Whether you’re building an ecommerce store via Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or TicTail, growing a profitable venture can be a tough slog.

From understanding the in-and-outs of your chosen commerce platform to marketing your venture online, choosing to become an ecommerce entrepreneur is not a decision to be taken lightly.

Luckily for today’s fearless founders, there are more tools than ever to help take your business from light bulb moment to revenue-positive venture.

Check out the following roundup of resources for ecommerce entrepreneurs to see which ones you can incorporate into your online business.

Ecommerce Loss Calculator

Formisimo offers an ecommerce loss calculator to help entrepreneurs understand the ramifications of shopping cart abandonment.

This powerful resource connects with your Google Analytics data and provides feedback on your conversion rate values.

If you want to improve your revenues and boost your customer satisfaction ratings, analyzing your conversion rate opportunities is highly recommended.

Apptuse

When you want to offer your mobile customers an improved ecommerce shopping experience, check out Apptuse.

Their handy platform lets you automatically create a mobile app version of your site.

Available for multiple shopping platforms including SpreeCommerce, Magento, and KartRocket.

Apptuse will have your mobile interface up and running in no time. Integrate everything from existing inventory counts to company branding.

Their platform even offers push notifications for both smartphone users and Apple Watch owners.

PushMarket

An excellent way to increase sales for your online venture is through the use of email marketing.

PushMarket helps you send personalized ecommerce emails to your customers. Features include retargeting, data analytics, and email campaign management tools.

Conversio

If you want to seek solace in the wisdom of other online shop owners, be sure to bookmark Conversio.

This helpful site offers a cornucopia of creative advice from other entrepreneurs just like you.

Discover everything from helpful email marketing tips to ways you can hack your confirmation slips to improve sales. Can you afford to not check out Conversio?

ecomm.design

ecomm.design is a must-discover resource for ecommerce entrepreneurs.

This helpful site lets you browse through hundreds of ecommerce website designs to find inspiration for your own online venture.

Browse by ecommerce platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.), category (fashion, home, etc.), technology stack, or even traffic volume.

You can discover all sorts of creative options you can try in your own store. Pretty powerful stuff, right?

With helpful resources like those listed above, there’s no reason you have to go it alone as an online business owner.

You can pick up powerful tips from other successful business owners and discover hacks you can incorporate into your own growth strategy.

Will you be adding any of these tools to your ecommerce entrepreneur’s must-use list?

stevepb / Pixabay

You work hard to create your audio and video course content. The last thing you want is for it to be stolen. You need a solution that will allow your clients easy access to the content, and an optimal listening and/or viewing experience.

While you can store the files on your site, it will eat up bandwidth, and the streaming may be slow and jerky. A better solution is to host it on a secure server that can handle large files without playback issues.

There are many file storage solutions, but one of the most reliable is Amazon S3.

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service. As the name suggests, it is owned and run by Amazon, with the goal of making cloud storage easy and accessible to its users. It can store a range of files in various formats and sizes. It can even handle large files and offers almost 100% quality playback, making it ideal for delivering your large media files to your coaching clients, course students, and others interested in your content as needed.

It can host software, analytics data and more, so you can back up your entire business in the cloud, for easy file recovery, particularly in the case of a disaster. Pricing varies depending on the service, but there is a free tier that offers 5GB of storage and a certain number of file access requests per month. After that, you would pay as you go, in the same way as you would for electricity or other utilities. You only pay for what is being used, making it an affordable option that is easily accessible while still keeping them secure.

Want to make your files even more accessible, while still maintaining optimal security? Then the S3 Media Maestro plugin for WordPress could be right for you.

The S3 Media Maestro plugin

The S3 Media Maestro plugin allows you to easily place your Amazon S3 hosted media content on WordPress pages so your course material can be viewed from your website, but can’t be shared.

Knowledge is power. Your audio and video files are valuable assets in your business. You’ve worked hard to produce your content, and do need to protect it. But you also need to make it accessible to paying clients.

It works across all devices, including mobile, creating an attractive viewer or player for your clients to access the content. But they can’t share the content because of a range of security features, including unique encrypted links that expire.

You can also set which countries are allowed to access the files to help prevent piracy.

It can be used with any WordPress theme, and you can customize the appearance of the players and skins in order to brand your content. Your WordPress-based site can become a powerful paid membership site or online education site with just a few clicks.

If you’ve been looking for a way to monetize all of your content, try Amazon S3 and the S3 Media Maestro plugin and see how quickly you can grow your course offerings.

RonnyK / Pixabay

Are you alive?

It could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

This is what I like to call “If You Have a Pulse” discounting. You’ll find it everywhere, but it’s hyper-prevalent in the travel and entertainment businesses.

It works like this: You set a ridiculously high price on whatever you are selling, then give absolutely everyone a discount. You offer coupons, senior citizen discounts, or student and military discounts, volume discounts, free shipping, children’s pricing, “treat receipts” for after 2 p.m., reduced rates for AAA members, a Thursday special, … you get the picture.

You have no expectation that anyone will pay full price. Ever. And you really don’t want them to, because you can develop loyalty by making them feel as if they got a bargain. In fact, AARP has built an entire industry on convincing seniors that their card gives them the power of the discount.

Of course, the Internet has created savvier consumers. Groupon and Hotwire and many others have now made it clear that there are a lot of ways to get that discount.

In the B2B world, the price and the stakes are much higher. Do you offer discounts to new customers to get their business, or do you reward the loyalty of longtime customers? Does setting a high price that you can later discount make you look like a premium brand, or does it simply scare away prospective customers? Merely offering a fair deal at a fair price seems like a great policy, but discounts provide great marketing opportunities.

And then there’s the GEICO approach. This is where you offer to help customers compare prices with your competitors: “Just talk to us and if we can’t offer you the best price, we’ll tell you who can.” They take a quick look at the field of customers and pull out the cream of the crop for themselves. Then, to add an evil twist, they inundate their competitors with the worst of the worst. The irony is that both their customers and those who are turned away are impressed with their amazing altruism. What a great company!

But seriously, we all know that pricing as a promotional tool is just a single aspect of pricing strategy, which in turn is just one piece of an integrated marketing strategy. We understand how to implement skim pricing or penetration pricing. We apply bundling and tie-in sales. We carefully study pricing for substitute products versus complementary products versus loss leaders. We position price-induced sampling. We steer clear of discriminatory pricing and predatory pricing, while modeling purchase behavior, segmenting by buyer identification, by purchase location, by the time of purchase, by purchase quantity, by product design, and on and on.

Internally, we implement incentives for selling value versus volume. We assiduously strive for internal and external cost efficiencies, yet always keep our eyes peeled for temporary cost advantages.

In the end, we all know that the best path is refreshingly simple: We have faith that ours is the best product. Marketers who can proudly announce that their product is truly better than their competitors’ product needn’t fear that they will alienate their customers with gimmicks. We won’t win over people who are dazzled by “If You Have a Pulse” discounts. Slow and steady wins the race, and in the B2B world, trust between vendor and customer is critical.

A more precise, quantifiable way to build customer relationships is emerging. Learn about Influencing Customers Through Infinite Personalization.

For many decades, salespeople were taught to find “the” decision-maker, that one person who had the authority to bind a company to a deal. They were taught that they needed to reach the C-suite if they were to create and capture opportunities. Most deals still need an executive sponsor of some kind, and all of them require someone with the authority to bind the company to a deal.

Because we have focused for so long on authority, there has been a tendency for some to believe that other people are not as important to winning a deal, and such, they have not treated the with appropriate respect, preferring to look over the shoulder and up the organizational chart. This is a mistake, and it should be remedied.

Treating people as if they are important is a hedge. The fact of the matter is, you don’t know who has what level of influence within their company, and whose ear they have.

You might believe that someone’s title indicates that they are not necessary to a deal, when that person might be just the person you need to gain access to the person who would most value from what you do.

You might mistakenly be ignoring someone because they don’t appear to have any influence, when they might very well be the person who her peers look to for advice in the area where you can help. You might believe that people who are lower on the organizational chart are somehow less important to winning a deal than people at the higher rungs of the ladder, but to believe this is to make a mistake.

Even though you believe someone may not be integral to winning business, you should treat everyone as if they are important, as though wants and needs are important to you, and you should always consider their needs. You should do this because it’s the right thing to do. But if you don’t believe it’s true, do it anyway as a hedge against behaving in a way that hurts you later.

The post A Hedge When It Comes to Relationships appeared first on The Sales Blog.

6 Tips for Converting One-Time Customers into Recurring Ones written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.”

Peter Drucker, Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author

We live in a world where businesses strive hard to outdo each other and win customers. Enduring business success is what most firms seek but very few achieve. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses have shut shop after 4 to 5 years of ordinary existence. These unsuccessful businesses never had the opportunity to break through and make their presence felt in a world dominated by cutthroat competition.

So what separates the successful companies from the unsuccessful ones? The answer is simple – recurring revenues!

Recurring revenue is a concept organization seek to achieve on a regular basis. This helps them engage in the intricacies of business more confidently without worrying too much about profits.

Recurring revenue is possible only if a business has a steady flow of customers. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get recurring customers. A lot of organizations deal with one-time customers who never return again. It’s time to convert them into trustworthy customers. It’s time to tweak the business strategies deployed by your organization and gain more acceptance with a widespread customer base.

Here are some tips to ensure your competitors don’t march ahead of you in the future. These tips are simple and may appear easy to implement. We recommend you implement them the right way to gain long-term benefits. Brainstorm with your team before embarking on a future course of action.

1. Offer exceptional products or services

One of the main reasons why a customer returns to a seller is to make use of the exceptional products or services on offer. Does your business offer goods that can rival those offered by competitors? If your answer is no, then it will take a while before one-time customers turn into lifelong ones.

You will have to sit with the team and iron out any deficiencies in your offerings. This will help you take a more balanced and positive approach towards ensuring customers remain with you for the long term.

2. Introduce customer loyalty programs

Make it a habit to reward loyal customers for their association with your brand. Launch a customer loyalty program and ensure that a lot of your customers sign up. Offer them discounts on their next purchase or after they have reached a pre-determined dollar value in purchases.

The way your loyalty program performs will rely solely on how it is run. You will need to spend significant time and efforts to understand your customers and whether the loyalty program caters to their varying tastes.

3. Send timely updates about exciting offers

You will have access to the customer’s email IDs after they sign up for the loyalty program. Send updates about offers in a timely fashion to ensure customers are aware of new deals. This also encourages them to visit your store or office more often!

Perform research to understand the kind of deals people love to receive. This will ensure that you are on the right path to ensuring people take complete advantage of the offers you provide.

4. Take complaints seriously!

A complaint is an opportunity to convert an angry customer into a happy friend. How does your team handle complaints? Do they go into defensive mode? Or do they take a genuine effort to provide a logical solution?

Remember this – customers appreciate businesses that go the extra mile to keep them happy. You should ensure that customers don’t feel neglected. Keeping them happy is the need of the hour!

5. Surprise customers whenever you can

It’s important to make customers feel positive about your business. Achieve this with useful gifts that they can put to use immediately at home or at the workplace. Choose impressive giveaways such as pens, totes, or mugs to keep customers hooked to your brand!

You could also send cookies, provide personalized service, or send “Thank you” notes. Another way to surprise them is by sending messages on birthdays and anniversaries. A pleasant surprise will make a customer feel good about your brand, granting them a positive experience to remember your brand by.

6. Highlight your business on social media

It’s important to make your presence felt on the Internet. The best way to do this is by creating social media pages. Create attractive and interactive posts that help you interact with followers on a daily basis, ensuring that your brand remains on their minds for a long time.

A social media campaign needs an effective content calendar to ensure that posts are successful. Make sure you have a talented resource who is capable of creating posts that resonate with followers. Use these posts to strike a meaningful chord with them. Your goal should be to highlight your brand as an industry leader who cares deeply about what the customer wants.

What kind of strategy have you adopted to gain customers for life? Has it helped you? Share your experiences in the comment box below!

About the Author

Dave Sarro is the President and CEO of Promo Direct, a #1 promotional products company in the US that is focused on supplying a range of promotional giveaways to businesses, educational institutes, and NGOs of all sizes in the US. Dave is a consummate marketing strategist, key authority in the promotional industry and responsible for driving the company towards its mission of delivering quality products and optimum user experiences.

3dman_eu / Pixabay

Depending on who you ask, the advice you are likely to get on how to conduct an effective sales call will vary. Some people insist on having an airtight script that works more times than not. Others insist on the opposite, that the best salespeople don’t work off of scripts, they cater each conversation to the prospective client.

The truth, as you likely already know, is that for most people the answer falls somewhere between these two extremes. While it may be that sticking to a script forces salespeople to sound overly robotic, having no script at all is not a recipe for success.

So the best sales call script is a loose outline that can be made to fit any conversation with any potential customer. To create this script, you must first know two things:

1. Who are you talking to?
2. When are you talking to them?

Salespeople and sales managers should have a clear understanding of who these potential customers are before talking to them. Why do they need what you’re selling? Do they know who you are or are they hearing about this for the first time? How does your product meet their needs and beat the competition?

You can’t create an effective sales call script without knowing who you will be talking to and where they are in the marketing funnel.

Once you know those things, your call script outline should look something like this:

Pique Interest

Right away, a salesperson should establish the value of the conversation. For the most part, the person on the other end of the line is looking for a way to end the call. It is up to the salesperson to create a reason to keep them involved. Lay out the basic value proposition in a way that keeps them engaged.

Ask Questions

Once you have a person’s interest, it is important to establish a rapport. The best way to do this is by asking questions to learn more about their needs. By listening to them speak, you can learn the proper way to frame the solution so that it makes sense to them. Different benefits or aspects of your offering will carry weight with different customers.

