cover note sent by e-mail and presented online for download – Dis-benefit: Cost of printing my renewal at home if I require paper evidence for a claim when my house is damaged by a flood/fire/tree/earthquake – Don’t laugh at this, some insurers really do ask for receipts/proof!	+ Reduced postal costs + Reduction in time from policy notification to confirmation of policy renewal + Improved organisation cashflow + Reduction in customer churn and increase in renewal rates – Dis-benefit: Cost of implementing online document management gateway, linked to customer policy and payment systems

As you can see, there are plenty of benefits that can be identified for both the customer and the insurer. I’ve also taken the time to identify things that reduce the strength of a business case (in programme management jargon, these are called ‘dis-benefits’).

Dis-benefits are a critical item in putting together your business case. If you’re dealing with supplier salespeople, you might have to get the thumbscrews out to find out about them though. Sales and marketing people tend not to be upfront about the downsides of their products in presentations and brochures.

Overall, this online renewal process seems like a straightforward case with some great savings and customer experience benefits. How then, did my insurer’s business case collapse into nothing on every one of the three renewals I’ve tried (and failed) to renew online this month?

Snatching defeat from victory: scoring the own goal

Step 1 – E-mail notification of renewal

It all started exactly to plan. On receiving my premium notification e-mail, I downloaded my renewal documents and followed their instructions to pay online. So far, so good, tick all those benefits off from step 1.

Step 2 – Online renewal payment: Process failure own goal and business case collapse

Everything was on track, right up to clicking ‘pay now’. This is where it all went to hell in a handcart. The on-screen timer ticked away before morphing into a humorous screen of death cartoon depicting an angry customer with the message “uh-oh, something went wrong. Please call our contact centre”.

It’s good to see they have a sense of humour about making their customers angry.

Three times I’ve tried to pay online for a policy and three times I’ve had to phone the contact centre to make that payment over the phone. The root cause issue? It turns out the billing system doesn’t generate the renewal invoice at the same time as sending out the renewal e-mail. The contact centre agent even told me I was just a bit too organised! However, this is exactly what the insurer wants me to do by sending a call to action e-mail with clickable ‘renew online now’ links.

What does this mean for the benefits case?

1. Savings are not delivered. Customer “channel shift” is not achieved and the volume of contact centre calls does not reduce. In fact, customers use both channels, it takes twice as long and those calls are likely to be even longer as customers express frustration and complain about having to do things twice.
2. Contact centre staff reductions cannot be delivered, as transaction volumes do not fall. Cost savings are not delivered.
3. Customer efficiency benefits are not achieved. In fact, frustration increases at having to do everything twice and annoyance level rises as the contact centre IVR messaging chirpily tells you “it’s faster to do it online.” No, it isn’t. I just tried. You failed.
4. The customer loyalty relationship suffers reputational damage. The customer’s perception of their insurer changes from being an efficient organisation offering online convenience to a company that doesn’t test its processes or its technology. It’s seen as a wasteful organisation that disrespects its customers’ time and money. Whilst waiting in the IVR queue, customers now have the time to Google the data that tells them their renewal notice premium increase of 15% is delivering an increase in the insurer’s profits of 8.4% and a Chief Executive’s annual salary package of $1.3m. It’s good to have something to keep you busy whilst listening to hold music.

Learning the lessons: take away points for a realistic business case

What can we learn from this case study that will help us avoid scoring this kind of own goals for our own channel-shift business cases?

• Lesson 1: Properly map business processes – by visualising the end to end renewal process from the customer’s perspective, the disconnect between renewal call to action and online billing would be obvious. A well-documented process map helps you identify, and therefore avoid, key points of process failure.

• Lesson 2: Learn from customer complaints and feedback – ensure that customers can provide feedback and give contact centre advisors a simple way to register customer complaints and feedback for improvement action. Analyse your complaints and focus improvement projects on fixing customer pain points. Don’t just leave your contact centre advisors managing customer frustration without learning about how widespread the problems in your business are.
• Lesson 3: Validate business case assumptions with real-life service data. Measure everything – at the start, during delivery and at the end. Compare this to planned business case promises. Every benefit proposed in a business case must have an associated measurement method, which is followed through to testing and realisation. Without this, you’ll never know if the value you were sold in the technology product sales pitch is actually delivering anything to your organisation.

