Rnordman

David Hung knows a thing or two about building companies. 

Now the CEO of Axovant, a company that has a shot to launch the first new Alzheimer's drug in 15 years, Hung had previously founded Medivation, a cancer drugmaker that Pfizer bought for $14 billion in August 2016. 

Since Hung joined Axovant in April, the company's doubled in size from 55 employees to about 105 now.

Hung told Business Insider that it's key to have the right people in place when building a company, especially one that's focused on building new drugs.

"The first thing you think about is how you survive," Hung said. "You can't really build too much if you die early." To do that, Hung said he focuses on the business's concept, makes sure that the company has enough capital, and starts to hire great people.

"Once you become successful and survival is no longer in question, I focus a lot on how I want my company to grow," he said. "In particular, I focus on not only the objective I want to achieve, but the way in which I want to achieve it."

For Hung, that means developing new treatments for diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's that don't already exist and investing time in having the right employees.

"The reason I named Medivation 'Medivation,' is because I didn't want to make a me-too drug — I wanted to make sure that everything I worked on represented true medical innovation," Hung said. "So I focused not only on the objectives I want to achieve, but as importantly how I want to achieve them. I spent a lot of my time and effort focusing on the culture of my company, the kind of people I want to work with. It's really important to me that my employees are treated well. I think that employees are by far the most valuable asset of a company."

So even if you have a great drug in development from the beginning, if you don't have the right people working on it, it won't have a chance at succeeding. 

"There are plenty of great assets, but with the wrong team they'll never come to fruition," he said. 

SEE ALSO: A medical breakthrough that hacks genes to fight cancer just got approved, and it's the beginning of 'a big new field of medicine'

DON'T MISS: A biotech founded by a 32-year-old has a shot to launch 'the first new Alzheimer’s drug in 15 years'

Join the conversation about this story »

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All businesses want to believe that the quality of their products and services will keep them out of the rat race on price, but the reality is quite different.

Pricing does not occur in a vacuum, so instead of avoiding price competition, the best harm reduction plan is to safeguard margins.  

Read more...

New hires take an average of 4.8 months to ramp to full productivity according to TOPO’s latest benchmark report. That’s well over an entire quarter spent in rigorous training sessions without an actual sale in sight.

Don’t get me wrong, onboarding correctly is important. New account executives need to develop an in-depth knowledge of your product or service, from competitive intel to the most minute technical details. But onboarding new reps does not mean they must spend months trying to learn all the necessary information or building their own processes. Each new hire requires a significant investment in order to to bring them up to speed, and every day they spend learning adds to their time-to-value.

You can make the onboarding process less time-intensive with the right technology. Using sales engagement platforms like SalesLoft, you can provide a templated process that easily prompts new reps through their sales cadences. Let’s explore three ways SalesLoft will have your newest sales reps selling faster.

Standardize the Sales Process

A company’s sales process can often be an elusive thing. Where does it live? How is it formatted? Is it a document on somebody’s computer? A diagram that’s referenced once a quarter? If your sales team can’t reference the process easily, they’re not likely to follow it.

No matter how the process is displayed, if it is not standardized across your team your existing reps will create processes of their own. This can lead to dozens of different processes floating around for one team. Having multiple sales processes in place makes it really hard for new reps to learn and trust the supposedly standard process. If the whole team’s not using it, how can new reps have confidence in it? Who’s custom sales process is best?

The solution is to implement a standard process within the sales platform you’re using to execute it. Having the process built into the platform makes it easier to onboard reps because the process is automatically available for them based on where they are in a sales cycle. Plus, integrating the process into the platform aligns new and existing reps on the same sales process.

With SalesLoft, features like team cadences codify every step of the sales process for any given scenario — whether that be persona, business type, etc. They also offer analytics so you can have confidence that your process works. If the team cadence isn’t showing good results, you can easily update the process for the entire team without disrupting ongoing sales.

Share the Most Effective Messages

Even with team cadences in place, your new reps may still want to craft or adjust messages to their own voice for each step, but this can be immensely time consuming. At worst, new reps are spending time and effort to build their emails from scratch. At best, they’re tracking down and cajoling their fellow reps for top performing messages.

Platforms like SalesLoft put all of your team’s messages in one place so your reps can share email templates freely. New reps can view the templates of other team members or access team templates. With team templates, you can create the messages your reps will use. So all the correct content is readily available to them.

Having a robust set of messaging templates in your engagement platform also provides insightful statistics and analytics into each template used. This way your new reps can use the messages that are performing best. Template insights also come in handy when your new reps begin selling. Based on stats like reply rate or open rate, new reps can quickly assess which messages are strong or which ones need some adjustments to gain more traction.

Make Content Easily Accessible

A large portion of the onboarding process is spent learning the ins and outs of your company’s product. You’ll see the new team member off in the corner studying away. New reps are often assigned reams of content to read and review. Or worse, they’re sent to disorganized or poorly maintained resource center hoping to gather whatever knowledge they can. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

The right sales engagement platform makes content easily accessible right within the platform itself. Features like Snippets make all of your team’s content accessible inside their email with the click of a button. They can search and sort for all the content they need. By providing a platform with organized and codified content, new reps can learn as they get acclimated with the platform, versus taking the time to find resources.

So before your next new hires begin onboarding, there are two questions you should ask yourself. Would you rather have your reps spend months digging for knowledge and creating processes? Or would you rather offer them a platform like SalesLoft that provides all your new reps need to get up and running in a matter of weeks?

Download a copy of the eBook today and take your account executive team into the modern sales era.

The post Reduce New Hire Ramp Time With the Right Technology appeared first on SalesLoft.

A few months ago, I finally decided to start doing something with the money I've saved over the years.

At the risk of sounding cliché, I'm a millennial with almost no investing experience. I have a 401(k) retirement account, but all my non-retirement savings has been stashed in a standard savings account from Bank of America.

With interest rates low and my savings not doing much, I decided it was time to start putting my money to work. So I connected with a financial advisor. 

The advisor and one of his colleagues came by my office one afternoon and asked me a bunch of standard questions. How much did I make? How much cash did I have on hand? How much do I pay in rent? Am I single? Married? Do I plan to have kids one day or buy a house? And so on.

A few weeks later, the advisor called me up for another meeting at his office. At the meeting, he handed me a stack of papers detailing the funds he wanted to invest my money in. I told him I'd think it over. While everything looked legitimate, it didn't seem like the best deal I could get. Like many financial advisors, he would be charging me a fee of 1% of the value of my investments, and I didn't think he was doing enough work to justify that cost. 

Plus, I knew there was a possible alternative. As someone plugged into the tech world (and someone who listens to a lot of podcasts with ads), I'd been hearing about so-called robo-advisors, apps that automatically manage and invest your money for you. The meeting with the financial advisor got me intrigued about whether these apps might offer a better alternative. So I went home that night and downloaded the two most popular ones, Wealthfront and Betterment.

I was shocked at how easy it was to get up and running with both apps. I plugged in my information — most of it the same stuff the advisor asked me — and minutes later each app gave me an investment plan that was nearly identical to the one the advisor made for me. It was no more complicated than signing up for a Facebook account.

Not only did the apps take much less time than the human advisor to offer similar advice, they came with a big cost advantage. Wealthfront and Betterment manage your first $10,000 for free. After that, they charge an annual fee equal to 0.25% of your investments.

One other benefit: You can start an account with either service by investing just $500, which is significantly less than what traditional financial advisors typically require.

You won't be surprised to hear that I told the human advisor to take a hike.

I have a feeling that a lot more people are going to be hiring robo-advisors in the future. 

We're already seeing computers taking on jobs that used to be reserved for humans. Not only are they doing it credibly, but people are becoming increasingly comfortable with computers doing those roles. We've seen it with automated Instagram feeds and curated articles in Apple News, and we're starting to see it with self-driving cars.

Now software can manage your financial future, and, in many cases, can do it just as well as a human, but for a lot less. That could open financial advice to a lot more people.

Historically, hiring a financial advisor has been limited to those with a lot of disposable income. For all the talk about the stock market reaching record highs and corporations making more money than ever, it can still be tough for the average Americans to know how to invest their money wisely so they can ride the current economic boom.

Robo-advisors aren't the perfect solution; there are still many things human advisors can do better. But such apps promise to make it easier and cheaper for regular people to get help with investing. 

"When I started the company, it was with the intent of social good," Wealthfront's cofounder and CEO Andy Rachleff told me an interview. "I wanted to democratize access to financial advice."

A lot of what human advisors do are routine tasks like rebalancing portfolios, Rachleff said. But humans only have the capacity to manage a couple hundred accounts at a time.

By contrast, there's literally no limit to how many accounts automated services like Wealthfront can manage. And since most of the industry's software is based on the same open-sourced investing algorithms, all companies like Rachleff's really need to do is just add a nice user interface on top. 

All this may sound too good to be true. And for some people, it might be.

My financial situation is pretty simple. I don't own property, I'm single, and I don't have kids. As my life gets more complex and my financial goals change, it might make sense for me to use a human financial advisor instead. 

Robo-advisors are great for people like me who want to dip their toe into investing, said Roger Ma, a certified financial planner at Life Laid Out. But human advisors are often worth the cost when you have questions that software may not be so good at answering. If you're trying to figure out how much you can afford to spend on a house or the best way to donate money in support of Hurricane Harvey disaster victims, you may be better off consulting a human.

"The bigger thing where I see people come to financial planners is when they have milestone events like getting engaged, having a kid, or buying a house," Ma said. "Betterment and Wealthfront can help you save and invest for that, but maybe not help you plan for that."

That distinction, though, may not last. Wealthfront, for example, is already offering planning advice.

If you link your various financial accounts — retirement, credit card, savings — to its service, it can track your spending and saving habits and automatically create a plan for you to meet your goals.

It can also chart out where it thinks you'll be in the future, financially speaking, when you're ready to do something like buy a house or retire. It might not be as personalized and responsive as a human, but I can see it getting to that point one day.

Because while the software is pretty smart today, it's only going to get smarter.

SEE ALSO: The technology that wants to replace your smartphone is going to be everywhere in a few weeks

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Lately, there’s been a ton of energy put into to declaring (or defending) the superiority of a particular sales funnel / cycle / journey / [descriptor of choice]. In the rush to have one’s point of view heralded as “the definitive model,” we’re overlooking the basics.

All these words and images are trying to do is capture the process tribal members go through to arrive at the “best” decision. And therein lies the crux of the problem. In the chase to define the process, we’re forgetting the most important core principle:

A Confused Mind Always Says “No.”

Regardless of which camp you sit in, the biggest challenge we face as marketers is keeping things simple and easy to understand. Whether we’re communicating internally to explain our strategic approach or the benefits of a product to customers, simplicity is key.

And while our various tribes (aka “buyer personas”) may seem to have unique journeys for deciding what solution will best solve their problem / need / desire, they face overwhelming odds at being able to make that choice easily. Why? Think about it. Not only is there an overabundance of solution choices, there’s this deluge of information they have to wade through to make that choice.

We’ve all been programmed into thinking more choices and more information is better — but is that really true? Because the more choices, and the more information, the more opportunity there is for our buyer personas to become confused.

Whenever we go into “analysis paralysis,” we click and go away. That’s not good for our businesses.

More Choice = Higher Expectations

Just to complicate things even more, the more product/service options a buyer persona can choose from, the greater her expectations about her experience with her chosen brand. So even if you successfully get someone through your funnel and she’s committed to buying a product or service from you, her expectations are now as high as the process was confusing, convoluted, and long, for her.

Watch Barry Schwarz at TED talking about the Paradox of Choice:

“Right” vs. “Wrong” Choices

As marketers, we’re tasked with helping prospective buyers make the “right” decision — with the implicit assumption that the “right” decision is to buy whatever it is we’re selling.

Yet as Barry points out, when a prospect is faced with lots of options, and has done all this research to determine the right one, the landmine is her high expectations — thus making it way easier for your brand to fail. It’s so much easier for her to experience buyer’s remorse, to keep second-guessing herself, and never feel like she’s truly satisfied than it is to sort through the plethora of available options.

Which in turn, directly impacts her next buying decision.

What Can You Do to Fix This?

1. Clearly position your solutions (brands). Help the prospect to distinguish your brand within the sea of sameness.

2. Make her care about your brand. Give her a compelling, irresistible reason to fall in love. Because once she does, saying “yes” comes easy and heaven help the person who tries to dissuade her from marrying the love of her life.

3. Simplify her decision journey as much as you can. Help her get from anxiety to security as quickly as possible, with as little fuss as possible. Don’t FUD (fear-uncertainty-doubt) her. Keep communication clear, sincere, and positive.

It’s my belief (and I’m sure I’ll piss off a lot of people off with this, but what else is new), that if we, as marketers, did our jobs and clearly positioned our brands, we’d make our clients more profitable and prospective buyers much happier.

Analysis Paralysis

We’d also perhaps not need such complex, over-described funnels, complicated marketing processes, and tons of content. I mean seriously, two hundred years ago, there wasn’t much choice around clothing, was there? You either made it yourself, went to a tailor or seamstress, or went naked.

Most people didn’t need much in the way of clothing back then — they needed four sets of clothes — one for winter, one for summer, one for work, and one for Sunday or special occasions. Fashion, as such, was not the widespread phenomenon it is today.