Ask for the Close

Once you feel confident that you have communicated the benefits of your product or service successfully, always make an attempt to close. Transition the conversation to pricing and the steps necessary to complete the transaction.

In closing, it is important to understand the likely hurdles you will encounter. These are the reasons potential customers may give for not wanting to close. An effective sales script will have rebuttals for each of these common hurdles.

Schedule Follow-Up

Not all sales calls end in a successful sale. That’s where the follow up comes into play. Once you’ve effectively asked for the close and still not gotten it, don’t give up. A follow up is a strong secondary goal for each call.

When you schedule a follow up, make it as specific as possible. Pick a time and method to follow up with this person when they will be ready to take the next step. In the meantime, there might be more information you can share with them to help make their decision simpler.

Depending on the state of your business and industry, you may be looking to sustain your current growth rate or bounce back from your losses. But growing a business takes significant strategy to ensure you’re nabbing quality, lasting clients that take your business to the next level. And today’s frequently changing business landscape can upset the applecart.

If you want your business to stand the test of time and sustain success, you’ll need to adopt leading industry and consumer trends. To help you form your business development strategy, let’s dive into five trends that will shape the future of business development across all industries.

1. Social Engagement

There’s no question that today’s buyer spends time on social media. According to Social Media Today, the average person spends 116 minutes on social media each day. That equates to nearly a whole month out of the year. And while email may be better at driving traffic to your website or expanding your reach, MailMunch reports that social media has a higher engagement rate than email.

The bottom line is that social networks have become commonplace for consumer and business interactions. And your business cannot afford to stay off of it — you need to place advertisements, participate in industry discussions, and publish content regularly on social networks to expand your reach and pull in new clients.

2. Mobile Optimization

It’s important to reach people where they are, and mobile internet traffic has already surpassed desktop and is expected to grow. Search Engine Journal recently reported that mobile accounts for 57% of all internet search traffic. And if we talk about email, which is a leading form of business development outreach, mobile email clients accounted for 61% of opens in July 2017. If you’re email doesn’t translate well onto a 5-inch mobile screen, your prospect will probably delete it without a second thought.

In the future of business development, you will need to reach people anywhere, anytime to ensure that they see and engage with your messages. This means making sure your communication with clients is built for mobile first and that your attachments, like Word documents or PDFs, are optimized for performance a mobile phone or tablet.

3. Personalized Content

With nearly 90% of all B2B marketers employing content marketing, it has been well established as a leading tool to engage new audiences and bring existing ones close to purchase. And content doesn’t have to be a daunting task, it can be as simple as a social message or email campaign. But where content really shines is in personalization. In fact, studies have found personalized emails to have six times higher transactional rates.

By using relevant, personalized content throughout the buyer journey, you are keeping your brand top of mind for your prospects. Something that will help you reel them in when you make the move to convert them into clients. Personalized content also helps you develop relationships with existing clients, increasing upsell, cross-sell, or even resell opportunities. And for the most accurate personalization for each prospect or client, you need to keep your company’s CRM data clean and up-to-date.

4. Vertical Marketing

Sometimes, it’s tempting to cast a wide net for your business. Who doesn’t want to reach anyone and everyone? Well, the problem with wide-range, horizontal marketing is that it’s shallow. Your marketing is intended for so many different types of people, that you don’t catch many clients. Instead, it’s more effective to narrowly target your marketing towards a unique audience that would actually be interested in your services.

To go after your priority accounts and clients, focus your marketing and development efforts towards the executives and decision makers in the right verticals. Especially for B2B companies, your clients belong to specific business sectors or industries. By targeting those unique sectors, you’re sales and marketing campaigns will attract and engage more qualified leads.

5. Innovative Technology

In the ultra connected world we live in today, there are emerging technologies in every market that enable businesses to create better solutions for their clients. To secure the best future for your company, adopting new technology may be the key to retaining and acquiring more clients. And considering the fact that it’s six times more expensive to acquire a new client, this isn’t something you can ignore.

The technology that you adopt doesn’t have to be customer facing either. For example, you could adopt a new CRM system or a project management platform to improve your team’s productivity. Alternatively, you may decide to invest in developing a mobile app that makes it easier for clients to access your services. The key to embracing technology is to focus on the innovations that add convenience and value to your clients.

Improving client relationships is at the center of many business development trends. Find out how these CRM automation tactics can help empower your marketing and business development teams to create better, more lasting relationships.

Reading time: less than 2 minutes

Customers want value, and they want the sales rep they deal with to bring value themselves. How so? By not wasting their time, being honest, offering distinctive and relevant insights they can benefit from.

To bring value, however, you must first create trust. Unfortunately, world events largely reinforce skepticism and mistrust of virtually everything and everyone.

All you have to do is look at a graph of the decline of trust over the last decade or so. It looks like the gradual decent of a tall water slide. Trust is at an all-time low. And it goes without saying, that buyers have a mistrust of suppliers in general, especially new suppliers.

So, if you want to earn the trust of a buyer, you must ask relevant questions, listen perceptively, share common values and speak their language. You must do this consistently, too.

Once you earn your buyer’s trust your insights will be welcomed. Your deep probing questions will be seen as caring and not intrusive. What’s more, they will openly hear challenges to their views because they trust your motives.

My new book, The Sales Diamond, presents the keys to building trust with buyers: never misrepresent or exaggerate, never take a shortcut to a sale, always do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it, ask intelligent questions, listen intensely and care personally about the buyer’s true needs. Never ever take advantage of the buyer’s trust for a quick buck!

Making sales is about creating trust today – and doing NOTHING to break that trust. Trust involves knowing your buyer and his or her concerns – and caring about their needs, expectations, concerns, goals, problems and issues. It’s about never selling them something they don’t want or don’t really need.

“The more buyers trust you and the value your solution provides, the more they’ll buy from you at prices justifiably higher than the competition’s – and the more Likes, 5 Star Ratings and Referrals they’ll give to your business.”

Creating trust and delivering value is your best route to getting better sales results, especially now.

I’ve been in the freelancing game for a while now. I have seen the content marketing industry go from nothing to millions. And I’ve gone from making $5 in a month to getting paid hundreds of dollars for one blog.

I’ve also been coaching other writers for some time as well. I’m fascinated (and honestly baffled) by the fact that some writers barely get by while others, like myself, are doing quite well.

It’s not just writers who are having trouble getting paid either. I see it all the time with other types of businesses as well. Here are some of my observations as to why these business owners aren’t getting paid and still struggling.

They are targeting the wrong people.

One of the biggest issues I see with small business owners is they target the wrong people. They’ve never evolved out of working with small fish clients even though they know it doesn’t get them paid.

What’s even more interesting is I’ve seen a common excuse come up multiple times. Many of them resist large clients because they feel like large companies are evil while mom and pop shops are somehow not.

Look, you have no control over what companies do. Also, mom and pops can be just as evil and on top of that irritating if they aren’t paying you. On top that, you can’t make a blanket statement and assume that because a client has a large budget that they are somehow bad.

I’ve noticed that my colleagues and I stopped working for clients with small budgets a long time ago and that’s a been a big part of our success. If we were still targeting clients with no money we wouldn’t be able to pay our bills.

They don’t have consistent brands.

Another common issue I see among business owners who aren’t getting paid is they don’t have consistent brands. In fact, they hardly ever market themselves, period.

I know for a fact that my colleagues and I can command larger sums of money because we’ve proven that we are experts in our fields. We’ve done this by building social media followings and consistently putting content out there.

They don’t have multiple streams of income.

Do you want to know what is saving my butt post-Hurricane Irma? Besides having emergency savings, it’s having multiple ways to get paid.

I have money coming in from course sales, affiliate sales and clients. A huge mistake I see business owners making is they rely on just one form of income. Or, even worse, they just rely on one client or one big project. This is detrimental to getting paid because you’re screwed when the project ends.

They don’t have confidence.

The most successful business owners I know are those that are confident. Even if they are just starting out, the sheer fact that they are super confident ensures they are getting paid.

People buy confidence. If you don’t believe in what you are doing no one else will either.

Final Thoughts

Getting paid doesn’t need to be difficult. You need to be in alignment mentally and be smart with where your money is coming from.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Medium here.

In my strategic messaging and positioning work with CEOs and leaderships teams, my goal is to align everyone around a story that’s going to drive sales, marketing, fundraising, recruiting, product – everything.

So when I kick off an engagement, I like to show a video of what it looks like when that goal is achieved.

The other day, a client company’s CEO emailed me with a request:

My comms team is making new content for prospects, and they’re taking a real “chest beater” approach, screaming to the world how great we are. I want them to see that video you played for us, where the CEO took the storytelling approach, along with your analysis of why it’s so good. Have you written that up anywhere?

The Video – and Why It’s So Good

The video is an appearance by Tien Tzuo, the CEO of Zuora, on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

I also wrote about Zuora in The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen, and while there are plenty of CEOs who tell the company story well, Tzuo is so consistently great at it that I continue to learn from him. (I have no relationship with, or stake in, Zuora.)

Zuora has raised over $240 million and is headed for an IPO, while many of its competitors – some of which started around the same time, sell the same thing, and lay claim to offering better technology – remain also-rans.

Why? I believe that much of the answer can be gleaned from the video, which I’ve posted at the bottom of this article. As you watch it, be on the lookout for how Tzuo accomplishes each of the following (figures in parentheses are the times each appears in the video):

1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World (1:20)

TZUO: Customers today, they don’t want to buy products. Why buy a DVD if you can get any movie you want from a Netflix? …Why buy a car if you can get from point A to point B with services like Uber…? …[It’s] what we call the “subscription economy.”

Tzuo doesn’t start by talking about his product, investors, his team or anything about Zuora. Instead, he describes a shift that creates opportunity and risk – what he calls the “subscription economy.” Whether you’re writing a screenplay or telling your company story, every great narrative starts with change.

2. Don’t Proceed Until Your Audience Validates the Change (2:29)

TZUO: In your own life, you’re probably buying less stuff because you’re getting everything you need from the services you can access on your phone…

CRAMER: That’s absolutely true.

This may seem like a small thing, but it’s huge. In validating the change, Kramer signals agreement with how Tzuo sees the world. Negotiation guru Chris Voss might say that if Kramer had been a sales prospect, this would have been the moment the deal became Zuora’s to lose. (Voss, a former lead FBI hostage negotiator, calls it “Getting to ‘that’s right.’”)

#3. Tease Your Promised Land Before Pitching Your Product (2:44)

TZUO: … we help turn their customers…into subscribers…

Before he delves into the details of Zuora’s product, Tzuo articulates in just a few words the happily-ever-future he’s committed to making real for his customers – what I call the Promised Land. Note that he uses exactly the same words that back then appeared at the top of Zuora’s home page:

By repeating the message, Tzuo drives home to everyone – employees, prospects, investors, press – Zuora’s mission, without the need for a separate mission statement.

#4. Name the stakes (2:51)

Having earlier name-checked the likes of Netflix, Uber, and Salesforce as subscription economy champions, Tzuo has been saying that winning and losing is at stake. Here, he drives that home:

TZUO: Most importantly, [we help companies] build a strong recurring-revenue business model, because that’s type of business model that Wall Street prefers.

#5. Position features as overcoming obstacles to the Promised Land (4:28)

For many Zuora prospects, one obstacle to Tzuo’s stated Promised Land – turning customers into subscribers – is that they suddenly have always-on relationships with large numbers of customers, and they have to start prioritizing the most valuable ones. When Tzuo finally does get to his product – roughly 3 minutes into a 3.5 minute interview! – he positions features in terms of how they overcome obstacles to the Promised Land:

CRAMER: We had Aaron Levie on recently from Box. He has that great subscription model. What would you be able to provide him so he could be a better provider to his customers?

TZUO: … We’re launching a product…what we’ll tell him is, if you give us all your subscriber behavior, we’ll tell you which behavior signals the higher-value customers…

CRAMER (fawning): That’s the killer app! I worked in sales at Goldman  – that’s what I had been looking for.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Tzuo also offers evidence that he’s been able to deliver clients to the Promised Land, citing clients in different industries who have successfully deployed successful subscription business with Zuora’s help. By the end of the interview, Cramer is practically drooling for Zuora stock.

Watch: Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo on Mad Money with Jim Cramer (2015)

Here’s the video, teed up to start at the beginning of Tzuo’s appearance:

About Andy Raskin
I help CEOs and leadership teams align around a strategic story  –  to power sales, marketing, fundraising, product, and recruiting. My clients include teams backed by Andreessen Horowitz, First Round, GV, and other top venture firms. I’ve also led strategic story training at Uber, Yelp, General Assembly, VMware, and Stanford. To learn more and get in touch, visit andyraskin.com.

The post This Is How a CEO Tells a Great Story appeared first on OpenView Labs.

NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming, was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They were studying the most powerful approaches to therapy, including Gestalt and Ericsonian hypnosis, when they recognized that they could help people change faster with an approach that combined an understanding of how we program ourselves. They gained a lot of attention, particularly through curing people of their longest held fears.

Anthony Robbins studied with Bandler and Grinder before popularizing his own version of their work, calling it Neuro Associative Conditioning. He mastered the ability to cure phobias in a very short period of time, but his preternatural skills have allowed him to exceed the original work of NLP.

I don’t believe that this work is necessary to salespeople, and I don’t believe that it is a good use of their time, energy, or attention.

First, hypnosis and state changes are not easily accomplished, and mastering the ability to do so takes decades. The idea that modeling someone’s sitting position or pacing their breathing is going to generate enough rapport so as to create a preference is not likely.

If you want to create rapport, you’re better off learning to be comfortable in your own skin, and working on a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Second, any sort of tactical approach like that is designed to create an “advantage,” and suggests that you are doing something to someone, and not for them, and with them. There is no case where it makes sense to use manipulation to achieve an outcome when it comes to sales—or any other human relationship.

