Rnordman

We recently rolled out a pretty major software update to the LeadFuze platform.

In the months leading up to it, the team and I were getting excited.

It was going to be a game changer and something that hadn’t been seen in the marketplace previously. It was exactly what our users were telling us they wanted.

Users that were canceling gave us the same kind of feedback:

Of course, getting it to a point we could launch it was troublesome.

We were running into one issue after another. It was already two months behind.

I recently performed a post-mortem analysis on the update, the launch, and what happened post-launch to see where we could improve.

Unfortunately, there were several things we could have differently.

Fortunately, there were also several things we would do again.

I decided to share this introspective in the hopes that others can learn from it as well.

Lessons From a Semi-Failed Software Update

1. Test EVERYTHING…Multiple Times

This was a product update that was relatively large. It literally changed the entire way users built lists. We were dropping our chrome extension and handling everything in-app.

We were able to leverage all of our own data, while building new data sources and partnerships.

There were a lot of moving parts.

We would run through a quick test, even built some unit tests, but we failed to account for all the moving parts.

A little more Q and A would have gone a long way.

Get your entire team involved in the testing process. Especially your Customer Success team so they can feel confident and know how to support users through the change.

You can also use a service like Blitz.io for stress testing heavy server load.

2. Soft Launch THEN Announce

The day of the update, we were still making last second code changes and bug fixes.

Probably a warning sign to begin with, but we were anxious to get this out. Again, it was already two months later than we wanted.

The moment the build was done (techie talk for the update went live), I fired off the email blast that it was live!

This email was saved as a draft for over a month.

Of course, immediately after clicking send we realized we had problems as our server CPU was maxing out and our data providers couldn’t handle the volume.

Doh!

Ideally, we would have released the update and hand-held the first several customers that had questions. We could have seen how our server and data providers were doing.

Let that run for a couple of days and then send out the email blast.

Now, if you have a list of several hundred people that won’t be an issue.

However, our list is approaching 15,000 subscribers so an email blast can mean a flood of users at once.

3. Triple Check the Links in Your Announcement

This was brutal as we rolled out a blog post to accompany the e-mail announcement.

However, I changed the URL of the actual email. Only, when I updated the link in Drip I apparently didn’t have the entire phrase highlighted.

So the first word was sent to a dead link, while the other was sent to the actual post.

#FAIL

This filled up my inbox with a bunch of responses.

A quick 301 redirect of the old URL did the trick, but since I was in Slack talking to dev team about all the issues, I didn’t notice my inbox filling up.

4. Launch When Engineers Will Be Available

Of course, we were working hard on so many last minute bugs that the day was getting away from us.

We decided to get it live and announce it the moment we thought it was ready.

Unfortunately, this was later in the day and our engineers were already seeing double.

If anything, soft launch later in the day with the plan of a full announcement the beginning of the next day.

5. Don’t Give an Estimated Launch Date

This is tough to do when you have users on the fence if they should cancel or not.

Especially when you know the update you are rolling out will fix their problems.

Even internally, you should avoid giving dates. Again, tough to do when Customer Success wants to know so they can pass it along to disgruntled users.

Did I mention we were two months past when we originally started telling users it was coming?

Ugh.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned running a software company, you NEVER launch on time.

6. Don’t Avoid Support Tickets

Don’t go dark on your customer support tickets.

Even if the update worked perfectly, many users will be PISSED you changed the UI on them.

People don’t like change.

Don’t take it too personally. Just know they were used to things being done in a certain manner.

Luckily, we handled this one pretty well.

We tried setting expectations that we were working through the kinks the next couple of days and appreciated their patience. We didn’t want them to expect an immediate resolution.

At the same time, tell them to keep reporting any issues they encounter so that your team is aware. This actually makes them feel like they are a part of it – which can change the dynamic of the conversation.

7. Tease the Release

In our email blasts, we would give hints as to what was coming.

Of course, we thought it was coming “next week”, and so we got a little lucky with the teaser.

Because of the delays, we were able to string along four emails that referenced the big change.

We’d use the bottom of newsletter type updates to reference it, we’d use the P.S. section and even use a subtle screenshot.

This helps to build some excitement for the release, lets current customers know you’re working on things, and also sets expectations that some things might be changing.

8. Update Your Help Documentation

Our Customer Success team had plenty of time to prepare Zendesk with all new articles, update old articles, and add new screenshots.

We ended up going live with some before the update even happened, which ended up not being a big deal.

It was nice that we could roll out such a massive change and have documentation for user’s to go to for more help.

9. Communicate to Impacted Users

Not only did we have a massive update to the platform, we actually LOWERED pricing.

So much more value, yet lowered pricing. Go figure.

This was important though because we found our sweet spot.

At the same time, we communicated individually with users in advance who were paying more and actually gave them a lot more value for their money.

This allowed us to keep current revenue (by giving more value), and made those customers feel like they were getting a free upgrade (since they were already okay paying the higher price point).

10. Update Your Onboarding

Inside Intercom, we had a whole new onboarding experience both for new users just checking us out, as well as for paying users.

This includes new screenshots, new workflows, triggers, goals, upsell messages, and more.

Luckily, we had this in place ready for over a month as well and so we just needed to turn it on when the announcement went out.

11. Celebrate!

Lastly, don’t forget to celebrate when it finally launches!! rum and coke for everyone in the office and we captured screenshots of our announcement to document the journey.

This was a monumental day for us. I physically went and poured rum and coke for everyone in the office.

We captured screenshots of our announcement and posted it into our #moments Slack channel. We have this Slack channel just for the purpose of documenting the journey.

It was a great time to reflect with the team while also getting them excited about where we’re headed.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it was a milestone and a major day in the history of LeadFuze.

I have always been focused on getting a product out the moment I think it’s “good enough”.

I literally have this printed on my wall:

While this served me well in the early days of LeadFuze, I’ve learned that things need to change as you progress as a business.

Avoid launching software update too early, but you still need to ensure the entire team feels the urgency. Especially when you are losing customers and your next update is going to solve those problems.

So there’s a delicate balance to be made between releasing too soon and releasing too late, but hopefully, this helps in guiding your decision.

B2B content is notoriously expensive…and notoriously underutilized.

In fact, some data shows that the average piece of B2B content takes 20 hours to create and $900 to produce, yet 65% goes unused. That’s a lot of wasted resources.

Why is this happening?

One reason has to do with discoverability. These companies think: “What’s the point? No one is going to read this.”

But that’s where they’re wrong.

By making content more discoverable, it will indeed be read (and used) by a larger audience–and it will help more readers start a journey down the sales funnel, too.

So how can content be optimized for discoverability? Let’s look at six different tactics that can make your production more effective, profitable, and useful to the target audience.

Organize by Segments

To make content more discoverable, you have to think like the end user.

Ask yourself, “If I were a reader, how would I want to find information on a site like ours? How would I like to see information grouped and sorted?”

Many times, readers are looking for something specific: Information about a certain type of tool, a how-to, etc. That’s why segments are an easy way to increase discoverability with a user-first mindset.

By breaking content down into contextual groups, you can simplify the information-seeking process and boost relevancy, too.

Uberflip does a nice job of this with their content. In the example, you can see how they organize content by marketing automation segments like Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, etc. rather than letting all of their marketing automation content get mixed together.

Image source: Uberflip

What they also do well is tying in contextual CTAs that are related back to each specific marketing automation tool. Smart, right?

The bottom line here: If your audience is looking for segment-specific information, make sure you give them the option to find content that way.

Organize Content by Topic

Speaking of discoverability by organization…let’s also talk about how organizing content by topic can be helpful for the audience as well.

Many times people discover content because they are problem-solving or learning. They’re on a mission for answers. Mathew Sweezey wrote Marketing Automation for Dummies, and he says:

“People don’t actively want content. They decide to engage with it to solve goals or because it aligns with their purpose–which is usually highly contextual.”

With this in mind, you need to remember that if a reader lands on your site’s content page, you need to bring them from point a to point B. Break down the wealth of information you have into more digestible, helpful topical regions that can quickly get that person involved.

Salesforce does this with their blog content. They’ve broken down content into five topics, which makes it fast and easy for a reader to go down the right path toward things like IT or marketing-related posts.

Image source: Salesforce

Other sites like CrazyEgg get even more specific with topical categories:

Image source: CrazyEgg

The more specific your topics, the easier it will be for the visitor to find what he or she needs.

If you’re not sure what topics to include, look at your website data to see what visitors type into the search bar most often. Using this data, you can find trends and patterns that will indicate which topics are most sought-out by visitors to your site.

Leverage Metadata and Structure for SEO

Sometimes, content is discovered by way of SEO. You need an answer, you Google it. Whatever appears relevant (and high enough) in the search results will be more readily found and consumed.

To make content more discoverable for this path, you have to think with a SEO mindset (and know a few basics.) Online information expert Ann Rockley says:

“Intelligent content is content that’s structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable.”

This translates into two main ideas: You need to use a rich, SEO-friendly content structure and to leverage metadata (tags).

Why? Because it works. Search engines evaluate metadata, titles, page content, and headings to determine the relevancy of search results they display.

This is the same reason people tag recipes by ingredient. Want to cook something with bacon? Tags make bacon-centric recipes more readily discoverable, like in this example from Supercook:

Here’s how you do that with your own content.

Structure: Site navigation, search bars, titles, and headings should all be extremely user-friendly, relevant, and content-oriented. Think semantically, and use words and phrasing that users would when seeking out answers to questions. Instead of titling your post “Need Better Marketing Results? Read This Next” you might try something more natural to a reader seeking an answer to a question, such as: “How to Boost Conversion Rates on Sales Pages.”

Metadata: Use your tags. If you’re writing about “interactive content”, you need to input metadata tags that include that tag as well as a few related ones. Most website builders have add-ons (Yoast works with WordPress, for example) that allow you to input metadata tags.

With this two-pronged approach, you can boost your SEO and make your content more relevant both to search engines and to your readers so that more people discover your posts.

Partner With Influencers

You can only toot your own horn so many times before people start to tune you out.

However, social proof theory tells us that validation from external sources is a powerful way to not only boost credibility, but to increase discoverability, too. That’s where partnering with influencers can be a smart move for your content.

Not only are influencers trusted sources for recommendations, but they often have large followings (both on social media and their email lists.) If you can partner with relevant influencers in your niche to create share-worthy content, you can reach thousands of new people through these extended audience.

So what do these partnerships look like?

• Interviews: Conduct interesting, in-depth interviews or Q&A sessions with influencers from your niche
• Roundups: Gather insights from several influencers on a specific topic, and then share that as a “master list”
• Guides: Hire an influencer to help put together an insightful guide, which acts as a go-to resource on a topic within your niche

Here’s an example of what this can look like. TopRankMarketing Blog interviewed marketing expert Ann Handley on her new book and thoughts on content creation in general in this long-form post:

Image source

Not only is this an interesting article, but it’s something Ann might want to share with her large following–and it’s something listeners and Ann’s fans might want to share, too. Discoverability at it’s finest.

Note: A best practice is to specify expectations around sharing before putting together an influencer piece of content. Some influencers do interviews only and won’t guarantee they’ll share the finished piece. Make sure you’re both on the same page (in writing) before diving in.

Repurpose Content for Different Mediums

Content has a shorter lifespan when it’s kept on a single platform.

As time passes, it lives in that one space, but gets pushed back further into the archives. You can extend the mileage you get out of content with social media sharing and promoted posts, but after a while, your audience will tune out repeated messages on the aging piece of material.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. By repurposing content for different mediums, you can use the same information and present it in new, interesting ways.

For example: Say you wrote a blog post on key marketing takeaways from the year. You could later transform that material into a SlideShare presentation that distills the key facts into quick, digestible slides. Same info, new piece of content.

Image source

The point is: You don’t always have to recreate the wheel when it comes to content discoverability. By re-purposing your existing content for new mediums, you can reach new audiences and spend less time working from square one.

Include Tools for Easy Sharing

This one might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many content creators forget to include this discoverability booster.

If you want your audience members to help increase the visibility of your content, you have to many it easy for them to do so.

One of the simplest ways to do that is by adding social sharing buttons in a prominent place on your content pages.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the big ones you want to include so that readers can share your content with their own audiences with just a few clicks. Kissmetrics does this over on their blog:

Image source

But it doesn’t have to stop there. You can also:

1. Encourage your team to share relevant, new content in their email signatures
2. Showcase your best content in a welcome email drip campaign (which can be easily forwarded)
3. Include “click to tweet” quotes within your articles for easier Twitter sharing

Ultimately, your goal should be to make your content as easily shareable as possible. Don’t make ‘em work for it. Keep sharing simple.

Increase Content Discoverability With These Tips

It’s a good idea to test out these different tactics to see which produce the best results for your content. Maybe your readers really like to forward good content via email–or maybe they’d like to see more of your content repurposed for new mediums.

Experiment with these tips to see which helps you acquire the most new site visitors, and in no time you’ll be drawing more views and interacting with more new leads.

Sales operations is shaping the future of sales and marketing organizations – the “who’s”, “what’s”, and “why’s” we should know about.

Nowadays, some of the best sales forces are empowered by technological innovations and advancements. Just take a look at how rapidly social networks, mobile technologies, and cloud-based applications are growing in size. These trends and tools open up a lot of opportunities for organizations to widen their market, generate more sales, and attain sustainable growth in profit.

As science and technology slowly but surely take over people’s lives, sales organizations become more and more dependent on systematic procedures and data analysis. Hence, the vital role of sales operations. According to Dharmendra Sahay and Scott Shimamoto, Principals at ZS Associates, sales operations is uniquely positioned to leverage data and technology to support the sales organization, diagnose issues, and design solutions.

To best understand the nuts-and-bolts that make up sales operations, recognition of the wide variety of the sales operations teams’ tasks and functions is key. Knowing what the sales operations analysts’ description is, we will be able to better comprehend and appreciate the role of the teams’ in sales operations.

Let’s get to know more about who the people in sales operations are, what are their roles and responsibilities, and why they play a crucial part in the growth of organizations in detail.

But first things first… what IS sales operations?

Since the birth of modern sales organizations, most -if not- all of us are familiar with the typical, well-defined characters that play essential roles in the sales organizations. These are the persistent sales reps, canny managers, charismatic VPs, and goal-driven CEOs.

