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VICTORIA — When news broke Tuesday that Malaysia’s Petronas was walking away from the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG project here in B.C., the New Democrats were quick to absolve themselves of any part in the demise of the $36 billion project.

“The company was very clear — this was a decision they are making because of the economic challenges in the global energy marketplace,” said newly appointed Energy Minister Michelle Mungall, reading from a prepared statement.

“This isn’t about anything else other than Petronas looking at that long-term reality in the international market,” she told reporters in her office in Victoria. “The Pacific NorthWest LNG project as proposed in its current state was uneconomical to move forward.”

Low commodity prices. Rival jurisdictions beating B.C. to the punch in developing liquefied natural gas for export. The glacial pace of project approvals here in Canada. All were factors in the decision.

Still, it was difficult to reconcile the energy minister’s response with what New Democrats had been saying in opposing the Pacific NorthWest LNG project every way they could.

Here’s Mungall herself, speaking against the B.C. Liberal-negotiated development agreement with Petronas, on the floor of the legislature in July 2015:

“The B.C. Liberals put themselves in such a desperate position when it comes to negotiating for LNG that they had to say yes to any single thing that walked through the door. That’s exactly what they have done. This is the big sellout of British Columbia.”

She then joined her colleagues in voting against what they denounced as a giveaway of the province’s natural gas resource to the Malaysians for insufficient returns in jobs and revenues.

NDP Leader John Horgan later urged federal environmental regulators to reject the project because of an unacceptable increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Two other NDP MLAs — now forests minister Doug Donaldson and parliamentary secretary Jennifer Rice — signed a petition to deny access to the preferred Lelu Island site for the terminal.

Even after the major First Nations groups in the area endorsed the project as part of a $200 million benefit-sharing agreement, the New Democrats continued to align themselves with a smaller group of holdouts.

The NDP view that the Malaysians had taken B.C. to the cleaners on this project — and trampled the environment and Indigenous rights in the process — raised a couple of questions in light of the latest decision from Petronas.

First, if the project was as much of a steal for the Malaysians as the NDP claimed, why didn’t Petronas go ahead and cash in? Second, if the project was as bad for British Columbians as the New Democrats maintained, why weren’t they celebrating its demise?

But Mungall stuck to her script, insisting that “our government is committed to working with the LNG industry to ensure we are competitive.”

Far from it.

The energy minister’s mandate from the premier directs her to drive a harder bargain with LNG producers than the terms that the NDP opposed two years ago and the Malaysians just abandoned.

Here’s the relevant passage in the mandate letter from Horgan: “Ensure British Columbians benefit from liquefied natural gas projects by requiring proposals to meet the following four conditions: express guarantees of jobs and training opportunities for British Columbians; a fair return for our resource; respect and make partners of First Nations; and protect our air, land and water, including living up to our climate commitments.”

Then there’s the mandate letter for her cabinet colleague Environment Minister George Heyman: “Work with the minister of finance to implement an increase of the carbon tax by $5 per tonne per year, beginning April 1, 2018. Take measures to expand the carbon tax to fugitive emissions.”

So Petronas balked at the current carbon tax and regulatory regime. But the New Democrats reckon that other companies would proceed to build multibillion-dollar LNG terminals under a higher tax applied more broadly to the fugitive emissions from pipelines and production at the well head?

Related

• Vaughn Palmer: Premier Horgan goes headhunting to fire, hire B.C. Hydro leader
• Vaughn Palmer: Horgan unplugs Clark's cronies, empowers Peterson in Hydro shakeup
• Petronas cancels $11.4-billion LNG project near Prince Rupert

Then there’s the reaction from the NDP’s partner in power-sharing, the Green party.

“B.C.’s future does not lie in chasing yesterday’s fossil fuel economy,” declared Green Leader Andrew Weaver on Tuesday, all but gloating over the news from Petronas.

“Since the beginning it has been clear that the global marketplace does not support the LNG industry that the B.C. Liberals promised in their 2013 election campaign.”

No, it doesn’t. But while the Greens celebrate B.C. remaining ideologically pure in not touching the stuff, other jurisdictions have gone ahead and developed LNG and will continue to do so when markets recover, as expected, in the next decade.

The real impact of Tuesday’s decision is not to reduce natural gas production in B.C., but rather to reduce the potential returns to the province from developing overseas markets.

Even as Petronas abandoned its big-ticket investment in B.C. LNG, a company representative announced that “we actually look forward to working with John Horgan and his government as we develop our vast assets in the Montney joint venture area.”

Those and other natural gas deposits here will remain captive of the glutted North American market and reliant on sales to the Americans who — ironically — have developed LNG for export while B.C. dawdled.

Nor is the situation likely to change, given one partner in the NDP-Green government bent on driving a harder bargain with investors and the other hostile to LNG development on any terms.

Vpalmer@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/VaughnPalmer

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Amazon's third annual Prime Day was its biggest one yet.

The company sold more during its massive sales event, which lasted 30 hours from July 10 to July 11, than it did on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of discounts available only for Prime members, the number one most popular purchase was the Echo Dot. Prime members also bought a record number of Echo speakers, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs — all of which are Alexa-enabled devices.

In addition to the basics, here are 27 useful Skills, or tricks, that you should know about if you're a new Alexa user.

Plan a vacation, track your flights, and book a hotel room.

Kayak's Alexa Skill lets you search for hotels, flights, and rental cars with your voice. To stay under budget, you can even say, "Alexa, ask Kayak where I can go for $200."

You can also try Expedia's Alexa Skill to book a rental car, check your flight status, and review your loyalty point status.

You can enable both through the Alexa Skills store, on the app or online. If you know the exact name of the skill you want, you can also say, "Enable Kayak Skill," for example.

Check how long security lines are at the airport before leaving your home.

The next time you have to go to the airport, use this Skill to check what the current security wait time is.

Just say, "Alexa, ask Airport Security for the wait time at JFK," or whatever airport you're going to.

Find out the best way to get to work every morning.

If you drive to work every morning, Alexa can help you find the quickest route and what traffic conditions are like on that route. To use this feature, go to Settings > Traffic and enter your starting point and destination. Then ask, "Alexa, what's my commute?"

If you commute on a train or subway, you can enable specific Skills such as NYC Transit or NYC Subway.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Most high-value complex sales require that we engage with multiple stakeholders at different levels in the customer. If we start at with a contact at the operational level, even if we successfully sell them on the need for action and the advantages of our solution, they will often have to persuade others - usually a combination of their peers and their superiors - before a buying decision can be finalised.

And if we start by successfully engaging a contact at the strategic level that we persuade to buy-in to our vision, it’s pretty much inevitable that in this age of collaborative, consensus-driven decision-making that they will at some point pass us down to people at the operational level so that they can conduct a more detailed evaluation on their behalf.

Wherever we start our conversation, it is always wise to remember some classic advice: “we end up talking to the person we sound like”…

For many top sales performers, this is instinctively obvious - but I’ve observed far too many sales conversations that go rapidly off-piste because the prospect sees the conversation as being irrelevant to them.

It’s probably worth highlighting a few of the distinctive differences between strategic and operational contacts:

AVOIDING MISALIGNED COMMUNICATIONS

It’s hardly any wonder, is it, that there is so much scope - particularly amongst relatively inexperienced sales people - for having the wrong level of communication with the wrong people?

Of course the problem is compounded (as a number of studies have pointed out) by the fact that the typical sales person is far more confident talking about their products than their customer’s business environment, whilst the typical business buyer regards relevant business expertise as far more important than product knowledge.

There’s got to be a way around this, and of course there is: it’s a matter of establishing separate talk tracks for strategic and operational conversations, and coaching sales people in how to handle both levels of conversation.

This is not about coming up with rigid scripts - any customer worth their salt will be able to see through them in an instant. It’s about coming up with a series of connected talking points and insights that are connected with the issues that are most likely to be relevant to the role and level of the audience.

But as I suggested in my introduction, there are times when we might want to deliberately switch the level of conversation up or down in order to progress an opportunity. Here are a couple of examples:

MOVING DOWN WITH A MANDATE

After successfully engaging at the C-Level, we are told that they now want to bring their subject matter experts in to evaluate our solution at a detailed level. There’s a real risk that the project could disappear into a Black Hole at this point. The operational people on whose desks this task lands will often have other views and priorities.

They might well report back to our C-Level sponsor that the problem is already being addressed, or that existing initiatives are adequate, or other related reasons. These responses are often predictable. In addition to negotiating continued direct contact with our initial sponsor, we might choose to quote these predictable operational responses and explain that it would be quite normal if their staff reported back along these lines, but that their responses may fail to take into account the strategic importance or value of the initiative.

MOVING UP WITH SUPPORT

If we find ourselves stuck at an operational level with a well-meaning contact who is protective of their position and appears to want to try and control the dissemination of our messages to their colleagues, we might choose to adopt an opposite tack: to ask our contact a series of strategic questions that we have deliberately chosen because we suspect they may not be in a position to answer.

Our goal here is to help persuade our contact of the importance to the success of the project that these questions are answered, and to convince them that their personal priorities will be most effectively supported if they help us to engage with the (strategic level) person who has the answers.

GETTING COMFORTABLE ABOVE OR BELOW THE POWER LINE

The best sales performers are comfortable in identifying whether their current contact sits above or below the strategic/operational power line, and are able to adapt their style and tone of communication accordingly. Just as important, they are capable of consciously moving their conversation from one side of the power line to the other (and back).

How confident are you that all your sales people are equally able to talk at the right level? Or is it possible that some of them find themselves talking - without realising or wanting this - to "the people they sound like?"

Fortunately, this sort of conversational awareness and fluency can be coached and supported through well-constructed talk tracks that act as skeletons rather than cages. Have you equipped your sales people to do the same? And if not, why wouldn't you?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, home of the Value Selling System®. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now works with a growing client base of tech-based B2B-focused high-growth businesses, enabling them to systematically establish their distinctive business value in every customer interaction.

Currency traders sure are a twitchy bunch. A couple of months ago, they were selling Canadian dollars faster than Tanzanian shillings. Suddenly, they fell back in love with the loonie. Canada’s currency is going for about 80 U.S. cents this week, a 10-percent-increase from early May.

What happened? A few things, the most important of which appears to be that global investors caught up with what was going on in the global economy, recognizing the growing evidence that Canada’s economy is back in a solid groove.

No slight against Tanzania, but Canada’s dollar didn’t belong on a list of the world’s weakest currencies this spring. The economy had been on a roll since the latter part of 2016, and oil prices had recovered somewhat. But instead of analyzing the data, traders were taking their cue from the Bank of Canada, which hadn’t fully embraced all the positive indicators. On July 12, the central bank finally did so, raising interest rates for the first time in seven years. It was a wakeup call for the markets. Most of the dollar’s appreciation has occurred in the past couple of weeks.

Foreign-exchange rates are imperfect indicators of economic strength. Speculative impulses cause currencies to climb too high and to tumble too low. Still, a currency’s value generally reflects the fundamentals. Canada’s dollar is back at 80 U.S. cents because the Canadian economy is currently among the strongest in the world. The International Monetary Fund updated its economic forecasts on July 25, predicting Canada’s gross domestic product will expand 2.5 percent this year. That would be a percentage-point improvement from 2016, and better than any other country in the Group of Seven rich economies.

Next closest is the United States, where the IMF estimates GDP will grow 2.1 percent in 2017. So there’s a big gap between first and second at the G7. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. dollar has been falling as Canada’s currency recovers. There always is an element of U.S. weakness in Canadian-dollar strength, and vice versa. Essentially, what’s happening now is global investors are repricing Donald Trump. The IMF cut its outlook for the U.S. because it no longer thinks the U.S. president will get the big tax cuts he promised in the campaign. Traders took note, and now are on the hunt for better bets than Trump’s chaotic America.

If there is one thing that could get Canadians talking about something other house prices, it’s the currency. But instead of obsessing over the gap between the U.S. and Canadian price on the back of the new Annie Proulx novel, take a look at your stock portfolio. Not so long ago, there were limits on the international assets Canadians could stash in their Registered Retirement Savings Accounts. Those restrictions were removed in 2005 and wealth managers have been urging us to diversify ever since.

Still, we’re hardly riverboat gamblers when it comes to our savings. We like what we know, making U.S. stocks a popular way to diversify. Many Canadians would have been feeling pretty good about their American stock picks this spring. Consider a blue-chip equity such as Amazon, which has gained more the (US) $250 this year, or almost 40 percent. If you own it, you are doing ok. But because exchange rates are reflected in the overall return on stocks listed overseas, you were doing a lot better in early May, when a loonie bought a mere 73 U.S. cents.

Or think about it this way. Mississauga, Ont.-based Cott Corp. announced on July 25 that it sold its soda business to a Dutch company for (US) $1.25 billion. The company said it will use the proceeds to pay off debt as it transitions to a new business plan built around water, coffee, and tea. If Cott had closed the deal in May, it might have made an extra $100 million, give or take, assuming they converted the proceeds into their home currency. That’s real money.

Most companies hedge against changes in the exchange rate, but it’s hard to guard against shifts as rapid as what’s happened to the Canadian dollar in recent weeks. International sales in U.S. dollars no longer are worth as much as they were earlier this year, which will dent profits. Some firms now may be scrambling to find ways to reduce costs, as international clients could be less keen to buy Canadian now that the exchange rate is less of an advantage. Tour operators likely will feel an immediate impact, as American tourists could look at Canada as a destination that no longer is on sale. Canadian travelers may feel like they can afford to go abroad for the first time in a couple of years.

Yet something doesn’t feel right. “The value of the Canadian dollar went up too much, too fast over the last few weeks,” Luc Vallée, chief strategist at Laurentian Bank Securities, said on July 17, when the exchange rate was around 78 U.S. cents. Canada’s dollar typically tracks the value of oil, and crude prices have been weak lately. That suggests the recent gain is based not only on stronger economic data, but a perception that the central bank is keen to keep raising interest rates.

That’s an aggressive bet. It’s not at all clear the central bank is planning many more increases. Governor Stephen Poloz said future changes will depend on data. And while indicators such as retail sales and exports are solid, there is little evidence of inflation, meaning the central bank faces no serious pressure to cool the economy. In fact, currency markets now are helping the central bank in that regard, since a stronger currency essentially has the same effect on the economy as higher interest rates because it will reduce exports and corporate profits.

Market participants anticipate a second interest-rate increase in October. By bidding up the dollar, they are giving Poloz a reason to disappoint them. Vallée’s advice: sell the Canadian dollar now while it’s hot, and then buy it back at a cheaper price before it goes even higher. By that reasoning, the currency traders weren’t wrong; they just bid the currency up a little too far too fast.

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MORE ABOUT CURRENCY:

• Why the Bank of Canada is so cloak-and-dagger about the loonie’s strength
• Why the loonie is still flying high despite the economic storm clouds
• To grow Canada’s exports, we have to look past the U.S. market
• How CCL Industries quietly became the world’s largest label-maker
• Canada’s real Brexit worry should be the surging U.S. dollar
• The Bank of Canada had nothing to say yesterday, and it said it

The post Why the loonie is soaring. And what it means to you appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

There’s a difference between an author and a writer. An author is someone who published a book at least once. A writer is someone who continues to write and publish, cultivating a writing life. But how do you know what to write about, and when to start your next project?

If you’re a writer for longer than five hours, you know that writing isn’t for the faint of heart. As William Zinsser said in On Writing Well:

If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.

Which isn’t to say writing isn’t fun or rewarding, which it is, but it’s no stroll on the beach either. When the research is finished, and the argument is finessed, writing the fifth, sixth, and seventh draft becomes a slog.

It’s in this phase, where the work of writing is done, that new inspiration often strikes. If you don’t have a place to put them, these ideas can distract you from your prize. If you lack a system of capturing moments when the Muse visits, you won’t have any material to work with in the future.

In this final installment of the How to Write Your Best Book series, Marion Roach Smith joins us on on The Portfolio Life to talk about when to start writing your next book, the importance of cultivating a writing life, and how to ensure you have a writing future.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you’re reading this via email, please click here).

Show highlights

In this episode, Marion and I discuss:

• What it means to build a writing life
• Pre-requisites for having a writing future
• The folder every writer needs
• How to handle new ideas in the middle of writing your book
• Dealing with boredom while writing
• The parallels between writing and dating
• When to start writing your next book
• How writing books is like growing up
• Moving onto the next project as a means of preserving personal sanity
• A rubric for deciding what to write about next
• The value of calling yourself a writer and an author
• Leaving it all on the battlefield once you’re done writing a book
• How to identify future market trends
• A soul-searching question every writer simply must ask themselves
• Who to send your “vomit draft” to
• Three questions every agent and publisher asks
• Lifting your sights to the next ideas and getting someone else’s eyes behind them
• How to hop genres while preserving your personal brand
• Enjoying a full-funded curiosity
• Learning new skills in order to switch genres
• What to read so that you know what good writing sounds like

Quotes and takeaways

• “You want to have a writing life, not just one book.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “Be hospitable to your writing life.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “You’re not in complete control of your book launch.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “Listen to what your agent says.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “There are no end of people online who don’t know what they’re talking about.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “Read over your head.” –Marion Roach Smith
• “Be respectful of your craft and learn it.” –Marion Roach Smith

Resources

• How to Write Your Best Book Part One, Two & Three
• The Book Writing Framework
• 5-Step Memoir Writing Program
• Real Artists Don’t Starve
• Screenplay by Syd Field

Where do you capture new ideas? How soon do you start writing a new book? Share in the comments

Social media marketers, do you feel a brief pang of envy when a brand gets sassy on Twitter or Facebook? Do you wish you had the brand identity and/or corporate backing to smack down a troll, a la Wendy’s?

Me too. It’s only natural. Even in a profession as inherently creative as marketing, some of us can fly our freak flags higher than others. If you’re working in financial services, or healthcare, or any number of staid verticals, odds are you have to keep your sarcasm in check.

We may never get the sweet satisfaction of seeing a tweet full of biting wit go viral. But we have to keep perspective. Are we here to get featured on Buzzfeed, or to generate revenue? Does the snark really translate to sales?

The good folks at Sprout Social just released their Q2 2017 Sprout Social Index, and they’re taking aim at precisely that question. People like brands with “personality,” sure. But what do consumers really want from brands on social media? And how should those preferences inform your social media marketing strategy? Let’s run the numbers.

#1: Funny Is Good, But It Isn’t Everything  

Infusing a little humor into a brand is a good way to express personality. It lets people know that there are actual human beings behind the brand, seeking to entertain just as much as they inform.

As a once and future comedy writer, I’m an advocate for humor in marketing. But we should make sure the humor is not all that we’re bringing to the table.

Sprout Social found that while 3 in 4 consumers appreciate humor from brands, being funny was 4^th on the list of what consumers really want from brands on social media:

The far-and-away winners are honest, friendly, and helpful. If you have these three covered, then you can add in the humor. On the other hand, if you’re not honest, friendly, or helpful, no level of funniness will make up for the lack.

It’s also worth noting how far down the list “trendy” and “snarky” are. There’s no shortage of brands trying to be edgy and au courant. But it looks like less than half of consumers want their brand to be the quip-slinging cool kid from a 90’s sitcom.

The bottom line: Humor is a welcome trait for a brand, but mean-spirited or edgy humor is likely to turn customers off (even if it lands you an AdWeek shoutout). And if you’re not being honest and helping people, no amount of humor can save you.

#2: Consider the Platform

Just as your brand has its own identity, every social network has a unique identity. Facebook is a casual place to post cute pictures and start political arguments. Twitter is an even more casual place to start extremely character-limited political arguments. LinkedIn is more buttoned-down and professional, with only occasional political arguments.

Your audience on each platform has a unique set of expectations, based not just on your brand, but on the platform itself.

People like personality on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, but not so much on LinkedIn. So it’s important to adjust your messaging for each.

Most of us are scheduling social media messages with a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer, and it’s easy to blast a single message across platforms. But don’t do that. Take a few minutes to craft unique messages for each channel, keeping audience expectation in mind. That bit of extra effort will help make your posts more engaging, and keep your most dedicated audience from seeing the same message multiple times.

#3: Know Your Audience

Social media is not a homogenous audience that’s the same for every brand. It’s a platform for connecting with your particular most-valued consumers. How your brand approaches social media, then, should be a byproduct of how your audience wants to interact with your brand. These preferences can vary widely across demographics.

For example, 74% of Gen X and Baby Boomers said they found it annoying when a brand uses slang. But only 59% of Millennials shared that sentiment. Millennials are also far more tolerant of brands making fun of competing brands:

How your brand should express personality on social media is dependent on your target audience. If your demographic still uses words like “hip” and “groovy,” it’s probably not hip or groovy for your brand to use them. However, if your target audience thinks things are “totes adorbs” and “can’t even,” you stand a better chance of connecting with slang.

It’s vital to find the intersection of your brand personality with your audience preferences, and let that drive how you present the brand on social.

#4: Bring Value to Drive Sales

To quote my personal hero, Captain Obvious, “the purpose of social media marketing is ultimately to drive sales.” If going viral with a funny tweet contributes to the bottom line, that’s a tactic worth pursuing. The research shows, though, that most people aren’t following brands just for laughs:

When it comes to driving sales, humor is 5^th on the list. Being responsive, offering promotions, and providing educational content are all more likely to inspire a purchase decision.

What do people really want from brands on social? The same thing they want from brands everywhere else. First, people want to be heard, to engage in a productive dialog. Second, they want to be offered something of value, whether it’s a deal on your solution or simply valuable information. When people are looking for help, you have to bring more than jokes to the table.

Check out the full Q2 2017 Sprout Social Index for more insights.

Helping People Is the Top Priority

Giving your brand a winning personality is great. It makes creating and consuming your content more fun. But personality should be the seasoning for your social media marketing, not the main course. Start with being helpful, being honest, and providing something of value in exchange for your audience’s time. Then add a little sprinkle of personality on top, like so:

See? You can be helpful and funny at the same time.

Need help maintaining your social media presence? Let us handle your social media marketing.

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The post Does Snark = Sales? What Consumers REALLY Want from Brands on Social Media appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

What are the keys to transforming your customer service operation? It could be the literal million-dollar question for businesses building relationships across an increasingly established customer base.

Across industries, customers are setting a higher bar for service, which may put those holding the purse strings between a rock and a hard place; how do you meet customer expectations and budget expectations?

With the right mix of strategy and execution, customer service can, and should, be more than a cost center. In fact, agile customer service is a proven revenue-driver. And while Gartner reports inbound marketing budgets are growing at a steady clip as companies attempt to woo new customers, customer retention is more profitable in the long run than customer acquisition. Furthermore, 83 percent of consumers will trust someone with whom they have a personal relationship over any form of advertising.

Convinced, but unsure where to start? Read on for a scalable roadmap to building your customer service strategy, according to a Forrester report updated with the latest recommendations.

1. Discover

In this phase, it’s best to establish the ROI of customer service for your business. Given the established impact of personal recommendations over advertising, there’s plenty of data at your fingertips to make a good business case. Here’s even more: A survey conducted by Dimensional Research found that 62 percent of both B2B and B2C customers purchased more after a good customer service experience. Furthermore, 88 percent have been influenced by an online customer service review when making a buying decision.

Before you’re equipped to go further, though, a couple things must take place. First, consider how (and whether) applying this data to your business given its size, scale, and longer-term growth. Next, evaluate your current contact center solution to quantify and qualify its maturity level for a new solution. While a lot of service desk software solutions are easy-to-use and out-of-the-box, you’ll want to know which pain points this solution is addressing in order to make your strongest business case.

2. Plan

Now that you’ve set the tone, it’s time to start building a great customer service strategy. Keep four things top of mind as you enter the Plan phase of your transformation: strategy, process, people, and technology. These key variables vary the most from company to company, particularly in terms of where your company is in its growth. Is it a lean, mean machine of fewer than 100 people? Or is it a high-growth company that requires more process or budget? Take an honest look at your team and tailor the solution around your people—the most important part of the puzzle. Think of this as a continuation of the analysis you conducted when making your business case. Great—now how does your solution fold into the people using that solution?

3. Act

Once a plan is in place, organizations must manage change effectively to ensure a smooth transition. Staff, and train that staff, appropriately. That means setting expectations and learning objectives, among other things. The report places heavy stock in selecting the most appropriate technology solution for your team—which greatly impacts how much training time you’ll need to devote to that new solution.

4. Optimize

Once you implement the solution, it’s essential to regularly check your progress against key benchmarks you establish at the outset. This may be a years-long initiative, so keeping tabs on customer satisfaction, cost of the solution, and revenue (generated and saved) ensures everyone is on board. What about your executives: Are they still bought in to your solution one year later? Look externally, too; what are your competitors doing in terms of customer service?

Essentially: Continually measure and improve as you manage your new-and-improved customer service team.

Weird as it sounds, with all of the new technologies, email seems almost old school today. It’s been around for decades and much like other mature mediums, we value and loathe it at the same time.

Part of the loathing comes from the daily experience of being barraged by emails we didn’t ask for, don’t want and that offer no value.  We all suffer from email fatigue.  What the senders forget is that they’re in the receiver’s in-box because they were invited in and have been granted permission to stay.

Until they’re not. Email us too often, or email us nothing of value and you’re quickly asked to leave, either through the unsubscribe link or simply by being ignored.

And yet for most of us, there are some emails we look forward to receiving and when we get them, we actually go out of our way to read them.

What’s the difference?

I believe it’s both intent and content.  When you get those both right, the receiver will not only allow you to stay but actually be open to considering that next action (click on a link, sign up for the webinar, learn more about your product or services, etc.) you want them to take.

Intent is really about respect and a genuine desire to help.  When we prepare an email campaign, we need to ask ourselves if we’re truly being respectful of the receiver’s time and attention.  Yes, of course we want them to become a customer or if they’re already a customer, we want them to buy more. But we have to trade them something of value in exchange for that consideration.

Are we offering them something of value in terms of insights, information or even a reminder of something important?  A realtor sends me an email every month and at the top of the email is a “don’t forget tip” reminding me to do something around my house.  It’s usually something simple like “change the furnace filter every 30 days.” Do I already know I need to do that?  Sure but the reminder often triggers me to do whatever he’s reminding me to do.

I’m not in the market to buy a house right now but I give him permission to stay in my in-box because he’s actually helpful.  He’s also smart enough to know that if he keeps earning the right to email me, then when I finally am in the market for a realtor to help me buy or sell a home or when one of my friends asks for a referral – he’ll be top of mind.

Another aspect of intent is how often are you asking me to pay attention to you?  I am happy to get his email once a month.  If he started emailing me a couple times a week, I’d unsubscribe in a hurry because the value proposition wouldn’t be there for me.  The frequency of your emails shouldn’t be about how frantic you are to sell something but instead; it should be based on how or why you’re being valuable.

I get an email every evening from a company that analyzes the day’s market activities and talks about how the day’s changes will impact what’s going to happen tomorrow.  That information would be stale/less helpful if I received it once a month.  So again, their timing is about me, not them.

Intent is about putting the audience first and being valuable before you ask for anything in return. That makes it much more appealing to envision hiring you down the road.

Next time, we’ll explore the content side of this equation so you can get them both correct every time.

The post Earning Your Spot in their Email In-Box appeared first on Drew's Marketing Minute.

Classic business strategy proposes three equally viable ways to create customer value and achieve competitive advantage – operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy. Even when Wiersema and Treacy proposed it, some strategists argued that operational excellence would beat the other two strategies in the end.

Today’s global economy and internet infrastructure have lowered costs dramatically. This makes it possible for Amazon and other operationally excellent organizations to achieve scale that affords them significant cost advantages and the ability to squeeze competitors steadily by driving down prices across categories. At the same time, product leadership is harder to claim and maintain, as features are easily copied and patent infringement is common.

As a result, brands that are not the cost leaders in their categories need to try the third way – they need to understand how to win through customer intimacy.

A New Interpretation Of Customer Intimacy

Customer intimacy has always sounded a little creepy, like a relationship with a stalker. In today’s economy, intimacy is about more than a one-to-one relationship. It’s about shared values and community. It’s about brands standing for (and behind) how their product and service offerings make their customers’ and other stakeholders’ lives better. It encompasses providing real human connection through a brand’s physical presence in their communities, and through its employees, who are members of and understand these communities intimately. Alignment through intimacy allows brands to side-step the race to the bottom that can occur when facing low cost competitors that win on price by offering interchangeable products and a no-frills, no-aspirational experience.