Honesty, integrity, and candor are far more valuable when it comes to selling well. Trust is the currency we trade in.

Finally, there are so many more powerful things you could spend time learning that would help far more than something like NLP. You could develop your business acumen and situational knowledge, developing yourself as an expert in your field. You could learn to prospect more effectively, sharpen your sales story, learn to gain commitments, or learn to negotiate in a way that allows you to sell at margins that allow you deliver results.

You could also learn to manage your time in a way that multiplies your results. You could interview your clients and prospective clients to better understand their world, and in doing so, learn how you can do something more to create value for them.

If you want to be more successful in sales, develop yourself into someone worth buying from, someone your dream client believes they need on their team.

The post Sales and NLP appeared first on The Sales Blog.

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There has been a growing number of fintechs either launching in, or pivoting toward, the business-to-business (B2B) market, with many of these players focused on helping incumbents better serve previously neglected consumers like small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Now, new research from Innovate Finance and Pitchbook suggests these fintechs are on the right track.

B2B fintechs are snapping up an increasing proportion of total European fintech funding. European B2B fintech investment has reached $948 million so far this year, outstripping 2016's $741 million total by 28%. Moreover, B2B fintech investment is making up an ever-larger portion of total European fintech funding: In 2015, it accounted for 34% of total funding, by 2016, it had reached 45%, and year-to-date, it accounts for 46%. Some recent rounds include French SMB neobank Qonto securing $11 million from Valar Ventures and Alven Capital in July, and Railsbank, a UK-based fintech that helps parties including SMBs connect to global banking services, closing a $1.2 million funding round led by VC Firestartr in August.

Such fintechs will likely soon account for a greater share of fintech funding globally.That's because fintech solutions are in high demand among long-underserved SMBs, as well as the incumbents that have struggled to adequately serve them independently using in-house resources. Moreover, as more clients subscribe to their services, B2B fintechs will have more use cases to point to when explaining the value of their propositions to the mainstream financial services industry, enabling them to attract more investor confidence and backing. As these factors converge, it seems likely that these companies' value and potential will only increase in investors' eyes.

As the world around us digitizes, payments are no exception. The way we manage money and make payments has moved from physical channels, like cash and checks, to digital methods, like cards and online platforms. And though that’s been a long-term shift, it’s one that’s occurred rather seamlessly. 

This isn’t the case for businesses, where the business-to-business (B2B) payments process is considerably more complex, and as a result, almost entirely analog for the majority of businesses. That makes payments a top pain point for sellers and buyers alike, because the existing process is cumbersome, expensive, and often unsafe. And though digital solutions exist, until now, they’ve been too costly and complex to be accessible to the majority of merchants, particularly smaller businesses — the population that’s hurt the most by the challenges of the existing system. 

However, the tides are beginning to turn.

Jaime Toplin, research associate for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on B2B payments that:

• Sizes the B2B payments market relative to other major US payment segments
• Explains how the B2B payments process works, and what makes it so complicated relative to consumer payments
• Discusses the pain points associated with analog B2B payments
• Analyzes the factors behind eroding barriers to industry digitization
• Evaluates what it will take to eventually build up an industry-wise digital payments standard

To get the full report, subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> Learn More Now

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B2B sales vs B2C sales – what’s the difference?

Well there are plenty of differences, but one fundamental alignment is that selling always revolves around the customer.

If you engage the customer right, sales will always follow.

Ignore the customer and your business will fold up.

Because the customer is paramount, the first item on any business’ agenda should be

• To know exactly who your customer is 
• Adopt a sales process where his or her experience is nothing less than amazing.

Fortunately, it is easy to identify the business type based on the kind of customers a company caters to. Most business units follow one of two business models based on the type of customers they engage: B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer).

B2B companies are enterprises whose customers are business organizations like themselves. Think airbag manufacturers like Takata and Autoliv who sell their products and technologies to automakers like Ford and Audi.

Or consider Salesforce and IBM Watson, whose primary customers are businesses in need of a CRM solution or an AI platform, respectively.  

On the other hand, B2C companies are those which directly reach out and sell to ever human, sentimental, and often fickle consumers.

The corner cafe is one good example. So is Apple (mostly), with its full ecosystem of digital consumer products.

For the cafe owner, establishing a memorable and unique ambience may be as important as brewing high quality beverage in keeping the place appealing to customers.

For an electronics manufacturer and software developer like Apple, UX design, hardware aesthetics, online stores and libraries, cutting-edge branding, and customer support spell the difference between failure and success.    

Many companies follow a single engagement model but the number of enterprises who adopt elements from both types are increasing. For example, most of the biggest names in tech such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon now operate units that focus on consumers as well as units that engage enterprises.

Notably, a growing number of business thinkers believe that the boundaries separating B2B and B2C companies are getting more blurred by the minute.

But before we completely lose sight of the distinction, here’s a table detailing similarities and differences of B2B and B2C engagements.

B2B and B2C Engagement: Similarities and Differences

In B2B selling, customers make buying decisions based on rational and strategic considerations. These include how a product or service can generate value for the company (e.g., improve process efficiencies, upgrade services to its own customers, improve profit margins, drive revenue, etc.).

If a B2B seller successfully demonstrates that the value generated by a product or service far exceeds the cost of acquisition, then the prospective buyer will be more inclined to opt in.

On the other hand, B2C audiences tend to make purchases based on how a brand establishes an emotional connection. As such, most B2C messaging typically appeal to consumers’ personal desires and value systems.

Financially capable consumers will not hesitate to purchase an expensive brand if it matches their aesthetic preferences or fills a need for maintaining social status — even when less costly but equally functional alternatives are available. In contrast, cost-efficiency and functionality are paramount concerns among B2B buyers.

Because B2B buyers make a purchase only when a specific set of criteria is met (i.e., functional specifications, business requirements, cost considerations), B2B sellers generally need a more thorough product knowledge to effectively engage, educate and drive conversations with their target audience.

Moreover, B2B sellers also need top-notch communication skills to establish meaningful and long-term relationships with all the decision makers authorized by a company to effect a purchase.

Key Takeaways from the B2C Universe

Changes in technology and customer behavior — among other things — are blurring the line between B2C and B2B selling. With information on just about any product readily available on the Internet, the premium for deep product knowledge seems to be slightly taking a dip.

Moreover, people who make up both markets now tend to prefer learning about a product first personally before agreeing to have a conversation with a sales or a marketing professional — if ever.

In many instances, saving time by expediting the purchase decision process seems more valuable than having an extended demo about something the buyer is already aware of. Changing business models and diversification are also transforming purely B2C companies into B2B enterprises, and vice versa. Apple, Samsung and Amazon are excellent examples of brands resonating among both end consumers and enterprise customers.      

Under these conditions, the B2B seller may well adopt sales and marketing tactics typically executed by B2C sales teams.

These include:

1) Establishing excellent and meaningful customer experiences at all stages of the sales cycle

2) building an emotional connection on top of your product’s functionalities;

3) Keeping your brand relevant to your core audience

4) Enabling convenient customer engagements anywhere and at anytime through multiple channels such as mobile and web.

Whether decision-makers are focusing on the rationale behind a product’s appeal or the emotional uplift it delivers, the new economy always demands a customer-centric experience.

After all, brand-to-market interactions in both B2B and B2C ecosystems always involve people. It’s no coincidence that many forward-looking companies already added a Chief Customer Success Officer in their leadership roster as a strategic initiative going forward.

The post B2B Sales vs B2C Sales – A Complete Breakdown All Sales Professionals Can Learn From appeared first on Sales Hacker.

LinkedIn provides access to an ocean of prospects and some valuable insight into what makes them tick — but connecting with them is a struggle in itself. Prospecting on the network is every bit as tricky as it is potentially productive, and if you want to do it effectively, you need to master the art of the LinkedIn sales message.

To help you get there, we've put together a blueprint of a LinkedIn prospecting message that can consistently deliver results and tacked on some other effective LinkedIn message templates to boot.

Effective LinkedIn Messages

Whether you're sending an InMail or a good old-fashioned message, look to the following template as a guide.

Let's dig into the nine components.

1. Their first name

Start with some degree of familiarity and specificity — greet your prospect by their first name so they know this message is intended specifically for them. "To whom it may concern" won't cut it when sending LinkedIn prospecting messages.

2. Your name and company

Make things easier for your prospect — don't make them click on your profile to figure out who's messaging them. That draws attention from what you're trying to say. Introduce yourself right upfront, so they can concentrate on what you've written instead of thinking, "Who is this, anyway?"

3. Commonality

Prospecting messages are awkward by nature — and coming off as totally unfamiliar can kick that awkwardness up a notch. You want to make your message a bit warmer by establishing some kind of commonality.

Data has shown that buyers and consumers react much differently to LinkedIn messages from salespeople with whom they share connections than salespeople with whom they don't.

If you have something in common with the buyer — such as a group or acquaintance — state this shared connection early on. It'll boost your credibility in their eyes and encourage them to drop their guard.

4. Observation

Every LinkedIn prospecting message should have some sort of focal point — something that prompted you to send the message. That typically comes from the prospect, themselves.

Always remember, sales messages, emails, and voicemails should be buyer-centric, not about you — so you need to show them that you value their insight and activity.

Do your research, and show that you have by mentioning their activities and content like social media group contributions, blog posts, or whitepapers.

5. Resource offer

In many cases, you're going to want to contribute something in exchange for the observation you just made. Offer something productive, meaningful, and relevant that can help them do what they do better.

That might include resources like a content asset, an introduction to an expert, or a recommendation for further reading about the subject you're discussing. This demonstrates your ability to help and add value from the get-go.

6. Question

Don't underestimate the power of a thoughtful question to get the conversation flowing. Some questions HubSpot Director of Sales Michael Pici recommends include:

• "Is [topic] a priority for you right now?"
• "Do you have any unanswered questions about [topic]?"
• "How, if at all, would you like to improve your strategy?"

Every conversation needs a starting point — a thoughtful question is a borderline-surefire way to set things in motion.

7. Interest

Again, everything about your messages should be buyer-centric, and demonstrating sincere interest is central to making that happen. Let them know you care about their situation here — the word "curious" never hurts.

8. Request

Every sales interaction needs to have an endgame. You're not starting a conversation with a prospect just to chat a bit and go your separate ways. You need to explicitly define next steps.

What do you hope to get out of this message? A call? An email exchange? A referral? Whatever it is, make sure to ask for it in clear terms. If you've piqued the prospect's interest effectively, you won't have any trouble getting them to follow through.

Bear in mind that "clear next steps" should never come in the form of a sales pitch. Overly "salesy" messages tend to fall flat. You're trying to start a discussion with your message — the hard selling comes further down the line.

Here's the template for the message I've just described:

Best LinkedIn Prospecting Message

Hey [Prospect],

My name is [your name and company]. We're both [commonality], and I saw your [observation] and thought it was really interesting.

It made me think of [resource offer] — I was surprised to learn [information relevant to the resource offer].

[Relevant question]? I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Can we set up [next steps]?

Best,

[Your Name]

Linkedin Prospecting Message Templates

Here are a few other effective templates you can use for your LinkedIn prospecting efforts.

1. "Congratulations!"

Prospects, like anyone else, are proud of their achievements — especially while they're still fresh. That's why recent accomplishments can provide a solid basis for an effective LinkedIn prospecting message.

A new promotion, a successful round of funding, or any other career or company milestone a prospect hits provides an opportunity for connection. In this case, you don't have to pitch anything, you just have to commend them to let them know you appreciate their success and keep yourself top of mind.

"Congratulations!" Template

Hey [Prospect],

Just wanted to reach out and congratulate you for [their recent accomplishment].

I look forward to seeing how you thrive and continue to shake up [their field].

Best,

[Your Name]

2. Complimenting Their Content

Some of your prospects will publish thought-leadership content that can provide excellent starting points for productive conversations. With this message, you can impress them with your knowledge of their space and let them know you value them through your interest in their thoughts.

The keys to this one are specificity and thoughtfulness. You need to actually read the content they wrote and be able to discuss specific points they made. This message template is a conversation starter, but you'll have to be prepared to have some in-depth back and forth once they respond.

Complimenting Their Content Template

Hey [Prospect],

I wanted to let you know that I read your [piece of content] about [subject] and was struck by how thoughtful, incisive, and well-written it was. You're doing a great job establishing yourself as a thought leader in [their space]!

You mentioned [reference to a specific point made in the content]. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about [open-ended, forward-thinking ask relevant to the content].

Best,

[Your Name]

3. Passing Along Content They Might Be Interested In

Like the previous one, this LinkedIn message strategy is geared towards starting thoughtful conversations. If you see them demonstrating interest in a subject — whether that be through something like social activity or content creation — try to capitalize on it.

Send them relevant content — written either by you or someone in their space — that ties into whatever they appear to be interested in. Again, the key here is thoughtfulness. They're not going to read your recommended content if it seems boring or pointless. So be selective with what you send, and always leave the conversation open-ended.

Passing Along Content They Might Be Interested In

Hey [Prospect],

I saw your [piece of content] about [subject] and was struck by how thoughtful and incisive it was. I was actually reading [another piece of content relevant to theirs] and thought you might be interested.

Here's the link: [link]. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Best,
[Your Name]

Crafting LinkedIn prospecting messages that resonate with prospects enough to start and sustain productive conversations is certainly easier said than done — but if you keep things buyer-centric, demonstrate sincere interest, and set yourself up for some solid back-and-forth, you should be in a good place.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Picture an weighty, rectangular object, placed in the middle square of nine squares; your task is to move the object to another square on the grid, a square other than the one you found it in. Ignoring the tools and resources you may want to utilize, there only three things that are going to happen;

• You’re going to lift it (in this case maybe a crane, so will move to the next)
• You’re going to push it
• You’re going to pull it

Now let’s apply that to a prospect, the square they are in represents their current state, and the square they end up in, represents their state, where they are, after a purchase decision. With about a third of all opportunities going into B2B pipelines ending in no decision, the reality is that about a third of the time the square they end up in is the one they started in.

