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I talk to sales leaders all day, every day and data integrity is only one of the many problems plaguing sales team efficiency. Productivity studies show that the average rep spends only 20-25% of their time on selling activities (vs. administration/compliance, customer support, planning, reporting, etc…). Run the numbers…this doesn’t make sense.

As a sales leader, your goal should be to clear the noise and protect your team’s time. This starts with identifying and understanding the issues, but takes so much more – vision, strategy and the ability, focus and discipline to execute.

Over the last decade or so, there’s been a proliferation of sales tech and the number of tools we use on a daily basis has increased exponentially. Every VP of Sales comes in with a mental playbook – “this worked for me at my last company, so of course it will work here”. Don’t fall into this trap, you need to stay up to date on the tech that’s out there and make the right decisions for your team.

If you’re biggest problem is getting a handle on your TAM and assigning territories, you probably shouldn’t be spending time with sales enablement and content management vendors. Similarly, if you’re struggling to get visibility into client calls, BI tools aren’t going to help. As you grow, you can build a true sales operations and enablement function (check out our advice here), but in an early stage startup these decisions fall to the VP of Sales and prioritization is key.

Where to start?

First, you have to understand the work your team does and where the time goes. Ask your team to jot down what they are doing at 15 min intervals for a week – it’s a telling exercise.

NOTE: You’ll probably look at the outcome of this exercise and think “this is not how I want to spend my time”…right, no one wants to spend 2 hours a day logging notes in Salesforce, updating their forecast or trying to find an email address for an elusive contact, but it’s a reality for your team.

Next, map that time back to key corporate initiatives – what is required, what is high impact, what can be outsourced, what can be automated?

Finally, set short and long term goals to address. Once you have a full list, you’re balancing for a few things: priority level, expense/cost, speed to complete, one time vs. ongoing, etc.

Some of the most common areas to address:

1. Data integrity: There are great tools out there to help you augment your data with the correct HQ, employee size, industry, etc…Clearbit and Datanyze are some of our favorites

2. Contact information: Solutions vary drastically depending on the industries, company size and titles you are exploring, and it’s much easier to track down email addresses than phone numbers. Try Clearbit, Connectifier and ZoomInfo first. No luck? Consider outsourcing list building via Upwork, offshore resources or interns.

3. Communication: To bring focus to your funnel and remove the friction associated with the traditional online form to BDR model, you should be talking to Drift. You can also help AEs stay on top of their leads while bringing visibility to activity levels with solutions like Salesloft and Outreach.

4. Conversation insights: Have a remote team? Want to get a pulse on what’s really happening in deals? Consider a solution like Chorus.ai or TalkIQ to bring efficiency to reps through transcriptions and deal insights to your leadership team to drill into when coaching

My final piece of advice – figure out who is going to own implementation, enablement and evolution of your tech stack before you start investing. You need to nail your process before you start layering in tech.

How do you stay up to date on sales tech? How do you know you have the right systems in place to support your growth goals? We want to hear from you!

The post Sales leaders, let’s talk tech (and automation, and outsourcing, and efficiency in general) appeared first on OpenView Labs.

One element of your success is based on your understanding of what things are limited, and what things are not.

Limited

Time: Your time is limited. It is finite. It is your most precious possession, but that possession is limited. Time is a constraint, even though you can do more than you believe over a longer time and less than you believe in a shorter period. You must treat time with the greatest respect, because time spent in one place means it is unavailable for investment in something more important.

Energy: Your energy is limited. You require periods of rest and recovery, and the more you build the right cadence of energy expenditure and recovery, the more you improve your effectiveness. This means that how you deploy your energy and against what outcomes is a critical decision.

These resources are truly limited. They should be treated as such.

Unlimited

Resourcefulness, Creativity, and Imagination: So far, we have been unable to find the limits of human resourcefulness. For thousands of years, we have figured out how to live, thrive, and survive. Our ability to create is limitless, as is our imagination. These resources are unlimited and should be treated as such. They should be put work and exercised in the solving of problems, and solving the problems that new solutions create.

Money: Money is not a scarce commodity. There is more than enough, even if it is not equally distributed. It’s everywhere, and even if you spend all of your money, you can get more by simply figuring out what value to trade for what you need.

Help with what you want: There is no reason to believe that there are not people who are ready and willing to help you. There are always people who are willing to assist you, and there are also people who need your help. Cooperation and collaboration are limitless.

It is easy to treat things that are limited as if they are unlimited, and things that are unlimited as if they are limited.If you want to produce better results in life, it is important to understand what the real constraints are, and what constraints are really illusions, and are really abundant.

The post Things That Are Limited and Unlimited appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.

In 1943 Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others. Our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thing that motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates us, and so on.

How are these concepts related to marketing and sales in B2B environment? In a couple of ways.

Conditions of Need

There are what I call the three conditions of need. These conditions apply to ANY purchase—anything from getting your oil changed over a lunch break (perhaps driven by an ad on the radio during morning drive time) to multimillion dollar purchases of equipment, technology or services. The three conditions are:

1. Fear of loss in your current situation
2. Perceived risk of deterioration in your current situation
3. Opportunity to improve your current situation

The easiest condition to sell into is fear of loss. A good example of fear of loss is when compliance laws are enacted and your company is not compliant. The fear of loss could be fines, inability to operate your business until you are compliant or immediate competitive threats. At any given time, only a small percentage of companies are in a fear of loss condition. So, you can’t wait for that condition to occur to begin selling to the prospect.

The second easiest condition to sell into is perceived risk. Some people have a hard time understanding the difference between fear of loss and perceived risk. Think about it this way. Fear of loss means that something is happening that threatens your existence. Perceived risk occurs when everything is fine right now, but there are factors in motion that are going to change your situation and you better make plans to defend your position. A good example of this is that many “big box” retailers are in a fear of loss condition. Some won’t make it (or already haven’t made it). Arguably, as little as five years ago, the big box stores should have considered themselves in a perceived risk condition and started earlier on the path to more ecommerce. Many didn’t.

The hardest condition to sell into is opportunity to improve. I call this selling into the rainbow. There are no basic needs or psychological needs (needs on Maslow’s hierarchy) to be satisfied by buying an opportunity to improve. It takes an individual who has reached the highest level—self-actualization—to take the risk to invest in a product or solution that only promises an opportunity to improve your current situation. An example of this (and demonstrating the potential for payoff) is the degree to which Apple’s Steve Jobs agonized over iPhone packaging. The product was already great. Yet, Jobs made changes (such as a change in shade of the box) so that the packaging was perfect for their perfect product.

Benefits

There is an old expression that features tell, benefits sell. A great example of this is when the iPod first came out. Instead of leading with how many gigabytes of storage the device had, Apple led with “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

There are benefits that are reasons people buy things for their company that are driven by company goals; and there are benefits that are reasons why people buy things for their company that are driven by personal goals.  

Reasons why people buy for their company that are driven by company goals:

1. Save money
2. Save time
3. Improve a product or service
4. Save lives

The four benefits above are what I call the ultimate benefits. Ultimate benefits resonate with your prospects’ or customers’ professional desires. However, when marketing or selling, you can’t simply lead with the ultimate benefit. Generally, there is a string of benefits that is paid off by the ultimate benefit. Example: the 2017 version of this SUV weighs less than last year’s model. Thus, you get more miles to the gallon. With more miles to the gallon you save money.

Finally, people also buy for their company because they are driven by personal goals:

1. Compensation
2. Security
3. Recognition
4. Self-actualization (want to do the right thing even if it does not impact them on the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy)

See how closely these personal goals tie to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Most buyers are focused on compensation, security and recognition. The paucity of self-actualized decision makers is what causes so many “no decision” outcomes. “No decision” happens when the buyer or buyers perceive there is more risk in buying something than in doing nothing.

Look at your forecast. What are the conditions of need driving the evaluations? What ultimate benefit or benefits does the buyer desire? How can you mitigate risk so that the buyers’ personal goals are met?

Unless I sold iPhones I would not want to depend on trying to sell into the opportunity to improve condition of need and selling to self-actualized individuals. But, that’s just me.

The B2B buyer journey, particularly in the technical professional space, has transformed. At TREW Marketing, our engineer-centered research in North America and Europe has shown these trends:

• The majority of the engineer’s buyer journey has moved online.

The majority of the #engineer’s buyer journey has moved online, says @RebeccaG. #CMWorld
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• Engineers valued Google as the most valuable content resource, followed by vendor websites.

#Engineers valued @Google as the most valuable #content resource, followed by vendor websites, says @RebeccaG.
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• Nearly all engineers prefer to do online research and evaluate vendors before talking to sales.

Nearly all #engineers prefer to do online research before talking to sales, says @RebeccaG. #CMWorld
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• Most engineers have between three and seven interactions with a company before talking with its representative directly.

Most #engineers have between 3-7 interactions w/a company before talking directly, says @RebeccaG. #CMWorld
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• Most engineers are more likely to do business with a company that regularly produces new and current content.

#Engineers are more likely to do business w/ a company that regularly produces current content, says @RebeccaG.
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Let’s tackle the critical factor in all five trends – content is THE deciding factor. How do you create content to engage technical experts and do it consistently? Here are five tips to keep you in your audience’s buyer journey:

1. Ensure that content is technically accurate, current, and includes detailed diagrams and images.

2. Have a technical expert at your company author it because technical experts trust other technical experts.

Image source: Smart Marketing for Engineers 2015 Study

3. Craft case studies, as that’s the content type technical professionals value most.

Engineers and other technical professionals are risk-averse and want to stay with the herd. Reference the experience of others whom they perceive to be similar. They want to hear about the challenges your customers faced, and how your products and services helped them solve those challenges.

Use case studies for #technical professionals who are risk-averse & want to stay with the herd @RebeccaG
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TIP: To secure approval from customers to publish their story, here are a couple suggestions:

• Ask for permission and include verbiage to use the customer’s experience for a case study when the contract is signed.
• Invite your customer to join your event or webinar to share how they overcame challenges and succeeded. It gives them a chance to shine and you can turn the presentation into a case study.

If your customer won’t consent to a case study, publish what I call an “unbranded” case study, a short overview of the challenge and solution without mentioning the customer by name. While this is not as effective as a fully branded case study, it can be valuable if it includes sufficient credible, technical descriptions.

4. Create customer-centric content that resonates with your specific technical buyer personas.

Consider these questions as you brainstorm content themes and topics:

• What are your prospects’ biggest pain points?
• What tough questions do your customers consistently ask your sales engineers?
• What are the top three to four questions most relevant to your application focus areas?
• What are the business risks associated with the application areas you work in and what can you share about how to mitigate these?
• What gaps in the market can you educate your prospects about?
• What does your company do better than your competitors that your prospects need to know about?

5. Make sure your content has great headlines – good headlines are not enough.

Because engineers’ most valued content source is Google, your content must stand out from the pages and pages of search results competing for your buyer’s click. Engineers go deep into search results – 30% go through four to 10 pages of results, and more go through 10-plus pages. You will win that first click with an effective and relevant content’s title and meta description (10- to 15-word description).

Over 1/3 of #engineers go through at least 4 pages of search results in their buyer journey. @RebeccaG #CMWorld
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Engineers interact with e-newsletters in a similar way. The majority of those surveyed told us they scan for subject lines that intrigue them and delete the rest.

Image source: Smart Marketing for Engineers 2017 Study 

Conclusion

Content planning, development, and marketing is hard work for any market. With technical audiences who are skeptical, data-driven, risk-averse, and who want to hear from experts, your job as a marketer is exponentially tougher. But if you understand the unique attributes of this audience – and respond to those nuances – your content will keep you in the game of attracting and engaging technical buyers.

Spend the day learning more about reaching technical audiences with content that sticks at the Industrial Manufacturing Lab Sept. 8 at Content Marketing World. Register today for the lab. Haven’t signed up for the main conference? Register now and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Create Content for the Technical B2B Buyer appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

On the surface, “using emotion to make your email copy more effective” obviously rings true.

But WHY does incorporating emotion make people more likely to take action? And how can you leverage this effect to make your sales emails as compelling as possible?

To answer the first question, we can look to a Harvard Business Review report by Scott Magids, Alan Zorfas and Daniel Leemon, titled “The New Science of Customer Emotions.”

What Makes Emotion So Effective In Email?

In their research, the HBR team studied hundreds of different brands in multiple industries, ultimately concluding that connecting with consumers’ emotions can result in a huge payday.

According to the authors:

“We find that customers become more valuable at each step of a predictable “emotional connection pathway” as they transition from (1) being unconnected to (2) being highly satisfied to (3) perceiving brand differentiation to (4) being fully connected.”

In particular, the team found that:

“Fully connected customers are 52% more valuable, on average, than those who are just highly satisfied.”

Demonstrating this impact, their research cites the example of a national fashion retailer which, upon further analysis, found that:

“Although fully connected customers constituted just 22% of customers in the category, they accounted for 37% of revenue and they spent, on average, twice as much annually ($400) as highly satisfied customers.”

To leverage their newfound knowledge, the retailer applied category segmentation schemes to the 25 million customers in its database, driving direct marketing campaign performance that was 40-120% higher than historical averages using a rules engine that sent messages based on browsing, transacting and servicing interactions.

How to Integrate Emotion Into Email

You don’t have to have 25 million people in your database – or access to advanced sales technology – to take advantage of the impact of emotion. All you need is an understanding of core human emotions and how to integrate them into your sales emails.

Core Emotions

Do enough Googling and you’ll find several models of core human emotions. But for the purposes of this article, we’ll stick with the one developed by sales expert Geoffrey James, which ties all purchase decisions to six core emotions: greed, fear, altruism, envy, pride and shame.

In a sales context:

• Greed ties potential purchases to a hypothetical reward that will be received.
• Fear drives purchases from those afraid of missing out.
• Feelings of altruism suggest that making a purchase decision will help others in some way.
• Envy causes us to make decisions to keep up with those we view as our competitors.
• Pride makes us believe our purchases will help us look smarter or better in some way.
• Shame leads us to avoid looking stupid through a potential purchase.

Thinking back to any sales pitches you’ve been on the receiving end of will make the role of these six emotions clear. If you’ve ever been persuaded by a scarcity-based pitch, that was fear at work. If you purchased in order to take advantage of a two-way referral marketing benefit, altruism may have been the driving factor.

Emotions Aren’t a One Man Show 

That said, it’s important to recognize that core emotions rarely work on their own.

If I said to you, “Buy now, because you’ll look stupid if you don’t,” you’d probably shake your head and walk away.

Leveraging core emotions in sales emails requires an understanding of the many supporting elements that inform how we interpret emotional messaging – a few of which I’ve profiled below:

Emotional State

When do you imagine you’d be more susceptible to pitches grounded in fear and envy? The times when you’re feeling 100% confident about yourself, or those days when your self esteem is wavering?

Your prospects’ emotional state influences the way they’ll interpret emotion-based appeals. While you may not know what these are when you’re emailing, it’s worth remembering that no message is received in a vacuum.

Word Choice

According to Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is determined by the level of emotional identification that word prompts. In other words, the right emotional trigger words take the same basic message to all new heights.”

While many words can instigate an emotional response, certain trigger words can amplify their effect. Understand what they are and how to wield them wisely.

Colors

The colors used in your email messages can influence their emotional impact. Imagine you’re an environmental charity, soliciting donations for an upcoming tree planting initiative. Will your appeal be more effective if your CTA button is red, blue or green?

While you can’t be absolutely certain without testing, it’s obvious that different colors evoke different emotional responses in recipients. Familiarize yourself with the principles of color psychology and test different combinations to enhance the emotional impact of your message.

Fonts

All I have to say are the words “Comic Sans,” and you’ll understand how the font you choose can impact the way your message is received.

Use CrazyEgg’s infographic below as a starting point, but test your selections for maximum impact:

Imagery

The ability of imagery to influence our emotions is, again, intuitive. Laundry Service proved the effect by replacing its stock imagery-driven ads with envy-inducing Instagram-style snaps:

• Using regular photos, the company saw a 2.35% click-through rate.
• With Instagram-style shots, that increased to as high as 8%.
• When tying ad performance to sales, Laundry Service saw conversion rates increase by 25%.