It took inventing the power loom, sewing machines, paper sewing patterns, automobiles, and the movies to spread the notion of “dressing fashionably” and needing more than the basics. Looms provided ready-made cloth, sewing machines and patterns meant ready-made clothing could be cheaply produced en masse, cars meant you could travel more easily, see more people, spend more time away from home. Along with local movie houses, they created the desire for you to want to dress to impress or mimic your favorite movie idol.

Enter Aaron Montgomery Ward who in 1872 created the first mail order catalog in the U.S. where you could order ready-made clothing. Suddenly, you had choices in shirts, pants, skirts, dresses, shoes, hats, gloves. Maybe only four or five initially, but heavens! Four or five was an amazing selection when compared to what your local tailor/seamstress could offer you. Or what you could make yourself.

Creating a clear positioning was much easier then because there weren’t as many choices as today. But as time has passed, and choices have exploded, positioning has become a fine art mixed with lots of science.

More Choices Means Positioning is Job #1

What does all this have to do with your funnel / journey / lifecycle? Everything.

Because underlying all of this is the psychological process every human being goes through to make a decision. When combined with the complexity of your market, and the choices available, it’s why working with a brand expert can help your company determine its most effective positioning, faster.

Pixaline / Pixabay

As a B2B Marketing consultant, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is “how can I really know what my customers care about?”

And, my answer is always the same — please do your research.

If there’s one thing that has always confused me, it’s why businesses choose to skip doing market research. Maybe they find the task too time-consuming, or perhaps they think they already have all the answers. But this is a recipe for failure.

According to surveys, only 41% of marketers even include market research in their budgets. Is it any wonder then that 58% of deals end in ‘no decision’? Or that only 30% of marketers claim to be “very effective” at content marketing?

Lack of proper research not only turns out to be a costly mistake (a whopping $958 million is wasted on ineffective marketing every year) but also cripples a company’s growth and success. I’ve covered four major risks associated with not doing your research in one of my previous posts. In this article, we’ll look at the brighter side of doing market research and how to get there.

Advantages of Doing Customer Research

Research doesn’t have to be a complicated, time-consuming and expensive process as many fear it is. And if you get it right, the upside is huge. Here are some of the key benefits your business experiences when you plan your processes based on thorough research.

Better reputation and more trust from prospective buyers.

Today, it’s not easy to gain the trust of your prospects. And if you fail to do so, you can be sure of one thing — sooner or later you’ll be pushed into obscurity by businesses that have earned that trust.

A company’s thought leadership has a tremendous influence on how customers perceive them. A recent survey reveals that 63% of business decision makers consider thought leadership as a critical factor in their vetting process.

But how do you ensure that your thought leadership helps build trust and reputation? 79% of CXOs believe that the most effective thought leadership is the one that addresses the issues they would be interested in. That’s where customer research comes in handy.

Done right, customer research equips you with the knowledge of what your buyers are interested in and what they really care about. This lays out a solid foundation for building your thought leadership strategy.

Decrease in losing to competitors or ‘no decision’.

While no one likes to losing out to competitors, ‘no decisions’ are oftentimes more frustrating. No decisions are the biggest dark spots in your sales. They are a huge waste of time, energy, resources, and money; plus, you are left in the lurch about what you could have done better to win the deal. The good news is, you can significantly reduce your no decision rate by investing more time into researching your customer’s purchase behaviors and preferences across every touch point, throughout the buying lifecycle. CSO Insights shows that companies with a thorough understanding of their customer’s “buying process” have experienced a 6.9% drop in their no decision rate.

Maximizing your marketing budgets.

When you know what your customers need to make a decision, you can focus all of your resources on producing effective content that resonates and helps move the sale forward. To that end, you have to gain a deeper understanding of where your potential customers place their trust, the size of the market for your product or service, and the cost of creating and disseminating the right content. Spend time to research the market to determine what type of communication your target audience is most receptive to and what it would cost to reach them in a way that will move the needle in sales.

Customer Research That Makes a Difference: Where to Start?

Now that you know how critical it is to get to know your customers, let’s talk about the methods you should be using to gather customer intelligence. We’ll split the method into two categories — secondary research and primary research.

Secondary Research – also called “Desk Research”

Secondary research is the collection of existing data and reports, and is where you should start your research.

3rd party Data.
Start by seeing what’s already out there. This includes 3rd party reports, trends and studies. Some of them are free, some of them are not. Many organizations we work with subscribe to analyst reports and databases that are produced by reputable firms. These can be a great place to start because the information is usually higher quality and validated from a reputable “expert”. For example, Gartner, Forrester and IDC are all good sources in the IT industry. Hoovers is also a great source for both industry and company-level information.

Internet Research.
General internet searches can also be insightful. Think of different ways that your customers may be asking questions related to your product category. “What is a [product]?” “What are the benefits of [product]?” “What’s the difference between x and y solution?” – move the words around in the sentence and see the results. But don’t stop at the first page of your Google search results. Go to page 2 or 3, as you may find unique or helpful information there. It will also give you an insight into what words and phrases resonate with customers.

Quora
Quora, a crowd-sourced Q&A platform — is another great resource where you can see what questions are being asked about your topic and the specific “words” that people are using to ask those questions. (This can also be considered Primary Research if you ask your own question).

Primary Research – also called “Field Research”

Primary research is the collection of new data and information, and can come in many shapes and sizes.

Marketing and Sales data.
Looking at your own marketing and sales data can be useful to identify sales patterns, trends related to your products, web interactions, online engagement, customer service complaints, etc. If you are not currently collecting this type of data, it can be a great, low-cost place to start.

1:1 Conversations.
These can be formal or informal. For example, holding a focus group with a moderator and a set of pre-identified interview questions would be a formal collection approach. Personal interviews with an unstructured list questions would be a more casual and informal approach.

How frequently is your marketing team engaging in one on one conversations with your customers? Does your company attend tradeshows, sponsor events or seminars? This is a great opportunity to speak with your customers and prospects directly. But this is also an area that is often neglected. Too many times, I’ve seen marketers miss the opportunity to engage with customers because they aren’t sure how to approach the customer with the right questions. Or worse, they are unprepared to listen, a skill that is completely underutilized in business today.

Here’s a short sample list of questions you should focus on asking your customers to better understand their needs. Note – your questions should be open-ended to prompt the

• What are the biggest challenges you’re facing right now?
• Where are your biggest opportunities?
• Who do you view as our biggest competitor? Why?
• If you had to divert all of your resources to one project, what would it be?
• Who is generally involved in decisions related to [our product]? How has the buying process changed over the last couple of years?
• How does our [product/ company] measure up?

Online Surveys.
Do you conduct surveys? This is another easy and cost effective way to gather information from your customers. It can be especially helpful when you are trying to validate new marketing messages or product ideas and content themes or topics that customers may find valuable.

Win-Loss Analysis.
Reviewing every sale — whether lost or won — is a great way to know what you may be doing right and what needs to change. To understand why the customer chose (or didn’t choose) your solution, make it a habit to collect valuable customer data and document the critical aspects of every sale to piece together a complete picture of what makes your customers do business with you. Knowing what makes your business tick can be a great way to replicate your wins.

Commissioned Research.

3^rd party research companies exist for a reason. The fact is, customers may not tell you the entire truth when asked directly. They may feel uncomfortable sharing negative feedback, and thus, may tell you only what they think you want to hear. Depending on the type of data you are seeking, consider outsourcing your customer interviews to a neutral 3^rd party.

In this day and age of shifting loyalties, it’s difficult to win and retain customers if you fail to provide them with a stellar — and consistent — service. In order to do that, you have to know what your buyers really want.

* This topic is covered in depth in my new marketing book, Value-ology: Aligning sales and marketing to shape and deliver profitable customer value propositions.

stevepb / Pixabay

Marketing is often referred to as the heart of a thriving business, and as an agency, that’s just the way you want to be thought of. Your team is responsible for driving awareness and leads to take your client’s business to the next level. Your digital marketing agency makes business happen for your clients. The truth is, even when a company has an amazing product, their business will likely begin to falter without a successful marketing team supporting them.

The challenge for marketing agencies has always been finding a way to decisively prove the value of their efforts and demonstrate that in client reports. By nature, marketing activities are difficult to track. Some activities, such as branding, public relations, and graphic design will never provide a direct link to revenue, yet they are essential to building a brand.

On the other hand, marketing tactics like lead generation, sales promotions, and targeted advertising definitively drive revenue. Although most companies agree with this point, allocating sales wins to specific marketing campaigns and documenting the ROI is often still a challenge.

Fortunately, Business Intelligence (BI) tools can help bring clarity to this challenge. BI tools provide value, structure and insight to the plethora of data available within disparate company systems. The beauty of these tools is their ability to pull in information from multiple sources and automatically consolidate it into a logical, understandable format from which your marketing team can make educated decisions and guide the client to the best next steps.

Access to that kind of consolidated marketing metrics can help you identify potentially drastic changes to specific marketing campaigns that need to be done, and sometimes to overall strategic marketing plans. Locating and reporting marketing metrics is greatly simplified with BI tools and can provide incredible insights that are otherwise difficult to gain.

Once you connect all of the data sources and see the reality of your results from a data-driven viewpoint, you’ll be surprised how much you learn, how quickly you’ll recognize when it’s time to adjust strategy and tactics, and much more clearly your team is able to prove value and ROI with your clients.

With Business Intelligence implementations now simpler and less expensive than ever, digital marketing agencies can provide quantifiable results that demonstrate the value of marketing initiatives at the campaign level. BI software enables you to position your agency as a highly effective, trusted business partner contributing to your clients’ bottom line.

That means you move from an ‘expense’ column on the budget to a ‘revenue generating’ line item. By bringing in data from multiple marketing applications and sales systems, you can create standard reports for all campaign metrics and KPIs with just a few clicks.

Let’s look at a few examples.

3 Key Marketing Dashboards to Track:

• eCommerce KPI Dashboard – Track revenue streams, customer profile data, geographic location, and online behavior.
• Google Analytics Dashboard – Uncover trends in pageviews, bounce rates, exit rates, best/worst pages, page views, and more – all refreshed automatically.
• Facebook Performance Dashboard – View total likes and follows for your Facebook page, learn demographic data, and compare results between paid vs. organic impressions.

These are just a few examples of the pre-created digital marketing dashboards available. In addition, you can create your own. Simply determine the critical indicators that matter most to your clients and set up customized marketing dashboards to reflect that information.

Every SaaS company pours mountains of resources into building a sales team, creating efficient sales processes, and optimizing sales emails.

That’s because the most direct way to impact your revenues is by making sure your sales processes are as tight as possible.

But, how can you be sure you use the most effective methods to follow up with leads and close more deals?

Maybe we can help.

In partnership with PersistIQ, we analyzed the complete sales cadences of 281 SaaS companies, from intro to break-up. That included signing up for a whole heap of free trials, and then collecting over 1,000 emails and voicemail transcriptions.

If you want to get proven insights from some of the world’s best SaaS sales teams, build your ideal sales sequence and learn to write emails that close deals, then check out Inside SaaS Sales.

Inside SaaS Sales is a microsite we launched that collects and organizes every single piece of sales communication we received. It’s all there for you to browse through, swipe, and analyze.

With such a lot of data, it’d be silly not to study it to find out the key trends and share that knowledge with you. So, keep reading for our full analysis of the data!

Here are our key findings:

Key data from our sales cycles study:

• Companies follow up for 9 days before stopping contact
• Companies send one email per day until the end of the cycle
• 65% of companies hand you over to an automated marketing campaign
• Most SaaS companies have two sales contacts per lead
• 74% of companies don’t leave voicemails
• If a company leaves voicemails, the sales cycle length is usually 160% longer
• 7% of emails have a false ‘re:’ in the subject line
• 9% of companies use webinars as a sales tactic
• The average marketing drip campaign contains 3 emails
• MailChimp is the most common email marketing software, used by 49% of the sample

What does an average sales cadence look like?

On average, sales teams will follow up with a lead for 9 days before giving up, and send one email every day. That’s around 2 business weeks of daily contact.

While 25% of companies sent only one email before giving up, some companies like Epicor were much more persistent:

Read the full cadence

Companies like Epicor who left regular voicemails have sales cadences 160% longer on average, presumably because they take a more ‘high-touch’ approach with less automation.

For 74% of companies, phone calls aren’t even part of the process, making it possible for these companies to fully automate the lead nurturing process and save time by not following up manually with leads that don’t respond.

37% of companies made only one touchpoint (email or voicemail) upon sign-up, while 40% made between 3 and 10. The most persistent companies made up only 23% of the set, sending anywhere between 11 and 36 emails and voicemails in a month.

Email and voicemails are sent in sequence

A common pattern we found was the trend of sending an email and then leaving a voicemail soon after asking if the lead has seen it.

Making reference to an email or some other communication gives the salesperson a better reason to call. HubSpot calls this ‘opening with context’ in their guide to writing sales emails. They recommend this as a winning strategy, and give the example of a salesperson making a call to a lead right after emailing with reference to the email they just sent.

Communication with context automatically feels more genuine and friendly than pushy repetition with the same messaging.

53% of the sales cycle is automated

Manually sending emails allows you to add more personalization that could help to persuade, but can be very inefficient at scale. For that reason, 65% of companies hand leads off to an automated marketing campaign and 39% of companies send only automated emails.