A key influence as to whether you will need to push, is the prospect’s current state. A small percentage will be easy to push, because they know they want to leave the square they are in, and know which square they want to move to, and why; all they need from you is a little push. I was talking to someone selling specialized ERP, and he was saying that this is only 5% of his market at any given time, small. But the vast majority of the market, has no reason to leave their familiar square, and given that they are busy improving their square, they don’t see the grass as being greener in the other square, and are too busy to care. To move these prospects, you’re going to have to “pull”.

Pulling here adds up to enticing them to see you as being able to deliver and exceed everything they set out to do in their square, but better; the only catch being that to do they need to be in a different square. You can try to push these buyers, but they do not react the same way as the willing 5%. These prospects have “to be led to”, and you have to do the leading. If you can lead in a way that they will follow, you can move them.

Getting them to follow involves many things, but two are a must:

• Your vision for their future state has to exceed their vision (from their perspective)
• It has to appear that you (more accurately your expertise), is the only path

Clearly these two go hand in hand, excelling at one, while not fully leveraging the other will not do; and both require that you demonstrate and reinforce your status as a subject matter expert.

The more and better they recognize and accept your SME status, the more effective you will be. Here we are not talking about your product expertise, but your expertise in helping prospects get the most out of their square. When you show them something they missed; something they had not considered or missed, that would have had an unanticipated outcome, a negative vis-à-vis their objectives, they will follow you. This could be unanticipated risk, something that impacts their cost structure or funding that in turn eats into margin; something that completely alters their supply chain in a way they hadn’t envisioned; or other factors like time. As with most successful sales approaches, it is not about product, need, or pain, but about changing the buyer’s state. BTW, addressing a single pain, no matter how well, generally just stabilizes the buyer in their current square, but will not get them to follow you, just puts them back on their current path, pain free.

All of these and many more, will allow you to create a reason for them to follow you, and as a result for you to pull them forward to another square.

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The post Push and Pull In Sales appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

They’re referred to as the “Duopoly” of online advertising. Facebook and Google account for 75% of the US digital ad spend and almost all of its growth according to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Facebook reported 45% growth in the last quarter and Google’s parent company, Alphabet posted earnings of $26 billion, 87% coming from advertising revenue.

But are these behemoths about to blindsided by a fierce competitor with a better ROI? We recently completed a consumer research study for a beverage manufacturer that uncovered an interesting trend, one that might tip the scale for advertisers.

Consumers, who had an Amazon Prime account, started their search for a purchase at Amazon 100% of the time. If they knew what they wanted to buy, they went directly to Amazon to search for different brands with the best price and delivery options.

With 85 million Amazon Prime members as of June 2017, it’s not going to take long for consumer brands to discover that if you want to invest ad dollars towards finding buyers with high purchase intent and conversion rates, Amazon is going to be hard to ignore. Although small in comparison to Google and Facebook, only 1% of global ads, it is one of Amazon’s fastest growing businesses, now on track to generate close to $2 billion this year.

Amazon also offers organizations a broad spectrum of advertising products ranging from their ad platform, offering mobile and desktop display and banner ads, to dynamic and coupon ads. Customer campaign pages allow advertisers to create immersive cross platform landing pages which can display more than one product.

With the digital ad market predicted to grow at 16% this year to $83 billion the “Duopoly” will get their fair share, and almost all of the attention, especially considering the growth of Facebook’s Snapchat ad revenue, up 158% in the past year. And that may be just how Amazon likes it. Having a history of sneaking up on competitors…just ask Microsoft and IBM about Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Andy Jassy, the AWS CEO said that in some ways the growth of his business was a classic case of disruption dynamics. “The competition simply didn’t believe there was enough of a market to worry about it. The dominant players don’t have any reason to worry about someone attacking the bottom of the market.” AWS now owns a third of the Cloud Infrastructure Services market, more than three times that of its next closest competitors.

Amazon seems to follow Al Pacino’s “never let them see you coming” advice from the Devil’s Advocate but one executive, Martin Sorrell, WPP CEO’s has noticed. Sorrell in a recent interview with Bloomberg said, “The company that would worry me if I was a client – or I think worries our clients, more than Google and Facebook – is Amazon.” Smart ad dollars follow consumer behavior and from we just learned, those consumers, are headed to Amazon.

“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter.” –Judith K. Charles

That’s me: A salesperson behind a keyboard. As a copywriter, it’s my job to align marketing and sales by creating copy that answers questions like, “What are the benefits of my product’s features?” and “How will these benefits improve my customer’s life?”

Answering these questions with well-articulated copy starts the conversation before the inbound lead hits the sales team. Because many leads are more than halfway through the buyer journey by the time they engage with a sales rep, they’ve likely consumed enough content to have established a positive impression of your product or service. Now it’s time for you -- the salesperson -- to spark a personal relationship and close the sale.

To keep the positive impression rolling, there are specific attitudes and vocabularies successful salespeople employ to win more sales. Consider incorporating these strategies in your next sales pitch.

1) Practice Non-Attachment

Not to be confused with apathy, non-attachment is the practice of letting go of preconceived desires and expectations. It’s an objective state of mind that frees you from feelings that do not serve you.

When applied to sales, a non-attached mindset allows you to approach each new lead with a fresh perspective -- while also avoiding negative emotions that inherently come with undesirable outcomes.

To fully embrace this philosophy, focus on “what is” rather than wishing “what if.” Let go of worries from the past -- such as a difficult prospect call -- and concerns about the future -- such as meeting your quota -- by giving the present your full attention.

Let’s look at a few scenarios where non-attachment would benefit your sales efforts.

Scenario A: Suppose you hop on a prospect call believing they’re an unqualified lead. In this case, you run the risk of subconsciously steering the prospect towards the figurative exit door, causing your preconceived expectation to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Scenario B: Alternatively, you might have high expectations that a prospect is going to purchase, prompting you to subconsciously put less effort into closing the deal. If the prospect fails to fulfill your desired outcome, psychology suggests you’ll be more likely to experience negative emotions that will hinder productivity.

The bottom line: A non-attached mindset will help you maintain focus, work productively, and stay grounded in the present.

2) Use Positive, Persuasive Vocabulary

Written or spoken, words sway. Words are the crux of persuasion -- and winning a sale typically hinges on your ability to persuade.

Subtle word choices can have a significant effect on the outcome of a sales conversation. They can trigger trust or skepticism, excitement or disinterest, engagement or disengagement. And, ultimately, they can win or lose the sale.

Salespeople who leverage the psychology of communication can increase their close rates simply by using the right words and phrases.

The next time you find yourself using potentially negative language, consider an alternative to soften the statement. The following examples illustrate several simple ways you can improve your sales vocabulary.

For example, the statement, “Getting set up with our software is no hassle at all,” contains two negatives -- “no” and “hassle” -- that send alarm messages through the brain. Instead, you can express the same message by saying, “Our software setup process is user-friendly.”

The bottom line: Words play a powerful part in shaping the tone of a conversation. A positive tone will build rapport, and a strong rapport will close more sales.

3) Maintain a Customer-Centric Attitude

Let’s face it: Your sales pitch isn’t about you. It’s not about the product or service you’re selling, either. It’s about what your product or service can do for your future customers.

With this in mind, your sales pitch should never focus on what the prospect can do for you but rather what you can do for the prospect before, during, and after they purchase. The goal is to provide a consistent and positive customer experience from the very first point of contact.

If you’re looking for ideas to accomplish this goal, look no further than these three customer-centric selling tactics.

1) Guide, don’t control.

Instead of trying to control the conversation, guide the customer to a clear decision on their own terms. For example, if the prospect objects to your initial pitch, find out what the deal-breakers are and concentrate on resolving them. If there’s no remedy, a clear “no” is still better than indecision.

2) Ask questions and listen.

Seventy percent of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems. Find out what those problems are and tailor your sales pitch accordingly. For example, let’s say you’re selling No. 2 pencils. You learn the prospect manages construction sites, where pencils frequently go missing. It so happens you’re offering a discount on bulk pencil orders, which is a selling point for this particular prospect.

3) Speak in layman's terms.

Buyers have become wary of sales messaging, with 75% rejecting sales-speak. Removing sales-speak and jargon from your dialogue will allow you to build better relationships with your prospects by leveling the communication playing field.

The bottom line: Focus on your prospect’s goals, needs, and pain points. Instead of asking, “How can I meet my quota?” shift your mindset to ask, “How can I help solve this person’s problem?”

4) Focus on Benefits and Solutions

In The Copywriter’s Handbook, Robert Bly explains the first step in writing copy that sells is to focus on benefits, not features. Apply this principle to your sales script, too.

Start by writing a list of your product’s feature and translate them to benefit statements by asking yourself, “What benefit does this feature provide to the customer?”

For example, if you’re selling paper clips, your features/benefits list might look something like this:

The bottom line: Presenting strong benefit statements will give your prospect tangible reasons to buy the product.

At the end of the day, no two deals are identical. Consider combining these mindset strategies to better tailor your sales pitches and create stronger connections with each unique prospect.

When you think about traditional sales, you might picture a bunch of people wearing ties in a scene from Boiler Room or two guys in country club getup shaking hands on a golf course. When you think about inside sales, the picture that comes to mind is probably a little less glamorous, a little less old-boys club—and hazy at best.

That’s because inside sales is changing the industry.

According to a study conducted among VPs of sales, 46% of the VPs surveyed reported a shift from a traditional field sales model to an inside sales model, while only 21% reported a shift from inside sales to field sales. The shift toward inside sales has swept the sales world—starting with the tech industry—and continues to impact industries ranging from manufacturing to real estate.

The field approach that many organizations have used for hundreds of years is still worthwhile at its core. We still need to understand the psychology of our buyers, the factors that go into their decision-making and how to deal with rejection. All the strategies for closing a deal in the ’90s pretty much hold up today in terms of building a relationship, nurturing that relationship, and demonstrating value.

But what’s different is the way the relationship evolves. And that’s exactly where inside sales comes into play. You see, inside sales is the act of identifying leads, nurturing them, and turning them into customers remotely.

No golf course.

No fancy dinner.

No cigar lounge.

Today's sales professionals have to move beyond the lobster dinners and golf outings. Wining and dining is no longer the key to closing a deal as the world has become smaller and industries have become more transparent thanks to review sites, social media, and a borderless, ever-growing network between buyers.

Inside sales is changing the industry

Many sales professionals are holding onto classic sales tactics, but the best organizations realize that times are changing and their approach to sales has to evolve too. Here are a few key reasons why some of the top organizations are investing in inside sales:

More cost-efficient than traditional sales

In the study mentioned above, inside sales teams were found to generate new customers at 40–90% less cost than traditional field salespeople. The gap in cost is directly linked to the inefficiencies, large salaries, and expenses that come with traveling to in-person meetings with prospects from all over the world.

Some reports suggest that the average cost of an outside B2B sales call is $215–$400 while an inside sales call ranges from $25–$75. Figures like these demonstrate why CEOs and executives are starting to scratch their heads and look for opportunities beyond the traditional field reps. Good organizations have always been believers in lowering costs and maximizing productivity, so gaudy stats like these drive action amongst forward-thinking sales leaders and company executives.

Technology makes managing relationships easier

Over the last few years, technology has played one of the biggest roles in making inside sales more attractive and feasible for organizations. Sales professionals no longer have to rely on face-to-face meetings when they can leverage services like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, or Uberconference for video calls. Furthermore, technologies like Close.io have given sales professionals the ability to do things that were nothing more than a pipe dream years ago.

Tech features that are helping to propel the growth of inside sales include:

• Built-in phone calls: The development of CRM software with integrated calling has been a game changer for sales professionals and teams. Sales reps never have to worry about missing an opportunity or struggling to make an awkward transfer. Built-in calling increases productivity while allowing sales reps to be in complete control of their relationships.

• Text messaging: If you asked someone six years ago what they thought about sending an SMS to a potential client, you may have gotten a few strange looks. Today, we know that buying behaviors are changing, and so is the definition of professional. People want convenience, and many people view texting as exactly that. Inside sales CRM tools like Close.io even offer SMS functionality directly in the app!

• Team transparency: Sales leaders now have the ability to see exactly what sales reps are getting done on a daily basis. Signing new contracts, answering missed calls, leaving voicemails, and watching leads become customers—no one is left in the dark about the team’s progress.

• Smarter and better emails: The latest sales software arms sales professionals with the ability to contact and nurture leads in bulk. This flexibility gives inside sales professionals a significant advantage over their traditional sales counterparts.

The growth of SaaS tools, CRM software, social media, and productivity apps is changing the world of sales. Inside sales teams who embrace this new technology have established a real competitive advantage over the other players on the field.

More aligned sales leaders & sales teams

It's more and more important for sales leaders to be aligned with their reps on priorities and accounts. Inside sales software gives everyone a transparent look at what's happening within a sales organization, which ultimately allows sales leaders to spot issues before they arise.

As an example, if a sales leader notices that their reps are spending two-thirds of their time on a potential client that is considered tier 3 vs. nurturing a recent lead that was identified as tier 1, the leader can jump in and adjust the sails.

Wrapping things up

We all know that buying behaviors have changed. In many cases, the majority of the research for a product is conducted before a sales professional is ever contacted.

As a result, the approach that sales professionals take to selling their products and services must evolve as well. It’s our hope that these insights show you the value of inside sales and how it could not only benefit your organization, but also be a threat to your bottom line if your competition embraces inside sales strategies before you do.

Want help growing your inside sales team? Download the free Startup Sales Resource Bundle. Get email templates, sales scripts, e-books, and more!