Story

Throughout history, we’ve communicated in stories. It should come as no surprise, then, that story remains an important vehicle for stimulating emotion and driving action.

According to TechCrunch’s Kobie Fuller:

“Humans are intrinsically wired to connect with stories. They connect us to people, ideas, places, products and brands; they help us justify how we spend our money and which brands we champion by substituting promotion with engagement.”

Learn how to build story into your sales emails. Adam Kreitman’s CrazyEgg article, “Why Storytelling is the Key to Selling With Email,” is a great place to start.

How to Leverage Emotion in Sales Emails

It’s one thing to read about the different elements that go into encouraging an emotional response in sales emails. It’s another thing to tie them all together; to determine when to leverage one element of emotion and when prospects might be more responsive to something else.

My advice? Don’t overcomplicate things (at least, not at first).

Start by looking at your subject lines, opening lines, email designs, body copy and CTAs and asking the following questions:

• Does my content engage an emotional response?
• Am I using highly-emotional trigger words?
• Am I telling a story or provoking emotional engagement in another way?
• Are all of my message’s elements contributing to the same emotional appeal?
• Have I personalized my messages to the emotional needs of different recipients?

Set thresholds that’ll tell you which messages aren’t hitting home – for instance, low opens, low clicks and/or high unsubscribes (if applicable). Wherever you see weaknesses, design an A/B split test that pits your current message against one that leverages even more of the factors described above.

You might also find it helpful to see good examples of emails that tap into emotion to close deals faster.

GetResponse taps into fear with a scarcity-based subject line:

WallMonkeys used color psychology to increase revenue by 550%:

Rip Curl encourages pride by enticing email subscribers to join their revolution:

These are great examples of the impact emotion can have on driving behavior and engagement.

Test the strategies they demonstrate yourself. Leverage the elements described above to appeal to your prospects’ emotions. They’ll tell you – both verbally and with their dollars – when your results are successful.

What other strategies do you use to incorporate emotion into your sales emails? Share your best tips with me in the comments below!

The post How To Use Emotion In Your Sales Emails And Become An Unstoppable Closer appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Simon / Pixabay

What some small business owners don’t realize when they get started is that selling will play a major role in their profits. Whether you’re offering a specific product, service, or even just free content, customers and clients will not just luck upon your business. You’ll need to strategically sell and market it to them. Small business sales are crucial to your business.

Luckily, with tools like social media, small business sales have become much easier to generate. With more than 1.9 billion active users, Facebook is the leader of social media sites.

According to Pew Research, 79 percent of online adults used Facebook in 2016, compared to just 29 percent for LinkedIn and 24 percent for Twitter.

Given this volume of online activity, it is not surprising businesses large and small use Facebook to generate leads and boost sales. Regardless of your niche, Facebook is probably critical to your business’ sales and here are 3 smart ways to start increasing sales and generating more payments for your business with help from the popular social media site.

1. Use Small Business Sales to Promote Your Facebook Page

You are more likely to generate leads that will convert to sales when prospective customers know you have a Facebook page. Facebook has a promotions option you can use to get more clicks to your site or to a particular page, but you do have to pay for those leads.

There are other organic ways to promote your page as well. Send emails to all current prospects asking them to visit and like your page, and include links to Facebook on your website and in your best blog posts.

You want to share engaging content mixed in with the latest offers for your products and services. If you are properly serving your target market, you can also provide Facebook giveaways and exclusive discounts to help generate sales as well.

2. Encourage Facebook Visitors To Share Your Content

Some visitors will like your content enough to send it to others. Make it easy by including Facebook’s like plugin and share button in all of your content. With a host of loyal fans sharing your content on their pages, you can grow leads and boost sales exponentially.

If you have specific products to sell for example, you can post a link to your Facebook page or even share an interactive video of someone using your product with the caption ‘Share this post with someone who would love to have a ____.” You can also use this tactic to your benefit around certain holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.

3. Use Facebook Ads

Since billions of people are using Facebook regularly, that means Facebook is gathering lots of demographics and interest regarding their users. You can take advantage of this by investing in Facebook ads to reach your target customer or client.

You can use ads to promote your business, your helpful content, or even a webinar. Facebook ads are also a great tool to help you boost email subscribers which can also increase your sales.

Summary

Be sure to add Facebook to your marketing and sales strategy for your business. The benefits of using this widely-known platform are too good to pass up.

StockSnap / Pixabay

After weeks (if not months) of guiding your prospect through the sales process they decide they no longer want your product. Disaster, right? Luckily for you, their objections probably aren’t unique. Here are a few common reasons why potential clients say no and some ways in which you can make them change their minds.

1. Lack of Trust

Along with perceived value, risk factor is a powerful gatekeeper to any sale. This is especially important for your first-time buyers.

A more mature or seasoned sales rep knows that the best way to build trust is to address the client’s emotional or financial concerns head-on. Most amateur sales reps rely on improvised conversation but they don’t have the experience it takes to pull it off.

The best way to overcome lack of experience? Prepare. Preparation is the key to eliminating any sales objections that relate to trust.

Learn how to build trust the moment your client makes their first objection. Like we’ll soon discuss with the price excuse, having developed answers for your client’s concerns is crucial to closing the sale. Expand your sales dialogue to include honest answers for any question or concern your customer has.

It’s not easy, but being proactive will help you build trust and win exponentially more sales.

Another way to address lack of trust is with referrals. In general, referred clients have a 16% higher lifetime value. There are a number of ways to increase referrals through offline and online means.

Like we talked about earlier, content marketing is also an excellent way to build trust. Create resources that help your clients solve day-to-day issues and watch them flock to you for support when they have a bigger problem. Plus, they may realize that all that free advice and information you gave them in the past far outweighs the cost of your product today, which leads us to our next top sales objection.

2. Price

This is the number one concern for hesitant buyers. Some would argue that the client has every good reason to turn down your offer if the funds are not available. However, the truth is that price is just another excuse that masks a more specific, actionable request.

The first step in deciphering the price puzzle is to simply wait. When a client first comments on price (in person or over the phone) use the power of silence and wait a full three to five seconds before responding. Chances are they may offer up a further explanation as to why the price is too high because they’re afraid of sounding cheap or dismissive.

Even if they don’t try to fill the silence, the next question out of your mouth should be the same. Why do they think the price is too high? Once you have an answer, you can then determine which avenue to take.

Are they concerned about cash flow or budget? This can have a great impact on your next steps. If the hold up is around budget restrictions, see if you can provide a payment plan that suits their needs.

If the main issue is cash flow, ask them if they really understand the value of what they are purchasing. Because at this juncture they’ve already invested a valuable amount of time and thought into your product. They are aware of the problem that led them here in the first place. Those same problems kept them involved in the sales conversation up until this point, so what’s changed?

The best solution for any price concern is to increase the product’s perceived value. Challenge your client to explain what they think is missing. Does a competitor offer something similar? Let them know how your product is different. Does their problem have a sense of urgency? Remind them of the true cost they face by putting off the purchase.

Content marketing can also be a powerful tool for increasing the perceived value of your product.

3. Bad Timing

You’ve heard the old adage timing is everything? That applies here too.

Bad timing can mean the buyer is heavily considering your solution but only for a future problem. According to Gleanster Research, 50% of generated leads are qualified but not ready to buy right now. Consider playing the long game. There’s no reason why a dismissal today can’t lead to an approval tomorrow.

Hear out their concerns about buying the product right here, right now. Since you’re prepared to address any scenario, respond to their reasoning with logic and emotional appeal.

If they are dead set on pushing off the sale even after your brilliant solutions have been presented, let it go – for now. Use a great CRM to keep track of their answers and what made them interested in your company in the first place. Make sure to create a solid follow up strategy and make a note to reach out to them at a later date.

Another great tip is to work with your marketing team to build an automated nurture stream that can be used to “warm them up,” and ask them to opt into this campaign. This steady stream of information about your market and offering should help familiarize prospects with your company over time so that, when they are ready to make a purchase, your company will be top of mind!

Regardless of which sales objection you encounter, having the right strategy in place to effectively anticipate the needs of your prospective buyer is crucial. If you are interested in learning more about the core issues facing sales teams today, check out our helpful resource, The 2017 Guide for Next-Generation Sales Leaders, for an in-depth look at cutting-edge scientific sales solutions.

When I asked the salesperson what he wanted in his next sales job, he wasted no time sharing his list. The list he shared betrayed his beliefs about sales, and, for me anyway, made him unhirable.

“I want to sell the best product in the category. That, to me, is the key to winning.”

It is important to believe in your product or service, your company, and yourself. The greater your doubts here, the more difficult it is to sell, specifically because you transmit your beliefs, even if unknowingly. But this isn’t what the salesperson was saying. He was saying that he wanted to sell a product that was universally the best in its category.

Quick: Which is better, Apple or Samsung? Try this one: Mercedes Benz or BMW? These companies make the best products in their category. But if this isn’t your category, you might think a GMC Suburban is the best product, or maybe you think the F150 is better.

The underlying belief this salesperson was unknowingly sharing is that he believes the product should do all the selling, that it should sell itself. He is guilty of wanting to sales to be easier than it is and, mistakenly, he believes that a great product will do that for him.

He continued:

“I want the product to be positioned well in the marketplace.”

There are two underlying beliefs wrapped up in this one statement. First, what this salesperson was suggesting is that the marketing of the product should be so good that everyone would recognize it, making it easy to buy. Because he had once sold something so universally recognized in its space, he wants that experience again.

The second belief his statement was masking was his belief that the price had to be as low as its competitor’s pricing. If a product is the best in its category, if it is universally known, and it has a low price relative to its competitor’s, in this salesperson’s mind, he believes he could “make his number,” and that is what he told me.

These beliefs are not uncommon. The implications of these beliefs are that the person who holds them is an order-taker, someone who believes that the tangibles in selling outweigh the intangibles, that the salesperson is not the determining factor when it comes to creating and winning opportunities. This thinking is how you commoditize yourself, and how you make selling more difficult than it has to be.

The post Unhealthy Beliefs That Destroy Sales appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Social media and sales go together perfectly.

However, not all companies harness the power of social media and develop a strategy with their B2B sales professionals in the mix.

Bernie Borges is one person that knows more than enough about B2B marketing and how powerful social media can be. As the CEO of Find and Convert, he is a content marketing expert for local businesses of all sizes. Furthermore, he specializes in B2B content marketing and was one of the authors of the first social media strategizing books on Amazon.

Today, he sits down with us to share his insight, stories, and knowledge for injecting B2B sales staff into the social media strategy.

While he touches on the “why” and overcoming challenges of pulling this off, one interesting aspect he discussed was the use of InMail and how it works with LinkedIn social media strategies.

What is InMail?

InMail is the process of sending someone an email but through LinkedIn. To do these messages, however, a company must purchase the credits through LinkedIn – the service is not offered free. The credits allow companies to send InMail then. So many credits earn you so many InMail messages per credit. The pricing frequently changes, so purchasing during a sale is always the best.

A company or person can send anyone an InMail message. There are no limitations to whom they can send them out to.  By purchasing these credits, the LinkedIn team guarantees the delivery of the InMail message to the recipient – even if that person is not a friend of the sender.

While you can send to anyone, LinkedIn does not guarantee that it will be opened or read. However, you still have the power to send your messages.

Getting the Most out of LinkedIn’s InMail Feature for Sales Team Members

When you start using your B2B sales team in the social media strategy, you must find ways for them to utilize their skill: selling.

Bernie recommends creating an InMail message and sending it to prospects. It is all about getting attention via InMail.

Create a Catchy Subject Line

The first step is to build a catchy subject line. Make it about the person, something that is personal, and get their attention. You are not mass mailing when you use these messages. Instead, you have the option for the personal touch that reaches out to that person and that person only.

Get to the Point and Do It Fast

Also, get to the point quickly. Keep the message short and reference someone that you both know. You could say something along the lines of “Hi, I am a friend of…” according to Bernie. It is an excellent way to open if you can reference someone else or something that you both share in common.

InMail Lets You Connect with People You Otherwise Cannot Reach

The important reasons for using InMail is that you and your sales staff can reach out to people that you have not connected with via social media. Sending a follow request only goes so far, but by sending them a personalized message you are on the path to connecting with that customer.

Making the Most Out of the Connection

Once the connection is established, you cannot ignore the cultivation factor.

Bernie recommends that you connect and then work to serve that person and be useful to their needs. You must be thoughtful and not hard-core sales. While you are there to sell, you should be offering compliments on their achievements, sending articles you think might help them, and flex your professionalism. Be casual about recommendations, but never recommend a product or your business. These sales tactics come later.

Instead, you are building trust and authority with that company – a critical step in converting them into your new customers.

Bernie recommends the five-touch formula. While there aren’t five steps, he just says it is a rule of thumb to use your judgment and ensure that your social media strategy involves enough steps to push someone through the buyer’s journey slowly. It is all about patience and persistence, says Bernie.

Naturally, a sales team member cannot connect with someone five times per day. However, they need to have a strategy in place so that they know how often to connect and cultivate.

InMail is Just a Piece of the Equation

While InMail is helpful, Bernie discusses other ways to incorporate sales into social media. Bottom line, when sales team members are involved in social media through commenting and messaging, they build the brand’s trust – and that is something that can increase revenue all around.

Learn more about Bernie Borges or gain valuable insights into B2B marketing by following his blog on the Find and Convert website.

The post Harnessing the Power of InMail for Driving Social Media Sales appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

       

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Brick and mortar retail is taking a hit. Recently, many of the major retailers such as Macy’s and Sears have announced stores closing all over the United States. While some believe it is due to a weak economy, the reality is that online sales are killing walk-in retail.

Stores that want to make money need to have an online presence. Over the last 20 years, ecommerce has taken off and has now become one of the most used shopping methods by consumers.

The more stores that have an online footprint, the more crowded it has become. As with brick and mortar, stores need to find a way to stand out online. The lack of knowledge of how to run an ecommerce platform has caused many retailers to fail in the online game.

The number of options afforded to ecommerce players are endless (website designs, shopping carts, etc.), making it more difficult to stand out from the crowd if you don’t have the right setup. If you cannot differentiate yourself from the competition, you may as well shut down your site.

“Having so many good options – and some lingering bad options too – can make the process of picking an ecommerce platform seem more complicated,” writes Armando Roggio for Practical Ecommerce.

So, what are the better ecommerce players doing to stand out from their competition.

1. Eliminating Clutter and Reduce Steps

Ever clicked on a website and immediately feel information overload? How long before you clicked off simply because you didn’t feel like navigating through it?

My point exactly.

Eliminating clutter has helped many ecommerce stores to stand out. And clutter means more than just pages with too much information.

“De-clutter the page and limit the amount of information you ask from the user,” writes Khalid Saleh for Usability Geek. “Use smart forms that pull in city, state information, etc. from the zip code. Leverage Google auto-fill forms to help users checkout faster.”

Basically, retailers need a website that is easy to use (both navigation-wise and checkout-wise). People abandoning shopping carts because they have to input too much information is common. After all, people can find the same or similar products through a competitor who doesn’t make things so difficult.

So how do you eliminate steps? Saleh makes a great point above. Use auto-fill if you can and don’t make people jump from one screen to another to complete the checkout process.

Companies such as Amazon.com have this down. Ever seen their 1-click ordering? Once you have your account set up, all you need to do is click the buy button and everything is completed for you. No going to multiple screens or filling in the same information over and over.

Amazon.com dash buttons allow consumers to simply push the button and place a preset order for certain products. Out of laundry soap? Simply click the button next to the washer. Image obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

Amazon.com even goes a step further by offering “Amazon Dash Buttons” where you don’t even have to be on a computer to place an order.

2. Quality as the Main Focus

Quality, quality, quality!

