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Buyers can unlock value for their organization by decreasing both their companies’ and vendors’ exposure to risk.For example, a food manufacturer unlocked value by partnering with their trucking vendor to mitigate the risk of fluctuating fuel costs. The companies agreed that the cost of fuel would be passed through to the company. At first that seems like a risky decision, but the vendor had a contractual incentive to be more fuel efficient, which they did by operating their trucks at lower speeds, idling less frequently for shorter periods of time, and using routing software. In the end, the risk of fluctuating fuel costs were mitigated decreasing risk to both companies and lowering costs to the food manufacturer.

Some buyers might think it is cost effective to allocate the risk of fuel costs to the vendor in a fixed fee agreement, so it may seem counter intuitive to think that partnering with a vendor would reduce the manufacturer’s costs. The problem with a knee jerk reaction to allocate risks is that the more buyers allocate risk to vendors—especially risks that are totally outside of the vendor’s control, like the cost of fuel—the greater potential for inflated costs to perform.

When buyers allocate uncontrollable risks to a vendor, vendors have little choice but to cover the potential cost of exposure in their pricing. Vendors who accept uncontrollable risks often include the potential cost of exposure, referred to by some as “risk premiums.” When I asked a service provider if his company ever returned the “risk premium” to the customer when no risk event occurred, he chuckled.

The value of the risk event, and correlating risk premium, depends on two factors: the degree of negative impact if the risk event materializes and the likelihood of the risk event happening. In the case of fuel costs, the impact could be significant and there exists a high likelihood of price increases. Therefore, the potential exists for a risk premium in exchange for accepting the risk of fuel costs in a fixed fee agreement.

Unfortunately for the buying company it may still face problems after allocating risks:allocated risk events may still occur impacting the buying company; the buying company may be paying a risk premium for a risk event with little likelihood of happening or little impact to their company; and in all likelihood, that risk premium will not be refunded if the event does not happen.

The better option would be to decrease the vendor’s risk by mitigating the risk. Risk mitigation means both companies work together to prevent the risk event from happening and/or reducing the impact of the risk event when it does happen. Only those risks that cannot be mitigated ought to be allocated to one of the companies.

The First Step To Decrease Risk– Identify The Risk

The first step to decrease risk is to identify those risks that are out of the vendor’s control versus those that are within their control. Typical examples of risks that are out of the vendor’s control include increased prices for raw materials or decreased demand for their customer’s product or service, which may reduce demand for the vendor’s products or services. Risks that are within the vendor’s control include predictable delays from the vendor’s organizational misalignment, inaccuracies in their manual data entry, and poor talent management.

When both companies are more transparent about the potential risks inherent in performance, they can find price-decreasing solutions based on reducing the possibility of the risk event from happening and/or reducing the negative impact of the risk event.

The Second Step To Decrease Risk – Mitigate The Risk

The second step is to collaboratively mitigate the risk. Collaboration requires cooperation, coordination and a fair bit of creativity. In the example above, the food manufacturer was just as savvy as the hauler at buying fuel. They worked together to mitigate the risk associated with fluctuating fuel prices by a) jointly monitoring fuel costs using a national index, b) agreeing that either company could purchase fuel so long as it was the lowest cost fuel at the time of purchase, and c) agreeing the hauler could consume fuel purchased by the food manufacturer for the manufacturer’s deliveries. This partnership was successful because both companies clearly understood and leveraged their operational strengths together.

The next time you think that you’ve saved money by allocating risk, like the risk associated with the cost of fluctuating raw materials, stop and ask yourself if your company should work with the vendor to mitigate that risk. You just might unlock real value for your company.

Press releases are a valuable tool in the hands of PR professionals — as long as you use them correctly. Learn what press release best practices can make your news and announcements more effective in today’s busy world.

While there are those that believe emphatically that the press release is dead, we are here to tell you that that is an urban myth. Press releases are alive, thriving, a vital tool that continues to empower companies in many ways.

In this article, we will answer the following questions:

• What are the press release best practices to know and use in 2017?
• Why are press releases still important in today’s world?
• What makes a successful press release headline?
• How long should a press release be?
• What is a good example of a press release that will improve your PR?

Why Press Releases Still Matter in Today’s Social World

Would you like to stand out as a company, and build relationships with journalists that you can use for years to come? Press releases may be just the ticket you’re looking for.

A press release is a vital component of any public relations strategy. Here is just a sampling of circumstances where a press release can amplify your message:

• New product launches
• Updates to existing products
• New partnership
• New office opening
• New team member/big-name hire
• Award

Handpicked Related Content

26 Solid Pitch Ideas That Will Make You a B2B Public Relations Pro

But how exactly does a press release benefit your company? Consider just a few ways:

• Increased Reach With professional distribution websites, you’ll have access to more journalists, bloggers, prospects and influencers than you could reach on your own.
• Improved SEO With well-chosen keywords and SEO practices, your press release can build strong traffic to your website.
• Improve Public Perception Press releases can shape your brand image, and deliver consistent and factual messages that offset any negative publicity.

These kinds of results would boost any company’s strategy. So let’s get down to how you can create a powerful press release that gets you all these benefits, and more.

Press releases are alive, thriving, and are a vital tool that empowers companies

10 Press Release Best Practices That You Can Take to the Bank

1. Make Your Headline Pop

Irresistible, captivating, engaging…these are just some of the words that should describe you press release headline. Your headline sets the tone for what to expect. These few words can make the difference between an open or a pass. Make your headline count with following pointers.

Use action words that capture the reader’s attention, and empower your message.

Write in everyday, uncomplicated language that is easily understood. Your headline is no place for industry jargon.

Keep it short and sweet to please the search engine powers that be, as well as prospective readers. The optimal length for a press release headline should be 100 characters or fewer.

Make it stand out among the dozens of press release headlines that journalists read on a daily basis.

2. Get to the Point Quickly

Focus on answering the question, “Why should I care?” This is, after all, the question that all reporters, bloggers, and influencers ask when they read a press release. Why would their audience want to read about your news?

Cover all the essential information in the first paragraph. Answer all the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions as soon as possible. Give the straight-up facts so journalists can quickly understand the story and aren’t left deciphering what it’s about. Don’t forget that prospects will also reach your release so be sure to make it acessible.

3. Create a Killer Quote

Personal and pertinent quotes add a human touch to your release. It makes a reader feel like this is not just another commercial company looking for the limelight. A quote gives the message that your news affects real people, and others will want to hear about it.

Choose an authority within the company, or someone whom the press release directly affects. This could be an executive, a project leader, or a stakeholder. The more important the individual, the more weight the quote will have to reporters and their readers.

Personal and pertinent quotes add a human touch to your release

4. Don’t Leave Any Loose Ends

Once a journalist opens the press release, you don’t want to lose him or her with a lack of relevant details. A reporter should never have to ask “What does this company do?” If he or she is confused, the journalist will most likely move on to the next press release in their inbox.

Explain about your company, and include a link to your company’s home page. Include titles of the people you cite, whether it’s a CEO, CFO, or another title that isn’t an alphabet soup combination. If you use statistics or data, link to the appropriate source material.

5. Don’t Make Your Press Release Too Long

Don’t overwhelm your reader with too much information. So, exactly how long should a press release be? The sweet spot is right between 300 and 500 words. Any more, and you’d be wasting space. This isn’t an essay or novella, and should be as short and sweet as possible while relaying all relevant details.

Use whitespace as much as possible — long paragraphs look and feel overwhelming to readers. Use bulleted lists to make the information easy to digest.

View your press release more like bait — if you want the fish to bite, it should not be too big to swallow.

6. Use Visual Content

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than it does text. Use that to your advantage in your press release. Visuals capture a reader’s attention, and allow people to more easily digest information.

Tell your story as visually as possible. Include infographics with key statistics and data, photos of your product, or a video demonstration. This adds value to your press release, and could make the difference in a journalist choosing to cover your story over another.

7. Make the Last Paragraph Count

By the end of your press release, you have likely provided all the essential information. Don’t overload the final paragraph with nonessential or redundant details.

Instead, add some details. This might be the prime place to explain some of the creative background of the project or announcement. You might also describe any future significance this could have for the industry.

Make it interesting, but keep it brief. End on a high note.

8. Include a Clear Call-to-Action

Don’t let your press release just hang in the air. Wrap it up with a clear call-to-action that guides the journalist or blogger to take the next step.

Don’t overdo it. Only use one CTA per press release. For instance, if your press release is about a product launch, you could use:

Sign up now to receive news about product updates

or…

Request a Demo (Supplies are Limited)

Your CTA needs an action word (i.e., sign up or view) that prompts the reader to take the next desired step. Use language that creates urgency, such as Today or Limited Supply. Decide what action you want your readers to take, and craft a CTA that will nudge them in that direction.

9. Reach Out to Specific Journalists

Resist the urge to send your press release to every journalist whose contact information you can find. Instead, approach your distribution methodically. Once you decide what publications you want to reach out to, do your research to find who is relevant to your industry.

Find out which bloggers and journalists your audience follows and reads. Read their past articles. Get to know them through their profiles. When you reach out, add a personal touch that sets you apart from the mountain of other press releases they receive.

10. Use Online Distribution Services to Give You a Leg Up

Press release distribution services can go a long way in getting the right eyes on your announcement. Here are few distribution services you might consider:

• PR Newswire
• Business Wire
• PRWeb
• eReleases
• 1888PressRelease
• PR.com

Tip: Don’t schedule your press release to be published on the hour (such as exactly at 1 pm or 3 pm). Because so many people publish at those times, your press release could be drowned out in a sea of other releases.

An Example of a Press Release Done Right

Want to see these best practices in action? Here’s an example of a press release we issued for an actual client.

A Few Points to Remember…

• Keep your headline short (less than 100 words), with action verbs that motivate your reader to open and read your press release.
• Get to the point quickly within your first paragraph, and answer all those W questions.
• The ideal press release length is between 300-500 words.
• Reach out only to those journalists and bloggers who are relevant to your industry.

Press releases are alive and well in 2017 — and when used correctly, can be a huge boon to your business. Make the most of each press release by applying these press release best practices.

 

Reading time: 2 ½ minutes

More executives today are involving themselves in the purchase process of long-cycle, large, or complex sales.

Some sellers are unnerved by this development because selling to top executives isn’t something they are trained to do.

There is definitely a knack to selling CEO’s effectively. It requires a healthy dose of confidence along with an ability to relate on a high, trusted level with the executive.

I cut my teeth (my twenties) on selling to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies. Made a lot of mistakes! Eventually, I caught on and made several home run sales.

In my experience, the best results occur when you keep in mind these twelve tips:

12 Tips to Sell Any C-Suite Executive In Any Industry, Anywhere

1. Link the purchase to one or more strategic issues. To do this you must build trust and relate on their level, communicating with clarity, conciseness and confidence.
2. Quantify the positive difference your product or service will make on their desired outcomes. The higher up you go – the more your messaging must speak to value.
3. Do your homework. Know the business, know the players and know the issues in their industry.
4. Don’t sound like a typical “salesman” by using worn-out phrases such as: I’d like to meet you and tell you about our… We’ve been in business for fifty years… Our quality is second to none… I’m just following up or… Tell me about your business.
5. Speak their language, use their verbiage and adopt their terms.
6. Ask intelligent questions if you expect to earn their respect. The higher you go the more you must be strategic with your questions.
7. When, not if the executive hits you with a rogue wave objection, be prepared with effective answers or questions to handle their resistance. CEO’s can be brusque and using excuses like they have no budget, or it’s the wrong timing, are common.
8. Use a combination of phone calls and emails to set appointments. Send emails or place your phone calls at the times of highest probability of getting through: early mornings before 7 a.m., after 3 p.m. on Friday, early morning on Saturdays, and five minutes before or after normal business hours.
9. Write short, powerful emails and include the call to action in the first sentence.
10. Leave powerful, brief (under 30 seconds) voicemail messages. Focus on one or two quick reasons why they should invest the time to speak with you. Do NOT sell your product; sell them on why they will benefit from a meeting.
11. Be prepared to communicate with multiple phone messages and emails. Take a long-term view and spread out messaging over five to seven day intervals, keepin gin mind the client’s circumstances.
12. Ask for at least eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-five minutes, never under ten minutes and never ask for an hour. Less than ten minutes is considered unrealistic, and thirty minutes or more may be considered too long.

Bonus Territory! Be certain the purchase decision for your product or services is made at the executive level, and not at a mid-level management position. Ask yourself: Does the purchase involve a sizeable amount of money? Is it a strategic issue or problem for the business? Does this require a significant capital expenditure? Does this purchase involve a fundamental change in how they operate or compete? If the answer is “yes” then a C-suite executive will likely influence or make the final decision entirely – set your aim high and don’t be delegated to lower levels too easily.

There is a change afoot in the way the world works.

In 2014, FastCompany speculated whether 50% of the workforce will be working remotely in some way by 2020. Last year, a Gallup survey found that 43% of Americans had worked remotely at some time, up from 39% in 2012.

Not 50% yet, but it’s not impossible to think that FastCompany’s speculation will bear out.

A virtual office was a radical idea until a few years ago. Today, no one will bat an eye if you tell them that your business employs remote workers.

For creative agencies, in particular, hiring remote workers makes a lot of sense. Without the limitations of physical locations, agencies can hire the best creative people for the job.

The lower office rent is, of course, an added bonus.

How exactly do you hire remote creative workers? What tools and strategies should you use to ensure a smoother hiring process? Once hired, how do you manage and motivate your creatives?

I’ll answer all of these questions, and more below.

Why Hire Remote Workers?

Some of the benefits of hiring remote creative workers are obvious enough:

• Lower rent: For many agencies, rent is one of the biggest line item expenses. The more remote workers you have, the lower this expense.
• Lower office expenses: Besides rent, you also have to pay for furniture, office equipment, internet and electricity. A virtual office cuts these expenses almost completely.
• Save commute time: Shorter commutes = happier employees. And as Fortune points out, happier employees = more productive employees.
• Cheaper workers: A location independent agency can hire employees from cities with a lower cost of living. This way, they can save on salaries while still paying their team competitively.

However, these are rather superficial reasons to hire remote people, especially in the agency context. Lower office expenses are nice to have, but unless you have a very large company, it won’t make a dramatic impact on your business.

For creative agencies and startups, there are two much more important reasons to hire remote workers:

• Access to better talent: Creative agencies and startups live and die by the quality of talent they can attract. And an increasingly larger share of the world’s best creative talent prefers to work remotely.
• Ability to scale (or shrink): Agency work is often erratic, especially if you do a lot of project-based work. Hiring a remote team gives you the ability to scale or shrink as needed..

I can’t underscore the importance of being able to hire better talent. There is no dearth of creative talent in the world. It’s just that in the internet age, this talent can and wants to work for itself, on its own terms.

Remote work is the only way any agency or startup can tap into this talent, regardless of its size or location. As Behance founder Scott Belsky notes:

“In the new era of “distributed creative production,” top talent will be able to work on their own terms. The companies (and clients) that welcome this future will benefit from better creative output.”

There’s also the fact that hiring remote workers gives you the freedom to mold your business the way you see fit. You can go lean and hire only key execs and managers, leaving the actual creative work to your remote team.

This flexibility allows you to respond to market needs much faster. Instead of lugging around a large in-house team, you can adopt a modular approach, adding/removing creative skills as necessary. Even large agencies like DDB have started adopting this approach.

Lower expenses, better talent, more flexibility. Clearly, there’s a lot to gain by hiring remotely.

But how exactly do you hire talented remote workers?

Let’s find out.

How to Hire Remote Creative Workers

First step: figure out whether you even need to hire new people or if you just need better management of your existing resources.

If you do need to hire new people, you’ll find that this is one of the biggest challenges in shifting to a remote model. You have to find, evaluate and onboard new people often without even meeting them face to face. This is a source of a great deal of apprehension for many businesses.

I’ll show you a proven process for hiring remote workers below.

Freelancers vs. Full-Time Employees

One of the first issues you’ll have to contend with in the remote hiring process is choosing between freelancers and full-time employees.

There is no single solution to this issue; every business has different needs. However, a few guidelines can help you choose better:

Agencies

Freelancers are a part and parcel of most agency rosters. In fact, one creative agency survey in 2015 found that 80% of agencies were employing freelancers.

If you’re running an agency, hiring freelancers makes sense if you:

• Need a specialized skill for a one-off project: For instance, if you don’t routinely create videos, you don’t have to hire a full-time video editor. In the above survey, 34% of agencies said this was their no. 1 reason for hiring freelancers.
• Don’t have enough work to justify the position: This is particularly true if you do a lot of project work and don’t have enough billable hours.
• Need access to talent quickly without going through the time-consuming hiring/training process.
• Need to scale an easy, repetitive task such as data entry.
• Need flexible availability for “always on” projects.

Think of freelancers as “mercenaries”. They come in when you need them, do the job and leave when the project is over.

Any time you find using a freelancer’s services for more than 20-30 hours/week regularly, you’d do better to have someone full-time.

Also, consider the amount of training any freelance hire will require. Any investment in training is essentially “wasted” on a freelancer if they work on a short, one-off project. If the training requirements are excessive, it’s better to invest in a full-time employee.

Startups

Hiring freelancers is trickier for startups and small businesses. While there are situations where you’ll need one-off talent – such as creating a logo – startup needs are usually better served by full-time employees.

Why?

Simple: freelancers and startups have different motivations.

As Buffer’s founder Joel Gascoigne puts it:

“As a startup, your goal is to reach product/market fit…the ideal approach for creating a successful startup is to put it out there as soon as possible and then iterate from there based on the new information that comes from usage and from doing customer development”

You can’t make rapid iterations if you have to reach out to your freelancer and ensure his availability every time you have a new idea.

That said, there are some situations where a startup will want to hire freelancers:

• Creative work where you don’t have the budget or the volume to justify hiring someone full-time.
• Manual, repetitive tasks that are better outsourced or offshored to cheaper workers.
• One-off tasks where you need access to top-tier talent without having to hire them full-time.

For most other cases, you’ll do better hiring someone full-time. This is particularly true for your startup’s core functions (such as product or operations).

Once you’ve figured out whether you want to hire a freelancer or a full-time creative worker, head on to the next section.

Identify What Makes a Good Remote Worker

It takes a special kind of person to make a successful remote worker. I’ve seen far too many great in-house employees struggle with responsibility and deadlines when shifted to remote work.

Here’s what Bonnie Morris of CompanyB says:

“People who are successful at virtual work are generally responsible self-starters who aren’t distracted during the day. The people I collaborate with don’t necessarily want or need a 9-6 structure to do their work”

This should be your template for finding good remote workers: self-starters who can combat distractions and deliver on deadlines.