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According to a study by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, the top inside sales challenge is training and development. As a result, almost half (45.7%) are increasing their internal training programs.

Training, however, can be a daunting task. After all, inside sales training should be at least as thorough as training for field reps and probably more so. That’s because inside salespeople need the same skills and expertise as road warriors, plus they have additional challenges because they are not face-to-face with the customer.

For example, it’s harder to establish rapport with someone when you are not sitting across the desk from them and cannot make eye contact. Likewise, it may be more challenging to understand the lay of the land within a corporation. After all, the rep can’t see whether they are talking with someone in a cubicle or corner office.

Here are some key skills and areas you need to train your inside sales people on so they can do their jobs with the ease and confidence that leads to sales success.

• All about the Product

  To sell a product, reps need to understand it inside out. That means not only the features and attributes but also the bigger picture — how buyers will be better off after they’ve purchased it. They need to be able to go in-depth into the details of any product feature that is essential to solving the prospect’s problem.

  Once salespeople are thoroughly steeped in product knowledge, they will be able to free their minds to listen to concerns of prospective customers and tailor conversations accordingly.

• Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses

  Because your product or solution does not exist in a vacuum, it’s equally important that your reps understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors’ offerings. This way, they can explain how your product compares, highlight competitors’ flaws, and better position your solution as the best choice.

• How to Listen Actively
  
  To sell, reps need to understand the customer. And to understand the customer, they need to listen actively.

  It seems like listening should be a natural skill. However, listening isn’t the same as hearing. For example, if a rep is preoccupied with reciting their sales pitch, they may not make an effort to listen and understand the prospect’s concerns.

  There are a few ways to help your reps hone their listening skills. Start by teaching them how to ask open-ended questions (those that can’t be answered with a “yes” or “no.”) Then move on to listening techniques such as parroting, paraphrasing and adding empathy.

  With these skills, reps will be able to understand customers better and build rapport by signaling genuine interest.

• How to Qualify Leads

  If you don’t have a separate lead qualification team, your inside sales people need to qualify leads, so they don’t waste time talking with people who will never buy. That means ensuring leads have the budget, authority and need to buy. Also, they must have some urgency to solve the problem, and your solution should be a good fit for them.

  Teach your reps to ask qualifying questions such as why the prospect is looking for a solution when they expect to make a decision, what their budget is and who is involved in the decision.

• Customized Demos

  It’s likely your product has a large number of bells and whistles. Because of this, demos can be challenging. You don’t want your reps to drown prospects in information that’s not relevant to them.

  To avoid, this, you need to train your reps to determine where someone is in the buying cycle, and what their processes and goals are before giving a demo. Without these insights, the demo is likely to wander off into areas where the prospect has no interest. Alternatively, a rep may give the demo before the prospect is ready.

  On the other hand, with information about the buyer and their needs, they have a roadmap for their demo. They can simply walk the customer through the challenge they are trying to overcome.

  The bottom line is that reps are not there to present the product in all its glory. Instead, they are revealing how to solve a particular problem.

• Overcoming Objections

  Sales often run into hurdles along the way — the dreaded objections. But if your reps know how to leap over them, they’ll gain confidence and increase their sales closing ratios.

  A full product understanding can help because it enables your reps to understand how your product is differentiated in ways that are meaningful to customers. But it’s also a good idea to prepare a list of common objections and the best ways to answer them and role play with reps until they can counter objections without hesitation.

• Time Management

  Time is money, especially in sales. Inside salespeople cannot afford to waste it. So provide your reps with guidance on how to be more productive.

  They should, of course, take full advantage of technology. This includes using your CRM system to automate follow-up tasks and schedule meetings. Also, they can use ready-made email templates that they customize when communicating with prospects and customers. And while technology can assist them, they need to know when to walk away from it. For example, turning off email alerts and mobile phones can reduce time-eroding distractions.

When your reps are grounded in product and competitive knowledge, know how to listen actively, customize demos and overcome objections, they are well on their way to sales success. Add in a dose of time management, and they’ll be more efficient closers than ever before. So put together an inside sales training program that embraces these key elements.

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It seems like you put endless amounts of time and energy into generating leads. But to what effect? Too many of them turn into dead ends.

It’s not surprising that you’re frustrated. Your leads should be converting at higher rates. And while you’re upset that your company’s salespeople aren’t squeezing the most out of each lead, they’re complaining about quality.

Perhaps your reps are working hard, but they simply don’t know enough about the science of sales conversations. What works? What fails?

Thankfully, because of Big Data, the answers to these questions are becoming clearer. It’s revealing the secrets of top performing sales reps. In fact, the self-learning conversation analytics engine Gong has analyzed hundreds of thousands of sales calls to determine how calls that convert differ from average calls.

Here are some of the fun facts they discovered:

1. Talk Less

   “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak,” said Epictetus, a Greek philosopher. While the best ratio of talking to listening isn’t quite two to one, Epictetus wasn’t far wrong. Today, artificial intelligence reveals that the ratio that leads to the highest conversion rates is 43% talking to 57% listening.

   So much for the garrulous salesperson — the average rep who speaks 65 to 75% of the time. Sales professionals who use their ears more than their mouth leave these reps by the wayside. Using the perfect 43 to 57% mix increases conversion rates by 11%.
   Imagine the revenue boost you’d receive if your business closed 11% more sales opportunities.

2. Deliver an Elevator Pitch

   While salespeople are comfortable talking about their companies, there can be too much of a good thing. When company overviews go beyond two minutes, there is a rapid decline in the probability that the sales process will move to the next step. So salespeople need to practice distilling background on your company into two minutes or less.

3. Competitor Mentions Are Good

   It might seem like it would be better if there were no competition for your offering. Reps probably don’t want buyers to bring up competitors. But here’s a little surprise. They are more likely to close the sale if a prospect talks about your competition early in the sales cycle.

   Perhaps when a prospect mentions a competitor, it shows a better understanding of the market and alternative solutions. That means the individual has a high level of interest and enables reps to demonstrate why the buyer would be better off choosing your product.

4. Language Matters

   There are some linguistic cues of which you may not be aware. For instance, if you ask about the buyer’s timeline, they might use the word “probably” in their response. For example, they could say, “We probably need to implement a solution in the next three months.”

   While “probably” is a word that could easily slip by you, Gong’s research shows prospects who use it have an increased forecast accuracy of 73% over those who don’t.

   On the other hand, if prospects say that they need to “figure out (fill in the blank) first,” the likeliness of them provide a forecast that’s correct is below average.

5. Risk Reduction

   Reducing risk or the perception of it can substantially increase conversion rates. Reps who talk about the lack of contracts or the ability to cancel at any time are 32% more likely to make the sale.

6. Talking Price

   When reps talk about price and how often they do so, affects results. The best reps wait until they’ve been involved in a discussion for 40 minutes to start chatting about costs. On the other hand, average reps normally start this discussion less than 20 minutes into the call.
   Perhaps if reps bring up pricing before they’ve fully established the value of the solution or product, the cost/benefit equation fails to balance in the buyer’s mind.

   It’s less surprising that high-converting calls include 3 to 4 questions or mentions of price. After all, salespeople have long recognized buyers’ questions about price as a buying signal.

“The Science of Winning Sales Conversations” by gong.io.

Now that you know some proven secrets for sales success, it’s time to put them to use. Make sure your reps listen more than they talk, keep their sales overview to two minutes or less, listen to mentions of competitors and the magic word “probably,” use phrases that reduce the perception of risk and wait 40 minutes before bringing up pricing issues.

Anytime someone moves into a new role, there is an adjustment period to figure out how to be effective. When that transition is from an individual contributor to manager, that adjustment can be even more jarring. We all know the typical story with sales managers – they were a top performing salesperson, had ambitions to move up in their career, and then a position opens up and they are managing a group of salespeople.

High performing salespeople are often successful for reasons they do not fully understand. They have an attitude of “getting it done” to beat their quota, but in reality they naturally have the discipline to consistently execute the actions that lead to success. They are regularly prospecting, networking, building pipeline, qualifying that pipeline, and maintaining momentum with current opportunities. They follow a defined process, but often do not realize that they are doing it – it just comes naturally to them.

Building a great sales management team is key to a sales team’s success. Sales managers are the front line leaders that make or break an organization because they are the ones who have the most influence on a given sales person’s performance. Research from Vantage Point Performance shows that top performing managers generate $3.5 million more sales per year compared to low performing managers. Let me say that again, $3.5M more sales per manager! I will let you do the math based on how many sales managers you have – it adds up fast.

Every sales manager can go from good to great as they progress in their career by following a tried-and-true path. Here is an outline of the 5 common stages of sales management:

Stage 1: Initial

I see lots of sales managers in this stage when they are new to management, or they work for firms that are “stuck in the dark ages” when it comes to technology and developing culture. This sales manager only talks and cares about what is closing, and how much someone has sold. Nothing else matters.

One-on-ones rarely ever happen, and all this manager wants to know is what is scheduled to close this month and how she can swoop in on a deal to help win it faster. While we can all appreciate the need for a resolute focus on results, this sales manager is blind to the process that leads to those results.

Eventually the sales manager realizes that effectively moving through the sales process is not intuitive to everyone on their sales team, and she moves to Stage 2…

Stage 2: Motivate

In this stage, the sales manager identifies key steps of the sales process that are being missed. For example, she may notice that some reps get easily distracted in customer service issues or proposal writing. This prevents them from moving their late stage deals to close on time. Others sales managers may observe that their reps are not spending enough time prospecting, or building pipeline from the right subset of customers.

This sales manager is starting to realize the process side of sales, and that as a manager it is her job is to utilize her resources effectively to maximize their output. She is not an individual seller anymore. Now she is responsible for managing a large amount of payroll, and she needs to make her team more productive. In an attempt to encourage the right behaviors, the manager will start using incentives, contests and leaderboards to try and motivate the team. This approach works, especially if it is new to the team as it helps get people focused, and adding some additional incentives keeps things interesting.

Eventually the sales manager realizes that while this approach works at first, it is not sustainable. She cannot run a contest every month or throw a spiff at everything, which leads her to Stage 3…

Stage 3: Execute

Here the manager defines a more clear sales process with defined pipeline standards and sales KPIs for their sellers. These standards and KPIs are initially created by based on the intuition of the sales manager, and they are improved by observing what her top performers are doing consistently and what the middle and bottom performers seem to miss. While the sales manager is still focused on closing, she understands that “inputs drive outputs”.

In this phase, each salesperson has clear expectations on things like how many new business meetings they need to have every month, how much pipeline they need to build, a common approach to qualifying (and disqualifying) opportunities, how much qualified pipeline should be open at any given time (a.k.a., pipeline coverage), and a solid forecast approach. Here the full team knows what is expected of them, there is a common language the team is using, and by leveraging data the manager and salespeople are able to add some objectivity to the sales process.

While this is a big leap forward from the early “just close deals” approach, the sales manager begins to realize that having metrics and reports are valuable, but her salespeople will not stay focused on them if she is not reinforcing their importance regularly. That is when she moves to Stage 4…

Stage 4: Coach

In this stage the sales manager starts running what I like to call a “Closed Loop Management Process.” The idea being that in Stage 3 she has defined the key metrics to manage around, and she ensures that these metrics are regularly reviewed with her salespeople – in their weekly team meeting and in one-on-ones. As a sales manager develops her craft, she now begins to realize what being a “coach” really means. She helps set the vision for the team, has a plan to execute against, and works with her sellers to master their craft.

Now that operating measures are in place, the manager can keep an eye on them regularly, and sales people clearly understand their importance and that they will be held accountable. It is not all about the numbers, but these metrics are effective guides to use during coaching conversations. For example, if a rep is not hitting his monthly new pipeline goal, the manager knows this is where her sales coaching needs to be focused for that salesperson. In this phase, the sales manager is starting to become a sales leader.

As the manager and sellers continue to become more comfortable and familiar with where they need to focus their time and attention, they want the data to be more personalized and real time. It becomes frustrating when the manager and salesperson review their metrics at the end of the week as they are unable to change what has already happened. That is when the sales manager moves to Stage 5…

Stage 5: Align

Here there is full alignment from the executive team right down to the sales manager and her sales team. There is a common language around the key steps and measures of the sales process, metrics and goals are personalized for each salesperson, and everyone has a real-time view of where they stand. At any given moment, the sales manager can see if her team is ahead or behind on a key metric, which empowers her to make corrections and get things back on track.

Salespeople are not waiting for the next team meeting or one-on-one to find out how they are doing. They always know where they stand. This stage also allows for rapid onboarding as new hires come in with a set of clearly defined metrics they can execute on immediately, such as how many meetings they should have, how much pipeline to build, pipeline coverage, etc. Even better, goals can be set in a way so that they scale up as reps gain experience. Rather than waiting 3-to-6 months to close a deal and feel valuable, reps can start executing immediately and know they are on the right track to hit their quota.

Summary

An experienced sales manager uses all aspects of the stages listed above, and none of these stages are bad. Rather, these 5 stages provide a framework that you can apply to your sales team so you know where you stand, what you need to work on, and build a plan to improve.

The post The 5 Stages of Sales Management appeared first on OpenView Labs.

A great sales compensation plan needs to accomplish quite a lot…

It needs to provide fair compensation to employees in customer-facing roles.

It needs to incentivize specific behaviors and actions that suit the needs of both the company and the customer.

And of course, a strong sales comp plan needs to motivate reps to hit goals that grow the company while still maintaining a profit margin.