Overall, just under half of the total communications were from a human, with 53% of emails being automated. This is because almost two thirds of companies subscribe you to their marketing drip campaigns when you sign up for a demo or a free trial. These campaigns can be used to invite the lead to webinars and send helpful resources as they progress through their trial.

For example, Slack’s fully automated sequence consists of just 5 emails, and each of them push the signup towards what Slack has detected to be the most common factors for retention:

Alternatively, some companies like Salesforce combine automated user onboarding emails with attempts to reach the lead via manual email:

In this post, Groove breaks down their automated onboarding sequence, which is presumably something that runs alongside their manual sales communications.

Groove CEO Alex Turnbull explains, “Once someone signs up for a free trial, we send them an entirely new drip, with the goal of helping them get as much value from Groove as possible, and ultimately becoming a paying customer.”

This is Groove’s workflow for automated free trial signup emails:

You can see this same pattern in the cadences of Intacct (here), BigCommerce (here), and AppDynamics (here). In our study, we found that the average length of an automated campaign is 3 emails.

54% of contacts are sales or business development staff

Collecting sales emails doesn’t just give you information on the content and frequency, it also provides insight into the number of people involved in the process of following up with one lead, and those people’s job title and role.

We found that on average, sales teams assign two contacts to a lead. Predictably, the majority of the first points of contact have ‘sales’ in their job titles. However, for smaller companies it’s not uncommon for the CEO to reach out (or at least sign off on part of an automated sales follow-up campaign).

MailChimp is used by 49% of SaaS companies

Almost two thirds of companies in this study use some level of marketing automation in their sales processes, and the tools they used varied wildly. MailChimp is the go-to marketing automation tool for 48% of the companies, but the prevalence of HubSpot and Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud gives us an extra insight into which CRMs SaaS companies are likely using, also.

Sales communication is short, direct, and in context

Including signatures, the average word count of a sales email is 129 words. Since all leads are presumably busy, sales communication is best kept brief, direct, and with context. Here’s an example from Bamboo HR:

The email also doesn’t assume the lead has been following the content so far, and drops another link to their demo call to action in the P.S.

Words and phrases used in sales emails and voicemails

The 5 most common words in sales email subject lines also prove how sales communication is most often done directly and with context:

• Your
• Re:
• Demo
• Request
• Trial

The 5 most common phrases in sales email subject lines:

• Follow up
• Demo request
• Thanks for your interest
• Welcome to
• Free trial

The most common phrases in voicemails:

• Give me a call back
• My number is
• The reason I’m calling is
• Feel free to
• I saw that

7% of emails used a false ‘re:’

A ‘re:’ is often used to make the recipient believe they’re receiving something they’ve already replied to. Since, in this study, we didn’t send any replies, all ‘re:’s are false.

Litmus describes this technique as one that improves open rates while frustrating readers:

“Making an email appear like it was being forwarded or part of an ongoing conversation thread hides the commercial nature of the message and makes an email look like it was coming from a trusted source—a colleague or a friend, for example. Making subscribers believe a message is coming from someone you have already emailed will likely lead to higher open rates—driven by people like me, who think there’s an important message from a colleague in their inbox. I was frustrated with this trick, hit unsubscribe, and forever banned this brand from my inbox.”

9% of SaaS companies use webinars as part of their sales process

As Crowdcast CEO Cy Hossain said in his blog post on Referral SaaSquatch, “If you’ve got a big-ticket item to sell, webinars are the way to go.”

And it’s true. The SaaS companies in this study serve big and small companies alike, but the enterprise B2B tools are the ones that use mostly webinars. This includes Datanyze (costs several thousand dollars per year at least), Apprenda (doesn’t show pricing on the site), and Cloudability (enterprise-targeted).

Webinars are both a way to educate leads on why they need your product, and a way to show them how to use it. Reportedly, webinars also get a good engagement rate: marketer Jeff Molander writes that 94% of his webinar attendants stay until the end, and his most successful webinar had a close rate of 29%.

A study by ReadyTalk found that 50% of registrants end up attending webinars, and that the average webinar had around 260 registrants. The engaging format and high conversion rates make webinars the 2nd best content for ROI.

Methodology

Using the details of a fictional Vodafone employee, we signed up to SaaS companies from the Montclare SaaS 250, and the top startups on AngelList. While no follow-up effort from our side was made, we tracked and archived all voicemail and email activity to build a set of over 2,000 data points.

To collect the emails, we connected Gmail up to Google Sheets via Zapier, and fed each part of the email (from address, subject line, body text, etc.) into its own column. The voicemails were captured and transcribed by Grasshopper, which emailed computer-generated transcriptions to the same address.

We tided and formatted the data in Google Sheets, TextWrangler (for lots of grep searches!), and Airtable.

Conclusion

Since the analyzed SaaS companies are among the world’s most successful, the way they nurture leads and run their sales cycles could be considered best practice. Here are the best practices you can extract from this study:

• Follow up for at least 9 days
• Send one sales email per day
• Add the lead to your onboarding drip campaign
• Use at least 3 emails in your drip campaign
• Use webinars to show leads the benefits of your SaaS and to close deals
• Send emails and voicemails in sequence
• Keep sales emails brief and direct, and send them in context of something the lead has (or hasn’t) done
• Keep marketing emails brief with a clear call to action
• When leaving voicemails, ask the lead to call you back or reply to your last email

The welcome email is the most important email brands can send to new subscribers.

Yes, even more important than all the broadcast, targeted and triggered messages combined.

The welcome email is your best shot at converting new subscribers into customers — and longtime readers.

A well-designed welcome email hits these three notes:

• Provide subscribers with the value proposition you promised during the signup process (e.g. a 15% discount).
• Prompt subscribers to take the next steps in their journey, whether that’s creating an account, completing a download, starting a purchase or whatever your strategic goals are.
• Build engagement right away. Why wait to get the party started?

But not just any welcome email will do.

At this point, you might be thinking, “You don’t need to sell me on welcome emails. My ESP sends them out automatically as soon as subscribers confirm their email addresses. I’m covered, right?”

Probably not.

It’s true that a default welcome email is better than none. (We’re looking at you, MailChimp users.) But you can expect better results from a welcome email that is strategically designed with the look and voice of your brand, with content that tackles the three points listed above.

After all, that’s true email marketing.

Speaking of MailChimp, in the Email Gallery below you will see how two BigCommerce customers improved on MailChimp’s serviceable but ho-hum welcome email format. Let’s dive in!

More than half of brands are missing out

Statistics on how many brands send welcome letters vary. Most hover a few points above or below 50%:

• A 2015 Salesforce benchmark study found 42% of brands send welcome emails. Among those that do, 72% rate them as highly effective.
• Econsultancy’s 2017 survey of UK and U.S. marketers found 44% sent welcome emails – surprisingly, down 2% points from 46% in 2016.
• Among Internet Retailer’s top 100 ecommerce websites, 87% send welcome emails, and 49% percent of those brands send more than one.

It’s also worth noting that 3 out of 4 email subscribers expect to see a welcome email after subscribing.

Be there for them!

Welcome emails are a big deal

These stats (all averages) are from BigCommerce partner Soundest, showing what welcome emails can deliver:

• 45.7% open rate (compared to 18.8% on promo emails)
• 9.7% click rate (compared to 3.8% on promo emails)
• 1% conversion rate (compared to 0.17% on promo emails)
• 61 cents revenue per email (compared to 10 cents on promo emails). Revenue per email can go up to $3.36 on optimized emails.

Given the stats we’ve seen so far, I hope we can all agree that sending a welcome email is a no-brainer. In the next section you’ll find some tips and tricks to help you design a great welcome email and start making money for your brand via more loyal customers.

6 easy ways to optimize your welcome email

Follow these tips to add value to your emails and prompt subscribers to start engaging with you.

1. Send your welcome email ASAP

Real-time welcome emails drive up to 10X better results than messages batched and sent one day or even a few hours later.

Start communicating with your subscribers while you’re still top-of-mind.

Here’s an example from BombTech Golf.

1. You land on their site
2. They push you to sign up via an email to get an immediate discount (that you are encouraged to use in 60 minutes or less –– GENIUS)
3. Then you get an immediate welcome email (with an additional ad on the side).

Check it out. These guys have all their Ts crossed (Get it?).

2. Include branded imagery

No disrespect to our IT colleagues, but they aren’t marketers. Default emails just state the obvious:

• “Your subscription is confirmed.”
• “You successfully created an account.”

By the way: Those are confirmation emails, not welcome emails. If that’s what you send to new subscribers, you’re not sending welcome emails.

People connect with other people, so your message should sound like one human being speaking to another. That’s what moves subscribers to engage with your brand (and, ultimately, convert).

Make sure your welcome email template plays nicely with your other email templates. And don’t forget to include imagery that is aligned with your website –– this helps reinforce your brand.

Here’s a great example from Tommy John. Note –– this is a WELCOME email. Not a subscription confirmed email.

3. Ask the subscriber to do something

It doesn’t have to be a big ask. In fact, it shouldn’t be. You don’t want to scare anybody off by asking them to fill out a preference form with more questions than a job application.

Invite subscribers to take the next step with you.

That might mean checking out your products or completing a low-hurdle request, such as answering a one-to-two-question survey (that will give you data you can use for segmentation and targeting).

The CTA should be totally on brand. We love jeweler Judith Bright’s call to action, in a gold-colored button: “Go Get Yourself Some Jewelry!” Irresistible.

4. Track email behavior right away to ward off inactivity

Here’s how you keep subscribers from morphing into Zombies: Don’t wait months or years before putting them into a reactivation program.

Subscriber interest can wane within days or weeks.

Segment your new subscribers, and see who’s opening and clicking and who isn’t.

Resend the welcome email to anyone that didn’t open or click your first few emails –– or send a follow-up message asking if they’re having problems with the email or site.

5. Rename your welcome email to reflect the outcome you want

Secretly, you want your welcome email to do more than welcome subscribers. It should prompt them to take actions that will increase their value to you, such as buying for the first time or creating an account.

This means your welcome email could become a “first-purchase” email, or an “upgrade” email.

It doesn’t lessen the value of saying “Welcome to our fabulous email program.” But it forces you to think strategically about what you want this email to accomplish, and that will guide the email’s design and content.

Here are a few headline examples from the brands we’ve already covered above:

See a trend? This leads us to….

6. Deliver opt-in incentives and rewards in the welcome email

If you offer a discount, freebie or other incentive in exchange for the email address, deliver it in the welcome email.

Sorry for being cynical, but it’s too easy for someone to give you a fake or throwaway email address, grab the incentive from a thank-you page on your site, and split.

Use that page for your IT-approved success notice instead where you notify subscribers to look in their inbox for your special welcome email which will have important information and their goodies.

Here’s how NaturallyCurly.com does it:

6 Sample Welcome Letter Templates from the MailCharts Gallery

The MailCharts email database is full of great welcome letters from BigCommerce clients. You’ll find some of my favorite emails below, along with other hand-picked examples.

Note: You can click on any image to view the full-sized email.

1. Josie Maran Cosmetics

• Subject line: Welcome to Josie Maran Cosmetics!
• Sell the full email.

Why it works

This welcome email hits all the highlights. The subject line greets the new subscriber, and the preheader (“Take 10% Off Your Next Purchase”) reinforces the incentive and CTA inside the email.

The copy states the company’s values and competitive differences, and it has an arresting image. Plus, it sends the subscriber back to the site with the 10% discount and clear CTA button.

Want to see the difference between a welcome email and a confirmation email? Here’s the first message Josie Maran Cosmetics sent (this is a confirmation email):

• Subject line: Thanks for Registering at Josie Maran Cosmetics
• See the full email.

2. CamelBak

• Subject line: Welcome to CamelBak!
• See the full email.

Why it works

A welcome email from this kind of company seems to be begging for some gorgeous product and scenery images. But we’re calling it to your attention because we love how CamelBak uses the preheader to sell the newsletter’s value proposition: “Our newsletter is full of training tips and gear previews.”

Inside the email you’ll find a clear call to action: “Visit CamelBak.com.” If you have to compromise with IT to create a lightweight message, this could be it.

3. Kelty

• Subject line: Welcome to Kelty
• See the full email.

Why it works

The images feature people using the products in ways that subscribers understand and may even aspire to. Maybe you can’t climb Kilimanjaro, but you can hike up a hill and hang out with your buddies in comfort.

We also like how the email links to the blog at the end, for people who aren’t ready to shop.

4. Iglu Ski

• Subject line: Welcome to Iglu Ski
• Sell the full email.

Why it works

Here’s an action-oriented welcome message!

It spends a little time greeting newbies and then gets right down to business, combining great images with links to the key locations on the website. We also like including email and phone contacts, too.

5. Four in the Bed

• Subject line: Four in the Bed Online Customers: Subscription Confirmed
• See the full email.

Why it works

We like how Four in the Bed customized the standard MailChimp welcome email format with their own logo, copy that reflects the brand voice and value and incentive delivery.

Note: One issue we have with MailChimp’s template is how prominent the unsubscribe button is. If you use MailChimp, put your call to action in a button that’s more prominent than the unsubscribe button.

6. Musto

• Subject line: Your Welcome Gift Awaits
• See the full email.

Why it works

This is a triple-duty welcome email.

The socko subject line kicks it off (not just “Welcome to …”). The gift code is easy to remember, which reduces shopping friction. The email aims to build community, not just mentioning “community” in the copy but also showing most faces in the images looking directly at the recipient. That’s welcoming!