Sales operations professionals also play a major character in the organization, however, they are new and some companies are still trying to figure them out. Despite there being a thousand of sales operations professionals in the US alone, and its function has become commonly well-known, there’s still a lack of clarity of what sales operations really is.

According to Wikipedia, sales operations is a set of business activities and processes that help a sales organization run effectively, efficiently, and in support of business strategies and objectives. In short, sales operations is the “backbone” of a sales organization.

Here are the roles and responsibilities of sales operations:

The ideal role of sales operations is to provide guidance to the sales teams by developing a well-structured sales process, analyzing team performance within the framework of that process, enhance the team’s productivity and effectiveness, and implement solutions based on data and analysis.

Sales operations need constant development to further maximize the sales team’s abilities and skills to create a smoother sales process.

The sales operations’ responsibilities are to discover high-level, notable, strategic findings, and learn how to transform them into significant strategies and use them to help sales reps, managers, and VP to hit their targets.

Let’s take a look at the common set of functions that sales operations teams are typically responsible for. Since the main aim of sales operations is to reduce friction in the sales process and incorporate itself into the organization so as to ensure the execution of the company’s sales strategy, then we’ll realize that sales operations is a strategic function. Here are some key elements to consider:

1. Driving Sales Strategy
2. Sales Excellence
3. Sales Team Organization
4. Team Efficiency and Execution

Who are Sales Operations Analysts?

A sales operations analyst’s description varies for different companies and organizations. Sales operations analysts are the ones responsible for handling and managing the workflow of an organization’s sales processes, enabling sales operations to go smoothly and ensure the implementation of sales strategies to further the growth of the organization. Hence, the strategic function of sales operations teams.

What does a Sales Operations Analyst do?

The practical role and task of sales operations analyst widely vary from one company to the next. Although, it is thought that the basic mission of a sales operations analyst is to gather and organize data, and generate deeper customer insight in order to enhance the sales force’s productivity. Essentially, sales operations teams can choose to offer varying levels of service depending on a sales organizations’ sophistication.

Sales operations analysts have a primary level of service: support. This includes generating sales performance reports, managing administrative programs like incentive compensation plans, and keeping customer relationship management relevant. The next level of service is delivering information and insight to the right people at the right time, including highlights of emerging problems, misalignments, and other challenges. The third level includes developing potential solutions to sales force effectiveness challenges across a range of critical areas, such as customer segmentation, sales resource optimization, sales process, talent development, and motivation.

Lastly, the highest level of impact that sales operations analyst distinguish themselves is as strategic partners. They detect emerging customer or market trends and help determine how the business can meet those opportunities and challenges to drive greater sales success.

Some of their tasks include:

1. Analyzing and developing sales operations policies and procedures.
2. Working in the field with sales representatives to identify opportunities for improvement.
3. Assisting in managing compliance program and sales operations help desk.
4. Maintaining existing sales reports and designs new reports as needed. Participates in the evaluation, selection, and implementation of a decision-support tool.
5. Acting as primary liaison on sales force automation projects/trends.
6. Developing promotional material distribution capability incorporating state-of-the-art technology.
7. Keeping the sales force in check tactically.
8. Making sure everyday tasks are aligned with the company strategy.

What is a Senior Sales Operations Analyst?

Senior sales operations analysts lead and manage the entirety of sales operations and keep sales operations analysts intact and provide them with measurable goals to fulfill. They play an integral part in helping senior management understand how to scale the sales organization and drive incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

Some of their key responsibilities are:

1. Coordinating revenue forecasting and budgeting processes used within the sales organization; establishing high levels of quality, accuracy, and consistency
2. Conducting analyses to gain deeper insights into business
3. Partnering with Finance on compensation design and providing goals for the sales organization
4. Administering, managing, and reporting on revenue forecasting and analysis
5. Assist with maintaining the functional areas of data management, forecasting, contacts, leads, opportunities, dashboards and reports, and ensuring data integrity throughout our CRM system
6. Responsible for creating the metrics to evaluate sales efficiency and productivity
7. Establishing effective analysis of sales force trends and performance in an effort to identify greater efficiencies and better manage and understand process bottlenecks and inconsistencies throughout the entire sales lifecycle
8. Assessing client and sales trends, feedback, and market movement; consolidate into recommendations for the executive team
9. Performing ad hoc analysis for senior management to provide data support for business decisions
10. Evaluating new tools and platforms to improve reporting and sales operations

By looking into the tasks and responsibilities of sales operations, sales operations analysts, and senior sales operations analysts…

We can deduce why they are considered as a fundamental component of sales organizations and companies. As our world marches toward further technological growth and as technology increases its influence over mankind, the need of capable sales operations teams grows as well.

Companies and organizations that foster and develop excellent sales operations teams will find it easier to continue and maintain a competitive edge, enhance sales force productivity and effectiveness, and achieve consistent, sustainable sales success.

“In the end, all business operations can be reduced into three words; people, product, and profit. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.”

-Lee Iacocca

It is the desire of every business owner with a website online to rank high in search engine result pages. One of the factors Google uses to determine the search engine ranking of websites is the number of links pointing to it.

According to Moz, 99.2% of search results that appears in the top 50 results have at least one external link pointing to the website.

This implies that the more the links pointing to your website, the higher the search engine ranking.

But wait;

What are the benefits of higher search engine ranking?

1. It brings tremendous traffic to your website

According to a recent research study by SocialTimes, the first result that shows up in search result pages will likely get 17% more clicks than every other result.

Buttressing this point, ImForza stats revealed that 70% of the links users click on is organic, and that three-fourths of search engine users do not move past the first page of results.

That means when Google ranks your website on its first page, you get most of the web users onto your website.

That is not all.

It opens up a lot of avenues from users all around the web to find your website and what you have to offer. These people are more likely to convert to leads than the visitors from the search engines.

This is because they came from websites that are related to your business. This makes it easy for you to turn them into paying customers.

So, what will the increase in website visitors do for your business?

1. It brings in more customers and sales.

According to Research Now, about 9 in 10 consumers (84%) make purchases after reading about a product or service on a blog.

Also, among the consumers aged 18–34, blogs ranked as the most important source of information to make buying decisions.

Despite the many benefits link building offers, Google does not want you to buy links or trade it with other blogs. It wants to you to earn them. In order words, it advocates natural links.

According to Matt Cutts, the purpose of SEO is not to make links and anchor text look natural because you can’t do that. Instead, write from your heart and focus on helping users find a better answer. That way, everything will naturally fall into place.

Now, that you know the benefits of building natural links to your website. The question is:

What are the ways you can build natural links to your website?

There are several ways you can build natural links, such as using Guest posts, Blog post/content, infographics, creating link bait, videos, sponsorships, and content.

However, we will be learning how to use content to build natural links. They will keep generating links even when you stop promoting them.

Now, there are several types of content, but few of them can actually help you to build links. We will take a look at five of them.

5 Types of content that generates natural links

Content is the essence of every decent link building strategy. It gives your blog the important taste it deserves. Content that generates natural links hook readers.

The fact is, people don’t share what they don’t read. They link to posts that connect with them on a personal level. They will share it with other people so that they can benefit also.

This type of content is not the popular ones you see all over the internet. If you want your content to generate a considerable amount of natural links, don’t tell people something they already know.

For instance, you create a post on “the benefits of taking water“. Everyone and their grandmother knows that you have to drink water to live. You need to create content that will add value to readers.

Content that generates natural links is in-depth and high quality. According to SocialmediaToday, 70% of Kissmetric’s traffic is from in-depth original content that ranks high in the search engines top result.

So, what type of content will hook your readers and generate natural links for your website?

1. Insanely Long List posts

List posts are popular all around the web. In fact there are websites dedicated to it, such as listverse.com. Lists are known for their traffic generating ability.

According to a research carried out by Okdork and Buzzsumo, list post gets the most shares after infographic.

Lists are great because they help your readers to navigate through your content easily.

However, list posts that attract links are ridiculously long. They are skyscraper kind of list post.

Below are great ideas of list posts you can create for your website:

• List of best and free paid tools in your niche
• List of ideas and resources
• Top influencers in your niche
• Best books for a specific thing in your niche
• Popular mistakes in your niche

2. How-to posts

How — to post help in breaking down complex issues into consumable bits. It educates your visitors and gives them value for their time.

A lot of people are looking for ways to do things they have never done before. They rely on search engines to give them such information. That is where your content comes in.

There are lots of how-to blog posts littering the internet today. You must ensure that yours is standing out. You can only achieve this if you teach people how to do things differently from the ways they are used to:
Popular How-to-posts can be on different topics, such as:

• How-to post for beginners
• How-to for advanced users
• How-to checklist
• How-to do something over a long period of time
• How-to choose the best product/service

3. Ultimate Guides:

Ultimate guides are different from How-to posts. They are longer and all-encompassing. They are also popular on the internet today. You can see ultimate guides in virtually all topics online.

An ultimate guide that will generate natural links should solve common problems in your niche. That is when it will be useful for your readers. This type of content will help to position you as an expert in your niche within a short period of time.

4. Case studies

Case studies show your readers how you take a certain approach and achieved a certain result. You can also leverage on someone’s result. Case studies have the capacities to drive traffic and links.

They show your expertise in your niche. Numerous examples of case studies that generate links abound on the internet.

5. Visual assets

Visual assets such as Images, diagrams, infographics etc., are very easy to link to.

For example, when you create an infographic and publish it on your website and other websites that allow infographic submission, whenever anyone shares it on their website, you get a link back to your website.

Conclusion:

Above are the five types of content that generate natural links. Having them on your website will increase your backlinks, search engine rankings, traffic and customers What are you waiting for, start creating them now!

The better you understand your prospect, the more efficient and effective your B2B prospecting will be, and no one silo or point of view within the company is going to give you the “who,” “what,” and “why” of prospects and the buying process.

The answer is to triangulate intelligence or we are no more effective than the blind men of poetry, trying to determine what an elephant really “looks like” with each touching the strange beast once from a different angle.

Let’s prove the point.

The Elephant in the Room

The prospect is the elephant in the room, and while no one perspective yields a true and complete portrait, there is no monopoly on insight, grasshopper.

Here’s the three-sided equation, or the three points of intelligence you need to grok:

• Data analysis adds an important dimension in recognizing what prospects are doing now. It’s immediate and improves targeting and enables greater efficiency. However, it doesn’t provide depth to the “who” and the “why” of the behavior which leads us to include Sales’ internal intelligence.
• Internal intelligence. Sales talks to the elephants all day long, every day. We can tap into their real-world knowledge, both of the individuals and the specific accounts. Marketing needs more depth on the real people who we are calling prospects.
• Persona research. Creation of a prospect person, or personas, based upon new qualitative research, yields the human insights into the individuals who comprise the buying center, their own values, perspectives, and agendas. It takes the learning from behavioral data analysis and inside intelligence and matches it with motivation.

The Elephant Revealed

Let’s see how this plays out in reality with a very prestigious firm which breathes the very rarefied atmosphere of derivative accounting, helping their clients (including Google) to mitigate foreign currency risk through consulting and outsourcing. Long seen as unassailable experts, they have made their reputation by being smarter, better prepared, and more proactive than their much larger competitors.

They recently introduced a highly-specialized software package, but results were not pacing with expectations. To really understand the prospect, and to improve their B2B prospecting, they had to triangulate.

• Data Analysis. This is reality and not a mega B2C company with oceans of data. The current data was on Salesforce but the history was on Excel (and some in personal recollection). When the sources were compiled and matched to the products and services purchased, it became obvious that the strength of the individual relationships they had forged―individuals were clients of one service, then became prospects for another, sometimes at a different company, then clients again.
• Internal Intelligence. The internal view was that the software is unique and robust. The tie-breaker was that everything is based on their insight and expertise, which is without peer. Sales felt they could now compete as a software company.
• Persona Research. The research validated the data analysis and the internal intelligence, and added a critical component―motivation―which changed the entire picture. Prospects were looking for an expert that also offered software. They needed to engage with people who could help them to better understand how to make the right decisions and then to install the software that could provide better decision support.

“Seeing” the B2B Prospecting Opportunity

Much comes from this triangulation, not the least that as pioneering experts in this very specialized accounting field, the client understandably believed they already knew how to position and sell the software. Markets evolve, even in accounting and more than one might think. We all need a regular dose of outside B2B prospecting perspective.

Here are some of the takeaways:

• Long-term relationships are a competitively differentiating asset and constitute the investment with the highest return. A client is a prospect is a client (And really, B2B prospecting is a personal sell.),
• Education is a critical component. Rebrand the firm’s training classes as a professional institute.
• Stop leading with software. The untapped potential, in this case, comes from being who your client needs you to be and when by walking down the consideration journey arm in arm. Software comes later in the continuum of the relationship. Software first is selling the elephant’s tail. Help them to “see” the rest of the elephant first, and then they can appreciate what’s missing.

Full Circle

Again, any one point of view can be true but still not account for the totality of the situation. Putting data analysis together with internal intelligence and persona research, we start to get a glimpse of that strange and wonderful beast, our prospect.

Or as one of this firm’s clients said, “Are they expensive―you bet. But they are worth every penny. First they installed best practices. Then the software to make it efficient.”

Congrats! Your efforts to prove that you have the ability to close with the best of them have been recognized, and you are now the proud manager of your very own sales team!

You have taken great care to ensure that your team has a well-established sales process in place. You’ve dutifully evaluated and chosen just the right tools to support them. And now you’re ready to start crushing that quota!

However, it takes you about 5 seconds to realize that managing a sales team is MUCH different than selling yourself. So where do you begin? Having been through this journey myself just a few years ago, I’d like to offer my fellow sales managers a few tips that I learned along the way.

Filter out the noise and set your priorities.

There are some really great articles about can’t-miss metrics, like this one. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring and maximizing sales – and that’s because every team has a unique set of goals and priorities. You can waste months digging into all kinds of unnecessary metrics or focusing on the wrong things if your priorities and desired outcomes are not 100% clear.

To avoid this timesink and guide your team down the path toward meaningful processes and behaviors, ask yourself the following questions before embarking on a quest to change your team’s day-to-day activities:

1. Does changing this process or behavior have the potential to make an impact?

For example, lead scoring can be very effective, but it’s only useful if you must prioritize outreach. If you have bandwidth to touch all of your leads in a timely manner, then there is no benefit to scoring them, and your time would be better spent on other initiatives.