Beyond this, there are a few key qualities you should look for in remote hires:

• Communication skills: Communication skills are particularly important when you’re doing remote work. Clear written (over email and chat) and oral communication (over Skype/video) is a must. Since written communication can come across as terse, look for people who have a naturally friendly writing style.
• Ability to self-manage: Since they’ll be working without supervision, it’s crucial that your remote workers know how to manage themselves. They should be able to set their own priorities and meet deadlines.
• Motivated to find work themselves: Ideal remote workers are able to find something meaningful to work on even if they don’t have a task list.

Essentially, you’re looking for people who have some background in being independent workers. Freelancers, people with a startup background and former entrepreneurs make for great remote workers.

In addition, look for people who have some form of social life and support system outside of work. It’s not unusual for loneliness to creep in when you don’t have the social system of office colleagues. Sure, regular video chats help, but it’s not an adequate replacement for face to face interaction with another human being.

Finally – and I can’t underscore its importance – look for people who align with your business’ values. This is hard to define but it will have a marked effect on the success of your remote hires.

Where to Find Remote Workers

While your standard job portals will happily let you post an ad for a remote position, you’ll get better results if you target some more unconventional platforms, such as:

• Remote job boards: There’s a whole range of job boards for remote workers – FlexJobs, WeWorkRemotely, SkipTheDrive, VirtualVocations, Dribble Jobs (pick “remote/anywhere”), RemoteOK, JobEspresso and Outsourcely are some popular options. Keep in mind that most of these job boards focus on tech positions, though you can find a number of designers on them as well.
• Remote work newsletters: These are newsletters that go out to people looking for remote jobs. Top among these: JobScribe, Remotive and WeWorkRemotely’s email newsletters.
• Your network: This should be the first place when you start your search. Tap into the network of your clients, existing employees, partners and social followers.
• Your blog and email newsletters: If you have a blog or email newsletter, make sure to advertise your open positions on them. I’ll show you examples of such posts below.
• Your website: Place a “we’re hiring” link prominently on your site. Since you have complete freedom here, you can make your business look more attractive to prospective employees.
• HackerNews and Reddit hiring threads: HackerNews has a monthly “Who is Hiring?” thread that’s grown quite popular for tech roles. Reddit’s /r/startups, /r/forhire, /r/designjobs, and /r/telecommuting are good subreddits for finding remote workers as well.

Some of these platforms are paid, but many are free. There is certainly some hustle involved in finding good remote workers; it’s not as simple as placing an ad on Monster and queuing up interviews.

The question now is: how do you write a remote job ad that actually gets people interested?

How to Write a Stellar Remote Job Ad

Writing an ad for a remote role is a different beast than writing a conventional job ad. Given the nature of talent you need – independent self-starters who agree with your values – you’ll want to create an ad that highlights your strengths and weeds out poor candidates.

There is certainly some soul searching required to write such an ad. Here are some guidelines you should follow:

Understand What the Job Involves

This is crucial – unless you know what the job truly involves, you can’t really create an attractive job post. Failure to do this results in generic job ads that get you generic candidates.

How exactly do you overcome this?

Basecamp’s Jason Fried recommends hiring “internally” for the position first:

“When it comes to an all-new position at the company, we like to try to do it first with the people we have so we really understand the work.”

Essentially, get someone from your company to fill the role for a week or so. List down everything this person needs to do to be successful in that role.

This should form the base of your job description. Be as detailed as you need to be. It’s far better to receive 1 relevant application than 100 irrelevant ones.

Create a ‘Culture Deck’

Your culture or “values” deck is a simple document highlighting your business’ values, culture and beliefs.

You’ll want to create this deck before you start the job posting process to:

• Better understand your own values, and
• Better communicate your values to potential hires.

Here’s an example of a value deck from Buffer:

Value alignment is critical for the success of your remote workers. Highlight these values in your job description.

Write a Solid Ad

A strong remote job tells prospective candidates three things

• What the job requires and pays (including non-monetary rewards)
• What kind of candidates should apply
• What kind of candidates should

s this ad for a designer from SilverOrange. It tells applicants exactly what’s required of them and what they should know before applying:

A common application process follows three steps:

• A job ad on a relevant job board.
• A landing page describing the job.
• An application form

For example, this ad from X-Team links to X-Team’s landing page:

The landing page has quotes from existing employees, plenty of visuals, a video and a long FAQ.

The landing page includes a form where candidates can enter their details and submit the application.

This tiered approach helps communicate your business’ values while still weeding out candidates.

Additionally, the landing page can serve as a “we’re hiring” page as well.

If you’re a startup or small agency, you have the added challenge of communicating your “why” – why should a candidate work with you and not a bigger company?According to Groove’s Alex Turnbull, one way startups can compete against bigger competitors is to highlight its impact, autonomy and culture.

Use appropriate language in your job ad to highlight these aspects. Tell candidates how they’ll be working on important problems and leading projects instead of being yet another cog in the wheel. Show them how you work and give autonomy to all employees.

Groove’s “We’re Hiring” page is a good example of communicating these values and perks clearly.

How to Manage Applications

Once your job ad is up, you’ll have applications streaming in. This can quickly become overwhelming. It’s helpful to have a system in place to manage and evaluate candidates quickly.

Here’s a system that works well:

• Create a Trello board visible to every stakeholder in your company. Use it to manage all applications.
• Use Google Forms to accept applications. Alternatively, use a specific email address (such as “jobs@yourcompany.com”) for all applications.
• Create automated Trello cards from Google Forms responses using Zapier. If you’re using email, use this IFTTT recipe to create Trello cards.

Once a candidate’s resume and portfolio pass initial screening, start an initial video interview. This is mostly to get to know the candidate better.

The process after this will vary from business to business, but a common step is to give the candidate a test task.

Once the test task is successful, invite the candidate for an in-depth interview, preferably with multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making.

After this, it’s a good idea to get the finalist(s) to meet with the whole team via video conferencing. This will help both the candidate and your existing team get to know each other better.

Given the context – remote work – this e-meet can be vital to your success.

When you find the right candidate, send over a job offer and cue the celebratory drinks.

For further reading, check out Remote.co’s roundup of actual hiring processes used by real businesses.

How to Manage and Retain Remote Workers

Hiring remote workers is hard, but managing and keeping them happy is often harder.

If you’ve done your homework and focused on hiring motivated self-starters, your management problems will be cut in half.

Nevertheless, a few simple steps will go a long way in making managing remote workers easier:

Establish Communication Protocols Early

Since communication is one of the biggest bottlenecks in remote creative work, it’s important to set expectations and protocols early.

SingleGrain’s Eric Siu uses a tiered system for communicating issues based on their urgency:

“ Red Alert: Such as an angry client about to cancel, big mistake, someone’s hurt. Use HipChat Video, Phone Call, or Google Hangout to get an immediate answer

Yellow Alert: Such as difficult question you can’t answer, need help hitting a deadline, request for something we can’t do. Use HipChat or text message to get an answer within the next couple of hours.

Green Alert: General questions, ideas, project updates. Use Trello or email to get an answer within the next day or two”

This helps set expectations and gives new hires a process for dealing with problems.

Use the Right Tools to Collaborate and Communicate

Collaboration and communication tools are critical for remote work. At the very least, you should have the following:

• Chat:
• Video chat:
• Daily meetings:
• Project management:

If you have team members from different nationalities and backgrounds (not uncommon in remote creative teams), try to encourage more visual communication. This can remove some of the uncertainty from written communication. Emojis, GIFs – anything that helps communicate thoughts and feelings without the barriers of words will help.

Create an Internal Wiki

Who should a new hire contact in case of a problem? What is the accepted workflow to complete a task? What is the process for managing a new project from scratch?

Mapping out all these processes will make it much, much easier to onboard new hires. A comprehensive internal wiki can be instrumental in a smooth transition for remote creatives.

Dropbox’s Paper is a solid tool for managing this documentation, especially for creative work. Alternatives include Confluence and Papyrs. Or you could simply create a shared Google Docs document.

Keep Your Remote Team Motivated

While remote work saves you money and gets you access to better talent, it often comes ats the cost of team morale and collaboration.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to keeping a remote team motivated. Different approaches work for different businesses.

That said, a few ideas you can try are:

• Weekly “all hands” meetings to keep everyone updated.
• Informal social sessions over video to promote teamwork and bonding.
• Annual or biannual “all hands” vacations. This is a regular feature of most remote companies like Buffer and Zapier. Use the money saved over from your office budget for this.
• Avoid micromanagement. Remote workers choose to work remotely because they value autonomy. When you micromanage, you remove this benefit.

Your Key Takeaways

Hiring, managing and retaining remote workers is challenging but also incredibly rewarding. What exact process you use will depend on your business and its requirements.

For most agencies and startups, however, a hiring process that focuses on finding independent workers who value the same things as your business will work.

Before you leave, here are your top takeaways from this post:

• Hiring remote workers saves you money and gives you access to better talent.
• Hire freelancers for short-term or one-off projects. For anything regular or long-term, hire full-time employees instead.
• Successful remote workers are motivated self-starters, often with a freelance or startup background.
• Understand your job requirements clearly before you start writing your remote job ad.
• Emphasize your business’ values and impact in your job application to attract better talent.
• Use Trello to manage job applications.
• Use chat and creative project management tools to manage your remote teams.
• Keep your remote team motivated with regular video chats and biannual/annual vacations.

NYT Bestselling Author and top Marketing Consultant Chris Brogan reveals his unusual (and wildly effective) approach to email marketing.

When it comes to email marketing, Chris Brogan literally owns a day of the week.

The New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker and marketing consultant for worldwide brands including Coca Cola, IBM, Google, Disney and countless others has a Sunday email newsletter that is the stuff of digital legend.

And what’s most fascinating is that Brogan’s approach to email marketing isn’t one many would consider emulating, let alone on the scale he does each week. Also, his views on the size of one’s email list seem to go against what many consider the Holy Grail of email marketing – the bigger the list, the better the results.

At the same time, Brogan is a NYT Bestselling author of nine books, one of the most sought-after marketing and social media speakers in the world and has a client list that reads like a who’s-who of the biggest brands and companies on the planet.

So he’s obviously got something figured out when it comes to email marketing.

Email Marketing Done Differently

“What would it be like to sit down and talk over coffee with a trusted ally, who knew enough to help you make the next move, and who could help you see a better path to your own success?” Brogan asks on his Sunday newsletter signup page. “It would be a LOT like my newsletter.

“Unlike most every newsletter in the world, you can simply just hit reply to talk with me. I’m there. Not some team of people. Me. Chris Brogan. Test it out. Lots of people do. And yep, I write back.”

(Podcast: Chris Brogan talks Email Marketing and Audience Engagement.)

Brogan told me on a recent podcast that he does indeed write back to the tune of 400-600 emails each and every Sunday.

“Well, if you give a minute to each of 600 emails, that’s 10 hours, and that’s a lot of time, right?” he asks. “You’re like ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t even fathom that.’ But the truth is, every Sunday is a lot of emails, and then every other day is a lot fewer emails.

“And you can get a conversation back and forth really quick with one or two responses per human being that are personable and directly to them, and make people see and feel that they’re heard and that they’re out there and that what they’ve said, you know, matters.”

Despite all the tools and technology that make it easier than ever to scale our communication to reach tens of thousands of people at once, Brogan’s personal touch (one you can also see others like Gary Vaynerchuk practicing daily) and audience engagement sets him apart.

Small + Engaged > Large + Disengaged

One other area of email marketing where Brogan breaks from the mainstream is in the size of his email list.

“I mean, my email is just around 32,000 people right now,” he says. “We do a lot of paring all the time. So I could have one of those fat lists that people boast about, with 200,000 people, but where only 300 people actually open the emails.”

The reason, Brogan says, is that he wants a dynamic, responsive and actionable audience on the other end of his emails.

“You know, my idea was that my email list … it’s somewhat personal, and it’s somewhat business,” he says. “Everything about my email newsletter is antithetical, meaning the opposite of most of what everyone else does. It’s not HTML. It doesn’t have pretty design. It does not have tons of links to tons of things.

“And this is so weird … it looks like it comes from a human being.”

Brogan’s efforts to humanize and simplify his email marketing not only results in higher open rates and engagement – it also helps his audience get to know, like and trust him as well.

“And in my newsletter, I do this other weird thing that no one ever does,” he continues. “My newsletter doesn’t come from DoNotReply@PleaseGodDontWriteBackToMe.com. It comes from a real email address. And you can hit reply, and a real me replies to you, not some staff, because that would be weird.

“People test it all the time. People just like write back, ‘hi,’ like they’re talking to a robot. And so I make fun of them.

“And (in my reply) I’m like, ‘Hi, Patricia. Two letters, like, not even a period? Like, you couldn’t even capitalize the H?’ And I’ll tease them, and that always gets a response.

“People will say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were really real.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, why would I keep asking you every week to reply to me?’

(Listen: Chris Brogan talks Email Marketing and Audience Engagement.)

Email Marketing – Mastered

For Brogan, authenticity, value and a personal touch are the hallmark of successful email marketing.

They’re also a refreshingly human approach in a digital world filled with a virtual firehose of fast-moving, impersonal and often irrelevant marketing messages gumming up your inbox and social media feeds on a daily basis.

Take it from Chris Brogan: If you want to be more successful, be more human in how you market to and engage with your target audience.

It’s really that simple, and it’s something Brogan does better than most.

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Henny Penny would have you believe that the sky is falling, that the end is near. She would most definitely have you believe that your world is coming to end.

Henny Penny will tell you that the balance of power in selling has shifted, that the buyer is now completely in control, and that you have no choice as to whether or not you are commoditized. The doom-saying chicken doesn’t believe that anyone can create value because she cannot, refusing to see or hear anything to the contrary.

Henny Penny would have you believe—like she does—that because some roles are going to be automated, that all roles will be automated. Hence, you have no place in a future that has no place for you. This disturbed bird wants you to share in her fear. She wants you to be paranoid and to overact with her.

According to said Hen:

• The cold call is dead.
• The field sales force is dead.
• Traditional prospecting is dead.
• Opportunity creation is dead.
• Closing is dead.
• Selling is dead. And soon, you too will be relegated to the ash heap of history.

This frightened, feathered fowl will squawk about this trend and that trend, offering you evidence that what she foretells is true and unavoidable, leaving out the evidence and information that would suggest that her reading is skewed and inaccurate.

The problem with large, loud Chicken Littles that run around making noise about the end of the world is that they are only speaking of their own experience. Because an acorn fell from a tree and hit them on the head, they believe that their experience is shared universally by one and all. In the end, all who followed Henny Penny end up being eaten by a fox.

Pay attention to what is going on around you. Don’t ignore trends that require you to change and grow. But while you are doing so, don’t listen to those who would feed you their fears.

The post The Sky Is Falling! appeared first on The Sales Blog.

I believe deeply in the value of making data accessible.

In service of that belief, there are few things that bring me as much joy as visualizing data (smart segmentation comes close). There is something magical about taking the tons and tons of complexity that lurks in our data, being able to find the core essence, and then illustrate that simply. The result then is both a mind and heart connection that drives action with a sense of urgency. #winning

While I am partial to the simplest of visualizations in a business data context, I love a simple Bar Chart just as much as a Chord or Fisher-Yates Shuffle. As we have all learned, tools matter a lot less than what we do with the tool. :)

In this post I want to inspire you to think differently. I’ve curated sixteen extremely diverse visualization examples to do that. By design none of them from the world of digital analytics, though I’ll stay connected to that world from a how could you use this idea perspective. My primary goal is to expand your horizon so that we can peek over and see new possibilities.

To spark your curiosity, the visuals I’ve worked hard to find for you cover the US debt, European politics, lynching and slavery, pandemics, movies, gun control, drugs and health, the Chinese economy, and where we spend our lives (definitely review this one!).

The sixteen examples neatly fall into nine strategies I hope you’ll cultivate in your analytics practice as you create data visualizations:

This post has quite a bit of depth, and loads for you to explore, reflect and internalize. It will take a few visits to absorb all the lessons. In as much, my recommendation is to read one section per day. Take time to really understand what’s going on, go to the site, play, look at the higher resolution versions (click on the images), make notes of what you’ll do for the first time or change about what you already do. Most importantly, practice taking action. Then, come back, read the next one and take action. I promise, the rewards will be rich.

Let’s go make you an even more effective influencer when it comes to data!

Strategy 1: The Simplicity Obsession

One of the reasons so many visuals are so very complex is that the Analyst/Creator is trying to demonstrate how clever they are. Sadly in the process of demonstrating aforementioned cleverness, the visuals ends up being incredibly complex crammed with every little bit of amazesomeness they  are trying to demonstrate…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Creator worked very hard, and, I sincerely mean this, they are very clever.

The problem is that the essence of what they want to communicate is probably only known to them, or to any person willing to take the time to first learn the job of the analyst, dig into the data themselves, create this picture and then understand what is being said.

It breaks my heart.

Go on. Scroll back up. See if you can understand what is being said.

In my humble opinion there is an additional subtle problem. The Creator was asked to plot the data, or perhaps share the insights, but it is unclear whose job it was to answer this simple question at the end: So What?

When you start with that as your destination, so what, as the creator of any visualization you are going to ask for a lot more context, you are going to make sure the visual is in service of the answer, you'll make sure your cleverness is focused on the outcome the data has to serve.

Please, please, please keep that in mind.

The complicated thing above is trying to highlight an important trend, is missing the context, and is simply not as dramatic as the reality of it actually is!

Here's a better visual showing the National Debt Burden, with four additional elements of context…

(Source)

Did you get what the point was in zero seconds?

Are you a whale-load more scared as you contemplate the red and the green?

Are you freaked out that if there is one thing both political parties in the US seem to be good at it is the red (!)?

That is what a good data visual does.

For the few of you that are a part of the team I lead, in addition to creating a visual for your analysis that is simple and effective, you know that my expectation is that you’ll come with recommendations on what to do.

To demonstrate that there are many paths to JesusKrishnaAllah… Here is another simple view of the debt, with a different x-axis, a stretched out y-axis, along with a different set of context…

(Source: CBO)

Different questions, different arguments, different outcomes. But, you'll get to them much, much, much faster than the first visual.

I can’t stress this enough: Don't try to earn your performance review from the client/audience. Earn it from your boss. Tell your boss how hard you worked, show her how clever you are, earn her praise. Spare your client/audience – show them the simplest manifestation of your brilliant insight, with the NACR criteria applied.

(For more on using NACR to identify out-of-sights, see TMAI #66.)

Strategy 2: If Complex, Focus!

You are going to see my deep bias for simplicity for the rest of this post (or in the 745,540 words written on this blog thus far). I do not want to come across as a simplicity snob.

Deployed well, there are instances where I love complexity.