The benefits from online service improvement are real, but only if you apply technology and process improvements that match your own circumstances and needs. There’s no substitute for preparation, planning, testing and checking that you’ve made the right assumptions.

It certainly beats explaining to the rest of the team why you decided to turn around and put the ball squarely in the back of your own net.

There’s a lot of pressure to create content today. Epic, authentic, viral content.

But perhaps the key to content success is not necessarily through originality, but through creating a wise curated content stream that helps people save time and money.

Most industries have at least one go-to newsletter of curated business highlights. If your industry doesn’t have that, maybe it’s a golden opportunity. I’ve seen people create curated content in pharma, tech, defense, and entertainment. Many have gone on to leverage this real or perceived expertise into consulting, books, and speaking careers.

But summarizing the work of others isn’t necessarily easy. In fact there is a certain art to it which we cover on the newest episode of The Marketing Companion.

In this episode, Scott Monty takes over as co-host for a day and explains his process behind the Full Monty newsletter. He explains how an internal newsletter at Ford Motor Company was the inspiration for what has become the go-to weekly content in the digital marketplace.

We also explore why there seems to be a “Tom Webster bias” creeping into the show …

Click on this link to listen to Episode 114

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
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Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

The results don’t lie: Typeform has a 57% completion rate on surveys, against the industry average of 20% (according to Survey Gizmo). The difference? Typeform’s one-question-at-a-time interface creates a memorable user experience. Use images, animated GIFs, and even video to express yourself more fully. And Typeform integrates with your favorite tools including Google Sheets, MailChimp, Airtable, and hundreds more. Remember: What you ask matters. How you ask is everything. Go to Typeform.com/companion to receive a special 30 percent off discount for our podcast fans!

Between 30 percent and 50 percent of your online visitors use your website’s search function. But analysis proves that customers rarely see the precise content that leads to a sale. Why leave this conversion opportunity to chance? Deliver search results that create sales conversions by deploying the powerful machine learning intelligence of Site Search Inspector from SoloSegment. Site Search Inspector can be set up quickly and continuously “learns” how to improve your search conversions. Visit the SoloSegment discount page to get 10 percent off your order for Marketing Companion fans!

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There are now more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook Messenger every month (Techcrunch, 2017.) Yes, billion with a b!

Have you considered the possibility of using it for your marketing?

We certainly have. And we have been experimenting with different ways to include Messenger as one of our go-to marketing tools, by sending out our latest blog posts through Messenger and engaging and helping our customerst through the platform too.

Since we are in the midst of figuring things out, we thought it would be great to share what we have found so far. Here’s everything we know about using Facebook Messenger for your marketing.

Here’s everything we know about using Facebook Messenger for your marketing.

Why use Facebook Messenger

We often think of social media as just the major social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But that thinking misses a big part — a bigger part, in fact — of social media. And that’s messaging apps.

According to BI Intelligence, more people are using the top four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Viber) every month than the top four social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) (BI Intelligence, 2017). And it seems that the gap between the two lines is getting bigger.

Instead of being a one-to-many channel, social media is becoming a one-to-few — and often one-to-one — channel.

Facebook IQ conducted a study on the use of mobile messaging with 12,500 people across the world and found several promising trends among the people surveyed3Facebook IQ, 2016:

• Sixty-three percent said that their messaging with businesses has increased over the past two years
• Fifty-six percent would rather message than call a business for customer service
• Sixty-one percent likes personalized messages from businesses
• More than 50 percent are more likely to shop with a business they can message
• Here are a few more interesting statistics about messaging:

If you are starting to think that messaging might be great for your business, read on to find out the seven ways of using Facebook Messenger for your marketing.

7 ways to use Facebook Messenger for your marketing

1. Deliver your content

The most common approach to deliver content to your readers is to use email. But HubSpot wanted to find out if using Facebook Messenger is a better alternative. So instead of just asking people to fill out a form and get the gated content via email, they offered the option to skip the form and get the content via Facebook Messenger. After four weeks of testing, they found a clear winner4HubSpot, 2017.

The Messenger strategy results in a 242 percent higher open rate and a 619 percent higher click rate5The image was taken from HubSpot (2017)..