Over to you

After you tune up your welcome email using the tips and examples I shared here, keep the momentum going. Think about taking your welcome email program up one more notch. Expand it to a full onboarding series –– a triggered series of emails, each with a unique purpose.

All businesses want to believe that the quality of their products and services will keep them out of the rat race on price, but the reality is quite different.

Pricing does not occur in a vacuum, so instead of avoiding price competition, the best harm reduction plan is to safeguard margins.  

Read more...

When you think of impressive public speakers like Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, or Gary Vaynerchuk, one thing sticks out: Their passion for their topic.

That excitement is infectious and inspiring. It’s also the best way to attract and maintain audience attention.

Whether you want to expand your public speaking resume, or just get better at presenting in front of clients, these tips can help you meet your goals.

But remember, even if you master all 17, the most important thing you can do is to get fired up about your topic. Find an angle that excites you, and the rest will come.

17 Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

1) Define Your End Goal

The first thing to do when preparing a speech is to define your end goal. What do you want the audience to do after they leave the room? What information should they walk away with?

Once you’ve defined what you want your audience to take away, build your talking points around supporting that goal. This lends itself to a more focused and actionable speech that provides real value to your audience.

For example, let’s say a big conference has invited you to speak about how small businesses can grow their sales organizations. Start by nailing down your objective. If it’s getting the audience to hire you as a sales consultant, build your speaking topic around five things preventing small sales organizations from scaling.

2) Be a Giver, Not a Taker

Renowned speaker Simon Sinek says, “We are highly social animals. Even at a distance onstage, we can tell if you’re a giver or a taker, and people are more likely to trust a giver -- a speaker that gives them value, that teaches them something new, that inspires them -- than a taker.”

Once you’ve defined your end goal, build a presentation that offers real value to your audience, regardless of whether they pursue your product or service.

If you immediately and doggedly pitch your consulting service throughout your presentation, you’ll probably lose your audience’s trust, and the remainder of your presentation will lose its credibility.

Offer tips and strategies that will be fresh, useful, and insightful for your audience. And make any business pitches subtle and at the end of your presentation.

3) Make Slides an Aid, Not a Crutch

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association recommends using keywords, instead of sentences or paragraphs on your slides. This helps your audience focus on your message. The ASHA also suggest bulleting body copy, using punctuation sparingly, and never using more than eight words per line or eight lines per slide.

Another rule of thumb is to make your font size double the average age of your audience. This means the font for most of your presentations will be between 60 and 80 points.

When it comes to the age-old question “Prezi or PowerPoint?”, a recent Harvard study suggests there is a right answer. Research shows that Prezi’s “focus on meaningful movement” makes it a more effective presentation medium than PowerPoint. So next time you want to impress your audience, give Prezi a try.

4) Practice (But Really, Practice)

Are you already rolling your eyes and skimming past this section? I don’t blame you. But so often, public speakers are under-prepared. Maybe your assistant created your slides and you’ve just scrolled through them a few times. Or maybe you’ve rehearsed your presentation by yourself, but haven’t run it by anyone else.

Make sure you’re practicing your presentation in front of several groups of people. Present to coworkers or to someone who represents your target audience. Ask for honest, critical feedback on the good, the bad, and the ugly of your presentation.

It’s also smart to record yourself during one of your practice runs, so that you can review areas that need work.

5) Eat Well & Burn Cortisol

Eating a protein-packed snack before a public speaking engagement boosts your energy, focus, and mood. But what if there were a way to decrease stress too?

Well, there is. Cortisol, also known as the "stress hormone," can interfere with your memory and limit your ability to process complex information. This can make it difficult to read your audience and react in the moment.

To decrease your cortisol levels, exercise one to three hours before you speak. You’ll feel less stressed and your audience will benefit from your focus.

6) Meet Audience Members First

It’s always a good idea to meet a few of your audience members before taking the stage.

This is a great way to calm pre-presentation jitters, not to mention network and recruit a few last-minute audience members into your meeting or session. Bonus points if you find a way to incorporate those conversations into your speech.

To illustrate, suppose you talked with Laura from XYZ Sales at the coffee bar this morning. If Laura shared that sales recruitment is a big roadblock to scaling their sales team, include this anecdote in your presentation, along with tips on how you would approach the situation.

7) Give Yourself Time to Acclimate

Many speakers begin talking immediately after being introduced or walking onstage. Instead, try approaching the stage in silence. This gives you time to gather your thoughts, take a deep breath, and get used to being in front of the audience.

It gives your audience the chance to get used to you as well. If they’re checking email or answering some last-minute texts, it provides a few buffer moments so they can wrap up. This pause also sets the tone for the rest of your speech, which should be evenly paced, effective, and purposeful.

8) Don’t Open with an Excuse

How many times have you heard a speaker start by saying, “Sorry, I didn’t have much time to prepare,” or “My flight was delayed last night, so I’m a little tired”?

Your audience doesn’t care. Announcing to them that you haven’t prepared or are tired from a long flight won’t change the way your presentation is received or remembered.

Don’t begin your presentation with an excuse. That makes the time about you, when it should be about your audience and how you can provide value to them.

9) Be Conversational

The first 30 seconds of a speaker’s presentation tell you almost everything you need to know about what’s next. That means you probably haven’t made it past introducing yourself before you’ve either lost or gained the attention of your audience.

So how do you make the most of that first few seconds? First, be conversational. Use inflection in your voice and engage in natural, friendly body language. Instead of staying glued to your podium, walk casually back and forth in front of your audience. Gesture with your hands and make eye contact with individual people in front of you.

Second, don’t memorize your content. You should understand the concepts you’re communicating and know the overall structure of your presentation, but don’t recite your speech word for word. You’ll seem rehearsed and less engaging.

10) Rejoice in the First Mistake

I once had an instructor who would openly rejoice when she made her first mistake in front of a large class. She said it took the pressure off for the remainder of her class, so she could simply relax and teach.

While I wouldn’t recommend calling out the first mistake you make in front of your audience -- they likely didn’t even notice -- it is something you can quickly take note of internally.

Don’t beat yourself up about it, feel embarrassed, or let it derail your composure. Simply acknowledge your first mistake and view it as permission to relax and move on with your presentation.

11) Tell Stories & Make It Personal

Think your audience doesn’t care about personal stories? Let me put it this way. They probably care more about the story you just told than the pie chart on the screen behind you.

Your audience is more likely to remember and share the stories you tell than the stats and figures you pack your slides with. Make your presentation personal, and remind them that you’re human.

Check out a few top TED Talks to learn how to flex your storytelling muscles. TED Talks are driven by powerful storytelling -- which is one of the reasons they’re so memorable. Stories also give your audience more context around your topic, heightening their ability to relate and find value in what you have to say. Basically, when in doubt, tell a story.

12) Channel Nervous Energy into Positive Energy

If you’re not excited about your presentation, why would your audience be? One way to channel excitement into your public speaking is to transform nervous energy into positive energy.

Simon Sinek has another great insight here. After watching reporters interview Olympic athletes, he noticed many of the athletes had similar responses when asked if they were nervous before competing. They answered, “No, I was excited.”

Sinek points out that they translated the body’s signals of anxiety or stress -- sweaty palms, neck tension, fast heartbeat -- as excitement. When Sinek’s onstage and notices these same signs, he says out loud to himself, “I’m not nervous, I’m excited!”

13) Speak Slowly & Pause Often

Speaking slowly is hard to do -- especially when you’re giving a presentation. But not only does a slower speed make it easier for your audience to understand, it also makes you seem more composed and thoughtful. Your pacing should feel a little unnatural. Only then have you probably found the right cadence.

Another way to control the pace of your presentation is to routinely pause for between three and five seconds. This length of pause remains conversational, while allowing you to take a breath and refocus before moving forward. As a bonus, it’s just long enough to get people to look up from their smartphones to see why you’ve stopped.

14) Repeat Audience Questions

Whether you’re working a large room or a three-person meeting, try to repeat audience questions. In large settings, it gives everyone a chance to hear what was asked, keeping them engaged with and invested in your answer.

In smaller settings, repeating audience questions gives you an extra few moments to gather your thoughts. More importantly, it ensures that you’ve understood what the question is and are actively listening to the needs of your audience members.

15) Reinforce Key Points

Repeating key points at multiple times throughout your presentation helps your audience retain what’s most important.

A simple technique for doing so? Mention each key point three times. Introduce your main points in the agenda you share at the beginning, speak to each point clearly during your presentation, and close by reviewing and restating your main points.

16) Use Video & GIF Sparingly

I know, I know -- this one is unpopular. GIFs and video can be a great way to break up your presentation and re-engage a drifting audience. But they can also distract listeners from the important points you’re making.

When appropriate, throw in a GIF or video. But make sure it aids in your storytelling, instead of distracting from it. A truly engaging public speaker will be able to present impactfully without gimmicks.

If you’re tempted to add a third GIF to your presentation, take a harder look at the quality of content you’re preparing. Could you illustrate that point better with a thoughtful anecdote or past experience?

17) Always End Early & Say Thanks

Whether your audience gave you five minutes of their attention or an hour, end early and say, “Thank you.” Time is a precious commodity, and they chose to spend a significant portion of it with you.

Be respectful of that time and always end early -- especially if you’re expecting a longer Q&A period. If people have questions, you want to make the most of every second before you lose them to the next session or meeting.

Public speaking is an art, and one that can take years to perfect. By following these tips for effective public speaking, you’ll start to notice benefits immediately. Want to continue your public speaking education? I mentioned Simon Sinek several times during this presentation. Check out his Skillshare class “Presentation Essentials: How to Share Ideas That Inspire Action” for more.

Let me paint a hypothetical (or perhaps very real) scenario.

You want to purchase something on Amazon. You’re excited about this purchase. It’s a new [insert that thing you’ve been dying to get]. You’ve set aside some cash over the past month and are pumped to finally be able to buy.

You go on Amazon and begin researching the different options. You read reviews on each product and find one that seems perfect. It’s got thousands of positive, glowing, over the top reviews.You click “Buy” and eagerly await for your happiness to be delivered.

When your package arrives, you rip it open with the fervor of a kid on Christmas.

It looks right. It feels right.

But there’s one problem.

It’s a terrible product. It breaks quickly. Or it’s poorly constructed. Or it’s just not the same as portrayed in the pictures.

So what gives? What about all those amazing reviews? You trusted those!

Unfortunately, it’s quite possible that they were fake. Yes, in an effort to boost sales, some Amazon sellers will either purchase reviews or offer free products in exchange for an “honest” review. As you can imagine, this deeply skews the rating system on Amazon.

Fortunately for you, Amazon is beginning to take steps to crack down on and even remove fake reviews.

But until all those fake reviews are gone, you need to know how to spot a fake.

Here are 10 ways to spot a false review on Amazon.

#1 – There Are Numerous Reviews Within A Short Time

Typically, it takes quite a while for a product to organically accumulate reviews. After all, only a small number of customers will actually review the product, which means that it should take a number of months for it to build up a significant base of reviews.

If there are flood of reviews (particularly positive ones) within a very short time, it’s a good sign that those are not legitimate reviews.

#2 – They All Contain Similar Photos

If most of the reviews contain similar photos, they’re probably fake. It’s likely that the company asked the reviewers to post a particular type of photo that will best highlight the product.

For example, if you’re looking at an essential oil diffuser and all the photos show it on an end table, that should raise a red flag.

#3 – You Can’t Find The Company Website

If you can’t find a legitimate company behind the product, a warning bell should go off in your head. That may not mean it’s not a legit company, but it should at least push you to do further research.

If they don’t have a website, it probably means that they’re only selling on Amazon. For all you know, it could be a guy shipping these products out of his basement. If that’s the case, it would be surprising if his product had thousands of positive reviews.

If a product has a reputable company behind it, you can know that you have recourse if something goes wrong with the product. You don’t have this assurance if you can’t even find a company website.

#4 – All The Reviews Use Similar Wording

What are the odds of every reviewer saying something like, “This is a great product and I am definitely buying a lot more?” Pretty small, right? You would expect there to be a variety of descriptions within the reviews.

If you notice that all the reviews have a similar flavor, it may be an indicator that the company asked reviewers to use a particular type of language.

#5 – A High Percentage Of The Reviews Are 5 Star

If almost all the reviews are 5 star, you should at least pause. The product may legitimately be of the highest quality, but this may also indicate that they’re fakes. In any normal product, you expect to see a mix high and mid quality reviews. If you don’t find any middle of the road reviews, this should raise a red flag.

After all, with any product, no matter how good, there will be issues. This should come out at least somewhere in the reviews.

#6 – The Reviews Are All Vague

A fair number of the reviews should contain language that is specific to the product, whether that’s how it functions in particular circumstances or the durability. There should be some reviews that are highly technical in nature, left by the type of people who really enjoy getting into the specifications of a product. There should also be reviews that tell how people are using the products.

If most of the reviews contain vague, unclear language, it may be a signal that they’re not legitimate.

#7 – The Reviewer Uses the Same Review Language Repeatedly

When you click on a person’s username, you can actually see all of the reviews they’ve ever left on Amazon. If they’ve left an unusually high number of reviews containing the same or similar language, there’s a good chance that their reviews are being compensated in some way.

A genuine reviewer will leave thoughtful, detailed reviews about the different ways that they’re using the products. A fake reviewer will essentially copy and paste their language across multiple reviews.