Competing On Community

Consumers’ decision criteria for brand choice have broadened. Forrester research in April 2017 shows that “consumer decision making is changing: Shoppers increasingly evaluate products and brands based on a company’s ethics and values.”

Research with consumers in the US, China and elsewhere shows that buyers increasingly are willing to spend more for green products, support environmentally friendly companies and seek out experiences that will enrich their lives. According to the 2015 Nielsen Global Corporate Sustainability Report, “Sixty-six percent of global respondents say they are willing to pay more for sustainable goods, up from 55% in 2014 (and 50% in 2013). And it’s no longer just wealthy suburbanites in major markets willing to open their wallets for sustainable offerings.” Similarly, The Boston Consulting Group recently reported that “80% of Chinese consumers feel that brands and companies should be environmentally responsible. A separate study of Alibaba’s customers—conducted by AliResearch—found that 66 million (or 16.2%) bought five or more “green” products in 2015, up from just 4 million in 2011 (3.4%). Notably, they are willing to pay a price premium—up to 33%—for those products.”

Making Competing On Community Work

To compete based on intimacy and succeed against Amazon and other low-price leaders enabled by operational excellence, brands need to do three things:

1. Build community into their brand positioning in ways that truly serve customers
2. Elaborate the elements of their offering that make this commitment believable
3. Leverage their unique assets – their people and locations

Here’s a starter list for how to build community with current employees and customers, and entice newcomers:

1. Walk the talk with products and offerings that are consistent with your values. Big food is overhauling its entire lineup to get in sync with changing consumer values around real ingredients, minimizing spoilage and ‘good-for-you’ claims. Meanwhile, brands like Honest Tea and Annie’s have been promoting their goodness since day one. Audit your portfolio to identify gaps and shortcomings relative to your core values and put addressing them at or near the top of your product/service offering roadmap.

2. Build your values into your operations. Walking the talk is about more than products. If you claim to be committed to sustainability, then you should be looking for ways to reduce your brand’s use of energy, packaging, water, and other inputs and generate less waste. Sustainability resonates with consumers as well as with business leaders (particularly CFOs and Risk Managers). As McKinsey anticipated in 2010, increasingly volatile input costs, driven by the emergence of bigger, fewer suppliers and natural-resource shortages make it a business imperative.

3. Get transparent in your pricing. Help customers understand why your products cost more than Amazon’s. Show how paying a living wage with benefits, paying rent and property taxes on your locations, and sourcing local or domestic inputs all cost more, as do design details that improve product quality. Everlane and Elizabeth Suzann are doing this now as are Starbucks and Costco, to some extent. It’s time for more organizations to get on board. Think in terms of unit costs. Deconstruct competitive offerings to identify differences between yours and theirs. Find the best ways to communicate your costs while also exploring opportunities to improve them in ways that are consistent with your values.

4. Ensure your customer experience is competitive in and across channels. Many brands have not yet integrated e-commerce with the rest of the business. Some, but not all, have optimized their web presence for use on mobile devices. Few have mastered social media as a two-way marketing and communications channel. The omnichannel imperative is real, and it’s now. Audit your cross-channel customer experience and identify the low hanging fruit to address. Optimize for mobile ASAP. If you’re a retailer, figure out how to allow customers to pick up online orders in-store, and get smart about your shipping offerings.

5. Foster a company culture and employee experience that reflect your values. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix are scooping up top talent as fast as they can. For everyone else, it’s getting harder to attract and retain the best people. Culture change is a huge undertaking that may be worth pursuing. Meanwhile, organizations can take smaller steps to engage employees and help them feel appreciated. One example is to encourage employees engage with their local communities (geographic, interest-based, etc.) in ways that are on-brand for you and personally rewarding for them. Inventory your employee offerings (benefits, training, matching contributions, volunteerism) to identify opportunities to better reflect your core values and engage employees.

6. Create on-site events to draw customers and prospects into your brand community. Use events to showcase the ways your brand makes the community a better place to live. For example, make the first Monday of the month new product demonstration day where employees or suppliers share what’s new with consumers who value being in the know or treated like insiders. Every other Tuesday could become “How-To Tuesday” where employees showcase a new way to use an existing product, adding to the perception of the product’s value (and of your commitment to helping customers maximize the value of your products). And when you put on your own events and participate in others’, ask participants to capture and share them on social media.

7. Call out Amazon and others who use arguably predatory pricing, early and often. Highlight your organization’s commitment to its core values (pricing transparency, ethical sourcing and community involvement) and use them as a platform for raising the hard questions about Amazon’s values. Make it obvious that Amazon’s aggressive pricing is designed to drive competitors out of business obvious. Use your pricing transparency to raise questions about Amazon’s sources, costs and margins.

There is no silver bullet here. Chasing or imitating the low-cost competitor in any industry is a sure way to fail. Product leadership is hard to sustain, and success is not guaranteed. The surest path to success requires brands to understand who they are, what they do and why it matters to employees, customers and the communities they serve. The route to intimacy takes aligning offerings, programs, promotions, communications, pricing, and distribution to the brand’s shared values and community.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Judy Hopelain of Brand Amplitude

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There's a cultural stereotype that says that women talk a lot while men are stoic, silent and annoyed with all that female chatter.

Another cultural stereotype is something called "mansplaining" — when a man pontificates to a woman. 

And now a startup called Gong has research that shows that the first stereotype isn't quite true for saleswoman but the second is, sadly, more true for salesmen. And when these men slip into mansplaining, it truly doesn't serve them.

Gong records sales calls and video conferences, transcribes them, matches them with sales outcomes and uses AI to analyze what makes a salesperson successful. The idea is to coach salespeople into closing more deals.

Gong analyzed 519,000 sales calls and discovered that the average monologue of male salespeople to female buyers was significantly longer (108 seconds) than the average monologue to a man (91 seconds). In other words, men talked for longer periods of uninterrupted time when selling to women. All told, when salesmen worked with female buyers, the men did 61% of the talking.

And when the buyer was male, the buyer spoke more, both when talking to saleswomen and to salesmen. The male buyer talked 56% of the time to another man and 52% of the time to a woman. 

When sales women talked to other women, the salesperson talked 51% of the time and listened 49%.

But the clincher is: the saleswomen closed more deals. Saleswomen closed 70% of the time when selling to a man, 72% of the time when selling to a woman. Salesmen closed 68% to women and 67% to men.

The ideal ratio for closing deals across all male/female combinations is 52% listening 48% talking, Gong counsels. 

Moral of the story: it pays to speak up, but only if you also listen up.

SEE ALSO: The 52 most powerful people in enterprise tech in 2017

Join the conversation about this story »

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“Best practices” tends to be used as a catch-all phrase often thrown around in the world of web design. When uttered, it’s almost as if design decisions are blessed with the ultimate guarantee of success— though this can prove to be a false truth in some situations, as Creative Market recently found out.

Creative Market is a large online marketplace for design and digital assets. Its community of 21,000+ digital creatives sells a multitude of assets—like fonts, website templates, WordPress themes, stock photos, and many other creative goods—through their respective stores. The site has more than 1 million users and boasts over a million design assets.

Their VP of Growth and Marketing, Paul Ghio, and its 30-strong team believe in moving quickly, strategically and scrappily. Usually, they validate each new product or growth decision by running thorough experiments first on Optimizely’s platform. For a business like Creative Market, making design decisions is especially critical when you consider that its store owners’ livelihoods are directly impacted by a rise or fall in site conversions.

Despite having made many validated design decisions in the past which boosted its product experience and bottom line, the made the decision to utilize web-design “best practices” instead for its Credits Purchase page redesign, with a resulting surprise outcome from performance testing.

Hypothesis

Creative Market’s redesign started with a strong hypothesis, as all good redesigns should. They believed that repositioning the credits checkout process above the fold would produce a conversion lift on the Credits Purchase page, where a successful conversion equals a purchase of a credits package. The basis for this belief was the reality that many people visit Creative Market on devices smaller than your traditional desktop, thereby being forced to scroll down before they can advance to the next step.

Paul Ghio notes: “we had a hypothesis that moving the credits checkout process above the fold would increase conversions on that page. A significant number of people are visiting Creative Market via a 13″ laptop or smaller desktop device and on these smaller devices, a user is forced to scroll before they can uncover the next step. We believed that this extra step, a scroll, was causing friction and a drop off in conversions.”

Of course, searching online for ‘best practices’ related to CTA positioning or the placement of web forms on landing pages returns thousands of results that confirm above-the-fold placement is the way to go. Naturally, the team went ahead and implemented the change.

In addition, they also embedded the purchase button directly on to the individual credits package cards instead of keeping the placement just underneath the form—again based on best practice insights. This time, it was thought that eliminating an additional step (read: an extra click) would reduce friction for the user and therefore lift conversions.

The team went ahead with this redesign before testing their hypothesis, usually done by A/B-testing any variations of the original page against the original.

The Results

When Creative Market eventually used Optimizely to perform an A/B test on the different page variations a few days after committing to the redesign, they were surprised to discover that it had completely failed. In spite of all the best practices gleaned from conducting usability and UX research on the web, changing the location of the call to action and basing it on above-the-fold sensibilities didn’t work for their users or the UX.

The redesign created a drop-off in conversions on the Credits Purchase page and an accompanying decrease in overall revenue.

Specifically, while there wasn’t a significant difference in the total credits bought, the original design still outperformed the redesign in terms of total revenue generated. Over a four-day period:

• The original design brought in approximately $45,000
• The redesign brought in just under $40,000

Understandably, when the Creative Market team looked over these results, they were in disbelief. Could tried and true best practices really have let them down? Should such best practices be really more of a guideline instead of a hard-and-fast rule? The results confirmed that they were essentially compromising performance for a perceived increase in the level of user experience quality, which is why they decided to revert back to the original design.

Moreover, buyers were much less likely to purchase the more expensive $100 option on the redesigned page compared to the original. The difference was that the redesigned page did away with the green border and check mark (visual cues) that highlighted the $100 option as the default option, thus creating a design where almost equal visual weighting was given to all purchasing options.

Key Takeaways

Creative Market believe that you can learn just as much from your fails as you can from your wins—perhaps even more. Unexpected failures like this have impacted their company culture. Whereas before they were more open to being influenced by design best practices from web research, now they approach things with their users’ UX in mind first and foremost; Creative Market user behavior steadfastly informs page redesigns and product improvements site-wide.

The team’s goal is to create their own version of Creative Market best practices (and not rely on generic and once-size-fits-all ‘best practices’) that are based on the sound science of their own A/B testing and actual user behavior.

Anything less could feasibly lead to an unnecessary drop-off in conversions and revenue—and no business wants that.

Predictive Marketing Analytics (PMA) enable B2B sales and marketers to harness unique customer and prospect insights for competitive advantage. Marketers utilizing PMA will be more successful at finding, reaching, attracting, engaging and converting prospects and in-market buyers.

Below are the things best-in-class B2B marketers are doing to deliver unprecedented program efficiencies and generate significant returns on the marketing investments their organizations both need and demand.

Move Beyond Lead Scoring

The best-in-class scoring products should be based on account and contact scoring, evaluating customers and prospects on fit, gauging engagement, and determining intent.

B2B marketers who are truly aligned with sales do not use lead scoring to “prove” to sales that marketing generated an MQL. Because sales and marketing must agree upfront on the target companies and contacts (keywords and titles), there should never be a need for B2B marketers to prove they generated a lead worthy of a sales person’s time (based on right company and right contact.)

Scoring products should also be used for opportunities in the sales pipeline and also to find those customers that sales can upsell or cross-sell. Scoring is also a must for B2B sales and marketers to help identify customers at risk, which should decrease customer churn.

Many predictive marketing analytics solutions now incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into scoring. These technologies analyze internal and external data to create insights for gauging interest and intention to purchase.

Improve Conversion Rates in the Marketing & Sales Funnel

Improving conversion rates is quantifiable, measurable and directly correlated to revenue. That’s why it is key for B2B marketers to communicate these metrics to the management team as it “justifies” marketing spend.

Specific outcomes attributed to PMA include improvements in lead quality, better conversion rates at all stages of the sales funnel, shorter sales cycles, and larger average deal sizes.

While some B2B marketers focus on generating more leads and driving down the cost of leads, seasoned marketing practitioners focus primarily on lead quality, while quantity is driven by capacity and financial targets. Here, B2B marketers filter out the junk or leads outside the sweet spot. This helps ensure that scarce and limited marketing and sales resources can focus on the best leads and opportunities.

Marketing Becomes Part of the Sales Process

In order for predictive marketing analytics solutions to be successful, sales and marketing must sit down and develop a mutually agreed upon Go-to-Market plan (objectives, strategies, tactic, systems, processes and terminology). With this as a backdrop, sales can then delegate the top of the marketing and sales funnel to marketing — and be confident that by assigning accountability and providing support and resources, true alignment will result.

PMA clearly provides one common goal for marketing and sales – revenue – a derivative of the number and activity of customers. To become a customer the sales team needs to efficiently and effectively move qualified sales opportunities through the sales process. With this is mind, the marketing mind-set shifts from generating leads to creating opportunities with a high propensity to purchase.

CMOs are Now Being Held Accountable for Sales Pipeline & Revenue

In traditional demand generation, approximately 10% of marketing leads result in net customer acquisition or existing customer expansion. However, marketers have struggled to identify the 10% that are productive and the 90% that are unproductive — without investing a great deal of time, money and cycles.

CMOs that are revenue-centric tend to key in on:

• Fewer, higher quality leads
• The use of marketing automation to increase the speed at which sales follows up
• Providing sales insights that help salespeople engage in more relevant dialogue with prospects and customers
• Focusing on the sales pipeline and key metrics

Eliminating “bad leads” reduces expenses, increases productivity for marketing and sales and results in more revenue, faster. This is because scarce sales and marketing resources are able to react quicker and allocate more time on the right leads.

PMA brings a managed, repeatable, objective process to marketing attribution issues by helping B2B marketers attribute marketing program spend to revenue, resulting in tremendous impact on marketing budget determination.

Predictive Marketing Analytics Helps B2B Marketers Become Relevant to Sales

Predictive analytic solutions also assists marketing and sales to better understand the real size and scope of their total addressable market (TAM), served market and target market. In addition, PMA solutions embrace third party data to drill down into the companies and contacts that make up each of the above mentioned markets.

Sales Intelligence (SI) enables marketers (and especially sales people) to be better prepared before they pick up the phone to engage a prospect in a relevant and meaningful conversation. SI does this by possessing a full overview of the market, technology, competitors, the company and specific contacts involved in the buying process. It’s important for B2B marketers to automate the access, updating and usage of firmographic, technographic, transactional, behavioral and intent data into integrated sales and marketing campaigns.

Summary

Prioritizing leads is now a table stake, and best-in-class B2B marketers need to step their game up to support sales at the next level. Ideally, PMA solutions will evolve to recommend what accounts to approach, how sales should engage with an account, which individuals to approach, what topics to discuss and when to do so. These are some of the promises of AI and machine-learning analysis of how ideal customers buy.

Predictive marketing analytics is an essential solution for creating sales and marketing alignment and for directly and significantly impacting the bottom line. PMA helps BtoB marketers identify net new prospects that are ready, willing and able to buy via enhanced segmentation, better prioritization of sales-ready leads, and proactive upselling, cross selling and customer retention. These are the key promises of PMA that will ultimately drive its widespread adoption.

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Guest Post by Trishla Tyagi

All of us experience it at some point or the other – that hour in the day where you are sitting at your desk and have lost all focus.

You pick up your phone and check social media, reply to some text messages and surf your favorite websites.

You have a long list of tasks to get done but you just can’t focus on them.

There are different reasons for productivity to suffer, from being distracted due to issues at home, to not feeling fit enough to work.

We have jotted down a few hacks for you to improve your productivity, many of which are used by top sales professionals already.

 

Prioritizing Daily Activities

Organize your call list

If you are preparing a call list then collating it logically, rather than in alphabetical order or anything else, can help save you time by giving you a clear picture of who you’re calling. Try making your list by industry and then probably by job title – or any other vertical you use to change your script.

 

Focus on quality leads

The biggest productivity hack for any sales representative is making sure you’re only working with highly targeted and qualified leads. Don’t get into calling sleeping or non-responsive leads who have not shown any buying signals in the past, or who aren’t a good fit and are never going to make a sale.

 

Automate when possible

 

Often times a salesperson’s time is not spent on actual selling, so the more you automate tasks, the more time they’ll be able to spend selling. Tasks like follow-up emails can be automated to help your reps save time, and a lot of other tasks can be supervised and documented with timely alerts. A quick audit of your salesperson’s daily schedule can help find the areas where automation can be applied.

 

Swallow the frog

Every rep has at least one task in particular that they simply don’t want to do. Searching, logging activity, writing follow-up emails, etc. Everyone has one and I’m sure you’ve got yours. We all can find a number of ways to seem productive and avoid those important tasks we terror the most. But lingering and hovering in one area to avoid doing what we do not want to do, wastes time. And at the end of it we only suffer. So instead of running from it, just do the task first to get it out of the way.

 

Scale back low-value activities

Every sales activity has a cost attached to it, but not every task has a high return on investment. Listing out all tasks and ranking them in order by the return you receive out of it can help prioritize time spent on tasks. Activities at the bottom of the list mean less ROI, and thus, these can be delayed or emphasized less. If low-ROI activities are tasks that can’t be avoided, then look for ways to group those tasks together to minimize the time spent on them.

 

Optimize Schedules

 

Time management skills

Training your sales reps to manage their time better can give you time back in your day. Some people are naturally better at time management than others, but it is a skill that can be imparted.

The most effective techniques are:

• Motivate your sales rep with rewards
• Teach them to avoid distractions
• Help them plan and prioritize their day

 

Streamline time spent on email

One of the most time consuming activity at work is constantly checking emails and replying to them, while we’re in the middle of other tasks. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the average worker spends 13 hours a week on emails.

To manage your email, try blocking off some time every few hours to go through and respond to emails. This way you’ll be able to work more efficiently and effectively knowing your inbox is taken care of.

Schedule meetings without breaks

Meetings are vital to sales, but there can be a lot of unused time in between meetings. There are times when you have multiple meetings back-to-back with less than an hour in-between. For most of us, that “in-between time” usually means checking our phones, looking at social media, going over notes, etc. One of the things you can do to utilize this time back is to schedule your meetings back-to-back without lengthy breaks in between.

Schedule regular “time off”

Working 8-9 hours continuously at the office can be tough, and if you don’t give yourself time to relax or unwind, you’re going to get tired. Try scheduling specific “time off” periods throughout your day. This could include checking your phone, hitting up social media, going for a stroll, calling a friend, etc. Every few hours you should have at least a few minutes to let your mind relax.

Schedule admin tasks

Sales reps are responsible for a lot of admin tasks, which can become a huge time waster when not organized. If you’re continuously going back and forth between things like phone calls, logging CRM data and scheduling emails, workflow will have endless pauses. If you can divide these tasks into precise time blocks, for example, start your cold calling with a notepad to make notes and then afterward log all of the data in your CRM, it could make completing these tasks more efficient.

 

Maximize Tools

 

Invest in the finest tools

There are lots of apps out there that claim to help boost your team’s productivity. You should collate a list down and think strategically about which you ones you need. The wrong technology can be a distraction, so make sure you jot down what your team needs most.

Take assistance of CRM

At the end of the day, it is all about efficiency so get your sales reps on board with the CRM. It makes chasing goals easier for performance evaluation purposes and also provides exact numbers to help sales rep perform better.

 

Clean up your CRM

Sales data is one of the most crucial resources for your sales team, so it’s necessary for your reps to consistently use a CRM. But if the CRM data is incorrect or does not include your target audience, your team will end up wasting time trying to find the right info — or worse, make mistakes with prospects and clients. Try and convey to your team the importance of taking some time off every month to go through and clean things up the CRM. This is an investment that will pay off on future deals.

 

Knowledge management software with close integration to CRM

Have a good knowledge management software in place to store knowledge that is just a click away. This way, you do not have to waste your time looking for the important information from different sources – it can be directly sourced from one place.

 

Excel shortcuts

For day-to-day tracking and reporting, if Excel is used for a good portion of their work, provide sales reps with Excel shortcuts keys and formulas to make their work easier and save more time.

For example: If a sales rep is working on more than one excel sheet then he can simply use CTRL + Tab instead of toggling with a mouse.

Create a resource library for your reps

Due to the very nature of work, you might feel like you are explaining the same thoughts over and over again to your reps. Make a resource library for them to save you and your reps’ time that will have information about: best practices, sales scripts, sales process, recordings, sales contests, new employee resources, and more.

 

Utilize flash cards

When training sales representatives, keep flash cards handy. Doing so serves a dual purpose:

• Make training more interactive and engaging
• Make retention of knowledge for sales reps easier

 

External Factors

 

Arrange your workspace

One of the quickest ways to boost your productivity is to make a physical change in your workspace. This will help you focus and provide a much needed lift to your mood.

Other things that you can try are:

• Intermittently move around and work in different places
• Use a private office or conference room when you really need to focus
• At the end of the day, organize your desk so it’s ready for the next day

 

Let it go to voicemail

Until and unless it is THE call you have been waiting for all day, other calls can sometimes wait. You do not have to answer all calls just because the phone rings! Let some go through to your voicemail. You will be in a better frame of mind and can prepare yourself before you call by reverting back to their voicemail. Try and avoid stumbling through a conversation, and also be strict with yourself and devote yourself by switching your phone to silent during meetings.

Prioritize your personal health

The most important thing you can do to stay productive at work is prioritize your personal health. According to the Harvard Business Review, your mental capability is directly proportionate to physical activity. Exercise is linked to less stress, a good mood, sharper concentration and better memory recall. By exercising and having a regular sleep schedule, you’ll be happier and more productive at work.

 

Stay positive!

In his TED Talk, Shawn Achor, CEO of Good Think Inc., talked about how happiness kindles productivity. He reasons that when we are more positive, we work harder and are therefore more productive. If you make an aware effort to be more positive, then your sales team will also be more positive and will therefore work harder, faster and more efficiently!

 

 

Conclusion

 

We hope these hacks make your life easier and help to make your sales team more productive.

What are some of your favorite productivity hacks? Share them with us in the comments section below.

 

Meet the Author

Trishla Tyagi

Trishla Tyagi is an inbound marketer with KnoBis in Gurugram, India. She received her certification in Strategic Marketing from the Imperial College Business School in London.

The post Guest Post: Productivity Hacks for Your Sales Team appeared first on SalesDrive, LLC.

It takes a lot to succeed in sales. You need empathy, grit, and drive. You need to know your customers intimately. You need to resiliently bounce back from rejection. You need to know when to talk and when to shut up. And then, there are inside sales tools…

The human element of sales will never go away — that’s a fact. But here’s another fact: sales is HARD! Don’t make it more difficult than it already is. There are thousands of options when it comes to software for sales that promise to make your life easier as a sales professional.

There’s no need to be doing manual tasks anymore like following up on cold emails one by one. There are plenty of sales prospecting tools and sales management software to help automate your manual tasks while personalizing your outreach.

So if technology improves your process, or helps you close more deals, add it to your arsenal of sales tools and get cracking!

There Are Plenty Of Fish (I Mean Sales Tools) In The Sea

There’s a vast ocean of sales tools in the market. The potential benefit these tools can bring to your business can be very exciting, but the sheer number of choices is straight up intimidating.

Fortunately, we’ve been tinkering with many of these inside sales tools for quite a while. We took the time to narrow down the options (all 150+) so you can spend less time researching and more time selling.

We also point out when one of the platforms offers a free version.

And Yeah, It Goes Beyond CRM Software

If CRM is the only technology enabler you’re currently using, your competitors are likely leaving you in the dust.

Over the last few years, just about every aspect of selling — from lead generation to contract management — has been flipped on its head by advances in cloud technology, artificial intelligence, data analytics and process automation.

That’s why we’ve built this list of sales management software — to help you improve, test, and optimize your own sales stack.

Here are some of the best inside sales tools to help keep your pipeline flowing, improve your team’s performance metrics, automate tedious tasks, or cause game-changing transformations in specific aspects of your sales process.

Editor’s Note: This list of sales tools is listed in no particular order, other than alphabetical. Its hierarchy does not reflect importance or value in any way, shape, or form.

Categories of Sales Management Software

• Account-based Sales and Marketing
• BI Analytics & Dashboards
• Buyer Enablement
• Communication/Conferencing
• Content Sharing and Management
• Contract Lifecycle Management
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
• Data Networks
• Email Management
• Lead Generation and Sales Prospecting Tools
• Performance Management
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Engagement
• Sales and Market Intelligence

Account-based Sales & Marketing

Demandbase

B2B sales professionals need a thorough understanding of each organization they engage, especially when it comes to the hierarchy of decision-makers who approve purchases. Demandbase focuses on this niche, providing a suite of account-based sales solutions that 1) pull CRM data, 2) correlate leads to accounts, 3) activate marketing automations, 4) measure engagement impact, and 5) provide insight on how best to prioritize accounts using real-time data and AI.

Lucidchart Sales Solution

Lucidchart Sales Solution is a modern account planning platform that aligns your revenue team, serving as a roadmap to more effectively coordinate, communicate, and execute your account-based selling strategies. With Lucidchart Sales Solution, sales teams can sell and win with increased consistency and efficiency.

PFL

Accelerate your sales cycle by making stronger connections and automating your outreach efforts. PFL provides a suite of sales and marketing solutions that help you close more deals, revitalize stalled engagements, hyper-personalize email campaigns, and deliver stunning content designed to drive conversion and loyalty.

Prelay

From POCs to Trials and Pilots, Prelay’s team selling platform simplifies the most complex deal processes across your organization. Deal coordination and communication are organized within one purpose-built platform integrated with your other key workflow software. Thanks to its centralized tracking, oversight, and learnings, revenue leaders have more insight into how effectively they’re leveraging their team resources and surpassing goals so that they can replicate successful processes. All of which ultimately enables your team to earn more technical wins, close more deals, and drive more revenue.

Revegy

Account planning is an important aspect of the sales process but many businesses fail to actualize its revenue-boosting potential by adopting sloppy account management strategies. Revegy helps streamline, automate, scale and monitor account management processes to provide teams with valuable insight for harnessing the full value of customer relationships across all stages of the sales process. Use Revegy to determine customer pain points, identify high-value leads and maximize business with key accounts.

RollWorks

RollWorks combines B2B lead generation with outbound sales communication to identify, engage and convert leads, at scale. Create your ideal customer profile(s) and automatically find leads from a proprietary database of 400 million verified prospects. RollWorks machine learning algorithms determine when to send emails and follow-ups and pass new qualified leads directly to sales reps.

Smart Rooms (Journey Sales)

Drive engagement and achieve higher sales performance by growth-hacking the experiences you create for your customers. Running as a native feature on Salesforce, Smart Rooms empowers your team to build hyper-personalized and guided experiences that positively impact customers’ buying behavior. Use Smart Rooms to deepen existing relationships with key accounts and organically ramp up your upselling and cross-selling campaigns.

Terminus

Terminus is an account-based marketing software that enables marketing and sales teams to run account-based marketing at scale. Some of their most useful features are campaigns for demand generation and sales acceleration. Campaigns can target different personas, buying stages, individual accounts, and other segments of your audience using various ABM tactics. This allows marketers to easily coordinate complex marketing efforts, track results, and optimize their campaigns on the fly.

BI Analytics & Dashboards

6sense

Accelerate your account management process with market-leading analytics. 6sense adds a data-driven layer to your sales cycle, unlocking and prioritizing new prospects across your pipeline. Use 6sense’ predictive intelligence to accurately forecast your customers’ purchasing behavior in a specific context.

Aviso

Make decisions, execute strategies, and drive performance based on data-driven intelligence. Aviso empowers reps, account executives and managers to add a robust layer of visibility and predictability in all aspects of their sales activities — from pipeline health to lead prioritization. By combining cloud technology, machine learning and data science, Aviso takes human insight into the next actionable level.

Bombora

Know what your prospects are thinking. Bombora collects and analyzes volumes of data from various sources to identify which of your prospect organizations are actively searching for your branded solutions. Discover critical information about your priority leads from business size, industry, location, and key decision makers.

Clari

Using AI and data science, Clari provides insights on prospects’ readiness to buy, giving your team a smart window and an ample legroom to make precise assessments and take decisive action in the opportunity-to-close stage in your sales cycle. Use Clari to formulate accurate forecasts and identify specific areas your sellers should focus on to improve skills, perfect pitches, and win deals.