I thought this was exceptionally well done…

(Source: Michael Paukner  |  His Flickr collection)
(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

While it is a little difficult to follow all the arrows back to the original country, the shape of the graphic is an homage to the visual's topic. The background color could not have been more prefect. And, notice there is just the perfect amount of information about every tree.

There are other more subtle things to admire. I love, love, love that Michael put the US on the right. When we “trip up” our audiences like this,  it gives them a pause and forces them to look at all the other information more carefully.

There is of course data itself that gives you many pauses. Notice the youngest tree in the graphic is older than Jesus Christ. Or, that we should all be so glad that the American West was settled last (by then we were more appreciative of nature as humans).

I am fine with complexity, if the essential makes it through. I am fine with complexity, if someone who’ll spend 1/100th of the time on the visual compared to you get’s it.

Strategy 3: Venn Diagrams FTW!

I love Venn diagrams. Ok, strictly speaking Euler. But, let's not get pedantic.

I've used them to simplify the presentation of complex topics. Ex: Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges

I am only slightly kidding but one of humanity’s most complex undertaking is to understand what the heck Europe is. One end's up ruing even asking, because you hear back EU, EEA, Euro Zone, Schengen, EFTA, and more.

I felt Bloomberg did a wonderful job with, what looks like an amoeba-inspired, Euler diagram…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

The color schemes are contrasted enough to allow you to follow along nicely.

The context from the sizes of the economy is a nice touch. (This is embarrassing but I was surprised how big Italy is, and how small Sweden is.)

The clusters of countries next to each other, for the sake of cleaner lines, all by itself has a built-in message. Cyprus and Ireland. UK, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. So on and so forth.

Overall, this is a topic that has been tackled numerous times, with painful to see results. Bloomberg managed to make it as simple as possible, with valuable built-in context.

Staying in the same geographic area, and my Euler-love, here's another fantastic visualization of often a very complicated answer: What is each political party in the UK promising?

I adore this as the answer…

(Source: Economist)
(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Would you have believed that the totally out there UKIP would have something on common with Labour? Or that Labour is completely alone in the minimum wage issue?

The visual makes it easier to understand what we might be most interested in from the thousands of pages that form each party’s manifesto. You, the audience, is now empowered to agree more passionately with your party or feel the uncomfortable squirming that comes with realizing what your party is solving for. Both. Fantastic. Outcomes.

Clearly this is a political picture, and someone has to decide what to include and what to exclude because the parties promise the Earth, Moon and the Andromeda galaxy. But that is the life of an Analyst… They have to make tough choices.

Two hopes.

So much to do, so simply, and so little time!

Strategy 4: Interactivity With Insightful End-Points.

There is a common belief that your company’s decision makers would use data more if they could explore it – more efficiently, deeper, etc. This is almost never true, primarily due to the problem outlined in the orange and blue triangles that outline skill/competency and insights/action.

Hence, in a business context I rarely advocate for initiatives whose only purpose is to allow the broad collection of company employees to go on random fishing expeditions.

Exploratory environments can be useful, especially when they are 1. sharply focused 2. have an ability to eliminate dead end-points and 3. allow for smart elements like modeling. Let’s look at the first two below and the third one in the following example.

Here’s a valuable dataset from the Equal Justice Initiative on Lynchings in America.

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Even at a glance the data is useful, along multiple dimensions.

In this case exploration of the data makes it even more valuable. You hover your mouse over your area of interest, and click…

You get your data drill-down, but what’s of most impactful is that you also get an end-point with a valuable insight providing meaning to the data.

In this case the number 29 for Jefferson County would be an insufficiently valuable end-point. The inclusion of Elizabeth Lawrence’s story on the other hand provides meaning. That is what gives the exploration a purposeful end-point.

You can now zoom out, move on to exploring other areas, continuing to get enriched value from the data.

In a business context when you are working with interactive data visualizations, ask this very valuable question: In a sea of data, whose job is it to include a logical end-point with an insight of value?

Surely, your terabytes of Google Analytics data dumped into a Tableau exploratory thingamagigy won’t magically throw them out there.

Surely, lay business decision makers, even senior ones, won’t have all the context they need to have to convert thingamagigy fishing expeditions, sorry, explorations, into the brilliance you feel the data contains.

Interactive visualization are great, only when packaged with insights for actions at logical end-points in exploration. Tweet that.

[SIDEBAR]
This is a difficult example to share because of the deeply emotional content it contains. But, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Beyond the value of the lessons from the visualizations, I encourage you to explore rest of the EJI website. At the very minimum please consider spending five minutes listening to the story of John Hartfield told by Tarabu Kirkland, and six minutes on the story of Thomas Miles Sr told by Shirah Dedman. Thank you.
[/SIDEBAR]

Bonus: Another insightful visualization on this topic is at pudding.cool, The Shape of Slavery…

A bit more complex of a visualization, a function of the depth of data populated.

Follow the story of Louisiana as you reflect on the data.

Lots of data visualization, storytelling and life lessons in this data set as well.

Strategy 5: What-if Analysis Models.

Building on the thought above, if you create exploratory environments it can be exceedingly accretive to decision-making if we build in what-if type models. Rather than stopping at an end-point, provide an option of doing some type of sensitivity analysis with the goal of prodding the audience to take action.

For example… Let’s say they end up looking at Visitors, Conversion Rates, and Revenue. You can easily imagine how you want someone to explore that data by traffic sources or campaigns or geo or myriad valuable dimensions. You can create an environment where they press buttons to get that data.

Necessary, but not sufficient.

Why not build in a model where the decision maker can change Conversion Rates, to see the impact on Revenue? Move it from 1% to 1.5% to 8%. See what happens by traffic sources. Then, make a smarter decision.

Or, empower them to play with discounting strategies. What happens if they offer a 5%, 10% or 18% discount? Show impact on Revenue and Profit.

Even without bundling insights into your prepackaged environment, the what-if models allow your decision makers to play with scenarios, understand impact and make smarter decisions about what to do.

That’s the key. Don’t make visualizations with dead ends.

Here’s a great example of that from Mosaic. The visualization is about outpacing pandemics.

Quoting them: Vaccines are an essential weapon in fighting disease outbreaks. But how does the time taken to develop vaccines compare to the speed and frequency of outbreaks? And how can we do it better?

This is the simple view that greets you, outbreaks from 1890 to 2016 with vaccine development during that same time…

Each element is clickable.

As an illustration, the longest bar is Typhoid fever and the smallest, mercifully, is Measles. For each bar, click on Measles, you’ll see the first big outbreak (1917, 3,000 deaths) and the last (1989, 123 deaths). It is really easy to explore the data.

What I love is the sensitivity analysis.

Click on the yellow dot, and you’ll see that in action. First, you see what actually happened…

Simple exploration. Good reporting. Easy to understand.

The buttons with the number of weeks represent what I wanted to highlight here. Click on them, and it demonstrates what the outcome would have been if action was taken earlier.

I choose 22 weeks…

Even if the vaccine had been introduced after 22 weeks, a long time, we could have saved 1,628 lives!

The team also built in some hypothetical scenarios to help inform decision-making.

You can play with the implications of a fast-moving flu-like pandemic. It would have grievous overall impact, 30 mil deaths in 12 months.

But, what if we restrict 50% of the travel since we don’t have a vaccine yet. That would have an impact…

Not quite as material as one might imagine, but it slows things down.

What if a vaccine was introduced 22 weeks in?

Insanely helpful. 17 mil lives saved.

This type of modeling is rarer than seeing a rhino in the Ngorongoro crater. (We were there last week, you should go, it is pretty awesome.)

As an analyst, as a Big Data person, as a Data Scientist, pouring the right data on humanity is only marginally effective. In this example, in others above, I hope you’ll see the type of additional creativity we can bring to our work to power smarter decision-making. Starting with no dead end-points.

Strategy 6: Turbocharging Data Visuals with Storytelling.

You know this. Even if data is shared in a simple environment, most people are unable to internalize it. As has been hinted in most examples today, the problem is that the Analyst’s brain has not been packaged with the data.

The Global Gender Gap Report is a fabulous example how to solve this problem. The team nor only shares in a simple and beautiful environment, they also include the story they want to tell in that same environment. The output is not the reporting, the output are the conclusions from the Analyst’s brain.

It is very difficult for me to show the beauty of what they have done in static screenshots. You just have to go there and scroll.

Explore how the initial trend in the gender gap morphs into multiple visualizations, note the subtle but important emphasis on trends, and, most importantly, feel joy from how the story is presented with the data (text on the right).

The website and visualization will work on your mobile device (yea!), but it is best admired on the largest screen you can find.

To tempt you, let me just contrast the gender gap performance of the United States (precipitous decline in the last two years!) with… with… inspired by FLOTUS, the 10 year performance of Slovenia…

Play with the histogram and scatterplot options.

Go back and forth a few times (yes, gender parity is an issue I care deeply about), make sure you absorb the many nuances both in the story (why the above stinky performance by the US?) and the way the text (story) and the visualization (data) play together.

When you send data out, is it bundled with a piece of your brain?

Remember, you’ll be the last person with the intelligence and skills to understand the deep layers and nuances in what the data is actually saying (assuming you are an Analysis Ninja!). It is imperative that your brain go with the data.

Bonus 1: Another fantastic example of this type of sequential storytelling is Film Money….

Lars Verspohl takes you along on a wonderful journey through cost and profit structures of movies. Like me, you’ll love the simple and delightful visualizations, how gracefully flow it all flows, and that all the charts and data are primarily there to support the story that emerges from his analysis.

Please also note the thought put into the order in which the story is told, if and when the visualizations switch (from the one above) and the techniques deployed to keep you interested. All excellent, loads to learn.

Bonus 2: This is one subject, storytelling, that I just love, love, love. Indulge me as I pile on and share one more, dramatically different, example of storytelling where data and text go hand in hand.

The team at Reuters Graphics does a fab job of explaining China’s debt problem.

Almost all the visuals are extremely simple. As you scroll through, observe though how they peel back layers of the onion one by one, segment the data, and zero in on the core point they want to make.

Really lovely. Worth emulating.

Strategy 7: The Magic of 2 x 2 Matrices

If you’ve read anything on this blog, you’ve read the importance of seeking why answers to provide critical context to the what answers that you get out of Adobe or Google Analytics. Hence, the amazing value of Surveys, Usability Studies (on or offline), Heuristic Evaluations, shadowing Customer Service calls, and more.

Customers are an amazing source of problems they are having, sometimes they are also a good source of ideas. The challenge is that if you ask people for their opinions you get tons of ideas.

How do you value them? How do you present them? How fast can you get from data to action?

One solution I love is a visualization strategy used by the team at the New York Times. The example illustrates, simply, the ideas related to an emotionally charged topic: Gun Control.

Everyone knows this is a polarizing topic. Friend against friend. Blue vs. Red. Police and minorities and every other combination thrown in. It is a mess.

But. Is it really as fraught with angst as we believe?

No. It turns out if you ask Americans about individual ideas that will reduce gun deaths… A vast majority of us agree!!

The lowest supported idea is “Demonstrate need for a gun.” Support for it is just shy of 50%. A number that simply sounds unbelievable. 

Did you think vast majorities in our countries agree with these common-sense ideas? I have to admit I did not. It is hopeful data.

But, this is not the reason for the inclusion of this visual on our list.

Rather than just share the ideas, the NYT team added incremental value (remember packing the Analyst’s brain?) by asking Experts to opine on the effectiveness of each idea. That’s what you are seeing in the distribution above.

From the 2×2 matrix, here is the slice of ideas American’s support and the ones Experts say are effective…

There are only two ideas rated as ineffective by Expert, but are supported by over 70% of the Americans (national stand your ground law and honor out-of-state conceal and carry permits).

We all basically agree on ideas, and a lot of them will have an impact.

I love the presentation of the ideas and the fact that Experts were brought in to give valuable context. This is what I meant in my above example by not simply taking all the customer ideas and running with them. A wonderful way for you to visualize multiple ideas, and you can combine it with an Expert dimension or a Customer Satisfaction dimension or even a Revenue dimension to give context to the ideas.

One last element of value from NYT.

I’ve said that all data in aggregate is crap. I’m so happy that the NYT team also segmented the data.

What does Mr. Trump support…

What do American law enforcement support…

And, lots more slices that make the data even more meaningful.

Segment. Always, always, always segment!

It is beyond the scope of this humble analytics blog to explore why in the face of such unanimity that nothing actually happens when it comes to reducing gun violence in the US. But, for lovers of data, for believers in the power of data to drive smart decision-making, this is one more reminder on the limitation of data if you can’t tell the story properly.

Strategy 8: Close Contextual Clusters.

Let’s close with examples of work that you’ll normally include in your enterprise analytics efforts.

Usually data we have is lonely. Just the Visits or Assisted Conversions or Order Size. Without other contextual elements, it turns out this data is less useful.

Consider this, conversion rate could go up by a statistically significant percentage… While revenue actually goes down. Or, the overall Visits to the site stay steady… But drop dramatically from your usually second highest source.

The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, also known by the gorgeous acronym EMCDDA (!), publishes a ton of data. Their Statistical Bulletin 2017 has a lovely collection of graphs and charts that we all use in some shape or form. The only difference is that we rarely report on Heroin Price and Purity. :)

Along with the use of (mostly) simple visuals to illustrate the data, I appreciated the context that they provide. Sometimes using the time dimensions, sometimes using geographic breakdowns, sometimes using two likely interplaying elements (like above), so on and so forth.

This simple strategy is quite effective at delivering insights – or at least causing the audience to ask relevant interesting questions.

I encourage you to take some time and explore the numerous examples on the site…

I’m confident the visualization strategies will spark upgrades to the work you are doing at your company to communicate data more effectively.

Our friends at the EMCDDA mostly avoid two things that I find as poor practices in data visualization. They triggered this in my mind, let me take the opportunity of sharing them with you.

Bonus: In the spirit of government data, I’ll be remiss if I did not share with you three examples of interactive scatter plots from Our World in Data (produced by the University of Oxford).

The second one is timely, it shows how when we look at health spending and life expectancy the United States is a massive outlier (and not the good kind)…

I love fusion charts, the first one on the site, Child Mortality vs. Mean Years of Schooling, is a good example of that as well. And, it shows great news.

Please review all three. Then, consider plotting one for your digital data. Conversion Rates by Discounts for Top Ten Traffic Sources. Time on Site by Visits to site for Content Types. And, more.

Strategy 9: Multi-dimensional Related Line Graphs.

One final example, to cause introspection about the final years of your life.

Wait. Things really got serious.

They did. But, I really do want you to lean into this one.

A small reason is that you are likely creating graphs like these every single day for your dashboards. I hope you’ll find lessons in how to make yours simpler. Notice the use of fonts and colors. Notice the labeling, or not, of the axis. And other little things.

A big reason is that I care for you deeply and I want this data to be a cautionary signal to all of us to possibly start making new choices.

The plots are from the American Time Use Survey, a multi-year study from 2003 to 2015 conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Age on the x-axis and hours we spend per day with on the y-axis…

(Source: halhen on Reddit  |  Github)

In our 20s we’ll spend most time with our friends and our parents. Our partner and co-workers will take over our lives from then on through our 50s.

I’ll let you internalize the rest, and please share via comments what you see as the lessons in this data.

Three things stood out for me, as I consider the larger latter chunk of life. 1. We might be giving an extraordinary amount of importance to our co-workers, perhaps worth a rethink. 2. I love my spouse, regardless of who goes first, I felt very sad after staring at the Partner and Alone graphs. 3. The data demonstrated the value of loving oneself – of being proud of who you are, of being comfortable in one’s own skin. After all each individual will spend huge chunks of a decade plus… alone. You have from now until you are 50 or so to get there. Hurry!

: )

The power of great data visualized simply.

Closing Thoughts.

The sixteen diverse sources and visualization strategies help you think differently about how you are bridging the critical last-mile when it comes to impact from data – from you to the person who’ll take and action of business value. We don’t give enough time and attention to this last-mile.

While some of these clearly take special skills (especially the ones that tell integrated stories), I hope you’ll note that most of them are simple and ones that you can create with just a little more effort.

What’s most important today is that I’ve sparked your commitment to upgrading your personal data visualization skills.

Good luck!

As always, it is your turn now.

Which one or two examples did you like the most? Why? Is there a visualization technique you deploy in your analytics practice that’s not covered in this post? What barriers prevent you from improving your data viz skills? What are your pet peeves when it comes to data visualizations? Do you have go-to sources when it comes to inspiring you?

Please share your tips, best practices, critique, and praise for the people who created the above examples, via comments.

Thank you.

PS: I was not kidding in the opening of this post… I've written a lot about data visualization and shared guidance for this type of storytelling in numerous different contexts. To continue your immersion, here's another collection of knowledge…

I hope you love it, and paint more beautiful pictures with your data.

Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

As a sales professional, you’re always on the lookout for ways to get more done in less time.

Getting more done doesn’t have to involve clocking more hours at the office or burning yourself out. The key to improving efficiency is to work smarter not harder.

But where do you go for actionable tips and advice to help you get better at your job? According to HubSpot research, over half of sales reps turn to their peers for advice on how to sharpen their skills. So when it came time to research tips for increasing sales productivity, we figured the best resource to ask was our own sales team. Here’s what they had to say.

1. Know your audience.

According to HubSpot Sales Enablement Manager Cody Normand, gauging your prospect’s genuine level of interest in your offering from the start is a must for reps who want to work smart, not hard. Cody says:

"Know who is going to buy, and who isn't going to buy. You can work your tail off running demos, being the top salesperson in activity metrics, and creating custom presentation decks. However, if you're spending your time doing that for people who are never going to buy, you're not working smart. Spend your time with the prospects and customers who you know are genuinely interested in evaluating your product.

This is a really hard skill to learn but it comes with repetition and practice. Once you master this skill, you'll be able to sniff out the true buyers just based on the tone in their voice/emails and how they're engaging (or not engaging) with you."

2. Create sequences for email correspondence.

Are you starting from scratch every time you send an email? Allow us to introduce you to email sequences. By setting up a series of personalized emails and messages to your prospects, you can put follow-up on autopilot. Because this automation works directly with your CRM, you can repurpose messages and share templates with your team.

3. Batch tasks in your CRM.

For HubSpot Revenue Specialist Emily Tong, using CRM to its fullest potential is her key to success.

"I work smart, not hard, by utilizing the task queues in HubSpot CRM. As I'm looking through emails and taking in new issues, I determine whether something needs further action, create a task for it, then move on to the next thing in my inbox. When I have time for followup, I take care of this in bulk all at one time when I go through the task queue.

I also apply this mindset to meetings with members of my team. Rather than asking one-off questions as I am ramping up into my new role, I have a running list of questions to review during our 30-minute or hour-long meetings. This way, we have pertinent topics to discuss and I can breeze through multiple items at once and make the most of our time together."