2. Do I own this process or behavior?

Only focus on things that you have total control over. Many metrics bleed into marketing or support, so invest your time in things that fall entirely in your domain and that you and your team can actually own.

3. How hard is this to change?
4. How long will this take?

The trick is to first focus on the low hanging fruit that will have the most impact on your number. Answering these two questions honestly will help you decide what to start working on today.

5. Can I measure the change?

As renowned physicist Lord Kelvin once said, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” You can completely revamp your entire sales process, pipeline and methodology, but if there is no way to prove that these changes made a positive difference, then you’re just right back where you started.

6. Does this align with the company vision?

Before pursuing any process or behavior changes, take a step back and run it through your company values and mission. If you don’t have company values, stop reading now and go find your CEO.

Hint: There is a huge difference between processes and behaviors. There may be a quick fix if a process is broken, but typically behavior is much more difficult to change and is where you should place the majority of your focus.

Maximize your time coaching.

If you did the first exercise properly, the odds are you are going to want to change some behavior through coaching. The best leaders find out how to deliver meaningful coaching at the right times and ensure that it sticks.

Let’s say you want to increase your average deal size by selling more add-ons. You will probably put together a product training so everyone is aware of the value props of each add-on and knows when and how to pitch them. You many even put an incentive on it. Is that going to drive long-term behavior change?

Great managers will identify and change how reps think and act by coaching in real-world settings. They sit in on discovery calls to make sure reps are uncovering pain and gain appropriately. They will shadow demos to make sure the features are being aligned to customer value. Great managers will listen to negotiations and make sure reps are not leaving money on the table. Sounds like a lot of work, huh?

My advice for coaching is to put in place a structure that allows you to target high-value or high-risk moments particular to the behavior you are interested in coaching around. Here are some great places to start. Note that the ability to record all phone calls and email interactions will be a HUGE help.

1. The first five and last five minutes of introductory calls
2. The middle thirty-minutes of discovery calls
3. Deals in stage two or three of the pipeline that go to lost or, even worse, unqualified
4. One of my favorites is negative sentiment analysis on emails. I get an alert any time we get bad news and I can coach in real time
5. Use a sales methodology and hold reps accountable to doing a deal strategy on qualified opportunities (MEDDIC, Sandler, Challenger, etc.)

Never lose sight of the customer.

How many times have you dealt with a company or salesperson who made your life more difficult because they had to follow a specific process? All the time! When behavior and process get too far removed from customer focus, it causes major issues. As you select processes and behaviors to change and coach around, be sure to ask yourself:

1. Will this have a noticeable outward effect?
2. Does it help or hurt (are prospects going to like it)?
3. How will we communicate this change?

This can be a difficult situation. Often an ultimately beneficial change may help some customers and hurt others. This is where it is critical to ensure the change fits well with the company values, and to be sure that this change is communicated very clearly both internally and externally.

For example, imagine if your company has decided to create and enforce a minimum seat count for your product. Your reps can handle this situation one of two ways:

Never Stop Learning

While being a first-time sales manager is full of trial and error, the truth is that you never stop learning – and you shouldn’t want to! Each time you discover a new high-impact process to improve, coach a rep through the biggest deal of his career or build a new customer relationship, you will continue to grow.

Sales managers, what are some of the biggest learnings that you’ve uncovered in your career thus far? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below. Good luck on your journey!

For some marketers and business owners, a carefully planned along with an executed email outreach campaign is the next best thing since sliced bread.

Not only can outreach campaigns help companies skyrocket their sales to new heights, but they can even get more traffic. In addition, form strategic partnerships with industry specific influencers that can help them establish their company. That’s how massive of an impact email outreach campaigns can be to a business.

However, despite being an advocate of the marketing method, we have to be bluntly honest with you about the nuances of choosing this marketing method. Not only can the whole process be tedious, but it can also be time-consuming, let alone complicated to manage that is if you don’t have the right email outreach tool.

In this guide, we are going to compare three of the best email outreach tools in the market. If you’re about to start an email outreach campaign and are oblivious about which tool to use, then you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in.

1. Mailshake

Despite the tool’s simplicity and user-friendliness, Mailshake can get you the leads, sales, or relationships with industry experts that can help you grow your business. Such is the beauty of Mailshake.

Once you log into Mailshake, one of the first things that you’ll notice is how easy it is to navigate around the platform.

You can upload your list in bulk to make it easier for you to start sending outreach messages.

When you’re done uploading your list and naming your campaign, you can start creating your email messages.

Here’s how their web editor looks.

The page’s elements look very easy to understand, doesn’t it?

As you can see, you can compose three different emails from within the page:

• Add Reply: The feature allows you to send multiple images if the recipients do not reply.
• Add Drip: -Let’s you send the email messages regardless.
• Add on Click: Lets you send an email if the recipient clicks a link in your message.

Mailshake also has truckloads of carefully crafted email templates.

While these templates are certainly usable, be sure to customize them to make sure that the messages fit perfectly to your business dynamics or to the goals that you are trying to accomplish out of your email outreach campaigns.

Of course, these are just some of the many functions and features of Mailshake. If you’d like to explore Mailshake’s features even further, then you can sign-up for an account.

Another important aspect worth mentioning about Mailshake is how it costs only $9 per user per month. Not only that, but the tool also has a 30-day money back guarantee program that you can take advantage of if for whatever reason you feel that it isn’t a good fit for you.

2. Ninja Outreach

There are a lot of things that Ninja Outreach can do for you. In addition, it can help you with managing your email outreach campaigns, the tool can also help you with social and content prospecting (among other things).

Let’s say you don’t have an email list yet. Nevertheless, you’re looking to come-up with a list of prospects to send outreach messages to. To do this, you can use Ninja Outreach’s Content Prospecting feature, or its Social Prospecting feature.

Look at the demonstrate the pages that you can see when using the Content Prospecting feature.

As you can see from the page, the tool has several customizations features to help you get a better list of people (or content) that you can refer to for prospecting.

Here’s an example:

Once you find a person (or content) that you think is worth reaching out to, then save or add the person to your list by clicking the blue “+” button.

While the process described above will help you build your very own list, there is a way for you to import your list if you already have an existing one.

To do this, just go to the “List Management” tab, click “Create a List,” then import your file.

Once your list is ready, you can start setting up your email messages (Ninja Outreach has truckloads of templates), then start sending them.

Ninja Outreach has four pricing packages:

• Blogger: $69 per month
• Small Agency: $99 per month
• Large Agency: $249 per month
• Enterprise: $599 per month

Visit their pricing page to learn more about what each package has to offer.

3. Quickmail

Quickmail has truckloads of features and here are the following: you can create events, tasks, setup your email list, add tags, labels, and set up DNCs (Do Not Contact) on specific domains. All of these features can help you, or any marketer or business owner setup and manage your email outreach campaigns better.

However, because of all the features that Quickmail has, the tool can be quite overwhelming to look at. That being said, those who are new to marketing might not appreciate the beauty of the tool. Let’s look at how the platform looks from the inside. Once you are done signing up, you’ll then be taken to the Dashboard.

Here’s how the dashboard looks:

While there are several ways that you can get started with Quickmail, here’s a workflow that you can use:

1. Import your prospect list. Or add them one by one. Try to enter as many details as you can about your prospects (e.g., their company name, job title, etc.)
2. Setup your email messages.
3. Setup your sequence.

Depending on how elaborate your email outreach campaign is, you might have to add a couple of steps before or after, which is mentioned above. However, for the most part, the three steps alone should be enough to get you started initially.

To add your prospect lists, just click the “Prospect List” menu on the left sidebar. Click the blue, “Actions” button, then choose whichever option is appropriate.

To create a Sequence, just click the “Sequence” drop down option on the left sidebar. Then click “Sequence List,” click the blue “Action” button, then click the “+ Create Sequence” button.

Once your Sequence is created, you can now start creating the email messages within your Sequence. To do that, open the Sequence that you created, then click the “Add E-Mail Variation.” You will then be taken to the page where you can start creating your email message.

As for Quickmail’s pricing, they have two pricing plans: The Basic Plan for $49 per user per month, and the Pro Plan for $69 per user per month.

Conclusion

In terms of user-friendliness and the tool’s ability to bring in real value to the company, Mailshake was chosen as the winner.

While Ninja Outreach and Quickmail certainly have their obvious merits both tools can be quite overwhelming.

Mailshake, on the other hand, doesn’t have an overwhelming feel to it, yet it still has the essential features to bring in truckloads of sales and leads.

What’s next?

What email outreach marketing tools have you been using to grow your business?

If there are other tools that you’d like us to review, then please tell us about the tool in the comments section below.

If your goal is to build a serious, actionable plan for real sales growth, there are four necessary steps. Here’s how I lay it out:

Target List

I want every sales person to start with a list of targeted, strategic accounts they’re calling on. I want that for a reason; I don’t want them to call on the accounts that are easy and receptive. I want them to call on the accounts that are hard to win. I want them to call on the accounts that are going to change the results for the whole company; for them, their sales manager, and the company’s bottom line.

You need to pick your targets at the beginning of the year – some will carry over from prior years. One place to look is at accounts for which you competed in the last 18 months and lost; that’s a target for you. What happens too often is that we lose and walk away, never knowing when the prospect becomes dissatisfied enough to change. It could be any time, it could be years, or months. Most of us go away and wait for them to reach out to us in the future, never thinking to nurture them, instead silently awaiting the day they decide to change.

You really need to pick your target dream clients. Who are you going to win?

A Pursuit Plan

You also need a pursuit plan. Sometimes we’re myopic and we have a narrow view of what we’re doing. The pursuit plan may mean that I have multiple people in my organization calling on multiple people in the  target’s organization.

I will have lots of different approaches. I’m going to ask existing clients to introduce me. I’m going to be super creative in laying out my pursuit plan. Who’s going to call? What relationships are we going to try to open? What are we going to leverage to help get an opening so we create an opportunity inside that account?

Nurture Tool Kit

You need a nurture tool kit – this is where messaging is important. If you’re calling saying the same things other sales people say, your target is going to resist your message. You need a message that talks about the value you create. You need language for phone calls that says “these are the three problems we’re helping our clients face now, here are the three problems you’re going to face in the coming year. I’m going to share with you some insights, whether you ever buy from me, that are going to help you make better decisions.”

You need white papers and case studies and things that will nurture that relationship. You need to continually feed the contacts within your target clients real, actionable insights that they can take action on, whether or not they hire you.

This thinking often generates real push back from salespeople, because they don’t want to “give away” their best ideas. The truth is, the ideas are mostly known, and most of them are not used because there are too many salespeople who don’t think of things through this lens of nurturing. If you want people to know you as a value creator and trusted advisor, you’ve got to do this.

Real Key Performance Indicators

I know this is old school, but it’s work you have to do and it’s the only way to really measure your progress. The indicators you really need to track are:

• How many clients do you have to win?
• What’s the average deal size?
• How many appointments do you need in a week to create the right number of opportunities?
• What’s the revenue and profit goal by month and by quarter?
• What’s the activity indicates that you’re getting closer to that goal?

You don’t need a dashboard with 64 metrics. You need to choose the ones that really are your key performance indicators, the ones that suggest that you’re moving towards success, and then you need to monitor them and see how your plan is driving results.

This plan is basic, and complex at the same time. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s the real work you must do to grow your sales. Target, pursue, nurture, and measure. Old school, but it works.

 

The post Target, Pursuit, Nurture, Measure appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Airline customer service reps know a thing or two about travel. 

From the moment you step into the airport to when you finally board your flight, it's these airport workers' job to help you successfully navigate getting from point A to point B.

What's more, with the perks that come along with working for an airline, like free or discounted flights, many of these agents have quite a bit of travel experience themselves. 

So, who better to turn to for travel tips and tricks than the people with extensive knowledge on the matter?

We asked airline gate agents, ticket agents, and other airport customer service reps to share their best travel hacks with us, and scoured the internet for more.

Here are eight things that could help make your next trip easier and more enjoyable:

DON'T MISS: Airline gate agents share 17 things they'd love to tell travelers but can't

SEE ALSO: Flight attendants share 20 things most people don't know about the job

Get help when you need it

"If something goes wrong, approach with a kind and humble attitude, and the agent will bend over backward to help you. This advice is worth its weight in gold."

— A retired airline customer service agent with 30 years of experience

"When you have truly been disserviced and are understanding about it, you might get a free upgrade. Honey is sweeter, and appreciated more, than crap."

— A retired airline customer service agent with 18 years of experience

Avoid delays

"As a general rule, the later in the day you travel, the more likely you are to catch a delay."

— Former airport customer service agent Travis O'Neal via Quora.

Earn free perks

"Join an airline credit card to get free access to the airport club and extra miles just for signing up."

— An airline customer service agent with 30 years of experience

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

As Ursula the sea witch famously said, "Don't underestimate the importance of body language."

Some tricks, like remembering to smile, are pretty easy to implement in your everyday life.

However, there are other techniques that, while relatively commonsense, are somewhat trickier to tackle.

Still, they can make a huge difference.

Here are eight body language hacks that can be tricky to master, but will definitely pay off forever once you do:

SEE ALSO: 11 signs someone is lying to you

DON'T MISS: 11 skills that are hard to learn but will pay off forever

1. Mirror the person you're speaking to

Mirroring — or aligning your body to match the position of whoever you're speaking to — can be a tough skill to master. But doing it shows admiration and agreement, says Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder.

It can be hard to do this subtly, without looking like you're mimicking or mocking someone, but this is definitely a good trick to employ if you're really trying to make a good impression.

2. Walk with purpose and energy

Not everyone walks with confidence. Some of us shuffle through life with a slumping, awkward gait.

And it can be tough to change the way we walk. But if you take some steps to improve it, you can help to ensure that people don't make snap judgments about your confidence, attractiveness, and trustworthiness, according to Scientific American.

3. Maintain good eye contact

It's all in the eyes.

People with a shaky gaze often come across as anxious, distracted, or dishonest. And it can be tough to master the skill of maintaining eye contact, since it's a very uncomfortable and unnatural thing for some people. But it's a practice that can help you immensely in life.

Luckily, there are some simple techniques for maintaining better eye contact if you feel your stare isn't cutting it.

In "How To Talk To Anyone," author and communication expert Leil Lowndes advises that you should "pretend your eyes are glued to your conversation partner's with sticky, warm taffy."