Gone are the days of seeking the absolute rock-bottom price. People are now looking for value and are willing to pay, as long as they receive quality.

Great examples are freelance marketplaces, Upwork and Freelancer. I will not call out which one I think is better, but I will say that one has a vigorous screening process for freelancers. If you are looking for quality, one excels above the other. While you may get a better deal on one, you receive better quality on the other.

Many retailers offer quality guarantees on products, including offering free shipping on returns so that buyers don’t pay out of pocket when there is an issue. Getting rid of things like “restocking fees” have helped sites earn repeat business.

By focusing on quality, customers know they can trust that site and will return over and over while the competition still struggles to convert new customers.

3. Being Socially Responsible Helps the Bottom Line

We are in an era where being socially responsible is rewarding, both personally and professionally.

“People like to feel that they are doing good for the world,” writes Thomas Smale for Entrepreneur, “even when they’re shopping online. From the user’s perspective, seeing that you, the brand owner, have donated a portion of your revenue will seem a selfless act. And it will help the user feel good about doing business with you.”

While we receive the joy of helping others, companies have found that corporate social responsibility has also helped them stand out from their competition.

How much does it help, you ask?

A 2013 study conducted by Cone Communications and Echo Research reported by Entrepreneur.com showed that 82 percent of consumers in the United States consider corporate social responsibility when deciding where to shop. 82 percent!!!

Companies such as Walmart, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola give away a lot of cash to charitable causes. Walmart alone gave $301 million to charitable efforts in 2015.

This is one reason why companies are very open about their charitable work. In fact, some businesses are even giving a percentage of sales to charities. This is an easy way to market their corporate social responsibility.

SRR presenting a check to the United Way in 2010. The company donates $500 to the choice charity of company employees who works a month without a lost day due to work related injury. Image obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, companies that want to take things a step further are inviting employees to choose the charitable programs the company gets involved with. This is a way to turn employees into brand ambassadors while at the same time participating in corporate social responsibility. A win/win for the company.

4. Elimination of Hidden Fees

I hate hidden fees! (Don’t we all?)

Think about ordering a pizza online. While your bill may initially be $15 (thankfully as you may only have a 20 spot), by the time they add on the delivery fee you are at $22.

Hidden fees are not only my pet peeve, but for many others too. According to Time.com (who also points out the frustration of pizza delivery fees), “the only thing these fees do is mislead the consumer by adding a hidden mark-up to the advertised price.”

And that is exactly how consumers feel – misled.

There are some that have eliminated hidden fees, but as Time.com points out, these fees are needed to recoup the cost of doing business. What many retailers don’t get is that people will gladly pay these fees if they know about them upfront and are not surprised by the markup at the last minute.

No Surprise Pricing: costs presented upfront vs. hidden from customer. Image obtained from Quality Logo Products website.

Some retailers have made the choice to be upfront about their pricing from the start instead of displaying fees later in the buying process. As shown above, Chicago-based promotional products distributor Quality Logo Products is doing just that. They are changing this frustrating trend with what they refer to as No Surprise Pricing. Visitors to the website see all associated fees from the beginning to the end of their order. The price on screen also self-adjusts in real time based on any changes made during the customization process.

5. Professional Photos over Stock Photos

Simple enough. Using professional photos can set you apart from others who are using the same stock photos.

There are only a few websites out there which have free images. In fact, there are really only a few quality sites that offer paid images. Regardless, everyone is using the same images.

So why not use your own?

“A stock image risks being no more distinctive than a black T-shirt at a heavy metal concert,” writes Jonathan Crossfield for Content Marketing Institute. He makes a good point which is why retailers wanting to stand out should avoid using them.

If you want some proof behind the madness, look no further than Neilson Norman. In 2010, they published a study showing that some types of stock photos are completely ignored. This means that people will see your website as if it is your competitors. You are trying to stand out, not blend in.

When I talk about professional photography, I don’t necessarily mean you need to hire an expensive photographer. You can do your own photography to both save money and stand out from stock images.

Final Thoughts

As with any business, standing out from your competitors is vital. If you can’t do so, you will drown in the sea of competition.

For those in the ecommerce space, this is even more important. With so many people selling their products or services online, you must find a way to shine through in order to convert customers that would otherwise buy from someone else.

Using things such as quality, bottom line pricing, and corporate social responsibility are all good ways to help stand out.

What methods do you use to stand out? What examples from other websites can you share for others to see?

Landing pages are a central part of every inbound marketing strategy. When visitors land on your page, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention and increase your conversions. Basically, they can make or break your business.

While it’s fairly easy to create landing pages without knowing how to code, conversions are still a hard-fought battle for most digital marketers. So it pays to be aware of what exactly makes a poor landing page and how to avoid fundamental landing page mistakes.

There are many reasons why visitors to your site may not decide to buy your products or fill out your forms. But at least you can be assured it isn’t because of the landing page if you bypass the following blunders.

1. Overly-complicated forms

Most of the time, when someone arrives on your landing page they are only in the Awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. That means they are only just beginning to comprehend that there is a problem or challenge that they need your help to solve.

At this stage, they probably have little knowledge of your brand or offering. They’re just seeking answers and information. It’s definitely a prime time to offer them a little perk, such as a free eBook or a valuable download, but don’t involve a lengthy sign-up form in obtaining that perk.

Even if you have the best eBook in town, no one is going to read it if you ask them to complete a form which requires info about everything but their blood type. At this early stage in the brand-consumer relationship, you haven’t earned the right to be so nosy yet.

Remember that your website visitor is automatically going to be protective of his or her information and that, at this point, all you really need from them is a name and an email address. If you integrate a pop-up form on your landing page, ensure it only asks for these details.

Just having their email address will provide you with many more opportunities to continue the conversation and nurture the relationship. So start small. Building a relationship takes time, both in real life and in the digital world.

This landing page from a consumer reporting agency demonstrates what NOT to do. This form is for a typical Awareness stage offer, however, instead of simply asking for a few key pieces of information, it requests eight different types of information. It will almost definitely deter clicks and ultimately conversions.

2. Self-aggrandising language

A landing page should be a masterclass in the art of persuasion. This persuasion isn’t centered around how awesome your brand is, it’s about how your offer – whether that be content, a webinar or a demo – can benefit consumers and make their life easier. And if it’s done right, it should be subtle.

There’s no shame in being confident, however, this doesn’t give you an unrestricted license to use every superlative under the sun. That’s not confidence, it’s fluff. Use clear, concise language – especially in your call to action – to resonate with audiences. Watering down your language with too many adjectives or propositions just comes off as unsure and cocky, which isn’t at all what you want to project.

Here’s an example:

A. It really is that simple. Learn how we can change the way you come across to others.
B. We’ve tried hard to remove the day-to-day challenges in the arduous process of becoming a more confident person. Learn more about how to boost your confidence by putting your confidence in our completely straightforward eight-step process.

Do you see the difference? The first example is confident and authentic. The second example is wordy and confusing.

Use strong language, not self-aggrandising language.

3. Generic calls-to-action (CTAs)

Did you know that there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of CTA buttons on forms that simply invite people to ‘click’, ‘submit’ or ‘download’?

It seems like a minor detail, but the words you choose can really impact your user’s response. When you use generic CTAs, users don’t necessarily get an expectation of value.

When you use specific language, on the other hand, users gain an expectation of what will happen next. Expectation is a vital part of the brand-consumer relationship.

Being vague or falling short can change someone’s mind. So correct this by being more specific.

Want some specific phrases that will work better than the weak words listed above?

Here are a couple:

• Get your guide
• Read your eBook
• Experience the program
• Take me there!

4. Lack of context

To create a solid and well-optimized landing page, you must consider how the user landed there. Did they click through from social media? Or find you through organic search efforts? Perhaps they were tempted by a pay-per-click ad?

Understanding the source allows you to infer the consumer’s stage in the buyer’s journey and their familiarity with your brand.

If you are using a landing page that ranks well for a popular keyword, then the majority of your traffic will probably be from Google or another search engine. You can, therefore, reason that the user is seeking answers to a problem and may be currently unfamiliar with your brand. Knowing this means you can create a relevant offer like an eBook download.

One of the biggest mistakes brands make is filling a landing page with paid ads offering the opportunity to get a quote or schedule a demo. You’ll know if this approach is killing your conversions simply by measuring bounce rate. This type of landing page just comes off too strong.

Having a variety of landing pages that consider context and the buyer’s journey will help the overall quality of your conversions.

This is a landing page that came up from searching ‘digital signage best practices’. The intent of the search was to find a resource or content. This paid ad from Planar, however, immediately offers a quote yet no content. Consider it another example of what NOT to do.

5. Crowded design

When optimizing the design of your landing page, you should always keep conversion-centered design in mind. The biggest takeaway from The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Design is to keep your users focused on one specific action you want them to take.

This means simplicity in design and self-explanatory site navigation should be a priority.

When a user lands on your page, they usually scan the text because in our digital world, reading is becoming extinct. So in that couple of seconds of scanning, he or she needs to know immediately what the offer is and why it matters. They won’t figure this out if the font is hard to read, the colours are jarring, the formatting is distracting, or the headlines are competing with each other.

The easier you make things for your visitors, the better user end experience you will provide for them and the more likely they are to become customers. For your website’s design, remain true to your brand, but don’t get cute.

Above are two sections of the same landing page from Bookkeeping.com. The page has over-design syndrome. The use of both images and icons is confusing and seems incompatible. It’s hard to know what to look at or focus on first.

In conclusion

Have a look at your current landing pages and find out if some – or ALL – of these sneaky saboteurs are lurking around to stuff up your conversions.

If they are, it’s time to make changes. However, make all your changes incrementally so that you will know exactly which leads to improved conversions. Monitor your traffic as you go.

Moving forward with new pages, make sure your:

• Form is equal to the offer or stage
• Language is confident but not condescending
• CTAs deliver the click
• User gets the experience expected based on source
• Context is considered and catered to
• Design is simple and clear

Let me know if you have any more suggestions below – I’d love to read your comments.

How to Develop Content for Every Stage of the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

For marketers, it’s nearly impossible to get through a day without hearing about or discussing content in one way or another. As the core of your strategy, you can not view content as a bunch of one-off projects. The creation of it needs to come out of one comprehensive strategy.

Because it is such an important piece of the marketing puzzle these days, it needs to be incorporated in every phase of the customer journey. While people often split this journey into three phases, Awareness, Consideration, and Content, I believe there is a bit more to it than that, which is why I’ve developed the Marketing Hourglass which consists of seven stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer. These phases will get a person from their first encounter with your business and then past your point of purchase where they not only turn into a customer but a loyal fan and advocate for your business.

As a person moves through the customer journey, you must hit them with content throughout the process to keep them engaged with your business, and the best way to do this is to match the content you’d like to develop with the various phases of the Marketing Hourglass.

Mapping the Customer Journey

When it comes to the customer journey, it’s important that you don’t get ahead of yourself. I often see small businesses trying to convince prospects that they can solve their problems before they even know they have one.

In order to map out your customer journey, you must understand who your audience is, and I mean really understand their wants, needs and pain points, as well as the types of questions they’d ask themselves before they even seek a solution like yours.

You must be aware of what your customer’s journey looks like in order to develop content for each stage of it. To help you do so, I’ve described the stages below as well as recommended content to go along with each stage to help you brainstorm what would work best for your business.

Know

The Know stage is the phase where people first become aware of your business, and it’s your job to put a piece of content out there that get’s their attention.

Types of content:

• Blog posts answering common client challenges (to help boost SEO)
• Advertising (consider paid search and paid social) promoting content upgrades to boost lead conversion
• Presentations at speaking engagements
• Social media

Like

Once you attract a person to your website, you enter the second stage of the Marketing Hourglass: Like. At this point, you need to give them reasons to keep wanting more and move towards gaining permission to continue the conversation.

Types of content:

• eNewsletters for lead nurturing and to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, and resources over time
• Blog content around specific topics
• Social media
• Webinars
• White papers

Trust

I believe Trust is the most important step but arguably the most tedious and time-consuming. Building trust is a marathon, not a sprint. The more a person trusts you and your company, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you.

Types of content:

• Reviews
• Success stories
• Client testimonials
• Webinars
• Ebooks
• Custom presentations
• How tos
• Client readiness packets
• Proposal documents
• Customer-generated videos
• Case studies

Try

If you’ve built trust to the point where people begin wondering how your solution might work for them, it’s time to enter the Try stage of the hourglass. Try is a phase that many people skip due to the desire to leap rather than lead, however, I think it’s the easiest phase to move people to the purchase.

Here, the content needs to represent a sample of the end result. By creating content in this phase that demonstrates how much better your product or service is than the competition, you can differentiate your business.

Types of content:

• Ebooks
• Online or offline seminars
• Webinars
• Workshops
• Audits
• Evaluations
• Video demos
• FAQs

Buy

This is the step all businesses want, but you must look at it as just another stepping stone to growing your list of thrilled customers (who become brand advocates). For this stage, the focus is maintaining a good experience for the prospect. In order to continue to deliver a remarkable customer experience, you’ve got to continue to educate through content.

Types of content:

• New customer kits
• Quick start guides
• Customer stories
• User manuals

Repeat

To keep customers coming back time and time again, don’t wait for them to call you. You need to stay top of mind, and a great way to do this is to provide them with high-level content.

One of the best ways to get repeat business is to make sure your customers understand the value they receive by doing business with you. In the Repeat phase, you need to consider adding a results review process as well as additional upsell and cross sell touchpoints.

Types of content:

• Start an auto responder series that provides education on additional solutions
• Handwritten notes for no reason
• Send press clippings systematically
• Customer-only newsletters

Refer

The whole point of the Marketing Hourglass is to turn happy clients into referral clients. To do this, you must build processes and campaigns that make it easy for your brand champions to refer your business.

Types of content:

• eBooks, videos, or gift certificates that your customers and strategic partners can co-brand and distribute
• Feature your client stories in your marketing materials
• Create a hot 100 prospect list and share it with clients for introductions

Keep in mind, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to content development. You can repurpose old content (i.e. turning educational videos into written blog posts) and you can even optimize and re-publish previous well-performing content to give it new life.

Creating content can be time-consuming, but by mapping it out along with certain themes and the customer journey, your life will become much easier.

What types of content do you find helpful in each stage of the journey?

Whoever came up with the concept of "networking" must not have had any other responsibilities.

Because who else would have the time to craft compelling cold emails to execs they admire, and invite old coworkers to coffee, and find industry events in their city where they can rub elbows with potential future employers?

It just seems kind of unrealistic. Oh, and by the way, it's not even that helpful.

At least, that's according to Wharton professor Adam Grant. In a New York Times op-ed, Grant argues that while making connections can make you more successful, more often than not it works the other way: Achieving success helps you make connections.

Grant says he learned this concept the hard way: "I once emailed an entrepreneur I admired and got nothing in response. Some months later he contacted me out of the blue, with no memory that I had tried to get in touch before. He had attended a talk I gave and wanted to meet — now he had proof that I could add value."

Grant also cites a 2010 study published in Administrative Science Quarterly that found radiologists who had performed the best later boasted the most robust professional networks.

It's worth noting that Grant is hardly recommending you work in isolation. Grant is also the author of "Give and Take," in which he explains that "givers" — people who genuinely try to help others — are generally the people who get ahead.

In other words, a professional network built naturally, and consisting of mutually beneficial relationships, is OK. A professional network that consists of people you only call when you need something? Not so much.

That said, if you feel like you need other people's help to do great work, there's no shame in reaching out. Career coach and former Googler Jenny Blake previously told Business Insider about the benefits of career "drafting," or asking someone you admire if you can help with any work overflow they don't have the resources to handle.

That way, you simultaneously make connections and gain work experience.

Bottom line: Don't overextend yourself trying to meet everyone influential in your field. Find something you're good at, do a stellar job at it, and those influential people may notice.