#8 – The Review Is Not A “Verified Purchase”

If a customer purchased the product directly from Amazon, it will say “Verified Purchase” under the headline. This means that they didn’t purchase it from the store or some other site and then come review it on Amazon.

If the review isn’t verified, you should probably discount it. You have no way of knowing whether it’s true, and there’s a good chance that it’s false.

#9 – The Review Is 5 Stars And Really Short

If a review is one sentence long and 5 stars, it offers very little value and may be fake. A true 5 star review should contain some detail as to what makes that product worth buying. Whether that’s the durability of the product or the many uses it has, one sentence simply doesn’t cut it.

#10 – Odd Language Is Used

If a product is being sold in the United States for $13 and a reviewer uses the phrase “13.00 USD”, it should be a red flag. A native english speaker would never use that type of language and it may indicate that the seller is buying reviews.

How To Spot Biased Reviews

You will encounter many reviews that aren’t exactly fake, but are highly biased. Fortunately, these can be spotted as well. Here are some simple ways to do that.

Disregard Highly Positive or Negative Reviews On Controversial Products

Some products, particularly books, are going to be controversial. If you see a glowing 5 star or vitriolic 1 star on a controversial product, it’s sign that it was written by a biased reviewer.

Disregard Reviews Not Related To The Product

Unfortunately, many reviews aren’t tied at all to the product. For example, a customer may have misunderstood what he was buying, gotten angry, and left a negative review in retaliation. Or a product may have been delivered late, which can be just as much the fault of the postal service.

Any review that’s not tied directly to the product can be disregarded.

Scrutinize “Vine” Reviews

Amazon has what they call the “Vine” program, which provides free products to top reviewers. There is nothing unethical about this, but the simple truth is that any time someone gets something for free, it will bias their review.

At a minimum, you should read some of that person’s other reviews to get a feel for their free product bias.

A Safe Rule Of Thumb

Generally speaking, you should do several things when looking at products.

• Look at the overall balance of reviews. The best product should have a healthy mix of 5 and 4 star reviews, with some three stars thrown in. Make sure to read the worst reviews to determine why they rated so poorly.
• Read reputable review websites like Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, and PC Mag.
• Watch reviews on YouTube. This can give you a visual feel for what your product will look like and feel like. You can also get some honest reviews.

Conclusion

You’ll never be able to fully avoid fake and biased reviews, but if you do some due diligence you can spare yourself a lot of pain.

Yes, it may take some time, which can be difficult if you’re really wanting to get your product, but it’s worth it. The last thing you want to happen is to waste your money on a terrible product.

Strong PR strategies keep you on course as your business moves ahead. Like a map for an unfamiliar place, a strategy takes the guess work out of your next move. It keeps you focused so you can reach your goals.

But how do you even begin to develop an effective public relations strategy? We’ve got you covered. Read on to learn how to create your own unique and powerful strategy and discover the tools you need to ensure it succeeds.

How to Develop Your Own Successful PR Strategy

The following are several steps involved in crafting an effective public relations strategy.

Define Goals. This is extremely important, but also often overlooked. In order to see whether your strategy is effective, you need to be able to measure the results against objectives. Create your goals according to the SMART model. This means that your goals are:

Specific — Specify your goals and be able to communicate them to others.

Measurable — Use analytics or other programs to see your progress toward the goal.

Actionable — Break down your goal into smaller objectives, with realistic timelines.

Realistic — Establish what you and your team can reasonably do in a set amount of time.

Time-Based — Set a final date for your overall goal, and shorter deadlines for the different stages of your goal.

Determine Your Target Audience. Who are the individuals, groups, and communities who are the key decision-makers of a business? Who will have the power to purchase your product or service? Create detailed buyer personas that will help you specifically target this audience.

Research the behavior of your target audience to add to your buyer personas. What are their buying habits? What publications do they read? What social networks are they on? The answers to these questions will help you tailor your strategy to your target audience.

Create a Key Message. What do you want your audience to remember about your company? This message will shape your content creation and methods going forward. All of your communications should have this key message woven into it — this will create a unified message throughout your various communications platforms.

Outline Key Tactics. This is where your audience research pays off. Choose tactics that will help your message reach your audience. For instance, if your research shows that your target audience reads a certain trade publication, then your tactics should include media relations and press releases that target that trade publication. More of these specific tactics are listed below.

Set a Deadline. Your strategy should not be never-ending. You want to create reasonable deadlines that will help you work toward something — otherwise, you will run out of steam, and your strategy won’t be as effective. Set reasonable deadlines for every stage of your strategy so that you get an accurate picture of its success.

Measure Your Results. How else will you know whether your strategy reaches your previously outlined goals? Use such programs as Google Analytics or AirPR to measure your PR efforts. The results at various stages of your strategy will help you to see areas where you can improve.

So now that you have a basic outline of your PR strategy, let’s fill it in a little. The following are 5 proven PR strategies that you should add to your PR toolbox.

5 PR Strategies That You Need to Use

1. Use Native Advertising

Native advertising is a form of paid media that uses content that naturally fits into its environment. By its very nature, native advertising does not look like advertising — it looks like a regular piece of content, with the goal of exposing a new audience to your brand.

Why do native ads work? People are fed up with traditional advertising. Native ads, on the other hand, are non-promotional. They provide real value to the reader, and that value leaves a mark — creating a bridge of trust between that reader and your brand.

Produce native ads that tell a story. They should never come off salesy or self-promotional. The beauty of native advertising is that it blends seamlessly into its environment. The key: An interesting topic, well-written, that does not look at all out-of-place in the publication. In fact, if it wasn’t for the “Branded Content” signature on it, you would never realize that it was a native ad.

2. Tap Into the Power of Influencers

Influencers are a powerful force in today’s PR landscape. If you don’t use them, you will be left behind. Why? Because today’s audience has been groomed to be distrustful of traditional advertising. So how do today’s buyers decide on a product or service? For the most part, they turn to third parties they trust for recommendations.

This is where influencers come in. They already have a large audience, possibly on social media, who looks to them for advice an guidance on industry matters. If they give their nod of approval to your brand, their followers take that as a green light.

In fact, 80% of marketers who use influencer marketing say that it is successful. Just how successful? Marketers report that for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, they see on average $6.85 in return. When you imagine all the money spent on this, it adds up to a huge return!

How do you choose influencers? There are many influencers to choose from — even from such a niche as B2B. But influencers are not all the same. You want to find someone that fits the needs and goals of your brand. Ask yourself:

• What networks does my target audience use?
• What influencers does my target audience engage with?
• What influencers fit my industry?

Narrow down your list of potential influencers according to your answers. Use such programs as BuzzSumo, Kred, or Traackr to see specific details about influencers — their following, engagement levels, and amount of influence. When you’ve narrowed this list down, you can start the process of reaching out to these influencers.

3. Offer Exclusivity

Competition among traditional media outlets is fierce! And more so today with the constant cutback of staff and resources within these outlets.

A key way to attract these outlets to your story is to offer them an exclusive. Don’t blast out your press release to several outlets in hopes for a bite. If you want to attract a big fish to your story, offer it to them, and only them.

First, find out who within the media outlet you want to target. Remember, each journalist has his or her own beat. Do your research, and only target those whose beat relates to your story. Read their past work, and create a pitch that details why you chose them for this exclusive story. Personal details go a long way in creating a working relationship with a journalist.

4. Humanize Your Brand

Brands today have to contend with internet-savvy audiences and platforms where anything is fair game. All it takes is one upset customer to take to social networks like Youtube or Twitter and air their grievance with a company. This puts organizations under a microscope, and many brands are feeling the heat.

So how can you combat this trend with your PR strategy? Humanize your brand. Create and share core values that define your company, giving it a more human feel. Choose values that represent you well, and that help your target audience relate to you. Make your values authentic — buyers can sniff out fake a mile away.

These values should also seep into your content. Include them in your vision statement, and make sure everyone representing your company embodies these values. All of the content that you create as part of your strategy should demonstrate how your company embraces those values as well.

This way, when an angry customer takes to social media to complain about your company, you will already have built up a trustworthy and credible reputation through your company’s strategy. Such a reputation will help douse the flames of controversy before they grow out of control.

5. Use Your Customer’s Voice

Nothing is more powerful in PR than an actual customer singing your praises. Use those happy customers as your spokespeople. It will carry a lot more weight to hear in their words how your company solved their problem than to have you tout it yourself.

Once you have a good supply of customer testimonials and case studies, think out of the box ways to feature them. You could create interactive videos that use the customer’s own voice and mannerisms. You could also feature the case studies in blog posts and SlideShares. Include snippets of customer testimonials in your marketing materials, or in images that you post to social media.

Your customer’s voice is a valuable asset to your PR strategy, so seek creative ways to maximize that value.

Key Points to Remember…

• Create a strategy with clearly defined goals and tactics that will help you reach your particular audience
• Measure the progress you make toward your goals and readjust when necessary
• Tap into the power of influencers who your target audience already follow attentively
• For a special story, be willing to offer exclusivity to a key traditional media outlet that your audience follows

Wherever you see for the future of your business, your strategy holds the power to get you there. We hope these PR strategies help you to reach your business goals.

Use video to enhance your digital marketing strategy

Days of old fashioned mass ads “spray and pray” approach to advertising are long gone now and what the modern day advertisers need today is more precise targeting. Video is one approach you may not have considered.

Video advertising today is organized more along the lines of a precise laser, rather than of an advertising equivalent of “shotgun” marketing. If the leads are what you are after in your online business, with 61 percent of successful businesses stating that they use video as a marketing tool. The very same tool helps them carve out revenue for themselves, as the research done by Eyeview demonstrated that using video on a landing page alone can increase conversion rates by 80 percent. The future of advertising is here and it offers lucrative propositions for those who can recognize it for what it genuinely is.

Brain as an Additional Conversion Tool

But, let us first quickly go back to the nearest past - back in 2011, a research by Treepodia showed that the conversion rate for buyers who were offered to watch video was dramatically higher across different verticals. Those looking to shop for gifts online were more easily converted to leads by 113 percent, followed by 101 percent for electronic enthusiasts. Even less “traditional” online shoppers, such as those looking for garden products recorded 43 percent higher conversion rates in case they were offered a video on a landing page of their interest.

For the majority of them, the most attractive proposition was the existence of videos (particularly those of explanatory nature), which managed to “charm” 74 percent of users who decided to buy a product immediately after watching them. Before you accuse e-commerce site owners of employing nefarious hypnosis techniques, let us remember that this is primarily an expression of human innate inclination towards visuals as opposed to written material.

This is important not only for selling products constituting the core of your online business, as you equally want your consumers to spread the word about it. Luckily for you, psychology and the human brain’s visual hunger once again offers their help at no marketing agency fees – as many as 39 percent of shoppers are more willing to share the content if it’s a video, reports Psychology Today.

Light on Resources, Heavy on ROI

As if this was not good enough, video advertising more than graciously returns whatever you decide to invest into it. According to the research prepared by Wyzowl, 76 percent of businesses were ready to confirm that, in their experience, video provided great rate of investment. These data easily dispel the notions put forward by those who claim that the costs of video production outweighs its benefits. Video production technology has closely followed diverse trends of IT revolution in general, rendering its tools more readily available for anyone with at least elementary expertise in the field. In addition to it, it is constantly improving and made “lighter” on resources (and, consequently, your budget) by turning everyday tech such as mere phones into solid video production tools.

Nevertheless, even if you lack professional resources to plunge yourself in the business of making sophisticated videos, you have to bear in mind that your beginning can be as humble as possible, as long as you set your bar ever higher afterwards. Provided that you adequately detect what your targeted users exactly need, these statistical data will turn your videos into an equivalent of morning cups of coffee that may taste bad occasionally, yet rarely fail to deliver the goods each day.

Mobilizing Your Conversion

Video advertising profits massively from the expansion of mobile technology which makes it possible for people to watch videos “on the go”. Starting from 2013, mobile video segment has grown by about 233 percent, judging by the number of its viewers. According to trustworthy sources such as Google, mobile users are two times more likely to feel personally connected to video content they watch on their devices, compared to TV viewers or desktop users. Considering that this is the loyal audience that you want to keep in order to ensure their conversion into leads, you’ll be more than happy to learn that their number has been steadily increasing, as the mobile technology expands beyond even the wildest predictions.  At the same time, the majority of mobile and tablet users also make use of multiple devices they play their videos on, despite them being as many as three times more prone to watch videos in general compared to other consumers.

Finally, there is one more important consideration, and that is the love which Google and consequently YouTube give to your videos. According to the statistics, you have 53 times higher chance to rank better in Google searches if your website features a video [Editor's note: this is based on an old Forrester blog article which is misleading and can be disregarded]. You can go even further: with competent SEO optimization and adequate placement of links to your website or products, you online lead conversion rates are bound to skyrocket in an environment that is surely ripe for growth.

Conclusion

Global world of advertising has finally accepted online video as an indispensable component of its unstoppable commercial engine. Its trump cards are in line with a contemporary focus on the needs of a single customer and personalization of the seller’s relationship with him or her. With the advent of mobile technologies and the shift in the average consumer’s approach to the seller’s content, video becomes an effective tool for converting them into stable leads that can, almost too easily, become loyal customers.