Once you master this trick, you'll immediately see an improvement in your face-to-face communications with others.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

If you rely on the product or your pricing to do the selling for you, your sales job is already gone. The forces of disintermediation are going to level all roles where no value can be created, including transactional salespeople.

The post Your Transactional Sales Job Is Already Gone – Episode 140 appeared first on The Sales Blog.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

Most sales people tend to ease off on their prospecting when they have a healthy pipeline. They feel that there is plenty to work, they have a number of prospects on the go, and tell me, that their time is better used to drive the opportunities in the pipeline, and figure that they will prospect for more opportunities once the current pipeline solidifies. While the disjointed thinking of that logic is obvious to most, like “lemmings“, many sales people follow a path that ultimately leads less success.

Let’s say you close all the deals in your pipeline, let’s say; what will you work on the next day? We have all been on the pipeline roller-coaster. All kinds of opportunities to close at the peak, desperately prospecting (praying and hoping), at the bottom. Sure, it’s absurd, but sales pros choose to repeat it over and over, even though changing their habits is less stressful in the long run. So, what’s the alternative?

We have all heard the expression, and many of us have experienced first hand that Success does indeed breed success. In sales, the reality is that pipeline success leads to more success. Prospecting when your pipeline is “overflowing”, is one of the most fun things you can do. Sales professionals who take a balanced approach to their pipeline, meaning prospecting, finding new opportunities, is as important as closing any opportunity in your pipeline.

Most people don’t like prospecting because of the stress of having to add an opportunity sooner rather than later. That pressure is amplified when you have depleted all the opportunities, the emptier your pipeline, the more that silence reverberates the further your quota is out of reach. This pressure is very apparent to your prospects, even when you are hiding behind a phone, e-mail, or LinkedIn. They can smell a desperate seller a mile away in a storm. Mistakes come easier, frustration surfaces faster, and most seller’s results are much worse than they have to be; accelerating the downward spiral.

On the other hand, when your pipeline is full, you can truly forecast a successful month or quarter, there is hardly pressure at all. Every day you are focused on things that are driving deals, allowing you to leverage not just the energy in your prospecting, but the things your buyers responding to positively are the very things you can use in your prospecting. Just as they can smell fear, they can sense and respond to success. The way we carry ourselves when things are good, is positive and attractive. Buyers want to deal with successful professionals, something we can’t claim to be when our pipeline is low, when our energy is drained before we even pick up the phone or send an e-mail.

I suspect one reason people leave dead opportunities is so they can fool themselves out of prospecting. “I don’t need to prospect, look at all the things in the pipeline I can work on”. Right.

The solution is simple, make prospecting a habit. Base on your metrics, how many “meetings” do you need to generate to have enough coverage to get you to goal. Once you calculate that, you can have a good sense of how much time you will need to allocate to the activity each week, all through the cycle. It is usually less than you would think, it is only because we let it build up in our mind that it seems ominous. (Well, that and the rejection). I know how long it takes me to get an appointment, and I know how many appointments I need to succeed. But there is no denying that I am much better when the pipe is full, frankly because the state of my pipeline gives me the confidence to relaxed, focus and successful, which in turn gets me more prospects.

Join me Thursday for:

The post Success Breeds Prospects appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

It can be intimidating to make the switch from traditional demand generation to an account-based mindset. It requires B2B organizations to evolve their process and activity — and change is never easy.

But, even if you think you’re not ready for a full Account Based Marketing strategy, there are numerous ways that you can apply some of the principles of Marketing Orchestration to have an immediate and direct impact on your business.

Marketing Orchestration is an ongoing and coordinated process where customer-facing teams work together to drive business outcomes. This means Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success working in harmony to create the best experience for the buyer. No one loses account visibility, deals are won as a team, and your business drives greater revenue in valuable accounts.

Here’s how you can use Marketing Orchestration today, even if you’re not ready for ABM:

1. You’ll ensure leads are followed-up with, correctly

Demand generation marketers are under the gun to generate leads. For many marketers, it’s still the most basic thing you’re responsible for every day. More than ⅔ of companies in a recent study plan to increase their demand gen budget this year. But, that investment is wasted if SDRs are not following with leads appropriately.

When there’s a breakdown in the lead handoff between Marketing and Sales, critical dollars and time invested in demand gen are wasted.

Marketing Orchestration can guide the lead follow-up process by ensuring that your SDR counterparts reach out on-time, repeatedly, and with a personalized message that is sensible and relevant to the individual and their account.

2. Improve your lead scoring by focusing resources on the right accounts

If you work in marketing operations, you’re likely doing some form of lead scoring. But, in a B2B context, you’re more effective when you’re able to prioritize and score accounts. Account-based scoring helps a marketing operations professional to think the same way buyers and sales teams do – in terms of accounts, not individual leads.

Why is this better?

• By scoring Marketing Qualified Accounts, you’ll be able to separate the signal from the noise, resulting in fewer false-positives. For example, if an individual is highly active but from a company that is not a good fit, traditional lead scoring qualifies them as a hot lead when this should not be the case.
• With account scoring, you’ll also avoid false-negatives, where multiple people at an account demonstrate activity like whitepaper downloads, but none of them individually score high enough to get onto your lead scoring model’s radar. ABM helps you understand which of the right accounts are demonstrating buying intent, and ensure you don’t miss critical interest from your most important accounts.
• Account scoring also helps you focus activity on specific buying centers. If 50 leads come from a marketing department, and you sell to IT engineers, how do you score those leads? With traditional lead scoring, you’re unable to prioritize your resources effectively. With account scoring, you can focus your efforts more accurately, on the best opportunities.

In short, this allows you to carefully select and strategically prioritize your activities. It’s what we’re always trying to do anyway, but this time, we’re doing it at the account level. By narrowing down your addressable market to a pre-qualified list, you can also afford to spend more time with these higher-value opportunities. Selecting and tiering your accounts is a key foundation to successful ABM.

3. You’ll manage leads more effectively

Lead management is another critical part of the revenue engine. When an individual lead comes into your funnel, if you’re unable to associate them to an existing account, you lose critical visibility and information.

Lead to Account Matching (L2A) and routing allows an incoming lead to be matched with the right account, giving context to the situation. You now know if there’s an open opportunity, or not. This also reveals important activity history, such as if this individual has been emailing your boss. Today, you may leave it up to the SDR to manually check if there’s an existing opportunity, or worse, have them call the lead to find out. That’s not a good look.

Buyers are more sophisticated than that – and they expect more from you, and your team. L2A ensures you’re set up to route that lead appropriately, and meet those expectations.

4. You’ll improve field marketing results by helping sales be on-message

As a field marketer, you’re spending time, money, and energy running field marketing programs. Whether you’re hosting a local dinner, taking clients and leads out to a baseball game, or setting up meetings at a tradeshow, you need to drum up attendance and drive responses.

Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get sales to do their part to invite leads and customers. But, the only way field marketing events are successful is when sales and marketing work closely and do their part. You’ll never get an executive to show up to an event with only a marketing email.

Account-based plays help field marketers make it as easy as possible for sales teams and executives to get the right people at field events, and communicate the right messages consistently.

From prioritizing the right contacts to giving them a clear template for the invitation, Marketing Orchestration automates the process where appropriate – data appending, reminders, and more. Where a human touch is needed, your sales team is given what they need to communicate effectively.

What’s more, Marketing Orchestration gives important visibility into the whole process – so you’re not scrambling a week before your event unsure of who’s attending, who’s been invited, or what needs to be done.

5. You’ll scale customer marketing and expand accounts

Senior marketing leaders who are focused on account expansion are turning to Marketing Orchestration to help drive more from specific accounts. Let’s face it, when you’re marketing to current customers, nothing is worse than generic, automated sends.

When you try that with a prospect, the worse than can happen is to be irrelevant, and ignored. When you do it to a customer, you damage the whole relationship.

If you’re like many marketers (not all) you might be tracking customer promotions manually, in spreadsheets. This isn’t repeatable, nor is it scalable.

What’s worse, traditional marketing automation technology is just not well-suited to marketers who are tasked with account expansion.

This is where orchestration can help, by running plays to your customer base. From new product releases, to up-sell and cross-sell initiatives, ABE can bring more personalized, human touches to customer interactions (at scale.)

6. You’ll be able be able to nurture long deal cycles

For Many B2B companies, deal cycles are long – sometimes just too long! We all want deals to close sooner and with less bumps along the way. For marketing and sales it’s hard to have the right level of visibility into the reasons a deal is moving slowly. Since diagnosis is tricky, teams often do not know the right tactics to pursue to speed things up. For these reasons, forecasting and predicting deal cycles is also hard. These are well-known pains with few clear answers- until now.

An underutilized benefit of ABM is leveraging it for account diagnosis and then taking the right set of proactive actions to shorten sales cycles. For example, we use Engagio’s analytics to identify who and/or what may be blocking a deal, then running targeted plays from our playbook to key individuals (marketing created, sales approved). In this particular case, we were able to maintain visibility into the deal and keep it moving forward, whereas in the past deals with a similar profile remained locked in stalemate.

After all, nurture doesn’t have to be a passive activity done through a marketing automation system. There are proactive steps that you can take with key individuals to shorten long sales cycles.

7. You’ll be able to measure complex B2B deals

89% of marketers ranked improving the ability to measure and analyze marketing impact as a top priority in 2017, according to a study by DemandGen Report.

Most methods of measuring marketing programs are too focused on creating pipeline. Yes, it’s important to understand how many leads and opportunities were generated, but what about ALL other types of impact?

Account-based measurement helps to illustrate how marketing is accelerating existing deals. Or, perhaps how marketing is helping to increase win-rates among a set of key opportunities that are most valuable to an organization.

When dealing with larger, and more complicated accounts, first-touch or last-touch attribution methodology becomes less sensible. Imagine a marketer at Siemens closing a $500K deal with Toyota claiming “that happened because of that one trade show that we ran in Q2.” Sure.

As marketing is under pressure to constantly defend its budget quarter over quarter, year over year, it’s time to start looking at speed, time, and other metrics to help quantify marketing’s impact.

Start here

While ABM shifts much of what we know to be “traditional” B2B sales and marketing, it actually doesn’t require a dramatic change in the way you operate. It simply leverages Marketing Orchestration to focus and improve key priorities that your team is tasked with today.

What are you waiting for?

SMB selling or small business sales is really a sales process designed around an ideal customer profile (ICP). Your ICP impacts every aspect of your sales process. In the past, small business selling assumed smaller deal sizes — that is not necessarily the case. The goal of this guide is to give SMB entrepreneurs and SMB sales leaders a step-by-step guide to creating a sales process from scratch.

Below are a few assumptions:

• Your SMB lacks a defined, refined, mature sales process
• Your average deal size is more on the transactional side ($10K-$50K)
• You have the budget to hire a 3+ person sales team
• You have the budget to invest in technology, training, and sales collateral

As an SMB, you need to be ruthless with your cash outflow; therefore, all recommendations in this post will focus on reducing cash expenditures while simultaneously scaling revenue.

The 5 Keys For Small Business Sales

• Process and Methodology
  • How is your sales team structured?
  • What does the ideal sales process look like?
  • What communication mediums will you use for connecting with prospects?
  • Which lead sources will you focus on? Inbound, referrals, cold outbound etc.

• Metrics
  • What is your average deal size?
  • What is your win rate?
  • What is your average sales cycle?
  • How many sales activities is your team executing per day?
  • How many activities on average does it take to close one opportunity?
  • How many new opportunities are you generating per month?
  • How many inbound leads are you getting per week?

• Technology
  • What CRM are you using?
  • What email automation app are you using?
  • What lead generation and list building technology is your sales team leveraging?
  • Are you using an e-sign app or making prospects print and sign?

• Team
  • How involved is the CEO with the sales process?
  • Does your CMO focus on driving quality inbound leads into the sales team?
  • Do you have a #1 closer you can trust to deliver consistently?
  • Are you leveraging virtual assistants to reduce manual, low-value labor?

• Training and Coaching
  • Does your sales team have regular sales training sessions?
  • Is your sales team getting regular in-person meetings with the CEO?
  • Do you have call scripts and email templates for a majority of the sales interactions?
  • Has your team read Predictable Revenue or Hacking Sales?
  • Does your sales team receive weekly sales focused YouTube videos to watch?

Recommended Read: SMB Sales vs Enterprise Sales – Key Differences to Know

 Ideal SMB Sales Team Structure

The ideal structure for an SMB sales team is:

• 1 Director of Sales
• 1 Account Executive
• 1 Sales Development Rep (SDR)
• 1 Virtual Assistant (VA)

The associated annual costs for this team will vary with your industry and geography but below is an estimate based on Los Angeles, CA data. We used Comparably to pull this info.

Things to Know About Your SMB Sales Process

Building a sales team is an investment. Too many times CEOs get frustrated after 6 months and blow up the whole machine. Don’t be an amateur.

Assume you won’t close many deals in year one and you are building the sales foundation for the long term, not the next quarter. If you can’t stomach the investment of building a minimum viable sales team and seeing minimal ROI over the first 12 months, do not proceed.

---

Patience is key to building a scalable, predictable revenue machine – @FreedomPop
Click To Tweet

---

The beauty of this type of structure is that we have two team members focused on the top-of-the-funnel (TOFU), and two team members focused on the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU).

The SDR and the VA are focused on list building, lead generation, outreach/prospecting, and generating qualified opportunities. When a sales opportunity is created, the opportunity is passed to the AE or Director of Sales for closing. This is Predictable Revenue 101.

The Director of Sales really acts as both the sales manager and the sales systems designer. You want someone who has built a sales team before, ideally in a similar vertical to yours.

Most companies still make their AEs do prospecting. And while that works for some SMBs, it is far from ideal.

Companies that say “VAs and SDRs don’t make sense for our business because XYZ” really don’t have a clue. If you are investing the time to truly build a high-quality list of target accounts, then your SDRs should be able to execute your outbound sales cadence.

---

If AEs have to do their own outbound, it might be time to think about a reorg – @FreedomPop
Click To Tweet

---

Outbound Sales Cadence

For small business selling, your outbound cadence should include the following:

• Automated Drip Emails
  • A series of emails over a given time period. This is executed using an app like ToutApp, SalesLoft, or MixMax.