SEE ALSO: This brilliant technique is less gross than networking and will get you actual experience and exposure

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 3 alternatives to networking that are less awkward and more effective

Seasoned sales executives know that growth isn’t about closing more business alone. It’s also about increasing the value of the deals that you close.

But telling your team, “We need to close bigger deals” and having them actually rake in the big bucks are two very different things. Increasing deal size means striking up business with enterprise-level accounts. So to reel in those bigger deals your reps need to bring a higher level of professionalism and strategy than they would with a small or mid-market account.

Before you toss your account executives into the deep waters after the larger fish, you can guide your AEs sales styles to fit the needs of enterprise companies. Here are three techniques you can provide your AEs to increase deal sizes.

Grant Total Account Visibility

The first step to increasing deal size is knowing which accounts your reps should target. Having relevant account details, like deal size, noted within your Salesforce account makes it easy to put together your rep’s pipeline.

But the importance of data doesn’t stop at knowing the deal size of your target opportunities. You and your reps can easily keep track of an opportunity’s progress with account details like where the account is within the sales process. Also, when working with enterprise accounts your AEs need the ability to reference activities and data related to a single account in one view.

Align with your sales ops team to ensure your CRM data is clean, concise, and accurate. Then, platforms like SalesLoft can offer the account visibility your team needs wherever they are working. They can see previous activities, account information, contact details, and additional insights. By having all of this information readily accessible, your rep can confidently execute any task and impress their prospect’s with their prepared knowledge.

Codify the Process

The sales process for larger deals is complex. Purchasing decisions can involve many stages of evaluation between multiple stakeholders and departments. According to TOPO, enterprise deals can go through six to ten sales stages over the course of eight months before a deal is closed. Your reps need a systematic process in place that will engage multiple stakeholders through all of the stages of the sale. Larger deals will require more from your reps across the board; more demos, more resources, and more engagement within the account. Without a process in place, communication can slip up and cost your rep the entire deal.

Team cadences provide your AEs with the strategic process to keep them actively engaged with their prospective accounts. So when your rep is working with business and technical stakeholders, they can divide each person into a cadence specifically built for each buyer’s persona. The content will be catered to each buyer’s role while the strategic manner of the cadence will keep each person consistently in the loop as the deal progresses forward.

Encourage the Strategic Upsell

When increasing deal size with an upsell, your reps should target the opportunity with account-based strategies. Selling with the account-based method offers a scalable sales process that aligns your sales rep’s efforts with your customer service and marketing teams. Through this aligned process, your customer — and upsell opportunity — will get the personalized, targeted engagement they received during the initial sales process and prompt them to purchase again and again.

Create a team cadence specifically for enterprise level upsells. The cadence acts as a fail-safe way for your reps to keep in touch with the customer, even while they are working new deals.

Also, one best practice within an upsell cadence is to create “Other” steps for collaborating with customer service and marketing. When your rep runs the tasks the step could involve creating personalized content or video with marketing or jumping on a call with the customer and their service rep to discuss the best upsell options for them. Whichever tactics your sales team uses, with the upsell cadence everyone’s efforts are aligned and progressing towards the upsell.

Increasing deal size doesn’t have to feel like you are putting your sales reps in a David versus Goliath situation. With the right knowledge, strategy, and targeted efforts, your reps will bring in the bigger deals and increase your company’s revenue and overall value. An enterprise level customer who feels the love from your company will be a loyal partner for the long haul.

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

The post What’s the Fastest Way to Increase Revenue? Increase Your Deal Size appeared first on SalesLoft.

Timing is everything in sales. That is why recognizing trigger events is key to being successful.

Getting this crucial step wrong can mean the difference between closing the deal or being rejected.

In this article, we’ll cover what a trigger event is, why they’re important and provide examples you can apply to your own sales strategy.

Skip to:

• Trigger Event Definition
• Importance of Trigger Events
• Tracking Trigger Events
• Trigger Event Examples

Sometimes called a “buy signal,” a sales trigger event is an action or occurrence that creates a sales opportunity. These could be industry changes, a new funding round announcement, a merger, or a prospect getting a new role.

Broadly speaking, any industry change can be considered a trigger event and indicate a channel for making a sale. That’s why sometimes it’s difficult to know the difference.

Why Trigger Events are Important

Sales is a time-sensitive profession. You only have a small window of opportunity to make a sale so it’s important you take advantage of it when it opens. Think of trigger events as an opportunity to do just that.

If you contact a prospect right after they buy an expensive competitive product, they're not going to bite.

But if you find out they're in the market for a new vendor, you can reach out to your prospect before they begin researching, which ensures your message will be received with much more interest. This presents an optimal opportunity to make a sale.

Tracking Trigger Events

With the myriad of instances that can be considered a trigger event, you may be wondering how to keep up with all of them. Luckily there are a few places you can set up alerts that will help you discover these events as they arrive.

Track sales trigger events with:

• Earnings Calls: Earnings calls are open to the public. These quarterly calls can give salespeople an inside peek at publicly owned companies’ performance and future expectations. You can check the company’s investor relations section on their website for the number.
• SEC Filings: If you sell to publicly traded companies, check out their financial statements that are sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These financial statements can help you determine a company’s financial position and whether or not they can afford to purchase your products or services.
• LinkedIn Alerts: Get a heads up on potential personnel changes with LinkedIn alerts. Set up alerts for when positions at a particular company are open. These can serve as an opening for you to reach out.
• Google Alerts: Google allows you to track whenever certain keywords are mentioned. Set up alerts for prospect names or business names and get notified whenever they are mentioned in news on the web.
• Industry Newsletters: Keeping up with industry news can really pay off. These newsletters are often full of potential trigger events as well as keep you informed about industry changes.
• Social Listening Tools: Social listening tools can notify you if someone is talking about you or your business online. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can help you track and get insights from the information pulled.

You'll need to tune into the right channels to detect the sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle shifts that can warm up a cold outreach.

So what do sales trigger events look like? Here are 30 examples of these valuable occurrences and where you can track them.

Sales Trigger Event Examples

1. New Executives

A newly hired member of the C-suite has ample authority and the desire to shake things up. Since they don‘t have established traditions in their new company and are looking to prove their value quickly they’re more open to fresh ideas than most business leaders. It's a perfect time for your pitch.

Track this event with: Google alert for the company name, the company's press releases page, LinkedIn

2. New Job/Role for Current Contact

If a satisfied customer assumes a different position in their company or moves to a new organization, reach out and see if they‘d like to bring your product or service along for the ride. If your offering made them look good in their last role, they’ll be eager to spread the gospel in their new one.

Track this event with: LinkedIn

3. Large Customer Announcement

If your prospect has just landed a significant account, they're about to have a lot more money rolling in. Reach out with a suggestion on how to use some of that cash to their benefit.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page, industry news

4. Company Expansion

A new office location necessitates a glut of new supplies and services. Depending on your product or service, this can be a primary upsell or introduction opportunity.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page

5. Company Relocation

A relocated office is essentially a new office. See above.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page

6. New Product/Service Announcement

By rolling out a new product or service, a company is venturing into uncharted territory. And uncharted territory calls for different types of support -- and potentially new vendors.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page, industry news, social media

7. Competitive Product/Service Announcement

Maybe a competitor beat your prospect to the punch with a new announcement -- or even stole their thunder entirely. You can be sure that if a rival made a bold move, your prospect will be looking to make a bold response. If you can help in that aim, your message will be welcome.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page, industry news, social media

8. Major Competitive Move

This includes any significant activity that falls outside the bounds of a product launch, like a new marketing campaign, piece of advertising, customer win, or leadership change. When one player moves, competitors won't be far behind.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page, industry news, social media

9. Dissatisfaction with Current Vendor

If your prospect is so kind as to announce that their current provider isn't working out, jump on the opportunity. Bear in mind that this could take other forms than a straightforward social media post; look for news articles or legal actions that speak to a souring relationship.

Track this event with: Industry news, social media

10. Bad Quarter

Is the company losing money fast? Do you sell a product or service that could reverse the trend? Introduce yourself.

Track this event with: SEC filings, earnings calls, industry news

11. Good Quarter

Is the company raking in money like crazy? Then they'll be more receptive to projects that could help them continue down the path to success or accelerate their growth. Introduce yourself.

Track this event with: SEC filings, earnings calls, industry news

12. Mergers and Acquisitions

The coming together of two organizations is a golden chance to earn add-on revenue. Spread the use of your product or service, if one party is already a customer, or get an initial foot in the door during a time of new beginnings.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page, industry news

13. Legal Problems

If a company gets penalized for compliance issues, they'll be looking for a product or service that can keep them out of trouble in the future. The salesperson who can swoop in to offer help amidst a disaster will look like a hero.

Track this event with: Industry news

14. Significant Changes in Hiring Velocity

Whether the company is recruiting all the new talent it can get or making massive layoffs, any major shift in hiring can be a worthy trigger event -- depending on what you sell, of course.

Track this event with: Google alerts, industry news, press releases page

15. Major Industry Development

A seismic industry shift will necessitate all in the vertical to take action to capitalize on an opportunity or avoid a risk. If you can help with either goal, reach out quickly.

Track this event with: Industry news

16. New Organizational Strategy/Initiatives

It's hard to get a glance inside a company to see which projects are getting funded and which are being punted to another time or canceled entirely. But if you can glean these insights from a social post or change in social media behavior and position your offering accordingly, buyers will be impressed with your seemingly psychic powers.

Track this event with: Social media, insider correspondence

17. Buyer Opens Your Email

You know when you‘re most top of mind? When a prospect is physically looking at an email you sent. Even though this isn’t so much a trigger event for them as for you, it's still a primary chance to hold their attention while you already have it.

Track this event with: HubSpot Sales

18. New Legislation

When the Affordable Care Act came down, businesses that never previously had to offer health insurance to employees were suddenly mandated to. In order to determine which employees were eligible and which were not, these organizations had to scrutinize the amount of hours employees worked according to very specific rules. And if the company didn't have a sophisticated time tracking system in place? Ouch.

Smart HR technology vendors recognized this opportunity to help companies struggling to implement Obamacare -- and sold a notable amount of new deals in the process. No matter what industry you sell to, it‘s worthwhile to keep a close eye on laws and regulations in case you can be of some aid in your buyers’ time of need.

Track this event with: Industry news

19. Increase in Expenses

Do you sell a product that saves organizations money? Look out for expense curves that rise sharply so you can swoop in to save the day.

Track this event with: SEC filings

20. Change in Price/Availability of Essential Resources/Materials

If a material central to a businesses‘ model suddenly vanishes or becomes cost prohibitive, they’ll be looking for alternate ways to get their hands on it -- or replace it with something else.

Track this event with: Industry news

21. Awards

Recognition within an organization‘s industry or niche feels great. Reach out while they’re riding a high and inform them of how you can help them continue to top their competition -- or even put more distance behind them.

Track this event with: Google alerts, industry news, press releases page

22. Evidence of Interest

If you sell a new kind of car, and a prospect posts an article on Facebook about the benefits of such a vehicle, they're displaying their interest for the whole world to see. Carefully monitor what prospects are posting, sharing, and liking on social networks. And if the topic coincides with what you sell? Pounce on it.

Track this event with: Social media

23. Analyst Report

Every industry has analysts that periodically research and rank companies in their vertical. Once you identify the notable analyst firm(s) in the market you sell to, keep an eye on new research releases. Organizations that rate highly will be looking to capitalize on their status, and organizations that fall to the bottom of the heap will be looking to disrupt the order.

Track this event with: Analyst websites, Google alerts, industry news

24. Entrance Into New Market

New market, new problems to contend with. New problems to contend with, new need, budget, and timeline. The perfect atmosphere for a new sales opportunity.

Track this event with: Google alerts, industry news, press releases page, social media

25. Additional Funding/IPO

Money is scientifically proven to burn holes in pockets. Don't be shy about reaching out to a company that has recently come into some cash to suggest ways to spend it wisely.

Track this event with: Google alerts, industry news, press releases page

26. Event Announcement

Is your prospect putting on a conference, or some other kind of event? If so, they'll need assistance. Offer your help.

Track this event with: Google alerts, press releases page

27. New Critical Positions Created

Don't just pay attention to executive leadership shifts — also watch for new roles that signal new strategies. Keep in mind that people with no predecessors are free to launch their divisions in any way they choose. Get in on the ground floor.

Track this event with: Press releases page, social media

28. Press Coverage

Whether positive or negative, an article from a third-party publication will cast a certain light on a company. Be there to help them double down on a favorable perception or turn around a damaging one.

Track this event with: Google alerts, news

29. Event Custom to Buyer's Industry

Every industry has news that makes huge waves within the category, and registers barely a blip to the rest of the world. Whatever these events are, make sure you're tracking them.

Track this event with: Industry news, social media

Leverage Trigger Events to Make the Sale

Most trigger events aren‘t as obvious as a tweet or LinkedIn post announcing, "I’m looking for a new product for [purpose]. Any thoughts?"

Knowing how to track and identify trigger events will help you capitalize on new opportunities and make your interaction with prospects more relevant to their needs.

Editor's note: This article was originally published in August 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

stevepb / Pixabay

While you may see your goal in any meeting as to sell a product, in reality, what you are trying to do is to solve a gap in the buyers existing abilities and what the possibilities exist for the company. A sale only happens if there is value in the product for the buyer, but that doesn’t mean that the only goal the sales rep has is to make the sale. Here is some detailed information on how to clarify and align sales goals during your next sales meeting.

In fact, the seller needs to go into the meeting also looking for a way to resolve the challenges of the buyer. In this way, both the seller and the buyer are in alignment, looking for ways to create a solution that satisfies a recognized need within a system. Learn How to Run A Productive Sales Meeting and your ability to clarify and align goals will improve dramatically.

This type of alignment of goals brings the buyer and the seller into a mutually collaborative experience during the meeting. However, this won’t happen by accident. Creating a message in advance that is tailored to clarifying the focus of the meeting (to solve the problem/gap/want/challenge of the company) needs to be an important part of your preparation. It should also be a clear intent in your opening message and outlined in your agenda; clarifying for the buyer what your true objectives are for the meeting.

This will prevent that defensive, disinterested and often dismissive attitude that can be difficult to break through when talking to decision makers in any business. Being well prepared and offering a valuable solution diminishes this natural dynamic in the room. So, make sure that you stop pitching & start solving client business problems.

Additionally, by structuring the sales presentation to be interactive, informative and not a hard-core sales pitch further aligns the goals, allowing you to test possibilities along the way and then move into the close at the opportune time.

Have a structured process for getting your prospects to take the next steps towards closing the sale. Here is an article that outlines 3 Steps to Help Prospects Commit. Don’t leave such an important meeting and process to your memory alone, always have an agenda and structured process. This agenda should even include a process to overcoming sales objections.

Software as a Service or SaaS is a different beast compared to other technology products or services. Unlike any other service, there is an always-on connection between the providers and the customers. In addition, SaaS customers are pretty well-informed and are usually technology experts as well.

The ordinary sales approach will not work well because the information that the salesperson can provide can easily be accessed by the prospective customer. More often than not, SaaS providers take advantage of the internet to make people aware of what their offerings are. Their websites almost have everything customers may need and a good chunk of the sales process is about funneling prospective buyers while they’re already on the website, letting them find the information they need (usually takes more than one visit) and waiting for them to take action like signing up for a free trial, a free demo, or a newsletter subscription.

The problem is that with so many SaaS companies in every niche, getting attention is now very difficult. The most effective solution is data. With effective data, SaaS companies are able to:

Identify the market that needs your SaaS

One of the biggest mistakes companies commit is that they try to sell to everyone. They believe that increasing available market size also equals more customers. That is an inefficient way to do things as the company will be exhausting resources on prospects that are unlikely to sign up. This is especially true for SaaS providers because each SaaS is very niche based, and not everyone needs it.

What you should do is identify who needs your SaaS and focus on market penetration. How do you do it? Through tools that give you your needed information like market segments, pain points, customer profiles, user cases, qualification criteria, etc. Leading UCaaS provider RingCentral actually gave more focus on winning the business of enterprises for their Office and Global Office service. Now, the enterprise and mid-market segments account for over $115 million in business, which translates to 86% overall growth, as well as around 45% growth in RingCentral office sales.