If you want to explore this strategy, Matthew Barby from HubSpot wrote a great guide on building a Messenger chatbot using ChatFuel. With ChatFuel, you can create a chatbot to deliver your content (and more) without having to code. And it’s free if you send less than 100,000 messages per month.

Here’s an example of how a chatbot newsletter opt-in looks 6This was taken from Matthew Barby’s guide.:

(We are testing a Facebook Messenger chatbot to deliver our latest blog posts. It’s not perfect yet but if you are interested, you can find it here.)

2. Help your followers find the most relevant content

Besides pushing content to your followers, you can also use Facebook Messenger to help your followers “pull” content to themselves.

There are many great examples of this use case on Facebook Messenger. Companies like Whole Foods Market, Food Network, and TechCrunch have Messenger chatbots that can help their followers find articles that they want to read. For example, this is what it looks like when I try to find articles related to Elon Musk on TechCrunch, using their chatbot:

This turns things around for content marketing. You now have a non-intrusive way to deliver personalized content to your target audience. If you are considering this strategy, here are some best practices, according to Ana Gotter on the Social Media Examiner blog (Social Media Examiner, 2017):

– Treat your chatbot like content marketing. Selling shouldn’t be your primary objective, but you can use content to send users to your site.
– Ensure your site is mobile-responsive.
– Inform customers how and where to contact you if they need additional help, including customer service issues.
– Include browsing menus if possible. This makes it easier for users to find content they’re interested in, even if they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for yet.

Creating a chatbot that allows your followers to search is a little more complicated than creating a chatbot that simply delivers content. But tools like ChatFuel, ManyChat, and Botsify have guides and templates to help you. If this strategy excites you, I would encourage you to have a go at these tools and see what you can do with them.

3. Engage participants during event

Another way HubSpot uses Facebook Messenger is to send important information and reminders about events that people have signed up to. Similar to the example above, they found that the response rate on Facebook Messenger was significantly higher than that on email (HubSpot, 2017).

Here’s a recent experience I had with HubSpot:

• I signed up for their Four Days of Facebook event through Facebook Messenger (which felt much nicer than filling up a form).
• The day before the event, they sent me a reminder with links to add the schedule to my calendar app.
• During the four days, they updated me about the day’s talk and sent me a link to watch the session online.
• At the end of the four days, they followed up to ask if I enjoyed the event.

The entire experience felt smooth and appropriate for an event on Facebook. And it works well for events that are not on Facebook, too. For example, for their offline events, HubSpot made use of the Messenger code to allow attendees to receive real-time updates through Facebook Messenger9This image was taken from HubSpot.

With a tool like ManyChat, you can create subscriber lists and broadcast messages easily. Broadcasting messages is very similar to sending an email. Just type your message, add attachments, and send.

4. Generate high-quality sales leads

Since Facebook Messenger is still a relatively new and novel marketing channel, it is a great way to get people’s attention and to generate high-quality sales leads. According to Dmitriy Kachin from Chatfuel, the response rate on Facebook Messenger is incredibly high at the moment (Matthew Barby, 2017):

Obviously, numbers vary across the board – and better bot experiences with more engaged audiences are getting 80-90% response rates. While even the least favorable experiences are in the 35-40% range.

Valassis, a marketing agency, built a Facebook Messenger chatbot for Feldman Automotive Group to help drive leads and sales for their local auto dealers. They ran click-to-Messenger ads with location targeting to reach their target audience on Facebook. When a person clicks on the ad to learn more, she will be brought into a Messenger conversation with a chatbot that would ask a series of questions. (She has the option to speak to a real sales rep, too.)11This image was adapted from the image on Martech Today (2017).

Within a few months, they reached more than 100,000 people and generated about 50 sales per month through the Facebook Messenger chatbot. (Martech Today, 2017)

When HubSpot tried a similar approach to generate leads through Facebook Messenger, they “saw a staggering 477% reduction in our cost per lead, while lead quality only slightly decreased“(HubSpot, 2017). Their advice?

“It might take a little muscle to build a Facebook Messenger bot to collect lead information, but the effort is well worth it. Use Facebook ads plus Messenger as a powerful one-two punch.”(HubSpot, 2017)

5. Re-engage potential customers

One thing you might be wondering is this: how do I get people to talk to me on Facebook Messenger in the first place?