ClicData

Being a data-driven sales team means enabling both your sales reps and managers to monitor key information that drives your business such as sales appointments, sales cycles, customer satisfaction, or outbound activities. This requires a business intelligence tool to centralize and combine data from your CRM, LMS, telephony, or VoIP systems. This is what ClicData does. Build custom, dynamic, and real-time KPI dashboards and share them with every sales rep and start improving your sales process right away. By building a single source of the truth, you’ll be able to manage your pipeline more efficiently and drive more revenue.

Crystal

When you’re emailing a prospect for the first time, negotiating with a customer, or having any important conversation, it’s critical to understand your audience. Crystal uses AI to predict anyone’s personality from their online footprint, helping you write and speak with the most effective style. It’s like having a coach for every conversation.

Datahug (SAP Sales Cloud)

Sometimes, the very process of using the tools that help you sell takes away valuable time you can otherwise spend for customer engagement, training or deal closures. Ironic but it’s a common phenomenon in digital selling. Datahug eliminates this problem by automating many of the manual processes you commonly need to run inside sales tools like CRMs. By automatically detecting and analyzing your sales activities as gleaned from emails, calendars, CRMs, and other sources, Datahug ramps up your sales velocity and team productivity, propelling win rates by more than 20% on the average.

Domo

Need an analytics and performance platform for the entire business? Domo crunches data across all your teams and departments to provide statistical analyses and actionable insights capable of moving the needle on every metric that matters. Customize Domo to deliver easy-to-understand data visualizations, enhance collaboration across the entire organization, discover new opportunities, or provide data-driven intelligence for making faster and smarter decisions.

Geckoboard

Out-of-focus teams will be compelled to stay on track using Geckoboard’s live TV dashboard that displays the mantra and metrics that matter. Use Geckoboard’s crisp and catchy visuals to keep everyone aware of their respective roles in meeting daily targets and long-term goals. Monitor key performance indicators and make critical adjustments in real time. Prevent distractions and keep team members focused on achieving high performance.

InsightSquared

As its name suggests, InsightSquared processes business intelligence into actionable insight to help move the needle on sales team performance. InsightSquared takes in data from your CRM and generates reports and visualizations that help you make smart decisions — from sales process improvements to training realignment for your sales team. Use InsightSquared to quicken the pace at which actionable revenue intelligence — such as historical trends and predictive outcomes — can be gleaned from your CRM.

Mediafly

Most great salespeople have a strong understanding of the ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO) of their solution. Communicating that value effectively is another story. When it comes to presenting value to economic buyers, complicated spreadsheets fall short. Value Story empowers sellers with interactive ROI calculators, product comparisons, and benchmark assessments that turn a boring spreadsheet into a collaborative conversation about value.

People.ai

People.ai is on a mission to be the AI Platform for all business activity, driving revenue intelligence, and building the sales automation tools to boost productivity. They are starting by solving the age-old problem of sales and marketing alignment, but in a completely new way.

They believe that by using their sales automation tools to automate manual tasks (like logging activities into your CRM), you’ll have more time in your day to focus on what’s most important to your business, and sales and marketing teams get the data they need to align and thrive.

RingLead

A data-fragmented sales operation can sap significant energy and revenue from your business. Effort duplication alone can waste resources that could have been used for more deal-closing engagements. RingLead eliminates duplicates in your sales team’s pipeline by automatically checking data quality upon manual entry, web form submission or data imports. Moreover, RingLead reduces sales cycles using an account-based lead routing and RevOps automation systems.

Sisense

With massive heaps of information available to enterprises, having a team of data scientists and a powerful crunching tool on your side becomes imperative. But with Sisense, you have a full-stack business intelligence analytics platform that can gather and process all your data scattered across multiple sources and quickly build decision-quality reports. Easy to use and deploy, Sisense reduces your need to badger IT specialists for critical analyses and visualizations of complex data. Use it to keep your people up-to-date on crucial data that can help them close bigger deals faster.

SpringML

Bring the power of data science and machine learning into your workflow. SpringML enables your team to improve forecasting capabilities, optimize performance, and increase revenue. Execute your strategy with confidence, backed by SpringML’s predictive analytics.

Tableau

As a desktop-based data analytics and business intelligence tool, Tableau is easy to deploy, customize, learn and use. Many users depend on its lightning-fast turn-around time for reports generation and data visualizations. Tableau outputs are presented in a way that taps people’s natural abilities to discern patterns or trends. Use Tableau to pull and merge data from various sources in creating complex but insightful statistical analyses.

TrustSphere

TrustSphere helps organizations leverage their most valuable asset—their collective relationship network. They enable organizations to unlock the inherent value of their own networks, using a proprietary Relationship Analytics platform. This rich set of analytics surface insights which help you improve key business challenges including workforce engagement, sales force effectiveness and enterprise-wide collaboration.

Buyer Enablement

Boxxstep

Sales is now more about people management than it is opportunity management. If sales teams want to close more deals they have to identify, understand and help entire committees of buyers. Boxxstep is a buyer-centric platform that aligns selling with buying. It helps you focus on what you know about your prospect through relationship mapping, how you can help them through mutual action plans, and what they think about you through win-loss analysis.

Communication/Conferencing

Aircall

Chorus

Give your reps all the intel they need to engage prospects better and close more deals. Chorus automatically records and transcribes sales conversations to generate analyses and insights that help sales teams calibrate their conversations with customers. Use Chorus to attain quotas consistently and achieve higher win rates. You can also use the platform to onboard new hires, keep your team’s engagement skills sharp, and fine-tune your communication strategies.

ConnectAndSell

Ramp up your win rates by increasing the number of your daily conversations. ConnectAndSell accelerates your customer outreach process and overcomes the limitations of conventional dialers, substantially reducing the time it takes for your team to respond to inbound leads. Using patented sales enablement technologies, ConnectAndSell promises to infuse a new name on your lead list every few minutes.

Demodesk

Demodesk is the first intelligent meeting tool for sales and success teams. Current tools can only share your local desktop, Demodesk provides you with a virtual display instead. It doesn’t require any downloads and automatically loads the right websites and documents to present at the meeting start. It also allows you to share control with your customers instantly for lag-free collaborative browsing and editing. The platform natively integrates with your CRM and calendar for seamless scheduling, handover, and meeting logging.

Dialpad

Dialpad Sell is a business communications platform for modern sales teams that improves calls as they’re happening by providing real-time coaching and conversational insights. These insights help reps close more deals, managers become better coaches, and teams be more productive.

ExecVision

Unlock valuable insights from your sales conversations. ExecVision enables your team to revisit their sales calls and identify factors that dampen their pitch and elements that boost their win rates. You can use ExecVision for call analysis, coaching, A/B Testing, and growth hacking.

FrontSpin

The tools you use in communicating your message matter. FrontSpin simplifies your sales cycle, enabling you to 1) connect with 3x more leads via Power Dialer; 2) hike engagement via personalized Sales Email; and 3) quicken lead generation via account-based Playbooks. FrontSpin centralizes call lists, voicemails, email templates and notifications, social media messaging and other channels you use in nurturing leads and closing deals. More customer engagement in less time translates to better win rates.

Gong

Find out the good and the bad in your sales conversations. Using AI technology, Gong automatically records and transcribes sales calls, then generates actionable analyses and insight on how your team can improve their pitches.

GoToMeeting

On the GoToMeeting website, customers claim that deals get closed 20% faster when they use the video conferencing service. Whether the claim is accurate or not, millions of business people around the world use GoToMeeting to facilitate real-time online meetings and share information/experiences/presentations via their desktops (i.e., screen sharing). For frontline sales professionals, engaging prospects within a stable and supportive channel is a crucial requirement for successful outcomes. Use GoToMeeting to invite prospects, domain experts, and referrals from any location and get all of them focused on your message.

Jiminny

Jiminny makes coaching happen for sales and customer success. Capture every customer conversation and simplify how teams work by integrating coaching, web conferencing and a dialer in one place. Jiminny allows every one of your team to be a coach. Automation with Salesforce & Slack improves team communication and productivity.

Nextiva

Connect seamlessly with leads, customers, and colleagues from anywhere with Nextiva’s business phone service. The product allows business professionals to make and receive business phone calls from any device, enable one-on-one HD video calls, instant message, and track all communications through the Nextiva App. Nextiva’s business phone service has omni-channel support across email, voice, and chat, allowing you to reach customers anytime and from anywhere.

Refract

Adopting Refract is a single move that impacts multiple aspects of your sales call infrastructure and overall performance: It helps upgrade sales coaching, keep reps’ engagement skills sharp, prevent call errors that erode win rates, and provides strategic insight that helps you formulate results-driven customer conversations.

Salesfolks

Building and scaling sales organizations is inefficient and costly. Salesfolks is a marketplace for on-demand salespeople. It helps businesses grow their sales by tapping into a cloud-based, virtual sales force. Salesfolks enables businesses to bolt on additional sales help completely risk-free. The model is pay-for-performance, so you only invest when your on-demand sales team delivers new leads, referrals and signed sales. It’s a great model for try-before-you-hire or for testing out if new markets drive more sales.

Skype

Skype has been around since 2003 and remains a dependable and easy-to-use service for reaching and communicating with your prospects. Operating under a freemium model, Skype offers instant messaging, video conferencing, screen sharing, and voice call services over the Internet. Users have the ability to exchange digital documents such as contracts, brochures, images and videos.

Wingman

Wingman is the actionable conversation intelligence platform that unlocks insights from every sales interaction. Use Wingman to record your calls, review deals, scale coaching and build a repeatable sales machine. Wingman is a G2 2022 Best Software Award Winner for Best Sales Products as well as Fastest Growing Products. Sales teams at Vendasta, Chargebee, Partsbase, Properly Homes, Oktopost and more trust Wingman to accelerate their revenue.

Zoom

Sometimes communicating effectively and communicating efficiently are one and the same. When reps can quickly get valuable face time with prospects using video conferences, their ability to build rapport and close deals increases dramatically. Zoom has evolved to offer more than just video conferencing, though. The platform is also effective for online meetings with remote or distributed teams, chat, mobile communications for reps who are on the road, and even webinars.

Content Sharing and Management

Allbound

While marketed as a partner sales acceleration platform, Allbound offers a lot more in many areas. You can use it to organize and manage all your sales and marketing content — from campaigns to training modules — in just one lively place. Your reseller reps can use it to create hyper-personalized landing pages for each prospect, hiking the quality and outcome of each engagement. You can also manage team progress using Allbound’s simple UI that enables reps to register all their deals and organize leads.

Bit

Bit is a modern-day collaboration tool that empowers sales teams to make marketing and advertising materials while collaborating in a common workplace. The sales team can create, customize, collaborate and share sales proposals, sales decks, and client-facing material. A great feature of Bit is the ability to receive notifications whenever a client or prospect views your sales proposal. You get engagement metrics like how much time did they spend on your document, how far they scrolled and how often they returned to the documents you shared.

BrainShark

Keep your sales team sharp with top-notch training and coaching resources to hike productivity and outsell competition. Use BrainShark to create on-demand training tracks that quicken their learning journey every step of the way — from onboarding to leadership. Validate your team’s sales readiness and equip them with relevant content they can access any time.

ClearSlide

ClearSlide is a full-stack sales engagement service covering content management, analytics and smart messaging. Use ClearSlide to ramp up the quality and impact of your emails, conferences, presentations, and other engagements. Persuade your customers and prospects with the most compelling content. Motivate and train your team with the most effective and inspirational learning modules.

Conga

Conga streamlines your contract management process, freeing up more valuable time for direct customer engagement. Re-imagine the way your team handles reports, contracts, and other documents. Eliminate bottlenecks, enforce compliance standards with ease, and run Conga’s native analytics engine to give you an accurate picture of how specific customers engage your content.

Consensus

The way you communicate your brand and articulate the benefits of your product matter. But so does the behavioral state of your target audience at the moment of engagement. Consensus provides insight on how your prospect perceives or responds to your messaging so you can align the conversation appropriately even before you engage a lead. More than this, Consensus lets you deliver personalized videos and documents that are highly relevant to your audience.

DocSend

Equip your sales team with a centralized content management, tracking, and presentation solution designed specifically for sales professionals. Providing an on-demand and always up-to-date content library, DocSend enables your team to engage clients more effectively. By initiating the right conversation at the right time with the right prospects, DocSend helps your team to close more deals faster.

Folloze

Deliver the impact of account-based content marketing to your sales operations. Folloze allows your sales team to create compelling experiences that positively influence your audience’s purchasing behavior. Enable your sales team to deploy account-specific content and execute campaigns designed for maximum conversion rate for the targeted account. Leverage native analytics and behavioral triggers to nurture leads across the buyer journey. Integrate with Salesforce, Microsoft Office, MailChimp, and other tools.

Guru

Knowledge is power, but only if you have the right one at the right time. Guru makes everyone on the team smarter by equipping them with relevant knowledge and resources they need at any point of the sales process. Providing situational information and access to marketing content on demand, the platform also enables everyone to personalize their organization’s knowledge base to fit their role and optimize their performance.

Prezi

Prezi is a formidable alternative to presentation titans PowerPoint and Keynote. Its enterprise variant, Prezi Business uses HTML5 technology and robust collaboration features to compel your audience with adept visual storytelling across multiple devices. It also comes with live leaderboard analytics, commenting support, and powerful design customization features.

Upland RO Innovation

The best pitch you have is the long list of satisfied customers in your corner. It’s no accident testimonials and success stories find their way into brands’ home pages. RO Innovation helps your team tap the power of customer feedback and other sales enablement assets to propel win rates and hike revenue. Integrate RO Innovation with your CRM and other inside sales tools to give prospects quick access to relevant customer reference and success stories of existing clients.

Vidyard

Images can sometimes drive the message home a lot better than words. No wonder videos are the fastest growing content format on the web, and why conversions improve by more than 80% when there’s a video on a landing page. Use Vidyard to strategically deploy videos in your sales process. When you get to inform, educate and delight leads better, you also get a better shot at closing deals and increasing revenue.

Contract Lifecycle Management

Adobe Sign

Few things can beat the sense of accomplishment at getting a big and challenging prospect to buy your product. In most cases though, verbal confirmation hardly counts until the new client actually signs a contract. Good thing contract management services like Adobe Sign are there to facilitate the binding agreement between your business and a new customer. Formerly called EchoSign and eSign, this tool forms part of the Adobe Document Cloud service which also includes the venerable PDF pioneer Acrobat. Use Adobe Sign to create, transmit, sign, and manage forms, agreements and contracts anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Better Proposals

Better Proposals lets you easily create, manage and send beautiful business proposals. Using their intuitive editor, you can create web-based proposals that look great on any device. Shorten your proposal creation time by using 200+ templates and track what happens once a client receives it. The tool integrates with all major payment processors and it has electronic signatures, allowing clients to sign and pay directly from the proposal.

Concord

A free and easy-to-use cloud-based contract management service, Concord helps individuals and companies create, negotiate, sign and manage contracts. Concord offers unlimited online contract storage and has decent collaboration and document tracking features.

DealHub

DealHub brings B2B buyers and sellers together in a single on-brand digital DealRoom which incorporates CPQ, CLM, subscription management, eSign technology, and everything else needed to close new and existing business. Generate a personalized quote and DealRoom within minutes after asking a specific set of questions during the beginning of the sales cycle and continue to get real-time buyer insights throughout.

DocuSign

Contracts evolve over time. Signatories from different parties typically would want to mutually modify the terms of agreement amid changes in their relationships or in conditions relevant to the contract. DocuSign makes this back and forth collaboration easier and faster to conduct and complete. The service also integrates well with most CRMs and other business solutions. Predating even Adobe’s offering and holding a dominant market share, DocuSign arguably represents the best in class solution in the contract management niche.

GetAccept

GetAccept automates your deal signing process by combining document tracking, e-signing, and automated email follow-ups into a single platform. Similar to marketing automation tools, the service comes with a clean dashboard that lets you see how deals are progressing across your business and which actions you need to take to accelerate the process.

HelloSign

HelloSign is a highly-rated e-signature service that helps you bypass printers, scanners and pens, speeding the contract negotiation and signing process by as much as 90%. The service is free for individuals and comes at comparatively affordable prices for small to enterprise-scale businesses. HelloSign takes all your paperwork into the cloud via a simple, clean and intuitive UI. You can get it customized based on your workflow and integrated with your CRM, email platform and other business software for sales.

Proposify

Proposify makes it easy to manage sales documents of all kinds: proposals, quotes, and contracts. Reps can build documents using templates, easily dropping in customized images, snippets of text, and numbers. Proposify also lets salespeople communicate with buyers on the details of each item directly within the documents, to make review and revisions a breeze.

Qvidian

Ramp up your team’s win rate by accelerating your documentation workflow. Qvidian is a proposal automation solution that significantly cuts the time it takes for customers to create an RFP, for your team to submit a winning proposal, and for everyone to sign an agreement. Organize all your content in a single accessible library.

Signaturely

Get legally-binding online signatures on any document, from anywhere, using any device. Just upload your documents or create new ones with free templates, place online signing fields and send them to your signees. Signaturely guides them through the online signing process, letting them create an online signature, signing each field, and sending them automated reminders if they’re taking too long to sign.

SpringCM

SpringCM automates your document cycle, establishing a high degree of control, visibility, and security for your contracts, presentations, and other content. Simplify your documentation process (creation, review, tracking, sign-off, storage, compliance, etc.) and increase the level of collaboration among creators, sellers, vendors and customers who engage the same content.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Agile CRM (Free for up to 10 users)

Agile CRM is a powerful tool for any small business struggling to manage the time and resources necessary to build effective sales and marketing processes. Featuring easy integration with the most popular email platforms, support and customer service software, phone and conference bridges, billing plugins, social media networks, and more Agile leverages the tools you need on one easy-to-use platform. Built specifically for small businesses, Agile offers effective solutions for sales, marketing, and process automation, as well as customer support, contact management, and even project management.

Airtable (Offers a free version with limited features)

Airtable is a CRM, and a lot more. It’s really a spreadsheet-meets-database application that lets anybody build a database for anything. Compared to other more purpose-built CRM options, it’s less expensive. And it’s also extremely flexible and customizable. But even for businesses that need an out of the box solution, Airtable works: they offer many pre-built Airtable templates, including one for a sales CRM.

Apptivo (Free for up to 3 users)

Apptivo is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning solution that has earned accolades and won awards for its comparative flexibility and affordability. In addition to its CRM feature, Apptivo also provides invoicing, sales reporting and project management services. It runs on a freemium model.

Close.io

Inside sales teams can increase productivity by uniting all their sales communications in one place. This CRM comes with built-in calling, emailing, and SMS, plus powerful search and filter functions that make it easy for your reps to follow up with the right leads at the right time. The reporting features give you a glance of both the activity and performance of individual reps and your overall sales team, while enabling you to dig deep into the data to find insights that matter. A powerful API enables you to automate and connect Close.io with other apps in your toolset.

Copper

Copper is just right for avid users of G Suite, since it integrates directly with all your most beloved Google Apps. That means you have the power of a full-featured CRM right in the familiar environment of Gmail, and a simple deal workflow management view. Unlike complex CRMs, Copper can easily be learned and optimized by anyone who uses email. The platform’s features set and ease-of-use earned it Google’s strong endorsement. But don’t let its simplicity fool you. Copper has the automation, analytics, and machine learning capabilities of other CRMs in the market.

Contactually (For real estate professionals)

Contactually is a solution purpose-built for the real estate industry. Agents and brokerages get features that address their specific needs. For instance, it offers agents the ability to identify and stay connected with contacts in their network, to drive referrals. Link your customer data with your email platform to quicken and enhance interactions. Organize your contacts to establish lead priorities and maintain long-lasting relationships with clients. Stay motivated and accountable to your own priorities with a dashboard that keeps the biggest, most pressing opportunities front-and-center.

CRMNEXT (For financial services)

CRMNEXT is the next generation cloud-based enterprise CRM for financial and banking services. It picks up from where traditional CRMs left off by taking down artificial barriers between human and digital channels, enabling omni-channel customer interactions within a unified platform. CRMNEXT is the largest banking CRM in the world with over 3 million users across 5,000 locations and 36 countries.

Membrain

Unlike traditional CRMs being perceived as mindless data-entry by your sales team, Membrain converts your sales strategy into visual workflows that are easy to understand. As a sales enablement CRM, Membrain helps salespeople to focus on the right prospects and opportunities and sell more confidently, from the first contact to close. If your organization operates in a complex B2B selling environment, with longer sales cycles and multiple stakeholders, Membrain is the CRM for you.

Freshsales (Offers a free forever startup plan with limited features)

Streamline your operations with a CRM purpose-built to ramp up performance and accelerate the sales process. Freshsales uses AI, automation, and other features to make it easier for your team to refresh pipelines, communicate with prospects, prioritize leads, make meaningful conversations, analyze customer behavior, and close maximum-value deals. Use Freshsales to upgrade your contact management, lead scoring, email tracking, and territory management process.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM was built from the ground up to be ready for the modern world. Intuitive and automatic where other systems are complicated and manual, HubSpot CRM takes care of all the little details — logging emails, recording calls, and managing your data — freeing up valuable selling time in the process. It regularly ranks as one of the best CRM software products for small businesses. HubSpot starts with a free plan that’s perfect for startups and small businesses, but also offers many additional paid features that are suitable for growing companies and enterprises.”

Infusionsoft (Keap)

Infusionsoft is the flexible but powerful CRM for small businesses. This sales and marketing platform enables teams to grow pipelines, qualify leads, deploy email marketing campaigns, automate tedious tasks such as follow-ups and invoicing, manage selling activities and centralize customer interactions. Use Infusionsoft to get everyone on the same page, achieve higher performance, and improve win rates.

Insightly

Available via a freemium model, Insightly is an affordable CRM option for solopreneurs and very small teams. For its pricing, ease of use, decent feature set and platform integrations, Insightly earned awards from channels such as Business News Daily. In addition to core CRM functions, Insightly has a native project management support as well as a mobile and social media component.

Messagely

Messagely is a powerful, all-in-one customer support solution that helps you take care of all of your customer communication needs from just one platform. It comes with a powerful live chat that lets you connect with your users as they browse your website, as well as creating tickets, sending targeted messages, and collecting customer information.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

This enterprise-scale application is available on the cloud, on-premises, or a combination of both. Given its pedigree, it integrates well with other Microsoft services such as SharePoint, Outlook, Office 365, and OneDrive.

Oracle NetSuite

If you want everything managed using just one platform, then NetSuite is the solution you’re looking for. Combining enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting and CRM functionalities, NetSuite enables managers to extract data-driven insights for strategy formulation while equipping sales teams with tools that improve productivity. You can use NetSuite to make forecasts, upsell and manage compensation and incentives systems.

Pipedrive

Small teams with big ambitions prefer to use Pipedrive’s clean UI and activity-based selling methodology. As its name suggests, this CRM solution visualizes your pipeline and shows you which activities you need to perform to move leads forward and get more deals closed. Pipedrive is highly customizable and can be integrated with many other tools in your sales stack.

Pipeliner

Pipeliner is a visually intuitive CRM solution that provides instant visibility and intelligence on key metrics and data. Designed with a drag-and-drop pipeline UI, this graphical CRM can generate one-click reports, comprehensive charts, and a quick view of your sales performance featuring metrics such as deals created, deals lost, deals converted, and the respective values of lost and won deals.

Rollio

Salesforce is great but it takes a while to keep it always up-to-date. Good thing Rollio’s AI is there to help. Just tell Rollio what to do via voice or text message and he’ll automatically make CRM updates for you, within seconds. With an AI-driven assistant who understands what you say, you won’t need to make manual updates on your CRM ever! Saves a ton of time, propels team productivity, and helps you focus on closing more deals.

Salesflare

Salesflare is the perfect CRM for any small B2B business that wants to make more sales with less work. The CRM fills out itself, by synchronizing with your email, calendar, phone, social media, … and organizes all this data for you. Its email integration is unrivaled. It’s instant, imports email signatures, tracks your emails on opens and clicks (with linked website integration), and brings your CRM right in your inbox. Start making sales simpler. Use Salesflare’s automation features and enjoy its simplicity. Setting it up only takes minutes.

Salesforce

The dominant player in the space, Salesforce basically sets the standard for all things CRM. Salesforce has a robust range of functionalities, allows a high degree of customization, and supports collaboration. It integrates well with other apps and services and inspires a thriving third-party ecosystem. The Salesforce dashboard is among the most useful tools among sales and marketing professionals. The only drawback is its relatively steep pricing. For even more helpful tips, head to the Salesforce article here.

Sellsy

Sellsy is a full-featured CRM that eliminates the need for multiple sales prospecting tools to cover different aspects of your sales operations. From prospecting to invoicing, Sellsy helps you manage every element in your workflow, including email campaigns, e-commerce, and project management. The platform also provides sales and marketing intelligence to help you make smarter business decisions and achieve higher conversion rates.

Teamgate

Zendesk Sunshine

Some sales teams need more than the “two-dimensional” view of a customer provided by most CRM systems. Built on AWS, Sunshine is an open platform with enough flexibility to accept customer information regardless of the source. Because it’s an open platform, it’s also deeply customizable, so you can build in apps to achieve any outcome the sales team needs.

Zoho

Zoho offers a ton of features at a very affordable price. It has goodies for email marketing, customer service, lead generation, and reporting. Zoho has a simple and intuitive UI and integrates well with widely used apps such as Evernote, MailChimp, Google Apps, Microsoft Office and Quickbooks.

Data Networks

Collective[i]

Short for Collective Intelligence, Collective[i] is an essential application for modern sales organizations looking to leverage various forms of AI/ML to improve productivity and drive revenue growth. It uses Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate data collection into CRM and keep contacts up-to-date. It also offers intelligent daily forecasting and collaboration tools all infused with data enriched insights about buyers, opportunity odds, and useful connectors to accelerate sales cycles. Underlying all of the functionality Collective[i] offers is one of the largest networks of B2B transactional data. This data set augments the internal data of their clients and trains Collective[i]’s algorithms so that predictions such as forecasting and opportunity odds are based on current market conditions and buying behaviors rather than historical selling patterns.

Email Management

Autoklose

Autoklose is a sales engagement platform that offers email automation and B2B data all-in-one. It helps you target the right prospects by utilizing a huge database packed with clean, verified B2B leads. You can then engage your prospects by sending out sequences of highly personalized emails at scale, fine-tuning your campaigns in real-time, and automating your outreach and sales process.

ContactOut

If you are looking to contact a business, sending an email to their generic email address won’t cut it. The challenge, though, is finding these people’s real email addresses, but ContactOut makes the work so much easier. ContactOut’s primary feature is a Chrome extension that finds your prospect’s email address as you view their LinkedIn profiles. However, it does more than just find their email address. It also finds their phone numbers and social media profiles.

EmailAnalytics

EmailAnalytics is an email productivity analytics tool that connects to your Gmail or G Suite account and visualizes your email activity — or that of your employees. This enables sales teams, customer service teams, and small business owners to measure essential KPIs like average email response time, email traffic by hour of the day, email traffic volume by day of the week, and much more.

Mixmax

Based on Gmail, Mixmax is a productivity app for any customer-facing team. Focused on finding efficiency in repetitive email tasks, Mixmax lets reps see who viewed each email and when, schedule meetings right from messages, schedule messages to send later, and add templated messages with one click.

Opensense

Previously known as SenderGen, Opensense helps sellers use build pipeline, stay memorable and keep prospects informed using customized email signatures. Sales teams can insert hyper-personalized banners into their emails to ensure the entire message (even the signature) does the job of selling.

Lead Generation and Sales Prospecting Tools

Apollo

Turbo-charge your lead management process. Apollo enables your team to scientifically determine your ideal customer persona and find real-world decision-makers who fit the profile. Once the platform infuses your pipeline with new qualified leads, Apollo immediately toggles your team to full engagement mode, accelerating your topline performance.

ClickPoint

ClickPoint is a lead management software purpose-built for sales managers. Use ClickPoint to instantly prioritize and route leads, reduce closing times and generate sales activity reports. Match your best salespeople with the most challenging and valuable leads.

Cognism

Your sales performance depends heavily on how your lead pipeline grows and flows. Increase revenue by accelerating your prospecting activities. Adopt smart practices that go beyond contact information and into deep analytics to sift through oceans of data and identify buyer personas most likely to engage your brand. Cognism uses automation and machine learning to get you to the right customers faster.