SaaS providers should identify their market and focus on market penetration instead of expansion. From there, deeper data can be acquired once targeted prospective buyers enter the sales process.

Personalize your approach to prospective buyers

In his article “Innovation in e-Commerce: Building a Highly Personalized Customer Experience,” Salesforce Marketing Cloud Vice President of Predictive and Web Products, Eric Tobias said that the future of customer experience is going towards a world where ads, emails, mobile offerings, and even stores entered are personalized for each customer. While that may be far off into the future, there have already been steps taken towards it.

Instead of broad macro strategies that aim to reach as many people as possible, you should aim for market penetration by using the data you have, including customer interaction data, to personalize the approach on multiple marketing and sales channels.

Based on interaction data, conversations with customers, and observations, companies can create customer profiles with unique qualification criteria and identifiers, which can, in turn, guide their approach to website content, email, mobile offerings, and other customer touchpoints. This makes for a more personal SaaS marketing and sales strategy.

Improve customer experience

Sales and marketing can do all they can to sell your SaaS but if current customers are not happy with their experience, you will lose them. Even worse, they will talk about it as well which will hurt your reputation.

This is why you want to give users the best customer experience possible when they are using your service. And how do you give your customers the best experience? Through feedback data. Listen to your customers. Open as many feedback channels as possible like feature requests and ratings, bug reporting tool, technical and general customer support, etc. Gather data by staying connected with your users.

In addition, pull up product usage metrics to get objective insight into what aspects of your SaaS is often used, seldomly used, or are never used. With this information, you can identify where your customers are having difficulty and what areas of the product are their favorite one.

By listening to feedback and digging deeper on how your product is used, you can identify customer pain points and eliminate them. With this process, you are able to provide a continuously evolving SaaS that fits your market’s needs.

PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay

As a business owner, one of the most important questions you need to answer is: What is my business worth? However, that question is not necessarily one that you can or should answer by yourself. When contemplating your exit options, you should consider receiving the advice of a professional.

At this point, you may find yourself asking a number of questions, such as: What is a valuation? What are the different types of business appraisals? How much does a business valuation cost? Do I really need a valuation for my business? What is the process of determining the value of my business?

This article addresses these questions, as well as others, and guides you through the critical decisions you need to make when planning to sell your business.

What is a business valuation?

A business valuation is a process used to determine how much a business is worth. The end result can range from a verbal opinion of value to a short written report that estimates the value of your business to highly complex formal reports that exceed 200 pages. These types of appraisals range in price and can cost anywhere from nothing to tens of thousands of dollars.

What is the purpose of a business valuation?

Business valuations are used for many purposes. The value of a business is often required in divorce proceedings, tax planning, bankruptcy proceedings, litigation, buy-sell agreements and strategic planning. An appraisal may also be needed when arranging financing and assessing economic damages for litigation.

Most appraisals are performed for legal purposes, and receiving an appraisal in this format is of limited use to you if your intent is discovering the value of your business to sell it. That is because the appraisal may not reflect the actual market value of your business for the purpose of selling your business.

For whom is a business appraisal written?

Unfortunately, most business appraisals are written for those involved in litigation or other legal matters. Therefore, most use complex language that is difficult to understand and include formulas that are of little use to a business owner wishing to sell.

For example, most appraisals contain an in-depth analysis of national and local economic factors that affect the value of a business, which is required for appraisals intended for legal proceedings. However, most owners are already familiar with the economic factors that affect the value of their business and do not want to pay an expert to prepare a report to discuss these factors.

Appraisals must follow guidelines and standards, and many of these standards require the appraiser to analyze these factors when preparing the report. These guidelines are in place so that appraisals comply with the specific requirements for different types of legal proceedings. For example, an appraisal for a divorce may require a strict definition of value, such as “fair market value,” whereas an appraisal for another purpose may require the standard of “fair value.” Such differences may seem minute, yet appraisals must follow these exacting standards if the purpose is for litigation or other legal matters.

As the business valuation industry has progressed, these standards became more complicated, and thus, the standard business valuation report has lengthened over the years. Following these standards results in more time to prepare a report and therefore an increased price. As a result, most business valuations are of little use to a business owner because they are too esoteric and confusing, and thus have little practical value.

Additionally, many business brokers and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) intermediaries do not have an in-depth working knowledge of these standards, so they decide not to offer business valuations as a service. Subsequently, most of the people offering business valuations are business appraisers and CPAs, many of whom have never sold a business in their life. Few have an understanding of the process of buying and selling a business, and few understand the marketplace for the exchange of companies.

This raises the question: Would you pay an appraiser thousands of dollars to determine the value of your business if that person has never sold a business?

How is a business valuation produced?

As a result of these complicated legal standards, most business valuation report software is specifically designed to produce valuations for legal purposes.

Nearly all appraisers use commercial software when preparing a valuation, while some have produced their own software. You will have difficulty finding an appraiser who uses valuation software designed for the purpose of selling a business. Unfortunately, the reports produced by most valuation software are highly technical and not of much use to you as a business owner.

We recommend seeing a sample report from an appraiser before engaging that appraiser. Read it and see if you can understand it. If you cannot, then you are wasting your money. Remember, the appraisal is designed for you, and if you cannot understand it, then you are throwing your money down the drain.

Fair market value vs. strategic value

1. Fair market value – Most business appraisals use fair market value (FMV) as the standard of value. Fair market value is the price at which a business would sell between a willing buyer and a willing seller, without taking into account the strategic value to the buyer.
2. Strategic value – Also called investment value, this is the value of a business to a specific buyer. It can represent the added value to a potential buyer who is in the market for a specific type of business or who is interested in being the owner of a particular brand, patent or other forms of intellectual property. For instance, a buyer who already owns a business in one area of the market may want to buy a similar business to reduce competition. Therefore, similar businesses to that of the buyer will have a higher strategic value to him. Unfortunately, you cannot measure strategic value until you know who the buyer is because every buyer is able to extract a different amount of value from the transaction. For larger companies, a valuation will only serve to establish a floor or a minimum price at which the company may sell. It is possible that your business may sell for more if it is purchased by strategic buyers.

What are the types of business appraisals?

When considering whether you should have your business appraised, you have many options. The various types of business valuations do not have standard definitions, so it can be confusing. You have many choices, and below are descriptions for each option. Most reports fall into three main categories: a verbal opinion, a written report for non-legal purposes (such as a business sale), and a written report for legal purposes.

Verbal opinion of value – A verbal (technically “oral”) opinion of value is recommended for any business owner who does not need a formal report. This style of report usually involves the appraiser, broker or CPA reviewing the owner’s financial statements and then offering an estimate of value. Sometimes business brokers or M&A intermediaries will charge for this opinion, and sometimes they will not.

A verbal opinion of value is appropriate when your financial statements are inaccurate or incomplete, or if you have large amounts of unreported cash in your business. It may also be appropriate when you do not want to invest too much money on a formal report. This type of report is also useful if you are in the planning stages of selling a business and would like a ballpark idea of what your business is worth before committing substantial time, money and effort to the process.

It is common for us to provide a verbal opinion of value to a client without preparing a formal report. We ordinarily have a 30- to 60-minute conversation with a client before advising the client on what type of report we believe is necessary. A formal report is not necessary for most small businesses valued at less than $500,000. In some cases, however, a formal report may be required.

Written report, not complying with appraisal standards (Restricted Appraisal Report or Calculation of Value) – These reports do not comply with appraisal standards and cannot be used for legal purposes. We generally refer to these reports as a “business valuation, not for legal purposes.” The format of these reports varies tremendously. Some are simple and straightforward, and others are long, formal and confusing. Categorizing the types of reports found in this category is nearly impossible.

A “calculation of value” is the industry’s attempt to offer a simplified report for business owners. Pricing can range from free to tens of thousands of dollars. These reports are useful for business owners who are looking to sell a business, and may not be used for legal purposes, such as a partner dispute, bankruptcy, or divorce. These reports are strictly advisory in nature and are not intended to be used for legal purposes.

Formal appraisal (Self-Contained Report) – This type of report is necessary for any legal purpose, such as a divorce, tax matter or bankruptcy. These reports are often hundreds of pages in length and are of little use to a business owner who is looking to sell a business. The format of these reports tends to be more consistent than the other formats because they comply with the appraisal standards. These reports usually cost $5,000 or more.

In conclusion, there is more to a business appraisal than affixing a number on your business. Before you determine how much your business is worth, you need to first identify what exactly is a business valuation, what is its purpose, for whom is it written, how is it produced, what type of business appraisal is appropriate for your business, and should you use fair market value or strategic value. Being equipped with this knowledge can help not only in saving you hundreds of dollars by choosing the right individual or company to prepare your business valuation but also in obtaining the maximum sale price for your business. Learn more about the process of valuing a business for sale from my latest book, The Complete Guide to Selling a Business.

A consultative selling approach is key to running a well-oiled sales team. To me, the difference between a traditional sales process and a consultative one looks a bit like the difference between a doctor and a therapist.

What Is Consultative Selling?

Rather than telling your prospects what they need, consultative selling is an investigative approach by which prospects are engaged with thought-provoking questions that help them identify their own pain points.

Ultimately, with a consultative selling approach, prospects will steer themselves into making their best decision. The role of the salesperson is to be empathetic and helpful; you should enable the prospect by providing them with the information they need to make an educated buying decision.

Consultative selling stands in stark contrast to transactional selling. Transactional selling is focused solely on hitting revenue targets. Consultative selling, while also interested in hitting revenue targets, aims to do that by helping their customers succeed. And that makes all the difference.

When you have a consultative approach, you measure the impact you have on customers, the outcomes they’re achieving, and their success. You focus your messaging around this data, rather than your features and benefits. You never treat the customer as a number. Instead, you view yourself as a trusted advisor.

Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what buyers want, especially when purchasing expensive, complex solutions.

The #1 Trait of Effective Consultative Selling

Curiosity is at the heart of a consultative sales process, and I think the new generation of salespeople has forgotten the art of asking questions that dig up quality responses.

In a time when selfies, likes, and online follower counts take precedence over human connection, sales leadership needs to reinforce the importance of thoughtful questions and how they can open up the sales process.

Consultative selling techniques are rooted in the selflessness of the salesperson. It’s not about proving that your product or service is the best, it’s about finding the solution that’s right for the customer.

This isn’t always the easiest path for sales leaders and their teams, but the results can be remarkable. If your sales team wants to be more consultative, these are a few best practices you can start working on today.

1. Practice Asking Questions

If this first takeaway sounds too simple to be true, that’s because it is. The simple act of asking better questions undoubtedly leads to a better bottom line.

The moment this hit home for me was when Lessonly interviewed a prospective employee named Katie for a sales position. In her presentation to our team, she challenged us to a simple game called “The Question Game.”

It may sound familiar to anyone who enjoys improv comedy;  we had to see how long we could go back and forth with another person by only asking questions.

This opened our eyes. You can pull a ton of information out of a person with the correctly worded question. I think the winner of Katie’s game asked nearly 15 questions in a row. Needless to say, the game had an impact on our team, and Katie is now Lessonly’s Director of Enterprise Sales.

Soon after we hired Katie, our sales leaders sat down to create sales enablement lessons within Lessonly on asking better questions. We now assign that training to every account executive. Taking this often-overlooked skill and turning it into a training focus has done wonders for our sales team.

4 Types of Consultative Sales Questions:

1. Situation questions
2. Problem questions
3. Implication questions
4. Need-Payoff questions

You may recognize this as SPIN Selling, an approach promoted by Neil Rackham. The reason it works is that it keeps you customer-focused.

Across the board, the best sales calls start with you learning everything you can about the buyer’s situation, what they consider their deepest need, what success looks like to them. That lays a strong foundation of trust and credibility — which is very likely to end in a closed-won deal.

2. Practice Active Listening

This is harder than you might think. All too often, we ask the appropriate “next question,” but instead of listening to the answer, we prepare for the next thing we want to say. We don’t actually register what the prospect is saying.

I recently experienced this first-hand — from the buyer’s seat.

The salesperson was clearly trying to use a consultative approach. This first call was even called a coaching call. But the questions asked at the beginning of the call were more about qualifying me than trying to understand my situation.

Then, in his efforts to display his coaching skills, he’d diagnose problems that didn’t exist. He hadn’t taken the time to dig into the things I said. He made assumptions (rude ones at that) and tried to make me believe I needed their product to overcome these issues.

Active listening is about more than waiting your turn to speak. It’s about making sure you understand what the other person is actually saying before responding to it.

To ensure you hear the prospect and understand their situation, follow these steps:

1. Listen to the words they’re saying. Slow down and listen.
2. Make sure you understand their meaning. Probe further if you aren’t sure.
3. Validate and clarify. Repeat back a summary of what the prospect said, so they can confirm or correct your understanding.
4. Then, and only then, decide on your response or your next question.

3. Do Your Research

There’s more to understanding the prospect than just asking questions. In a consultative sales approach, you need to gather copious information about your buyer before a conversation in order to understand what they need and why they’re talking to you.

I have always been struck by Hubspot’s now-legendary sales training program and how the two things they promise is that you’ll learn to prioritize the right buyers and understand your prospects’ real challenges.

As part of their training, they ask new reps to create a website and try to drive inbound traffic to it. This requires reps to get into the world of the customer. That’s at the core of a consultative sales approach.

These ideas frame the buyer persona/buyer journey matrix of Mark Roberge’s book, The Sales Acceleration Formula.

You don’t know exactly where in the buyer journey your prospect is if you don’t ask. Similarly, if you ask the same questions on every call, what resonates with small businesses most definitely won’t catch the attention of an enterprise-sized account.

Progressive sales leaders should be constantly updating their sales enablement documents as they learn more about their buyer personas. These lessons become extremely important consultative sales training templates that sales reps can fill with their first-hand accounts and information.

4. Add Variety To Your Sales Process

In the early days of Lessonly, we sold plenty of small deals because our product had promise, but was still young. In my experience since then, those deals with lower ACV tended to be simple and easy to sell with a formulaic mentality.

We could crank out low ACV and simple deal cycles like we were on a conveyor belt, but that’s not a healthy way to grow a company.

Training sales reps to add variety into their sales process is a great way to help them be more consultative in selling.

Here at Lessonly, we often issue a “word of the week” to keep our sales team on their toes.

In these challenges, our sales leadership team gets together and picks a random word that our AEs and SDRs should try to use in every one of their prospect interactions.

Then at the end of the week, we go back through emails, calls, and other touchpoints to see how the team did.

We don’t pick winners and losers during this challenge, but we often pull everyone together to highlight a few of the best interactions involving that word and review what made it great.

The point of this tactic is to add variety back into your sales process. If you don’t know where to start, then it might be time for a sales process audit. 

If you’ve ever heard something to the effect of “I know I’m on a good sales call if I say these two things a lot…” that rep is probably not asking enough of the right questions.

Asking the same two questions in every single call is formulaic, not consultative. Your sales team can’t be consultative sales therapists if they’re giving every single person the exact same prescription.

The only thing that applies to every one of your customers is that they have a problem. How you go about solving that problem will almost always be different.

5. Training: Zero in on the Qualifiers

The Lessonly sales leadership team and I were recently listening to recorded sales calls, and we realized that most of our customer interactions that ended in closed deals had a larger number of qualifiers sprinkled throughout the conversation. This includes little phrases like:

• So you mentioned…  
• I’m curious why….
• The reason I’m asking this next question is…

When looking to build a consultative selling process into your sales cycle, these qualifiers are subtle, yet invaluable to the overall conversation. They prove that you’re really listening and engaging with the prospect, and provide clarity that allows a question to have maximum impact.

The best way to actively change this is to listen to your team’s sales calls with an ear for consultative qualifiers.