4. Use meeting scheduling tools.

Is there anything more annoying than a back-and-forth email chain with a prospect trying to decide on a time to meet? We don’t think so. That’s why scheduling tools come in handy.

For easily scheduling one-on-one calls, our sales team likes to use this free meeting scheduling tool that allows your contact to set a meeting time based on your availability. Struggling to find a good time for a team meeting? A tool like Doodle lets your team vote for their preferred meeting time — freeing up your inbox and saving you time.

5. Take inventory of your projects.

Diving into one project after another without taking stock of how much you’ve got on your plate can lead to overwhelm which can seriously impair the quality of your work and your ability to work smart.

Steve Sears, Sales Strategy and Operations Manager recommends the following approach for getting everything done, and doing it well:

"Take the time to identify the projects you've committed to do and make sure you've identified the next step for each one. Then plan when you're going to take each next step."

6. Automate lead qualification with predictive scoring.

Having a hard time identifying qualified leads? Not sure how to prioritize your leads? Allow data to help you.

Members of the HubSpot sales team use predictive lead scoring to optimize their outreach strategy. All customer data points are tracked in one platform helping reps decide what prospects to reach out to, and when getting content in front of the right leads, at the right time.

7. Customize your CRM fields.

Your CRM can be a powerful tool when it comes to helping you work smarter, not harder. On the HubSpot sales team, reps prefer to customize CRM fields to prioritize key pieces of information they need for the sale.

For example, if you sell B2B software and the size of the company you’re selling to impacts how your team will navigate the sale, you may want to create a custom property that specifies the size of the company you’re working with. This way, anytime you or a member of your team open that contact record, you can see this important data point without having to search for it.

In sales, efficiency is everything. Ready to continue building your skills? Check out this post featuring 15 Habits of Highly Productive Salespeople.

Cold Calling On The Phone Is A Waste Of Your Valuable Time

A few times a week my support staff will tell me funny stories about some of the crazy people who call or write in, and the ridiculous things they say.

Today it was about someone who has repeatedly written into our helpdesk, first demanding to speak to a salesperson, then insisting that we need to have salespeople if we expect to sell our products.

This person obviously has no concept of the economies of a small business and why it’s absurd to even consider hiring a sales staff when our product only costs $97, but that’s another story altogether.

Yet Another Sales Rep Who Didn’t Know How A Business Works

Getting back on topic… there’s a reason why having salespeople for my product is a really bad idea. It’s the same reason why we no longer take orders over the phone and are now internet-only.

It comes down to the simple fact that we don’t want customers who fall into any of these categories:

– People who never take any action

– People who need constant hand-holding

– People who can’t make a decision on their own

– People who want ‘get rich quick’ without work

– People who don’t appreciate value

Is this policy costing me sales? I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care.

The bottom line is that there are certain people I do NOT want as customers – like those extremely needy people who will whine, try to abuse my time (and my support staff’s), have no sense of humor, and are looking to get something for nothing at my expense.

If this policy is costing me sales, fine.

But – I’m not sure it’s “costing” me anything.

For one thing, when we did have a call center, the people who called in to ask endless questions, instead of buying online, were so weak-minded when it came to their inability to make decisions that they wasted SO MUCH of my staff’s time on the phone that there was little profit left for me.

I mean seriously, what questions would anyone really have when there’s a 30-day trial in place and all they have to do is send it back and never pay for it if they don’t like it?

What’s really bizarre is that, even though our return rate is VERY low, a huge number of these people sent the system back – UNOPENED in the original shrink wrap! Meaning they took NO action at all and GAVE UP before even opening the box!!!!

So, no more phone sales. If they won’t buy online, they can’t have my product, and that’s it. The numbers don’t lie.

Am I being too harsh?

No, I don’t think so.

Successful people LIKE to be told how it is. I know I do. We LIKE to have the facts, even when they’re not pleasant, shown to us with no b.s.

Suckers and scammers, on the other hand, love to be told they’ll be swimming in sales & commissions overnight just by ordering a product or buying a book.

That may offend some, but the bottom line is that these are the kinds of people I DON’T want subscribing to my newsletter or buying my products.

Take it or leave it, that’s the way it is.

Some people are in the “attraction” marketing business.

I’m in the “reality” marketing business.

And you know what?

It’s worked out very well so far!

Thanks for reading, and here’s to your continued success!

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Amazon’s annual Prime Day promotion resulted in the biggest day of sales in the online retailer's history, it announced in a press release.

While Amazon has not released specific numbers, the company said sales from the 30-hour promotion improved significantly from last year’s event.

Prime Day created immense sales for both Amazon and its merchants:

• Amazon saw 60% sales growth from Prime Day 2016, as well as a 50% increase in the number of Prime subscribers making a purchase. The company also said more consumers signed up for the program on Prime Day 2017 than on any previous day, adding to its existing subscriber base, which is estimated to be around 85 million in the US.
• Third-party sellers sold 50% more items on Amazon’s marketplace by noon (GMT) on Prime Day than in the same period last year. The company also stated its merchants saw greater sales growth than Amazon’s 60%.

The promotion helped Amazon connect with consumers via the Echo line and Amazon app:

• Amazon sold seven times more Echo products than on Prime Day 2016. This is partially due to the steep discounts Amazon offered on the devices, which were likely enacted to introduce its Alexa voice assistant into more households.
• The number of orders made through the Amazon app more than doubled from last year's Prime Day. This likely includes a significant increase in app downloads during the promotion.

Amazon is using Prime Day to create a cycle of ever-increasing engagement and spend, as it gets more people to own Echos, subscribe to Amazon Prime, and download the Amazon app. According to a report from The NPD Group, 30% of people who purchase an Echo Dot buy another one in the next year, and their orders through Prime Now increase 140%.

Additionally, half of the money Echo users spend online is spent through Amazon. Meanwhile, Prime subscribers tend to spend more on Amazon than non-subscribers, and once consumers have the app downloaded, it is easier to go back to it. All of these channels and products could lead to increased future revenue — a Harvard Business Review survey found that consumers who engage with a retailer through multiple channels spend 10% more than ones who only shop through one channel. While Prime Day saw tremendous sales this year, the real value is in finding more ways to engage with customers.

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Your Quick Takeaway

With some smart research, some common sense and a little patience, there are huge gains to be made in Google rankings and monthly revenue. Joel Gross, CEO of Coalition Technologies, an ecommerce design + marketing agency that has worked to increase the organic visibility of multi-million dollar brands including Spinning.com and Pink Lily, walks you through how to build the B2B SEO strategy your company deserves, without the confusion.

Until you’ve seen the positive effects of a properly optimized website first-hand, until you’ve seen monthly and annual revenue increase as a result of search engine optimization (SEO), it can be difficult to grasp why this practice is so valuable.

Even if you do understand the value of SEO to your digital marketing stack, where do you start for your own business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce website?

• What’s involved in building a search engine strategy from the ground up?
• How do you identify the right keywords for your audience?
• And crucially, what questions should you ask to make sure you’re getting the most out of your online presence?

There’s a lot to think about, but it’s more than manageable with some smart research, some common sense, and empathy for what your audience is looking for.

In this guide, we’ll talk through the following, to help you understand the value of B2B SEO for your ecommerce (or soon-to-be ecommerce) business:

• B2B vs. B2C: What’s the difference?
• Identifying your product’s true worth with 8 simple questions
• Understanding the buyer journey for your products
• Building a keyword and content marketing strategy
• Optimizing the right parts of your ecommerce website
• Best practices for outstanding B2B SEO (both off-page and on-page SEO)
• Guarding your secret sauce (aka. Overcoming the fear of online selling)

Protecting Your Secret Sauce: Overcoming Online Fear

The last point on our list is the one we need to address first, because the fear, or rather the suspicion of taking a B2B or any business online after becoming hugely successful offline, is a major roadblock for a lot of people.

It’s understandable, too.

If you have a product that works and that has produced revenue for you year after year, then what’s to say that once you go online, you won’t have competitors stealing your secret sauce left and right?

There are a few ways to approach this issue, and to rationalize it.

The first, is to recognize that if you’re an authority on your product or service — let’s say you make car wax, for example — then you already have the high ground going into the online market, even though your domain authority (how highly you rank in the standings online) may be lower.

Any competitor who ‘steals’ your idea is on the back foot from square one.

I’m concerned that competitors will see my prices and undercut me.

Fair point, but in relation to the point above, if you’re the one setting the pace then it becomes less of a concern anyway. Plus, with platforms like BigCommerce, you can hide prices until a customer is signed in.

For a B2B ecommerce company, this is standard practice, and one which will help you keep those pesky competitors at bay. That’s the second way to approach this.

The third and arguably most important way to overcome this fear of getting online, is to think about it from your customers’ point-of-view.

They have a problem, and you have a solution. Modern humanity solves problems using the internet — specifically, search engines. Therefore, to truly put your best foot forward with your audience, you need an online presence. This means marketing strategy, lead generation, and conversion.

At Coalition, we’ve helped around 800 clients big and small, to get their businesses online, and to increase revenue with a tailored SEO strategy. We’re currently in the process of getting as many of those case studies as possible onto the website.

Will our competitors be able to figure out how we did what we did and for who? Probably, but what we bank on, is that those clients (and prospective ones) will see our results and either stick with us, or join us for the first time.

Every knock-off cola brand is running in the shadow of Coca-Cola. They might be cheaper, but Coke has been leading the way for 125 years because they’re the real deal, like ‘em or not.

It’s the same with your business.

B2B vs. B2C SEO: What’s the Difference?

Alright, now that we’ve cleared that up, we have another important question to address: when it comes to SEO, and specifically the kind of language used on your website, is there a major difference between a B2B ecommerce store and a B2C one?

The answer is both yes and no.

No, in the sense that the way you measure return — analytics, data, metrics, all of that — is the same.

When the two differ in terms of your SEO strategy becomes evident when you think about who your audience is.

As a business-to-customer brand, you’re speaking directly to the consumer, to people who may or may not have expert knowledge of your product. For those people, the language used on-site is likely to be softer, more general and less technical. The goal here is to make that prospective customer feel welcome, and to speak to them in a way which gently but definitely moves them toward a sale.

Trumpet & Horn, for example, is a company that sells vintage engagement rings. By understanding that their audience is wealthy individuals and not wholesale buyers, they were able to pitch themselves with the right kind of language to ultimately help them increase organic search revenue from $160k a month, to $315k a month.

They were able to pitch themselves with the right kind of language to increase organic search revenue from $160k a month to $315k a month.

Take a look at the copy on their website; it’s clearly aimed at individual buyers looking for a special vintage engagement ring. Trumpet & Horn isn’t trying to be high and mighty or exclusive, but rather chooses to speak directly to the consumer.

Understanding who your audience is – and this is something which cannot be overstressed – is crucial to building a successful B2B SEO strategy. Unlike a customer audience, a B2B audience is likely to be more educated about the specifics of your product or service. They’re looking for specific features, they’re interested in your deep knowledge of the subject, and they care about who you’ve worked with before.

What does that look like in terms of keywords?

Which keywords and phrases you choose to use on your B2B ecommerce store will be informed by what your audience is searching for. We’ve listed some our favorite tools for finding this out in another section, but essentially what you’re looking for is language more appropriate to people with specific needs.

Here, for example, it’s still possible for home customers to buy from 1ink, but the website — including the design, copy and SEO strategy — are set up to appeal to the business customer, the wholesale buyer. Long-tail keywords such as ‘Tax season savings on printer ink and toner’ might not sound sexy or even like they’d garner much return, but for the high-spending business customer searching for just that, it’s the perfect choice of keyword phrase.

The result of this kind of specific, business-focused keyword strategy? An increase in revenue from organic search results from $525k a month to $918k a month.

What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

A long-tail keyword is a phrase that’s very specific to the product you’re selling. Another example might be ‘botanically brewed organic cola’ instead of ‘cola’.

8 Simple Questions to Identify True Worth

Remember how we said that understanding your audience is crucial for building an SEO strategy that works? Well, before you can do that, you need to fully understand your own business, your own product.

That might sound silly, because why wouldn’t you know what your own business is all about? But honestly, the value you’ll get from assessing your brand and product as objectively as possible, is enormous.

Whenever we get a new client at Coalition, we spend about two hours with them initially, just going through these basic questions.

Like all aspects of marketing, they aren’t just relevant to one channel such as SEO. These questions will help you increase conversion rates and hone your messaging across every part of your digital marketing strategy.

Here they are, with a simple explanation of how to answer each one, using one of our clients, PaperMart as an example for some of the answers.

1. What are you selling?

Being able to define what you’re selling in simple terms is the first step to understanding what its value is to your customers, and who those customers might be. PaperMart sells packaging supplies — cardboard boxes, wrapping paper, tape, bubble wrap, etc.

2. How does it work?

You know how your product works, but getting it into words is another story. Defining how your product works is going to inform how you communicate its benefits to your audience.
When your audience knows how your product works, they can quickly and easily decide whether it’s right for them. PaperMart’s products work by providing cost-effective protection to items in need of shipping.

3. What are the features / benefits / pros / cons?

Of course you won’t advertise any cons, but recognizing them helps you to capitalize on your strengths. Listing the features and benefits of your product will help you build and prioritize keywords. For PaperMart, the focus is on quality shipping products at affordable bulk prices.

4. How much does it cost?

Having said all we have about being an authority on your product, if you price yourself out of the market, it doesn’t matter how good your SEO strategy is. PaperMart makes sure that what it’s charging is both competitive and attractive enough for customers to choose them over say, Staples.

5. How does it compare to competitors?

Sometimes a competitor will have features you don’t, or will have thought of something you haven’t. In that case, you need to focus on what makes your brand unique. Your goal is to be as positively different from the competition as possible. See what they’ve got, and go one up on that.

6. How proven is your company?

This is an important one, because if you’re new to the game both online and offline, then your strategy for building growth and trust is going to look different to if you’re established and proven.

In terms of your keywords, for example, a less proven company may have to start out targeting smaller, more specific groups of people, in order to build some trust. We’ll touch on this again in a bit.

7. Who have you worked with before?

This, and the final question are all about social proof. SEO is essential for driving people to your site, but there is no better marketing tool than social proof, including word-of-mouth and the people you’ve worked with before.

8. What do your former customers say about you / references?

This is linked to social proof, but knowing what your customers are saying about you is also helpful for defining the kind of keywords you should be using in your strategy. If people are talking about a certain product or feature a lot which they love, then focus on that.

Building a Keyword Strategy: Identifying Keywords

There are countless ways of identifying the right keywords for your B2B ecommerce store, but we’re just going to focus on a few which we know from experience will yield results you can put into practice on your website. Traditional keyword research revolves around tools and maximizing click through rate — which, while undoubtedly important, is only part of the puzzle.

Talk to people

The first way involves no special metrics or software at all, unless you choose to run a survey or something of that nature. One of the best ways of finding out what people think about your brand and how they find and interact with it, is to ask them.

Ask previous customers and clients how they found you, what search terms they used, and how they approached navigating your website/store. If you have a customer service team, mine them for information on the types of things people ask for.

You’d be amazed by how much you can learn by asking your team, ‘Hey, what do people ask for when they call or email us?’

Your team will then say things like, ‘Oh, they say ABC all the time, but they never ask for XYZ.’
Having that kind of top-level insight is priceless when it comes to building your keyword strategy.

Use the right research tools

Which tools are best and how each of them works in detail is for another article, but getting to grips with some of these fan-favorites is going to help you understand what works, and what doesn’t.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

Google says, “Keyword Planner is a free AdWords tool for new or experienced advertisers that’s like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns.”

Why we love it: Since Google is where your keywords are going to be ranked, it makes sense to use a tool built by Google to choose them. You don’t choose your keywords here, though, you can also optimize and test them.

2. Google Trends

Google Trends takes a search term — ‘GMO food’ for example — and shows how that term has performed in search results and in the news over time. By parsing the data, you can see how interested people might be in what you have to say.

Why we love it: The fastest, most accurate way we know of to see what massive groups of people are talking about. You can use it on a small scale, as well, by searching for very specific topics.

3. Moz

Moz is a great tool for all things SEO-related, from identifying keywords, to tracking and optimizing. We recommend checking them out and having a play around as the best way to learn the ropes.

Why we love it: Moz is dedicated to SEO, and with a community of specialists on-staff, there’s not much that hasn’t been covered.

4. SEMRush

Trusted by Disney, Amazon and eBay, SEMRush is a service aimed at competitor research. The idea is that you use the SEMRush service to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for, so that you can out-do them. Sneaky!

Why we love it: It feels so wrong, but at the same time it feels so right.

Choosing the Right Keywords at the Right Time

Let’s just make a point of this, because it’s something which does trip people up on occasion.

Let’s say you’ve been running an audio speaker business offline for 15 years, with an annual turnover of $3 million — not bad.

You’ve done your research, you’ve got some keywords lined up and you’re ready to hit the internet. This should be a breeze, right? You’ve been dominating the indie speaker scene for fifteen years, so you ought to dominate online, too.

Not so fast.

Even though you’ve been hugely successful offline, when you come online, you’re competing against the likes of Amazon and online independent audio stores, and so using keywords like, ‘Best home speakers’ and ‘Portable beach speakers’ is going to do absolutely nothing for your search rankings.

Focused on those ultra-specific, long-tail keywords which are going to bring in customers who are already at the bottom of the funnel (AKA People with their wallets out).

What you need to be focused on, is those ultra-specific, long-tail keywords, which are going to bring in customers who are already at the bottom of the funnel (aka. People with their wallets out). You then need do determine the intent behind those, so you can create pages that:

• rank
• answer user questions or concerns for a particular search term.

That might mean a direct response landing page, an ebook, or a blog post/other form of content marketing asset.

It’ll be slow going for a while, but building a reputation and trust online by providing the best possible service to the few will eventually help replicate your offline success with the many.

6 Best Practices For Building a Killer B2B SEO Strategy

With all of that said, we’re going to round this off with some easy-to-remember best practice tips to help you build that B2B SEO strategy for your online store. Here goes:

1. Be fearless — Realize that fear of poaching and copycatting is holding you back. Trust in your ability to shine, and in your customers.
2. Understand your own product — Get back to basics and define what it is about your product that people love.
3. Understand your audience — If you have to hide prices, so be it, but know who’s interested in your product and speak to them. Tailor your keywords to that audience, and don’t cast your net too wide.
4. Use the right research tools — Talk to your team, and take advantage of the tools mentioned here.
5. Stay focused on the customer — We said it of word-of-mouth, and it’s true of your entire business: there is no better way of growing a business than to treat your customers well. When you understand what your customers want, SEO and everything that comes with it, becomes a whole lot easier.
6. Create the right content — Content is the bridge connecting what you offer and what your customers are looking for at each step in the buyer journey. So many SEOs create content for content’s sake; in reality, content success is equal parts art and science. Speaking to your potential buyers and existing customers is good not only for direct response, but also for brand awareness and link building (plus social media shares).