Conversica

Harness the link between conversation and conversion rates. Conversica is an AI-driven sales tool that automates, streamlines and upscales your lead contact and qualification process. Deploying Conversica is like hiring a group of sales reps — at a fraction of the cost — who will tirelessly chase and nurture leads 24-7. The Conversica sales assistant will relentlessly but smartly continue to engage customers using natural language until they are ready for human sales professionals to come in and close the deal.

DealSheet

Drive revenue growth by managing your opportunities better. DealSheet extends the capabilities of your CRM, helping your team qualify, manage and close leads better. DealSheet also tracks the metrics sales leaders need to train and coach their team more effectively.

DealSignal

Prospecting can be a tedious process. Worse, doing it manually can take up an entire day and still leave you with a trickle of low-quality leads whose likelihood of opting in is not very bright. Fortunately, DealSignal automatically generates a list of prospects, leads and relevant intel on demand so you can focus on scheduling meetups, polishing your pitch and closing deals.

Dooly

Dooly brings your most important sales and marketing content to your reps when they need it most—during their sales meetings. By analyzing your team’s calls and notes in real-time, Dooly feeds your team the stories and competitor intel they need to wow prospective customers and weave through objections with ease. Stop searching the abyss of your Google Drive for deal collateral or saying “I’ll get back to you on that,” and let Dooly help you close more deals—all while knowing your CRM and your team are kept up-to-date on the fly.

Drift

You started a conversation with your prospect in email. Continue that conversation via chat when the prospect visits your site. Drift gives sales teams the ability to link email and on-site chat, sending personalized messages and sequences across platforms. Drift also uses bots to quickly qualify website visitors, and route them to the right person to begin a sales conversation – all on the website.

Growbots

Growbots automates the entire outbound sales process to help you generate and tap new sales opportunities from a database of more than 200 million decision makers. Use Growbots to create an ideal customer profile and automatically get a list of screened prospects that fit your criteria. You can then automate and execute an email campaign for warm leads and get closer to your sales goals. Growbot is intuitive and customizable.

Growlabs

Growlabs combines B2B lead generation with outbound sales communication to identify, engage and convert leads, at scale. Create your ideal customer profile(s) and automatically find leads from a proprietary database of 400 million verified prospects. Growlabs machine-learning algorithms determine when to send emails and follow-ups and pass new qualified leads directly to sales reps.

Hubspot

Hubspot offers an array of services ranging from free online analytics tools to a full-featured CRM. However, the company is best known for its set of inbound marketing tools that help brands hike customer reach and engagement. Use Hubspot to glean data-driven insight on how to build and optimize your lead generation campaigns.

Hull

Having a powerful tool stack for your sales team is a valuable strategic advantage. But things can become complicated when your different tools become so siloed and detached from each other that you need to 1) exit one tool just to use another, 2) manually sync data across the stack, or 3) follow separate usage protocols to get things done. Fortunately, Hull keeps all your tools in one place and automatically syncs customer data and other information across your stack. Use Hull as your command center to access and use your CRM, email, databases, pipeline manager, performance platforms and other sales enablement software.

Infor Sales Portal

Optimize and streamline your sales process by centralizing your customer content, quoting and ordering system across all your channels. Infor Sales Portal benefits makers and sellers of complex products which often experience discrepancies arising from the parallel use of disparate tools, apps, and other software for sales. Infor Sales Portal systematizes all your selling collaterals in one place to ensure that everyone gets timely information about your product.

Intercom

Use customer data integrations and segmentation to identify only the most qualified website visitors and route them to sales to start conversations. A/B test messaging to constantly improve effectiveness, allow site visitors to book meetings with reps. All activities sync with Salesforce, so reps don’t need to spend any more time entering data.

Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder keeps your pipeline flowing by identifying companies who favorably engage your content. In analyzing website traffic, Leadfeeder traces organizations who show interest in your brand and which specific products appear to offer solutions to their problems. With this insight, sales teams can then approach prospects from the right angle and with the right pitch, substantially increasing their win rates.

LeadFuze

LeadFuze automates your prospecting process, giving you more time to improve your skills, perfect your pitch, and close deals. Based on how you configure your ideal customer profile (industry, title, location, company size, etc), this lead generation software automatically gathers the contact information of matching decision-makers and promptly sends personal emails and follow-ups. LeadFuze has more than 50 million records in its growing lead database.

LeadGenius

Elevate your lead generation and management process using the powerful combination of machine learning and expert human intelligence. LeadGenius enables your team to build lasting and meaningful relationships with every decision-maker who matters. Grow your market by identifying new prospects, validating consumer segments and buyer personas, optimizing your existing lead database, and enhancing your email outreach.

LeadIQ

LeadIQ makes prospecting super easy, especially on LinkedIn. It is one of the fastest and easiest ways for sales teams and recruiters to build lists of verified contact data from the web and sync it into Salesforce, and many other CRMs.

LeanData

There are a lot of things you need to match well besides clothes, job skills, and romantic partners. In sales, there’s such a thing as a lead-rep fit. A promising lead getting to the wrong rep easily becomes a lost opportunity. LeanData enhances your sales process by enabling precise customizations of your lead routing strategy. Use LeanData’s visually intuitive and insight-driven lead management features to optimize your topline potential by consistently assigning the right leads to the right reps.

Mintigo

Gain real-time, data-driven insights to propel your lead management process. Mintigo collects and analyzes thousands of corporate data points including financials, tech subscriptions, staff complement, and purchasing behavior. Running these data points with corresponding models and data in your CRM, Mintigo then prioritizes leads based on the value they can generate for your company.

Affinity

Let AI-derived insights enhance your customer engagement efforts. Affinity, a relationship intelligence platform, analyzes your prospect’s behavioral patterns and gives you real-time recommendations on how best to connect with your customers at every moment of the engagement cycle. Integrate Affinity with your sales prospecting tools in your toolbox to get actionable intel (social media mentions, company news, etc) about the customer while you write emails or browse the Web.

Refiner

Any SaaS company wishing to go upmarket must understand who their best sales opportunities are first. Without it, its salespeople risk wasting time processing bad leads and missing out on high-value opportunities. Refiner is a lead qualification software helping B2B SaaS companies uncover their hottest product qualified leads on autopilot, and providing their salespeople with insights about which of their leads and customers they should focus on, when to reach out, and what information to use, potentially, to make the sales conversation more relevant.

Salesvue

Salesvue was purpose-built as a native Salesforce function to help sales professionals automate their entire workflow: from prospecting to lead nurturing. Use Salesvue to grow your pipeline, increase appointment rates and convert more leads — without the glitches, delay, and usability issues commonly experienced in other third-party, non-native solutions that run in the Salesforce environment.

SalesWings

You need real-time intelligence on how your prospects perceive your brand in order to create and execute a timely engagement plan. SalesWings is a handy tool for monitoring and gauging how your leads respond to your current messaging. This suite of plugins, APIs, add-ons, and apps has the ability to detect specific behavior (such as newsletter engagement, visits to your website, and the particular sections or topics they are interested in). When trigger conditions are met, SalesWings sends real-time notifications so you can instantly react to positive signals.

Troops

The new generation of sales professionals demand toolsets that align with their habits and preferences, seamlessly melding work and lifestyle to keep them motivated and primed for high performance. Troops uses conversational AI to help teams get what they need (from cumbersome CRMs) fast, easy and on-the-go via a bot on Slack. No more need to wade in the murky swampland of conventional CRMs. All you need is to chat with a smart bot like you do with your friends.

Velocify Pulse

As its name suggests, Velocify Pulse accelerates the sales process while improving the precision with which teams prospect for and engage leads. Use the platform with Salesforce to hike the productivity of everyone on the team — from prospectors and SDRs to closers and managers. Automate the way leads are distributed and systematize how your team approaches different engagement scenarios to improve conversion rates.

Wiza

Wiza turns your LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches into lists of verified lead emails. If you’re already using Sales Nav for lead generation, use Wiza to export all of your searches and saved lead lists into a clean .csv, ready for outreach. Connect your account to Salesforce, Outreach or HubSpot to speed up your prospecting workflow.

Performance Management

Altify

Keep your team sharp with the right performance management tool. Altify helps determine the factors that deliver the biggest impact on your sales velocity, win rates and other metrics. Whether you need to tweak a specific sales activity or build new business development skills, Altify will show you how best to move the needle.

AlwaysHired

Tech businesses who partner with AlwaysHired can expect to have a high-quality talent pool from which they can onboard tech-savvy sales professionals. An immersive bootcamp for salespeople wishing to upgrade their skills, AlwaysHired also trains candidates to become well-versed in the trends and language of technology. Any organization who plans to sell tech products stands to benefit from this rare subset of salespeople.

Ambition

You can brag about the latest tech enabler on your premises but selling still depends on how motivated your people are. Software can help improve metrics but it’s the people behind a brand who ultimately reel the profits in. To keep sales professionals focused and motivated, Ambition identifies which metrics have the greatest impact on your business then incentivizes sales reps who perform excellently on those metrics. Ambition provides motivational leaderboards to establish transparency and accountability, real-time scorecards to instill focus, and data analytics to ramp up individual and team performance.

Betts Recruiting

Finding competent sales professionals can be difficult, especially when you’re doing business in competitive cities like New York, San Francisco, and London. Fortunately, Betts Recruiting is doing the groundwork for ambitious, fast-paced companies who need top-performing personnel manning their sales floor. Check out Betts Recruiting if you need pre-screened and optimally primed selling machines on your side.

Bigtincan

Powered by AI and machine learning, Bigtincan automatically delivers recommended content to each specific prospect on any device and at every stage of the sales cycle. Bigtincan integrates with your CRM, providing real-time intelligence to help you customize collaterals, presentations, and dynamic sales playbooks any time and on the go. Real-time usage alerts help you understand how prospects engage with content. Automated CRM updates and predictive modeling drive sales rep productivity.

Factor 8

If you need training for people in your inside sales operations, Factor 8 is the team to get your reps in top shape. Factor 8 focuses on B2B selling for small and medium businesses but they work and partner with big-name brands such as IBM, HP, Google, and SAP. Unlike nearly every item on this list, Factor 8 is not a technically a software that you deploy across the organization but a bankable source of skill sets from where your team can learn everything they need to consistently deliver high performance.

HireVue

Give your recruitment and training programs an upgrade. HireVue is a video-based platform that helps organizations discover, assess and train top talent. Use HireVue’s analytics capabilities to identify candidates who’ll fit your ideal profile for each sales role in your team. Use the platform for pinpoint-precise coaching, and use it to maintain peak sales readiness.

Hoopla

Hoopla is a full-stack performance management platform that aims to build a culture of excellence and collaboration. Using data analytics, gamification, and other features, Hoopla takes everyone on the same page and keeps sales teams focused on achieving their goals. Dynamic leaderboards and visualized metrics drive staff engagement and motivate everyone to give their best. Hoopla can be integrated with CRM, productivity apps and other software.

LevelEleven

Things pan out well when data is on your side. LevelEleven is a sales activity management system that relies on engagement, behavioral, and performance data to tweak your sales team into top shape. The platform determines the key factors that tip the scales in favor of your business, then guides your salespeople on how best to transform that intelligence into closed deals. Use LevelEleven to build a culture of high performance and revenue growth.

MindTickle

In sales, your numbers are only as good as your members. Because your team’s knowledge and skills are critical, sales readiness is a strategic component you can’t afford to ignore. MindTickle is an end-to-end sales enablement platform that guides reps and managers across the selling cycle using structured learning paths, role-play, and analytics. From onboarding to ongoing readiness, equip your sales team with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.

PointForward

PointForward is an end-to-end performance management solution that helps you train sales reps quickly and cost-efficiently. Use PointForward to facilitate the onboarding of new sales hires, reinforce deal-winning skills, and establish best practices that consistently deliver positive results in every scenario.

Qstream

A team’s performance depends very much on the leadership behind it. Qstream equips sales coaches and managers with qualitative and quantitative insights that demonstrably move the needle on metrics that matter. This solution combines KPI information from your CRM, competency ratings, skills training, knowledge base, gamification, and video-formatted observations to equip sales professionals with the right selling approaches, behavior, and messages as they engage customers in real time.

QuotaPath

QuotaPath automates commission calculating and increases understanding of complex comp plans, thereby fueling a more efficient and accurate sales process for teams. With real-time data syncs from HubSpot and Salesforce and personalized dashboards, reps and leaders gain a deeper understanding of their earnings and quota attainment all on a freemium model. With Payouts functionality, everyone on the team is paid accurately and on time.

SAP Commissions

SAP Commissions is an award-winning sales software provider whose suite of solutions cover marketing, sales performance, learning, and customer experience. SAP Commissions, the suite’s sales compensation service automates the compensation process while making any organization’s rewards program fast and accurate. Use SAP Commissions to create and manage sophisticated incentives programs that reduce disputes and overpayments while motivating direct and indirect sales teams to attain higher levels of performance.

ThinkSmartOne

Success in sales depends heavily on behavior, attitude, and habits. ThinkSmartOne is an incentive and rewards platform that helps reinforce and standardize winning behavior among sales professionals. Using gamification, automation, reporting, and real-time communication, ThinkSmartOne drives high performance and top-line growth.

Veelo

Veelo provides a comprehensive sales performance management solution by centralizing enablement, optimization, onboarding, and training in a single platform. Using AI, machine learning and behavioral science, Veelo recommends the perfect conversation agenda or the most crucial learning track at the right moment to drive productivity and hike success rates. Use Veelo to onboard new salespeople faster and get them to reach peak performance quicker.

Xactly

You can (and should) align your compensation strategy with your growth targets. Xactly can help you do so easier, faster, and with surprising levels of success. Xactly is a cloud-based incentive, compensation, and performance management platform purpose-built for enterprise-class sales organizations. Develop incentive plans that ensure optimal sales performance. Let Xactly automatically manage complex calculations and focus on getting your team to improve their win rates. Use analytics to glean actionable insight on performance-compensation dynamics. Leverage industry data to see how the competition compensates their talent pool.

Sales Enablement

Accent Accelerate

Having a full view of every sales situation enables your team to make the right moves that directly impact your bottom line. With Accent Accelerate, you gain complete visibility into opportunities, selling activities, and customer behavior — crucial information that propels your team to achieve higher win rates. Using Accent’s data analytics, real-time tracking and visualization tools, you can navigate complex sales situations, prioritize the most valuable opportunities and determine the best step forward.

Highspot

Highspot uses AI and machine learning to manage and deliver content for each unique engagement scenario. Use Highspot to keep sales reps sharp with the right training modules. Implement well-designed playbooks and delight customers with compelling content via email, landing pages or online presentations. Enable sales managers, teams and customers to discover and act on relevant information or insight. Integrate Highspot into Salesforce and gain real-time data on how prospects and leads respond to your messaging.

Klyck

The quality of your content significantly impact the buying behavior of your prospects, but the manner in which it is delivered also matters. Klyck’s integration with your CRM allows reps to build interactive presentations right within the platform. Plus, reps save time with Klyck’s advanced search and filtering options that make it easy to find the most relevant sales content quickly.

Lavender

Lavender is an in-inbox email assistant that helps sellers get more replies to sales emails. It has a suite of tools that help to write emails faster, like automatic email verification and personalization data. The Lavender email assistant detects anything that could lower your reply rate — then it fixes them you.

With features like an AI Email Writer, Mobile Preview & Optimization, Sentence Suggestions, GIFs, Tone and Sentiment Analysis, Spam Detection and more, Lavender has everything needed to write better emails faster.

Lavender integrates with Gmail, Outlook 365, Outreach, and Salesloft, and continuously learns about each seller and their team. These insights are populated into a team coaching dashboard that helps sales teams coach and onboard reps faster while enabling them to detect potential problems early.

SalesHood

SalesHood is the leading all-in-one sales enablement platform, purpose-built to help hyper-growth companies activate sales excellence. Through its cutting-edge approach to learning, coaching, guided selling and content management, SalesHood is proven to reduce time to ramp, lift quota attainment and accelerate sales velocity. Virtual, hybrid and in-person organizations use SalesHood to optimize seller performance, build team connectivity and realize faster revenue outcomes—at scale.

Seismic

Elite sales professionals go the extra mile to understand their prospects’ key pain points and customize messaging to address them. But even the most efficient salespeople can waste time searching for the right content to send to prospects at the right time. Then, it’s not always clear what content was most engaging for the prospect. Seismic is an enterprise-grade sales enablement platform. Among its many capabilities, it shines as a content management system that provides up-to-date versioning, predictive content recommendations for each deal, and analytics to show reps which content makes the most impact.

SetSail

SetSail is the leading revenue execution tool. It helps drive sales productivity as you scale by incentivizing your revenue teams to focus on the right behaviors. Reward best practices in real-time to make every rep behave like a top-performer.

Showpad

Get the most from your content by making it more accessible, measurable, relevant, and powerful. Showpad enables your team and your customers to find, share, or present the perfect content for every situation. Ramp up sales performance by engaging and inspiring customers with better, action-inducing conversations.

Veelo

Veelo provides a comprehensive sales performance management solution by centralizing enablement, optimization, onboarding, and training in a single platform. Using AI, machine learning and behavioral science, Veelo recommends the perfect conversation agenda or the most crucial learning track at the right moment to drive productivity and hike success rates. Use Veelo to onboard new salespeople faster and get them to reach peak performance quicker.

Sales Engagement

Bloobirds.com

Designed to eliminate sales reps’ and managers’ admin tasks, Bloobirds helps your team flow through their pipeline to make selling more intuitive. All while collecting crucial insights without relying on notoriously forgetful salespeople to fill out the CRM. Plus, drag and drop your sales playbook into their user-friendly platform to see results like a 210% increase in qualified sales opportunities. Bloobirds supports your sales and prospecting team every step of the way while helping leaders to make better decisions.

Cirrus Insight

Going back and forth between your email and Salesforce can be tedious and surely takes a ridiculous amount of time. Cirrus Insight allows you to work within your email while having Salesforce around to seamlessly guide your correspondence with smart, deal-closing insight. With Cirrus Insight, all your email data, schedules, and follow-ups get sync automatically with Salesforce, eliminating the need for data entry, manual updates, and other tedious tasks. You save time, increase productivity, and exude unmatched domain mastery in your email correspondence.

Mailshake

Looking for a simple yet powerful software for sales engagement? Mailshake allows you to send personalized cold emails at scale, engage with prospects via phone and social media, and build all-in-one sequences — all on one dashboard. Leverage mail merge personalization and automatic follow-ups to improve and scale your email outreach. Save time with the integrated phone dialer. And improve connect rates with sales cadences that engage with prospects in multiple social channels.

Outreach

Get your email campaigns in order. Outreach is the market-leading sales engagement platform, helping you track, pace, analyze and automate your email and voice messages to your customers. By integrating Outreach into your CRM, you’ll never have to manually log your messaging activities and outcomes, freeing more time for you to book more meetings, close deals and make better-informed decisions. A top research firm recently found that organizations using Outreach get a 387% return on investment — that’s 5x, which is the highest in the industry. It also frees up 20% of your sales reps’ time to focus on additional selling activities, giving you a 3-month payback period.

PersistIQ

Gone are the days of missed follow-ups with prospects or losing hours each day logging information to your CRM. PersistIQ is an easy to use sales orchestration system that salespeople use to proactively generate new opportunities. With PersistIQ, salespeople quickly create multi-touch and multi-channel communication campaigns that include email, voice, and manual tasks, all synced to your CRM. These campaigns drive high-quality and personalized touchpoints with prospects, increase sales activity numbers, and keep salespeople organized every day.

Reply

Reply automates your outreach while maintaining personalized conversations with each of your prospects and tracking their behavior over time. Use Reply to scale your outbound communications across multiple channels and drive engagement. Use it to boost inbound sales and nurture relationships with existing accounts. Integrate Reply with your CRM, find prospect emails on LinkedIn, initiate call sessions more efficiently, and tap the benefits of data-driven analytics to make smarter selling decisions.

SalesHandy

SalesHandy makes it easy to reach out to prospects and close deals. You can send cold emails and email campaigns. Automatic followups and email scheduling both ensure you never miss an opportunity. Mail Merge allows you to increase personalization and get more opens. SalesHandy analytics gives you insight into your overall performance so you can boost engagement faster.

SalesLoft

SalesLoft provides sales organizations the ability to build, share, and execute on their pattern of sales steps across email, phone, and social. They help sellers make more connections and close more business. Real-time email tracking helps teams respond to buying signals, and the integrated dialer allows users to dial, log, and record calls from anywhere. SalesLoft integrates with over 35 other sales technology vendors.

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a comprehensive field sales management software for sales managers and reps. Delivered through an intuitive mobile application for reps in the field and a desktop application for managers, SPOTIO centralizes sales team activity to enable higher productivity, increased revenue, and more deals closed.

VanillaSoft

Striking while the lead is hot increases your odds of closing the deal. VanillaSoft’s unique lead prioritization engine automatically serves up the “next best lead” to the sales rep, based on buying intent (incoming web leads rise to the top), various lead profile attributes, and the follow-up cadence. There are no lists to manage. As a sales rep concludes an outreach attempt the next best lead automatically appears, dramatically increasing productivity and revenue-per-rep.

Yesware

Use email to simplify sales prospecting and propel your closing rate. Yesware is an easy-to-use service that runs in the background of your email client, syncs with CRM, and provides prescriptive analytics on how to best engage prospects at each stage of the selling cycle. Yesware tracks and analyzes email, call and presentation data as gleaned from your inbox then automatically syncs with Salesforce, lending more transparency while eliminating the need for manual data entry.

Sales and Market Intelligence

Artesian

Having the right information at the right time enables you to make decisions or take actions that get you closer to your goals. Artesian provides real-time and relevant insights about your customers, their world, and what matters to them most. Use Artesian to understand your market better, qualify prospects more intelligently, and maintain customer engagements that yield meaningful and productive results.

Clearbit

Skip the research and data entry with automatically enriched customer data. With access to 200 million contacts at 20 million companies, Clearbit gives you the right information about your prospects when and where you need it. The platform can find new leads based on your target demographic or firmographic data, and identify web traffic, providing insight into named accounts.

D&B Hoover’s

Knowing your audience and having fresh, accurate information about prospects help set the right tone for customer engagement. Hoover’s has been providing customers with market intelligence since the 1990s and runs a database of more than 85 million businesses and 100 million professionals across nearly a thousand industry segments. If you want a quick way to gather insider info on a new prospect, Hoovers is a decent tool to use. A well-known secret: this tool can help you find prospects with immediate needs.

DiscoverOrg

Combine accurate sales and marketing intelligence with your sales management software and you get an effective tool for homing in on the right leads every time. Use DiscoverOrg to funnel marketing-qualified leads into the pipeline of your sales development team. Configure behavioral triggers to give you real-time information on whether targeted prospects are ready to buy. Use detailed and regularly updated org charts of your prospective client companies to identify the right point person for each engagement. With its acquisition of Zoominfo in 2019, DiscoverOrg is now an even more complete database of contacts and firms.

Emissary

Deepen your knowledge of high-value prospects. As a platform enabling sales professionals to connect with former executives of target companies, Emissary helps you gain a clearer understanding of the ecosystem, motivations and pain points of your key customers. Use Emissary to formulate a winning engagement strategy.

FirstRain

The right intel will help you establish positive connections with prospects. The right insight gained at the right time will help you build relationships and convert prospects into paying customers. FirstRain focuses on acquiring pertinent information, and on formulating timely insights to drive growth strategies and strengthen sales. FirstRain tracks the business, social media, and financial activities of your key customers and empowers your team through in-depth field knowledge and analytics.

FullContact

FullContact is a powerhouse contact platform for professionals, teams, and businesses. Their Chrome extension puts your Gmail on steroids – giving you robust data on your prospects so you can sell better and win more deals.

Intricately

KickFire

KickFire enriches your pipeline by unlocking new leads and opportunities, identifying which of your products and services resonate most with your key audience, and scoring prospects to help you prioritize your moves. KickFire uses web tracking, real-time notifications, and powerful analytics to give you full sales process visibility and keep you ahead of the competition.

Lead411

Lead411 is a Sales Intelligence platform that discovers actionable insights for sales/marketing teams to help them target companies/contacts that are much more likely to be buying specific products and services. Using technology and their team, they expose high quality leads for your solutions coupled with highly accurate contact information. Lead411 helps their clients crush their competition.

Mattermark

Acquire the corporate intel and insight you need to attract, qualify and convert customers. Mattermark enriches your customer database with dynamic, up-to-date information about your target companies, including location, number of employees, funding rounds, and scores of other data. Use Mattermark to deepen your understanding of key prospects and initiate more meaningful conversations that lead to sales.

So you want to rank on page one of Google?

Just like any other industry, SEO doesn’t lack prophets of doom, proclaiming its death every other year.

But in spite of the constant negativity coming from those who see search engine optimization as a mere fad, SEO has not only survived for nearly 27 years, but it has also thrived.

According to a recent report, companies spent over $65 billion on SEO in 2016. That is three times more than what experts predicted in 2008 for this year, and that was before major algorithms like Penguin and Panda were released. Plus, it’s estimated that SEO will reach the $80 billion mark by 2020.

Sure, these predictions aren’t set in stone, but they do paint a pretty accurate picture: search engine optimization is here to stay.

The question isn’t whether you should invest in SEO, but more about which activities you should invest in to get the best results.

This article will take a closer look at what it takes to rank on page one of Google and where you should be investing your money.

Let’s get straight to it.

Why investing in SEO is just good business sense

SEO has changed dramatically since its inception. And, although search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated than ever before, and you need to have deep knowledge to win at SEO, it’s still one of the most effective marketing strategies available.

One study found that SEO provides the best ROI of any inbound marketing channel. Most businesses invest on average 12% of their budget into search engine optimization, but it generates 15% of their leads. By comparison, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has 8% of the budget and generates only 6% of leads.

The high ROI has to do with the fact that the intent of searchers is very specific. Unlike social media channels, for example, where prospects might stumble upon one of your posts and click on it if it grabs their attention, people go to Google to ask specific questions and get specific answers.

So, how much does it cost to rank on page one of Google?

When people ask this question, they usually expect a straightforward answer like, “$5,763 plus tax.”

It doesn’t work that way.

SEO can be very tricky. It’s a combination of various practices that take time and discipline to return results.

For example, here are just some of the key factors that will determine how expensive it is for your unique business to rank on page one:

• Your target audience
• Your geolocation
• Your targeted keywords
• Current industry trends
• How aggressively you want to approach it

It takes some upfront costs to get the ball rolling, and the initial expenses can be a bit intimidating to a small business.

But, instead of obsessing over the expenses, focus on the benefits you’ll get from SEO, such as organic traffic, increased brand visibility and authority, higher brand credibility, and better ROI as compared to other inbound marketing strategies.

The longer and more you invest in SEO, the higher the return you’ll see. And, I’m not talking only about returns in website traffic and brand reputation, but also actual customers and sales.

Here’s the twist: to leverage all these benefits, your execution has to be flawless.

If you aren’t confident in your ability and resources to execute flawlessly, then consider hiring an agency to do it for you. Trust that they know what they are doing and have done this all before…

But hold them accountable to the key areas of SEO importance that I am about to discuss.

If you want to win at SEO in 2017, invest in these 5 key areas:

5 key things your SEO strategy needs to focus on right now

1. Technical Optimization on Your Website

Don’t let the word “technical” scare you. Technical SEO refers to the practices that allow you to build a strong foundation for your content.

I’m talking about optimizing title and meta tags, minifying your code to increase site speed, using the right keywords to ensure your site shows up in relevant search results, or creating HTML sitemaps that help web crawlers understand your content better and index it.

Technical SEO might not be as time-consuming as other optimization strategies, such as link building or content creation. But get it wrong, and it can affect your ranking dramatically.

2. Design and User Experience

No one talks about user experience until something goes wrong. However, it should be an integral part of your design process, from concept to launch.

As more and more of our daily lives move online, it has become critical for businesses to provide seamless digital experiences. Internet users today expect sites to perform flawlessly and deliver customized experiences. They don’t have the time or the patience to wait around for pages that load slowly, are hard to navigate or provide a poor experience.

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and try to understand why they’ve come to your site, what they’re looking for, and what they can expect. Creating a design with user intent in mind will work for everyone involved. Plus Google loves it.

Use the Google PageSpeed tool to see how fast your website loads:

Also, don’t forget that a large portion of your site visitors are viewing your pages on a mobile device.

3. Quality Content

You’ve heard it over and over again: quality content is the backbone of an effective SEO strategy. But, what does that mean? How do you create content that ranks high in Google and appeals to your audience too?