• Social Touches
  • Leveraging networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and blogs to connect with and interact with your prospects.

• Form Fills
  • Filling out a “contact us” form on the prospect’s website

• Cold Calls

An example of an outbound play/series of sales activities/cadence can be seen below:

Core Prospecting Play Highlights:

• 10 Emails
• 4 Cold Calls
• 5 Social Touches
• 1 Contact Us/Form Fill

In the above play I included sales activities for the CEO.

SMBs may be more responsive to an email from the CEO of your company than a sales rep.

The more team members you can involve in the sales process, the more effective it will be.

Lead Sources

In terms of sources, the goal is to make outbound leads work for your business. Generating inbound leads at scale is challenging and is really in your marketing team’s hands. Referrals are key for any business looking to scale revenues, so you need to have some type of plan here.

Best Practices For Tracking and Earning Referrals:

Track the number of referrals you are getting per month and look to grow this number.

Reach out to your top 10 clients and ask them for five referrals each. Try to identify people in their network via LinkedIn that are in your ICP. For example “I saw you were connected with Frank Johnson at XYZ Company on LinkedIn. Love to get an intro to him and talk shop.”

Develop a referral program. For anyone that refers a deal that closes, the referrer should receive 10% of revenue for life.

I have seen companies try to cap the referrer commission to one year. This is just short-sighted.

New business acquisition is the name of the game. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by being cheap on the commission.

Referrals have the highest likelihood to close when compared to any other lead source, so the 10% of revenue for life is a small price to pay.

Sales Metrics

First step here is to your know your sales metrics and to be tracking them. Once you begin tracking basic sales activity metrics like the number of emails sent per day, you will see instant productivity improvements.

Deal Velocity

Deal Velocity is a “fancy” formula that we won’t really get into in this post. But the components of deal velocity are extremely important. Those components are:

• Average Deal Size
• Average Deal Length
• Win Rate
• Number of Qualified Opportunities Generated

By improving any of the metrics, we will improve sales performance and drive additional revenue. Questions you should ask to improve these metrics could be:

• How do we decrease our average sales cycle by 25%?
  • Could we make our paperwork more streamlined and simplified?
  • Can we develop an entry-level product that gets prospects to close faster?
  • What lead source has the shortest sales cycle? Can we get more of those leads?
  • How many activities are we doing to close one deal? If we increased the frequency of those activities and reduced the time between those activities, would that shorten the sales cycle?

• How do we increase deal size by 10%?
  • What upsells do we offer?
  • Do we have a defined pipeline management process?
  • Do we have a “closed deal play”? What activities are we executing post-closed deal to increase deal size?
  • Can we simply raise prices and not negatively impact the other deal velocity variables?

• How do we increase win rate by 15%?
  • Can we do a better job defining our ICP and named accounts?
  • Can we spend more time on list building in order to increase quality of opportunities?
  • Do we have defined criteria for what makes a qualified opportunity for the SDR?

• How do we increase qualified opportunities by 20%
  • Can we increase the total # of outbound activities?
  • Can we double down on one lead source that is generating the most opportunities?

Activity Metrics

Using your CRM you should be able to track every single sales activity. The challenge will be developing a system and getting your sales team to adopt it. By having the system designed from day one, you should substantially improve adoption as your team will have no bad CRM habits to break.

The metrics to track are:

• Number of sales email sent
• Number of cold calls
• Number of form fills
• Number of social touches

Tracking and studying sales metrics can be a rabbit hole. Don’t make this complicated. Focus on the deal velocity variables and these basic activity metrics, and you will be well on your way.

Recommended Read: The Key To Sales Success

The Key To Sales Success: Focus On What You Can Control

Sales Technology

As a sales hacker, this is where you can really drive efficiency into the sales system. Let’s look at what an SMB sales stack would look like:

The email automation is clearly the biggest technology investment. You could also look at ToutApp, SalesLoft, LeadFuze etc.

This sales stack gives you a defined “go-to” app for each component of the sales process.

The foundation of your sales stack is Pipedrive CRM. This easy to use CRM is perfect for SMBs.

Use LeadIQ or Hunter to build your lists. These prospecting tools allow you to do list building via LinkedIn and vendor websites.

Once you have all that data, you connect with prospects using MixMax. MixMax is a new age email automation app which has a lot of new era features like gifs, “book a time with me” calendaring, etc.

Text Expander is text expansion software which will automate your social touches as well as in-funnel opportunity communication. When you are ready to close the deal you send paperwork via HelloSign.

Team 

The CEO and founders need to be on-board for the long haul with developing a real sales machine. The more they are involved, the better. As the process is ramping up, get founders and CEOs involved in sales discovery calls. This will help the sales team ramp faster. The CEO should be focused on training the sales team.

With the account-based everything movement, you are seeing that more and more business units are getting involved with the sales process. Removing silos is important for new client acquisition and retention. The key team members should understand what it takes to close a new client so that they then know how to better service that client downstream.

Training and Coaching

The Director of Sales needs to have defined, regular training plans for his team. You should be coaching the reps on these four components:

• Opportunity Management
  • How are we handling the specific aspects of a complex transaction/opportunity?

• Call Management
  • Call scripts and feedback. Doing mock calls.

• Territory Management
  • Have the accounts been divided evenly and in an intelligent and organized fashion?

• Account Management
  • Do we have an account plan for our major accounts? How are we going to grow them? When are we going to see them in-person?

The Director should be having weekly one-on-ones with all his direct reports. There should be an agenda for the meeting provided by the Director each week. This is one of the most important meetings of the week you should treat it as such.

In order to help you on your training journey here is the FreedomPop Small Business Sales Hacker Bundle. This free training bundle from Sales Hacker U contains some of our best resources to help SMBs build their own sales machine.

The post The Ultimate Sales Guide For Small Business: How To Create A Sales Process From Scratch appeared first on Sales Hacker.

In the “Ultimate Sales Machine”, Chet Holmes mentions that only 3% of your target market is ready to buy! 7% of your target market is open to buying but not looking, 30% of your market is comfortable with the status quo and 30% of your market believes they aren’t interested.

When it comes to LinkedIn marketing and social selling, where do you think everyone’s focus is? It’s on the top 3% of the market meaning they’re missing out on 67% more opportunities that my clients (like Schneider) are getting with a 40% to 70% improved chance of closing.

How sales & marketing professionals and social media lead generation companies are focused on only 3% of the target market…

In a recent article, SAP’s Nicholas Kontopoulos mentioned that social selling has become another form of spam! He wrote: “Social media is now just amplifying the bad selling behaviors of salespeople. Where a bad salesperson could deter dozens of potential customers, social platforms allow the same person to reach thousands of people…with the same one-night stand, transactional mentality and message.”

You see LinkedIn marketing and social selling has become a volume play. The focus is on how many connections are being made, how many prospects are joining the LinkedIn community, how many views the content is generating, how much website traffic are they getting, how many people are being reached with messages. They’re focused on how many people are being added to the pipeline even if they aren’t validated and qualified. They’re focused on lead generation even though most leads go nowhere – when the focus should be on prospect development.

Even social media experts are talking about social media being a volume play.

The majority of social media and social selling experts are coaching clients and followers to take a templated approach that lacks relevance to try to book as many calls and sales conversations as you possibly can. For example a digital sales prospecting trainer and coach, teaches clients to use templates like:

Hi, Sam.

How are you adding new capability to your ______________ [insert area of business your product addresses] at any time soon or in future? I work with organizations like _______ [prospect’s business] to make sure ________ [goal]. Would you like to quickly explore, via email, if a larger conversation makes sense? Please let me know what you decide.

So, instead of taking an account based marketing approach and focusing on issues that are relevant to targeted organizations. key decision makers and influencers, sales, marketing and social media lead generation firms using this approach are hoping that if they send it out to enough people, it will be relevant to someone and stick. They are focused on “trying” to hit that 3% of the market – the people that are most likely ready to buy now. If those leads that may or may not be part of the 3% of the market do not move forward, then you have a high cost for business growth. And, your efforts on LinkedIn are nothing more than a cost center. It doesn’t matter how low your cost-per-lead is if leads are being stuck at the top-of-the-funnel. It’s still a cost and investment that isn’t leading to revenue!

Social media firm focuses on lead goals even though the leads they delivered went nowhere!

As I share in this cost-per-lead post, I recently spoke to the President and CMO of a logistics company – and they were both so focused on how many leads we are able to deliver on a weekly and monthly basis. They proceeded to tell me how another social media lead generation firm was delivering 5 to 10 leads for sales calls per week.

However, those sales leads they were delivering sucked! 90% of the calls were with prospects who were not in the right stage of the buying process at this time – or they were with people who were not even a decision maker or influencer. The people who said “yes” to a call was just looking for free information, to network – and maybe refer the company. What good were those leads if there were no relationships being created and leveraged to create revenue opportunities?

How sales and marketing can capture 67% more opportunities instead of just leads that go nowhere

1. Focus on relevance across all levels using an account based sales and marketing approach

Adding the person’s name or position to a message or talking about their industry does not make you relevant. When you’re engaging in prospect development, you’re not just relevant on one or two levels – you’re relevant to the industry, to the company, to the person’s role and to the individual decision maker or influencer.

Being relevant to each key decision maker and opening doors with different demand units is what account based sales and marketing is about. It’s how you can forge stronger connections within individual people within potential customer organizations. Remember, developing relationships require getting to know the potential customer and demonstrating how you can bring relevant value to them. This is how you’ll move those that are indifferent or think they are not interested in your solution.

2. Engage in marketing for sales alignment:

Marketers who go beyond lead generation and focus on Sales and Marketing alignment to achieve revenue goals using LinkedIn can prove a clearer, stronger social media ROI. By providing rich insights into buyers, their companies, and their territories, marketers enable sales to better prioritize their efforts. And by focusing on relationships and how to leverage them, marketers can become the social bridge between buyers and sales. They can help build familiarity between salespeople and their customers. Together, sales and marketing can improve sales effectiveness using LinkedIn.

But marketing has to use its influence on LinkedIn and become more of a sales enabler – and support sales in a more meaningful way so they can close deals.. There can’t be these silos anymore where marketing is focused on the company page, sponsored updates and the solutions that LinkedIn Marketing Solutions provides and relying on sales to make the relationships. Marketing needs to become a sales enabler on LinkedIn by focusing on the complete awareness to revenue customer life-cycle that includes a set of psychological transitions where customers become aware of, evaluate, like, advocate and invest in a specific product or service. We need to go beyond the awareness tactics that social media and digital marketing executives take and meld traditional marketing with LinkedIn to increase the percentages of transitions as well as increase the speed at which they transition.

3. Focus on breaking down the potential customer’s status quo

When going beyond the 3% of the market that is ready to buy, you have to spend time breaking down the customer’s status quo. As the CEB mentions in their Challenger Demand Gen Marketer Role Guide, “Without breaking down the status quo, potential customers may engage with your content, talk to your sales reps and nod along. But ultimately. they won’t take the hard actions to drive consensus and take the next steps toward investing in your solution.”

It’s not enough to just challenge prospects and show them a new approach. You need to give prospects a reason to change. For a positioning and messaging firm client, we were only able to help the firm gain clients once the firm’s President was able to show sales and marketing how their positioning and messaging was affecting sales and marketing performance – especially in the areas that were high on the priority list. Once we were able to target specific companies with specific positioning and messaging issues and show sales and marketing leaders why they needed to change, the firm gained clients like Membrain, Mariner Partners, Shift Energy, Idea5, Rocket Software and SmartOrg.

4. Don’t optimize content for social media engagement

When you’re optimizing content for social media engagement, you’re optimizing it for reach. You’re optimizing the content for top of the funnel awareness which may attract that top 3% of the market that is ready to buy – but it won’t move the other 67% of the market. As the CEB mentions, you want to optimize your content for consumption of disruption or, in other words, focus on how your content is driving changes in thoughts and actions.

5. Focus on lead validation and qualification

The CEO of a popular social selling firm tells clients:

“With each new connection, determine if they are someone you’d like to speak with and tweak the LinkedIn message slightly: NAME, it is nice to be connected on LinkedIn. Typically I like to have a brief call with my new connections so we can explore ways we might be able to work together now or in the future. Here is a link to my calendar: xxxxxxxx. Please pick a time that is most convenient for you. I am looking forward to our call.”

So she’s telling business leaders and sales and marketing professionals to go for the call–don’t worry about lead qualification and validation. She’s saying don’t worry if they haven’t seen your value yet and that you haven’t demonstrated your relevance. Don’t worry if you haven’t identified a need yet and don’t worry if they are not in the right buying stage. This shotgun thinking assumes that getting the sales information “out there” may eventually lead to a sale. But all it really does is cost you time and money.

If your goal is to build a serious, actionable plan for real sales growth, there are four necessary steps. Here’s how I lay it out:

Target List

I want every sales person to start with a list of targeted, strategic accounts they’re calling on. I want that for a reason; I don’t want them to call on the accounts that are easy and receptive. I want them to call on the accounts that are hard to win. I want them to call on the accounts that are going to change the results for the whole company; for them, their sales manager, and the company’s bottom line.

You need to pick your targets at the beginning of the year – some will carry over from prior years. One place to look is at accounts for which you competed in the last 18 months and lost; that’s a target for you. What happens too often is that we lose and walk away, never knowing when the prospect becomes dissatisfied enough to change. It could be any time, it could be years, or months. Most of us go away and wait for them to reach out to us in the future, never thinking to nurture them, instead silently awaiting the day they decide to change.

You really need to pick your target dream clients. Who are you going to win?

A Pursuit Plan

You also need a pursuit plan. Sometimes we’re myopic and we have a narrow view of what we’re doing. The pursuit plan may mean that I have multiple people in my organization calling on multiple people in the  target’s organization.

I will have lots of different approaches. I’m going to ask existing clients to introduce me. I’m going to be super creative in laying out my pursuit plan. Who’s going to call? What relationships are we going to try to open? What are we going to leverage to help get an opening so we create an opportunity inside that account?

Nurture Tool Kit

You need a nurture tool kit – this is where messaging is important. If you’re calling saying the same things other sales people say, your target is going to resist your message. You need a message that talks about the value you create. You need language for phone calls that says “these are the three problems we’re helping our clients face now, here are the three problems you’re going to face in the coming year. I’m going to share with you some insights, whether you ever buy from me, that are going to help you make better decisions.”