• How are your reps asking for context?
• Are they listening more than telling?
• What exact words are they using?
• Keep in mind, a consultative sales model shouldn’t sound like an interrogation.

Reps should be weaving in questions and context throughout their sales pitch.

These are the points that you should train your team on. It’s how you’ll build consultative selling into your sales culture. 

6. Add Value First

It’s easy to slip back into transactional selling — even when you’re committed to the consultative model. When revenue numbers are down, a transactional approach to sales may look like the right choice. When that happens, remember, buyers are looking for salespeople they can trust.

That’s why it’s so important to stay focused on adding value. If you focus on selling first, you might hit your numbers this quarter. But what about the future? Consultative sales is about providing value first, trusting that the sale will follow.

How do you do that? Here’s how Anthony Iannariono describes it:

Sales organizations with complex, greater value-creating solutions are focused on solving their clients’ most strategic challenges, spending time consulting with their dream clients, and differentiating their value propositions….. They are increasingly hiring more — and paying more for — people who can develop relationships. This creates a higher level of value and differentiates these companies and their offerings.

People skills are key. You need to be able to identify the people within the target organization who will be most impacted by your solution, then talk to them and advocate for them with the bean counters and decision makers.

You also need to be good at out-of-the-box thinking. There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution, and your ability to listen to the prospect’s needs and come up with a personalized solution can easily set you apart from the competition.

Most of all, if your solution isn’t the right fit, you need to be willing to recommend something else — knowing that you may be the best fit at another time. Because, ultimately, if you aren’t adding real tangible value, you’re selling yourself and the prospect short.

Long-term success in sales depends on building trust and credibility. By offering value in advance (even if it means losing the sale), you earn a reputation as someone who treats people right. In the long run, that will earn you more business and give you far more success.

The Consultative Approach: How to Get Started

As a salesperson, it can be tough to ask consultative selling questions in every interaction, particularly when you’re fairly sure your product solves the prospect’s pain point.

But, adding these best practices to your sales process will ensure the healthy growth of your team, and company, by making sure you are solving the right problem for the right people.

Here are 6 steps for implementing a consultative sales process:

1. Start asking better questions.
2. Practice active listening.
3. Do the work to understand your buyer and their needs.
4. Add variety into the sales process.
5. Train your team on conversation qualifiers.
6. Always add value first.

The post Consultative Selling Techniques: 6 Ways to Earn Trust and Sell More appeared first on Sales Hacker.

ON AVERAGE, GOOGLE PROCESSES 40,000 SEARCH QUERIES EVERY SECOND.

That’s 3.5 billion searches per day, and 1.2 trillion search per year, worldwide.

What major shift have you made in your business to generate traffic to your website?

The reason I ask you this question, is because I went through a huge change in my business, and because of going through this, I was truly able to understand how to steal customers, generate more traffic to my website and generate more leads and sales.

This change was a digital transformation. For the last three years, I have researched and analysed my industry, competitors and customers to understand what they wanted from me.

The tools I used to market by business, and the various marketing techniques stayed the same, but the way I connected with my audience had changed. During this process, I realised, and understood a number of key moving parts to a website that when they are working like clockwork, do give you that boost in traffic to your website that you are looking for.

For this article, I want to highlight eight tips on how to steal customers with google in 24 hours. The eight tips relate to different moving parts to a successful website, how they can negatively impact your business online and a simple solution so that you can drive that much-needed traffic back to your website.

1. DO YOU HAVE A WEBSITE PLAN IN PLACE?

Imagine you are opening a high-street store, or a restaurant. When going through the building process, do you just “go with the flow” or do you have a solid plan in place of how you want everything to look?

Hopefully, you would have a plan in place for not only the build and structure of the physical location, but moving forward with the products you are going to sell. Take this scenario, and apply it online.

There is no difference between building an online store, or a location-based business. The same rules apply (in my opinion). If you are going to invest your time and energy into building a website, you need to have a plan in place.

This plan should include the following:

• Defining your target market
• Researching your competitors (understanding how to steal customers)
• Understanding your USP (unique selling proposition)
• How you are going to promote your website
• Design ideas around how you want your website to look
• Brand guidelines including fonts, colours and layout
• Future growth plans

A website is always a working process and I have realised this over the last three years in particular since launching thinkdigitalfirst.com.

2. IS YOUR WEBSITE RESPONSIVE?

80% of Social Media searches are now conducted through mobile, as well as 60% of all online searches.

Your website is the hub for your brand’s identity online and the importance of offering a seamless experience to a potential prospect regardless of the device they are using is absolutely crucial.

I remember a time when having a “responsive” website was an expensive ask, and something that website builders were not offering and so it was somewhat of a taboo subject.

Here is the definition of a responsive website;

“A single website that adapts to any screen size so it’s as easy to use on mobile as it is on tablet and desktop – no pinching or horizontal scrolling required. The design instinctively adapts to the device it is being viewed on so it looks great on a mobile, tablet and desktop.”

So, when you visit your website via a mobile, or tablet device, are you getting the same seamless journey that you experience when viewing your website on a computer or laptop?

If the answer is no, you need to make a change, and it could be quite an expensive one. It has however, become a lot easier especially if you are using a website builder like WordPress, as they now offer a large number of engaging responsive templates.

If you had your website created by a website designer, explain to them the importance of having a responsive website, and make it a priority.

3. IS YOUR WEBSITE GENERATING BACKLINKS?

When you visit a website, and you see a link to a secondary website, this is what is called a backlink. That secondary website will gain extra brownie points by having content on another website, linking back to it.

Backlinks used to be the most important search engine ranking factor when it came to sitting on the first page of a search engine for search results. Backlinks are still so important, but their value has changed, and this can work to your advantage when looking at how to steal customers with Google.

There are a number of different “types” of links that you need to be aware of:

Link Juice: a webpage that links to your website is deemed “link juice”. This will help with with content ranking.

No-Follow Tag: This is a link to a website that does not contain “link juice”. This is usually done when linking to an unreliable site.

Do-Follow Link: This is the default setting for all links in blog posts, and do contain “link juice”.

Linking Root Domains: The number of backlinks coming to your website from a unique domain. Regardless of the amount of links, it will only count as one linked root domain.

Low-Quality Links: These links come from automated sites, spam sites, and harvested sites and do a lot more harm than good.

Anchor Text: Otherwise known as a hyperlink and are used to help rank for a specific keyword.

Having high-quality do-follow links will generate that link juice you need, and if this is something you do not currently have, it could be one of the biggest reasons why your website is not generating the amount of traffic you would expect.

Monitor Backlinks is a great website for you to check all of your backlinks completely free of charge. If you find that you do not have as many backlinks generating link juice as you thought, here is one simple way to change this; blog commenting.

Find an industry specific high-ranking authoritative website that encourages comments and a community environment so that you can leave a worthy comment, with a link back to your website. Guest-blogging is another great way to generate high-quality backlinks.

4. IS YOUR BLOG CONTENT ENGAGING UNIQUE AND RELEVANT?

One of the best ways that I have personally generated hundreds and thousands of website visitors is through the content I create, and this is one of the best tips when it comes to looking at how to steal customers, and get on the first page of Google.

If you haven’t already, install a social shares plugin/widget to your website. Allowing your audience to go and share your blog content with their audience will bring organic traffic back to your website.

But…

Is your content worthy?

It may take you a long time to find the perfect type of content for your target audience, but it all starts with research, and an understanding that the content you create has to be relevant, engaging and unique.

I have seven rules that I follow for all of my content:

1. A catchy headline (I know what works for my audience… read more here)
2. Short paragraphs (nothing more than five lines long).
3. Clearly define the context of the article
4. Bold headlines, and use the quotation feature where necessary
5. Variety of different pieces of content including visuals and videos
6. Statistics, facts and real-life examples
7. Article length must be at least 600 words

5. HOW USER-FRIENDLY IS YOUR WEBSITE?

User-friendliness.

How frustrating is it when you come to a website, and you find a number of different issues? The usual suspects include:

• Loading time
• No search bar
• Difficult navigation
• Content overload
• Broken links

All of the above contribute to a negative website visit, and in turn, results in a high bounce rate (where someone only visits a specific page on your website, and leaves before navigating elsewhere).

There are a number of different tools you can use to make simple fixes around user-friendliness. If you have a wordpress website, have a read of a recent article I wrote around plug-ins that will help you achieve a seamless website experience.

6. HOW UP-TO-DATE ARE YOUR KEYWORDS?

This is where it gets slightly more complicated. Defining your keywords, and actively using them on your website is a sure-fire way to get a big thumbs up for search engine ranking, but it’s not that simple anymore.

The more businesses that start using certain keywords as a way of driving traffic, the less likely you are to rank for them because the competition is so high. Regardless of whether you have the best content or not, authority outweighs this every time.

This means that more common one-word, or question keywords around popular subjects are almost not worth look at, so you need to do your research, and really listen to your target audience.

How are your target audience searching for your products/services online? They won’t be using a one-word search term to get specific, they will use more words, and this is where you capitalise on long-tail keywords.

Doing all of the above, plus using long-tail keywords will help you generate the website traffic you are looking for, and achieve the ultimate goal of understanding how to steal customers.

7. ARE YOU PROMOTING YOUR WEBSITE ONLINE?

Regardless of whether this is inside of a Facebook, Twitter, on a forum or at an event/tradeshow, think about how you interact with your audience and the way in which you share your content that sits on your website.

You have an arsenal of amazing marketing tools across the board including Social Media, so use them to your advantage and always track the content linking back to your website to measure what is getting the most engagement.

Asking your audience questions can give you a 162% increase in interactions, and the more you interact online, the more likely you are to increase your website traffic.

8. ARE YOU PROMOTING YOU ONLINE?

My final question to you, is around becoming an influencer online, and building YOUR authority online, that will in-turn help your website grow.

As I have evolved as an entrepreneur, I have realised that I have become more personal, and have shared more of my life with my audience than most other influencers I know. Doing this has definitely contributed to becoming a top 100 digital influencer because people buy from people, and having my own unique and personal tone of voice has definitely heightened my engagement, and increased my reach, and website traffic over time.

Every single company that connects with their customers online that has a website and a successful marketing strategy will have their own tone of voice that connects with their customers. People will always buy from people, so your brand has to have emotion, and a personality which they can connect with and relate to.

How do you feel after asking yourself the above eight questions?

Lesson for leaders

How will you exceed the new winners-eat-everything digital economy? You must surpass the world’s billion-user platforms that are eating the digital world, and as Amazon shows, advancing far into the physical one. Even the billion-user platforms face this threat. They will soon need to defeat each other or lose everything.

Digital convergence wars are coming. Why? The prize is the world’s digital infrastructure for decades to come. If you are one of today’s giant leaders, the reward is to concentrate the world’s wealth in your own corporate-first hands. The penalty will be total defeat.

If you are a publisher or media, your only chance is to change the paradigm, win a different game, and conquer from your chosen playing field. Your competitive strategy could be to add people-first exponential growth publishing, and ride it to industry leadership—then scale it to lead the world.

This may be your last chance to win today’s only real race, to capture the fast-arriving digital infrastructure. Put on your ten-league boots. It’s stomping time.

Who leads the race to eat the future? Of the 14 platforms with a billion-users, Google and Facebook own 11 of them.

Today’s business scale is billion-user platforms: lead the world or go home

How have today’s billion-user platforms been created? Hunt for massive traction by pivoting your innovations, buying hot startups and copying those you can’t buy. Then scale digitally worldwide.

By 2025 the dominant platforms aim to capture most of the world’s digital economy through addictive technologies, AI, robotics, universal tracking-advertising-persuasion, cost elimination, and automated jobs. That digital world will surround and be invisible to unconnected companies.

Today’s linear and non-platform leaders will have four choices:

• Be consumed and work in the digital infrastructure for its leaders
• Decline to a smaller size and work in the old disconnected economy
• Die
• Only a few will rise to the challenge of taking on today’s leaders by building a world-leading platform of their own.

Publishing is one of the major industries that could be up to this challenge.

The Digital Convergence Wars of 2020-2025

Digital Convergence will explode into war. Follow-the-leader will stop working as the platforms add hooks to consume companies that merely copy them. Each of the giant platforms will spend $billions to capture your customers, the economy and entire societies.

How will your company win against the billion-user platforms, AI’s and voice bots from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple?

Either capture your industry, then other industries, or be captured.

Digital convergence warfare is almost here. How do you prepare strategically?

These wars will fight to own the world’s fast-arriving global digital infrastructure:

• Digital Convergence Wars are arriving: This will rapidly converge the future of devices (Apple, Samsung, AR-VR-MR), advertising/marketing (Google, Facebook), work (Microsoft, Slack), commerce (Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart), cloud (Amazon, Microsoft, Google), and much more. Some of today’s leaders will not make it.
• The top leading companies each have their roadmap, but they know it’s too early to see if they can win: The billion-user platforms are not yet prepared battle for their strategic global convergence into a digital infrastructure. Facebook announced the most visible 10-year roadmap. It focused on their $2 billion VR purchase of Oculus, and Mark Zuckerberg demo-ed himself living in VR in the future. Then Amazon leaped ahead with Alexa, Google declared AI will be its future, chatbots rose, Pokemon Go triggered Apple’s addition of the ARKit platform, the cloud services war erupted, and Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26 billion and re-focused on the cloud. These are the skirmishes. The great war for dominance has yet to break out.
• Tech’s leaders know that tech causes widespread job losses and leaves millions behind: They talk up “more creative lives” and avoid visible systems to grow widespread prosperity, because that will highlight their negative impacts. It will also prove that they don’t know how to solve problems caused by corporate-first platforms. None of the billion-user platforms has a roadmap to build a planet that delivers universal prosperity and include everyone. Today’s leaders focus attention on their latest shiny object advance. This distracts from the “real story,” which is: who among them will wind up winning and becoming the richest while not mentioning how many people are made poorer as tech leaves their jobs behind. They don’t discuss the answer to our generation’s historic question: where is the wealthy future we knew was coming from advanced technology? It’s here but it’s in their pocket. Most of the world remains relatively poor, without a clear way to rise.

In contrast, an exponential platform is the only IP (intellectual property) that has been developed specifically to deliver a people-first digital Earth, start universal prosperity, and build a successful planet in years, not some future generation.

• This IP is an “intentional invention” to create a positive future without revolutionary wars, and without attacking those at the top.
• The U.S. Patent Office divided its 1,400-page patent specification into 31 technology categories.
• This IP is designed to create a patent family with a potential hierarchy of hundreds of divisional patents.
• Why start with IP? To provide competitive advantages to the few companies that invest in leading a successful planet, to strengthen their unique role and leadership.
• Who is paying attention? This IP has already been cited by over 650 subsequent patents, with the most citations from leading tech companies. In comparison, the average patent receives only 3 citations, and only a small number of patents receive more than 100-200 citations, out of millions of patents.
• The growing number of citations of this IP is already making it a node in the tech “IP tree” that reveals the future.

As the physical and digital worlds merge, the digital Earth will grow dominant. Everyone will fall behind if tomorrow’s digital infrastructure fails to accelerate everyone’s personal abilities and successes.

But if the digital infrastructure is people-first, then everyone can rise. Think of how many people use one direct and simple Amazon and bypass all the other e-commerce choices.

Instead of today’s multiple platforms, a people-first publishing platform would simplify everyone’s “presences”; always on connections; personal digital protections and physical safety; immediate achievement during each interaction; and everyday online life, work, and entertainment. This was designed to build the preferred choice for digital life, work, learning, and entertainment.

A direct and personal “People-First Digital Earth” will empower everyone to achieve much more, immediately, across the world. Its exponential publishing platform may be the last chance for leading publishing and media companies to take the lead.

What’s at stake? The winning infrastructure will lead the digital economy for decades to come

Today’s leaders have corporation-first roadmaps. Their success comes first.

Instead, an exponential publishing platform adds a two-way Internet business model that builds a successful digital Earth that includes everyone.

With Digital Convergence Wars arriving by about 2020, it’s time now for publishing to prepare its strategy, technology, and platforms.