Facebook ads.

There are two types of Facebook Messenger ads you could use. The first type, click-to-Messenger ads, which I mentioned briefly above, allows you to direct people from the Facebook News Feed to a Messenger conversation with you. The second type, sponsored messages, allows you to initiate a Messenger conversation with anyone who has messaged your Facebook Page before.

A great way to use these Facebook Messenger ads is to re-engage potential customers, such as people who have visited your pricing page but didn’t purchase your product or people who have asked you questions via Facebook Messenger before15Thanks, Molly Pittman from Digital Marketer, for these ideas (2017).. For example, you can use the click-to-Messenger ads offer them a channel to ask any questions they have or you can use sponsored messages to send relevant content and offers to them16These images were taken from Digital Marketer and Jon Loomer (2017)..

Molly Pittman from Digital Marketer described these two approaches in great detail in her blog post. Using sponsored messages, she was able to get a read rate of 67 to 90 percent. Compared to an open rate of about 20 percent for emails (MailChimp, 2017), these results are incredible!

For a detailed walkthrough on how to create these ads using the Facebook Ads Manager, check out Jon Loomer’s guide on Facebook Messenger ads.

6. Reach your target audience one-to-one

The Facebook News Feed is saturated with ads. Imagine being able to reach your target audience without all the noise. One-to-one.

With Messenger ads, you can do just that. People will see your ad in the home tab of their Messenger mobile app. When they tap on the ad, they will be brought to your preferred destination — your website or a Messenger conversation.

Here’s a short video of how a Messenger ad looks like and works18This video was taken from TechCrunch Editor-at-Large, Josh Constine’s YouTube channel (2017):

But here’s something to consider: the reaction to such ads is mixed. While marketers are likely rejoicing at this opportunity, some people are finding such ads unpleasant. (What’s your take?) It might take some time for people to get used to having such ads in the Messenger app.

To have your Facebook ads displayed in the Messenger app, select Messenger Home for the placement of your ad.

7. Provide speedy customer support

The last strategy (of this list) for using Facebook Messenger is something you might be already doing. That’s providing timely customer support through Facebook Messenger. As Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, suggests, social media customer service is the new marketing (Convince & Convert, 2016).

It’s clear that people prefer to contact brands through messaging than through other channels.

And they want a response from brands — a quick one.

As mentioned earlier, Facebook found that 56 percent of their study’s respondents would rather message than call a business for customer service20Facebook IQ, 2016. In a survey of more than 1,000 people, Sprout Social found that most consumers expect a response on social media within four hours (while brands take an average of 10 hours to reply). They also found that 30 percent of the people would go to a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond (Sprout Social, 2016).

It’s very easy to get started with this strategy.

First, you want to allow people to message you on Facebook Messenger. You can enable this in your Facebook Page settings. Under the “General” tab, look for “Messages” and click “Edit”. Then, check the box and click “Save Changes”.

Now, visitors to your Page will see a “Message” button on your Page, which they can use to initiate a conversation with you on Facebook Messenger.

When you receive messages, hop over to your inbox by clicking on “Inbox” at the top of your Facebook Page. Your inbox will look something like this:

At Buffer, we use our social engagement tool, Buffer Reply, to reply to all conversations on Messenger — and Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — from a single inbox. If you manage multiple social media profiles, we would love for you to check it out.

How would you use Facebook Messenger?

As more and more people adopt messaging, the potential for you to market and grow your business through Facebook Messenger becomes even bigger. And Facebook is working hard to make Facebook Messenger a great channel for businesses. For example, Facebook created a new Messages objective for Facebook ads, which allows you to reach people who will most likely reply your business on Facebook Messenger.

I believe it’ll be great to follow this trend and not to be left behind. Here are the seven ways you can get started with Facebook Messenger marketing:

1. Deliver your amazing content
2. Help your followers find the most relevant content
3. Engage participants during event
4. Generate high-quality sales leads
5. Re-engage your potential customers
6. Reach your target audience one-to-one
7. Provide speedy customer support

How would you use Facebook Messenger for your marketing? I would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and dreams!

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Image credit: Unsplash