Interviewing salespeople is like peeling an onion. It involves peeling away their superficial layers and getting past conditioned responses to learn about their capabilities, traits, cultural fit, and if they will yield quality results. With 50% of sales reps today missing quotas, conducting a successful sales interview is the difference between hiring a top performer

Read More

The post Sales Interview Questions: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Behind every good salesperson, whether they be an Account Executive or a Sales Development Rep, there’s a high-functioning marketing team. Sales reps love being armed with persuasive content, automation software and, of course, a never-ending flow of leads to work.

The post Empowering the SDR: How Marketing Initiatives and Programs Help Reps on the Front Lines of Sales appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

A strong relationship between a salesperson or account executive (AE) and their business development rep (BDR) is crucial for success. Not only will the team be more efficient, motivated, and productive, they’ll also get plenty of learning opportunities.

I’ve performed both roles in the past. Here are the best practices I’ve used over the last 10 years to maximize my success.

1) Understand each other’s goals

Sales professionals who have a target or quota are naturally focused on hitting those metrics. The key is to understand and align both the BDR and AE’s metrics with the factors that make a successful sales process.

If you’re not aligned, you might end up with a BDR who’s trying to pass as many leads as possible to sales reps because their compensation plan hinges on meeting an opportunity creation quota. Of course, then the reps are trying to sell to unqualified leads.

As an individual contributor, you might be unable to really influence the metrics you’re measured on. But you can identify prospect fit, authority, urgency, budget, and timeline -- and become more effective as a team.

With this in mind, we adopted a target account approach. The sales representative defines a list of companies that are an ideal fit, making it easier for the BDR to have good fit leads to call and decreasing the pre-qualification criteria required by the rep. When a meeting is booked, it will have a better chance of closing because it is a good fit.

When each person involved in the sales process understands what drives success, it will stimulate positive team-focused behavior. Setting regular one-on-ones to discuss and analyze the previous period -- what went well and what can be improved -- will set you up for success.

2) Keep each other up-to-date and provide feedback

Using a helpful, educational selling style usually means that the buyer has control. However, this has nothing to do with being clear where you are in a sales process, setting next steps for accountability, and hand-holding the prospect on their buyer’s journey.

Knowing where you are in the sales process and making sure this is shared within the company will not only improve your forecast abilities, it will let your team members see how the opportunity is progressing. Transparency leads to better communication and buy-in from the team, as everyone knows who is doing what and when. If the deal falls through, the AE can provide feedback and clearly define what the BDR can do differently in the future (or vice versa).

There will always be deviations and problems. As a leader, approach those matters as opportunities for learning. Always try to give the critique in a thoughtful and empathetic way. Behave kindly and appropriately even in the tough matters.

3) Explain why something is important

Poor leaders tell others what to do. Better leaders show them how to do. The best leaders explain why to do it. The same principle applies to relationship management. If the other person doesn’t understand the business environment and context you’re working in, explain it to them. The team will work harder if they know why it’s important to your own operations. Without an explanation, it’s hard to get anyone motivated.

For instance, I explained to my team which factors make an opportunity progress from an assessment to a demo. Having this context increased our initial meeting to demo ratio, meaning overall team performance increases.

4) Do things outside of work

Just because you work at the same company and in the same department doesn’t make you a team. In my experience, the most successful teams interact with each other outside of work. That can be a casual activity like going to the gym; for example, at HubSpot we regularly go to the gym and play team sports together.

But it can also be more professional. I’ve started a sales training website with my team member where we provide helpful content and resources for salespeople in the Netherlands.

This enables us to share insights and best practices and generate potential sales opportunities in the future. People really become a team when they love working with each other. The enjoyment and respect you build up for each other is key to success.

Good cooperation begins with aligning and understanding each other. Build on this foundation with transparency and effective communication. Finally, strengthen your relationships by finding opportunities to do things outside of the office. 

Success is not extrinsic.

It’s not measurable.

“Success” can only truly occur internally, because it is based on emotion. At the most basic level, success is your relationship with yourself. Most people are living a lie. They purposefully ignore and distract themselves from what they want deep down for themselves.

Many people want something more for themselves. They have dreams and ambitions. Yet few of these people ever get what they intended.

Being ambitious isn’t enough. Far more important than ambition is commitment.

When you’re committed to something, you will do what is required for the attainment of that thing. You’ll stop wondering and start building. You’ll stop being distracted and start learning. You’ll start connecting. You’ll start failing. You’ll get what you want, rather than have a long list of “ambitions.” You’ll have actual accomplishments that reflect your inner goals and values. Your external environment will reflect your deepest internal views and aims.

If you’re committed to a marriage, you’ll change in whatever ways are necessary for your marriage to thrive. You’ll become what is required to make it work. If you’re committed to your craft, you’ll change and become what is required to do work at the level of your desire. You won’t point to your limitations with a victim mentality. You’ll change your limitations so they stop stopping you.

Only those who are truly committed will become a new and different person in order to live their commitment.
If you’re not willing to change, then you aren’t committed to anything beyond what you currently have. If you don’t believe you can change, then you can’t commit to anything beyond what life randomly throws at you.

The Myth of the “Unchanging” Self

Your life is a reflection of you. If you want to change your life, you have to change yourself. If you want to change the world, you have to be that change.

If you want to become a millionaire, you need to become the kind of person that can do that. If you want healthy relationships, you need to become the kind of person that has healthy relationships.

Interestingly, in western culture we falsely emphasize fixed traits and “personality” types. We believe very strongly in an unalterable “nature” which is uninfluenced and untouched by the environments in which we reside.
We believe something about us is self-contained and exists outside of space and time. This is individualism at its finest, and it leads us to believe in some theoretical and “true” version of ourselves, which cannot and does not change.

The truth is that you are always changing. Your brain and even biology are highly malleable. Your worldview is continually integrating new information. When you change a part of any system, you change the whole. Over time, as you have new experiences, surround yourself with new people, and learn new things, you emerge as a new person.

Yet these changes occur gradually and in real-time, and thus are almost impossible for you to notice.

As you learn new things, your brain literally creates new connections and is reshaped. The brain you will have in a year from now will literally be a different brain than the one you have now. Especially if you consciously reshape how you see and live in the world.

Consequently, when you become fully committed to something, you throw the individualistic myths away. You are part of a dynamic system that is constantly changing.
When you’re committed, you stop justifying mediocrity in the name of authenticity.

You stop lying to yourself about what you want and what you believe in.

You create an environment that facilitates your commitment, because you know that as a person, you take on the form of your environment. The only agency you truly have is to choose the influences that shape you, both internally and externally.

If you’re not committed, you rely on willpower. You remain indecisive. You leave things up to chance.

You leave yourself outs. You never fully decide.

When you’re not committed, you live in a continual state of self-hatred and internal conflict. Over and over and over, you watch yourself consciously behave in ways that oppose your highest ambitions.

Only Those Who Are Committed Succeed

Being ambitious isn’t honorable. Wanting more for your life is a common desire.

But being completely committed to something is not common. It’s rare. It’s rare because commitment requires, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “not less than everything.”

The hardest thing you will give up is the false idea of what you think you are. You have no clue what you are. More importantly, there is no “you” who is fixed and permanent, only the individualistic idea you have of yourself.

This “authentic” self is your worst enemy. It’s the excuse you have for not evolving. It’s your justification for not committing to something bigger and better. It’s the chain around your neck, stopping you from putting yourself into situations that will demand you become a better version of you.

Conclusion

If you’re truly committed to something, you will shape the circumstances which support your commitment. You’ll let go of things you once loved, which contradict the ambitions you truly want.

Unlike the many people who want more for themselves but never truly get it, you’ll evolve. You’ll be and do more than you ever thought possible, because your current self and worldview is extremely limited. And your views, as well as yourself, will change.

Will you succeed?

Will you be honest enough with yourself to evolve?

Or will you continue living a lie? Will you continue pointing to some imaginary version of yourself to which you must be “authentic"?

Call to Action

If you want to focus on the right activities and get results 10x faster than most people, check out my morning checklist.

Click here to get the checklist right now!

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Medium and is republished here with permission.

Chart of the Day: Marketing provide lower quality leads compared to those sourced directly by the sales reps

A Sales and Marketing SLA is important, but as we found out last week 21% of respondents characterize their company's Sales and marketings relationship as either misaligned or 'don't know'.

But how often do marketing teams provide their sales team with quality leads? Not as often as they find their own.

38% of respondents said that leads sources by sales are the top source of sales, 33% say referrals are the top source of sales and only 25% of respondents believe leads sourced by marketing are their top source of sales.

Sales respondents in organizations with an SLA between Marketing and Sales felt differently. Those respondents ranked marketing-sourced leads highest. Thanks to alignment, which sets clear expectations on the types of leads Marketing should provide and a feedback loop between departments, these sales respondents are nding much higher value in the leads Marketing generates for them. - Hubspot, State of Inboud 2017

Investment in your sales team is important in order to help enhance their ability to source top quality leads that convert - yet almost half (49%) of respondents said their company was going to spend less than $5,000 dollars for sales training and 43% of sales technology.

If you can't wait until my next Chart of the Day, you can view the full report online.

• Source : HubSpot
• Sample Size: 6,000+ worldwide inc CEOs, Directors and individual contributions from large and small businesses
• Recommended resource: Sales and Marketing integration guide 

Free-Photos / Pixabay

You may have noticed that your workforce has a minority of top performers. Perhaps your social media marketing efforts are producing uneven results, where most of your profitable leads come from a minority of social platforms. These observations point to how things are unevenly distributed. Very few things in the real world are perfectly even or proportional.

This unevenness is a fact of life that’s embodied in the 80-20 rule. It states that 20 percent of causes result in 80 percent of effects. The percentages don’t have to be 80-20 and they don’t have to add up to 100 percent. For example, 10 percent of your sales force could produce 100 percent of the sales if the other 90 percent never do their job. The main point from a business perspective is that you should commit most of your efforts and resources to the things, people, and activities that do the most good. Here are a few examples:

A Minority of Your Customers Create Most of Your Revenue

These are often your repeat customers. However, even within this group your revenue generation is uneven. There will be a few prolific purchasers of your goods or users of your services. While all of your repeat customers should get your attention, you may want to make greater efforts at retaining the customer satisfaction of your “superstar” customers. Your resources and time are better spent with these people than with prospects who turn a deaf ear to your marketing efforts.

A Minority of Your Social Media Platforms Bring in Most of Your Web Traffic

It’s unlikely that all of them produce identical results. If you notice a few top performers, focus most of your efforts on bringing more traffic from them. If your resources are tight, you might want to stop working with the worst performing platforms, at least until your resource shortage problem improves.

A Minority of Your Landing Pages Produce the Majority of Your Conversions

If your landing pages address the same demographic, then perhaps you should direct more of your traffic to the top performing pages instead of spending too much time and resources trying to “shore up” the poor performers. A few simple traffic redirects could result in a big increase of your revenue. While understanding why your poor performers aren’t converting is useful, the task should have a lower priority than getting the most from your top performers.

Because of the universality of the 80-20 rule, you should be alert to its appearance in other facets of your business. To best exploit this rule, you need extensive data from your business activities, and analytics that allow you to easily see these patterns.

Our automated marketing and CRM software allows you to set up, track, and monitor social media campaigns, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns. Your customer activity is easily tracked so that you can identify your superstar customers. For more information about this, contact us today.

Why does it take six months for a website to rank? We get asked this quite a bit. For the most part, it’s because there is a lag time of between 10 and 20 weeks before listings start to improve in search results. The exception to the rule is viral content—if users signal content is of very high value, and they do so quickly, search listings can improve in hours. Unfortunately, not every piece of content is going to go viral.

So forget the tall claims of your SEO agency—reaching Google’s first page takes time, unless you hire Larry Page (Google’s founder), which sadly, you probably can’t. Search engines have evolved into supremely intelligent systems that consider hundreds of different factors when evaluating a website or a piece of content. No SEO consultant or company in the world can tell you exactly when your website will make it to the top 10 results.

But we can give you an understanding of how search rankings work, and why it almost always takes at least six months to trigger visible changes to your search rankings.

Here are a few reasons why achieving sustainable search rankings takes time.

Bing and Google Serve Their Searchers, Not You

A search provider’s primary concern is its users, not you or any other business that’s fighting for a spot on the first page. The search engine’s goal is to provide the best user experience to its searchers; that means displaying the most relevant and high quality results for every search query. Both Bing and Google watch how people react to content before they decide how visible that content should be in results. Even when content has had a lot of SEO therapy, the content itself has to be spot-on.

This is why Google evaluates every piece of content on more than 200 ranking factors and ensures that only the best quality pages make it to the top 10.

The best way to make it to the first page is by aligning yourself with Google’s objective, which is to serve its users. But it’s not just about great content; other SEO factors also come into play. The combination of these factors takes time—that’s why it takes months to improve rankings for either an SEO campaign or an online reputation management (ORM) campaign.

Early Movers Have an Advantage

The age of a particular page or domain has a huge impact on its search rankings. According to a study by Ahrefs, the average age of the top 10 search results in Google Search is 2+ years. The same study shows that less than 5% of pages younger than 1 year make it to the top 10.

Clearly, a page becomes more credible and trustworthy in Google’s eyes as it gets older. Which is why it is highly improbable for a completely new piece of content or website to start ranking as soon as it is published unless it’s published by a very well-known brand or publication—or it goes viral.