And there you have it. Search engine optimization for B2B websites is the same basic formula with some altered application. Take the marketing principles that have worked for other aspects of your business, and find ways to apply them with the tips outlined in this guide.

Hi. I’m Lauren. I’m writing to introduce myself as your Sales Hacker guest blogger.

WAIT! Kidding!! Don’t go!

Seriously, this was a HORRIBLE intro – and one of the most common problems we hear on inside sales calls.

I’m here to explain what NOT to do on sales call intros.

Join me for a chuckle (and a cringe) over the rest:

The “Show Up and Throw up Intro”

Combine a nervous rep and dead air, and this is what you get – one of the worst sales call intros ever. 

I’ve heard folks pack in their full bio, a short company history, the obligatory value prop, and get a good 1/3 down their product list before taking a breath.

It’s like we recruited under-water divers for the position. You can guess what the Decision Maker said when he worked a word in right?

5 seconds is the target folks. And the goal is to get THEM talking ASAP, not the other way around. 

The “Get Out of Jail Free Card Intro”

Yes, I said get them talking right away, but your question should NEVER be…

“Are you the person in charge of purchasing IT equipment at Factor 8?”

Who actually says yes to this? You’ve announced yourself as a sales person, as disinterested in the human you did (finally) connect with on the phone, and given them the ultimate path to lying their way out of a sales call. Ouch.

The “Yeah, It’s My Value Prop Intro”

It sounds like this:

“Hi, I’m LB calling with Factor 8.  We’re the leading inside sales training firm known for getting reps live on the phones getting results during training.”

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The intro is NOT the time to start selling. It’s the time to engage the DM and get THEM talking!…
Click To Tweet

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Let’s all promise right now (so I have my hand up in the air for this solemn oath, do you?) to make sales call intros about THEM (your prospect), not about you – the self-centered salesperson. 

Value props are great tools, but if you do your intro right, their next question is, “Who are you with again?” NOW! Hit it! They’re actually listening to you too. Bonus.

I alluded to it above, but didn’t name it… The “Good for You Intro”

Really? You’re my new account rep!? I’ve been literally sitting here by the phone WAITING for you to call!  

It’s awesome – really! – that you’re excited about your new role, but your sales targets aren’t. And chances are good they’ve gotten five of these calls this quarter (hopefully not from your company). Instead, why not lead with what you want to do for THEM as their new account rep?

The “Set Up Intro”

Picture a beach volleyball scene. Ok, wait, come back. Too distracting.

Picture a ball lofted high up in the air and about to be spiked right down on you. The setup. When you’re just begging to be shut down (or spiked).

It sounds like this:

“If I could triple your ROI on your sales training you’d be interested right?”

This bad approach is typically favored by our most cocky reps.

And when they get the No, they’re right back up in the fight with defensiveness and indignation.  

“What?!  So you don’t like getting more value?!”

Frankly, not from you asshole. Yeah, that was a little harsh. But work with me here. Can we all agree that making people feel stupid and fighting with them in the first thirty seconds might not be the way to go?

“The Toucher Intro”

The best for last. The number one most-used horrible sales call intro.  

Instead of typing this one out, let me just play it for you.  Enjoy.

If you don’t have a compelling reason to call, please don’t waste my time.

And please don’t touch me or my base. Ever.

Sales leaders, you have my permission to chuck something at any rep you hear use this line in your office this week.  

(On a similar note, consider yourself informed that harming reps with bad intros is not a view expressed by Sales Hacker and is solely the view of your guest blogger LB.)

Now that we’ve had a laugh, here’s a killer formula to fix it.

Step 1 – Use Their Name (gets their attention faster).

Step 2 – Use Your Abbreviated Company Name (be “HP, not Hewlett-Packard  Eastern SMB division)

Step 3 – Use a “SWIIFT” Purpose statement (get them to pick their head ½ way up from typing by expressing your goal of the call and highlighting, So What’s In It For Them?)

Step 4 – Ask Two SWIIFT Questions (short, closed, rote-answer questions that get them talking before they realize they’re talking to a sales person.)

Bam. Done. 4 seconds or less and they’re actually TALKING to you!  

Does it work? Absolutely. After sales call intro training for 2 business development teams this year, we saw conversion rates double and even triple. And it makes sense right? If your intro can keep 3x the people on the phone longer, you get triple the at-bats to sell.  

If you want to give this a try on your team, download the free learning kit. Webinar, examples, intro graders, and even coaching videos. Go to www.factor8.com/fixyourintros. Yeah, it will cost you an email address where we’ll send more great tips about once a month, but you’ll get a recording of the touch-base montage and a step-by-step implementation guide! Together we’ll abolish bad intros!

Editor’s Note – This is a Sales Hacker partner guest post from Lauren Bailey, a 20 year sales veteran, and the president / founder of Factor 8.

The post 6 Horrendous Ways To Begin Your Sales Call (And What To Do Instead) appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Sales reps run into trouble when they try to go into a call totally cold. The modern buyer doesn't have the patience to address basic questions with answers that anyone can find through a cursory search — nor do they have the time to fill you in on their challenges.

If you pick up the phone without gathering any background information, at best, you stand to annoy the person — and at worst, you could be hung up on mid-sentence. Either way, that deal is probably going nowhere

Prospect research is a challenge that's every bit as frustrating as it is essential — so to help you out, we've put together a list of 18 of the best places to research buyers before sales conversations.

The 18 Best Places to Research Buyers Before Sales Conversations

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a staple of prospect research — it has a case for being the most centralized, effective platform for gathering valuable information on potential customers. 

If you decide to leverage LinkedIn to guide or support your prospect research efforts, there are some key steps you should follow. Find your buyer on the network, and check out each of the following areas of their profile:

• Experience at their current job: Most people list primary job duties or major projects they’ve worked on. This can help you get a sense of their decision-making authority and place within their organization.
• Experience at their former jobs: Customize your messaging based on their career history. Is this their first time making this kind of purchasing decision? Or have they done this many times?
• Shared connections: If you have a connection in common with your prospect, make sure to bring it up during your conversation. Ask how they know this person to establish a sense of credibility and set the stage for a potential referral opportunity.
• Groups: Click through to their groups to gauge their interests and see what’s being talked about.
• Recent activity: Take a look at what your buyer has recently shared and where.

2. The Buyer’s Twitter Account

If your prospect has a Twitter account, spend a few minutes on their page to get a sense of what they’re interested in. If they've retweeted any articles, take a look at them. If they consistently express interest in a particular issue, familiarize yourself with it.

You don't necessarily have to be too ham-handed and direct about everything you saw on their feed on your call — but it helps to be able to speak to their interests a bit. Adding an element of familiarity to a sales conversation is disarming and often productive.

3. The Company’s Twitter Account

A company's Twitter account can give you valuable information on its messaging, identity, and mission. Seeing the kind of content it's promoting and getting a feel for its brand voice helps you understand how to better present yourself to a buyer.

For instance, if the company's Twitter comes off as stern and no-nonsense, you'll know that prospects from it will probably be more receptive to consummate professionalism than a more laid-back approach.

One way or another, leverage the platform to get a read on their company's identity. Doing so can give you the perspective needed to tailor a targeted, effective pitch that suits how their business operates.

4. The Company’s Press and Media Releases Page

Press and media releases give you valuable context into how the company operates and has been performing. Being able to discuss announcements like leadership changes, product releases, or financial statements lets a buyer know you've taken a sincere, vested interest in their business.

That kind of information can also help you determine the most appropriate, relevant subject matter to touch on during your call. If you know where their business stands, you can have a better picture of what they need to hear.

5. Their Competitor's Press and Media Releases Pages

Any significant announcement a competitor has made within the past few months will color the way your buyer looks at your offering — either as a competitive advantage or an unnecessary expense in the face of more pressing priorities.

Where does their business stand, relative to its competition? If you have a pulse on how their industry peers are performing, you can frame your pitch with a special sense of urgency — you can pin down the company's current place in its market and give yourself the space to demonstrate how you can improve it.

6. The Company's Financial Statements

If your buyer works for a public company, it might be a good idea to check out its most recent financial reports on the SEC’s website. This will give you an idea of how the company is performing — as well as the problems it’s facing.

This point's value is similar to the one above — it gives you a frame of reference for where the business stands and allows you to speak to the ways your solution can enhance its footing.

7. Various Blogs

Read what your buyer reads, and read what your buyer writes. If your prospect maintains a blog, be sure to read at least the last few posts and comment on them during your call. Referencing the company's content demonstrates interest and shows you've done your homework.

You should also look over popular industry blogs to get a feel for the trends and challenges your prospect is likely facing. You want to show that you're in tune with their needs, interests, and specific pain points — that often starts with understanding the nuances of their industry.

8. The Buyer's Facebook Profile

Facebook is a less professional, more personal social network — so you're less likely to find immediately relevant, company-specific information on it than you would on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Still, checking out your buyer's Facebook profile to pick up a few personal tidbits about them generally doesn't hurt. But be careful with that kind of intel — weave it into the conversation naturally. You don't want to come off as intrusive or flat-out creepy with an overly personal appeal.

9. Your Marketing Automation System

Sure, this might be the first time you're checking up on your prospect — but it might not be the first time they've checked you out. Search your prospect's name in your marketing automation system to turn up any existing contact records or interaction history.

You might just find this particular buyer knows a lot more about your product or service than you thought — or they might have demonstrated a particular interest in certain features or applications your solution offers.

That kind of information gives you perspective on their level of familiarity with your product or service and where they stand in their buying process — allowing you to make a more thoughtfully tailored appeal on your call.

10. Your CRM

In addition to the marketing automation system, stop by your trusty CRM to determine if another sales team member has reached out to this prospect in the past — and if so, what the results were.

You don't want to overwhelm your prospect with overly aggressive contact or inundate them with too many sales emails. See whether they've engaged with your sales team previously — that perspective lets you know how hard you should press the gas when pursuing their business.

11. The Company's Google Results

Search for the company to bring up any news stories that they've kept off their press page — good or bad. Be sure to select high-quality, reliable third-party publications when going this route.

This strategy can give you more objective intel about the prospect's company's performance and any issues it might be facing. Backing your conversations with that kind of insight can make you seem more in tune with the business's unique challenges.

12. The Buyer's Google Results

Search your buyer’s name in quotes to surface any other information about them that might’ve fallen through the cracks. Just like researching your prospect on Facebook, this method gives you a more personal perspective on your prospect.

Are they a baking contest winner? An amateur trumpet player? A published creative writer? Approaching a sales conversation with that information can be disarming — but don't get carried away. Remember, being overly familiar can raise some uncomfortable questions or come off as creepy.

13. Quora

Use Quora to understand what your prospect is hoping to learn. For instance, maybe they posted a question three days ago about a challenge their company is facing.

If you show up to your meeting with some relevant tips in hand, your prospect will definitely be impressed — bonus points if you can demonstrate how your solution can remedy the issues they brought up on the platform.

14. Glassdoor

Looking at a company's Glassdoor page reveals a few important details. First, it helps you understand its culture. Does almost every review from the past two years mention the organization's stellar philanthropic record? If so, you might want to build rapport by asking the buyer about the company's charitable initiatives.

Glassdoor will also tell you which positions the company is hiring for. If it's looking for new employees in a division related to your product, that's definitely a good sign. The organization is clearly investing in that area of its business.

15. AngelList

If you sell to startups, AngelList is an essential research tool. You can see the company's funding history — including the timing, value, and participants in each round, past and present employees, advisory team, founders, products, launches, and open roles.

All of that information gives you a better sense of the challenges their business is dealing with. Sales is about solving — you'll have a hard time doing that if you don't know what the problems are, to begin with.

16. Datanyze

Knowing what technology your prospect uses can help you personalize your messaging and make a more persuasive pitch. Datanyze offers a free Chrome Extension that you can click while on the prospect's website to see which tools its company is currently using.

17. Crunchbase

Use Crunchbase to discover your prospect's acquisition history, funding rounds, investors, team members, news, timeline, competitors, former employees, customers, partners, sub-organizations, board members and advisors, and other related details.

18. Yelp

Does your prospect work directly with consumers? If so, browsing their Yelp page is a great way to learn more about their strengths and weaknesses. For example, maybe 40% of their reviews mention their poor customer service.

If that was the case, you could give a few suggestions to improve service in your initial email. Or maybe multiple reviewers praise its reasonable prices. You might offer to share some strategies for directing customers to the most high-margin products.

Prospect research is central to having productive sales conversations and ultimately closing deals. You never want to go into any engagement with a potential customer blind — so always thoroughly prepare for those kinds of interactions with focused, thoughtful intel gathering from a variety of sources.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and accuracy.

Did you watch the Home Run Derby on Monday night?  I've never seen anything like it. You could see thunder and lightening through the glass wall in left field as thunderstorms raged while all the home runs were being launched.  Wow, what a show!  Of course, my mind always looks for a correlation to selling and there are some good ones here.  

The sales equivalent to the Home Run Derby wouldn't really work - buyers lining up to place orders with the greatest salespeople on the planet.  That's stupid.  But there's another way to correlate the derby to selling greatness and that is in the area of preparation.  Consider this:

The technology industry sales field is one of unending change. Sellers must remain cognizant of these changes and how they affect their buyers’ needs in order to be equipped to properly position their offering. Focusing on these four selling behaviors will help sellers working in this challenging industry better serve their buyers and drive revenue for their businesses.

Provide Value in a Rapidly Changing Industry

Many sellers today struggle to understand the nuances of their market. Rapid developments in tech mean that this challenge is becoming a moving target. Sellers face emerging trends, shifting priorities, and even new terminology when approaching the customer. These factors create challenges in articulating the relevancy of a solution over the long-term.

To provide value, sellers need to form a collaborative relationship. This collaboration leads to insights, which offer clues on how to position a product. Sellers can start by understanding the trends impacting the customer’s business, and the most critical challenges. From here, sellers can generate new ideas by providing compelling and thought-provoking ideas to their customers. As a result, the customer will see value in the dialogue and understand how you will deliver solutions to them and their stakeholders.

Remember to stay involved. Keep in regular contact with customers during and after delivery, solve problems, and continue to identify needs and form new ideas as their business continues to transform.

Preserve Long-term Relationships

Preserving long-term relationships is becoming more challenging amid the increasing expectations placed upon sellers. Additionally, opportunistic competitors await their chance to exploit the slightest rift between a seller and their client.

Too often, these risks go unnoticed because sellers believe that customer satisfaction is a guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. This idea is untrue.

Just because a client is satisfied, doesn’t mean that they are receiving the value from the relationship that would keep them as a long-term customer. Customers seek more than a seller. They want a business advisor they can trust. The challenge for salespeople is to ensure they have the right approach to their accounts ensuring long-term customer loyalty and retention.

Salespeople need to strive for objectivity when considering the customer’s needs. Annual customer check-ins are no longer sufficient. Instead, sellers need to engage in an ongoing process where they co-create value with customer stakeholders. The result is a deeper understanding of their customer’s business. This, in turn, leads to a closer alignment between the seller’s and customer’s organization.

Sellers must start to see themselves as an extension of the customer’s staff. This thinking enables the seller to take the stance of a trusted business partner lending relevance to their offering. Applying a process of understanding a customer’s business in-depth will ensure the preservation of long-term and trusted relationships.

Keep a Customer-centric Focus

Technology companies believe that a customer-centric business model is important for generating long-term growth. However, the culture within some companies has not caught up to this ideal because the mandate to continually push innovation often supersedes a focus on the client.

The result: customers feel left behind. As technology becomes more complex, customers have less of an understanding of how these advancements connect to their needs. They want an easy way to understand the solutions that are a right fit for their business goals.

Even as technology strives to keep more of us connected, the result is often the opposite. We have fewer interactions with each other. We communicate through screens. Therefore, sellers must create a real connection. Doing so means taking more time with customers and listening to their needs. Keep a client-focused approach to ensure that every client experience and connection is exceptional, both during and after the sale.

How does a seller do this? Take more time during each customer dialogue to ask questions and understand the client’s goals. Use this dialogue to anticipate needs. The goal is to keep the customer engaged in the relationship. Build trust by integrating client ideas and needs into a meaningful and consultative dialogue. This approach drives future opportunities.

Follow-up is also critical to ensure that the customer always feels like they are a priority. Salespeople need to solve problems promptly and fairly and act as a catalyst among multiple stakeholders.

Ensure Consistency in Culture and Sales Approach

Acquisition- driven growth offers immediate benefits to a company. However, a multitude of long-term challenges also surface. Each company, partner, or entity that comes into the fold introduces different processes, unique sales methodologies, and varied pricing strategies that are not aligned with each other.

Confusion for sales teams, channels, and customers can be overwhelming. This confusion leads to market reputation problems, decreased customer loyalty, and client turnover. Ensuring that these disparate teams are aligned and speaking the same language to the customer is critical. This practice remains a significant challenge for most technology sales organizations.

As companies prepare to leverage diverse sales teams, it will be necessary to implement a consistent and easy-to-execute selling methodology. Salespeople must have one uniform sales process and one consistent account development process to ensure that each relationship is preserved long-term. They must also have excellent and consistent dialogue skills to be successful. Reinforcementtools that are embedded in their everyday work stream will ensure that processes and skills are strengthened, embraced, and become part of a consistent selling culture.

Learn More about Selling in the Technology Industry, Click Here to Download Richardson’s Technology Industry Brief.

The post 4 Ways to Get Better at Selling Technology appeared first on Richardson Sales Training & Enablement Blog.

Episode 70 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why social selling success is like running a marathon.

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Marathon training is a slow process of teaching the mind and the body to take the right actions. Anyone that has enjoyed selling success understands it too requires unique skills that are learned over time.

Last month I began training for my first marathon in over 30 years. Everything was going well until I got caught in a downpour that chilled me to the bone.

That concerned me because I was pushing the limits by upping my mileage too soon to get faster results. Then it happened.

Instantly, I recognized that piercing pain in my calf and stopped, hoping it was just a warning. It wasn’t. I was out for more than a week.

Desperate, I researched injuries and discovered 83% of all runners are injured at any given time, but fixing the running mechanics can actually prevent most of those injuries.

Isn’t the same true for some social media practitioners? They automate and push the limits without giving much thought to their mechanics, the process of serving customers

You’re going to discover it is.

If you build the proper foundation, it will reliably lead to results that far exceed the competition.

Social Selling is Discovery and Understanding

If you are still blasting email messages to your communities like it’s 1999, then you are overselling.

You are like a runner on the path to pain because you are forgetting that social is an essential part of the selling equation today, and ignoring it will quickly get you blocked or ignored.