This Media 2025 Exponential Roadmap gives publishers and media critical elements they need for victory:

1. You see what’s coming while you still have resources, talent, communication channels that reach everyone, and are early enough to act.
2. This technology shows you how to leap ahead at speed, and translate new people-first technology into business leadership.
3. Business ecosystem — Its technology and its exponential platforms are designed for partnering and ecosystem growth. Many threatened industries and leading companies will face digital extinction. You expand your central role by coordinating their sharing in people-first prosperity by using your exponential platform as a service.
4. People ecosystem — Large numbers of people can use your exponential platform to take personal action and rise to the top. Successful personal lives can begin again. Your platform will continuously grow and advance their needs, protect them personally, and drive both personal and children’s success. That will appeal to people everywhere, worldwide.
5. Cloud business — An exponential platform produces a scalable cloud service you can deliver as a scalable business. It begins by developing it and using it online for your company, markets, and customers. Then its proven advantages can be sold as a service. Potentially large numbers of leading companies who can add it rapidly to drive their own successful global digital transformations.
6. Early revenues — To cover costs, future participation can be pre-sold at early stages, just like movie distribution rights are currently pre-sold for countries, toys and branded products are licensed toys, and other spin-offs are pre-sold. In the movie industry, these sales can cover most movie production costs. There is also the tech model of other companies’ VC funds investing and purchasing an equity stake.

Once launched, an exponential ecosystem can use your “Digital Earth as a Service” (DEaaS). Companies can generate new growth by adding an advanced Digital Earth for their customers and markets. People can rise by using your Digital Earth to live, work, learn, and entertain.

Instead of a digital Economy driven by corporation-first dominance, you can lead a successful people-first Digital Earth with visible markets and more efficient people-first companies that serve everyone faster, cheaper, and better. Your leadership helps capitalism evolve into partnership capitalism that benefits everyone, instead of a few.

There isn’t another roadmap like this, to drive the success of large numbers of companies and people worldwide. But to win, it’s time to fasten your seat belt and learn how a successful digital Earth will work.

How to engage your audience with a customer-focused relationship

It seems to be a trend in the world of digital marketing: Brands are leaning heavily on their product instead of their customers. Coca-Cola recently rebranded its Coke Zero product to Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, abandoning advertisements about the experiences of people drinking its beverages in favor of a product-oriented focus on ingredients and taste.

Coca-Cola believes this product-centered approach will drive sales and create a loyal culture of followers, but this mindset runs counter to human behavior. An overemphasis on the bells and whistles of a product might work in some industries, but people are far more likely — to the tune of a jaw-dropping 269 percent, according to one study — to do business with companies that take their needs into account.

Think about the last time you tried to buy a car. I suspect the salesperson spent hours talking about the features, gadgets, and design aspects of the car. And you probably did not care that the car could zoom from zero to 60 in 2.2 seconds or that the controls for the radio were right next to your hand. You were likely more interested in whether the vehicle met the needs of your family.

Had the salesperson instead asked how you plan to use the vehicle and what you dislike about your current car, it might have been a more pleasant experience. Customers are more interested in learning what a product does for them and less interested in hearing how this car compares to competitors.

The same theory applies to digital marketing. By considering the interests, wants, and needs of customers, brands can emphasize how a given product might solve specific challenges. Marketers must get their customers talking to understand their unique pain points. This insight is tremendously useful when cementing a marketing strategy, and it sets you up to sell by design instead of by chance.

So how do you get started? Here are four tips for implementing a customer-focused process:

1. Stop underestimating data.

Nearly 90 percent of marketers consider data their most underutilized asset. If you can measure it, you can manage it, but you cannot manage things that you fail to measure. Collect as much data as possible, and spend time analyzing it for trends that you can use to generate leads and drive sales. If possible, make these data-centric exchanges conversational and interactive when engaging with customers. Ask your customers what they need.

Your research will help you relate to your customers and shape what I call your W.I.N. list: what's important now. This list of life goals should include everything that is important right now to make your next significant personal and professional moves. The end goal is definitely critical, but incremental steps along the way are equally as important. Considering the amount of white noise in the marketing world, it is necessary to differentiate your company in some way. The best way to achieve separation for your brand is to truly understand your customers — and data can play a big role to help you achieve your goals.

2. Be flexible, not breakable.

Even the best-laid plans of marketers can go awry. You might hit a roadblock, but that does not mean you should abandon your entire strategy. Instead of pulling the plug, take the time to consider why it failed. Tweak your strategy, believe in your system, and start again.

Consider Amazon, which is arguably the most innovative company of our time. Despite several high-profile failures, Amazon continues to reinvent the wheel. Remember the ill-fated Fire Phone? It certainly resulted in a bit of egg on Amazon’s face, but that did not stop the company from going back to the drawing board to try again. The company learned from those mistakes and eventually incorporated some elements into its new Echo Show.

Most successful endeavors involve some amount of failure. You might fall down seven times, but you need to stand up eight times. Learn from your mistakes and come back with something bigger and better. A marketing strategy that incorporates the same openness and determination is bound to succeed.

3. Get your story straight.

Does your website tell a story? Does it match your social media posts? Does your social content sync with the stories coming from your sales reps? Each platform of your brand influences every other foundation of your business to create a continuum of communication.

Consider Anthropologie, a clothing retailer that truly excels at content marketing. Anthropologie understands the wants and needs of its customers, and its content speaks to those needs by delivering a consistent story across its store, blog, website, and social accounts. It offers contests, photos, and lifestyle tips across these platforms, ensuring customers remain engaged and loyal to the brand — with 2.3 million Instagram followers, its customer loyalty seems secure.

When you tell your story, be as honest as possible. Be authentic. Even though we might be afraid to call our babies — or our businesses, in this case — ugly, it is OK to let customers see the truth behind the curtain. People want something that feels real instead of canned and scripted. Deliver a consistent, authentic story, and consumers will be hooked. This sort of brand alignment helps build trust in your company and enables your team to use storytelling in the sales process.

4. Sleep with one eye open.

A Gartner survey revealed that the number of companies that planned to invest in big data dropped by 6 percent in 2016. If that trend were to continue, industry insights and trends might not be as prolific in the years to come.

I encourage clients to spend 90 percent of their time driving business with a marketing plan. I adhere to the adage of planning your work and working your plan. But what about the remaining 10 percent of your time?

In addition to monitoring what your competitors are doing, dedicate a small team at your company to research and development. Give them a budget, and let them pursue ideas nobody else has tackled. Whether something sounds unimportant or insane, give them space to experiment. You will stay on the cutting edge while nurturing an innovative company culture.

Not buts about it, you must go outside your comfort zone to identify your customers and determine how to appeal to their unique needs. Instead of trying to sell people on the myriad features of your product, talk about what your product does for potential customers. A client-focused process helps you discover the needs and wants of your clients while allowing you to connect with them on a personal level.

Think of it this way: When we talk about our lives, we talk about designing the life we want instead of simply living it. It is easy to say, “I want to make a million dollars and live in a white house with a picket fence,” but those words are hollow without actions to back them up. We can turn our dreams into reality by designing a plan rooted in our wants and needs. By taking a similar tact, digital marketers can cut through the clutter and serve the needs of their clients.

Thanks to Michael Ray Newman for sharing his advice and opinion in this post. Michael is the CEO of Zig Ziglar Internation. ZZI transforms businesses, changes lives, and trains people to be leaders through the time-tested principles of Zig Ziglar. Michael has committed his life to helping others and inspiring employees with high energy and higher expectations You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

Episode 74 of Landscape Digital Show reveals 9 ways telephone selling can be used to get people talking, earn trust and grow relationships

After graduating from university in the early eighties I accepted a technical sales position with a big oil company. That’s when I learned to overcome my fear of the telephone as a selling tool.

At that time telephone selling skills were everything because other than personal meetings, it was the fastest way to make discoveries, share information and develop relationships.

Like anything else, telephone selling is something you learn from experience. This may be why so many people today are afraid of cold calling. They have seldom been in tough situations where they had to make it work.

Instead, they lob an email out there and hope for the best. There’s a problem with that approach. Everyone else is using it too.

This is why telephone selling works. It makes you memorable, and that should be enough to make it a key part of your selling strategy.

Not only that, it improves the effectiveness of your other selling tactics, including email and social media.

Telephone Selling Sparks Relationships

If your audience is predominantly comprised of people are over the age of 40, there is a very good chance they prefer to do business in person or over the telephone. While they may use text and email, you will never truly have their full attention unless you are face-to-face or on the telephone with them.

The telephone gets and holds people’s attention. If you have ever tried to have a short telephone conversation you know that it’s not easy because most people want to have a little small talk first; it’s just how we are wired as human beings.

The telephone makes human connections that are vital for earning trust and closing deals.

Contrast that with email, texting, and social media. These methods of communication are best-suited to brevity. It’s why lengthy social media updates earn the tag TLDR – too long didn’t read.

That’s not going to happen with telephone selling if you follow these 9 proven practices that respect the person you are calling and the value that you bring to him or her. You may not agree with all of them but give each a few tries before rejecting any because people are different and not every tactic will work every time.

#1. Have a written telephone selling plan.

This includes how you will open and close the call, and key questions to ask. This is especially important if you are not comfortable with telephone selling, and if there are key issues you want to be sure to address.

However, be prepared to go off script. Most important is to follow the lead of your caller. If they want to small talk you should too. They will let you know when it’s time to talk business.

#2. Do not send an email to set up the call.

If you use email to state your business up front you increase the odds of having your call ignored. That email gives your caller what they need to craft an excuse for the gatekeeper.

#3. Be prepared to leave an intelligent voicemail.

Congratulations. While you did not have a conversation, you’ve become more memorable than your competition that isn’t using the telephone. Now you can follow-up with an email to provide additional value that you promised in the voicemail.

It’s a process that you have to plan and track.

#4. Research your caller.

When your call is accepted you need to quickly establish alignment. The purpose of the call is to develop a more personal relationship by making discoveries that are shared with the inner circle. Come to the call prepared or you will destroy that trust.

Also, be sure to update your CRM systems to document the call and build your intelligence for this contact and others like him or her.

#5. Connect the dots to mutually trusted connections.

Having mutual friends in common is a great way to establish alignment that moves the conversation along. Just be prepared with details that only another friend would know about that person.

#6. Be humble.

People may be intense or relaxed, but those that are most successful are always humble because nobody knows everything there is to know. Be attentive and interested and you will make surprising discoveries.

#7. Offer to collaborate.

This stops short of offering a solution and that earns respect from people that don’t want to be pitched, and that’s most of us. Collaboration always leads to better outcomes and greater commitment to seeing them through.

#8. Go for no instead of yes.

High-pressure sellers go straight for yes and that makes people uncomfortable because everyone has a different process for making decisions.

Smart sellers make inquiries that are likely to receive a no response. This approach eliminates obstacles and objections one at a time. Eventually, there is only one likely response, and whether that’s a yes or no, you will be remembered as a professional.

And that is how you get referrals from people that do not become your customer.

#9. Thank them for taking the call.

This is an extension of being humble. Your caller took a chance that you might have some value to offer. And they invested a nice chunk of their time. That should be acknowledged in no uncertain terms.

Call to Action

As I was putting these tactics together I realized there are more I’ve developed or happened upon during the course of making thousands of telephone selling calls over the years. I’ll put those together for a future episode.

Until then, the call to action for this episode is to put these 9 telephone selling tips to the test. Then drop me a line to let me know how they are working for you.

I talk to sales leaders all day, every day and data integrity is only one of the many problems plaguing sales team efficiency. Productivity studies show that the average rep spends only 20-25% of their time on selling activities (vs. administration/compliance, customer support, planning, reporting, etc…). Run the numbers…this doesn’t make sense.

As a sales leader, your goal should be to clear the noise and protect your team’s time. This starts with identifying and understanding the issues, but takes so much more – vision, strategy and the ability, focus and discipline to execute.

Over the last decade or so, there’s been a proliferation of sales tech and the number of tools we use on a daily basis has increased exponentially. Every VP of Sales comes in with a mental playbook – “this worked for me at my last company, so of course it will work here”. Don’t fall into this trap, you need to stay up to date on the tech that’s out there and make the right decisions for your team.

If you’re biggest problem is getting a handle on your TAM and assigning territories, you probably shouldn’t be spending time with sales enablement and content management vendors. Similarly, if you’re struggling to get visibility into client calls, BI tools aren’t going to help. As you grow, you can build a true sales operations and enablement function (check out our advice here), but in an early stage startup these decisions fall to the VP of Sales and prioritization is key.

Where to start?

First, you have to understand the work your team does and where the time goes. Ask your team to jot down what they are doing at 15 min intervals for a week – it’s a telling exercise.

NOTE: You’ll probably look at the outcome of this exercise and think “this is not how I want to spend my time”…right, no one wants to spend 2 hours a day logging notes in Salesforce, updating their forecast or trying to find an email address for an elusive contact, but it’s a reality for your team.

Next, map that time back to key corporate initiatives – what is required, what is high impact, what can be outsourced, what can be automated?

Finally, set short and long term goals to address. Once you have a full list, you’re balancing for a few things: priority level, expense/cost, speed to complete, one time vs. ongoing, etc.

Some of the most common areas to address:

1. Data integrity: There are great tools out there to help you augment your data with the correct HQ, employee size, industry, etc…Clearbit and Datanyze are some of our favorites

2. Contact information: Solutions vary drastically depending on the industries, company size and titles you are exploring, and it’s much easier to track down email addresses than phone numbers. Try Clearbit, Connectifier and ZoomInfo first. No luck? Consider outsourcing list building via Upwork, offshore resources or interns.

3. Communication: To bring focus to your funnel and remove the friction associated with the traditional online form to BDR model, you should be talking to Drift. You can also help AEs stay on top of their leads while bringing visibility to activity levels with solutions like Salesloft and Outreach.

4. Conversation insights: Have a remote team? Want to get a pulse on what’s really happening in deals? Consider a solution like Chorus.ai or TalkIQ to bring efficiency to reps through transcriptions and deal insights to your leadership team to drill into when coaching

My final piece of advice – figure out who is going to own implementation, enablement and evolution of your tech stack before you start investing. You need to nail your process before you start layering in tech.

How do you stay up to date on sales tech? How do you know you have the right systems in place to support your growth goals? We want to hear from you!

The post Sales leaders, let’s talk tech (and automation, and outsourcing, and efficiency in general) appeared first on OpenView Labs.

A senior sales executive I’ll call Daniela was frustrated. She’d been working on delegating more to her team. To her dismay, many were struggling to take on the levels of freedom she’d offered — even though they’d asked for more responsibility. Exasperated, she vented to me, “I thought delegating was supposed to free me up to do more of my own job. But every time they drop a ball I hand off, it takes me twice as long to clean up the mess as it would have taken for me to just do it myself.” Exhausted from failing at one extreme, her natural impulse was to revert back to the other.

As research on decision making shows, our brains are wired to be more reactionary under stress. This can mean that stressed-out leaders like Daniela resort to binary choice-making, limiting the options available to them. In tough moments, we reach for premature conclusions rather than opening ourselves to more and better options. Faced with less familiar conditions for which our tried-and-true approaches won’t work, we reflexively counter our natural anxiety by narrowing and simplifying our options. Unfortunately, the attempt to impose certainty on the uncertain tends to oversimplify things to a black-and-white, all-or-nothing extreme.

Just as an orthopedist works with joint injuries whose stiffened muscles need to increase their range of motion, leaders must avoid the whiplashing effect of bounding between polarities. They must learn to increase their “range of motion” across an array of leadership challenges and increased pressures — because that gives them a more effective set of options from which to choose.

Let’s examine how this might work in four common but stressful situations.