Targeting the Right Keywords Requires Research

Keyword research is one of the pillars of SEO and, although it has evolved significantly over the years, it’s still a key factor in determining your search rankings.

You can’t create content unless you have the right keywords to target.

Keyword research is now more about targeting a particular topic and its closely related terminologies thanks to Google’s RankBrain algorithm, which ranks content based on topical relevance.

These changes have made keyword research a more sophisticated and time-consuming activity.

Creating Quality Content Takes Time

Gone are the days when you could hire a few hobbyists to write thin 500-word articles for your site and still rank on Google’s first page. When it comes to SEO, there’s no longer a substitute for quality content. It is one of Google’s primary considerations when evaluating and ranking a piece of content. Another study by Ahrefs found that the average piece of first-page content shows up for about 1,000 search terms. That means longer content will often fare better than short (thin) content. But for a page to rank with a large number of terms means search engines must test the content with a lot of different people and related searches. So it can take time for a page to rise to the top for a large number of terms.

Link Building Is Not As Simple As Before

Just about everyone knows that when your website gets backlinks from other reliable sites, Google considers them votes of confidence for the quality of your content. The more links your site has, the higher you’ll rank … generally.

Just a couple of years ago, acquiring high quality links wasn’t a big problem. However, Google now has some very strict guidelines about link building, and violating any of those rules can result in search engine penalties. The most prevalent penalty is having the link ignored. It’s an invisible Google penalty, but very effective.

Modern-day link building is a long and tedious process that involves content creation, guest blogging, outreach and influencer relationships. Naturally, doing all of this takes a lot of time and effort.

Social Media Also Impacts Rankings

Search engine rankings are not just about your position in Google Search anymore. Studies suggest that social signals also play a key role in determining your search rankings. The number of times your content is shared on social media and the length of the social conversations it triggers has a direct impact on your position in search engine result pages.

So social factors also impact the time it takes for content to rank in search results.

Summing Up

Be patient. Both ORM and SEO are long-term investments that require a lot of initial groundwork before your site can start ranking in the top 10. You need to view SEO as an ongoing investment instead of a one-time expense. Most of the time, you’ll start seeing returns on your SEO efforts within six months. After that, if the foundations of your SEO strategy are strong, your rankings can grow exponentially.

Knowing the software tools and analytic skills that have emerged to handle massive data volumes will help you navigate today’s technological landscape.

In only a few years, Big Data has moved from just Gigabytes to whopping Zettabytes! But what is behind the hype and what characteristics make regular old data become “Big Data”? What type of data is Big Data? And, given these characteristics of Big Data, how is useful information extracted from this tremendous growth in data?

The 5 Vs of Big Data:

The characteristics of Big Data are succinctly described using these concepts:

1. Volume: just moving data files of 10s of Gigabytes or more around will require non-traditional methods.
2. Velocity: Data streams are enormous, so network and processing speed is critical
3. Variety: There is no definite structure; data can be anything from audio & video to unstructured text
4. Veracity: if we hope to learn something from the data, it better be right; remember – “garbage in – garbage out”
5. Value: captures whether the data actually increases information content and therefore providing downstream inferred correlations

Big Data and the emerging Science of Data

Dealing with all these Vs of Big Data involves a wide mix of Technology Skills, summarized as:

• Data Analytics, Warehousing, and Database engineering
• Programming languages
• Statistics, machine learning modeling, and algorithm testing/tuning
• Data visualization

Those possessing these broad skill set are called Data Scientists. This new brand of scientists are discovering deeply hidden relationships from the constant streams of data produced every day.

Are you confused about which tools and platforms to use in order to get started as a Data Scientist or a Big Data Engineer?

Don’t worry, because here is a simple infographic that explains all you need to know about Big Data and Data Science together with tools and platforms.

Infographic brought to you by Digital Vidya

There’s a lot of interest these days in marketing research. And nowhere is research a hotter topic than in the business-to-business world, where it’s a substantial factor in many firms’ prosperity. In this post, we’re going to explore this powerful marketing piece by piece, breaking down B2B marketing research into a series of questions and answers. Chances are you’ve been mulling some of these questions, too.

What Is B2B Marketing Research, Anyway?

B2B marketing research is the process of uncovering insights into your marketplace by surveying a representative sample of its participants. Participants might include existing customers, former customers, prospective buyers, lost prospects (buyers who chose to buy from another company), and influencers. And in a competitive employer market, research might even include current and prospective employees, as well.

Typically, the research process consists of two parts: data collection and analysis.

Let’s start with data collection. There are two broad approaches you can take to collecting your data:

1. Qualitative. In this approach, researchers talk directly with people to gather their experiences and opinions about your business, product or other aspects of the marketplace. Because it involves live conversations, this type of research takes more time and effort and it can be trickier to analyze. On the plus side, qualitative research provides unmatched depth and it allows you to ask open-ended questions and pursue new lines of inquiry as opportunities arise. Phone interviews, face-to-face interviews and focus groups are the most common ways businesses conduct qualitative research.
2. Quantitative. If qualitative research allows you to dive deep into a relatively small sample, quantitative research derives its power from volume. Using a standardized survey questionnaire, the researcher asks everyone the same set of questions (though branched questions, in which an answer determines what question comes next, are also an option). While open-ended questions are certainly possible in quantitative research, they are used less frequently so that it’s easier to analyze the large quantity of data. The more rigid structure of quantitative research lends itself to a different range of formats, including online, mail and telephone surveys.

Which is better, qualitative or quantitative research? Really, there’s no right or wrong answer. Each serves a different purpose. At a very simplistic level, quantitative research is useful for understanding what is happening in the marketplace, while qualitative research is good at exploring why.

Qualitative research offers a great deal of flexibility, and it provides a rich body of information. Quantitative research is highly structured, which makes it easier to recognize patterns and draw broad conclusions from the data. Because of the amount of labor and cost involved in doing qualitative marketing research, it often addresses a small sample — sacrificing some statistical confidence for a deeper dive into the subjects.

The process of identifying whom to interview can be a difficult task, and usually only a fraction of those people will be willing or available to join the study. Qualitative research, on the other hand, can often reach a much larger audience, so it’s sample may be more statistically representative of the group you want to understand.

Some studies include both quantitative and qualitative research. That way, they gather a more complete picture of the audiences they are investigating.

What Are the Benefits of Marketing Research?

Our own research of professional services firms has shown a strong correlation between research and growth/profitability. In fact, firms that conduct frequent research (at least quarterly) grow almost 12X faster and are almost twice as profitable as firms that do no research.

Firms that conduct frequent research grow almost 12X faster and are almost twice as profitable

Here’s the data:

The most successful companies understand that the market is in constant flux, and the only way they can keep on top of all that change is by doing research on a regular basis. Up-to-date intelligence allows them to adjust their messaging and services to meet the evolving needs of their audiences.

How Can My Business Use Market Research?

There are an almost limitless number of ways you can use market research to improve your business. Here are 25 to get you thinking about your own situation:

1. Discover who you really compete against in the marketplace (you will be surprised, I promise)
2. Uncover your differentiators
3. Find your competitive advantage
4. Learn what services your clients appreciate most, and why
5. See emerging opportunities in the marketplace
6. Adjust your marketing messages to reflect what customers really want to hear
7. Find out what your customers think about you
8. Discover which weaknesses you need to fix right away
9. Get your Net Promoter Score and find out whether your customers are likely to recommend your company to others
10. Learn how well known your business is in the marketplace
11. Explore why some customers chose to buy from another company, instead
12. Find out how your pricing compares to the competition
13. Find out how important price is to your buyers
14. Discover whether there is demand for your new product or service
15. Recognize emerging trends in the marketplace
16. Demonstrate that you care about your customers — the act of doing research shows that you are interested in them and their opinions
17. Discover the one thing your customers would change about your business
18. Find out if you are well positioned to enter a new market
19. Determine what issues you should be writing and speaking about to engage your audience and build your visibility
20. Find out whether internal perceptions about your company match external perceptions
21. Learn how your customers find you
22. Find out why your customers chose you over a competitor
23. See if your customers are aware of all of your key products or services
24. Find out what you are known for in the marketplace
25. Benchmark your business against competitors in your industry

Can I Do the Research Myself?

Yes, you can do it yourself. But in most cases, I recommend against it. Why? Three reasons.

First of all, designing a valid and insightful survey questionnaire takes skill. A professional survey designer has the experience to write a questionnaire that will achieve your goals — and avoid the leading questions and biases that can produce ambiguous, misleading or invalid results.

Second, most surveys, even those with small samples, can generate a lot of data. The way you categorize, roll up and score the data can dramatically affect the results. Best to leave that to an expert, if possible.

Third, you will get more honest answers if an impartial third party conducts your research for you. If you conduct interviews yourself, people may be reluctant to be critical of your business — precisely the stuff you need to know if you want to make course corrections to your marketing or operations.

What Types of B2B Marketing Research Are There?

There are many ways to approach marketing research. Here are a few of the most common:

• Brand research — Learn how you are perceived in the marketplace and where your opportunities lie. Use this information to differentiate your business and strengthen your brand.
• Client research — Discover what your clients and prospects want and how you can deliver it. Use this information to adjust your marketing messages, services and operations to meet the changing needs of the marketplace.
• Market research — Find out who your true competitors are, what services you should be offering and what opportunities you can take advantage of.
• Client satisfaction research — Answer the question, “how happy are your clients with your work and service?”
• Client journey research — Map out the path people take to find, learn to trust and buy your products or services. Use this information to reduce friction in the buying process, improve you closing rate and raising your service standards.
• Client persona research — Who are the people that buy your services or influence those who make the final decision? What messages do they need to hear? Persona research will identify and profile them so your marketing and sales can be more persuasive.

What Questions Should We Be Asking?

What questions should you ask? This question is difficult to answer without first identifying the type of research you will be tackling and the goals you are trying to achieve. Also, the way you word the questions can have a real effect on the way people answer them. So I’m going to avoid prescribing specific questions here and talk about general strategy, instead.

Of course, if you engage a marketing research partner, they will work with you to develop an appropriate set of questions that get to the heart of your issues.

First, let’s look at some of the different ways you can pose questions.

• Multiple choice — Use this when you want to limit the answers to a specific set of possible answers. You can introduce flexibility, if you like, by allowing respondents to choose more than one answer, select “Other” as their answer, or supply a custom answer that wasn’t prompted.
• Yes-No — Use when you want a definitive binary answer to a question.
• Scaled — Use when you want to gauge responses on a continuum. 3-, 5-, 7- and 10-poing scales are common. A 10-point scale, for instance, is used to determine customer loyalty in the Net Promoter
• Matrix questions — These close-ended questions are used to evaluate multiple items using the same set of criteria. The result is a matrix table of results. Here’s a simple example:

• Open-ended questions — Use when you want respondents to provide their own answers. In qualitative research, an interviewer might ask a respondent to elaborate on an aspect of his or her answer.

Okay, now that you understand the types of questions you can ask, you need to clearly define your goals.

Are you trying to get a better understanding of your target audience and their needs? Do you want to know what buyers think of your flagship product or service? Do you want to measure the strength of your brand?

Each of those questions would require a very different questionnaire, so before you can begin designing your survey you need to spell out what it is you are trying to learn. This may sound obvious, but it’s all too easy to jump right into writing questions without setting any boundaries or goals. You’ll also need to decide whom you will ask to participate in your survey — again, your overall goals will directly affect your choices.

Next, you’ll determine whether qualitative, quantitative or a combination of the two is most appropriate for your study. If in doubt, choose qualitative. In my opinion, it offers the most value for your effort.

Only after you’ve completed the previous steps should you begin developing your questions. As you write questions, test them in your mind (or better yet, run them by others) to make sure they aren’t confusing in any way and that they don’t accidentally reflect any biases or assumptions you may have about the answers.

It bears repeating: you are more likely to get accurate results if you work with an experienced research partner. That said, it’s certainly possible to do it yourself.

How Many Participants Do We Need?

How many people do you need to include in your research? Well, that depends on your budget and whether you want bullet-proof data or good-enough results. If you want a high level of confidence that your research represents the entire population you are studying, you will need a statistically significant sample size.

In other words, if you want to be confident that your results have, say, less than a 5% likelihood of being wrong, you would need a truly random sample that is large enough to represent the full range of people that make up your audience. That could be a lot of participants.

If you have a large budget, you may be able to achieve such levels of certainty. But if your budget is smaller, you may need to lower your standards and settle for a “non-probability” technique called “convenience sampling.”

This common approach to research is used when it is very difficult (or expensive) to obtain a statistically significant and/or random sample. It is often used in university research settings — for instance, small studies in which students are recruited to take part in experiments. It is also common in business research when it is impractical to identify a large enough sample, much less a truly random one.

While the results of convenience sampling can’t be assumed to apply to the entire study population, they can provide useful, actionable information so long as you keep in mind the limitations of this approach. In convenience sampling, the sample should be as large as is practical. If that means six people, so be it. It’s better than nothing. You just can’t assume that these six subjects will accurately reflect the mindset of your broader audience. At Hinge, we like to include at least 10 people in one of these studies, and that’s a bare minimum. 20 is even better. The more, the merrier. If you are working with a small sample, I recommend that you conduct qualitative research so that you can extract the most information from your limited sources.

How Often Should We Be Doing Research?

As the chart that I shared earlier illustrates, businesses that do research at least quarterly tend to be high-growth, high-profit businesses. But even those that do it infrequently (say, once a year or so) significantly outperform companies that do no research at all.