The Process for Creating a Sales Compensation Plan

Whether you’re building a sales compensation plan from scratch or re-building an old one, you should take the following steps in order:

1. Understand the Basic Requirements of a Good Sales Comp Plan
2. Establish Role Levels
3. Determine Total On-Target Earnings (OTE)
4. Decide Base Pay vs. Variable Pay (Commissions)
5. Set Targets
6. Plan Compensation for Onboarding and Training
7. Know what to Include in a Sales Incentive Plan
8. Create a Contract and Get Mutual Commitment [TEMPLATE PROVIDED]

Sales Compensation Plan Examples

Once you understand how to create a fair compensation plan for your sales team, you can check out some examples:

Sales Development Rep (SDR) Compensation Plan Example

This is how the sales compensation plan should work for reps in a prospecting role. This could be anywhere from a first SDR job focused on inbound, to a senior SDR calling on key accounts with 1–4 years of experience.

Account Executive (AE) Compensation Plan Example

This is how the comp plan should look for those in closing roles. This plan can cover anybody from a first AE job to 3–5+ years of experience (AE) or 4–8 years of experience (Sr. AE).

Step 1:  Understand the Basic Requirements of a Good Sales Compensation Plan

A good comp plan is a win-win-win: It’s easy to implement and benefits everyone. Here are 5 things to keep in mind when planning yours.

Keep it Simple. A summary of your compensation plan must fit on a single page.

Show Causality. Make compensation directly related to the desired effect you wish to achieve.

Think Short. Keep the time between activity and compensation under 60 days.

Fair for Everyone. All compensation must be fair and equal to everyone.

Must be Easy. Easy to measure. Easy to administer.

Step 2: Establish Role Levels

Establishing your role levels can become a complicated process. To avoid getting bogged down, create just three levels, based on experience levels:

1. Entry level
2. Baseline
3. Experienced/Top Performer

Here’s a simple example to begin with that covers the SDR, AE, and Customer Success Manager (CSM) functions:

With these three role levels, you can easily define the differences between un-tested, new employees and those with experience. It also puts you in a position of offering “micro promotions,” which can help motivate people, especially early in their careers.

Step 3: Determine Total On-Target Earnings (OTE)

Before you can decide base pay or commission rate, you need to decide On-Target Earnings, or OTE.

On-Target Earnings (OTE): what the person would be paid annually.  It includes two elements: a base salary and a sales incentive held against sales, also known as variable pay.

Be aware, OTE will vary depending on your geography (and possibly your industry).

Here’s an example of OTE levels for a SaaS business hiring sales talent in the Bay Area:

NOTE: We recommend that you avoid calling any sales incentives a “bonus.” A bonus is not guaranteed and is usually given on-the-spot.

A compensation plan (or incentive plan) is just that: a plan. It ties payment to the achievement of specific objectives that have been:

• pre-determined
• shared on the incentive plan
• clearly communicated to the employees

Step 4: Decide Base Pay vs. Variable (Commissions)

The goal of variable pay is to develop a performance-driven culture in which your sales team is financially accountable for results.

The ratio between base pay and the variable is sometimes called “leverage.”

A plan with a high variable and a low base salary is referred to as a highly leveraged comp plan. To some leaders, highly leveraged plans sound great, because you only pay for results.

But beware…

This can create a lot of issues.

For example, senior sales talent and top performers may not be interested because the banking system penalizes those who rely heavily on commissions when they apply for a mortgage, car loan, or any other form of credit.

Highly leveraged sales compensation plans are mostly seen in transactional sales, where the volume is extremely high at low prices. On the other hand, if the plan has little leverage, the salesperson is less motivated to deliver against set goals.

Let’s look at a few examples. Here are some highly leveraged and low-leverage compensation plans, and the situations where they might apply:

OTE and the breakout between base pay and variable can change depending on your location. I usually recommend my clients consult with a local recruiter if they’re unsure of the expectations of the job market.

Here are a few other variables that can affect pay:

Just to paint a picture for you, look at the range of salaries for an AE as of Mid 2017:

• Atlanta based AE. Base/Variable:  $80,000 / $80,000 / OTE $160,000
• Denver based AE. Base/Variable:  $75,000 / $75,000 / OTE $150,000
• NY/SF  based AE. Base/Variable:   $100,000 / $100,000 / OTE $200,000

Obviously, the balance between base and variable pay varies by role as well. Here’s an example of how these can change based on what I’ve seen in the Bay Area:

Step 5: Set Targets

How you set targets depends on your specific business model. You need to  consider a wide range of factors, including:

• your financials
• whether you receive recurring revenue
• how you charge for services

Since many SaaS businesses have similar financial models, I’ll use that as an example.

There are three models of target setting for a platform product with an average contract value (ACV) of $25k:

1) Top-Down Target Setting

Take the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) you wish to achieve, and divide this by the number of salespeople.

So let’s say you want $4M in ARR and have 4 salespeople.

$4M / 4 = $1M ARR/salesperson.

You then divide by the Annual Contract Value (ACV) per deal.

So, assuming an ACV of $25K…

$1M ARR/salesperson / $25K = 40 deals won per year

40 deals / 12 months = ~3 deals per month

The problem with this older B2B approach is that it lacks predictability, and it is hard to measure where things go wrong.

2) Bottom-Up Target Setting

Take “till date” numbers and use 80% of the best month ever as your guideline.

For example, if your Founder closed $800K in business in the past 12 months, at an ACV of $25K, the target for a new salesperson would be $640K.

$800K x .80 = $640K per salesperson

$640K / $25K ACV = ~25 deals per year

To hit the $4M revenue goal, we need about 6 salespeople.

$4M / $640K per salesperson = ~6 salespeople

The problem with this model is that founder-based sales is not scalable, and it doesn’t tell you about any dependencies.

What if you need 4 SDRs and 2 CSMs to bring on those customers? You’d be making a loss.

This is a common situation with today’s sales organization since the cost of acquiring a client have shot up radically.

3) Business-Case Target Setting (Recommended)

The sales acquisition team that sells a CRM platform uses one SDR ($80K), one Jr. AE ($160K) and ½ a CSM ($120K/2) to prospect/win and onboard 20 deals/month at $25K ACV.

That level of growth costs a total of $300K each year. To profit on that growth, the team needs to bring in at least $300K, but we actually recommend 2x that number = $600K.

Why? It takes 3 months to ramp the team:

• Year 1 $600K / $25K = 24 deals (take into account a 3-month ramp)
• Year 2 $900K / $30K = 30 deals

For a SaaS model, here’s an example of how targets can be set across roles:

NOTE: Lifetime Value has an enormous impact.

For example, within the FedTech space, sales contracts can be established with 3 years of commitment. This allows for richer comp plans than at companies in AdTech, where LTV only accrues across a 9-month timespan on average.

With new products, where LTV is not yet established, we advise that you spend less than 40% of year-one revenues on the total OTE of your SDR, AE, and CSM.

For the same reason, we recommend that businesses with LTVs of 2+ years spend less than 60% of year-one revenues.

Step 6: Plan Compensation for Onboarding and Training

Any professional earning $10,000 a month in commission will have trouble agreeing to forego that income for 3 months by coming to work for you.

So it’s quite normal for new reps to ask for compensation above their base pay during onboarding. There are several ways to structure your compensation plan during ramp.

Imagine you hire an AE who you expect to pay $10K in commissions each month after they’re ramped up. Let’s look at some examples of how you may compensate that person in the first few months of employment.

Sales Compensation Models While Onboarding

Non-Recoverable Draw

You pay the sales rep $6.67K per month. If they close $10,000 worth of commission, you pay the remaining $3,333 extra.

Any sales executive in a start-up will request a non-recoverable draw as part of their sales compensation plan.

Recoverable Draw

You pay $6,667 per month upfront.  If they only close $5,000 worth of commission, the amount of $1,667 rolls over to next month.

A recoverable draw makes more sense if your sales rep is taking over an established territory where brand name helps close 80% of the business.

Clawback

Unlike a recoverable draw, a clawback requires the salesperson to pay the company back $1,667.

Clawbacks can also be used against deals that churn within three months of purchase when the commission was already paid. Deals like this are the result of selling to the wrong customer. Any clients that churn after the 3-month mark are considered the responsibility of the Customer Success team.

Bookings vs. Cash Collections

This is a touchy subject because a booked client does not guarantee cash collection.

If you want to use this method, here are some baseline thoughts to think through:

Compensation against bookings accelerates deals and is used during growth. On the other hand, compensation on cash collections improves the quality of deals and is commonly used during maturity.

Early-stage companies do not like handing out commissions before the money is collected, but compensating on cash payments doesn’t help.

Here are several of the main problems with commissions based on cash payments:

• The delayed incentive makes it hard to determine how the incentive plan affects performance because it’s hard to establish causality.
• Cash payments make it harder to motivate a team because their reward is often delayed up to 45 days after the deal closed
• It causes higher churn and is a signal to top sales talent to avoid your company — they assume “something must be wrong if they can’t pay their salespeople on time.”

Besides, there are easier ways to ensure that commissions are only paid when a customer pays:

• Clawback the next month. Any deals that fall through after signature can come out of next month’s commissions check.
• Or, you can simply adjust quota upwards to account for an expected level of premature churn.

Example of a Draw

Here’s a table that illustrates how a draw might work for an AE onboarding over the course of 4 months, with either a recoverable draw or a non-recoverable draw.

This particular example is linear and is based on a compensation plan of 10% of sales, with a target of $900K. That would mean on target commissions would be $90K per year or about $7.5K per month. We’ve also assumed that there’s a 90-day ramp.

Earning the Draw

Here are a few ideas to motivate your new employee to earn the non-recoverable draw:

Step 7: Know What to Include in a Sales Incentive Plan

Your incentive plan should include several key sections that clearly spell out your sales commission structure.

Monthly vs. Quarterly Commission Payments

The evidence is clear, monthly payments reduce the hockey-stick effect (when a disproportionate amount of revenue closes at the end of the quarter). There are very few exceptions to this.

Payment Timing

With often 50% of the compensation locked up in commissions, you must pay compensation on time, with the same due diligence as any other salary compensation.

The norm is 1 payment cycle after the quarter closes, e.g., within 30 days of month close.

Capping Compensation

This protects the upside. For example, “capped at $400,000 annually” means that if total comp exceeds $400,000, the person will not get paid above $400,000.

This is common practice at companies working strategic deals with large teams. For example, a Fortune 500 company may choose to deploy an enterprise-wide solution following a series of meetings between the CEO and VPs — but not AEs. The AE should be notified that Capping may apply.

Override

Any sales compensation plan should have an override by the CxO/VP to overcome unknown scenarios.

For example, one year my team fell $400K short on quota. My CEO worked with a board member to have another portfolio company “buy” our solution to overcome the shortfall. This is a situation I experienced where the override was enforced.

Fair Compensation

For good reason, sales compensation receives a high level of scrutiny. The aim? To be equal, regardless of gender, age, race, etc.

But in practice, performance typically beats equality, which can be a problem.

For instance, it’s common practice for a VP of sales to bring in a former sales performer or individual contributor at an increased pay rate, since they are a known entity. 

When that happens, it can create unfair compensation. It can also lead to another performer being let go to make room for this superstar. Either way, it can be grounds for a lawsuit.

Another example has to do with underperformers. If you choose to let them go, be aware: If the contributor was not fairly compensated during their tenure, there is ground for a lawsuit even if the contributor underperformed.

Fair Compensation Board

Winning By Design strongly recommends portfolio companies with more than 25 people to establish a Fair Compensation Board. In it, the CEO, an internal executive, an industry expert (often a board member), and an external HR professional agree to review compensation and ensure fairness on a quarterly basis.

Using a fair compensation board prevents you from hiring people with insane compensation packages. It also allows you to take note of underrated performers, who can be put on an accelerated career path.

Step 8: Create a Contract and Get Mutual Commitment [Template]

If you’re looking for a sales compensation plan template, look no further.

Here is example language you can use to create a documented version of your now complete sales compensation plan!

Appendix A – Sales Compensation Plan Example

Revision Date: April 23, 2019

This   document   describes   the   agreement   between   ______________  (“Company”) and ______________  (“Payee”) regarding terms related to sales incentive compensation.   Company and Payee enter into this agreement whereby Payee provides services to the Company in return for compensation specified in this agreement.

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All commissions will be calculated and paid once every month, for the preceding month. Commissions will be calculated and paid out as part of the next payroll cycle, following the month for which commissions are calculated.

Base Salary Payout – Sales Rep is due a base salary of __________ , payable every __________.

Sales Incentive Payout – Sales incentive compensation is payable every __________.

Expenses – The Account Executive will be paid for all travel and lodging expenses related to sales activities within 30 days of being presented with the receipts and a completed and accepted expense reimbursement form.

Travel and Lodging

• Auto travel: Reimbursed at the current federal reimbursement rate
• Cell phone: Sales Reps will be required to maintain a cell phone as part of conducting sales business. Sales Rep will be provided an allowance of $50 per month for cell phone usage.

Client entertainment expenses will be reimbursed as following:

• Meals/Coffee: Reimbursable with receipts
• Special Events: Must be pre-approved. Reimbursable with receipts

Draw – Payee receives a monthly un-recoverable draw against the sales incentive plan as follows based on the participation and completion of the 90 Day Onboarding Program.

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• Clawback – In order to receive your full commission with no clawback, the customer must stay live for 3-months from the day we start billing the customer. If a customer cancels short of the 3-month mark you will have a prorated amount clawed back from your commission against the sales made.
• Draw Clawback – If payee voluntarily leaves the position within the first 6 months of this plan, the Draw payment(s) will be due back to the Company through a payroll deduction from any monies owed to Payee.
• Splits – Commissions can be split with other Payees, on a deal-by-deal basis at the discretion of the VP of Sales.
• Termination of Employment – On voluntary or involuntary termination of Payee employment with the Company, commissions will be paid on transactions dated prior to the termination date only. Any amounts owed to the Payee will be according to employment regulations after withholding taxes and other dues.         
• 90 Day Onboarding Program – The onboarding program will take place over 90 days and the following activities are expected from the Payee to be eligible for the Draw as outlined in Table 2.