Delegating important work. This is Daniela’s problem, and it’s a common one. Many leaders struggle to let go of decision rights. Leaders obsess over letting go of their own authority because an untested follower’s failure will make them look bad. A more insidious fear is that a follower’s success will make them irrelevant! So they cling to their authority with exhausting levels of control. But eventually, being the bottleneck becomes too stressful, and in demanding situations leaders are forced to give people chances to step up to new challenges. And with unfettered optimism, they then declare “I trust you” and let employees muddle through on their own, with limited perspective and experience. In most circumstances that is not delegation: It’s abandonment.

The amount of authority the delegator relinquishes should match the delegatee’s skill and readiness with the situation at hand. It should begin with a clear conversation between the leader and the employee clarifying expectations, honestly assessing what the employee is ready to take on, and explaining how the leader will remain involved. Too often, a sense of urgency causes leaders to skip this important preparation. In fact, the more urgent a project is, the more carefully planned the delegated authority must be.

Taking this approach would have helped Daniela see beyond the polar opposite alternatives of “delegate” and “control.” Instead, Daniela might ask herself, “What parts of this task are my people ready for and confident enough to take on, and what role must I play for this to get done?”

Communicating tough news. One of a leader’s most stressful demands is delivering messages that disappoint people. The two extremes that leaders tend to bounce between here are being overly blunt and excessively tentative. I’ve watched leaders waste precious minutes on long, confusing preambles designed to soften the blow. I’ve also seen leaders convince themselves that “just ripping the Band-Aid off” is the best way to deliver bad news. Neither option ever works. This is because “softening the blow” too often includes diluted and vague language that leaves the listener anxious but confused about what they heard. The Band-Aid-ripping approach is usually delivered with harsh, judgmental, and sometimes demeaning language that leaves the listener more focused on the leader’s offensive behavior than on whatever the message was.

Leaders must learn to blend their degree of directness and their degree of diplomacy based on the impact of what they are saying on those hearing it. Leaders who don’t have sufficient range of motion to appropriately deliver tough news have even less capacity when they need it most — dealing with the inevitable aftermath of what they’ve said. The key, again, is preparation. If leaders spend time carefully crafting messages that blend the right degree of diplomacy and directness, tailored to those hearing it, they will be far better prepared to deal with what comes afterward. Isolate your own discomfort with or fear of their defensiveness or anger; write out the message in clear, nonjudgmental language in no more than two to three sentences. Then deliver the message within the first two minutes of the conversation —no long wind-ups, no small talk to delay or warm up. Use the remainder of the conversation to process what they’ve heard, ask questions, vent, or clarify. Make it about their needs, not yours.

Facing high-risk decisions. For routine decisions, most leaders fall into one of two camps: The “trust your gut” leader makes highly intuitive decisions, and the “analyze everything” leader wants lots of data to back up their choice. Usually, a leader’s preference for one of these approaches poses minimal threat to the decision’s quality. But the stress caused by a high-stakes decision can provoke them to the extremes of their natural inclination. The highly intuitive leader becomes impulsive, missing critical facts. The highly analytical leader gets paralyzed in data, often failing to make any decision. The right blend of data and intuition applied to carefully constructing a choice builds the organization’s confidence for executing the decision once made. Clearly identify the risks inherent in the precedents underlying the decision and communicate that you understand them. Examine available data sets, identify any conflicting facts, and vet them with appropriate stakeholders (especially superiors) to make sure your interpretations align. Ask for input from others who’ve faced similar decisions. Then make the call.

Solving an intractable problem. To a stressed-out leader facing a chronic challenge, it often feels like their only options are to either (1) vehemently argue for their proposed solution with unyielding certainty, or (2) offer ideas very indirectly to avoid seeming domineering and to encourage the team to take ownership of the challenge. The problem, again, is that neither extreme works. If people feel the leader is being dogmatic, they will disengage regardless of the merits of the idea. If they feel the leader lacks confidence in the idea, they will struggle to muster conviction to try it, concluding, “Well, if the boss isn’t all that convinced it will work, I’m not going to stick my neck out.”

The right blend of conviction and openness sets the stage for others to participate in surfacing an untested solution that builds on the leader’s best thinking, but refines it with the inputs of others. This collectively energizes a leader and their team, preparing the organization for putting the idea into action. Facilitate this type of problem-solving conversation with careful intent. Establish the persistence of the issue, what solutions have failed, and why. Clarify that you want the team to choose the solution with you. Make it clear you are looking for new ideas, not a defense of failed solutions or rehashed versions of them. Build a shared set of measurable criteria that you believe depict a viable solution. Own any biases you have for particular untested solutions, and ask the team to treat them no differently than ones they generate. Have the team surface their ideas. Rate all ideas, including yours, against the established criteria, and most important, surface all assumptions underneath your views.

The more stressful circumstances are, the more a leader can benefit from a wide range of options to choose from. Reverting to extremes may create a false sense of comfort in the moment but set up disaster in the end. There are no complex challenges in the world for which there are only two possible solutions. The minute you find yourself torn between two extremes, assume that both are limited, step back, and build a broader menu of options. That’s where you’re likely to find your optimal choice.

AlexanderStein / Pixabay

With the rise of content marketing, thought leadership has become increasingly popular, especially in technology and consulting. Thought leadership pieces provide a great way to demonstrate your knowledge while providing added value to clients and customers. But, despite the benefits that great thought leadership can provide, many go about creating thought leadership pieces all wrong.

The simple fact is that great thought leadership is not easy to create. Yet many companies want to jump into thought leadership creation with no concrete goals, objectives or prior planning. The result is often muddled pieces that don’t deliver a consistent return on investment.
To create a white paper, article or other thought leadership piece that delivers real value, it’s important to invest some up-front time and effort to develop a plan. Here are the five critical steps that can help you create great thought leadership:

1. Establish your business objectives.
   Many individuals approach thought leadership with a great idea for a topic. Instead of diving in, take a step back and consider: what are you trying to achieve? The fact of the matter is, without giving thought to your goals, you aren’t likely to achieve much of anything. Some common goals that can drive the creation of thought leadership pieces could include attracting new clients or making sales, gaining press attention, or establishing your reputation in a new space. By considering and documenting your specific goals, you will not only get yourself pointed in the right direction but also give yourself a “true north” that you can revisit throughout the creation process to ensure that you stay on track.
2. Identify your KPIs.
   Once you have clear objectives, you need a way to measure your success. If your goal is to generate press attention, for example, your success measure may be as simple as having your results published in a well-known industry publication. If your goal is to generate new leads, your KPI may be the number of meetings you make to discuss your results with prospects. Setting clear KPIs or success measures up front will not only give you a target to aim for, but also create a tangible way of gauging the value of your efforts.
3. Determine the type of thought leadership that will be valuable to you and your target audience.
   The first step here is to clearly identify your target audience. This isn’t about demographics so much as psychographics: what is your target audience interested in, and what will help them in their business? The second step is to consider the value for you and your organization. All too often I see thought leadership pieces that provide free value to the target audience, while having little to no bearing on the producing company’s product or service offering. The needs of the target audience should be balanced against the size/scope of your specific objectives and the amount of time/effort you are willing to devote to achieving those objectives. Choose the type of thought leadership—be it a whitepaper, article, webinar, conference presentation or other piece—accordingly.
4. Identify the topic.
   The right topic isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, the place to start is talking with people in your sales team. Sales people are close enough to the customer to understand what prospects will find helpful while still being mindful of your company goals. Next, do some secondary research to see where white space exists in the market. It’s hard to achieve your objective if your piece is treading over ground your competitors have walked before. Take a look at what your company and competitors have published in the past, and examine current trends to see what people in your industry are talking about. In the social media age, it’s particularly important to identify a topic that fits into an ongoing dialog in your industry. Before finalizing your topic, also give some thought to shelf life. Is the time and effort expenditure worthwhile if the piece will seem dated within a few months?
5. Develop a hypothesis.
   Only once you have completed the first four steps are you ready to develop your hypothesis, or the piece’s unique point of view. This should be a distinctive position that you are trying to prove or disprove in support of your business objective. Make sure that your hypothesis is both linked to your company’s abilities, products or services, and that the discussion of your topic will be relevant to your clients or prospects.

Now you’re ready to begin!

I know, this sounds like a lot of work—but creating truly distinctive thought leadership takes energy and careful planning. And, if done well, a good white paper can go a long way to establishing credibility, driving loyalty, and generating new revenue for your company.

Sorry, Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

By Mike Brooks, http://mrinsidesales.com/

Practice doesn’t make perfect,

only practice of perfection makes perfect. 

--Anonymous

This is one of my favorite sayings, and I love to use it during training or during a speaking event. I ask the audience how many people think that practice makes perfect, and you should see the hands shoot up! Everyone has heard this saying since they were kids, and most people believe it is true. And you should see the look on their faces when I tell them it’s not. 

As they slowly put their hands down, I tell them that practice only makes permanent. If you practice something wrong – a golf swing, a sales rebuttal, etc. – you’re going to get really good at doing it wrong. In fact, it will be easy for you to be bad at something automatically, you won’t even have to think about it!

Unfortunately, whenever I go into a company and listen to their pitch, or the way they handle objections, or open their calls, I hear it. Many sales teams, and sales reps, are practicing poor selling techniques over and over again. And because they get into the same situations over and over again, they just keep saying and practicing the poor techniques. 

And this is why they don’t see the consistent results they want. Think about it: If your prospect tells you at the end of your demo that they need to talk to their partner or spouse before they can make a decision, the right response isn’t, “Okay, when do you think I can call you back?” That is practicing a poor selling skill, and the result is a lot of calls backs and chasing unqualified leads. 

The proper response – and the way to practice perfection in this instance – is to isolate this stall by saying, “I understand and you should speak with them. And if, after you do, they tell you to do what you think is best, then based on what we’ve just gone over, what would you tend to do?” 

By isolating this stall – rather than buying into it – you’ll soon learn that any answer other than, “I’d do it,” means that asking their so-called partner or spouse isn’t the real objection. There is something else holding them back, and until you uncover and deal with that first, then you are just going to get stalled by this objection over and over again. 

Practicing poor selling skills has another danger as well. It also ingrains poor techniques and turns them into habits. And habits are very hard to break. In fact, when teaching a team new and better selling techniques, one of the biggest challenges is getting them to first “un-learn” their old, ineffective habits. While they may do well in the first week or two with the new approach I teach, soon, if they’re not diligent, they can drift back to their old habits and poor skills. 

That’s why constant, ongoing work and commitment is required in the first 90 days to make sure they learn and adopt the new habit of a best practice technique. 

The good news is that by concentrating on practicing perfection, you’ll not only get better results – and what better reinforcement is there? – but you’ll also develop better habits. Soon, if you really stay focused and keep practicing your new techniques, it will be easy for you to succeed in the selling situations and objections you get into over and over again. And then soon, it will be like you to do things well and become a top producer. 

And that’s when selling become easy, and your career becomes much more rewarding.

Mike Brooks, is founder and principle of Mr. Inside Sales, a North Carolina based inside sales consulting and training firm. Mike is considered THE authority on inside sales, and is author of award winning books on inside sales, including his new book: Power Phone Scripts: 500 Questions, Phrases, and Word-for-Word Scripts to Open and Close More Sales. (Published by Wiley & Sons and available at all booksellers, online and in stores)

Mike has been voted one of the most Influential Inside Sales Professionals for the past seven years by The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, and just won the 2017 Service Provider Award for training and development from the AA-ISP. Mike is hired by business owners to implement proven sales processes that help them immediately scale and grow Multi-Million Dollar Inside Sales Teams.  For more information, you can visit his website: www.MrInsideSales.com

There’s a simple checklist I use before pressing send on every outreach email.

It’s worked to get the attention of the press.
It’s worked to get the attention of leads.
It’s worked to kick-start conversations that result in closed deals.

Why a checklist?

I fell in love with checklists after reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. In this book, Gawande explains how checklists have saved lives in industries like construction, medicine, and aviation. While it’s unlikely that the emails you’re sending are saving lives, there’s no question that an email can make or break a relationship.

Send better cold emails with proven hacks and templates. Download your free templates right now!

So I’m going to show you the exact checklist I use to ensure that every email I craft is one worth opening.

1) Never, ever, ever use a generic salutation

I’d like to have a moment of silence for the following salutations:

• To whom it may concern…

• Hello [Company Name] folks…

• Dear [occupation] manager...

• Hey there!

Now that that’s out of the way, let me start by emphasizing that these types of introductions have no place in outreach. Whether you’re reaching out to a potential hire or a potential lead, your emails should never, ever, ever use a generic salutation.

And in this tech-savvy world, it’s easier than ever to avoid them! There are plenty of services to help you track down the actual first and last names of the people you’re trying to get in touch with, along with their email addresses—try Hunter or Anymail finder, or any of these tools to help you find an email address.

If you find the email of someone within your target organization but not the person you’re really looking to talk to, reach out and ask for an introduction. This is one of the best strategies for reaching an individual you’re not connected with. Once you’ve gotten your foot in the door, ask your contact to connect you with the decision-maker for the kind of product you’re selling.

2) Capitalize on a recent or timely event

Did a prospect's company just get slammed by a Google penalty or raise VC money?

Any event that signals change in an organization can be an opportunity to engage. When you’re reaching out to someone who doesn’t know you, look for these opportunities and craft a relevant message that cuts through the noise.

Include a mention of the event in your subject line or in the body copy of your email. A simple gesture like this shows the recipient that you’re not just sending a blast to hundreds of people—you’ve actually done your research. For example, if the company just got accepted into a popular accelerator program, your subject line might read: Congrats on getting into ABC!

3) Avoid spammy keywords & tricks in your subject line

Few things in this world frustrate me more than emails with a fake RE: or FWD: tag in the subject line. Don’t try to trick the people you’re emailing! You wouldn’t want to be tricked into opening an email, so don’t take the lazy way out and pretend that you’re replying to one of their emails or forwarding something relevant.

Realize that the subject line of your email can play a significant role in determining whether your email hits the trash or gets a reply. If you try to be tricky, it’s likely your efforts will get sent to the trash—or be met with a not-so-friendly reply. Don’t do it.

Something else you should avoid when crafting your subject line are spammy keywords that make the recipient’s spidey senses start tingling. Words and phrases like Free, Cash, Low Price, Click Here, Read This or This Isn’t Junk are to be avoided like the plague. Not only are they considered spammy by most email clients, they also give some email recipients a case of the hives because they’re inclined not to trust words like that.

Suggested reading: How to craft better subject lines?

4) Optimize your very first sentence (it’s important!)

When an email hits your inbox, you don’t just read the subject line. You also read the name of the sender and the preview that appears directly after the subject line—usually it’s the first sentence of the email.

When reaching out to prospects, it’s important to make sure this first sentence doesn’t come off as spammy either. Instead, try to make that sentence so compelling that the reader has to click.

For starters, use the recipient's name (spell it correctly, please) to let them know it’s not a mass effort. Then say something that will catch their attention quite quickly, whether it’s a reference to something they recently shared on Twitter or a news story about the company. Show the recipient as soon as possible that you’re not just blasting anyone and everyone.

5) Go above and beyond with personalization

The most enticing and memorable emails I’ve received have always been personalized.

And I’m not simply talking about a personalized salutation like Hi Steli...

I’m talking about emails that are personalized to the next level. I’ve even received emails with a video of the sender talking me through how their product or service could help me, from marketers showing examples of how we could improve our landing pages to SaaS salespeople showing us leads we’re missing out on. Personalization through video is a great way to stand out. Video tools like Wistia’s Soapbox are perfect for sales professionals who want to deliver this level of personalization, as you can record both your screen and yourself.  

If you’re not interested in being on video, that’s OK—personalization can be done through the written word as well. Be descriptive when explaining how you can help, and show the recipient that you’ve done your homework on their competition, growth, sales, or headcount. All these things can positively contribute to the impression you give in your initial email. And though many people don’t like to believe it, first impressions matter.

Wrapping things up

The next time you send an email, take into consideration these simple ideas. They might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies are still sending emails getting the basics wrong—and then concluding that “cold emailing is dead.” If you don’t do it right, of course it won't do what it’s supposed to do.

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