You need white papers and case studies and things that will nurture that relationship. You need to continually feed the contacts within your target clients real, actionable insights that they can take action on, whether or not they hire you.

This thinking often generates real push back from salespeople, because they don’t want to “give away” their best ideas. The truth is, the ideas are mostly known, and most of them are not used because there are too many salespeople who don’t think of things through this lens of nurturing. If you want people to know you as a value creator and trusted advisor, you’ve got to do this.

Real Key Performance Indicators

I know this is old school, but it’s work you have to do and it’s the only way to really measure your progress. The indicators you really need to track are:

• How many clients do you have to win?
• What’s the average deal size?
• How many appointments do you need in a week to create the right number of opportunities?
• What’s the revenue and profit goal by month and by quarter?
• What’s the activity indicates that you’re getting closer to that goal?

You don’t need a dashboard with 64 metrics. You need to choose the ones that really are your key performance indicators, the ones that suggest that you’re moving towards success, and then you need to monitor them and see how your plan is driving results.

This plan is basic, and complex at the same time. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s the real work you must do to grow your sales. Target, pursue, nurture, and measure. Old school, but it works.

 

The post Target, Pursuit, Nurture, Measure appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Summary List Placement

An oft-cited interview with Jeff Bezos gives us some insight into how the Amazon CEO, and soon-to-be executive chairman when he steps down in Q3, makes big decisions. 

In the interview, which was conducted by the Academy of Achievement, Bezos discusses his "regret minimization framework." (We first came across this snippet of the interview in Jenny Blake's 2016 book, "Pivot.")

Basically, it's the idea that we should live our lives minimizing the number of potential regrets from missed opportunities. And this idea has helped create Bezos' legacy: a $1.4 trillion retail behemoth that he will soon pass over to incoming CEO Andy Jassy, who is currently the CEO of Amazon Web Services. 

Here's what Bezos said: "'I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.'"

"And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that.

"But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day."

Bezos has made embracing failure an integral part of business at Amazon. Insider has reported that Bezos "says nine times out of ten, you're going to fail. But every once in while, you'll hit a home run that in business terms is more like 1,000 runs. 'Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time,' Bezos says."

That doesn't mean the company hasn't incurred sizable losses due to its past failures. Its visual shopping platform Amazon Spark, screenwriting tool Amazon Storybuilder, and ticketing service Amazon Tickets are all examples of less-than-successful ventures that the company has had to pull the plug on. Bezos has said that these ideas have resulted in billions of dollars of mistakes. 

But Bezos' strategy of capitalizing on every chance has also allowed him to expand Amazon into a retail giant that's burrowed itself into every corner of its customer's lives. By encouraging employees to invent new tools, Amazon is able to have many more successful ventures and branch out into media, food and grocery services, charitable giving, and, now, healthcare. 

Bezos is hardly the only successful person to use this strategy. Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation and chairman of the National Geographic Society, has also touted the benefits of failure — the prospect of a failed venture, he wrote for Insider, isn't something to shy away from. It can actually teach valuable lessons, inspire creativity, and strengthen your resolve. 

"Rather than viewing failure as an embarrassment, or shameful, or something to be endured, acknowledging failure and making it matter can actually make your life better," Case wrote. 

Read more: How Jeff Bezos' 'customer obsession' transformed Amazon from an online bookseller into a $1.4 trillion retail giant that's burrowed into every corner of daily life

SEE ALSO: The 'two pizza rule' is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' secret to productive meetings

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Amazon just bought Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion — here's what the future of shopping could look like

Today, we’re going to talk about whose fault it is when you lose a sale because you have to call somebody back.

Here’s a situation that happened to me recently. I had a flat tire, about 100 miles away from our usual place.

I called a few local shops. For the most part, each one of them said, they would call me back. They took my tire information down, and they had to call me back, which I thought was a little odd because in this day and age, you should be able to look something up right on the spot.

I would’ve stayed on the phone, but regardless, for the most part, each one of them said they’d call me back.

We have this thing called the Internet today. While I was waiting to be called back, I just looked online a little and found a couple of places that allowed you to see what the price of the tire is and to schedule an appointment.

I wish they were local, but they weren’t. One was a chain.

So I scheduled an appointment and then, within an hour or so, I got called back by a bunch of these places. I didn’t need them anymore. I already solved my problem, so to speak. There are some lessons here.

The first one is, if you let the customer get off the phone, you risk losing the sale. You do so because they can contact anybody.

The Internet’s right there so while you’re finding your price and figuring out your markup and everything else, they’re moving on and calling other people.

You must remember that. They have contacts at their disposal. The other thing is they’ve got a problem.

When you have a bad tire, you need to get it fixed right away.

You don’t really want to wait forever, so you’re going to solve the problem as fast as you can.

Then the other thing is, if they get off the phone, there’s usually someone else out there who’s prepared to solve the problem or begin to solve the problem without letting the person get off the phone.

What can we do? The first thing is to be prepared when someone calls for something that’s common.

When a tire goes out, people need a new tire. Typically, they need two tires.

You should have that information available, know what your markup is, if that’s what you do, and go, “What’s your tire size?”

Then give them a few ideas for pricing. You can ask them a bunch more questions, but still, know what your product costs, know your markup and give them some information right away. That’s what they’re looking for.

Place them on hold, if you need to, and then get back to them every minute. This whole process should take less than five minutes.

You should say, “Let me place you on hold after I get your information,” and every minute or so, even use a little countdown timer, connect with the customer and let them know you’re working it.”

They’re willing to do that. Now they might be looking on the Internet while you’re looking it up but, at least, they’re not hanging up. The third thing is to arrange a time to get them in there.

Set the appointment and say, “I understand you might be shopping around still. Why don’t we make an appointment? If you find a better deal, you can let us know when you come and get some written estimate, for example, and you can do that when you come in?

That’s the value of it. You want to get them scheduled.

Now, you and I both know, which is why a lot of times we don’t want to get our cars repaired is that when you go in there, many times there are other things that need to be fixed. Even if you lose a little bit of money on that first item the person needs, you have to remember, you’re now beginning a relationship with the customer and the client. There’s an opportunity for you to build on that and make money year after year because you solved their problem.

They trust you. They don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding somebody new, etc.

You should always do your best, if you’re a business that takes phone calls, to try to take care of that potential customer when they call get them in there to your place.

If you don’t, there’s a good chance they are probably not going to pick up the phone when you call them back because they’ve probably already solved their problem.

Hello and welcome to the password pool – a time and place where we are all swimming in passwords. I think it is safe to say that we have too many passwords and login combinations that must be remembered and managed. It’s no secret that most of us, and those who work with us, are overwhelmed by trying to remember exactly how to get into our most basic systems. You know, those systems we need to do our jobs. With so much we need to remember, what more can we do than just write down the credentials on sticky notes and place them about our workspace.

Most of us – the average workers – must remember seven or so password and login credential combinations, but it is likely that many of us need 12 or more combinations. However, given overwhelming password issues we all face, and the likelihood that passwords are far from obsolete, there must be some hacks (pardon the pun) that can be implemented to lighten the burden.

While we have long been instructed on how to create and manage passwords – change them regularly, use special characters, uppercase/lowercase, 12 characters, etc. – it appears that what we have always been taught may be wrong. Shocking, but likely true. The United States National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released new guidelines for password policies to be used in the whole of the US government, which often are then adopted by other business sectors.

So, what are some of the major differences between current best practices and what NIST says we can safely (and should) be doing now? Well, as should always be the case, the practices should favor the user. NIST recommends that we stop asking users to do things that aren’t improving security.

Also, size matters in the password pool. NIST says passwords should be a minimum of eight characters.

NIST also says there should be a maximum length of at least 64. The user who creates a password 64 characters long either might be a glutton for punishment or is calling the helpdesk quite often for a reset. Even stranger, the NIST states passwords must allow all printable ASCII characters, including spaces, and should accept all UNICODE characters.

Finally, organizations should create a list of banned passwords, known for being bad actors. NIST recommends excluding at least 100,000, including “ChangeMe,” “this is a password,” and “Yankees,” for example.

Now, for the NIST don’ts. NIST recommends no password composition rules. In other words, no more requirements that users create particular characters or combinations; no more passwords that must contain certain letters or symbols. NIST also recommends freedom of choice and now encourages pass phrases instead of hard-to-remember passwords or illusions, such as “Trust Know 1.”

Also, no more knowledge-based authentication or expiration of passwords without reason. Passwords should only be reset if they are forgotten, if they have been phished or if the database has been stolen.

Big changes for password management policies from the organization. The NIST policies are somewhat of a surprising turn for the industry, and leaves us a good bit to meditate on. But, there’s nothing here that hasn’t already been discussed before. In fact, I’ve spoken to these subjects multiple times.

Let us start with some surprisingly easy steps that you can take to better protect yourself from a password breach. First, don’t use default passwords that come with devices, like routers. Always change the default username and password on anything you buy. Easy enough advice, but, amazingly, many people do not bother to come up with their own passwords and they simply let it ride. In addition, as I have said before, and as NIST recommends, you need to avoid words found in the dictionary and anything associated with you as an individual like maiden names, birth dates, children’s names, etc. Passwords should not be written down, of course. No Post-it notes with passwords written on them for the world to see.

Solutions including two-factor authentication can protect user accounts, securing the primary login using a pass card or biometrics. Users log in by presenting a pass card/biometric offering to an electronic reader and entering a PIN code rather than the standard username and password. Combining a pass card/biometrics and a PIN code ensures a much stronger authentication, minimizing the possibility of a network breach.

Another way to simplify the process is single sign-on integrated with two-factor authentication, proximity-based devices and RFID readers. One login credential means employees must only remember one login. The fewer passwords that need to be remembered the more secure an organization.

With the NIST recommendations and the points I’ve suggested here, you may be able to achieve the desired effect – better use of passwords that actually help protect your information and your organization. Maybe, too, in so doing we might be able to drain a few passwords from the pool.

Amazon has been granted a patent designed to stop you from visiting a shop to buy something, but then looking for a cheaper version online while you're there.

The patent, which we first saw via The Verge, would essentially try and intercept you if you made a price comparison search using the shop's WiFi. It outlines a way that a retailer could intercept and analyse a network request, like a search term or URL.

If the retailer works out that you're probably looking at a competitor's site, it can try and persuade you back with a store coupon, show you that the item's immediately available in-store, or offer a discounted version of the item.

Retailers call this trend of looking at a product in-person and buying it online "showrooming", and it's something that's been worrying them for a while.

As Amazon puts it in its patent: "[A] negative scenario may exist for a physical store retailer when a consumer evaluates items at the physical store, leverages physical store sales representatives, and then reviews pricing information online in order to purchase the same item from an online retailer.

"The physical store retailer pays for floor space, sales representative time, product inventory management, and other costs while not being able to complete a sales transaction." 

On the face of it, this anti-showrooming patent looks like a strange move from Amazon, given it's the main beneficiary of this trend.

And Amazon also doesn't have that many physical itself — so why would it worry about price comparisons with competitors?

It's instead more likely that the patent is a defensive move against retailers. Now, retailers can't take measures to stop you from logging into their WiFi and looking for their products more cheaply online on Amazon.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's why Boeing 747s have a giant hump in the front

Marketing and sales teams too often find themselves stuck in a detrimental battle over to whom revenue attribution should be attributed. CEOs at top-performing companies utilize revenue attribution to navigate this war-zone and understand which activities produce revenue bookings. Revenue attribution models

Businesses are changing how they think.

For years ― decades even ― companies have been focused on their products. The customer experience has always been top of mind, of course. But in a more passive role. If someone wasn’t happy with a product or service, usually they just stopped using it. Maybe they might complain to a couple of people, but probably not too many.

Flash forward to now, when one person who has a poor customer experience can post a bad review on just one site and cause all kinds of havoc. In May, BrightLocal released research that found that if a company in the Google Local Pack can improve its rating from 3 stars to 5, they’ll get 25% more clicks.

Even those review stats look like peanuts compared to what a truly angry and vocal customer can do.

Just consider the case of Dave Carroll.

Dave is a musician. A few years ago he was seated on a United Airlines plane as United personnel loaded up the aircraft on the tarmac below. Dave saw his guitar thrown about and badly broken by staff who seemed to think it was as much a volleyball as someone’s primary earning tool.

Outraged, Dave petitioned multiple United customer service reps for justice … only to be dismissed. Now even more outraged, and still heartbroken over the loss of his beloved guitar, Dave made a video.

“United Breaks Guitars” now has more than 17 million views.

I’m not sure all of United’s ads, cumulatively, have 17 million views. (At least there were no broken bones, right?)

But the power to damage your brand isn’t the only power The Customer now wields.

And just trying to avoid making them angry isn’t enough.

The idea is to make them happy.

As we’ve written about before, happy customers stick around. It’s called loyalty. And if you can improve loyalty by even a paltry 5%, your profits can go up by 25% to 95%.

Happy customers stay longer, spend more ― and also pull in new customers.

How? Their referrals, reviews, comments, and social shares all amplify your brand’s message. All this user-generated content is basically the new word-of-mouth marketing. And as some of you old-time marketers know, word of mouth is the most effective type of marketing for actual ROI.

In short, customers have become so powerful, in so many different ways, that they are basically running the show.

Businesses will please their customers … or die. And when they do, there’s a herd of competitors behind them, waiting to take their place.

Even lucky companies, like Comcast, who all but own their industries, risk losing their customers to competing technologies. Alternative technologies that customers might embrace are always lurking on the edges of the market. They’re just waiting for an opportunity to burst through, like a young tree straining for light in the jungle.

The Customer-Centric Company

Customers are now so powerful, in fact, that many marketing wizards (like Joe Pulizzi, in his book “Content Inc.”) recommend a 180-degree change from the old way of doing things. You start a company by assembling an audience first, then figure out what to sell to them, these experts say. Design the products and the business model around the customer – not the other way around.

That sure flips the old business mindset on its head.

But it works. Companies that delight their customers now rule the business world. Witness Apple, which has more cash on hand than the US government.

So if customers are so important, so able to build empires ― or tear them down ― how can we work with them? How can we leverage their power to keep our businesses thriving?

Well, there are plenty of ways to do that. But you might want to start by finding out what they want you to know.