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Other Important Terms

1. Payee agrees to follow all Federal and Local laws while engaged in providing services to the Company during the period of this agreement.
2. Payee shall not engage in any other employment during the term of this agreement. Company reserves the right to require Sales Rep to terminate any such other employment at Company’s sole discretion.
3. Payee shall use the most ethical practices while engaging in any sales activity.
4. Payee agrees to protect all confidential material including prospect data, sales data, and client information belonging to the Company and shall take all reasonable care in making sure that such confidential material is not disbursed to anyone outside the company.
5. This entire agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of _______________.
6. VP of Sales reserves the right to override the terms of this agreement without cause.

SDR Sales Compensation Plan Example

Assumptions:

• Business model:  $900,000 in ARR, across 30 deals with an ACV of $30,000
• SDR compensation:  $40,000/$40,000 fully ramped
• Win ratio:  1 in 5 (this is the norm in SaaS sales vs. 1 in 3 in perpetual sales)
• Lifecycle:  Fully ramped

Model: $40,000 in variable comp needs to bring in enough deals to win 30 deals per year

• Linear model: 30 deals per year, with a 1:5 win rate equated to 150 leads per year. $40,000/150 = $267/SQL. Or rather $250/SQL. As the SDR generates 12 SQLs/mo = $3,000 in commission. This also means that for every deal won at an ACV of ~$30,000 with a 1 in 5 win ratio you thus will have to pay for 5 SQLs = $1,250. 

NOTE: In comparison, it is common to pay $500 for a meeting and $1,000 for a meeting with a decision maker generated by an external firm.  Also a referral fee of 5% ($1,500) is common for an intro at manager/VP level and 10% ($3,000) at CxO/Board level.  

• Accelerated model: This is used to drives behavior to qualify the right deals.
  • We look to spend $1,250 for 5 SQLs since this is what the business model is
  • We then pay less per SQL – say $150
  • So we pay total for 5 SQLs @ $150 = $750
  • Leaving us $500  – so we now pay out $500 for every deal close
  • You end up paying the exact same amount but drive behavior to identify quality SQLs.

• Business model:
  • Drive opening a new market: $150 for Medical company, $250 for Financial Institution
  • Drive to get seniority: $100 for a meeting with the manager, $150 for a meeting with a CxO/VP title

IMPORTANT: The definition of an SQL and a SAL needs to be clearly defined either in the comp plan or hung on a poster on the wall where it is clearly visible for all team members. We encourage you, not only to give examples of what an SQL is, but also to give examples of what does NOT constitute an SQL.

• Split model:
  • The SDR function has been under pressure as their comp plans have been held accountable against market metrics that frequently reset themselves. Whereas a few years ago generating 30-40 SQLs/SDR/month was quite feasible, today we are looking at 10-15 SQLs/SDR/month. This fluctuates between markets, regions, etc. Due to the lower SQLs count, you may find yourself following the model and concluding you need to compensate the SDR $500 or even $1,000 per SQL. Such as high $ value per SQL invites an SDR to game the system. We recommend that in such cases, you split the model to a point where you reduce the price per SQL to about $200-250 (along accelerated model), and add compensation for productivity performed in the form of number of emails, calls, event sign-ups, visits at a tradeshow booth, etc.

• Quality vs. Quantity

To generate a volume you can compensate on Sales Qualified Leads for a Meeting, set (SQL). This may flow a high amount of unqualified deals in. To create a level of performance that AE can accept, set the Sales Accepted Lead (SAL). This offers you three options to guarantee quality.

• Compensate on SQLs and lower the price per SQL from $100 per SQL to $50. Note that you are wasting AE resources, as they have a lot of unqualified calls.
• Compensate on SALs instead of SQLs. This reduces the velocity and creates a strenuous relationship between the SDR and AE, as the AE disqualifies deals that SDR worked hard on.
• Add a Quality Measure by shifting the gravity of the compensation to a comp plan, $50/SQL + $500/deal won.
• Clawback at the end of the month — take out all deals that did not turn into an opportunity.

Account Executive Sales Compensation Plan Example

Assumptions:

• Model:                     Business-case target setting
• Revenue:                 $900,000 / 30 deals
• Average contract:   $30,000
• Compensation:       Jr. AE. $80,000 base + $80,000 variable
• Lifecycle:                 Fully ramped

Model: $80,000 in variable comp needs to bring in $900,000 across ~30 deals with an ACV of $30,000.

• Linear model: $900,000 in 30 deals vs. $80,000 in compensation = 8.8% of every sale every month, good for business at the speed of 2-3 deals per month using a 2-stage (SDR/AE) based sales organization.

• Accelerated model: Drives behavior to close more towards an end of the season.*
  • 6.4% on first $500,000 ($32,000 in commission)
  • 12% on $500,000 – 900,000 ($48,000 in commission)
  • 15% over $900,000 (upside)

*Requires matching of the commission season to the buying behavior you want. For example, schools/districts buy in March to July, Federal government from August to October, Enterprise Nov to Dec, Retail March to July.

• Business model:
• Size of deal: Very effective to drive a team to sell more items to increase the price:
  • 5% on deals < $20,000k, 10% >$20,000,  15% on deals over $30,000
• Market: Very effective to open up new markets:
  • 7% to schools in CA and 10% to schools in Colorado
• Product: Very effective to drive sales of new products:
  • 5% on standard platform, 8% on add-on services X, and 15% on a new platform services

This is part of the Winning By Design Blueprint Series in which we analyze and provide practical advice for every part of a SaaS sales organization.

The post How to Build Effective Sales Compensation Plans for Any Customer Facing Role [Templates] appeared first on Sales Hacker.

“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter.” –Judith K. Charles

That’s me: A salesperson behind a keyboard. As a copywriter, it’s my job to align marketing and sales by creating copy that answers questions like, “What are the benefits of my product’s features?” and “How will these benefits improve my customer’s life?”

Answering these questions with well-articulated copy starts the conversation before the inbound lead hits the sales team. Because many leads are more than halfway through the buyer journey by the time they engage with a sales rep, they’ve likely consumed enough content to have established a positive impression of your product or service. Now it’s time for you -- the salesperson -- to spark a personal relationship and close the sale.

To keep the positive impression rolling, there are specific attitudes and vocabularies successful salespeople employ to win more sales. Consider incorporating these strategies in your next sales pitch.

1) Practice Non-Attachment

Not to be confused with apathy, non-attachment is the practice of letting go of preconceived desires and expectations. It’s an objective state of mind that frees you from feelings that do not serve you.

When applied to sales, a non-attached mindset allows you to approach each new lead with a fresh perspective -- while also avoiding negative emotions that inherently come with undesirable outcomes.

To fully embrace this philosophy, focus on “what is” rather than wishing “what if.” Let go of worries from the past -- such as a difficult prospect call -- and concerns about the future -- such as meeting your quota -- by giving the present your full attention.

Let’s look at a few scenarios where non-attachment would benefit your sales efforts.

Scenario A: Suppose you hop on a prospect call believing they’re an unqualified lead. In this case, you run the risk of subconsciously steering the prospect towards the figurative exit door, causing your preconceived expectation to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Scenario B: Alternatively, you might have high expectations that a prospect is going to purchase, prompting you to subconsciously put less effort into closing the deal. If the prospect fails to fulfill your desired outcome, psychology suggests you’ll be more likely to experience negative emotions that will hinder productivity.

The bottom line: A non-attached mindset will help you maintain focus, work productively, and stay grounded in the present.

2) Use Positive, Persuasive Vocabulary

Written or spoken, words sway. Words are the crux of persuasion -- and winning a sale typically hinges on your ability to persuade.

Subtle word choices can have a significant effect on the outcome of a sales conversation. They can trigger trust or skepticism, excitement or disinterest, engagement or disengagement. And, ultimately, they can win or lose the sale.

Salespeople who leverage the psychology of communication can increase their close rates simply by using the right words and phrases.

The next time you find yourself using potentially negative language, consider an alternative to soften the statement. The following examples illustrate several simple ways you can improve your sales vocabulary.

For example, the statement, “Getting set up with our software is no hassle at all,” contains two negatives -- “no” and “hassle” -- that send alarm messages through the brain. Instead, you can express the same message by saying, “Our software setup process is user-friendly.”

The bottom line: Words play a powerful part in shaping the tone of a conversation. A positive tone will build rapport, and a strong rapport will close more sales.

3) Maintain a Customer-Centric Attitude

Let’s face it: Your sales pitch isn’t about you. It’s not about the product or service you’re selling, either. It’s about what your product or service can do for your future customers.

With this in mind, your sales pitch should never focus on what the prospect can do for you but rather what you can do for the prospect before, during, and after they purchase. The goal is to provide a consistent and positive customer experience from the very first point of contact.

If you’re looking for ideas to accomplish this goal, look no further than these three customer-centric selling tactics.

1) Guide, don’t control.

Instead of trying to control the conversation, guide the customer to a clear decision on their own terms. For example, if the prospect objects to your initial pitch, find out what the deal-breakers are and concentrate on resolving them. If there’s no remedy, a clear “no” is still better than indecision.

2) Ask questions and listen.

Seventy percent of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems. Find out what those problems are and tailor your sales pitch accordingly. For example, let’s say you’re selling No. 2 pencils. You learn the prospect manages construction sites, where pencils frequently go missing. It so happens you’re offering a discount on bulk pencil orders, which is a selling point for this particular prospect.

3) Speak in layman's terms.

Buyers have become wary of sales messaging, with 75% rejecting sales-speak. Removing sales-speak and jargon from your dialogue will allow you to build better relationships with your prospects by leveling the communication playing field.

The bottom line: Focus on your prospect’s goals, needs, and pain points. Instead of asking, “How can I meet my quota?” shift your mindset to ask, “How can I help solve this person’s problem?”

4) Focus on Benefits and Solutions

In The Copywriter’s Handbook, Robert Bly explains the first step in writing copy that sells is to focus on benefits, not features. Apply this principle to your sales script, too.

Start by writing a list of your product’s feature and translate them to benefit statements by asking yourself, “What benefit does this feature provide to the customer?”

For example, if you’re selling paper clips, your features/benefits list might look something like this:

The bottom line: Presenting strong benefit statements will give your prospect tangible reasons to buy the product.

At the end of the day, no two deals are identical. Consider combining these mindset strategies to better tailor your sales pitches and create stronger connections with each unique prospect.

In a recent Reachforce interview, Kate Athmer answered a question about common demand generation marketing challenges:

Traditional demand gen campaigns and channels are managed individually, and are almost never integrated with marketing automation or CRM systems. So marketers spend all their time managing media partners, testing lead sources, formatting and scrubbing spreadsheets, arguing over returns and loading leads into their database – without much insight into what’s actually working. Plus, all the manual components make it nearly impossible to scale for gains in marketing-attributed revenue.

In the grand scheme of things, each of the challenges Kate listed seem rather minor, so marketing leaders and the c-suite (and even the demand generation and marketing operations practitioners in the trenches) avoid addressing these inefficient processes.

Take all this inefficiencies in aggregate, however, and you have a major problem that affects revenue and marketing’s impact.

To dig deeper, I conducted a conversational survey of 14 B2B (for a report on the aggregate cost of bad leads that will be published in the coming weeks). The survey showed that the average marketing team spends more than 51.9 hours per month manually processing leads for database upload – that is, scrubbing, deduping and reformatting. That doesn’t even include all the other inefficient time sucks Kate mentioned.

“The average marketing team spends more than 51.9 hours per month manually processing leads for database upload.”

As the expectations of marketing’s contribution to the business increases, it’s crazy we don’t address these inefficiencies – sweat the small stuff. Here are 3 examples of how wasted time and inefficiency affect our B2B marketing and demand effort.

Slow lead velocity diminishes prospect experience

For all the effort spent to govern leads and support database integrity, the inefficiency of typical lead processing drastically slows lead velocity, which doubles back to hurt the prospect experience.

Take event-generated leads for example; according to a recent report by the event lead capture software company, Certain, 73.5% of survey respondents say they can’t follow up with leads as quickly as they’d like to. And the No.1 reason given for delayed follow-up was: “Preparing leads for follow-up takes too long.” (Certain, Closing the Loop: Crunching the Numbers on Event Followup, 2017).

Regarding content syndication, it used to take Iron Mountain at least nine days to follow up with leads after the prospect’s initial engagement with its branded content. And this isn’t uncommon; of surveyed businesses, the average time between lead capture and lead follow-up typically spans well more than a week and often sometimes more than a month. That’s easily enough time for prospect interest to cool or for a competitor to jump in. Of course, this then hinders sales pipeline value and customer and revenue growth, not to mention marketing’s relationship with sales.

Decreased team moral leads to employee turnover

A gradual sinking of enthusiasm and moral is an often-understated consequence that hits marketing especially hard. Demand generation and marketing operations practitioners didn’t spend four years in college (if not more) just so they could spend more than a quarter of their worktime tediously pouring over excel files.

People are a business’ most valuable resource, wasting them on mundane manual tasks is a substantial opportunity cost. Further, it often results in employee turnover, which creates direct costs regarding recruitment and training. Marketing leaders are hamstrung from achieving their marketing attributed pipeline and revenue goals if they’re constantly having to replace members of their team.

No time to optimize programs and implement more impactful initiatives

Opportunity costs are often an afterthought at best. 50 hours a month is a large chunk of time; think of all the other things marketers could be doing with that time: identifying new audiences; setting up new channel partners and revenue sources; fine-tuning measurement for better program optimization; creating new content; researching new marketing technology to scale efforts – the list is not short.

And once again, all this comes back to limit business growth. Plus, your creativity gets squashed.