It all starts with picking the right keywords. Go to social media and see what’s trending. Pay attention to the keywords your audience are using and monitor popular industry topics. Keep in mind that the most obvious keywords aren’t always the best ones. Try to dig deeper and get to the bottom of what really interests your audience.

A tool like Keywordtool.io can be great for taking this to the next level:

Don’t get frustrated if you can’t come up with original content ideas. Instead, focus on how you can approach an old topic from a fresh perspective. Most importantly, don’t overstuff your content with keywords, don’t duplicate content, and make sure you post frequently on your website.

4. Trust Signals

Would you do business with a person you don’t trust?

Probably not.

Trust signals play a crucial role in SEO since these subliminal cues have the power to improve the initial impression of your website.

Incorporating social sharing into your website is one of the most effective ways to boost the credibility of your site. Include social media buttons on every page of your site and promote them with every opportunity you’ve got. The more your content is shared, the higher your chances of ranking are.

They use Sumo here at JeffBullas.com:

5. White Hat Link Building

Google’s Matt Cutts created a lot of controversy when he proclaimed the death of guest blogging as a link building strategy. Eventually, he made it clear that he was referring to shady and excessive guest blogging.

So, don’t worry: this is still a legitimate and effective way of acquiring backlinks, as long as they come from reputable sites that are relevant to your industry and audience.

HARO inquiries, expert roundup posts, the Skyscraper technique, and scholarship link building are other methods that can help you increase your ranking.

Wrapping it up

Search engine optimization isn’t a once-and-done type of deal. It requires constant work and tweaks to ensure that your site respects Google’s guidelines and adds value to your prospects.

Instead of trying to figure out how much you need to invest to get to the first page, think of SEO as a long-term game that, if played correctly, can provide consistent benefits to your business.

All in all, make sure you trust in Google. They are dedicated to delivering search results to their users that are accurate, resourceful, and provide a first-class experience. If you keep turning up and providing that experience, your journey to page one will come more quickly than you can imagine.

We all want to score new sales. But daily stumbling blocks like a messy CRM, poor lead quality, and lack of personal connections can regularly prevent follow up success.

A well-thought-out follow up strategy is essential for overcoming these obstacles. Unlock some truly powerful follow ups with these tips.

1. Use the best possible CRM for your business.

There are many ways the wrong CRM can ruin your best laid plans for following up with potential leads.

Most CRMs are created to service the basic, big picture functions of a predetermined business structure. This cookie cutter approach can be devastating for your ability to manage time, find information when you need it, and keep track of all the moving parts that are vital to your sale.

But how do you know which CRM will work for your unique needs?

Your best option is to choose a fully customizable, all-in-one CRM. We’ve written about this before; a high-quality CRM that pairs insightful data and sleek user-functionality is the cornerstone of every great sales team.

Check out this resource for more tips on how to select your perfect CRM.

Once you have all of your client relationship history beautifully laid out in front of you it’s time to assess your priorities.

2. Prioritize your follow ups by time and by Customer Lifetime Value.

Not all leads are high quality and, consequently, not all follow ups lead to sales. But how do you know which leads are the highest quality?

The best way to increase the success of your follow up strategy is to analyze both time and Customer Lifetime Value.

Instead of scrambling to email the first name on your list, try prioritizing your leads into these two distinct categories.

First consider how much time has passed since your last interaction with the lead. If you’ve chosen an effective CRM, this information should be readily available to you in just a few clicks.

The best follow ups occur within relatively short time frames after your initial conversation took place, but you may have some catching up to do. Rank your potential follow ups by the longest to shortest amount of time since your last interaction.

Now factor in your Customer Lifetime Value for these individuals. If you’re not sure how to calculate Customer Lifetime Value, check out this helpful post.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is significant to the follow up process for a few reasons.
CLV is critical for identifying long term revenue sources. This data increases the potential for repeat sales. It’s also essential for focusing customer acquisition efforts.

CLV is also helpful in establishing your follow up strategy because it determines which leads are more likely to result in future sales. So all the time you spend writing, preparing, and negotiating is more likely to be worth it in the end.

Once you have your follow up list sorted and your major data points in place, choosing how to follow up is simple.

3. Choose the best follow up method based on data.

While email is the most convenient form of follow up to date, it’s not necessarily the best method of communication for all of your leads.

The steps laid out above are useful for finding a clear and direct approach to profiling your leads and ranking them.

From here it should be a no brainer. Use your data to approach each name on your list in a way that suits them best. Again, prioritizing your leads increases the chance of a sale, so make sure to factor this into your process.

For example, let’s say your CLV data points to clients in a particular age range who happen to be technologically averse.

After consulting your list and choosing leads that fit this description you can then prioritize calling them on the phone first thing in the morning. Following up with other clients electronically can be scheduled later in the day.

In short, data analysis and prioritization are key. Always look for clues within your existing CRM information and CLV data to determine the most lucrative follow up method.

For more on how to prioritize follow-up methods according to data-driven outcomes rather than contact quotas, we suggest reviewing the relationship between activity metrics and closing deals.

By now you’ve determined what method to use for your follow up, but do you really know how to close the deal?

4. Add the art of communication to your follow up plan.

Personal connection is the driving force behind how and why we make choices in life.

You know who you need to speak with and what method to use for communication. But do you really know how to connect with them on a personal level?

If you haven’t already done so, there are numerous exercises you can try to increase your level of empathy towards these potential connections. No matter how cheesy they may seem, trying one or two of these suggestions may result in a more human experience for both you and your client.

Have you stopped to consider whether or not your written sales speeches allow for human connection and empathy?

As previously discussed here, sales scripts are often more harmful than helpful. Most sales reps don’t understand why they are saying these words to the client.

Or worse, they forget to allow flexibility into the conversation. These well-meaning reps will bulldoze through speaking points on a phone call with a potential client and leave them feeling ignored or irritated.

The client’s needs aren’t met and you’ve lost the potential sale, all because your employee followed directions.

Making empathy a cornerstone of sales training eliminates these issues. It also has the potential of increasing job satisfaction among your staff. When the customer truly comes first, everyone profits.

You’re now prepared to create a follow up plan with clear direction that will maximize results, time, and sales. I recommend getting started today by learning more about improving sales performance using an all-in-one sales platform that features native communication functionality.

Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve built a career in the world of inside sales, you already know first-hand that sales tactics aren’t just learned in the classroom and immediately applied to driving real business results.

While there are certainly a stable of proven sales strategies that are widely applicable to growing your startup regardless of the industry you’re in—it’s not quite as simple as copying, pasting, and kicking back to watch your numbers soar.

Becoming a master at inside sales takes time, repetition, the willingness to adapt on the fly, and a dedication to improving your craft on a daily basis.

For most, that bank of experience and knowledge takes years to accumulate.

However, if you decide to learn from the right people who’ve already put in thousands of hours sending cold emails and picking up the phone to close deals, you can significantly chip away at the inside sales learning curve.

Note: If you want to get more of Close.io's best resources for inside sales teams, make sure to download our (free) sales bundle. You'll find plenty of useful templates, proven inside sales scripts, checklists and much more in there. Click here to download it now.

That’s why today, we’re sharing the best sales tactics from over a dozen inside sales professionals, that have been honed over countless years of experience.

And beyond just the advice these pros are sharing, we’re drilling down into the fundamentals of how to take their tips—and implement them directly into your sales process today. Let’s dive in.

1. Develop a deep understanding of your prospect’s business.
 — Julianne Gsell, Director of Enterprise Sales at Box.com

Starting as the company’s very first Sales Development Representative back in 2009, Julianne Gsell is now the Director of Sales on the Enterprise team at Box. Though her work is now largely with a field sales team, it’s safe to say she’s learned a thing or two about mastering both the art and science behind what it takes to be effective at inside sales throughout her career.

When asked about the single most effective sales tactic her team employs to close more leads, Gsell shares, “For my team and I, it’s very important to focus on the business process and relate our value back to how it impacts their business. IT and Security today are under a lot of pressure to drive business outcomes, so in order to partner with them, we must deeply understand their business process.”

This selling tactic really cuts to the core of what it means to partner with your customers, as opposed to simply selling them something.

Gsell and her team aren’t just seeing dollar signs, selling widgets and moving on to the next prospect. They’re investing in the upfront lead qualification that’ll ensure their solution drives real business results for the client after they’ve signed on the dotted line.

Sound too time-consuming for your inside sales team? Well, the alternative—not truly qualifying leads—can be devastating for any business.

To qualify your leads before selling to them, take these four steps:

Build a profile of your ideal customer. Don’t forget, you get to choose who your customers are. Starting with this foundational step will help you eliminate the noise and rule out prospects that aren’t a good fit for you, right away. Ask yourself questions like:

• What industry is your ideal customer in?
• How large is the company?
• Where is the company located?
• What’s the ideal use case?
• Have they used any similar tools in the past? If so, which ones?

Understand their needs. At the end of the day, even in B2B sales, you’re still selling to real people. Therefore, your inside sales team needs to know what kind of downstream results your solution will do for your ideal customers on all levels within the organization. Ask yourself questions like:

• What’s the specific goal your ideal customer wants to achieve?
• How will they be measuring these results internally?
• What are the needs of the individual, the team, and the company?

Gauge their decision-making process. Depending upon the solution you’re selling, your prospect could need high up executive buy-in on making the purchase. That can take minutes, days, months or more. Early on in your qualification process, it’s in your best interest to get a clear picture of how long your sales process will be. Ask your prospect questions like:

• How does your company usually make purchasing decisions like this?
• How many people are involved in the decision-making process?
• Which teams are involved?
• How much time does it typically take to buy a product?

Know your competition. In order to fully understand whether or not you’ll be able to thrive with this prospect, you have to know who you’re competing against. Ask yourself questions like:

• Are you competing with other vendors, or the prospect’s internal team that could build their own similar solution?
• Which similar vendors have they worked with in the past?
• What relevant criteria do they base their decision-making process on?

When you qualify your leads, turn them into paying customers, and deliver the results they’re expecting, you’re laying the foundation for a referral engine that’ll bring unpredictable numbers of new customers your way.

The best part is, the more great work you deliver, the more referrals you’ll likely bring in.

2. Learn to thrive in the discomfort that is selling.
 — Lane Caruthers, Enterprise Account Executive at Zendesk

Selling is an inherently uncomfortable activity for many people.

If you’re not careful, it’s easy to allow your own fears, insecurities, and natural desire to be liked, to creep into the conversation and ultimately lead you to pay less attention to what your prospect actually needs. And if that discomfort gets in the way of helping the prospect you’re talking to, you’ve already lost the sale.

Lane Caruthers, now an Enterprise Account Executive at Zendesk, has experience working in inside sales for several bay area startups including Cloudera and Box.com. Through his own selling experience, Caruthers has learned how to befriend the variety of uncomfortable activities involved in closing a sale.

Caruthers explains, “You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Sales reps go through a lot of uncomfortable things during a sales cycle. For example, taking advantage of silence when you break news about pricing. Let it sink in. Rambling on to justify the cost of your system won't help.”

If you try to quickly gloss over an important detail like product pricing, that could be a deal-killer for your prospect, that’s the fast track to losing their trust. You’ll only sign your own death certificate.

Instead, choose to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that your product is premium priced—and use that as an opportunity to explain why it’s significantly better than other options on the market. Lean on your sales scripts if you’ve got them, and justify your cost by showing clear value through case studies.

Following up doesn’t have to be uncomfortable either

When it comes to following up with your prospects, Caruthers has strong convictions, based on his experience of what works best out in the real world.

He shares, “If a champion doesn't return your call, shoot them a text. Don't worry about whether or not you're bothering them—let them tell you that. Don't assume the worst. You're doing things other sales reps aren't which puts you above just about everyone else. It's a hard tactic to implement as it takes time and practice to not feel overwhelmed; however, it's extremely rewarding.”

If you commit to following up with your prospect until you get a definitive answer either way, then you’re guaranteed one of two outcomes:

• Eventually you’ll get a yes
• Or, you’ll get a no

The positive outcome is a huge win, and the negative won’t kill you. What you absolutely need to avoid is staying in the maybe zone with a prospect—that will kill your business in the long run.

The world of inside sales is built on clarity

After qualifying a lead, it’s your job to get a definitive yes or no. Because when you don’t get a clear answer, and the number of maybe’s stack up in your CRM, they’ll bog down your effectiveness. They’ll lead to hopeless optimism, slowing the momentum of your inside sales team, and ambiguity.

3. Treat yourself as a consultant and chief problem-solver.
 — Megan Dunn, Inside Sales at Lever

Now as a mid-market account executive at Lever, a leading recruiting software company based in San Francisco, Megan Dunn has worked in inside sales for years—including time spent at both Oracle and Okta.

When asked about her most effective sales tactic, Dunn shares, “I personalize everything and take a very consultative approach to sales. Whether I'm sending an outbound email to a cold account, or getting on a demo with 10 executives; I make sure I know my audience and do my research on the company.”

This makes sense right? Taking this consultative approach of being a true advisor that cares about the challenges her prospects are facing during the inside sales process, is what helps Dunn stand out from the pack of other salespeople that are just clamoring to close a deal.

Personalization is the key to showing empathy

And when you show true empathy to your prospects during the inside sales process, experience shows that you’ll create a range of long-lasting benefits for this new relationship you’re building. Things like:

• Deeper levels of trust and stronger confidence in your solution
• More willingness to experiment, upgrade and grow into new features & offerings
• Eagerness to offer introductions and referrals to other potential customers

To build on all of this, Dunn adds, “People just like to feel that you took the time to make an email, presentation, or demo about them. No company is the same, no use case is the same, no buyer is the same. It’s my job in inside sales, to adapt my presentation or demo to the specific company, use case, and buyer.”

When you can effectively do that during your selling process, it’s only a matter of time until your prospects want to work with you—even more than you need them.

4. Craft a powerful story that builds value and excitement.
 — Poya Osgouei, Inside Sales Manager at Automile

As an experienced inside sales manager at Automile, Poya Osgouei also spent several years building his skills in the world of sales as an inside sales manager at HackerRank, a technical recruiting company in the bay area.

Throughout his journey in sales, Osgouei has learned the power of storytelling to help build value, share relatable experiences, and and get prospects more invested in the purchase.

When asked about his most effective sales tactic, Osgouei shares, “One sales tactic that’s extremely undervalued is telling a story that can create a powerful perception of value by showing both the before story and the after story—in a way that gets the customer excited to partner with your team, and excited about your offering.”

Think this sales tactic is overstated?

Well, telling a story sounds pretty simple, but let’s take a closer look.

Humans have been using storytelling as our primary means of communication for more than 40,000 years. From ancient cave paintings in Spain, to the war chronicles of Julius Caesar, stories—whether written, visual or verbal—have long been used to show, tell and convince.

Moreover, our evolution means we’re literally hardwired to not only want to tell stories ourselves, but to more easily consume and understand information that’s communicated through a story format. When structured properly, you can use storytelling at every stage of your sales process.

As you’re crafting the story you’ll be sharing with your prospects, keep in mind the seven core elements of a story you’ll need to hit if you want to have your desired effect.

1. Stasis: This is the norm—everyday life that sets the stage for what happens next.
2. Trigger: The trigger is beyond the control of the protagonist and can be either unpleasant or pleasant. In the context of inside sales, this is the challenge or struggle your prospect is facing; often some sort of growth obstacle.
3. Quest: The trigger leads to a quest for a solution.
4. Critical choice: This is when the protagonist needs to make a tough decision which reveals their character. You’ll want to play to your prospects desire to take control of their situation; to take an active role in growing beyond their struggle, rather than be idle.
5. Climax: The decision the protagonist made results in the highest peak of tension in the narrative. This could be a momentary dip in performance as your character repositions and shifts priorities.
6. Reversal: The reversal is the result of the critical choice and climax. This will change the status of the character, and is where you’ll emphasize what your solution has done.
7. Resolution: The resolution is a return to a new, fresh (ideally better by measure of core metrics) stasis. The characters should be changed, as they’re now wiser and enlightened.

After you’ve shown the final resolution (i.e. positive business impact your character experienced), the story is complete. Your message should’ve been effectively driven home and your sales plan is kicked off on the right foot.

To bring home the point of what your story is designed to achieve, Osgouei emphasizes, “The best way to really get a customer excited is to talk about how you’ve helped make the lives of your other similar customers easier. More often than not, I’ve seen leveraging this inside sales technique, as a great method for earning a prospect’s business and finalizing a partnership.”

5. Be quiet and build trust through listening.
 — Jill Angelone, Account Executive at Lyft Corporate Travel Emerging Markets

For more than seven years, Jill Angelone has moved her way up in various different inside sales and account management roles within AT&T—bringing in deals that placed her amongst the top sales managers in the country, overseeing a $300 Million account with Apple, and more.

Throughout her career in inside sales, Angelone has learned just how powerful of a sales strategy it can be, once you learn how to let your prospect talk and fully explain their situation.  

Angelone explains, “In all honesty, my most effective sales tactic is to just be quiet. When reaching out to prospects, I have a few probing questions in order to gather the information I need to qualify an opportunity. However, the key is to allow your prospect to talk. If you're talking more than the customer is, you're doing something wrong. Everyone likes to talk about themselves and an employee of a company is no different.”

There’s a lot of truth to that.

In fact, most people spend a whopping 60% of conversations talking about themselves. A scientific link has been shown, connecting the positive feeling we often experience while talking about ourselves—to higher levels of activation in areas of the brain associated with reward.

This sales tactic has consistently netted positive results for Angelone over the years.

She adds, “Allowing your prospect time to explain how the business operates, shows that you're just genuinely interested in how their business runs and by being a shoulder to lean on, you build trust. Once trust is built, it opens up new avenues of opportunity. People will want to refer you to the right decision makers when it doesn't seem like you're pushing your agenda, but rather, hearing them out and finding ways to optimize their business.”

By taking advantage of our hardwired tendency to talk about ourselves, and allowing your prospects to really express themselves during the sales process, they’re more likely to feel good about the interaction you just had.

Feeling good—becoming comfortable—is the first step to building trust with your prospects.

6. Personalize your conversation around real needs.
 — Heidi Effenberger, Sales Development Rep at Zenefits

We’ve all gotten those copy and paste cold sales emails that read like a robot wrote them.

My personal favorite is when something goes wrong with the automation tool they’re using and it actually says, “Hi [First Name]...”

Either way, when I get the impression that the “person” emailing me hasn’t even taken one minute of their time to look at my website to judge whether or not I’d actually be a good fit for needing their solution, the deal is already done before it’s even gotten started. Delete.

Here’s an example of one of these emails I got just the other day…

This email…

• Reads like a template.
• No mention of anything specific on my website, leading me to believe she probably didn't take the time to look at my content.
• Spends 75% of the email talking about their solution without a clear connection to how a partnership would stand to benefit me.

With these emails, how many times have you read the full message, let alone actually respond or end up making a purchase from them?

My guess is probably zero. Add to that, the fact that decision-makers are probably getting a dozen (or more) cold emails each day, and you can’t afford not to personalize your conversation  from the moment it starts.

Zenefits Sales Development Rep, Heidi Effenberger, knows first-hand the importance of personalizing her inside sales conversations when she’s talking to prospects—whether it’s through cold outreach or further down the sales pipeline.

Effenberger shares, "Sales gets a bad wrap due to lack of personalization and understanding of customer needs. I've found the most important selling tactic is to start by learning about the person, how they work, and their specific challenges.” She continues, “At Zenefits, we often talk to leaders of HR, which is a complex role. There are common challenges, but every workplace is different and our prospects are dealing with competing priorities. I always start by asking questions and listening to make sure Zenefits is a good fit for their needs, which allows me to really tailor the conversation to what matters most."

This is great advice. Do what you can to research your prospects ahead of your outreach, to try and develop a baseline understanding of both the person and the company—it’ll help you better assess their needs.

Then once you’ve gotten your prospect on the phone, it’s then your job to actively listen, ask the right questions and craft a pitch that truly addresses those needs they’re telling you about.

7. Never stop following up.
 — Steli Efti, CEO (here) at Close.io

Steli has been sharpening his teeth in the world of inside sales for over a decade, having grown multiple seven-figure startups, including Close.io. So much of his success with inside sales is due to his philosophy on following up—never considering a deal dead until he’s gotten a very clear no from a prospect.

“I follow up as many times as necessary until I get a response,” Steli explains. “I don’t care what the response is as long as I get one. If someone tells me they need another 14 days to get back to me, I’ll put that in my calendar and ping them again in 14 days. If they tell me they’re busy and they don’t have time right now, I’ll respond and ask them when they feel like a good time would be for me ping them.”

What I like most about this selling tactic is that it’s easy as hell to implement.

No complicated tools, tricks or scripts necessary.

All it requires is a mindset of persistence, and a commitment to see through every single deal until you get a clear answer either way. It’s not about following up to close every single lead all the time, rather it’s about making sure you’re never in the deathly maybe zone.

“The key here is to actually keep following up,” Steli explains. “If someone tells me they’re not interested—I leave them alone. But here is the kicker—if they don’t respond at all, I’ll keep pinging them until they do. And trust me, they always do.”

What makes something as simple as following up so effective then?

It’s easy to make initial contact with a prospect. Find their email address or phone number, send that cold email, schedule a first meeting, get across your pitch. But right here is where many inside sales reps pause or stop altogether, hoping their prospect is so sold that they’ll be clamoring to sign the contract.

It’s tempting to want to just sit around and wait for them to respond at this stage. You don’t want to be a pain in the ass, right? We all want to avoid being annoying, and the feeling of rejection is never fun.

That’s why, when you commit to never stop following up, you’re differentiating yourself from virtually everyone else who’s competing with you for this client’s business (and attention). The key with your follow up is to keep it short and sweet, yet remain persistent.

There’s been a very clear, positive return on this selling tactic for Steli

“Once I followed up with an investor 48 times until I got a meeting,” Steli adds. “Now mind you, this investor was introduced to me and had responded positively to my initial email, but then disappeared in limbo and I couldn’t get hold of him anymore. After all the follow up, he finally responded, we met, and he ended up investing.”

Now ask yourself, how bad do you want to close the deal?

We know how hectic it is as a founder in sales mode, or when you’re grinding in inside sales, so we built follow up reminders into the core sales workflow that comes straight out of the box with Close.io. Give it a try and sign up for a free trial today.

8. Ask, define and explore.
 — Arjun Varma, Sales Manager at Quantcast

Director of Sales Arjun Varma from Quantcast is tasked with driving new business revenue and building strategy to grow the company’s high potential accounts. In his time at Quantcast, he’s contributed over $60M in revenue, while managing over 35 sales reps.

When asked about his most effective sales tactic from nearly a decade in sales, Varma shares, "My most effective sales tactic can be utilized in a quick exchange or in a big meeting, and has helped me win as both a sales rep and now as a sales manager. Ask, define, and explore.”

Varma explains, “Ask discovery questions to uncover the largest business challenges a prospect is facing. Define the implications of these challenges. Explore a partnership or sale that addresses the defined challenges and helps the customer do more business."

Let’s break this selling tactic down and take a closer look at each component.

Ask

Asking the right questions from the moment you strike up a conversation with your prospect is crucial to qualifying whether or not their business is a match for what you’re selling. As we covered earlier, there are four main stages of lead qualification—that’ll be assessed through asking the right questions.

• Determining if they’re an ideal customer. If it’s not abundantly clear upfront, it’s your job to ask questions that get to the bottom of whether or not this prospect in question is the right size company, whether or not they’re in one of your target industries, the right geographic location, have the correct use-cases, and so on.

• Understanding their needs. This is the big one. Asking your prospect questions that get to the bottom of what they want to achieve, how they’ll be measuring these results, and getting a feel for what expectations will be across the organization.

• Feeling out their decision-making process. If you’re not dealing with a decision-maker, you need to know that. Asking questions that’ll determine exactly who will be involved in the purchasing & implementation process is crucial to closing the deal. You’ll also want to get a very clear expectation for the timeline on making a buying decision for what you’re selling—if it’ll take a year to go through, you need to know that.

• Learning their level of experience. Have they used a similar solution in the past? If so, you’ll want to know exactly what they’ve tried so that you can compete effectively, set the right expectations, and buffer against upcoming objections.

Define

More often than not, the solution most inside sales reps are selling—whether a physical product, tool, or service—has a primary purpose of helping customers to do one (or more) of two things:

• Do more business
• And/or do business more efficiently

Don’t assume that your prospect immediately understands how your solution can help with the challenges they’ve already expressed. Your job in this sales process is to partner with your prospects to develop a clear understanding of their unique challenges and create a convincing plan of action that’s likely to net positive results for their business—as per the metric they want to achieve.

Explore

It’s not always realistic, no matter how much information you already have, to walk into a meeting (or phone call) with your prospect who’s interested, and be able to land on an immediate game plan for them.

As Varma alluded to, coming up with the right solution is a collaborative process that needs to be done with your prospect, and not in a silo from where you’re sitting at your desk strategizing. There could be unforeseen internal organizational requirements, implementation hurdles, hidden challenges, and even obstacles that your prospect hasn’t anticipated yet.

It’s your job to walk through this combined process with your prospect and come to the best solution together.

9. Know when to pause your pitch.
 — Caitlin Burch, Inside Sales Rep at Universe (a LiveNation Company)

At Universe, a Live Nation and Ticketmaster-owned company, Caitlin Burch is responsible for bringing on new clients—event organizers, that’ll use the Universe platform to create event pages, incentivize their communities to promote events, and sell tickets all in one destination.

When asked about the most effective selling tactic she’s learned in inside sales, Caitlin shares, "It’s almost silly because it's so simple and obvious; listen. Let me correct that, really and empathetically listen.”

It does sound pretty obvious, right?

Well, research shows that on average, people tend to talk about themselves during 60% of a conversation—and when there’s something being sold by one person in the conversation, a less experienced salesperson could be tempted to fill a void of silence with a laundry list of more selling points and value propositions.

Instead, take the time to let your pitch sink in while you’re delivering it. When you see that something might not be connecting, or your prospect starts to sound confused, invite them to speak. Encourage questions.

This is a technique that should be a core component of every sales training program, but it often doesn’t stick. You need to make it abundantly clear that you’re here to help your prospects, not just make the sale and move on with your day. That requires listening and collaborating.

“More often than not, clients will tell you exactly what their needs are and provide the opening for you to offer a solution and seal the deal,” Burch adds. “You've just got to pause your auto-pilot long enough to hear it and reply with an assertive but friendly way to quell their needs."

Not only will your prospect feel that you’re understanding their needs better if you listen intently to what they have to say, rather than rambling on about your features, but research shows you’ll actually be more effective at helping them once the deal is closed. Shocker, I know.

Case in point, know when to close your damn mouth and just listen. Because everyone benefits when you do.

10. Be honest, transparent, and provide value first.
 — George Vitko, Sales Executive at Reply.io

While the first two pieces of sales advice from George Vitko at Reply sound pretty intuitive, figuring out how to provide value first—in the way your prospects want to receive it—is a unique challenge for those less experienced in inside sales.

“In most cases, our prospects are waiting for other vendors to respond for days or weeks, while we’re able schedule calls with them on the same day or next,” Vitko explains.

By being quick to qualify his leads and get them on the phone shortly after initial contact, his sales team keeps the initial excitement and momentum going right off the bat, which is very valuable to prospects that are ready to move quickly and start testing out their solution.

And due to the nature of Reply’s product that helps people scale their one-on-one email outreach, this quick-to-reply selling tactic is a live, in-action case study of how their prospects will be able to use the product to grow their outreach (and sales) once they’re on board. That makes their selling experience all the more crucial.

Providing value through product demos

Some products just need to be test driven before you can fully understand what they do and how they’ll be able to impact your business. Plus, demo’s are arguably one of the best ways to give your prospects a quick “Aha! Moment” that helps push them over the edge.

But, you can’t just send a cold email asking when your prospect is available for a demo of a product they may not be familiar with yet. You need to establish relevancy, build credibility, qualify, and get them excited first.

Here’s how Vitko and his sales team at Reply do just that. “Our script is pretty simple. Get people on the phone as soon as possible by sending a few personalized cold emails sent via our platform. We’re advocates of meaningful follow-ups where you not only ask, but also give something of value during the conversation.” Vitko continues, “From there, our goal is not to pitch the product, but to listen to which challenges they’re facing. Then, only if we’re a good fit, we’ll do a demo and discuss use cases.”

When you’re ready to deliver your demo, keep these four pitching essentials in mind.