And they want you to know these things:

1. Your customer service is part of your marketing.

Marketing, customer experience, and customer service? It’s all connected.

Existing customers experience our brands without the silos we define in our businesses. To them, in a sense, messaging is messaging. That reply about a product issue is a message, and so is that ad they saw about your new product.

If you define marketing as “how we promote ourselves,” your customer service efforts are all marketing for your customers. You promote yourself (or not) by doing a good job for them (or not).

And, like any human interaction, what you say (your advertising, even your content), is less important than what you do (your customer support and other customer-touch activities).

2. I’m the customer. You’re supposed to put my needs ahead of your own.

This is the expectation. And boy, do a lot of companies fall short. Maybe that’s why so many consumers have become jaded. The advertising says: “We put you first” … but then the actual service does not.

There is a particular moment when the customer’s trust breaks. If you’re ever been in sales or customer service, you may have actually been with a customer, in person, to witness that moment.

It happens when the person gets a very clear look on their face, like: “Oh yeah, of course. Now I know you’re only out for yourselves. I should have known it all along.”

After a customer knows you put your own needs ahead of theirs, the romance is over. They may stick around out of habit or convenience, but they will try out one of your competitors as soon as they get the chance.

Marketing Sherpa documented this quite clearly in a recent survey they did for their “Customer Satisfaction Research Study”. It was one of the clearest differences between satisfied and unsatisfied customers.

3. I don’t necessarily want to talk to someone if I need help.

Here’s one for those of you who would rather not have the overhead of a large customer-service staff. Many customers, especially Millennials, would prefer to figure things out for themselves. They want “self-serve” customer service.

The Aspect Consumer Experience Index study found that “73 percent of US consumers said that they should have the ability to solve most product and service issues on their own.”

They really want it, too. From that same study:

How strongly do Americans like or dislike interacting with customer service?

Almost a third of America ― that’s over 100 million people ― would rather clean a toilet than interact with customer service. A quarter of America would rather change a dirty diaper than interact with customer service.

Those are some pretty strong feelings. And, they might well justify the cost of building a useful, detailed, self-serve help section, complete with short video tutorials and maybe even a forum, so customers could help each other and see how other customers’ issues were resolved.

Start building a hub like this by answering the 30 most common questions that your business receives. Then provide the answers via video, text, emails, on your site, via an app ― in every channel possible.

Next, expand to the top 50 answers. Then to the top 100.

4. Loyalty programs are a way for you to be loyal to me, not the other way around.

According to KiteWheel’s “The State of the Customer Journey” report:

“73% of consumers feel loyalty programs ‘should be a way for brands to show how loyal they are to them as a customer.’ However marketing executives disagree; 66% believe loyalty programs are still a way for consumers to show how loyal they are to their business.“

I hate to break it to you, CMOs … but you’re not going to win that argument.

5. I expect you to reply within an hour on social media. Really.

You may have heard this one before. But it bears repeating: According to research from Twitter, 71% of Twitter users expect a brand to respond within an hour of when the customer contacts them on social media.

Not only that, but a third of consumers expect a response within 30 minutes.

That’s internet time for you.

6. Irrelevant marketing is spam.

Here’s how the email tool Litmus describes the situation:

Your customers view any irrelevant or unwanted email as spam. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been a customer or if they’ve given you permission ― if your email is repeatedly of little to no relevance to them, it’s spam.

Trouble is, consumers ― and customers ― get a lot of irrelevant messages. In fact, 50% of consumers who receive marketing materials on the web or over the phone say this content is irrelevant to them.

A study from Janrain illustrates the problem:

This graphic is assembled from pieces of the 2015 Janrain “US Consumer Research Consumer Identity and Mistargeting” report.

Conclusion

Of course, these aren’t the only things your customers wish you knew. Every company is different. While your customers want all the things we’ve mentioned above, they also want “smaller,” more specific things from your particular products and services.

You need to get that information. Whether you do it through surveys or interviews or behavior tracking, the important thing is to find out what they want.

Of course, just talking to people is often best course. Giving them an open, prioritized voice in your business certainly helps, too.

You may have heard about how Amazon does this. They leave an empty chair at every meeting. It’s to represent the customer.

Perhaps it’s time we pushed that even further, and actually put a customer in the seat.

What do you think?

What do you think is the #1 thing your customers wish you knew ― and actually acted on? Tell us about it in the comments.

Motivation is one of the essential ingredients of sales success. When you’re not motivated, you’ll struggle to finish even the most basic tasks, like sending out a batch of prospecting emails or prepping for your upcoming calls. Things that require more attention and energy, like demoing or negotiating? Probably won’t go very well.

If you need an immediate dose of motivation, read the stories of these inspiring salespeople. Like you, they’ve had less-than-spectacular moments. But they kept grinding -- and the results speak for themselves.

1. Daymond John

This entrepreneur and Shark Tank judge started his first business in elementary school, selling customized pencils to his fellow first-graders.

At age 10, his parents divorced and he had to start contributing to the family’s finances.

After barely graduating from high school, he got a job as a waiter at Red Lobster. Meanwhile, his mom taught him how to sew wool caps. Cap sales got so good John took $100,000 from his mom (who mortgaged her house), eventually quit Red Lobster, and made $350 billion in revenue in six years.

The brand has now earned more than $6 billion in sales.

John got an opportunity to join the first season of “Shark Tank” in the early 2000s as a judge. He lost $750,000 the first season -- but that helped him refine his investing strategy. Now, his businesses make millions of dollars each year. John himself is worth $300 million.

2. John Paul DeJoria

John Paul DeJoria is a first-generation American businessman who’s worth more than $4 billion. But when he was growing up in Los Angeles, he “had nothing.”

DeJoria started selling when he was just nine years old. To support his family, he sold Christmas cards door-to-door.

After DeJoria graduated high school, he joined the Navy.

“When I got out of the service in 1964, I didn't have the money to go to college, so I worked as a salesman for Collier's Encyclopedia,” DeJoria explains. “I had 10 jobs for the next several years until John Capra, a friend who was an employment counselor, said I should try the beauty industry. He said it didn't pay much at first, but there was no end to where you could go with it.”

Although DeJoria did extremely well as a hair care sales rep, he was fired for his next two jobs for poor cultural fit.

By 1980, DeJoria was tired of selling other people’s products. He and his friend Paul Mitchell decided to start a business. They had just $700 in the bank. To make ends meet, DeJoria lived in his car. Today, the company brings in more than $1 billion in yearly revenue.

“If you're prepared (for rejection), you won't stop after the first few doors get slammed in your face,” he says. “You still need to be as enthusiastic at door #16 as you were at door #1.”

3. David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy dropped out of Oxford in 1931 to become an apprentice chef in Paris. After a year, he went back to his native Scotland and became a door-to-door sales rep for cooking stoves.

He was so good his manager asked him to write a guide to selling the stoves for his coworkers. The manual has since been deemed the best sales instruction manual ever.

Ogilvy’s brother showed the manual to his boss at the ad agency he was working. The agency offered David a job.

He worked six days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, for seven years -- and it paid off. Every account the agency pitched, it won.

Eventually, Ogilvy founded his own ultra-successful agency. He’s now known as the father of advertising.

4. Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay Ash was a highly successful sales rep known for single-handedly boosting company-wide sales 50% in one year. But in 1963, when a man she’d trained got a promotion instead of her, she quit.

Mary Kay decided to start her own business. With her life savings of $5,000, she launched a skin care company. The business was profitable within months -- thanks in large part to Mary Kay’s decision to give her sales reps commission for referring new salespeople.

She also coached her team to avoid high pressure sales tactics. Her consultants added value by showing women how to apply makeup; once women saw the effects, they naturally wanted to buy.

Today, Mary Kay consultants generate more than $2 billion in yearly revenue.

5. Joe Girard

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Joe Girard is the world’s greatest salesperson. He was born in 1928. After dropping out of high school, Girard worked a series of odd jobs, including newsboy, dishwasher, and shoeshine boy.

He wanted a real career. At 35, Girard walked into a car dealership and begged for a job. The manager decided to take a chance -- and was quickly rewarded when Girard sold a car on his first day.

Between 1963 and 1977, Girard sold more than 13,000 cars (that’s roughly six per day.) He attributes his success to keeping in regular contact with his customers, remembering small personal details about them, and diligently asking for referrals.

6. Erica Feidner

Erica Feidner, also known as the Piano Matchmaker™, gained worldwide recognition when she was named Steinway & Sons top global sales representative for eight consecutive years. She sold over $41 million dollar’s worth of pianos (costing from $2,000 to $152,000) by adapting her sales approach to match that of each prospect’s location in the buyer’s journey.

Sounds like a pretty normal approach, right? The complexity of this particular journey is that prospects ranged from novices who would have to devote years of practice to be able to use the piano, and experts for whom the piano was a very personal purchase they’d spend a lifetime enjoying.

To match her prospects with the perfect piano, Feidner had them test out different pianos -- sometimes located in different parts of the word -- until they found one that felt right. “If you cannot tell the difference and thus know which piano is right for you, I haven’t yet succeeded,” Feidner says.

7. Grant Cardone

Today, Grant Cardone is a New York Times bestselling author, radio show host, and international sales expert. But he wasn’t always at the top. At 25 years old, Cardone found himself battling drug addiction in a rehabilitation treatment center. By 30 he was a millionaire.

Among his many businesses, Cardone Training Technologies has trained entrepreneurs and sales teams at many Fortune 500 companies. And Cardone Acquisitions has been involved in more than $425 million in real-estate transactions.

How did he grow a multimillion dollar real estate business without acquiring outside funding beyond his immediate family? By saving fastidiously and learning as much as he could about real estate before making his first investment.

He also swore buying single-family homes after breaking even on his first investment property. By acquiring apartment buildings instead, Cardone built the foundation for his $566 million portfolio.

8. Joy Mangano

It all started with the Miracle Mop. Mangano was frustrated by cleaning up after her kids with a traditional, back-breaking mop, and had a better idea. She invested $100,000 of saved and borrowed money into creating her first prototype and manufacturing 100 Miracle Mops. Her first year, she sold around 1000 mops by marketing the invention herself and recruiting her children to help fill orders.

In 1992, Mangano’s big break came when she pitched the Miracle Mop to QVC -- and suggested she be the one to sell the product on television. Her first appearance sold 18,000 mops in less than 30 minutes.

More household inventions and millions more Miracle Mops followed, and in 1999, Mangano sold her company, Ingenious Designs, to the Home Shopping Network’s parent company. To date, she’s built an empire worth $3 billion, is still inventing and investing in innovative home gadgets, and stars in the HSN original series, “Meet Joy.”

9. Zig Ziglar

Prolific author, motivational speaker, and business consultant Zig Ziglar is as synonymous with sales as the phrase, “Always Be Selling.” In 1947 he dropped out of college to become a cookware salesman. He excelled and spent the next 20 years working his way up the corporate ladder.

In 1970, he left his lucrative sales job behind in favor of a full-time speaking circuit and writing career. His personal development and sales training company, Ziglar Inc., lives on, “helping people achieve the best in personal and vocational performance.”

Today Ziglar’s best remembered for influencing a quarter of a billion people through his 33 books, including the bestselling “See You at the Top.”

10. Oprah Winfrey

Yep, Oprah is one of the most successful salespeople of all time. Winfrey got her start in radio and television broadcasting. Her first television show, “People Are Talking,” became a hit in 1976, opening the doors to her own morning show, “A.M. Chicago.” Her warm style and expert interview skills drew in more than 100,000 viewers and won her a role in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film “The Color Purple.”

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” hit televisions nationally in 1986, grossing $125 million by the end of its first year -- of which Winfrey received $30 million. Soon, her production company, Harpo Productions, gained ownership of the program from ABC.

In the decades that followed, Winfrey grew her empire with successful book clubs, a magazine, and a media company. In 2009, she ended “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and launched The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). An explosive interview with former cyclist Lance Armstrong put the network on the map, and in 2017 Discovery purchased 24.5% of the company from Winfrey for a reported $70 million.

By building a personal brand based on respect, openness, and business savvy, Winfrey is not only the richest African American of the 20th century, but one of the most influential women of her generation.

Feeling inspired? Get started building your own legacy today. I can't wait to include you on this list. 

One of the key principles of value selling is that unless and until our customer acknowledges a problem that requires action, they have no need to invest in a solution and there can be no potential sale.

But not all problems are equal. The issue could be trivial, significant or critical. The value gap between the prospect’s current situation and their desired future state could be insignificant or so large that action is inevitable.

It’s down to our sales people to help our customer to acknowledge the value gap and either amplify it to the point where they conclude that they simply have to do something or – if we can’t – to accept that they will probably decide to stick with the status quo.

But how can we best guide our customer in first acknowledging and then amplifying the gap between where they are today and where they need to be in the future? In collaboration with our clients, we’ve developed a simple visual tool that I hope you might also find useful…

Let’s first acknowledge that the size and nature of the value gap is a powerful indicator of the likelihood of action. Small and stable value gaps are much less likely to drive action than large and growing value gaps.

HIGH LEVEL DRIVERS

There are four high-level factors that can drive the value gap: the need to reduce business risk, the need to reduce costs, the need to increase revenues and/or the need to achieve certain strategic goals. If none of these are at play, the customer’s value gap and thus their motivation to change is likely to be weak.

VISUALISING THE VALUE GAP

So how can we help our customers to not only recognise the compelling need for change, but also guide them to the conclusion that our approach is the one most likely to enable them to achieve their desired future state?

Our visual approach to defining the value gap involves six interlocking elements:

The first two elements of the value gap – the “bread in the sandwich” – are their current situation and their desired future state. We need to help them to simply and succinctly articulate:

[1] THEIR CURRENT SITUATION: briefly summarise where the prospect is today, including the most obvious negative consequences associated with sticking with the status quo

[2] THEIR DESIRED FUTURE STATE: briefly summarise what the prospect has decided they need to achieve, including the key positive outcomes that they can expect from making the change

Then we need to progressively work through the key components of the value gap – the “meat in the sandwich”:

[3] KEY SYMPTOMS: What are the typical symptoms, risks and consequences of the prospect choosing to stick with the status quo?

[4] SIGNIFICANT ANCHORS: What are the constraints or impediments that are stopping or could stop them from making the necessary changes?

[5] KEY ENABLERS: What key capabilities can we offer that will allow the prospect to eliminate the anchors and achieve their desired future state?