Social media success starts with making discoveries that can potentially lead to profitable relationships. Maybe your connections will become clients or customers, and maybe not, but you won’t know without engagement and interaction.

Understanding people can be a slow process, but it’s a vitally important aspect of social selling.

Think of it as training that builds the foundation for later using marketing automation and other cool technology that can help scale your human interactions.

There are now 2 billion Facebook users and 65% of them are active. That’s a lot of prospects you can reach with Facebook advertising (good luck reaching them any other way).

But then what? Hoping that people will buy once you have their attention is not an option.

In my opinion, social selling success is using technology right to take relationships to the next level, and then the next, and so on. It’s and ongoing process of engaging and understanding that should never stop.

If it does, you’re done.

Now you have two choices. You can either quit or fix it. Many people quit, but surprisingly most of the others keep going without fixing what’s broken.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Your Overnight Success Start Today

A recent report from LinkedIn shows that 78% of social sellers outsell their peers that are not using social media. That’s exciting, but it requires making good choices for using the social channels well.

You will find many coaches, consultants, and advisors that promise to fast track your path to results, but the truth is you can get good advice by simply engaging with your network.

Fast growth does happen, but not as often as many believe. Those that have reached the top, such as Gary Vaynerchuk or Chris Brogan, point out that it took them 20 years to become an overnight sensation.

That’s good advice for beginners or anyone that wants to get to the next level.

There are more than a few YouTube celebrities that have recently had massive falls from stardom. Better to go the marathon route and build a foundation for your future success. That’s what Vaynerchuk and Brogan have done, and their careers continue to flourish.

They say knowledge is power, but it’s really potential power that only works when you are ready for it, otherwise, it can be destructive.

Think of an automobile. You need a solid chassis to transfer the power of the engine into acceleration without breaking down.

The chassis for runners is a balanced and flexible body that is not prone to injury. For your business, it’s everything that got you here, including the network of people that support what you do.

Your success starts with respecting and building on that. All of us have pain points in our business that need to be fixed to take full advantage of our strengths.

These are obstacles that can be flipped upside down to reveal the opportunities that are needed to create more forward progress. You have to try new methods and shift your thinking, such as erasing the word ‘blast’ from your email marketing vocabulary.

Interact and engage with people. You don’t think of engagement as selling, but if engagement is necessary to succeed with social selling, then it is, isn’t it?

Business owners, marketers, and sales teams are discovering, that social selling is a wonderful thing, but it requires practice, patience, organization and occasional adjustments to make it work.

That’s how selling has always been, a marathon, not a sprint.

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to rethink your social selling as a marathon and not a sprint.

You’ll get there faster by steadily using your smarts to build a foundation that respects your customers.

B2B sales often involve an extended sales process, is more geared towards companies (and not individuals), and also comes with the baggage of complexity associated with B2B products and services.

With B2B sales, it’s also harder to identify the right buyers and create the complex pricing structures that it demands.

By the time you get around to the list of things that make B2B marketing fundamentally different from B2C marketing, you’d be forgiven to think that the B2B sales process has to be “complex”, “serious”, and more “corporate like”.

Get anywhere near “complex” and “Hello sir, to whomsoever it might concern”, and I’ll begin to trip, yell, and stomp my feet on the ground.

I don’t like that typical B2B approach, and you’ll do well not to like it either.

B2B sales don’t have to be serious, boring, and “corporate like”. You certainly won’t get results that way.

You don’t need to be a genius to come to that realization because even with B2B sales, it’s still people on the other end of the table, call, or email.

If you are into B2B sales, here are fundamental rules you should follow like it’s religion:

Ask & Listen: It’s both easy and difficult

Consider a typical B2B sales call: You straighten up, sit straight, and wait for the call. Or maybe you tip-toed straight into your client’s office. You are ready to make that presentation or deliver the pitch. It’s the moment of truth.

[Let’s assume you are actually meeting your client. You know? An actual meeting…]

You meet your client. You shake hands. That bead of sweat is there, but it won’t drip (…a composed superstar that you are).

The time has come to hustle.

Guess what most people do at this point? Blabber…blabber…and then blabber some more. I know, because I did it when I started my career in sales.

My boss then taught me a lesson I’d never forget: Ask questions and listen actively, and that’s all there is to it.

The nod will come soon. Somewhere during the talk or after. The check is a formality. Your client won’t ever get to the dotted line without you listening and establishing rapport first.

It’s really not about you

It almost hurts as I write this. I know just how much you do just to get your business off the ground (and then there’s that big leap of faith before you even got started).

You love what you do. You beam with pride every time you look at that logo. You just can’t stop talking about your business. You spent years to make all this entrepreneur thing work.

Yet, you’ll do well to realize: your prospects don’t care. If you aren’t careful or if you push too hard, you’ll lose your prospects forever.

You’ve done so well for yourself until now. There’s just one more thing that you’d need to send deep into your psyche: it’s always about your customers and prospects.

The “You” In “Them” Lives On

Them = the company you are pitching to.

Most business owners and the average marketers in the B2B space forget that it’s still one person — usually, the person who signed up for your newsletter, the one you are writing the blog post for, or the potential customer you’ve just called up for a demo — that you are communicating with.

Forget that you are communicating with Shell or Apple. It’s still someone out there who you are communicating with.

Write or speak to that one person. The persona. The decision-maker. Or someone on that chain of command that’s a part of your complex sales process.

Let the sales process be what it is. You can always keep your communication light-hearted, personalized, and focused on a single individual.

Solve It, Do It Well, Do It Better Than Anyone Else

What would you say if your best friend comes up to you and asks for an honest opinion or advice about something? I don’t think you’d pitch a product. You’d take a confident stand. In your infinite wisdom laced with genuine concern, you’d hold your friend’s hand and guide her in the right direction.

When you do this with a friend who’s close enough, you’d also realize that it’s not even about you.

It’s about her, right?

When you know what pains your prospect, you are in a great position to pitch. Just that I don’t want you to actually call it a “pitch”.

Don’t even call it a demo, a presentation, or anything else. Words have a strange way to play with your head.

Call it a solution, maybe? Treat your prospective client like a friend. Give her a solution. Show her how you’d achieve it, demonstrate proof that you really can do what you just promised, and maybe even throw in a word or two that some of your previous clients said (testimonials?).

Now, we took the case of you actually meeting the client here. But this holds good for all kinds of communication – calls, emails, blog posts, copy on your website, email marketing, advertising, and pretty much everything else.

B2B or B2C – it’s always people we are dealing with.

The day you start treating your customers as transaction numbers, order IDs, cookies, or whatever, you are tripping and missing the open secret to better B2B marketing and sales.

Just saying…

How to use strategic targeting to boost your results from Facebook video ads

In March, I wrote about some of the most effective ways to ensure you create strong, brand-building creative for your Facebook video campaigns. With competition for attention at an all-time high, it’s never been more important to create content that is interesting, relevant and clearly branded to make consumers stop and take notice.

The quality of the creative is absolutely essential and an area in which we should continually strive to optimise and improve. However for Facebook the importance of developing brand-building creative is closely followed by the level of rigour you dedicate to how and whom you target:

In the second of our short series on how to make an effective Facebook video campaign, I’m going to take a look at some of the best practices for developing a strategic targeting approach to campaign planning.

Key steps for strategic targeting on Facebook

Facebook gives marketers many different ways to distribute content to reach a target audience and the success of a campaign can often live or die by the targeting options you choose to use. Even if you follow all of Facebook’s creative brilliant basics (e.g. make an impact within the first three seconds; ensure the story works without sound; include a clear call-to-action within the ad), if you don’t manage to effectively reach your target audience and meet your overall objective then this effort could all be for nothing.

Whilst the specific goals, objectives and budgets will vary for every business and campaign, marketers looking to build brand awareness should consider the following three steps:

1. Define your target

Focus on making your campaign sharply relevant but scalable so that you can still reach large audiences of the right people.

The key here is to avoid targeting niche audiences of really small groups of people that lack scale as this is unlikely to meaningfully move your business. Last summer P&G announced that it would no longer buy highly targeted Facebook ads because targeting to super-specific audiences was expensive, but didn't result in a big difference to its business.

Optimising towards reach will maximise the number of people impacted by the media, leading to changed behaviour. Driving growth therefore requires a trade-off between reach and precision:

2. Balance broad with niche

Of course it’s worth acknowledging that P&G is the world’s largest advertiser and their objective is often to continuously reach all buyers of the category in which their brands sit and last year P&G were probably targeting too narrowly too often. However precision does have value and smaller businesses will have different approaches to building brand awareness as well as vastly smaller budgets!

Nevertheless the lesson we can take away is that if you need to reach a niche audience, extend your reach by targeting a broader audience simultaneously. Balancing broad audiences with niche audiences will help deliver relevance at scale and maintain cost efficiencies.

Facebook offers a multitude of targeting capabilities to enable marketers to layer in more narrow targeting based on specific audience attributes:

Facebook offers guidance on when and how to target specifically and broadly, and the key takeaway is to only separate a target audience into its own ad set if you'd bid differently to reach the people in that audience compared to those in your other audiences. Otherwise the advice is to combine your audiences into one ad set with a larger budget. This broad targeting approach trusts Facebook’s system to find the right people from a large pool (providing their system can gather enough conversion data).

3. Extend your audience through smart retargeting

One of the tactics to balance broad with niche is to extend your audience by retargeting (aka remarketing). This can include targeting:

• People that visit your website and/ or mobile app
• Users you have in your database
• Similar profiles to your existing customer base

Retargeting is about getting relevant visitors to return and then do business with you. With Facebook marketers have two options:

A) Facebook custom audiences/ website custom audiences

Custom Audiences lets you reach customers you already know with ads on Facebook. You can upload a list of email addresses or phone numbers of at least 20 people and Facebook can deliver an ad to those people if they’re on the platform. You can also build audiences from the people that visit your website from others who use your mobile app

B) Lookalike Audiences

This is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to customers you already care about. When you use Custom Audiences, you can choose to create a Lookalike Audience that targets people who are similar to one of your Custom Audience lists

Some of the potential benefits of Facebook retargeting can be seen in this case study via Salesforce.com, which shows that a major retailer found that by coordinating Facebook advertising and email they connected with customers 22 percent more likely to purchase. By using email and advertising together, the retailer extended the reach of their email program by 77 percent:

For an in-depth tutorial into Facebook retargeting and Custom Audiences check out our Smart Insights’ ‘Quick Win' on setting up Facebook retargeting.

Conclusion

The advantage of using a strategic targeting approach for your Facebook ad campaign is to avoid targeting niche audiences that sacrifice the scale needed to drive a sales uplift. This is particularly important when the objective is to build brand awareness because whilst precision has many benefits, the evidence suggests that brands who target too narrowly are unable to generate the reach and scale needed to make a meaningful impact to their business.

A SaaS Buyer’s Journey

A few years ago, when researching a new project management software tool for Bop Design, I did what most prospective buyers do. I came up with a list of requirements, searched the web for top project management tools and talked to other people in the industry. This resulted in a very short list of contenders—one of which swept me away with their beautiful, compelling website and charismatic sales people. Finally, a tool that was going to solve all of my project management woes!

I sign a contract and start the promised “3-week implementation” period. Fast forward three months later, this expensive software is still not being utilized and my staff being trained to use it, hates it. The user-interface (UI) is confusing and the user-experience (UX) is even worse.

Unmet Expectations

So, what went wrong? The hype created in the sales process and cutting edge website, didn’t match the software experience. This is a perfect example of a poorly executed brand promise.

Your brand is more than your logo. It’s the expectations and experience a buyer has about your products and services, from the first touch point to sales engagement to user experience to customer service. A good brand aligns marketing and delivery. Let’s take Starbucks as an example. We are sold the idea of community, seasonal beverages, and fair-trade. When I go to Starbucks that’s exactly what I get. I don’t get unfriendly people, a static menu, and a lack of social-consciousness.

What Makes a Good SaaS Brand?

In this day and age where SaaS products come and go and buyers are more impatient than ever, there are several things that can make a SaaS brand get noticed and stand the test of time including:

• A tool that solves legitimate problems
• Clean and intuitive UI & UX
• A tool that doesn’t require months, weeks or even days to learn
• High adoption rates (The easier it is to use, the higher that adoption rate. No one is going to pay for software they don’t use for very long.)
• Accurate and honest marketing

Below are 3 SaaS brands that are getting it right:

Basecamp

How they are getting it right

• Basecamp’s website and their software have a consistent look and feel.
• The home page clearly spells out use cases and showcases social proof.
• The “How it Works” page is accurate and looks exactly like their software.
• The software is incredibly easy to use, and that’s saying something for a project management tool.
• It requires almost no training.
• It has had a tremendously high adoption rate.
• The visionaries at Basecamp are very focused on improving their flagship product and aren’t getting distracted by continually trying to create spin-off products to expand their market.

Slack

How they are getting it right

• What seems like overnight, Slack has become an indispensable tool in many workplaces.
• The user-experience on desktop and mobile is exactly the same.
• While most chat apps are very easy to use, even Slack’s more advanced features are intuitive and require no training.
• Their visual brand is super consistent—from their ads and commercials to website and software, it’s a consistent look that is undeniably Slack.
• The app has extremely high adoption rates.

Quickbooks

How they are getting it right

• Quickbooks has been around forever (in software years anyway) and has adapted as the market has changed.
• Their new SaaS platform has made the software incredibly easier to use.
• With the help of my CPA, I was able to learn what I need in Quickbooks in less than an hour.
• The UI is very intuitive, visually appealing and consistent with their marketing.
• Their website displays social proof and honestly speaks to their target market of small businesses.

The Takeaway

With the marketing of a SaaS product, make sure your company can live up to its brand promise. This will translate into long-term, happy customers.

Your discovery calls can have a big impact on the deals you’re working. A positive outcome drives your sales cycle forward with ease, while a lackluster call can have your prospect pumping the breaks. With so much hanging in the balance, you’re probably asking yourself “how can I improve my discovery calls?”

We partnered with Gong.io to analyze over 500,000 discovery calls and what we found is that a lot of your call’s strength comes down to the questions; the number of questions you ask, the topics your questions uncover, and how questions are distributed throughout the call. So by investing in the right questions throughout your call you can boost your discovery call performance to that of top sales performers.

That’s why we’ve invited Blake Edwards, Inbound SDR at SalesLoft for this edition of Sales Tips. Blake completed over 60 discovery calls last month alone so he’s joined us to talk more about what top performers bring to the best discovery calls.

Transcript

Hey everybody, Blake here with SalesLoft. Today I just want to talk to you about Discovery Calls. As our first prolonged interaction with prospects, discovery calls are super important. They’re either going to set the stage as positive or negative from the very beginning. We worked with one of our partners, Gong.io, to analyze our 500,000 calls, and see what’s working and what’s not during those calls. So these are the three things that matter most during those calls. The first thing is to ask more questions. I’m sure as a sales rep, you’ve heard that asking more questions, usually leads to a better outcome, so what we found is that 11-14 questions is that sweet spot, where 5-6 is a little bit under that sweet spot. So we found out that there’s actually an upper limit to the good number of questions that you can ask. Once you get over 14, a prospect can feel more uncomfortable, and feel like they’re actually being interrogated. Now that we know how many questions you need to ask, let’s talk about the topics that need to be covered while you’re talking to the prospect. The second thing that we’ve found is that top performers stick to key topics. While small talk is great, those key topics help to uncover value, which helps you as a rep. So top performers average 10.1 questions on key topics per hour. So, one of the things that I like to do is ask more open-ended questions to get the prospect talking. So one of those questions might be something such as what’s most important to you, so that I can uncover more value for the prospect. So we know that covering important topics is key during discovery calls, but there’s actually one more thing that is important. So, the last thing that I want to discuss is distributing your questions evenly throughout the call. So, when you’re talking to a prospect, it’s going to be more give and take, instead of asking all your questions up front, so that they have time to respond. So, sometimes as a new rep what you want to do is, ask all the questions that you have, right up front, instead of giving the prospect time to respond. But we’ve found that it results in more positive conversations when the prospect actually does have time to respond. Thanks for joining us again. I hope you learned something new. If you have any thoughts, feel free to comment below. Thanks again.

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Download your copy of the free report today and start turning every discovery call into a highly qualified opportunity.

The post Discovery Call Secrets from a Rep Who Has Done Hundreds appeared first on SalesLoft.

“To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.” — Benjamin Franklin

Of course, before you put your gym shoes on, you need to step back and look at your sales process. Does your sales team know what distinguishes sales opportunities from leads? Are they prioritizing their time and channeling their efforts where they get the most returns?

It is important to define what a sales opportunity is. As basic as this sounds, your definition becomes the qualifiers that move people from lead to opportunity. It gives your sales reps guidelines to follow so they can manage their leads consistently with the rest of the team. And, in turn, you get forecasting accuracy and a true picture of where people and accounts are in your sales pipeline.

Leads VS. Sales Opportunities

Simply put, sales opportunities are people or accounts that have been qualified. You’ve called these contacts and talked about their needs. You’ve assessed their fit. They’re in your pipeline and are in touch with you. You feel good about the possibility of closing the deal.

Contrast this with leads. A lead is just a contact that you have few information about. It could be a marketing-generated lead, which is inbound and top-of-the-funnel. The contact might have downloaded content or filled out a form. Or, it could be a sales-generated lead, gathered through efforts of your outbound sales team or SDRs.

Communication lies in between. You need to talk to your leads, and gather enough information to help you qualify them. Do they share the top characteristics typical of your sales opportunities? Can you justify devoting more of your time and effort to nurturing these leads?

Top Characteristics of Sales Opportunities

“Find your trigger. Find the qualities that make a lead more likely to convert, and focus on those leads.” – Brian Kardon, CMO at Lattice Engines, a B2B cloud applications company.

In time, you will notice similar characteristics that are shared by leads who convert to sales opportunities. Take note of the top three: need, interest and fit. These characteristics help you come up with an accurate profile of your ideal customer. You can then focus your efforts on nurturing leads that more or less fit into this mold.

Need: This pertains to the common pain points shared by your ideal customers. Your qualified sales opportunities experience a similar problem. The primary motivation to buy is to fix this problem and lessen the pain. Your sales rep’s job is to help identify the pain and frame your product as the best-fit salve.

Interest: Having a need for your product – or a pain point that has to be resolved – is just the start. Need does not always translate to interest. For instance, a start-up might need a CRM software. But, if they’re set on using MS Excel for their client management needs, a CRM system is going to be difficult to sell.

Fit: Here, you need to consider your product and how it fits into your lead’s current business and its capacity. Because, as much as you are able to lessen pain points, a SMB is not a good fit if your product is enterprise-scale. A business with a few hundred bucks to spare will not be able to buy your million dollar solution.