• A good demo balances business and emotional needs. No matter who you’re demoing for, you have to hit them on both emotional and business levels. Sure they want to see the quantifiable impact your solution can have on their business, but how about the less obvious benefits like saving countless hours of their time each week, helping them over-deliver on their manager’s expectations, and so on.
• A good demo is succinct. In most cases you only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention at the beginning of your demo and get your most important point across. Focus and momentum are your friends.
• A good demo tells a story. Humans have been telling tales for thousands of years. Which is why it’s a great idea for the flow of your demo to follow a narrative pattern, whether it’s a live walkthrough of your product or via a slide deck using visually appealing templates from solutions like Slidebean.
• A good demo focuses on benefits. Value beats price every single time. Rather than focus on cost or features, your pitch needs to focus on the value you’re going to create for the person you’re pitching.

Remember, your customers care about how you’ll help them.

Show them how you’re better than the competition, don’t just tell them.

11. Don’t oversell and know when to ask for their business.
 — Jennay Golden, Sales Manager at Yelp

Yelp sales manager Jennay Golden is a true people person. She’s outgoing and can strike up a conversation with someone she’s never met, walking away minutes later with a new friend. That skill has translated directly to supporting her career growth in inside sales over the years.

But not everyone has that ability to build quick camaraderie after getting a prospect on the phone. And for those of us that don’t, it can be a natural response to ramble on during a sales call.

Highlighting more benefits, listing out every product feature, reiterating the same value props in different words over and over again to our own detriment.

To fight this urge, Golden has trained herself to embrace the silence. She explains, "There’s endless value in asking a pointed question followed by a deliberate, confident pause.”

Why does this selling tactic work so well for her?

Well, rather than continuing on ad nauseum after asking an important qualifying question in hopes of nudging your prospect’s answer in a particular direction, you’re letting reality sink in.

“Tech sales has gotten more competitive,” Golden adds. “As such, stressed out sales reps will all too often try to sell and negotiate at the same time by layering questions with value points, or worse, answering their own question on behalf of the prospect.”

Here’s an example of what you don’t want to do. Ask, "What's holding you back? Is it the contract?” And then launch straight into negotiating against the barriers you just put in your own way. “If it's the contract maybe we can negotiate that, but you really don't have to worry because... oversell, oversell, etc.”

Instead of overselling, Golden suggest, “Ask a smart question that's relevant to their specific pain point. Pause confidently. Acknowledge their response. Negotiate if needed. Ask for the business. Wash, rinse, repeat."

12. Treat your prospects like real people.
 — Adam King, Director of Sales at Vidyard

With the proliferation of undoubtedly useful sales automation tools like Prospect.io and Reply, comes a natural trade-off. What you gain in productivity and scale from employing these kinds of services that do automated outreach on your behalf, you lose some when it comes to the personal touch that can often make all the difference.

Vidyard’s director of sales, Adam King, has mastered the art of building that initial connection with prospects in a way that virtually nobody else is—through video.

King explains, “We love using video as our first outreach tool, because it shows our prospects that we are human and that we’re not automating our emails. Video is personal and different, so it increases our initial response rates and saves our team time as they don't need to go through an entire cadence.”

Here’s a great case study breakdown of how Vidyard customer and inside sales rep, Lauren Wadsworth from Dynamic Signal used customized outreach videos to get a massive 200% increase in meeting bookings—with an additional lift in conversion rate.

Standing out from the crowd

If recording a customized video for each of your prospects won’t fit into your sales cycle, fear not. As long as you take a few minutes to really personalize your outreach, you can experience a major lift in response rate. Most people just want to know they’re talking to a real person.

Start with these outreach personalization techniques:

• Find your prospect on social media and craft a message that highlights a shared interest
• If your prospect has a blog, mention what you liked about a recent post they wrote
• Mention a mutual connection you share and establish more relevancy right away

This personalized sales tactic extends beyond just the prospecting phase, too.

By investing in the upfront creation of guides, video demos, case studies and walkthroughs that cover the most common questions your prospects have during the selling process, you can deliver much stronger—and time saving answers to their questions and objections.

Vidyard’s Adam King shares, “We also love to record short 2 to 3 minute 'micro demos' for our most commonly requested feature demonstrations. These micro demos change our game because they free up our solution consultant's time from doing the same demonstration over and over again.” He continues, “If a prospect won't take 2-3 minutes to watch a short demonstration of a feature they expressed interest in, then we start to question their level of readiness to work with our team and prioritize our efforts on our most engaged customers.”

The real effectiveness with this video sales strategy lies in your ability to further qualify leads throughout the buying process.

At first you’re qualifying leads with a personalized video that’d pique the interest of most people. Then further down the funnel, if your prospect isn’t willing to dive into a deeper answer to their questions by watching a micro demo, the purchase intent might not really be there.

13. Identify your prospect’s primary motivation.
 — Christian Keroles, SMB Account Executive at Reach Analytics

In the world of inside sales, cutting to the core of your prospect’s deepest motivation is the name of the game. Christian Keroles knows this very well.

“Throughout the years, I’ve learned that the most important thing when it comes to selling anything, is diagnosing the need first,” Keroles shares. “Before you do anything else, you need to identify what your prospect cares about right now and what’s motivating their actions today.”

If you waste five minutes of your prospect’s time droning on about a product feature or service offering that isn’t going to positively affect their primary business need right now, chances are high that you’ll lose the sale.

You’ll get shot down, ignored, or even worse—the proverbial "maybe later" that leaves you sitting in sales limbo for the coming months. While a clear answer in either direction is better than maybe, it’d be a hell of a lot better to land more yes’s in your corner. How will you do that?

Become your prospect’s number one priority

“If you can successfully identify your prospect’s motivation and deepest need, then you can position your product or service in a way that solves that need,” Keroles explains.

No matter the product or service you’re selling, there’s going to be a pretty long list of benefits that span across different potential needs your prospect could have.

Use your early conversations to really probe which of those needs are the highest priority—don’t just take their word for it, do your own homework and ask the right questions to cut through the noise. Start with these five killer sales questions:

• How did you hear about us?
• What’s the top challenge your team or company is currently facing?

• What’s the top challenge you’re personally facing?

• What are the results you want to achieve and how do you want to achieve them?

• What concerns do you (or would the decision makers) have?

If you’re not able to identify your prospect’s biggest pain point, it’ll be difficult to get your prospect to care—or treat your solution as a must-have.

14. Use social selling to your advantage.
 — Cole Sutliff, Sales Operations at LinkedIn

We’ve all seen it. That LinkedIn connection or Facebook friend who’s frequently sharing statistics, insights, thought leadership pieces on the state of their industry.

Whether you like it or not, social selling is here to stay (and it’s working).

Thanks in a large part to professional networks like LinkedIn, any inside sales rep can instantly leverage their network to find the right prospects, build relationships, and start conversations that could lead to an uptick in closed deals.

This sales tactic has a focus towards the front end—on helping to improve your lead generation and sales prospecting process—with the goal of eliminating time-intensive cold calling. By positioning yourself as an industry expert (if you are in fact one), you can bring more qualified leads directly to your inbox by regularly showing up on your social platforms.

Cole Sutliff, sales operations associate at LinkedIn, works to empower more than 300 sales development representatives to put social selling to work in building their pipeline of potential members who could benefit from upgrading to LinkedIn’s more advanced selling tools.

“Regardless of sales level, those who engage in social selling win,” explains Sutliff. “Establish your brand, find the right people, and engage with insights to foster organic, rapport building conversation with prospects about your solution.”

Based on LinkedIn data, 51% of social selling leaders are more likely to reach quota and 78% of social sellers outsell their peers who don’t use social media for selling. Sutliff and his team are constantly looking for best practices across the globe, to help optimize their sales team's ability at generating the most pipeline.

If you’re starting from the ground up with social selling as a sales tactic, prepare for the long haul. While you shouldn’t expect to publish a status update and get a flood of qualified leads in your inbox, the payoff can be huge over time. Jump into social selling with these four steps:

• Create a professional brand. Prospects want to work with people they can trust. By establishing a strong professional brand for yourself, you’ll show anyone you reach out to that you’re an active force within your industry. Not only can elevating your personal brand result in more inbound leads, but it’ll also boost response rate to your outbound communications.
• Find the right prospects. Blind cold calling is dead. With social selling, you’re connecting with prospects that are much more qualified. On top of that, 76% of buyers report being ready to have conversations over social media. Plus, social selling helps you identify prospects based on your ideal customer criteria—filtering by role, function, or industry.
• Engage with insights. Social selling gives you an incredible opportunity to position yourself as an expert by sharing relevant industry insights and thought pieces. With inside sales in particular, you can use insights to stay up-to-date with happenings at your prospect companies, by identifying new contacts, and finding the right decision makers.
• Build relationships. Build trust with your prospects by becoming the ultimate education resource for topics within your industry. Have genuine conversations and focus on the needs of your prospects first in your content, and selling second—that’ll show them that you’re in this to provide real value, not just make a quick buck.

Show up, be present and engage. Rinse, repeat and the payoff will be there.

15. Mirror your prospects.
 — Carlos Ballesteros, Business Development Manager at Continu

We’re all familiar with mirroring. You probably do it too, whether you realize it or not.

When you’re in a conversation and either you or the person you’re talking to begins to subconsciously imitate the gestures, facial expressions, speech pattern, or attitude of the other, that’s mirroring. Essentially, it’s a subtle form of mimicry.

Mirroring is most common within close groups of friends and family, implying a certain level of understood comfort with each other—which makes it a great potential sales tactic for establishing a closer connection with your prospect (if you can pull it off well).

When you do, our modern psychological understanding suggests that mirroring positively affects the other person’s thoughts and/or feelings about you, which can lead to building quicker rapport with them.

In the context of using mirroring in inside sales, your prospect will feel more like they can relate to you on a personal level. Carlos Ballesteros, formerly inside sales at Databricks and now in busniess development at Continu, is no stranger to this sales tactic.

“My most effective sales tactic is mirroring my prospects.” Ballesteros explains. “There are two ways in which I go about doing this. The first is a more traditional facet in which I literally match the customers nonverbals or tone of voice.” That’s classic mirroring.

But Ballesteros takes his version of mirroring much farther than that. He adds, “The other way I apply the concept of mirroring is in understanding where my prospects are coming from. I put myself in the prospect’s shoes and ask myself what the clear value in my solution is to them. Whether this is done via email, phone, or in person, this sales tactic has been very successful for me.”

There’s actually evidence to support this hypothesis, too

In a 1974 study conducted by Word, Zanna and Cooper, job interviewers were asked to follow very specific types of body language over the course of several interviews.

In one condition, the interviewers were asked to show a very distant and uninterested body language. They leaned away and avoided direct eye contact with the interviewee. In the other condition, the interviewers were asked to be more welcoming with their body language—smiling, nodding their heads, and making eye contact.

In both cases, the individuals being interviewed began to mirror the actions of the interviewer. As a result, the individuals in the condition with less friendly body language performed worse during the interview than the individuals in the friendly condition.

The outcome of this study suggests that the initial attitude an interviewer has about the person being interviewed may strongly affect the performance of the interviewee, largely due to mirroring.

In your day-to-day inside sales role, do what you can to mirror the attitude, tone and expressions your prospects exhibit. What does that mean?

• If your prospect has a naturally calm demeanor, don’t talk a mile a minute.
• If your prospect sounds confused or isn’t giving much input, don’t just drone on with a deeper explanation of features and benefits. Pause and ask if what you’re telling them makes sense.
• If you’re meeting a prospect in-person, doing a presentation or demo, make frequent eye contact and reinforce warm facial expressions—if they return similar expressions, you have their attention.

Remember, you’re in a unique position to dictate much of the tone of the conversation you strike up with your prospects since you’re kicking things off.

Do your best to get started on the right foot and keep the momentum going with mirroring.

16. Customize your pitch for each individual.
 — Bill Mooney, Head of Sales at ClickTime

If you want to be successful in inside sales, realize today that you’re selling to people, not companies.

Whenever you pick up the phone to call a prospect, you’ll be talking to a real person on the other end of the line—not just an imaginary entity with deep pockets. You have to understand the individual you’re pitching, which starts with doing your homework ahead of time.

ClickTime’s head of sales, Bill Mooney, knows the importance of this sales tactic.

"Put in the work to customize your pitch,” Mooney shares. “Research your prospect. Learn where they’ve worked before, what their social media footprint tells you about them, where they fit in the organizational chart at your prospect company, and get a feel for who else will likely be involved in the sales process. Make sure that every interaction you have with a lead reinforces their belief that you understand who they are and exactly what they need to be successful."

That means positioning your solution not just how you see it working for your prospect’s business, but in a way that solves the problem they personally care about most too.

Your prospect might be most interested in a particular feature that’ll help them perform better in the eyes of their manager—than say a feature that could have the biggest net impact on the company’s bottom line. Use your understanding of the position your individual prospect is in, to your advantage as you sell to them.

Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur, investor, bestselling business author and CEO of VaynerMedia agrees with this sales tactic.

A couple years ago, Steli interviewed Vaynerchuk about what’s different in his business now that he’s selling his services to Fortune 500 companies instead of mom and pop wine shops.

Vaynerchuk explained, “Nothing has changed other than me having to learn what my new customers care about. As soon as I know what the other person needs, I will sell them that as long as I feel good about what we’re doing.”

You’re selling to people, not companies.

And remember what people buy—they don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.

Over to you

Inside sales can be a grind, especially as you’re just getting started and going through the learning curve every salesperson has to experience for themselves.

Prospecting for potential customers. Sending cold emails and dialing numbers for hours on end. Following up with warm leads. Tracking the status of deals in your pipeline.

Arm yourself with the right technology, sales training, and tools you need to get the job done.

Keep these time-tested sales tactics in the front of your mind and you’ll be well on your way to inside sales success.

Want more resources to take your inside sales game to the next level? Get our free sales bundle that contains checklists, templates, inside sales scripts and much more!

Get your sales resource bundle

Growth hacks. Organic Growth. Backlinks. Earned Media. Virality!

These concepts are like royalty when it comes to generating traction in the startup world. Hundreds of blog posts, ebooks and infographics have been created over the years to talk about the importance of all of these marketing buzzwords.

While we’re not going to downplay the importance of marketing and communications, we have to address the elephant in the room. We have to address the fact that far too many startups are afraid of the word sales.

And that’s deadly.

(Quick note: Our free Startup Sales Success course helps you get yourself and your team up to speed on the most important elements of building a sales process for your startup. Click here to get it!)

It’s deadly because while we live in a world where warm intros are great, inbound leads are awesome and the virality effect is delightful, we also live in a world where sales rules the day when it comes to converting enterprise clients.

(Note: Want to build our your sales team? Even if you’re just getting started, our free Startup Sales Success course has got you covered—and it’s free for you today. Click here to sign up!)

Selling to the enterprise isn’t always straightforward

When you target enterprise organizations, the steps you have to take between finding a prospect and closing a deal might feel like a marathon. It’s not going to happen overnight. When it comes to high-ticket products, sales isn’t just about demonstrating value to an individual prospect—it’s part of a much more complex system.

Mark Cranney, knows a thing or two about growth as the former field operations lead at Opsware, where he grew the company’s headcount from a handful to 350 people and revenue from $15 million to $150 million in just under four years. In a blog post for Andreessen Horowitz, where he worked for more than six years, he describes the unfamiliar waters that many startups find themselves in when selling to large organizations:

Decision-making in large organizations is a long, tortuous process due to legacy technology deployments, internal politics, entrenched homegrown solutions, sunk cost of integrations, account control by incumbent vendors, and the sheer size and scale involved. In many ways, the purpose of enterprise sales is about helping customers get through their own internal buying processes. Even the best and most popular product can’t make a typical enterprise buyer change the way it does procurement.

In light of this complex reality, having a sales team reduces the chances that you’ll be twiddling your thumbs or chasing unqualified leads. A sales team will help you stay focused on the right prospects and understand how important it is to get those prospects through their own internal buying processes.

A sales team will help you close clients without credit cards

Wait... What prospects aren’t allowed to use credit cards these days?

As it turns out, a lot of organizations don’t give their team members the power to buy internet services using a company card. In fact, some organizations view it as an offense that could actually cost employees their jobs. Why do these organizations put up roadblocks like this? There’s actually some real logic behind what many startup founders mistakenly assume is madness. Here are four insights from Ben Horowitz into why many enterprise organizations don’t allow it:

1. The employee may not know what’s appropriate in the context of the larger organization.
2. The company may already own the technology or a similar technology.
3. The employee may be corrupted by side incentives.
4. Public companies must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley compliant expense controls.

Makes sense, right?

When you build a sales team, you inherently redefine your processes for closing these types of clients. You’re more likely to invest the necessary time and energy to support enterprise clients and provide for the financial and legal processes required to close a deal. It’s a win-win, as these are the clients that will help you reach the next level.  

A sales team can uncover issues you may not see

In a blog post titled “Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing,” Jessica Livingston, co-founder of Y-Combinator, offers some great advice about the importance of investing in sales—including the importance of feedback:

Sales gives you a kind of harsh feedback that ‘marketing’ doesn't. You try to convince someone to use what you've built, and they won't… I suspect from my experience that founders who want to remain in denial about the inadequacy of their product and/or the difficulty of starting a startup subconsciously prefer the broad and shallow “marketing” approach precisely because they can’t face the work and unpleasant truths they’ll find if they talk to users.

Ouch.

Her words might hurt some feelings, but why wouldn’t you want to hear from your customers? Why wouldn’t you want to hear the reasons your audience is reluctant to buy? You should want to know!

As a startup, it’s your job to reach product-market fit as soon as possible, and that’s only possible by iterating and having tough conversations. As Tim Ferriss once put it:

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

Sales professionals embrace these uncomfortable conversations on the regular. If you build an inside sales team and empower them to connect with potential customers, there’s no question that you’re going to learn a lot. These lessons will ultimately provide you with insights on how to improve your product and deliver the value that your prospects are looking for.

Wrapping things up

I hope you realize the value that an inside sales team can offer in driving growth for your startup. One of the major misconceptions among startup founders is thinking they can do everything on their own, without a sales team.

Big mistake.

Remember: There are only so many hours in a day. Double down on your strengths—whether that’s tech savvy or product design—and embrace the idea of hiring a great sales team that can take your startup to the next level. If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few great resources that I’ve sent to founders all over the world:

The ultimate sales hiring guide for B2B startup founders

Hire a Head of Sales – What you should know before you do

Build an Inbound Sales Machine

The Ultimate Sales Resource Bundle

Want to take your startup sales skills to the next level? Get Steli Efti's free Startup Sales Success Course:

The last time we talked about email marketing, we threw out a pretty big number: 2.5 billion, or the number of people around the world using email.

Here’s another big number: 4300%

That’s the average return on investment businesses see from doing email marketing, according to Experian. It’s one of several reasons you should consider launching a B2B email marketing campaign. In this post, we’ll go over some ways to set up your campaign, and offer up some tips for what to do once it’s underway.

First up, here’s how to get started:

Outline Your Goal

The first step in setting up an email marketing campaign is defining what you want it to accomplish. Do you want your email marketing campaign to educate your customers? Do you want to use it to bring in more leads? To increase sales? Before you launch, be sure you’ve determined your objectives.

Tap Into The Powers Of ESP

We’re not talking about extra-sensory perception. In this case, ESP stands for “email service provider,” an online platform that allows a business to manage an email marketing campaign.

Some of the major players in the ESP world include Hubspot, Pardot, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Exact Target and Campaign Monitor, all of them providing a range of costs and features. A careful evaluation will tell you which service is the best fit for your business.

Appoint Someone To Run The ESP

Once you’ve defined the goal for your email marketing campaign and decided on an ESP, it’s time to choose someone on your team to be your point-person for the email service provider. They should immerse themselves in the tool – or better yet, have experience with it already – so they know all the ways it can help your business succeed.

Now that you’ve done all your set-up, here are a few B2B marketing techniques you can use to build relationships with current and potential clients.

1. Create and Build Lists

A good B2B email marketing plan needs a solid list of email addresses, one that you develop with care. The list can be made up of new and old clients, and should be specific to your industry and geared toward a specific objective. Be aware: specific laws govern the collection of email addresses. Be sure everyone on your list knows you, has given permission to be emailed, and can reasonably expect an email from you.

2. Get Segmented

From there, get even more specific with the practice of segmentation. To be clear, this is usually an extra service with an ESP, so it may cost more. What it gives you is the chance to engage certain portions of your audience with content that is most suitable to them: special offers, pertinent blog posts and event announcements.

3. Use Automation

The ESP you pick should include an automation tool that lets you communicate with customers and future customers in a timely, relevant fashion. For example: an auto responder can let you reply to users who fill out a form or download content from your site, letting you take your conversation with new leads to the next step.

4. Say Yes To RSS

With an RSS-to-email feed, you can decide how often an email subscriber receives your content, and send your audience emails every time you create new content for your blog. Your RSS-to-email feed should allow readers the opportunity to opt in or out of reading. If what you send them is good, relevant content, they’ll keep checking in.

5. Leads Need To Be Nurtured

While email can be a great tool to reach existing customers, you can also use it to reach potential customers who are undecided about you. By creating a lead nurturing campaign, you can keep in touch with prospective clients, contacting them on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.

Pricing is one of the most under-discussed, under-utilized tools in marketing. Though it is one of the Four Ps we all learn about in Marketing 101, we too often take for granted that the price is the price and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But price is a lever we can use to improve returns in a multitude of ways. One popular strategy is the introduction of variable pricing to your product line.

Variable pricing, in the broadest sense, means offering different prices for the same products at different times, locations, or to different audiences. There are many different ways to do it, as the large number of companies that execute these strategies successfully have proven.

Below are a number of the most common forms of variable pricing, which you can apply to your business in order to get more mileage out of your existing marketing efforts:

1. Amazon famously got caught showing different prices to different users for the exact same products. Amazon and other technology-intensive companies are in a constant state of price testing. By showing different prices for the same products over millions of different site interactions, they can use variable pricing to find the price point that provides the maximum profit for each product.
2. Uber is widely derided for their “surge pricing” model, which follows the basic law of supply and demand. When more people are using the service, prices go up. You can use a similar strategy to increase profits during times of increased demand.
3. eBay made the auction pricing system popular, where customers compete on price so that sellers are able to maximize their earnings for each product. Auctions work when supply is limited by gaming demand.
4. Time-based pricing is common with hotels and airlines. Similar to Uber’s surge pricing model, their prices go up and down during specific times of year, days of the week, or time of day based on the likelihood that people will be traveling.
5. Many physical retailers will use variable pricing based on location. They might offer a product for one price in New York City and a different price in suburban Pennsylvania.
6. Discounting is a form of variable pricing many companies use. Offering discounts at specific times or to specific categories of customers helps drive sales where they otherwise might be low or non-existent.
7. Pricing based on benefits allows companies to suit a product to each individual customer’s needs. Car dealers and many B2B sales use negotiation to match a variable set of “options” to the needs of the customer, where the pricing will depend on the final product.

As with any pricing strategy, your goal is to maximize profits. Use variable pricing if it allows you to find a more effective balance of sales and profit margin per sale.

If you are a sales leader who leaves work frustrated because of the ineptitude of your sales team you are not alone. The most recent State of Sales study released by Salesforce reveals that high-performing sales teams represent a mere 20% of all sales organizations.

For leaders with aggressive growth and revenue mandates, meeting targets only half of the time isn’t good enough. It’s why the average tenure has dropped to just 18 months.

While identifying which changes need to be made to improve the performance of your sales force is a task that can take months, with deep dives into lead, pipeline, and customer segment data, there are things that can be learned from the unlikeliest of sources: your worst salespeople.

Here are the 4 things your worst salespeople can teach you:

1. Your Recruiting Process is Broken

It is time to examine three things: how this underperformer got hired in the first place; how many new hires are likely to be terminated because they possess the same skills, experiences, and psychological profile of that underperformer; and what investments need to be made to build a world-class sales hiring process.

Why invest in sales processes, training, technology, enablement, or products and services development if you’re going to hire the wrong people to take the product to market. In 2017, it is simply too costly not to invest in a best-in-class recruiting process.

Maren Donovan, CEO of Zirtual, a company that hires virtual assistants correctly stated, “We see companies don’t want to spend money to do this kind of screening but that’s counterproductive. If you’re constantly hiring the ‘wrong’ people who leave in just a few months, or who aren’t the right fit, you’ll end up spending more in the long run than if you’d just done it ‘right’ to begin with.”

The most effective sales hiring processes:

• Define the specific skills, experience, and DNA candidates are required to possess in order qualify for an interview.
• Put candidates through multiple behavioral-based interviews and selling environment role plays involving the same set of hiring stakeholders, on the exact same day.
• Leverage third-party psychometric testing to uncover a candidate’s drivers and motivators.
• Thoroughly check candidate references, including managers, bosses, and direct reports.

2. That You Are Tolerating Underperformance

Being an empathetic leader is critical; being too nice is detrimental. Tolerating mediocrity hurts revenues, profits, sales force morale, and raises questions about your leadership. We agree with the editors at Selling Power who laid out simple steps sales managers can use to address poor performers:

• Set for the salesperson a clear standard and performance milestones.
• Inform the salesperson where he or she is not meeting the standard, and set milestones.
• Give the salesperson the opportunity to meet the standard, and set milestones.
• Offer assistance to meet the standard, and set milestones.
• Advise the salesperson of the consequences of not meeting the standard, and set milestones.

If the rep fails to make progress despite hands-on support from managers, it is important to take swift action and terminate their employment. This will benefit your bottom line, cement your standing as a strong leader and in the long run it will be the best thing for the employee who needs to find their true calling.

3. That Your Leadership Style and Playbook Needs to Change

If you have a group of people who are faltering, you must look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to improve matters. And that includes changing the way you operate.

Four-time NBA Championship coach Pat Riley was the ultimate example of this. He was known for his ability to adapt his leadership style to fit his team. He won with the ‘Showtime’ Los Angeles Lakers using an unprecedented high powered offense and later with the New York Knicks and Miami Heat he became a defensive specialist.

Another great example took place a few years ago when Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff made a bold change to their annual executive offsite retreat to improve employee collaboration. Benioff invited all 5,000 employees to virtually attend the meeting, which was previously restricted to the top 200 executives. The event served as a catalyst for the creation of a more open and empowered culture which has helped the company become the number one CRM platform in the world.

4. That You May Need a Better Compensation Plan

If you are hiring bad reps, it may be time to re-evaluate your sales compensation plan. After surveying 600 salespeople in more than 100 cities, the 2017 Peak Sales Compensation Study found that an astounding 70% of employers do not have an appropriate compensation plan in place to retain A-level talent and that only 6% of employees were extremely satisfied with their compensation plan. By nature, salespeople are money motivated and if your compensation package is not enticing enough, you will not attract A-Player nor will you be able to keep the sales team properly motivated.

To conclude, when you leave work feeling frustrated about an underperforming sales rep or team, take the time to examine how you can improve your practices personally and across the organization.

The post 4 Things Your Worst Salespeople Can Teach You appeared first on OpenView Labs.

When people think about selling financial services it evokes images of balance sheets and ledgers. Too often, we forget that people are behind the numbers. Each transaction begins and ends with a person. Therefore, building a presence in the Financial Services industry means building relationships. Forming these relationships is becoming increasingly challenging. In today’s tech-driven world, digital solutions separate the professional from the customer. Emails are easy and fast, but they are simply surface level communications. Therefore, sellers must go further to connect with a customer. Doing so requires overcoming the inertia of complacency.

Sellers need a more active approach to engage customers. Here, we explore how trust, decisiveness, support, differentiation, and unity all empower the seller.

Earn Trust

Every relationship requires trust to grow. However, building trust is a process in a world that demands fast results. Often, short-term pressures leave this critical step languishing. Over time, the connection between the seller and the customer weakens.

Dialogue is the basis of trust. These conversations must culminate in insights that deliver value to the customer. Therefore, professionals must adopt a consultative approach rather than one that is strictly transactional. Explain the backstory for your recommendations. Describe why you’re suggesting a course of action. This engagement aligns the interests of the seller and the customer. The customer will be more receptive to one’s professional acumen if they believe in their fiduciary commitment. In turn, the goals become shared, and ideas become action. In the end, the customer will be receptive to your decisive stance amid changing markets.