So my advice is to dive in now and do something — even if you don’t think you’ll be able to conduct additional research again for a while. A little information can be a powerful thing, and it can be a great motivator to make changes in your business. Changes that will make you more competitive and aware of your strengths, weaknesses and blue-ocean opportunities.

How Do I Get Started?

To do research right, you should seek out an outside research partner. Even we at Hinge, use a third party to interview our clients and prospects. It’s the only way to minimize bias and convince people that your survey is confidential and impartial.

Look for a firm that knows your industry. And if they have worked extensively in it, ask if they have industry benchmarks to which you can compare your results.

Be prepared to provide a list of clients and prospects. A good firm will help you develop a letter or email you can use to reach out to these people. Depending on the situation, they may supplement these lists with their own prospecting.

Most importantly, have an open mind. Some of the findings may take you by surprise. Those are often the most valuables insights — whether they are positive or negative.

If you prefer to do the research yourself, that’s okay. Just be aware it comes with limitations and caveats, some of which I’ve addressed above. You may want to keep your survey to a handful of questions to avoid being overwhelmed by data. Do your best to select a broad sample of your audience, and try to include people who had different experiences (good and bad) with your firm.

Conclusion

Conducting marketing research can make your B2B company more self-aware, attuned to the marketplace and better prepared for change. If you haven’t done this kind of research before, don’t worry. A qualified research partner can handle the heavy lifting and deliver a more nuanced interpretation of the results — results that you should be able to act on right away.

Marketing research is a powerful and often underappreciated tool. Whether you are wondering how to build your company’s momentum again, what’s going on in the marketplace, why your top competitor is winning all the business or how you can keep your competitive edge, the answers are out there. You just need the will and the way to extract them.

Now go do it!

Did you know vacation is scientifically proven to boost productivity, increase creativity, and reduce long-term risks of heart disease? The key isn’t taking two weeks off and spending half the time checking email or making calls. Even the presence of a cell phone decreases the quality of in-person conversation and the ability to relax.

But is it realistic for salespeople to completely unplug on vacation? We asked the HubSpot sales team how they approach time off. Their responses were as diverse as the offices they came from (Cambridge, Sydney, Dublin, and Berlin). Check out their thoughts below, along with best practices for working -- and not working -- when out of office.

I even had a rep respond to my email while poolside in Bali … I’ll let you decide which camp he fell into.

Can Salespeople Take a Vacation from Work?

Should you check email and stay accessible to prospects/managers while on vacation?

Most HubSpot salespeople answered “Yes” to this question, saying they want to stay on top of business while out -- especially if a prospect is almost ready to close. To mitigate work during vacation, HubSpotters said they collaborate with managers and teammates to prepare and set limits on how much they’ll work while out.

David Appleby, channel account manager at HubSpot (Cambridge), responds to prospects on vacation but not internal emails unless they’re super urgent. “My OOO message says to expect 24 hours for a reply,” he explains. “This lets prospects know that if they have something urgent, they should reach out to my OOO contact.”

Dan Tyre, director of sales at HubSpot (remote), says he works and checks email if he’s in the US and has wifi. “But not if my wife says that it is or I feel like it takes away from my family time.” Tyre adds, “I have five things going on at all times, so if I didn’t check my work email, I would still be checking email.”

“If I'm well over my yearly number and have a strong pipeline, I will try to completely disconnect,” says Paul O. Rios, manager, international sales and strategy at HubSpot (Cambridge). “If I'm going through a rough patch or have an important or interesting deal on the one-yard line, I will make myself accessible.”

“I do, yes -- but this is totally my option. Many of us in sales are control-oriented, and would rather stay on top of things ourselves than delegate,” says Jessica King, senior IGA at HubSpot (Cambridge). “I pride myself on building rapport with my potential customers, and would prefer to be their POC unless I absolutely cannot be available.”

Some salespeople explained unplugging is critical to their sales results.

“I think when on vacation it's very important to put work aside so you can get the rest you need,” says Ransom Cook, senior inbound growth specialist at HubSpot (Cambridge). “I find that if I don't fully unplug from work and make that time I am much less productive in my role and in my job.”

“I realized that I could leverage my time out of the office to get more insight into any deals I was working and would be accessible only to prospects that I needed to,” comments Greg Brown, senior sales manager at HubSpot (Cambridge). “For everyone else, I set the expectation I was going to be OOO and would respond when I got back.”

And what about the pool-side salesperson?

Usman Hijazi, inbound growth specialist at HubSpot (Sydney), says he’s been checking his email every morning since he left four days ago. I guess there are worst places to keep an eye on your inbox than a villa in Bali.

Should managers expect their reps to be accessible at all times -- even during time off?

Managers unanimously said they prefer reps make arrangements before time off. They want team members to get the most from fully unplugging.

“No!” Rios says. “Time off is important for recharging batteries and not burning out … I encourage reps to completely unplug.”

Tyre is similarly emphatic managers should let their team members recharge in peace. He explains, “A good manager makes people turn off and has someone else cover for them.”

According to Brown, there are a few steps salespeople can take to ensure they’re ready for a complete break.

“I expect them to help me prepare for their vacation by providing updates on active deals, tell me what I need to keep an eye out for, come up with a plan to cover for them while they are out (i.e. who will follow up with their leads), and add me to their auto-responder,” he says. "In general, I want reps who are going on vacation to feel like they can step away from the business and rest up, so I need their help in preparing for their departure.”

Have you ever closed a deal while on vacation?

Almost every HubSpotter has closed a deal on vacation. From the middle of the lake to white sandy beaches, because they were winning deals, no one minded the disruption.

“I closed a deal while on a boat on Lake Winnipesaukee last summer,” says Alexandrea Ferguson, inbound growth specialist at HubSpot (Cambridge). “I took the call from my cell phone and asked my friends to slow down the boat.”

"Yes, multiple times. It's sometimes kind of fun,” says Michael Rogewitz, inbound marketing specialist at HubSpot (Cambridge). “There was one vacation where I was running a big deal and had to do a demo to close with my manager. I went up to my hotel room overlooking the beach, went back into business mode, ran the call, got my manager on the contract steps, and went back out to the beach with a drink in my hand. It made the vacation that much better knowing I was coming back with 35% knocked off of my number.”

Aine Garland, account manager at HubSpot (Dublin), disagrees. “Nope -- downtime is downtime. I can't give my full attention to something like this while on vacation.”

Rios shared that his biggest month ever happened while he was taking three weeks off. “In 2014, I took three weeks off to go to the World Cup in Brazil,” he says. “But I had a very strong pipeline and closed multiple deals while out of the office. In fact, June 2014 was my best month ever as a sales rep in three-plus years.”

Is there ever an appropriate time to completely unplug from work?

Respondents agreed, when it comes to mental health, maternity and paternity leave, and family emergencies, it’s always appropriate to unplug. A few HubSpotters proudly shared secrets to maintaining work-life balance -- an impressive accomplishment in sales.

“It's really important to manage your stress load in sales. It's almost impossible to not get to the point of cracking, so it's important to manage it like anything else, health-wise,” says Rogewitz.

He continues, "You should work with your manager and be transparent about how stressed you are. Your manager will want you to perform to your best. There’s no sense in ruining opportunities because you over-exerted yourself. There's not value in running deals like that.”

“Being customer-facing, I think there needs to be a balance. If you're gone for a week and a half -- that has direct implications on anyone you're working with at that time, so you need to ensure that they're not being affected by your vacation,” says Joshua Newall, senior inbound growth specialist at HubSpot (Cambridge).

“Setting up a solid game plan with your manager to fill in for you is critical, but I don't think it hurts to check-in in the morning or when you're winding down at night to ensure there's not any alarm bells going off.”

“I am very happy to say that I think this is one of my biggest strengths,” shares Cook. “I have worked very hard at being able to separate my work from my time off and when I'm out, I don't check my phone or email. Tim Ferriss’ podcast and book, ‘The 4-Hour Workweek,’ have been incredible at helping me manage my time. Things like meditation and journaling are amazing tools to help train yourself to focus intensely when you need to get stuff done and separate your work life from personal life.”

“I may not feel it is necessary to unplug while on a staycation or even a short trip,” explains King. “If I am going on Sabbatical or maternity leave, and the company is compensating accordingly, to unplug would be in the best interest of both parties.”

“I think it's important to unplug completely from work as long as you've prepared your team, your boss, your prospects/clients, and other stakeholders about your absence and have communicated your coverage plans,” Brown says.

It’s hard for salespeople to unplug. The job demands you be accessible -- sometimes to a fault. But it’s important to make your mental and physical health a priority to perform at a high level. Find what works for you, talk to your manager, and be willing to put yourself above the job.

The New Copywriter: Meeting Modern Content Writing Demands written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Millennials will make up roughly 35% of the global workforce in 2020 and right now many are optimistic about their career prospects – two-thirds to be exact.1 Because of the collective push for well-curated and highly targeted content in both B2B and B2C markets, skillful young writers have ample opportunity to break into the workforce through the art of copywriting. And today, it really is an art form.

Professional copywriters have quickly recognized the need to adapt their writing style and content delivery methods to satisfy peers and charm decision makers. The overcrowded Internet has changed the way consumers find and digest information, with most users seeking instant answers and dodging the growing presence of brands on their favorite websites and social media platforms.

Copywriters today are tasked with producing fodder for a machine that’s hard to please: search engines. They must create content worthy of page one that at the same time breaks down the barriers between companies and their audiences. What is a modern copywriter to do? To meet these demands, copywriters must rewrite and continually revise their content strategy.

Standing Out with SEO and Style

Is copywriting creative or calculated? If you want eyes on your content, it has to be both. To rank on the search engine results page (SERP), you’ll have to factor in search engine optimization (SEO) when brainstorming topics and planning your piece. Search engine optimizers say the value of written content is judged by its substance which includes length, keyword usage, organization and unfortunately, even some unknown criteria that influence SERP rankings.

The challenge? You can’t only write for an algorithm and if you’re taking SEO into consideration when crafting content online, your competitors are too. The copy must follow machine-dictated rules and still be genuine, useful and unique. All of these factors combine to push your writing higher up on search engines like Google, where users make 2.3 million searches per second and select from 130 trillion indexed pages.

The democratization of information online has changed the goal of traditional copywriting, redefining best practices and adding a new level of unpredictability to the actions of all audiences. However, there are a few things that copywriters can count on.

Today’s readers want:

• Clean and concise copy that’s free of typos and avoids the use of slang
• Easy-to-scan articles with shorter paragraphs, descriptive headings, and bolded key terms
• Digestible pieces that break down complex subject matter and industry jargon
• Visual content to support copy including shareable photos, videos, charts, and infographics
• Relatable blogs and social posts that blend the professional and the casual
• Articles hosted on fast-loading websites that link to social media profiles for easy sharing
• Blog posts and other forms of content that are fully optimized for mobile viewing

User Expectations and The New Niche

Keeping people engaged is a difficult endeavor made all the more challenging when writers can’t rely on a common set of user behaviors and preferences to guide content. Content curation tries to confront this uncertainty by gathering and offering only the best resources for a niche audience to consume. Content marketing stakes out similar territory, operating on the belief that inbound marketing will generate interested and qualified leads with continued effort.

New copywriters should put these techniques into practice by testing and refreshing their tactics to capture increasingly elusive audiences. Brands have learned that niche marketing is not a tactic reserved for bloggers; in B2B industries, embracing your market and individualizing your content can help grow a smaller but more ideal audience of buyers who crave consistency.

Guide your writing around the new niche – a narrowed and fully explored focus that taps into influencer marketing and engages subject-matter experts (SMEs) to take content to the next level.

Analyzing Content and Proving ROI

Now that many recognize the power of content in shaping brand personality and impacting audiences, business leaders have placed content under a microscope. Content marketers and copywriters are asked to prove the value of campaigns, but reporting on content initiatives is difficult when writing still stands in the context of a highly competitive space.

Today’s copywriters can present a number of data points to take stock of their writing efforts, set goals and exhibit ROI.

Writers should measure content marketing, SEO and other goals with stats such as:

• Number of landing pages, backlinks and page views
• Landing page conversions, CTA button clicks, and confirmation page views
• Referral traffic, bounce rate and time on site for specific pages such as blog posts
• Marketing and sales qualified leads delivered (MQLs and SQLs) and cost per lead
• Number of blog and newsletter subscribers and qualitative data such as comments
• Email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates
• Social media metrics such as likes, follows, shares and impressions

The Copywriter’s Future

Writing in advertising, marketing and media will always be in demand, but it takes a forward-thinking individual to keep up with the needs of consumers and the requirements of new technology. Copywriters, both new and established, should actively seek information on how to improve their writing across all channels by following industry blogs and news outlets, listening to thought leaders and field experts and obtaining new certifications.

Writers should never hesitate to learn about other subjects that will enhance their skills, such as digital marketing and project management. With an open mind and continued education in place, copywriters are guaranteed to succeed; if you write what you know, you’ll be destined to grow.

About the Author

Alyssa Dannaker, Content Marketing Associate at Sagefrog Marketing Group. Alyssa is a copywriter and content marketer with experience in public relations and project management. Sagefrog is a top rated B2B marketing agency with specialties in healthcare, technology, and business services. Visit Sagefrog.com for more information and connect with Alyssa on LinkedIn and Twitter.