How to Manage Your Sales Opportunities

“It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter, author, speaker and lead expert at The Sales Hunter

In a lot of ways, the line between closed deals and lost sales depends on how you manage sales opportunities. Here are some things to consider:

1. Accurately qualify your leads: There may be cases wherein you promote your leads to sales opportunities prematurely. It could be that the lead needs further nurturing, and is not yet sales-ready. When you inaccurately qualify your leads, you end up devoting your efforts on opportunities that take longer to close.

2. Know your buyer: It takes trust and rapport when you want to develop business relationships from your sales opportunities. To get to this point, you need to know your prospective buyer like the back of your hand. So, do the groundwork and understand your prospect’s business, their buying processes, needs/ motivations and the decision-making team, among other aspects.

3. Know your prospect’s obstacles to buying: There are always perceived risks when buying a product or solution. Understand what might keep a prospect from making a purchase and address these issues.

4. Track the deal’s progress: Once a lead becomes an opportunity, it becomes more important to track deal milestones, instead of monitoring activity levels. A prospect’s time on your website, their downloads and all that are still good indicators of interest. However, you need to focus more on where they are in the decision-making process and their requirements to move this process along.

5. Don’t be afraid to disqualify: Not all sales opportunities move to the next stage. Some of them become lost opportunities due to something that you discover as you engage with them. When this happens, don’t be afraid to disqualify. This is ultimately better than devoting your time to opportunities you can’t close.

Nate Skinner, Vice President of Product Marketing at Salesforce, has been in B2B marketing for ten years with a focus on enterprise software, cloud, and mobile technology. Nate is responsible for B2B marketing for Salesforce, Pardot, and Einstein. In this episode, Nate and I are diving into Salesforce Einstein Account-Based Marketing (ABM). You’re going to learn what it is, how it’s used, and examples of Salesforce Einstein in action.

If you’re a regular listener to this podcast, you’ve noticed that I’m paying quite a bit of attention to artificial intelligence (AI) and how it impacts marketing professionals and the sales process. I believe the lines are blurring between marketing and sales. My conversation with Nate provides more validation that we’re seeing the convergence of marketing and sales, and how AI and account-based marketing play a significant role in this convergence.

Salesforce and Artificial Intelligence

Salesforce started in 1999 with the vision of transforming the enterprise software landscape and the technology model with cloud computing. They’re the leader in marketing applications and the number one CRM provider in the world. Salesforce set up a new business model with subscriptions and a distinct philanthropy model setting aside one percent of their equity and employee’s time to create salesforce.org.

Nate says that AI has tremendous promise for B2B marketers. Salesforce’s AI product Einstein is “everyone’s data scientist.” For example, it gives B2B marketers the ability to do predictive lead scoring. This used to be a rules-based process, but Einstein provides automated lead scoring capabilities. Einstein can also create look-alike audiences so the marketer can reproduce previous marketing campaigns that were successful with a similar audience. It also provides vast campaign and opportunity insights.

Trends of AI in B2B Marketing

In the “age of the customer,” everything is expected to be personalized, relevant, and device agnostic. Nate referenced CareerBuilder as one example of a brand using Einstein Account-Based Marketing (ABM). The company was able to increase their response rate on offers from 30% to 90% by leveraging the built-in intelligence in Einstein.

According to Constellation Research, 92% of surveyed companies plan to execute ABM in 2017, but only 19% are confident they can execute their strategy. The reason people are unsure about ABM is that they’re confused about what it is. ABM isn’t new though – it was just difficult to scale in the past. Einstein allows companies to take part in ABM using broad-based marketing strategies and tactics to target specific buyers.

Nate says marketing is sales. If you can’t can’t gauge the impact of your marketing efforts, then you can’t show the value. ABM allows you to measure the value of your marketing. While salespeople are using CRM for their day to day activities, marketing is creating their campaigns separately. The two are not in sync and collaboration is broken. Einstein brings the two together by integrating with both marketing and sales.

Sika, a commercial construction product manufacturer, has a finite list of target customers. Einstein ABM simplifies how they identify key accounts and how to market to these companies. Valpak is another brand that has seen major benefits from Salesforce. They were challenged with generating high-quality leads through their website. Valpak reinvented their marketing presence on their site with a redesign and the addition of a lead generation tool. This allowed for a 30% increase in lead conversion, and in a mere 90 days they closed over $1M using Salesforce, Salescloud, Pardot, and Einstein.

Salesforce strives to empower the Trailblazers, those customers, and partners that are setting the bar with Einstein. They’ve set up Trailhead to educate everyone (not just customers) on how they can harness AI, Einstein, ABM, and more to further their careers. Whether you’re in B2C, B2B, the non-profit sector, government, small business, midsize business, or an enterprise, you can benefit from Einstein Account-Based Marketing.

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The average adult has to make about 35,000 decisions each day. What to wear, which route to take to work, where to buy coffee—these are just the start, and usually the easiest.

So you can imagine the last thing someone wants to face when they open a cold email from you is a complex choice. As a salesperson, your job is to make their decision to respond as easy as possible.

The simplest and most effective way to do this is to appeal to your potential customer’s most basic human instincts: desire, curiosity, and fear. Of all the emotional triggers out there, these three can create a strong sense of urgency and increase the chances of someone responding to your email.

Of course, this is easier said than done. In the span of a single cold email, you have to trigger those instincts and, at the same time, communicate that you understand the customer’s wants, needs, and worries, and can deliver the solution: you.

I’ve used these tactics to triple the sales appointments booked for hundreds of business-to-business companies. Here are three tips to help you do the same:

1. Desire

Every business wants to grow and succeed. Your email can appeal to this by offering the promise of serious and direct business value. Your messaging should address, quickly and believably, exactly how your prospective customer will benefit from your product or service, and it should do so in a manner that inspires them to respond. There are two approaches you can take:

The first is to demonstrate value by providing clear and tangible examples, or social proof, of how your service or product delivers results. This is especially effective if you can use actual numbers to demonstrate success with a competitor. For example: “By increasing [Client]’s response rate from 22% to 40%, we were able to double their net revenue.”

Alternatively, you can reframe your product features as customer benefits. This is a good approach if you are new to the scene or unable to reference your clients by name: “Our email campaign service has helped many other small businesses increase brand credibility and gain more followers and website traffic.”

2. Curiosity

Intrigue is a powerful tool that can also be a lot of fun to use. If your email hints at a solution to a potential customer’s pain point or particular need, their desire to know the full story should override any hesitation to respond to your email.

For example, you might inform the buyer you have an idea or strategy that will make a significant difference to an aspect of their business. Remember, you are trying to keep their curiosity peaked, so this should just be a teaser, something that will induce them to follow up. You might try something like: “I have an idea that could generate hundreds of highly qualified leads for [Company]’s sales team. I’d love to share it with you.”

You can also offer tips that helped other clients or advice about getting ahead of competitors. Your email could ask, “We helped [your competitor] increase their sales revenue by 63% last year. Want to see if {!Company} can achieve similar results?”

3. Fear

Fear is probably the most powerful way to introduce urgency and inspire a potential customer to action. However, it’s important to apply subtlety over aggression. You don’t want to terrify your potential clients; you just want to address their concerns. Research specific issues at play within their industry, introduce anxiety, and then end on a positive note by offering a solution.

Instead of writing, “Data hacking will destroy your business if you don’t do something now,” try an approach with less fire and brimstone: “Data hacks have increased tenfold in the past two years, making it more important than ever to protect your data.“

When I joined LinkedIn on February 21, 2005, I had no idea what it was or how to use it. It took a while, but I did figure out how to use LinkedIn to get connected, stay connected, share valuable content and generate leads. Today I have 9,330 connections, and I have closed several large deals from leads that came through LinkedIn, from people I had never met.

On April 24, 2017, LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, hit 500 million users in more than 200 countries. With those kinds of statistics, it baffles me why more businesses don’t take it seriously. They have outdated profiles, incorrect information, old photos, no banner and worse yet they are not interacting with their customers and prospects.

The Power is in the Network

You’d think every business leader would be learning everything they could about using LinkedIn and insisting that their entire company get on LinkedIn and use it to share great content and interact with customers and prospects. Not just the salespeople, because the power is in the network when everyone in your company is connected to each other and connected to all of the people they know.

LinkedIn can be used to build a network that will generate leads for sales, acquire needed resources, find new employees, get intel on companies and buying influences, build your company brand, and build your personal brand. I don’t know many tools more powerful than that, and the funny thing is, most people are under-utilizing or grossly misusing this amazing tool.

Of the people that are on LinkedIn, only about 50% have a complete profile and a very small percentage are actually interacting with others by posting, sharing and commenting in a way that is engaging. Instead, some people are making random connections, sending spammy sales messages or worse yet, DOING NOTHING.

Are you failing? Here are 2 ways I see people failing on LinkedIn.

1. The incomplete profile

Ok, maybe my profile has too much, but most of you don’t have enough. The purpose of your profile is to engage people. Let them read about you and find things they have in common. If you don’t share where you went to school or the many places you have worked or what non-profits you volunteer for, it’s going to be hard for me to find something I have in common with you other than your work.

Your profile is a promotional piece for you and your company. It’s a way to build credibility and to build your brand. The object is to get people to read it and connect, or better yet, contact you to learn more. Your photo, headline, banner and contact information are the most important items on your profile. They should grab attention and immediately help people understand who you are, and your brand. Make a good first impression. Did you know that when people google your name, your LinkedIn profile will show up in the top 5 listings and people will click it to learn about you? You may be missing great opportunities, and they may be skipping over you and going to your competition. Don’t fail at using your profile to grab attention and build credibility. If you want to get an “A” be sure:

• Your contact information is on the profile so people can reach you. Don’t make them search because most won’t.
• Your summary engages the reader. Use words that will resonate with the type of people you are trying to attract.
• To fill out your profile to show that you have experience and are an expert in your field. Use all of the sections that apply.
• Your activity section shows you are active.

2. They do nothing

The point of being on LinkedIn is to interact with people. It’s networking. I understand you may not be as outgoing as I am, but it is truly easy to meet people on LinkedIn. As a business leader and especially if you own a business you simply must build your brand online. You are missing opportunities if you don’t.

If you have a profile but aren’t interacting, it’s like going to a party and standing in the corner all night. You will get limited if any results. You should be interacting with others on a regular basis. It’s very quick and easy to do.

• Make a list of people with whom you want to interact.
• If you know them, find them on LinkedIn and connect with a personal message.
• If you don’t know them, follow their posts and click like, comment or share a few times before requesting to connect.
• Once connected continue to click like, comment or share their posts. And post interesting things that will attract them.
• Find an article of interest and private message it to them. Strike up a conversation about things that interest them.

Get Results

Networking on LinkedIn is like networking in person. You say hello, introduce yourself and strike up a conversation. Conversations lead to results. The next thing you know you’ll be scheduling a meeting.

Once you start sharing be sure to check your posts to see if anyone is commenting on them. You can reply and start a conversation right from the comment area. If you interact with them, they will probably ask you to connect. If they ask you to connect, they may be a prospect, potential collaboration, referral source, or even your next employee. (Ok, sometimes they will be a spammy salesperson, but you can always disconnect!)

I get leads every week via LinkedIn. You can get the results you are looking for too. Spend some time with this powerful tool and learn to use it properly. It’s just like anything else; you have to learn it and spend time on it consistently if you want it to work. I promise it will be worth it.

Are you ready to use LinkedIn to get the results you need? More sales, finding employees, building your brand? Download my free LinkedIn eBook to learn how to quickly and easily improve your profile or, schedule with me to learn how to use LinkedIn as part of your sales strategy and start attracting your ideal customers now.

The post 2 Ways To Fail At Using LinkedIn appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

Consumer behavior has shifted. What troubles me, is that marketers have been aware of this shift for some time now, and some of us still fail to adapt to the ways our customers want to experience the buying journey.

To better illustrate my thoughts, I’ve chosen to deliver them at the expense of the stereotypical used car salesman we are all familiar with. I think we can agree that used car shopping isn’t an experience we are all eager to embark on and a lot of that has to do with the tactics conducted by the salespeople. The same thing can be true of your online marketing tactics.

Are you the used car salesman of digital marketing? Scroll on to find out:

1. You List Features Instead of Benefits

“This vehicle has 85k miles, leather seats, Bluetooth connectivity, and acrylic paint.” We do this all too often. Listing the features of your product/service instead of highlighting the benefits.

We get it — your product has features. But what does that mean for me, the buyer? Not much, unless I’m a very knowledgeable consumer and am willing to connect the dots on my own.

Alternatively, tell your prospects why your product will be beneficial to them. For example, if you’re a SaaS provider, your website homepage may showcase all of the features of the program. This is common but not optimal. Instead of just listing those features, identify how they help solve problems your consumers may be challenged with. Instead of “Dedicated Server” say “99.9% Uptime.” Make sense?

2. You Use Unfamiliar Language

Another tactic leveraged by our stereotypical used car salesman is to use language that is unfamiliar to the average consumer. These may include specifications like horsepower, drivetrain, suspension, torque, braking systems, etc. I understand that these are all very important considerations that are often taken into account when purchasing a vehicle. However, if the car salesman tells you a specific model has a torque of 200 Nm, will you have any idea what that means? For the average car shopper, the answer is no.

Many online marketers fall into the same trap. On our websites, we often use language that many of our prospects are unfamiliar with. Instead, I’d suggest presenting the information on your site using language that is digestible to more than a few of your audience members. However, don’t forget to include a link to more in-depth product details or specifications for the individuals looking for more info.

3. You Control the Pace of the Conversation

Used car salesmen tend to control the pace of the conversation and the buying experience as a whole. This is part of the reason people feel so vulnerable when they shop for a used car. It is difficult to feel empowered when the salesman is dominating each step of the process.

Frankly, this is a major contributor towards the shift in consumer behavior. Now, on average, consumers go through 70%-90% of the buyer journey before contacting a vendor. That’s directly related to shoppers’ desire to control the pace of the journey. Online research/shopping allows your audience to do that with ease.

Think about a retail store. You walk in and a service rep immediately walks up to you and says “Can I help you find anything?” Most of the time, you’ll respond with “I’m just looking.” That’s because you want to control the pace of your shopping experience.

Used car salesmen tend to be more aggressive and demand that you fit into their forceful process. If you are too pushy with your online customer experience or sales processes, people will lose trust. Your website doesn’t have to always be closing, ABC as some would say — instead it should always be educating, ABE.

4. Instead of Answering Questions, You Resolve Objections

This is a common tactic of used car salesmen, and frankly many salesmen. You pose a question about a specific vehicle and instead of an honest, helpful answer, you receive a response that fails to provide you with what you were looking for. Rather, they treat your question like an objection and focus on resolving it.

Consumers can experience the same manipulation when browsing around the internet. They may end up on a web page looking for an answer to a question, and are presented with unapplicable sales jargon.

If I go to a pricing page, I want to see information on pricing. I want transparency. I don’t want “Our solutions are less expensive than our competitors.” In this example, the website is assuming price is going to be an objection I make and they rush to the resolution. It’s not. I just wanted real information.

5. You Use Common, “Salesy” Buzzwords

“Hurry on down!” “Buy Today!” “Unheard of Savings!” Today’s consumer doesn’t react to these messages the same way shoppers did 10-20 years ago. Especially millennial shoppers. I’d encourage you to avoid the common buzzwords entirely — we’ve heard them too frequently and they’re easy to drown out.

Now, that’s not to say that urgency and scarcity aren’t great marketing/sales tactics to be employed. Those are principles of selling and proven to be effective. I’m more focused on the way this information is presented. You don’t need to have a blinking light on your website that says “Hurry! Buy Now!” to create a feeling of urgency for your consumers. Instead, it could be as simple as, “Only 3 spots left” at the bottom of your webinar sign-up form. That feels authentic and honest to the visitor, something valued in today’s market.

6. You Look Untrustworthy

As you’ve read through this post, it is my hope that you’ve been picturing certain scenarios in your head. When you picture the interactions with our stereotypical used car salesman, what does he look like? Something like this:

Source

Do you trust this guy? Are you excited to enter into the steps of a sales process with him, confident that he cares about your goals? Probably not.

THE SAME IS TRUE FOR YOUR WEBSITE! Looks matter! If your website looks cheap, your prospects aren’t going to enjoy interacting with it. It’s as simple as that.

Takeaways

Remember, it all surrounds the way your audience wants to shop. And in this day and age, people don’t want to feel that they’re being sold to.

Rather than being in the business of selling used cars, be in the business of helping people buy used cars. A simple change in perspective can be a huge step in the right direction.

Sales methodologies have changed. And "inside sales" is trending faster than fidget spinners and the latest meme.

Especially in the technology sector -- and even more acutely in sales of SaaS services -- the time-honored approach to prospecting, qualifying, and closing sales revenues is morphing radically in response to new workforce demographics, new sales technologies, and new customer expectations.

What does the inside sales trend mean for CEOs and CROs? Here's how your sales organization should respond to the top four changes.

1) Sales cycles are accelerating

While large enterprise deals in the past might have required six to 12 months to close, a well-oiled inside sales team might do the same in one to three months.

The inside sales model can increase the velocity of your sales process. It’s not about getting 10 meetings per week anymore -- it’s about giving prospects the tools and information to qualify themselves on your website, then answering whatever questions remain so that they feel comfortable moving forward with a free trial or paid pilot.

This also improves the handoff from marketing to sales. According to a 2015 report by The Bridge Group, Inc., at least 44% of the inside sales pipeline typically comes from marketing. Marketing automation tools generate higher-quality leads by analyzing and fine-tuning a larger volume of prospects at the top of the funnel.

Inside sales allows you to rapidly iterate your sales approach and double down on the channels and techniques that show early success. Start by creating buyer personas of your ideal customer and then gather whatever data you can to analyze the buyer journey and decision psychology. Using a more data-driven approach, instead of relying on the intuition of your best sales reps, can increase sales volume and lower your sales costs.

2) Workplaces are now global

Companies operate in a global context, and prospects aren’t limited by vendor location.

Thanks to connected technology, people can be sitting in different parts of the world yet still collaborate effectively. Although this makes buying processes more competitive, it's also an advantage. You can now hire salespeople anywhere in the world, no matter where your business is based. This helps you both adapt your inside sales processes to local cultures and call on prospects in their time zones.

3) SaaS and Services are proliferating

Mega-dollar enterprise software deployments are becoming less and less common, replaced by SaaS services and monthly subscriptions. Front-loaded field sales processes are too expensive and risky for these types of deals.

Subscriptions services can be found everywhere now, from your dinner meal delivered at home to your e-mail host at work. The proliferation of SaaS technologies has matured beyond hosting and storage and security, and is now driving the rise of inside sales as the SaaS mentality and technology is finding its way into marketing and sales processes.