Build Decisive Momentum

Uncertainty is the prevailing mood across the globe. Recent figures from the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index reflect this ambivalence. Winning new accounts is becoming a greater challenge as more clients wait for a definitive read on the market. Meanwhile, competitors, facing similar problems, are more resolute than ever in their goal of bringing more accounts off the sidelines. Sellers must equip themselves to overcome these two challenges.

Customer seek guidance when ambivalence tempers the mood. This need for direction presents sellers with the opportunity to illustrate their value. Begin by helping them understand that every market offers opportunities. However, taking advantage of the upside means overcoming inaction by instilling a sense of decisive momentum. When the customer makes one decision, it will enable them to make another. Remember that inaction is a cost to both the seller and the customer.

Refocus on the Customer

Frequently, the work of the day distracts sellers from the core of the business: the customer. This disconnect is a problem because serving the customer means understanding their needs. Product promotions and customer experience matter, but they mean more when backed by an understanding of the customer’s challenges. In short: the customer wants to be understood.

Engage the customer by demonstrating an understanding of the challenges inherent in their industry. Deliver ideas and solutions that speak to their daily demands. This congruence between their problem and your solution fosters credibility and trust.

Over time, the seller becomes an authority on solutions. The emphasis on results forms the foundation of a strong customer experience. Think problem-driven rather than profit-driven to outpace competitors.

Differentiate From the Competition

Problems begin when the seller pursues the competition rather than the customer. Sellers must identify what they are rather than what they’re not. Otherwise, differences appear nuanced, and the unique value of the seller erodes. A lack of differentiation diminishes the seller’s standing.

Connect with the client’s needs rather than compete on price and devolve into a commodity. Leverage core competencies to demonstrate creativity in problem solving. That is, sellers must create a link between their key advantage and the client’s particular problem. This process begins with compelling conversations. Use these discussions to gain insight into the nuances of the client’s challenges. More conversations of problem solving via teams brings the picture into focus faster.

Sell as a Team

Greater competition necessitates team selling. However, building this unified front presents challenges. Sellers have individual styles, therefore, creating cohesion remains difficult. Without unity, the team’s presentation can become disjointed, leading to confusion on the part of the customer.

Effective teams work by clearly identifying each person’s role. More importantly, there must be an understanding of how each role connects to tell a story. The narrative must follow a natural progression. In its simplest form, this narrative builds in three parts. First, identifying the problem, second, illustrating a solution, and third, defining the intended outcome. This basic story structure is part of our shared consciousness.

At Richardson, we understand selling because we understand the customer. This understanding equips us to empower leading financial services firms to earn more business. There is a way to connect with every client, Richardson finds it.

Contact us by clicking here or calling 215.940.9255 learn more about our customized sales training programs for financial services organizations.

The post 4 Best Practices for Selling Financial Services appeared first on Richardson Sales Training & Enablement Blog.

Although many consultants are embracing digital business strategies that benefit their clients, few are using these same digital methods to better their own firms. The leaders of these firms are missing out, digital methods present an opportunity to track and measure new sophisticated consulting metrics. A digital approach will help consulting firm leadership make better decisions on capital allocation, competitive strategy, client engagement, and productization of intellectual property.

Part of the reason why consultants are not measuring these metrics may be because many still largely measure their success by the number of billable hours they can accrue. Because they measure success by utilization, they are less focused on accomplishing more work with fewer resources and more interested in maximizing the use of their available human capital. The problem is that technology has shifted client expectations; whereas previously, clients were content to invest in consulting engagements that involved months of interviews and analysis, in today’s fast-paced digital world they expect value from day one, measurable results, and better knowledge of their business. Consultants, therefore, need to measure their success in terms of internal efficiency, customer knowledge, and competitive advantage.

Here are three key consulting metrics firm leadership can adopt:

1. Consulting Engagement Cycles

Efficiency is more important than ever in the digital age, as digitization replaces formerly manual processes and clients expect an accelerated timeline. It is imperative, therefore, that consulting firms thoroughly understand their engagement cycles in order to see where they can improve and become more efficient. By exploring the peaks and downtime of engagement cycles, firms can discover how to improve efficiency in multiple ways. By shortening engagement cycles, they can enable themselves to take on more business and increase profits. In fact measuring engagement ebb and flow over time can help firm leadership staff for peak engagement periods and begin marketing new opportunities during downtime. At the same time, using fewer resources to do more work, they can improve resource and, ultimately, capital allocation. If you can measure it, you can manage it.

2. Quality of Intellectual Property

Few consulting firms today are successfully measuring and scaling their intellectual property. Traditionally, consultants have used spreadsheets to build data models, consisting of a combination of formulas that manipulate data to form the main analysis of a project. These spreadsheets live largely in the individual hard drives of the consultants that built them. As a result, a firm’s intellectual property often remains siloed, and consultants are essentially reinventing the wheel every time they run an engagement. By digitizing intellectual property so that it is stored in a central digital repository, consultants can ensure that their intellectual property is shared, measurable and can be improved upon as they make new discoveries with each client engagement. The consulting metrics that firms can use to assess the quality of their IP can be a combination of the following:

• Direct client feedback into their questions– For example at the end of each 9Lenses digital interview, clients are asked to rate the quality of the questions on a five point scale. Firms can track these metrics across engagements and clients and use the information to make improvements and market the quality of their IP.
• The number of data points collected with each assessment– The highest performing assessments are those that capture the most information with the fewest questions ensuring high response rates and maximizing each ask of your client. By tracking the data points collected, leaders assess the quality of their questions and assessments.
• The number of times a particular assessment has been run across their clients– by tracking the most utilized assets firms are essentially providing a measure of demand.

Many firms have little window into their highest performing assets and are unable to link revenue to particular assessments. Imagine knowing your most impactful assessments that you can then market with quantifiable attributes like average customer rating or data points collected or number of times run? All else being equal, prospective clients will be more likely to choose the firm with demonstrated expertise in a particular subject matter. Consultants should be marketing top selling assessments and then measuring the return on those investments.

3. Breadth and depth of client knowledge

Most firms are using CRM systems to track and measure the number of engagements they have with each client but are they tracking their data in the same way? Consultants are in the unique position of being trusted stewards of their client’s biggest weaknesses and their strategic priorities. That is a responsibility not to be taken lightly as clients expect security and insight they cannot generate themselves. This presents a tremendous opportunity for consultants to demonstrate that they are taking that data seriously but unfortunately, 30% of client data is stored on spreadsheets on individual hard drives. Instead, firms that use a digital platform to extract data and insight from their clients are storing that information in a secure environment. More importantly, consultants then have a single location for every assessment conducted at a single client. Consultants can establish a 3360-degreeview of their clients across practice areas and job functions. As an added benefit, firms are able to break down the siloes between practice areas when client data is properly leveraged. We have yet to find the consulting firm that can present their client leadership with a cross-functional view of data and performance- and that’s a missed opportunity. By demonstrating that breadth and depth of client knowledge, firms will win more business and be able to use that cross-functional data to establish new insight and guidance that clients could not replicate themselves.

As digital transformation continues to take hold with their clients, leaders of consulting firms have an opportunity to lead by example. By adopting a digital approach to manage their IP, engagements and client data, firms can measure consulting metrics that will drive sustainable business performance in the new digital economy.

Are you leveraging sales voicemail as part of your prospecting process?

There’s this dirty little rumor circulating the sales world that says voicemail is dead and gone.

Sure, we are largely a society of text messages and email consumers, but voicemail still remains a very valuable sales tool… You just have to take a strategic approach.

What if I were to tell you that no matter how great a salesperson you are, the majority of prospects aren’t going to call you back?

You would probably respond with something like, “then why the heck am I reading this post?”

Fair enough.

Check out the following stats:

• The average voicemail response rate is 4.8%.
• The optimal voicemail is between 8 and 14 seconds.
• 80% of calls go to voicemail, and 90% of first time voicemails are never returned.

These aren’t meant to discourage, only to help you set realistic goals.

Increase your callbacks from your by crafting the best sales voicemail messages that you can. Take advantage of that short time you have to connect with your prospect.

Don’t become a sales voicemail leaving zombie.

Emails may get more responses, but returned voicemails typically show a greater level of interest. These leads are truly interested in doing business with you.

Never forget that key decision makers are busy. Going to voicemail doesn’t need to make you stop in your tracks and panic.

Don’t hang up.

Don’t call back 15 times in a row hoping for an answer.

It’s time to EMBRACE the sales voicemail – it’s far from dead no matter what anyone tells you!

1. Make Sure You Have Context for Your Call

How did you first become introduced to the person you are calling? Did they download an ebook or accept a LinkedIn invite?

Whatever the original introduction, make sure you are mentioning this.

Top decision makers are left with mailboxes full of messages each day, so establish context in order to make your message stand out.

Fortunately, gaining intel and connecting with these contacts is easier than ever with the many opportunities we have on the Internet to cultivate relationships.

You might be making a cold call, but you can warm it up a bit by doing your homework, creating connections, and building a relationship prior to leaving your message.

2. Be Clear About What You Want

As with any sales message, you need to be clear about your call to action.

What are you hoping to gain as a result of you message? Why should they call you back?

Don’t go into a lengthy description – simply leave enough information to make them curious about the whole story.

Tell them you would love to set aside 10 minutes to chat or schedule a time next week to go over a demo.

When you are clear about what you want, your chances of a callback increase dramatically.

3. Offer a Clear Value Incentive

“What’s in it for me?”

This is our first thought whenever we are prospected.

Take your sales hat off for a second and consider your personal experience as a consumer. We are never truly interested in listening to a sales message unless we can easily identify the benefit we can expect for ourselves.

By nature, we are greedy.

With this in mind, be sure to offer a clear value incentive in your message. Use statistics and real facts on how you are going to improve their life – the trick is you have about 5 or 10 seconds to achieve just this goal in your message so typically you are better off going with one strong stat.

It’s your chance to pack a punch and keep your prospect from immediately hitting the ‘delete’ button.

4. Keep it Short and Sweet

While it seems no two professionals can agree on the exact number of seconds that equal the perfect sales voicemail, the overriding theme is that short and sweet is best.

As mentioned earlier, somewhere between 8 to 14 seconds is believed to be ideal.

It’s no easy task to get every point across in this short amount of time, so use each second to the fullest.

The moment you start rambling you are getting deleted.

5. Call at Strategic Times

This will take a little research on your end to discover the best time to reach prospects, but follow what other industry leaders say to get you started.

For example, the folks at RingLead claim Wednesday through Thursday from 6:45 to 9:00 A.M. or Wednesday through Thursday from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. work best for them. The worst times are Mondays 6:00 A.M. to noon, and Friday afternoons.

Avoid calling very early in the morning or late at night. This means you need to be aware of time zones in the areas you are calling. Not all your calls will be in-state, so be conscious of the local time in the areas you are reaching out to.

Do a bit of A/B testing on your own to find the most successful call times.

6. Use the Person’s First Name More Than Once

Using the prospect’s first name establishes a sense of familiarity; using the last name, however, does just the opposite.

Be sure to say the first name of the person you are calling at least twice (so long as it doesn’t sound forced).

On occasion, you might have those hard-to-pronounce names to contend with. Make sure you figure out the normal pronunciation BEFORE you call.

The second someone screws up your name, you instantly see them as a stranger and the only thing worse than a call from a stranger is a call from a stranger trying to sell you something – poof, instant deletion.

7. Repeat Critical Information Twice

We’ve all had that voicemail where we need to listen to it 5 times just to get the information we need to call back.

Unless it’s from your dear grandmother, chances are that you aren’t going to make the effort to listen again and again to get the gist of the message.

When leaving your message you are against the clock without a doubt, but it’s still recommended that you leave your critical info (callback number, for example) twice so that your message doesn’t require work on the other end.

Additionally, avoid making the call from a number that you don’t want the callback going to. In the days of answering machines this wasn’t such an issue but smartphones make it easy to call back the person who left a message. Remember, you want to clear all obstacles out of the way to increase your chances of getting a response.

8. Perfect Your Tone

Walking the line between professional and personal is tough, no doubt, but it’s typically the best way to connect through voicemail. The second you SOUND like someone selling something you have lost all chance of a callback.

One method I have heard and am completely on board with is scouting out the contact’s LinkedIn profile and then leaving the message while looking at it.

It might sound silly, but if you can visualize who you are leaving the sales voicemail for, you are better able to develop the correct tone of voice.

Above all, try to keep it friendly and professional.

9. Use a Contact Name You Both Have in Common

Part of building context for the call is relying on any mutual connection or reference you have in common.

Using this in your message will create a personal connection and increase the importance of the message as a result.

A word of warning – make sure this is someone that has a positive connection with them! Do a little research before accidentally name dropping an old business partner who is currently at war with them.

10. Craft a Script

If you are the type that doesn’t like to leave anything to chance, craft a script.

Remember those high school days when you had to leave your crush a message on their machine? You needed to think out each aspect while not sounding desperate or overly excited. Maybe you wrote down the key points.

Look at your sales prospect as that crush – you want to impress, get a callback and ultimately make the sale. Sure it’s not a date you are after, but use this same thought process to get you on the right page.

Carefully write out a sales voicemail script, or even bullet points, that you need to cover in your message. This will help you avoid those awful moments when your mind draws a blank.

11. Don’t Sound “Salesy”

Even as a salesperson, let’s face it, you hate being sold to in your personal life.

Why do you think your contacts are any different?

The point of a sales voicemail is NOT to close a sale, it’s to gain their interest and invite them to learn more. Don’t use those power closing skills in a voicemail, you will be turning potential clients off from entertaining learning anything more about you.

12. Appeal to Curiosity

So how do you pique someone’s interest in a sales voicemail?

You appeal to the natural sense of curiosity we all have.

This is where the idea of stating your value proposition comes in. Mention the impact you have made working with clients similar to themselves and allow that curiosity you’ve created to result in a callback.

13. Don’t Start With Your Name (or Your Company’s Name)

Starting with your name, or the name of your company, is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make. Sure it may seem like the professional way to start off but it also knocks you back into the category of a stranger selling something.

These are of course important things to leave in a message, but don’t start off with them. Near the very end you can state your first name and your company along with your callback info.

14. Never Request a Callback at a Specific Time

While on the topic of leaving your callback information, do NOT – I repeat – do not request that the prospect call you back at a specific time.

Sure, you may argue that this is a part of creating your call to action but what you are actually doing is giving them a great excuse for never returning your call. “Oh, he wants me to call back at 3? Well, I have a meeting at that time – too bad!”

Make yourself accessible and don’t ask for any favors.

Alright, have I renewed your enthusiasm for voicemail?

It’s time to take action, ask for what you want and ditch the ‘salesy’ tone. Voicemail is far from dead and is yet one more skill you can bring to the table. Closing sales is your goal right? It all starts with paving a great foundation.

Any entrepreneur with experience buying or selling a business knows that deals fall through all the time. Even worse, many have to look back on a deal they went through with that, in retrospect, they probably should have passed on. Knowing when to close a deal and when to walk away is more art than science, but it can be critical to the future success of your acquired business. But how does the sale of a business really work? And how do you know when it’s smarter to walk away? Let’s take a closer look.

Closing the sale of a business, step by step

The real work begins once you’ve reached a general agreement on the sale of acquisition of a business. The sales process can be a little confusing for uninitiated, so let’s go through it step by step:

• Letter of intent. The buyer will draft and sign a non-binding purchase agreement called a letter of intent. This letter outlines the terms of the sale, including the price agreed to.

• Due diligence. Both the buyer and the seller will do their own due diligence to investigate and perform research on the other party. This step is particularly important for the buyer because it can turn up signs that the deal isn’t right for them.

• Financing. Unless the sale is an all-cash deal, the buyer will need to obtain financing, either from a bank or through the seller.

• Purchase agreement. Assuming the buyer obtains financing and neither party finds anything untoward during the due diligence process, a purchase agreement will be executed. The purchase agreement will outline price of the sale, any financing details, and ancillary agreements like noncompete clauses or confidentiality agreements.
• Closing the deal. The final step in the process requires all participants to sign the purchase agreement and any other contracts of sale.

Depending on your level of experience, that list might seem straightforward or downright complicated. In most cases, you’ll have a business broker, attorney, or both to help walk you through the process. Arguably the most important step of the process is step two: due diligence. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a sale or acquisition, but that can be a costly mistake. Here are some signs it’s time to step back from the negotiating table and walk away from a deal.

Signs it’s time to walk away from a deal

1. Inconsistencies – Since one of the most important aspects of business due diligence involves reviewing the financial, legal, and business records, it’s important that any inconsistencies are thoroughly investigated and discussed to your satisfaction. Don’t sweep things under the rug or let the current owner sweet talk you out of getting to the bottom of anything that’s not in perfect order. If you don’t get a satisfactory response, walk away.
2. Neglect – Most business owners only put their business up for sale after giving it a lot of thought and coming to a firm decision. After the decision is made, it can often take months or more before the right buyer comes along. During that interim period, some owners will consciously decide not to “waste” any more time, effort, or money on building and maintaining the business they’ve already decided to sell. Depending on how long it’s been on the market, that neglect could become apparent, and the buyer needs to take it into consideration. If significant renovations are required, the cost of the acquisition might not make sense. If you can’t rectify the cost of the business with the amount of money you’ll need to invest to get it into shape, walk away.
3. Undisclosed problems – Whether it’s a tax lien the current owner failed to mention, an expired inspection on a key piece of equipment, or any other detail the buyer has a legitimate right to know, if it comes to light that the owner has tried to cover up (or just ignore) a problem prior to the sale, warning bells should be going off. Ask yourself: why is this owner really selling the business? If the answer makes you think twice, walk away.
4. Poor credit rating – It’s not a guarantee since some business owners simply aren’t great money managers, but if your due diligence turns up a poor credit rating or problematic borrowing history for the company, it could be a sign that otherwise positive financial records may be artificially propped up. If the business’s finances aren’t in order, walk away.
5. The industry is in decline – Sometimes, savvy business owners choose to sell their companies because, after years in the industry, they can tell major changes are on the horizon and that could spell big problems for their business. Of course, they’d be loathed to tell a prospective buyer about that fact, so it’s up to the buyer to consult with other industry experts to make sure the outlook is still positive. If that outlook is negative, walk away.

These are fairly general, and it’s certainly not an exhaustive list. But the point is clear: while strategic planning and preparation are key to identifying a great business opportunity in the first place, it’s also vital for prospective buyers to remain alert to any signs of trouble throughout the entire buying process.

That’s not to say every business deal turns sour. In fact, most don’t. Your next deal might not reveal anything that even makes you consider walking away, but you need to be prepared for the possibility. In some cases, walking away from a prospective deal is the best thing you can do. There’s always another deal on the horizon.

One of the best ways to avoid a deal going south is to work with a team of business sale experts who can help vet opportunities and may be able to catch items you would otherwise miss. This team could include a business broker, commercial real estate agent, lawyer, and accountant, as well as niche industry experts appropriate for the specific business you’re considering.

With their help, and with your own sharp eye for detail and gut instincts, you should be able to pass on the wrong businesses until the right one comes along.

You've probably heard of solution selling — it might even be your strategy of choice.

It's a sales methodology that became popular in the 1980s, and it's based on a pretty simple premise: A salesperson diagnoses their prospect’s needs, then recommends the right products and/or services to accommodate them.

The prospect might not know they have a problem or opportunity, let alone what it looks like, how urgent or important it is, and how they should address it. That makes the salesperson an important resource — one that can help a prospect both understand and react to their situation.

Solution selling is one of the best ways salespeople can sell with empathy. It also takes critical thought and a firm grasp on a prospect's general circumstances.

In some cases, selling a product for the sake of selling a product can be fairly surface level.

Selling a solution runs deeper. You need some degree of knowledge of a prospect's industry, the unique challenges they face, what similar customers have gone through, and their overall goals to diagnose and present solutions for their problems.

This kind of selling is common among certain businesses and suits some specific situations. Let's take a closer look at those elements.

When is solution selling used?

Solution selling is ideal for industries with highly customized products and/or packages. For example, a company that offers a cloud storage platform along with maintenance and security services will probably create a unique bundle for each of its customers.

The salesperson will figure out how much data her prospect needs to store, how many devices he'll be accessing his files on, what kind of extra features and support he'll need, and so forth.

This brand of sales emphasizes the "why" over the "what" of a potential sale. "What" your selling takes a back seat to "why" your prospect needs it. Consider a cybersecurity consulting firm trying to sell a midsize retail business a cybersecurity risk assessment.

If the firm was fixated on solely selling the assessment itself, it would mull over the general benefits of the service — "Our assessments cover virtually every relevant risk concern and help businesses understand where they have room to grow. Long story short, we make them more secure."

If that firm sold the service as a solution, it would probably:

• Pin down the risks most relevant to the prospect's industry.
• Determine the common security challenges a business of that size might face.
• Stress the specific aspects of the assessment that cover those bases
• Offer a picture of how that company can expect to improve as a result of its engagement with the firm.

This kind of approach might start with something like this:

"We find that retail outlets, like yours, tend to employ younger workers who are more prone to social engineering attacks like phishing. Our assessments feature penetration testing to simulate those breaches and see where and how you might be most vulnerable to them — along with several other services to cover virtually any other risk scenario.

"Ultimately, we have an exceptional track record working within your industry. The risk forecasts and actionable solutions that come with our assessments can help you bolster your cybersecurity infrastructure, appropriately train your staff, and get ahead of any vulnerabilities that can compromise the safety and soundness of your retail transactions and business operations going forward."

It's the difference between "what" and "why" that separates the two concepts. In most cases, it helps to support your description of "what" the product is with an idea of "why" it will be valuable.

Solution Selling Benefits and Disadvantages

Now that you know a little bit about solution selling, let’s dive into the pros and cons of using this method so you can decide if it’s the right strategy for your team.

One great thing about solution selling is that it uses a tailored approach to selling. Many times, sales reps try to fit the prospect to the product instead of the other way around.

With solution selling, it’s all about understanding the prospect’s needs and understanding which features within your products or services will benefit them most.

As such, customers don’t feel like they’re just being sold features, but instead are getting answers to their bigger scale business issues.

As for the disadvantages, there are a few to consider. Solution selling often requires following a question-and-answer format, this can lead to a conversation that’s quite stale and inflexible.

You may also find that reps rely too heavily on their set of questions and don’t allow the conversation to flow naturally. Prospects may feel like the conversation feels more like an interrogation that will corner them into making a purchase.

Lastly, some argue that solution selling is less valuable today, as prospects already know what solutions they need. Because so much information is readily available to anyone online, prospects no longer rely as heavily on sales reps for diagnosing and solutioning.

They may have already done their research and reached the stage where it’s all about comparing prices and terms.

That’s why some sales leaders opt for insight selling, in which sales reps help prospects understand their unknown needs rather than known ones.

Get Started With Solution Selling

Use this three-step plan to begin solution selling:

1. Identify common pain points.

Figuring out your customers’ most common pain points might be the most important part of the process — without this information, you can’t effectively target prospects or present your solution.

Analyze your won deals to see which problems prompted prospects to buy your product. Ask them, "What factored into your decision to work with us? " and "When did you decide to solve [problem], and why? "

2. Develop your questions.

Once you’ve figured out the most pressing problems your product solves for buyers, develop a set of questions that’ll help you diagnose prospects.

Having the right questions prepared means you’ll spend the majority of the sales conversation focused on the buyer and their company, rather than your product and its features.

Start with broad, open-ended questions that probe into the relevant aspects of your prospect’s business. Then get more narrow — you’re looking for specific facts and figures that will help you build a case for your solution.

3. Practice selling value.

Solution selling is effective because it focuses on the ROI of a product, not its feature set or sticker price. Whether you’re a sales manager or individual salesperson, make sure you understand and can demonstrate your product’s value.

It might be helpful to consider these questions:

• How is life easier with your product? Which challenges or tasks are eliminated or reduced?
• Does your product save the buyer time? If so, how much? What could they accomplish in those minutes, hours, or days?
• Does your product save the buyer money? If so, how much? What could they accomplish with that amount?
• How does your product influence others’ perceptions of your prospect? Do they look more credible, important, effective, or successful?
• What’s the impact on your prospect’s bottom line one month after buying your product? Six months? A year?

Practice highlighting the answers to these questions to your prospects.

"Solution selling" is used pretty broadly these days, but salespeople using this methodology typically follow this sales process:

Solution Selling Questions

To accurately diagnose your prospect’s pain points, you need the right questions. There are three main goals of this stage (typically the discovery call):

1. Identify the causes: Which factors are responsible for the buyer’s pain? How are they ranked in terms of importance and impact?
2. Calculate the magnitude: How is this pain affecting your prospect, their team, other departments, and/or the entire company? How many people will benefit from solving the problem?
3. Get buy-in: Gauge the buyer’s interest in life with your product. Are they excited about the solution you can provide?

To give you an idea, here are sample questions for each objective.

Identify the causes:

• How has [problem] gotten to [current state]?
• How significant is [factor]?
• Have you seen [factor they haven’t considered] making any impact on [problem]?

Calculate the magnitude:

• How has this problem changed your [daily, weekly] workload and focus?
• How has this problem affected your [coworkers, boss, direct reports]?
• What does [job title] think about this problem?

Get buy-in:

• In a world where [problem] doesn’t exist, what’s different about [your results, your priorities, the company’s success]?
• We can solve [problem] with [X solution]. What do you think?

Solution Selling Books: 3 Helpful Resources

1. "Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets" by Michael Bosworth

Originally published in 1995, this book is one of the most comprehensive and popular pieces on solution selling. It’s authored by Bosworth, a successful B2B sales leader with over 20 years of experience.

The book offers a blueprint on how to sell products and/or services for which traditional sales techniques aren’t effective. It dives into the issues both sales reps and prospects face during the sales process, offers use cases to facilitate understanding, and presents solutions to common roadblocks.

While things have certainly changed since the publication of this book, there are fundamental principles that still apply today. It’s what you’d call an oldie but a goodie.

2. "The New Solution Selling" by Keith M. Eades

Nearly 10 years after the original "Solution Selling" book was published, Eades published what many call the sequel.

While many sequels fail to live up to the hype, this one doesn’t disappoint.

In this book, Eades builds off known solution-selling concepts and introduces new ones. He presents a more streamlined approach to solution selling to help sales teams achieve their goals.

Need another reason to buy this? It comes with a workbook, which will further your understanding of the concepts introduced in the book and help you implement them in your day-to-day.

3. "Solution Selling: The Strongman Process" by Ed Wal

One of the most recent books on this sales tactic was published in 2016 by sales trainer Ed Wal.

It’s been described as a must-read, "no-nonsense" book that gets straight to the point and provides step-by-step instructions on how to sell solutions.

Because this book was written so recently, it tackles solution selling from a modern perspective. Accounting for changes in both how sales reps and consumers operate.

Is solution sales dead?

Some believe solution selling isn’t effective anymore.

Since 2012, sales leaders Brent Adamson, Matt Dixon, and Nicholas Toman have argued that a solution sales rep can be more of an annoyance than an asset.

"Customers didn’t know how to solve their own problems, even though they often had a good understanding of what their problems were," they write in their book "The Challenger Sale. "But now, owing to increasingly sophisticated procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data, companies can readily define solutions for themselves."

But that's not to say that solution selling has lost all relevance. It’s always possible to reveal problems buyers don’t know they have.

Salespeople who follow this model look for customers with emerging needs or who are in flux who can make decisions quickly. For example, a rep might target a company with a brand-new CEO who’s looking to make their mark.

"Since they’re already reexamining the status quo, these customers are looking for insights and are naturally more receptive to the disruptive ideas that star performers bring to the table," the authors write.

They give an example of a top business services salesperson who walked into an hour-long RFP presentation with several executives.

He handed them his firm’s report.

"Because we have only 60 minutes together, I’m going to let you read that on your own," the rep said. "I’d like to use our time to walk you through the three things we believe should have been in the RFP but weren’t, and to explain why they matter so much."

The executive team dismissed the other two vendors and began the RFP process from scratch.

Is this solution selling? In this example, the salesperson didn’t conform to his prospect’s needs — he redefined them. Nonetheless, the focus on needs and solutions is still there. I’d say this is an updated form of solution selling.

The core principles of solution selling are valuable whether you follow the methodology to the tee or use a different one: Consider how your product can help your prospect specifically, then craft them a custom solution or strategy.

Take this approach, and you'll never hurt for sales.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in Dec 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When I became the leader of a sales team for the first time in the mid 90’s, I did not have the luxury of selling for many years and being mentored by someone who could teach me the ropes. Instead, I was a company founder who filled a need that we had at the time to build our sales team, and I kind of made things up as I went along. As I think back to those days, I realize how much I struggled to achieve my goals, and while I was successful, I can’t deny that it probably had as much to do with luck and timing as it did with my will and effort.