The first “small” steps toward greater efficiency

Not everyone has a big budget to spend on completely restructuring their marketing org, buying fancy technology, etc. Take a deep breath and start small to win big. Here’s how Kate suggests getting started:

1. Identify which demand gen challenges are affecting your organization. We created a demand marketing assessment guide to help with this. You can get it here.
2. Talk to your peers at other organizations to learn how they’re approaching similar problems.
3. Create a strategy for solving these challenges incrementally.
   • How can you reiterate manual processes to speed them up? For example, creating templates for repetitive efforts.
   • Are there any alternative ways to approach a problem that would be more efficient? Maybe existing tech you have could be repurposed?
4. Research new martech solutions that could prevent problems or automate manual processes. Even if you can’t afford them now, start to plan 3, 6 or even 12 months down the road – it’ll help in the long run.

Thinking about where you want to be is important. Map out the path to get there and start trading some short-term effort for long-term gains, instead of just putting Band-Aids on it.

RavindraPanwar / Pixabay

As a busy sales rep, there is a lot you have to do every day if you want to hit that next benchmark. Between phone calls, emails, and team meetings, most of your time is taken up by important but repetitive tasks. Take stock of your everyday activities and consider how much time you could save just by automating one of the items on your to do list. With the help of the latest technology, you can save time and be more productive with these sales automation tactics.

Sales Automation #1: Lead Scoring

Any experienced sales professional will tell you that understanding how to evaluate and assess prospective clients is a big part of a winning business strategy. You could spend hours every week pouring over your CRM data trying to analyze trends, find patterns, and choose a direction for your next objective. Or, you could just automate it!

Cutting edge CRM programs now offer highly intuitive interfaces that will help you choose which potential customers to focus on the most. The feature, known as lead scoring, provides insight into your sales history by assigning a numerical value for each client profile. It will also automatically capture, analyze, and update this information in real-time.

Lead scoring is determined by full-funnel analytics, meaning your entire client history for every recorded sale is taken into consideration. These CRMs also include factors like demographic, firmographic, and channel inputs. An automatic scoring tool helps save time by allowing sales reps to focus on their highest value relationships based on real-time data.

The most advanced CRMs will also offer automatic visual reporting to go along with their lead assessments. Reporting is an incredibly valuable and often overlooked feature despite how helpful it has proven to be. You’ll get an overview of your past activities, deal loss reasons, forecast and so much more. These reports help sales employees further prioritize leads and communicate more effectively at any level.

Sales Automation #2: Communications

Another task you should consider for sales automation is client communications. We’re not suggesting you get a robot to talk to your customers (although artificial intelligence is a trend that’s here to stay) but there are some steps to the sales process that do not have to be accomplished manually any more.

These include automatic call dialing and email merge tags. These examples will save you just a few moments per client, but high volume sales teams will value how much time they can save over the course of a week, month, and quarter. It all adds up and, in sales, a little can go a long way to demolishing your goals and deadlines.

You can even use automated communication tracking. This includes tasks like saving text messages, phone call logging, and updating your appointment calendars. These small yet time-consuming tasks take your focus away from closing the sale by creating cumbersome activities that could cost you some important deals if the information failed to be saved properly.

Having these tasks done for you by intelligent sales software is like having the world’s most helpful assistant, right on your desktop. And now, with the advent of mobile-friendly CRM apps, that same assistant can also live in your pocket!

Sales Automation #3: Data Syncing

A good mobile CRM will offer automatic data-syncing. Your whole team can be automatically updated regardless of their proximity to strong wifi or the office. If your field reps find themselves in between meetings, waiting in line at a sales conference, or hopping on a plane, they can quickly take out their phones and jot down their notes into the CRM. Everyone in their department can now work with this new information in real time. As a result, mobile CRMs are especially useful for optimizing team productivity and collaboration.

When choosing a mobile CRM it’s important to evaluate its functionality. Don’t settle for an app that only offers a fraction of what its desktop version can do. Industry-leading CRM apps offer all the same automation and features you would expect from the main platform, and then some.

Because you’re dealing with a smaller screen, your mobile CRM should not have the same user-interface as the desktop version. Some CRMs attempt to squish their interface onto tiny phone screens. This makes it difficult to read, navigate, and accomplish simple tasks in a timely manner – talk about defeating the whole purpose. Make sure you find a CRM that caters to your mobile device, has a user-friendly design, and offers a fully-functioning program.

Regardless of how you choose to fast track your sales process, the right CRM can help propel you towards your next sales goal with features like lead scoring, automated communications, user-friendly mobile apps, and a slew of other productivity-enhancing tools. Choosing a new CRM can be daunting with all the great options out there, which is why we suggest downloading this free CRM Buyer’s Kit to better find and evaluate which software can power sales automation and save you the most time and money.

A Smart Start for your B2B’s Social Presence

Like any other Millennial, I’m obsessed with social media. I scroll through Facebook to see who’s engaged or expecting, Instagram to see who’s been to that new fusion restaurant and LinkedIn to keep tabs on my classmates’ professional ventures. While we’ve all been busy swiping and double tapping our way through life, someone realized they could make a ton of cash using these platforms for marketing. I mean a lot. Today, all companies list social media as an integral (if not the most important part) of their marketing and public relations operations.

Some companies have used social media to come back from the brink of obscurity (hello, Denny’s) while others have had bad situations go from bad to worse play out on social media (RIP, Fyre Festival). It’s tempting to experiment with a social media strategy that sees your account slinging out sassy comebacks like Wendy’s, but it’s not in the cards for everyone. Especially if you’re a business-facing company, or B2B. No one wants their accountant serving out sick burns, they just want their taxes done on time.

Why Use Social as a B2B?

So, we already know that a lot of companies use social media as a marketing tool. Is it a worthy investment for a B2B though? Survey says yes. According to HubSpot, 90 percent of marketers report that their social media efforts generated more exposure for their company and increased sales. By spending as little as six hours a week, 66 percent of those surveyed saw lead generation benefits from their social media activity and revenue increases nearing 25 percent.

Being a B2B on social media does not mean you can’t have fun and engage with your audience. If your company only posts sales pitch after sales pitch, you’ll alienate existing customers and push away potential leads. Whether your company already has a Facebook account or you’re just dipping your toes into the water, now is the time for you to invest in your social media efforts and tell your company’s story.

Consistency is Key

If you’re worried about your current social media presence, take a breath. Establishing a company’s social media account is quick and easy. The most important thing to social media is consistency in posting. If you’re planning a social media strategy where your company begins by posting on a frequent basis, you need to be prepared to maintain that frequency.

There’s been a million different studies for what day or time posts on a specific platform perform best, but the best advice I can give you is to create a schedule that you can stick to. What does this mean? If you want to launch an Instagram for your office furniture company, it’s better to start by posting less content consistently than it is to post more content inconsistently.

If you plan to start by posting several photos a day on Instagram, you need to be able to keep that momentum for the long-term future. Not just a week, or even a month—you should be planning for at least a year.

Every social media platform values consistency in their algorithm, and it’s in your best interest to keep this top of mind when developing your company’s social media strategy.

Which Channel is the Best Fit?

So now that we’ve got a posting strategy out of the way, the next step is to decide what channel or channels your company should be on. A good rule of thumb is to start with Facebook and add channels from there. Pew Research Center states that 79 percent of all adults use Facebook, and that number is only rising. That’s a lot of scrolling.

Is your company a professional services company with clients that tend to be other businesses? You should most likely have a LinkedIn account since a lot of your customers are already there. According to HubSpot, LinkedIn is the only platform with a user base that trends older rather than younger. These older users tend to be decision makers.

Similarly, if your company is more visual and generally public-facing, say hello to Instagram. In March 2017, over 120 million Instagram users interacted with a business based on viewing an Instagram ad, and more than 60 percent of users first learned about a product or service through Instagram.

Since there is so much competition, your company should consider launching only on channels that are vital to reaching your target audience. Instagram is a great platform, but only if you’re ready to invest the time into growing your account. If so, read on to learn how you can tell your company’s best story on Instagram.

To make a long story short, social media is a big deal today. It’s not just for Nike, Wendy’s or your mom’s Etsy store. Your B2B business needs to join the partyit’s easy to play catch up. Social media is a matter of finding your audience and determining how much time you can invest. Use your 140 characters wisely.

Want to learn more? Download our whitepaper.
Photo credit: Pixabay.com

What’s more important to your organization: generating as many “leads” as possible at a trade show or generating just a handful of truly qualified leads?

There’s no right answer to that question. However, the answer you’ll receive will most likely depend on whom you ask. Sales reps (particularly those who are responsible for engaging with these “leads” after the trade show) want sales-qualified leads: leads ready to sign up for a demo, start a trial, or even make a purchase. Marketers, on the other hand, may be more apt to analyze leads from the funnel perspective: While sales-qualified leads are always preferred, from a mathematical standpoint, the more new contacts generated, the better the chance for a sale in the long run.

While that may be true in terms of website-generated leads, that’s definitely not the case at trade shows.

Not all trade-show leads are created equal.

It is possible that many contacts who stop by your booth are interested in your company and its product or service—and when you consider the fact that 81 percent of all trade-show attendees have buying authority, those certainly aren’t bad odds. However, the unfortunate truth is that some of these contacts were probably just trying to pick up some of your swag. And while there are steps that you can take to keep these swaghounds out of the lead category (Pro Tip #1: Don’t give away swag for free! Give away your goodies only after a focused conversation or after a form submission—simply saying hi shouldn’t be enough!), chances are, it’s too late for that now.

After the trade show

Let’s say your last trade show was an enormous success. You had some of your most seasoned, knowledgeable sales reps at the booth, but you also had some newbies there, too. And with a disparity in experience on the floor, it’s only natural that there will be a disparity in the quality of the leads.

So, what do you do when you return from your trade show, with an abundance of new contact information under your belt?

You follow up.

But so does everyone else. What can you do that not only sets your follow-up activities apart from all other vendors at the trade show, but that productively helps you qualify your leads? You leverage email marketing—specifically, lead nurture workflows and the all- star content that you’ve already created.

And as you have high-, medium-, and low- priority leads, it’s important that your follow-up activities—which do double duty as qualification efforts—vary as well:

High-priority leads

These leads, for all intents and purposes, are the ones that your sales team qualified on the spot: Meaningful conversations were had, demos were discussed, and either a BOFU form was submitted, or firm next steps were laid. (Pro Tip #2: If your sales team will be encouraging qualified contacts to sign up for demos at the trade show, be sure you have follow-up emails already set up to go! Learn more here.)

Your team already knows that these leads are sales-qualified and should be working to confirm and finalize previously laid plans.

Medium- to low-priority leads

These are the leads that you have in your all-encompassing database; they come from either business cards collected at your booth, or name tags that were scanned throughout the event. These leads are the questionable leads, and this sizeable category is where you will see the greatest benefit from lead qualification activities.

At a minimum, you probably have access to these pieces of contacts’ information:

• Name
• Email address
• Company
• Job title

If you’re lucky, or if your team was aware of this strategy from the get-go, you might also have some other helpful pieces of information, such as:

• Specific solution of interest
• Estimated time frame for implementation
• Organizational pain points

Either way, you have enough information to set up and implement a cold lead qualification workflow. The goal of this workflow is simple: to reach out to trade-show prospects as soon as possible and determine their level of interest in your company, its value, and the services that it can provide.

At a minimum, this workflow should consist of three different emails—one per week, for three weeks:

• Email 1: Reminder of who you are, your product/service, and an educational resource such as a blog post or two for these contacts to read (bonus points if you can use smart content to send resources truly relevant to these contacts!)
• Email 2: Have a most popular offer for new contacts? This is your chance to send it out. Sending out educational resources that not only establish you and your organization as a thought leader but also help keep you top of mind is an all-around win.
• Email 3: There’s no better disqualification than a lack of reciprocity/engagement from your contacts. If even after sending a third piece of content (your best case study, perhaps?), you don’t hear back from your contacts, it’s time to disqualify them. Now, I’m not saying you should get rid of them entirely—especially if they’re opening and/or reading your emails—but they’re just not ready for you yet.

Now, your follow-up workflow doesn’t have to end after just three distinct emails—in fact, there’s a point to be made for sending cold lead engagement emails that can last for up to six months! But, depending on your average sales cycle and the behavior of your recipients, you should have an idea of when it’s time to stop. (Pro Tip #3: If your team already uses HubSpot Sales, the Sequences tool might be a great way to keep these follow- up qualification activities within your sales department!)

And if this seems like a lot of work—setting up a nurturing workflow to contacts who aren’t even ready to buy—it’s not for nought; after all, it has been reported that lead nurturing can convert 15 percent to 20 percent of “not yet ready to purchase” opportunities into sales.

Low-priority leads: trade-show attendees

Now, while it’s completely that this category of contacts is completely disinterested in both you and your organization (after all, they didn’t even stop by your booth at the trade show!), if the event administrators send out all attendees’ email addresses, it’s imperative that you reach out. A simple reminder—this is who I am, this is how my organization can help you—will either generate or rekindle interest, or it won’t.

Are your leads qualified?

While the simplest measurement of lead quality is willingness to 1) purchase your product or service, or 2) sign up for a demo, these are not the only ways.

When it comes to trade-show lead qualification, it’s all about engagement. A contact can be interested in your service and the value it adds, but he or she just may not be ready to sign up for demos; or even provide information at this time. That’s why watching his or her online behavior is critical. As with any other prospects, you should be carefully monitoring his or her digital footprints. Does he or she open all your emails; and even click through? Does he or she visit your website frequently? Has he or she signed up to receive all your blog articles?

If so, don’t lose faith; and definitely don’t purge that contact them from your system; after all, 67 percent of trade-show attendees represent new potential customers for companies. So don’t forget about them—these engaged contacts are still qualified; they’re just not sales-qualified… yet. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not valuable; it’s just a matter of time.