Along with inside sales processes, sales compensation models for SaaS products should be calculated based on lifetime value of the deal (expressed as MRR or ARR or TCV) versus price.

This influx of SaaS technologies and on-demand services is driving the trend to measure and optimize everything, including sales processes.

4) Workforce demographics are changing

Your target buyer is likely a millennial who is not interested in having lunch and is more likely to respond to inside sales’ self-help product materials and marketing’s digital funnel campaigns.

A sea change is happening in the demographic of tech buyers and tech salespersons. Millennials already dominate the workforce in many technology companies, and Generation Z is right behind them. These new workers have already influenced everything from HR policies to office food choices, and they are a major force behind the inside sales trend as well.

By using modern inside sales methodologies, companies can capitalize on these trends and lower their overall cost of sales.

The rise of the internet, digital technologies and social media platforms have transformed the way consumers make purchasing decisions—and not just for B2C consumers, but for B2B as well. In fact, according to CEB, B2B buyers are 57% of the way through a purchasing decision before engaging with a sales rep.

But, as a savvy B2B marketer, you already knew all this. So, you’ve designed an integrated strategy featuring a hearty mix of marketing tactics to help build trust and awareness as prospects do their research. You’re turning out thoughtful, relevant content that informs, engages and inspires action. You’re working with industry influencers to add credibility and authority to your efforts. Heck, you’re even driving what you believe are solid marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

However, there’s a problem: The leads you’re generating in aren’t translating into sales. What’s a savvy marketer to do? You know this, too—it’s time to double-down on nurturing those MQLs.

Simply put, MQLs are warm prospects who are not ready to make a purchasing decision yet—and lead nurturing can help you turn up the heat. And most of you are probably doing some form of lead nurturing already. According to DemandGen Report’s 2016 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Study, 89% of marketers use lead nurturing programs as part of their demand generation strategy. In addition, the remaining 11% said they plan to start a lead nurturing program in the next 12 months.

But whether you’re seasoned at lead nurturing or just getting started, you’re likely facing some common struggles. DemandGen Report’s study also revealed that more than half of marketers ranked “developing targeted content by buyer stage/interest” as their greatest challenge. Other top challenges included adapting to modern B2B buyer expectations, changing and unpredictable buyer behavior, and processes and workflow.

In this post, we share tips and best practices for heating up your MQL nurturing efforts, so you can build trust and relationships with prospects, and hopefully hand them off as SQLs (sales qualified leads) when the time is right.

#1 – Determine what qualifies as a qualified lead.

Every company has a different perspective on what MQLs and SQLs actually look like—and some may not differentiate between them at all. In addition, every lead is different and not all leads are created equal. Depending on your product or service, and your marketing mix and program goals, you’ll want to work with your marketing and sales team to define each lead type.

Why is this so important? At a basic level, it makes sure that everyone is on the same page and enhances communication between the two departments. But perhaps more importantly, understanding the differences between the two helps you craft a more effective strategy—and ultimately—help you serve up higher-quality sales-ready leads.

Read: Want Better Leads? 7 Tips for Achieve Sales & Marketing Alignment

#2 – Make sure you have a deep understanding of your target customer.

It’s no secret that audience and customer knowledge is the foundation of all marketing initiatives. If you want to create relevant content that nurtures them throughout their journey, you need to understand your audience’s pain points, what they care about, how they like to get information, and what influences their purchasing decisions.

If you don’t already have them, build out customer personas that define who your ideal customers are—and what they look like at each stage of the sales funnel. Ask yourself:

• What are the common characteristics of my best and worst customers?
• What are their content preferences, search phrases, social networks, and the types of products or services they buy or “like”?
• What does my ideal customer look like at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel?

Read: Adele Revella Weighs In On Connecting B2B Content to Customers

#3 – Understand where your leads are in the sales funnel.

The modern customer journey is far from linear and requires multiple touch points throughout the sales funnel. When it comes to your bucket of MQLs, while they’ve signaled their interest through some type of conversion, that doesn’t mean they’re sales-ready. As a result, you need to make an effort to map your leads to a specific area of the sales funnel if you want to nurture them properly.

For example, for new leads—such as those that have just converted for the first time through a download or newsletter signup—they’re likely pretty new to your brand. As a result, the content you use to nurture may include tactical blog posts, curated third-party articles and long-form thought leadership pieces aimed at engagement.

Leverage your MQL and SQL definitions, customer personas and any analytics data you have to audit your existing list of MQLs. This gives you important insights into where you stand with prospects, and can help you plan you segment your list to create nurture more effectively.

When it comes to segmenting or categorizing your list, it may seem like a daunting task. If you’ve been building your list for many years, it will take a bit of work—but it’s worth it. In addition, begin incorporating and requiring segmentation information in your lead capture forms. This ensures that new audience members are categorized appropriately from the start.

Depending on your prospect base and how the information will be used you can include simple qualifiers such as:

• Company Name
• Title
• Area of Interest

Read: Is Your Content Marketing Designed for the New Customer Journey?

#4 – Audit your existing content for repurposing opportunities.

Chances are that your team has a huge portfolio of existing content. As TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden often says: “Content isn’t King. It’s the Kingdom.” So why not get the most out of the kingdom you’ve built?

Take an inventory of your existing content, paying special attention to the unicorns—the content that is generating the awesome traffic, engagement and helping move people to the next step. Then look for ways to repurpose and personalize the content in ways that maps to your leads at every stage of the funnel.

Read: 5 Magical Tactics for Repurposing B2B Marketing Content

#5 – If you’re new to lead nurturing, start small.

This one’s pretty simple. If you’re just beginning to dip your toe in the lead nurturing waters, don’t dive head-first just yet.

Get started by launching a single campaign such as a bi-monthly newsletter or monthly offer for all leads. By starting small, you can get something in front of your prospects right away and keep your brand top-of-mind.

Read: 5 Elements of a Successful Email Based Lead Nurturing Program

#6 – Invest in marketing automation software when it makes sense.

Marketing automation software from vendors like Marketo and HubSpot can be an incredible lead nurturing tool. However, if your lead nurturing program is relatively young, don’t spring for marketing automation software right away. Marketing automation software is an investment that requires budget, and the appropriate resources to execute effectively.

When it’s time to scale your lead nurturing program, ask yourself the following questions to help you make the right decision:

• What is the organizational goal you hope to achieve with marketing automation?
• What is the health of your current database? (Hopefully, your recent audit can help you answer this one.)
• What content assets are available? (Again, your work up to this point should help you answer this.)
• Do you have the resources to dedicate to the planning, implementation and measurement of a marketing automation system?
• Are sales and marketing aligned?
• What does success look like?

Read: How to Avoid Marketing Automation Disaster: 6 Essential Pre-Planning Steps

Ready. Set. Nurture.

At the end of the day, your marketing efforts aim to drive leads that have a high chance of turning into paying customers. But without effective lead nurturing, valuable prospects will inevitably slip through the cracks or find your competitor.

Use these best practices to bolster your integrated marketing strategy, build relationships with your prospects, achieve marketing ROI and eventually deliver your sales team with better quality leads.

What are your biggest lead nurturing challenges? How are you working to overcome them? Tell us in the comments section.

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2017. | 6 Best Practices for Nurturing B2B Marketing Qualified Leads | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 6 Best Practices for Nurturing B2B Marketing Qualified Leads appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Marketers today are not shy about facing the challenges of the changing market, regardless of whether they are selling to consumers or to other businesses. And the market is changing rapidly—mobile use only continues to rise, personalization is an expectation, and the channels where people engage are constantly shifting—and marketers and marketing organizations are expected to respond at speed and with scale.

The challenge could feel insurmountable, but it’s not. Marketers are innovative, creative, and data-driven and with the right technology at their side, they can work faster and smarter, and face the challenges of changing markets and high customer expectations.

In this blog, I’ll highlight 5 marketing trends that marketers are using technology to address and succeed—many of which are covered in our latest product release.

Your Audience Is Online and They Expect More Than Generic

Each year more people gain access to the internet, and even more have multiple devices and ways they access it. For marketers, this data point only increases the pressure to ensure their web presence is optimized. As buyers do more self-education than ever before, you may not even be aware when they get their first impression of your company or product. But marketers know that not every audience member is the same, and have looked to technology to help them engage their visitors in the right way, with the right message.

That’s where web personalization and predictive content recommendations come in. Web personalization helps marketers drive conversions more effectively on their website by delivering personalized messages, images and offers to segments of your Web visitors. In our latest product release, Marketo Web Personalization took this to the next level with increased campaign triggering and display options that respond to the visitor based on new intent signals, like scrolling, or exit, and appear in new ways like animating in and out, all at the marketer’s fingertips.

Predictive content recommendations take personalization to the next level by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend the right content to each individual. Marketo Predictive Content uses behavioral information and customer profiles in the Marketo Engagement Hub, combined with AI, to assess an individual’s likelihood to consume certain content and then recommends the right piece of content. This is incredibly powerful when you think that content is now one of the primary ways organizations can deliver value to a customer or prospective customer. Marketo Predictive Content can recommend content across your web, mobile and email channels, and in multiple languages.

Mobile Continues to Gain Momentum

You’ve probably heard stats thrown around about how often someone checks their mobile device, or how many mobile devices (phone, tablet, smart watch, etc.) a person uses in a day. And all of these stats point to one fact—mobile rules the customer experience. If you are not adapting your marketing to perform on a mobile device, then you are wasting time and money.

Marketers have started to adapt their websites, blogs, and emails to cater specifically to a mobile device experience, but not everyone has adapted their digital ads. And that’s a missed opportunity—with the right technology, marketers can not only ensure their ads are precisely targeted but they can also optimize the ad conversion experience on a mobile device to drive better results. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, for example, improves the member experience and conversion rates on the Linkedin mobile app with a form that pre-populates with contact and professional details. Marketo recently released a product integration with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms that automatically syncs captured lead data to Marketo and allows marketers to instantly deliver an email follow-up, sales alert or add someone to a nurture list. As part of Marketo Ad Bridge, this complements our product integration with LinkedIn Matched Audiences for targeting and personalization.

Data is King

The amount of data available in an organization today is massive. The challenge that many marketers face is how to take that data and make it valuable, useable and glean key insights from it. While you may have a platform, like Marketo, that you use as your system of record or data foundation, there is not a single vendor that offers a complete marketing stack. With this in mind, it’s critical that marketers and organizations have the freedom and flexibility to move and manipulate their data.

We recently introduced more ways to get data in and out of Marketo more efficiently. For Marketo customers, their trove of data that’s stored in Marketo is accessible to them through Bulk API’s, which gives marketers freedom to quickly bring data in that you want to associate with the people in your database or export it—to a business intelligence tool, for example.

Account-Level Engagement Is Critical

Account-based marketing (ABM), or account-based engagement is not a new concept but with new digital technology, it has become more scalable and accessible for marketers. Marketers today are using ABM to target and engage accounts and measure the revenue impact of their activities. As a native part of the Marketo Engagement Platform, Marketo ABM marries ABM capabilities with Marketo’s powerful lead management capabilities and its complete ecosystem of services partners and integrated technology partners. A well-orchestrated ABM strategy often leverages multiple vendors and capabilities, which makes the latest update to Marketo ABM—adding Custom Fields and Account List APIs for eased data flow across your ABM tech stack—even more important.

Sales & Marketing Play as a Team

Marketing and Sales alignment is an age-old challenge that organizations face, but as organizations shift to become customer centric, marketing and sales must develop the skills to act as a well-coordinated and supportive team. A team that can offer a seamless customer experience because let’s face it, the customer does not differentiate between teams when they interact with your organization.

With that said, how can marketing and sales get in sync with the right content, messaging and playbooks to engage prospects and turn leads into pipeline and revenue? It comes down to bringing your playbooks to life instead of producing them, training and implementing your teams on them and then having them sit and gather dust. Sales engagement technology allows marketing and sales to collaborate on a living playbook—that considers the latest messaging and techniques but also can offer the analytics to know what’s working and what isn’t. With Marketo’s Sales Insight and ToutApp together, marketers and sales can operationalize their playbooks, collaborate on best practices content and drive more pipeline and revenue.

As marketers are faced with new challenges from emerging trends, innovative technology will surely be at their side to help. What trends are you addressing with technology? I’d love to hear more in the comments below. Looking for more information on Marketo’s latest product release, check out the details here.

The post 5 Marketing Trends and How Technology is Helping Marketers Address Them appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

As goods move from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer, each party has its own interests. For the businesses in that chain, those interests are often centered on core company goals like increased sales or profitability. Channel partner managers seek to influence wholesalers and retailers to get more leads and sales.

Studies have revealed that alliances among businesses increased over the past decade, with partner distribution worth up to one-third of many companies’ revenue. Still, a channel program relationship has a remarkable failure rate—some estimates put it as high as 70 percent.

How to improve the management of these vital programs warrants a closer look.

What Is Channel Marketing?

Channel marketing builds partnerships with companies outside an organization to help increase the distribution and sales of a product or service. Each channel represents a link in the chain between the original manufacturer and the end consumer.

A common example is a supermarket that has aisles full of products it does not produce. While some may think of a cereal producer as the first link in the chain, the link extends further back to the farmers who grow the wheat or corn used to produce the cereal. That elongated chain reveals the potential scope of channel marketing efforts.

Channel programs developed over time because businesses face limitations in distributing a product or service from a single location. It’s not hard to imagine the potential increase in sales if a local health-food manufacturer were suddenly to feature on the homepage of Amazon.

Historically, the businesses with the resources to invest in channel marketing have been large organizations with sophisticated marketing departments. However, the growth of online shopping on sites like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy has provided single-person entities access to powerful channel partners with minimal maintenance of relationships within that channel.

Despite this expansion of the market, traditional channel program management remains key for many large organizations that depend on sales across a wide geographic area. Because channel marketing programs typically seek to influence other businesses between the manufacturer and consumer, the work often falls within the ambit of the business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Channel marketing may, of course, also advertise directly to consumers.

Types of Channel Marketing Programs

What does a B2B partner marketing program look like? The answer varies based on the business as well as short- and long-term marketing goals.

Typically, an organization hires a manager or team to identify new partners, negotiate channel marketing agreements, nurture relationships, and report on the value of channel partnerships. Due to the multi-tiered structure of a robust partner program, channel marketing tends to be resource intensive.

To minimize the burden of running a program, some businesses take advantage of Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software, which offers a similar set of benefits as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Others outsource partner program management when in-house operations are not feasible.

Channel partner relationships operate in several ways. In each, the original producer usually shares a percentage of the revenue as compensation for a partner’s role in generating sales. Channel partners may also receive other rewards, like the exclusive rights to sell products or services.

These are the various relationships producers may build with their channel partners:

To-partner marketing. This effort helps persuade a partner that the relationship is valuable. It answers the “What’s in it for me?” question that a partner may ask. This marketing strategy does not necessarily affect end-of-line consumers. Instead, it treats the channel partner as the consumer of marketing materials.

With-partner marketing. This subcategory of a partner program identifies joint-marketing initiatives. Often, a prominent company may lend its brand to help increase sales for the partner. For example, a Dell television advertisement may highlight the use of Intel processors to persuade buyers to buy a computer from a company that uses a trusted processor manufacturer. With-partner marketing may also include a producer sponsorship of a local event, although these engagements may be limited by cost and reserved for top-tier partners.

Through-partner marketing. This tactic seeks to make it easier for partners to sell a vendor’s product. It may include training to help prepare a partner to sell a new product or generate marketing materials that highlight the benefits of a consumer using the vendor’s service. For example, a through-partner marketing effort by an electronics manufacturer may help train big-box sales staff to convey the benefits of a new line of LED televisions. Strong through-partner marketing efforts highlight shared benefits, like the ability of the latest smartphone to take advantage of a service partner’s upgraded network.

For-partner marketing. This final type of partner marketing bypasses the producer’s partners and markets a product or service directly to consumers—even when the partner makes the actual sale. A common example is a national advertisement campaign by an automobile manufacturer on behalf of its independently owned dealerships. The lack of required collaboration makes for-partner marketing a popular choice among vendors, who retain greater control over the marketing message.

Strategies for Channel Partner Program Management

With a basic understanding of channel partner programs, a manager can begin to create or improve partner relationships for a business. These strategies reflect the proven strategies that help guide successful partner relationships:

Identify the right partner. Without the right partner, managing a relationship may be a continual and unprofitable drain on internal resources. What makes a good partner? A key factor is a clear benefit for both sides. It’s useful to keep in mind that an ideal partner may operate at a different scale. A small vendor may take advantage of a national partner’s wide distribution network; a large vendor may build new markets through local retailers. Consider, for example, the diverse businesses that all identified a potential benefit in producing The LEGO Batman Movie. In the end, the critical shared quality is a business goal, not a business type.

Streamline the acquisition process. In a channel partner program, both sides are interested in learning whether a partnership will prove valuable as quickly as possible. A tedious onboarding process may stretch the time between a signed contract and mutual profitability. That delay can impair the development of a relationship and even end the partnership prematurely. Similarly, a failure to educate partners quickly may slow the growth of the relationship.

Build a strong relationship. A shared business goal may be a requisite for a strong relationship, but it takes continual effort to maintain and improve that relationship. Framed in the traditional marketing terms of “awareness” and “engagement,” partner relationship building may include regular contact to assess performance and identify needs. It may also rely on the consistent production and distribution of supporting marketing materials, one of the several reasons some companies employ PRM software that helps automate the process. Partners are likely to be more motivated to sell a product when it’s consistently top-of-mind and has clear selling points.

Create relevant targets for measurement. The measurement of a partner relationship is essential for businesses that want to identify the most valuable marketing partners. Just as a business-to-consumer marketing department works to develop a buyer persona, a channel partner manager should choose metrics that help identify the most valuable marketing partners. Common metrics may relate to revenue or sales, but others may also include scoring systems related to partner development. For example, a manager may use PRM data to identify which partners engage with vendor marketing materials most often or complete online training courses quickly.

Moving Forward

Successful partner marketing programs can increase the visibility of a brand, its ability to access new markets, and its overall sales. Such positive gains, however, require an understanding of the nuances of partner marketing programs, such as whether a vendor should invest more money in marketing to partners or directly to consumers.

Many of the strategies that lead to successful partner relationships rely on the same business principles that help companies market to consumers, like building strong relationships and setting clear targets that define business success.

Beyond these tested strategies, some experts encourage vendors to focus even more on the vendor–partner relationship. Those advanced tactics suggest rethinking historical challenges. For example, rather than focusing on eliminating business differences, exploring how those differences may allow the partners to increase the value of their offering.

Still, the underlying goal remains consistent: increasing collaboration between businesses to offer a better product to consumers and a greater business opportunity to all involved.