It was a time of great learning but there are a few lessons that would have served me well if I had known them in advance.

Here are the top things myself and 28 other sales leaders wish we had known before becoming a Sales Manager:

1. That it’s almost impossible to be a player-coach selling manager

Mike Weinberg – Principal of The New Business Sales Coach and bestselling author of Sales Management. Simplified. and New Sales. Simplified.

“I wish I knew how little most senior executives understand the true job of a Sales Manager and how much crap companies throw on the sales leader’s desk that has nothing to do with leading the sales team. I wish I knew that much of what makes people great as individual producers in sales does not translate to success as a manager. The jobs could not be more different. As a producer, you win on your own, but great leaders win through their people. Night and day difference. I wish I knew that it is almost impossible to be a player-coach selling-manager. To do that, well you have to be schizophrenic. The reason sports teams abandoned the player-coach model is because it’s stupid and produces sub-optimal results while creating a mess.”

Follow Mike on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram

2. To teach my sales team to think differently

Jill Konrath – Sales Keynote Speaker and bestselling author of More Sales Less Time and SNAP Selling

“I wish I knew that not everyone thought as much about how to be successful as I did. After meetings/conversations with prospective buyers, very few sales reps took time to self assess. To help them develop, I needed to teach them how to think differently. I constantly asked: What do you think went well? Why did it work? How can you use it again? Where did you get stuck or run into trouble? What was your role in creating this situation? How could you do things differently next time? What else could you try? Doing this creates an upward spiral. Everyone gets better, driving increased revenue.”

Follow Jill on Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

3. To recognize that I’m playing a long game

Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” – Principal of The Sales Hunter and author of High Profit Prospecting and High Profit Selling

“As a sales leader, you likely want to jump in and make every sale happen. It is vital you have wise discernment, though.  You must recognize you’re playing a long-game, and as such you should focus on the development of the people you’re leading, not just on chasing short-term customer opportunities.  As tempting as it is to close the sale, the bigger benefit is in coaching the salesperson to know how to close the sale when you’re not around.  The mark of a sales leader is not what occurs when they’re present, but rather the success their team has when the leader is away.”

Follow Mark on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

4. The skills that made me a top performer are a small part of what would make me a great sales leader

Kelly Riggs – Founder and CSO of The Business LockerRoom

“I think a lot of sales leaders wish they knew how difficult it was going to be to transition from salesperson to sales leader. The skills that made them successful as an individual performer turn out to be only a small part of the toolbox they need to build a successful team. As a salesperson, they could easily and quickly respond to adversity, but as a sales leader, they often find it quite frustrating that people don’t do things the way they do.”

Follow Kelly on Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Facebook.

5. It’s very difficult to coach and develop sales reps without a structured process in place

Eliot Burdett – CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting, Co-author of Sales Recruiting 2.0: How to Find Top Performing Salespeople, Fast, and Founder of Helping Heroes

“Without many years in sales myself and having to take over leadership of a sales group, I didn’t appreciate the value of a structured selling process. I told my sales reps to call-qualify-develop and close and left them to their own devices beyond this, which meant that each rep sold in their own unique way. Beyond ensuring that customers received different experiences from my sales team, it made it very difficult for me to coach and develop my reps. In short, without a structured process in place, some of the characteristics of a dysfunctional sales team were beginning to reveal themselves.”

6. To spend more time on the hiring than the selecting

Brent Thomson – CSO of Peak Sales Recruiting and Co-author of Sales Recruiting 2.0: How to Find Top Performing Salespeople, Fast

“I wish I had known that what people say and what they actually do are two different things. While your salespeople may tell you something that has transpired, they may not be telling you the whole story. It’s important to have full transparency as it helps them in their sales cycle. It’s important to understand that not everyone lives in the CRM and you need to look for that when recruiting, as that data’s so important. I also wish I had spent more time on the hiring process versus the selection process. It’s much easier to hire than it is to fire someone. Relying on the experts to find you the right people is much more beneficial than selecting someone and having to fire them later due to poor performance.”

7. How to understand the different personality types of people in sales

Tom Hopkins – Chairman at Tom Hopkins International Inc.

“When I first moved from sales into a sales management position, I was fortunate that my company sent me for some training. The most important lesson taught was about understanding the different personality types of people in sales. Previous to this, I thought everyone would handle their business the way I did. Upon taking over, I quickly learned that you cannot manage everyone the same way. Each person on the team had a different temperament, a different attitude, and was motivated by different things. Once I got a handle on each person’s wants, needs, and desires, I was able to take an office that was on the bottom of the revenue-generation pile and turn it into the first place office in the company.”

Follow Tom on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and YouTube.

8. A sales manager’s job is not to be the best seller on the team

Colleen Francis – Owner of Engage Selling Solutions and author of Nonstop Sales Boom

“I wish I knew before becoming a sales leader/manager that 1+1 = 3. When I became a sales leader I thought it was my job to be the best seller on the team. I would swoop in to save deals, and ride along with sellers to close deals. Always being the hero. We did well, but not exceptionally well.  It was only after I learned that my job was to coach each individual to be better than me that our sales really accelerated! A sales manager’s job is not to be the best seller on the team. It’s to curate excellence and leverage it amongst the team members.”

Follow Colleen on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and iTunes.

9. To offer one specific suggestion that would trigger all the other actions

Shari Levitin – CEO and Professional Speaker at Levitin Group and Author of Heart and Sell

“Three Rules for Giving Feedback:

Tell your salespeople what they did right. A Harvard Business review study confirms that individuals who receive at least a 6-1 ratio of positive-to-negative advice outperform those more often criticized. Focus on a maximum of three improvements at a time. The brain can’t possibly remember 36 new techniques to incorporate into a sales presentation. Like golf, a good swing coach offers just one suggestion that triggers all the other actions. Feedback must be specific. Avoid generic suggestions like, build more trust or tell better stories. Instead share the four components of building trust or five keys to a powerful story. “

Follow Shari on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

10. That there is a difference between being busy and being productive

Kelvin Shaw – Executive Sales recruiter at Peak Sales Recruiting and former President of Stimulus Strategies Networking

“If there is one thing that I know now that I didn’t know then, it’s the importance of time management and prioritizing tasks. As a young business owner or professional, you will have many moving parts and daily tasks which can easily keep you busy. However, there is a major difference between being busy and being productive! In my opinion, the “Eisenhower Principle” is a must have time management principle that should be learnt and adopted by every business owner and professional. In essence, it is understanding the difference between urgent and important activities to help you think and structure your business priorities correctly.”

11. The value of really getting to know each person on the team well

Aaron Ross – Author of From Impossible to Inevitable and Predictable Revenue, and Co-Founder of Predictable University and Predictable Revenue

“I wish I knew the value of really getting to know each person on the team well, especially personally.  When I did, it made it much easier to help that person overcome a problem or set better goals – whether personal and professional – to keep them motivated.  Especially once they ‘got good’ at their jobs, it’s easy to get comfortable and go on ‘autopilot’ as a manager.”

Follow Aaron on Twitter.

12. To take the time to help my sales reps focus on high-value sales activities

Janice Mars – President and Founder of SalesLatitude

“Many salespeople spend their precious time on the wrong things. Sales Managers and leaders play a crucial role in helping their reps focus on high-value sales activities. Here are three tips: Guide them towards activities that benefit customers the most. The bigger the problems reps can solve, the more resources, time and money customers will commit. Ask reps what they need to do their jobs better. Knock down any obstacles that make it difficult for reps to sell and customers to buy. Limit business hours to high-value sales activities. Train reps to save travel and administrative work for “non-working” hours.”

Follow Janice on Twitter and Google+.

13. That there is a big difference between demanding results and putting the right people in the right roles

Paul Howard – Chief Revenue Officer at Nectar Desk

“This is easy for me …. firstly COACHING 2.0. As a 2.0 manager, learning that there is a big difference between demanding results and putting the right people in the right roles and conditions for success is crucial. Lastly DOGS versus STARS. If you spend 50% of your time with your ‘stars’ – who are often independent by nature – instead of the ‘dogs’, you will double your results. Apologies to ‘dogs’ but they always have an excuse, lots of personal issues, etc. Once they are past a reasonable training time they will vacuum up all your time and energy. Go with the stars who are building a joint path for their career development and success!”

14. To trust myself and not suffer from “Impostor Syndrome”

Jane Gentry – Principal of Jane Gentry & Company

“I wish I had known to trust myself. Many of the leaders I coach now have the same syndrome that I had – Imposter Syndrome – the fear that the world will find out that I really don’t know anything. The truth is that I did/do know a lot and you do too. It’s those who think they know everything who are circumspect. It is OK to be authentic and a little vulnerable; it engenders trust. And, a team who trusts you will follow you into the unknown where you’ll likely create great things together.”

Follow Jane on Twitter.

15. People don’t care what you know until they know you care

Steven Rosen – Executive Coach at STAR Results and Author of 52 Sales Management Tips

“The one thing I wish I knew before becoming a Sales Manager was that when it comes to managing people, people don’t care what you know until they know you care. I have coached many new sales leaders to get to know their salespeople before they begin talking business or trying to tell them what they would do.”

Follow Steven on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and YouTube.

16. How to find simplicity in leading a sales force

Jason Jordan – Partner at Vantage Point Performance

“I perceived that sales leadership was a very complex task, so I tried to explore and navigate every possible course of action.  In reality, leading a sales force is all about finding simplicity.  Identify the few things that really drive sales performance, and then hammer those things hard from every possible angle.  If you wade into the complexities of sales leadership, you’ll drown.”

Follow Jason on Twitter and YouTube.

17. To understand that the separation between the ideology of church and state is a real thing as a manager

Morgan Ingram – Manager of Sales Development at Terminus and Host of The SDR Chronicles

“I wish I knew that I had to understand that the separation between the ideology of church and state is a real thing as a manager. When I was an SDR, I developed friendships with people on the SDR team and when I became a manager everything had to change. You have to realize as a manager that once you come into work, it’s like you putting on your jersey during a game and your reps cannot be seen as your friends when you have to put your manager hat on.”

Follow Morgan on Twitter.

18. To design an informative and actionable sales process

George Brontén – Founder and CEO of Membrain

“The first time I built a sales team I made 3 faulty assumptions that almost cost me my company: 1) I assumed that salespeople knew how to sell because they had sold something for someone else. 2) I assumed that salespeople have discipline and are disciplined. 3) I assumed that a CRM system would help us sell better as a team. My conclusion and advice: design an informative and actionable sales process that is easy for salespeople to learn and execute. Make it the vehicle for sales methodology, enablement content, performance tracking and coaching. Then improve it!”

Follow George on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

19. How to motivate salespeople on a deeper and more sustainable level

Steven Benson – Founder and CEO of Badger Maps Inc. and former Regional Sales Manager at Google

“Many Sales Managers make a mistake in assuming sales reps are coin operated, and that therefore the most important parts of motivating a sales team are the compensation plan’s size and structure. Although those are important, salespeople are much more complex, and there are things you can do to motivate them on a deeper and more sustainable level. Help your team understand the big picture. A sales rep should be able to connect the dollar they earn to the company’s ability to produce a better version of the product they’re selling. This can be more motivating than just the cash in their pocket alone.”

Follow Steven on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

20. How to be involved with my sales team without the fear of becoming a micro-manager  

Kevin F. Davis – President & Founder of TopLine Leadership Inc. and author of The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top.

“When I was a sales rep, I once worked for a micro-manager—and hated it! I resolved never to be that way myself if became a sales manager. Years later, as a Sales Manager, I got confidential feedback from my sales team about my management style. Sure enough, the overwhelming perception was “Hey, Kevin’s not involved enough in our opportunities and our coaching. I realized then that I had over-corrected. And because I did little coaching, I wasn’t helping my team develop. Though I’d had the job title “Sales Manager” for over three years at that point, that was the moment I truly became a Sales Manager.”

Follow Kevin on Twitter and YouTube

21. How to manage my time and prioritize my tasks

Bridget Gleason – Vice President of Sales at Logz.io

“Your time is not your own! I’m not sure what I was expecting when I first moved from an individual contributor to a Sales Manager, but I was surprised at how much time was required to manage and lead a team. My calendar was suddenly full of meetings, 1:1’s, customer calls and coaching sessions. And for a while I felt a bit out of control. One skill I had to work on was time management and prioritization. Sometimes I miss the days when my time was truly my own, but I wouldn’t trade the privilege of working with a team for any amount of hours back in my day.”

22. To understand the uniqueness of each person on my team

Sam Capra – VP Sales at flexReceipts

“One Size Does NOT Fit All. You need to understand the uniqueness of each individual on your team. It sounds obvious, but as a young leader you try and apply a one size fits all approach.  The key is to take the time to know what motivates each member of your sales team and what demotivates them. Having this understanding means you can play to their strengths. This allows you to adapt your coaching, training and feedback in a manner that gets results.”

Follow Sam on Twitter.

23. To coach each salesperson in the way they learn, process, speak and execute actions

Alice Kemper – President of Sales Training Werks

“It was one thing to be 100% responsible for achieving my numbers as a rep and totally foreign to achieve my new numbers through 20 people as the manager.  My first biggest “ah-ha” was they didn’t sell how I did, think like I did, have the same goals or methodologies and they were certainly not interested in hearing how I did it.  Because of my teaching background I immediately realized I needed to coach each person to be the best that they could be in the way they learn, process, speak and execute actions.  A few months of building a great team could have been shaved off if I had known coaching was the key before day one.”

Follow Alice in Facebook and Twitter.

24. To treat my sales team like I treat my customers 

Nancy Bleeke – President and CSO at Sales Pro Insider

“To lead your sales team to perform, treat them like you treat your customers! For customers – you make the time when they need it, lead them to the best outcome, explain everything relevant to them, offer information, solutions, tools, and resources relevant for THEM, and make it easy for them to work with you. It’s the same for your team. Get them what they need to succeed (it’s not just leads and software), make the time to coach, and make everything you say, do, ask, and expect focused on what makes it important to them. You’ll be an effective leader with a performing team.”

Follow Nancy on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

25. How I need to make sales reps lives easier

Michael Seymour – Senior Director, Sales Enablement/PMO at Oracle

“What I wish I learned earlier in my career is how you need to make a sales rep’s life simpler. Selling, especially in B2B, is a tough job. Navigating byzantine internal bureaucracies while at the same time maneuvering complex customer buying processes is challenging. If you absorb as much of that complexity as possible, it makes it much easier for sales reps to close business. Whenever possible simplify processes, products, messaging and asset distribution to enable a rep to focus on selling.”

Follow Michael on Twitter.

26. That sales comp plans must align with the results the company wants to achieve

Ann Davis – VP of Sales at Journey Sales

“Anyone with a career in sales has heard the stereotypes that salespeople are coin operated and competitive.  Understanding that there is definitely truth to these, I have always paid close attention to how sales people are being paid because it is directly tied to what they will actually do.  Therefore, sales comp plans MUST be aligned to the results the company wants to achieve. As an old boss/mentor of mine once told me, they must be simple enough to pass the spouse test.  So any spouse that looked at it would instantly understand how their spouse is being paid.  In regards to competition, mostly all sales reps use it appropriately as a little bit of healthy competition, which never hurt anyone and can be just added driver to achieve greater results.”

27. To be involved in the recruiting process

Nick van der Kolk – Head of Enterprise HubSpot & Founder of HubSterdam

“Recruiting is hard, not only because it is a totally different skill set and process than sales. It also requires an even bigger focus on a long term mindset. On top of that, your legacy as a manager won’t be the number you hit but who and how you developed the team. I would have spent far more time being involved in the recruiting process prior to being a hiring manager myself.”

28. To use programs to set up sales contests and broadcast sales results frequently

Emily LaRusch – Founder and CEO at Back Office Betties

“One of the things I wish I’d done earlier is use a program like Zoho Motivator. It plugs into our CRM so it’s always up to date and makes it easy to give the sales team daily contest results and tie 1st place to a prize. I have always communicated targets but never publically broadcast results with regularity or frequency. With Zoho Motivator, I set up the contest in the beginning of the month and it runs on autopilot. I think good sales people tend to be competitive and seeing team member results regularly will either light a fire under someone driven or highlight the duds on the team.”

Follow Emily on Twitter and Facebook.

29. There’s a difference between being updated on a project and hovering over your employees

Vladimir Gendelman — Founder and CEO of CompanyFolders

“Of course you want to stay on top of everything, but there’s a different between being updated on a project and hovering over your employees. When you micromanage, your sales team feels smothered and unappreciated. Instead, give your employees ownership of their work to let their talents shine. Productivity will improve dramatically.”

Put these 28 tips to use and visit the Peak Sales Career Blog for the latest actionable insights on how to advance your sales career.

 

 

The post What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Sales Manager: 29 Expert Tips appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

A competitor in the teleprospecting business recently published a list of B2B companies based on how easy or hard they were to work from a lead-generation standpoint. They listed those that they had had success with on top. At the bottom of the list were what they called “uncloseables,” meaning these were companies that this competitor was not able to generated leads from.

One of the uncloseables on their list was a company from which PointClear generated a sales-qualified lead that we turned over to a client in the middle of 2016.

How can one company be considered an uncloseable to one lead generation services firm and a success to another?

At PointClear, we approach our client’s lead generation, lead qualification and lead nurturing by combining persistence with professionalism.

We know how to navigate the prospect, to find the decisionmaker, to pinpoint the need, and to move the lead to sales-qualified status. We don’t bug prospects, or annoy them, but we also don’t give up too soon.

To demonstrate, take a look at the touch summary for the “uncloseable” that our competitor identified:

Date Stamp	Entry
04-Aug-16	vm 1
04-Aug-16	email 1
10-Aug-16	vm 2
10-Aug-16	email 2
12-Aug-16	no email just vm
18-Aug-16	zero out
24-Aug-16	vm 3
24-Aug-16	email 3
24-Aug-16	Dean called me to ask for more information for Mike Smith
30-Aug-16	follow up voice mail
30-Aug-16	follow up voice mail
30-Aug-16	email to request call back
30-Aug-16	I'll be on vacation from 24 Aug to 2 Sep and will have limited access to email
30-Aug-16	call scheduled for 8 Sep at 11
06-Sep-16	sent invite to confirm call
08-Sep-16	call
12-Sep-16	sent email to schedule a meeting with sales exec
16-Sep-16	confirmed appointment for noon Wed 21 Sep

 

Notice we used a multi-touch (18 touchpoints over approximately one month) cadence and utilized multi-media (calls, voicemails, emails) to get this prospect converted to a sales-qualified lead for our client.

Had this prospect not converted to a lead, we would have used multiple cycles (multi-cycle) to stay on top of the prospect over the months or years until we got them converted.

All the details about the number and type of touches and each disposition is reported to the client. We also track touches to disposition (an outcome, see below), touches to lead and the number of cycles used for every project. 

On a regular basis, we test more and fewer touches to see how the disposition rate and lead rate is affected. It’s our secret sauce—we know how to manage a lot of moving parts. Many if not most firms in our industry lack the automated capability to track touches and cycles.

Another way we differ from our industry brethren is that we believe a lead is not the only positive outcome of a multi-touch, multi-media, multi-cycle campaign. This blog talks about how to triple your return on marketing campaigns with scientific nurturing. Here is a list of desireable outcomes and and explanation of why each is desirable.

Leads are one desirable outcome of teleprospecting, but there are others

• Lead. A sales-qualified lead tops the list of course. That's what's needed to meet your revenue goals.
• Pipeline. This is what we call opportunities that are qualified, with perceived interest and need, but not quite ready. Twenty to 25% will turn into leads with additional, scheduled contact.
• Nurture. These are also qualified opportunities, but we have yet to perceive interest and need. We will stay on top of these targets, maintaining our cadence. On the next touch cycle, we will get 150% of the lead rate the first touch cycle generated. We might invest up to 3 to 5 cycles before hitting the point of diminishing return.
• No Response. These could be qualified opportunities, but we have exhausted the touch cycle. We did not reach them and they did not return our voicemails or emails. We will invest additional activity across additional touch cycles and will drive a much higher lead rate on these as compared to Not Qualified outcomes.
• Not Qualified. We have confirmed their not-qualified status and will never need to try to reach them again—at least for this client. Taking out (and keeping track of) Not Qualified accounts means we have less work to do the next touch cycle—making it more productive.
• Bad. We’ve confirmed that the data on this target is incorrect. Again, we pull them off the list and keep track—making the next touch cycle more productive.

What to watch out for in your lead generation efforts:

1. One and done campaigns. Don’t skim leads off campaigns and disregard the rest. If you do, you lose the value that results from nurturing pipeline and nurture dispositions or outcomes—value that can triple your lead-generation ROI.

2. Lack of persistence in lead follow-up by sales. We have a mini-course we present to our clients’ sales forces to help them increase the number of leads that get converted to sales opportunities. A sales-qualified lead that’s not effectively followed up is wasteful from a budget and revenue point-of-view.

3. No testing. If you are rolling out an untested campaign you are likely wasting a LOT of money. Everything is testable. The telephone is one of the best and least expensive ways to determine if you’re on point with your market, message and media.

Want to discuss this? Email me at dan.mcdade@pointclear.com

I still believe that you need business acumen and situational knowledge to create and win opportunities. I believe that you need to know things, to be your dream client’s peer, to think like a business person. (This is chapter 15 in The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need)

It’s true that one of the reasons that buyers are struggling to make a good buying decision is that it’s tough for them to manage their internal processes and build the necessary consensus. The more people that enter the process, the more difficult it becomes until it is easier to do nothing. (This is chapter 16 in The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need).

Because your client doesn’t have a good process, it’s critical that you control the process, helping them to make the necessary commitments to make real change inside their companies, something they can’t easily do with you. If they could do it without you, they would have done so already. (This is chapter 2 in The Lost Art of Closing).

All these things are true, and they make the difference in sales. As much as they should be the primary differentiators in sales, I am afraid that they are not. There is something more fundamental that is being overlooked, without which you cannot succeed in sales, and that something is prospecting.

The Facebook post from an expert says, “Anyone who still prospects is wasting their own time . . . there is a thing called the Internet, where digital marketers go to get you free leads . . .” But see, the thing is, we aren’t trying to create leads; we are trying to create opportunities. Leads are what marketing generates. Jeb Blount sent me a screen capture (The same Jeb that wrote and recorded the audio book, Fanatical Prospecting).

Tony Hughes’ post on Linked about the best time to cold call has 67 comments as of the time of this writing. Some of the stand out comments include, “Why would you cold call at all these days,” and “Why would you want to cold call in the first place,” and “Best time to cold call was 1999.” The final comment says. “The real best time to cold call is between Never and Don’t, this comment submitted by a safety manager.

For all of the higher level skills necessary to succeed in sales, the willingness to prospect, and particularly the willingness to call strangers, may just be the most important of all the necessary skills and abilities. You are not going to be considered if no one knows you, and eliminating one of the real variables of a competitive advantage will cause you to miss every shot that you don’t take.

In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is King, and the one-eyed woman, Queen.

The post In the World of the Blind, the One Eyed Man is King appeared first on The Sales Blog.

What Exactly Is Customer Lifetime Value and Why Should You Care? written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

In the marketing world, niche terms and metrics get thrown around frequently, and while there is some jargon that you can just shrug off, there are others that you should pay attention to, which brings me to the topic I’d like to discuss today: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

This is a metric that is often misunderstood and, even more often, overlooked completely. In a nutshell, Customer Lifetime Value is the calculation of what a customer might be worth to your business over the course of doing business with you, perhaps over the course of a few years as opposed to a single transaction.

This number might change the way you look at how much you are willing to invest to get each new customer, so as you can see, it’s an important number to follow. Once you understand the lifetime value of a customer, you can determine how much you’re willing to pay in new customer acquisition costs.

For example, if a customer buys a $500 service once every year on average for ten years if you keep them happy you might determine you can invest more in landing and thrilling that customer.

This change in point of view often leads business owners from viewing marketing as an expense to viewing it like the investment it can be. Of course, there are many factors that impact CLV over and above simply measuring it.

Who should care about Customer Lifetime Value

For businesses that offer a customer multiple transactions over time, the concept of Customer Lifetime Value is pretty significant. For businesses such as home builders, who might only work with a customer once in their lifetime, this concept might not seem to matter. Seem being the keyword in that sentence.

In my opinion, the lifetime value of every customer, including those who make a one-time purchase, is unlimited because of the potential for referrals they can make. A happy, single-transaction customer might be a source of business for years because they are likely to talk about your business and recommend you to others. It’s happened to me personally numerous times.

How to calculate Customer Lifetime Value

To get technical:

LTV = Revenue from each paying customer per month, multiplied by Gross Margin, divided by churn (Gross Margin is the amount left over after the cost of goods sold, churn is the percent of people who leave).

Let’s break that down a bit.

1. Computer your average sale and gross margin of profit – we’ll call this number M (margin)
2. Determine the average number of sales, transactions, renewals, etc you can expect over some period if you keep your customers happy – we’ll call this number R (repeat, renew)

In simplest terms CLV = M X R

I have a $2,000 product, and on average I make about $500 off of every transaction, and people buy on average 4.75 times over the course of the relationship – it could be said that my CLV = $2,375 or $500 X 4.75

Now, with that number in mind I can make some decisions:

1. Am I investing enough if acquiring more customers?
2. Could I find more products and services to sell?
3. Could I find ways to create more frequent transactions?
4. Could I find ways to get more referrals from these happy customers?
5. Should I adjust my current pricing based on generating more sales or more profit?

A few notes for calculations purposes:

• Try to establish your baseline CLV # (where it stands today), so you have something to go to work on.
• The R # in the equation is a huge variable and can include transactions, renewals, upsells, new products, special offers, etc. It’s the number you can impact the easiest with your marketing efforts.
• If you have happy customers, there’s a very good chance 20-25% of them would like to buy more – substantially more – go to work on that and make it a strategic initiative as soon as possible.

Here are some more suggestions on how to think about the relationship between CLV and Customer acquisition cost, as recommended by Jay Abraham, author of Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got:

1. Compute your average sale and your profit per sale
2. Compute how much additional profit a client is worth to you by determining how many times he or she comes back
3. Compute precisely what a client costs by dividing the marketing budget by the number of clients it produces
4. Compute the cost of a prospect the same way
5. Compute how many sales you get for so many prospects (the percentage of prospects who become clients)
6. Compute the marginal net worth of a client by subtracting the cost to produce (or convert) the client from the profit you expect to earn from the client over the lifetime of his or her patronage

Regardless of how long the average lifetime of your customers is, Customer Lifetime Value helps you determine how much you can spend for acquiring a new customer as well as how much you can spend to keep your current customers.

How to increase Customer Lifetime Value

Here’s why I love this metric – a focus on this North Star kind of number gives you lots of room to look at every aspect of your business because many times this number can increase by simply creating a better customer experience.

To improve your company’s Customer Lifetime Value across the board, you need to take care of your customers and ensure that they are loyal to you. A few ideas to do this include:

• Improve customer service – provide your customers with the ultimate customer experience. This will help them to become repeat and loyal customers and will increase your odds of referrals.
• Solve your customer’s problems – remember, customers care about their interests, not yours. Make all marketing efforts and outreach client-centric and address their needs and pain points.
• Show you know your customers by sending them something they didn’t even know they wanted – this personalization shows that you care and helps to build trust and relationships with your audience.
• Listen to what your customers have to say and keep them informed when a change is made based off of their feedback
• Provide value even when it’s outside of your wheelhouse (this is why I’m very vocal with the idea of creating a strategic partner network)
• Reward loyalty – Make them know how much you appreciate them being brand advocates. You should appreciate all that loyal customers do for you, and it’s important that you show that.
• Feature customers in your content or give them shout outs – make them feel special

Essentially, your marketing campaigns should nurture current customers as leads. If your lead nurturing endeavors are successful, then your average LTV should increase. If it isn’t, then you know that you need to make adjustments in your lead nurturing endeavors.

The higher your Customer Lifetime Value is, the better off you are regarding acquisition costs. The high value means customers stick around and maintain a relationship with you, which can lead to consistent referrals moving forward.

Hopefully, based on the information I’ve provided above, you’ve realized that this is a metric that can’t be ignored for all businesses, but especially for small business that need to pay attention to their bottom line.

So, let me ask you, are you tracking Customer Lifetime Value? If not, it’s time you start.