[6] SIGNIFICANT OUTCOMES: What are the significant benefits that the prospect can expect to achieve as a result of achieving their desired future state?

There’s a loose sequence in which these elements are best established that is indicated by the numbers above, but developing the value gap is often an iterative process that cycles around the various elements until a coherent picture emerges.

Summarizing the entire value gap in a single slide can be a tremendously powerful way of helping your customer to clearly visualize the reason to take action – and why they should adopt your approach to achieving the necessary change – supported, of course, by greater detail where necessary.

I’ve found this approach tremendously powerful in qualifying opportunities, accelerating the progress of deals and reducing the risk that the prospect will at the need of the day decide to “do nothing”.

The approach is probably overkill in simple transactional sales, but in any complex B2B sales situation involving multiple stakeholders and conflicting priorities, the time required to do this – less than you would think, once your sales people become practised at it – is more than justified in terms of improved performance.

Information vectors fuel innovation. The challenge is that information gathered from one vector may be completely ignored from another. This differential perspective is influenced by the place, resources, and reference point of the observer. The observing vector thus determines what is valued. For most companies, and teams, the options are separate and distinct. Observing one information vector usually precludes engaging others.

Identifying innovations that are both marketable and value adding remains the challenge of each and every entrepreneur. Because information vectors influence and determine the path of inquiry understanding them becomes crucial towards identifying opportunities for innovation.

Without information strategic pursuits, efforts, and coalitions are likely to stumble in the dark from one non-essential product to the next irrelevant service. Information vectors fuel the process of innovation as the curiosity becomes inquiry, and inquiry becomes understanding. The goal is learning to scan the environment to access the often distinct, and contradictory, information and opportunities available.

The path between curiosity and understanding is paved with good intentions and cognitive filters that limit one’s ability to learn. Information that is filtered prior to the analysis and digestion stages may be missing the valuable insights and lessons needed to fuel the teams’ next innovation. The challenge facing leadership is to engage available information vectors without bias, assumption, or other cognitive filters that prematurely alter the information received. There is a significant difference between analyzing information vectors and filtering them. The former supports learning whereas the latter supports the status-quo.

Lebowitz (2015) identifies 20 cognitive biases that effectively limit the learning, discovery, and innovation building process. These biases begin filtering information at step-one of the model above, at the collection stage. The impact this can have on the following stages cannot be understated. If the information available at step four has been altered to fit pre-existing cognitive biases the opportunity for leadership and technological innovation is significantly limited.

The following (short list) of cognitive biases is pulled from Lebowitz’ article in the Business Insider. The type and description of each bias is provided, followed by examples of how these biases can impact the teams’ effort to support leadership and technological innovations.

• Anchoring Bias: People are over-reliant on the first piece of information they hear.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when gossiping, politics, and ‘limited fields of vision’ are introduced.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Product was developed based on 2-year-old requirements that were outdated.

• Availability Heuristic: People overestimate the importance of information that is available to them.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when analysis and decisions are based exclusively on formal reports, meetings, and chain of command.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Project performance was evaluated based on cultural narrative norms of ‘optimism’ and ‘positivity’ instead of requirements, schedule, quality, and scope.

• Bandwagon Effect: The chance of one person adopting a belief increased based on the number of people who hold that belief.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when group think and group dynamics influence what information is heard, reviewed, and implemented.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Team engagement and follow through was based on existing laissez-faire norms, exposing the facility to ongoing risks.

• Blind-Spot Bias: Failing to recognize your own cognitive biases is a bias in itself.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when alternative viewpoints, competing data, and out of the box thinking is ignored.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: New team member expecting project’s to proceed according to the requirements, instead of the unspoken cultural rules which often influence project performance ‘behind the scenes’.

• Choice-Supportive Bias: When you choose something you tend to feel positive about it, even if that choice has flaws.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when project risks are ignored and the ‘bad idea’ is implemented ‘as planned.’

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: A new service line was pitched to the Ministry, with apparent success. Subsequent implementations found the Ministry’s support lacking, with critical items in the supply chain becoming misaligned with the direction of the new service line. Thousands in Ministry funds are allocated, but go unspent.

• Clustering Illusion: This is the tendency to see patterns in random events.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when ‘conspiracy’ is found at every turn, and when system dynamics are inadequately understood.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: The COTS implementation team insisting on adhering to a specific application architecture and schedule. The software was subsequently not launched as scheduled, and several changes had to be introduced.

• Confirmation bias: We tend to listen only to information that confirms our preconceptions.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when one’s team, or in-group, is the only source of information.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Legacy team members voice support for the ongoing progress of the project. Subsequent phase gates are introduced as the project’s scope, schedule, and communication deteriorates. Phase review gates are more ‘form’ than ‘function.’

• Conservatism Bias: Where people favor prior evidence over new evidence or information that has emerged.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when decisions are rigidly held despite competing information surfacing later on.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Corporate commitment to traditional project approaches, and outcomes, despite evidence that the environment, and corporate culture, is better matched to pursue other opportunities.

• Information Bias: The tendency to seek information when it does not affect action.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when the ‘form’ of active discussion exists but without the intended ‘function’, i.e. to evaluate current progress.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Specific routes of corporate information are emphasized, precluding the exploration of other routes. Only part of the whole is understood as a result.

• Ostrich Effect: The decision to ignore dangerous or negative information by ‘burring’ one’s head in the sand.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when information leads ‘lock themselves in their office’ and no further discussion or decisions can occur.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: This bias is particularly event when data is evaluated based on its source within the corporate hierarchy, often limiting the exploration of other routes.

• Outcome Bias: Judging a decision based on the outcome and not how the decision is made in the moment.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when team members continue to ‘proceed on course’ in the pursuit of desired outcomes despite evidence of deteriorating project performance.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: The boss pushes the team to ‘do whatever it takes’ to deliver on contract outcome requirements. Scapegoating and blame surface after the collateral consequences of this approach is realized.

• Overconfidence: Some of us are too confident about our abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when ‘empire building’ is prioritized over identifying how to best serve the customers.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Adding service lines, updating program/project names (or management titles), and pursuing new funding sources instead of addressing falling KPI’s in existing operations.

• Placebo Effect: When simply believing that something will have a certain effect on you causes it to have that effect.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when positive team building experiences reinforces the tendency to approve decisions without an adequate review process.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: The leadership team leaves the cross-region collaboration symposium with a renewed commitment to the current vision, strategy, and processes. Key stakeholders feel devalued and unengaged as they are ignored and initiatives move forward.

• Pro-Innovation Bias: When a proponent of an innovation tends to overvalue its usefulness and undervalue its limitations.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when every incremental change is championed as an essential, and irrevocable, improvement.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Corporate mergers proceed without adequately performing the initial risk analysis and cultural fit assessment.

• Recency: The tendency to weigh the latest information more heavily than older data.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when teams become too busy to continue the discussion, and instead, refer to the most recent decision for implementation.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Technology project requirements and specifications are updated based on team skills, competencies, and preferences, but without adequate customer consultation or change management/request mechanisms. The product subsequently delivered to the project owner fails to meet original specifications.

• Salience: Our tendency to focus the most easily recognizable features of a person or concept.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when decisions are made based on convenience and accessibility instead of problem-solution fit.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Service lines, planning, and strategy emphasize ‘low hanging fruit’ (easily accessible goals) that fails to understand the customer’s needs. Corporate impact KPI’s, aligned with the corporate mission and initial intent, are often unmet as a result.

• Selective Perception: Allowing our expectations to influence how we perceive the world.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when all projects are evaluated as successful despite failing to meet originally agreed upon requirements.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Corporate culture, relationships, and dynamics influencing how (or if) performance, output, and feedback is evaluated (or used).

• Stereotyping: Expecting a group or person to have certain qualities without having real information about the person.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when ideas and information presented by new-comers, or unpopular team members, is automatically evaluated negatively.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Terminating employees for ‘fit’ instead of leveraging the opportunities for improved quality, effectiveness, and sustainability available through their contributions, perspectives, and skills.

• Survivorship Bias: An error that comes from focusing only on surviving examples, causing us to misjudge a situation.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt when the status-quo is reinforced, and thinking ‘outside the box’ is treated as ‘taboo’.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Toxic corporate cultures are often reinforced over time as specific negative experiences continue unabated and ‘survival of the fittest’ strategies are needed just to keep one’s job.

• Zero-Risk Bias: Sociologists have found that we love certainty even when it’s counterproductive.

The destructive force of this bias can be felt in risk-averse environments. This bias not only avoids opportunities but is also prone to follow instead of lead innovation efforts.

Innovation Example from ‘Real Life’: Resistance to adopt new technology even if it would increase productivity, focus impact, and strengthen planning and evaluation.

The impact of these cognitive biases on the company’s ability to leverage information vectors to support leadership innovation cannot be understated. Beginning the process to ‘pull back the veil’ of ignorance begins with continuously asking the following questions:

• Is this information consistent with existing expectations? Why?
• Is this information inconsistent with existing expectations? Why?
• Is any information missing? Why?

How company’s leverage, respond, and apply information vectors will depend on the following company culture, leadership culture, company competencies, and company vision. In order to avoid limiting the company’s vision, direction, and impact to the constraints of its comfort zone the company must build the necessary competencies for innovation leadership.

How is your organization leveraging innovation vectors to support leadership innovation? Share your insights below.

Resource:

Lebowitz, S. L. (2015, August 26). 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions. Retrieved May 26, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/cognitive-biases-that-affect-decisions-2015-8

Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and TV personality, took to Twitter on Friday to weigh in the acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon.

Cuban said there was one question to determine whether the purchase by the online retail giant was a smart one.

"The Amazon question. Can they get your groceries to you faster than you can get to the store to shop in an Uber/Lyft world? Yes," Cuban tweeted.

Cuban's argument is forward looking, but he believes that the time it would take for Amazon to deliver you groceries from one of the physical Whole Foods locations (by drone, van, or whatever) would be less than the time it would take for an autonomous car owned by a ride share company to get you to a physical store and back.

For him, that's a yes.

When questioned if faster grocery delivery like Cuban is envisioning would actually add value to the world, the Shark Tank host replied: "What is more valuable than your time?"

Here are the tweets:

 

 

SEE ALSO: Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: An economist explains what could happen if Trump pulls the US out of NAFTA

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence IoT Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Smart-home voice assistants help to organize connected homes and provide great utility to consumers, allowing them to control devices, look up information, communicate with friends and family, and buy goods or request services.

This provides a lucrative opportunity for companies to gain users and bring them into their larger ecosystems. Here’s are a couple of the moves companies made to start or expand their presence in the smart home voice assistant market:

• Line followed through on earlier announcements and introduced its flagship smart speaker and along with a pair of cartoonish devices to house its Clova voice assistant, according to The Verge. The flagship Wave speaker will ship in the fall, and will allow users to speak to the device in Japanese or Korean. It also showed off a concept device design featuring a screen, somewhat akin to Amazon’s Echo Show. A user will be able to talk to Clova to search the web, create to-do lists, and control smart home devices. Line will also likely look to bring more of the commerce capabilities of its messaging app — such as ordering food or summoning a ride-hailing vehicle — to Clova as the user base grows.
• Amazon announced a new version of its Dash Wand that adds Alexa integration to the home barcode scanner, reports TechCrunch. The device is meant to be kept in a kitchen, attached by magnet to a refrigerator and readily available for consumers to scan or say at item that they want to order or reorder. A prior version of the device was available, but did not feature Alexa integration and required users to finalize any purchases using a computer or an app. Amazon is looking to make Alexa ubiquitous, and the introduction of a cheap device — the Dash Wand is just $20, and Prime members get a $20 account credit to make the device essentially free — could expose new users to Alexa and grow the ecosystem.

Both companies are looking to the smart home voice assistant as a pillar of a growing ecosystem. The assistant provides another entry point into a company’s services and offers an additional means of interacting with those services via voice. Players like Amazon and Apple — which recently introduced its own music-oriented smart speaker, the HomePod — are able inspire excitement for their devices, and consumers are responding; 28% of respondents to an exclusive BI Intelligence survey said they’d buy the Echo Show, and 25% that they’d pick up a HomePod.

Consumers are going to buy these devices, and lock themselves into ecosystems that they will be unlikely to leave due to the hassles associated with moving from one set of services to another. The market will likely shake out quickly, and while Amazon is out to a major lead in the US, there is still a large share of both that market and the rest of the world up for grabs.

The US smart home market has still yet to meet the expectations many observers had in the early part of this decade.

The same issues BI Intelligence first identified back in 2015 still plague the space — persistently high prices, technological fragmentation, and consumers' lack of a perceived benefit from the devices.

But the newfound popularity of smart home voice control has revolutionized smart home ecosystems across the country, and convinces more consumers to equip their homes with smart devices on a daily basis. The Amazon Echo, released in 2014, has become immensely popular and capable, awakening users to the utility of both voice control and smart home devices. This has prompted companies to rush to release competing devices and integrate voice control into their smart home ecosystems.

Nicholas Shields, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the US smart home market that:

• Analyzes current consumer demand for smart home devices based off results from BI Intelligence's proprietary survey.
• Forecasts future growth in the number of smart home devices installed in American homes.
• Analyzes the factors influencing the proliferation of voice control devices in the homes.
• Identifies and analyzes the market strategies of various companies that have integrated voice control into their smart home ecosystems.

To get the full report, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full report from our research store.

Join the conversation about this story »

With so many different CRM providers, systems, and features to choose from, finding the best CRM software for your business can be a challenge.

And considering the majority of businesses use Excel to track sales, choosing a CRM will be new territory for many.

We asked leading sales and marketers to tell us the most common mistakes of evaluating CRM software -- so you don’t make the same ones.

1) Unwillingness to Use a CRM

“The biggest mistake I see businesses make is not actually jumping in and utilizing a CRM. I'm not just talking about the smaller companies either -- it staggers me that there are a lot of companies with more than 100 employees who haven’t set up a CRM. The benefits of a CRM are huge, and in today's market there is no excuse for not being able to find an affordable, modern, and easy-to-implement CRM.”

Rikki Lear is a director at Digital 22 inbound marketing agency, based in the UK. Rikki has been in the digital marketing industry for over 10 years, helping clients succeed with inbound marketing, sales enablement, and growth driven design.

2) Failure to Define Why You Need a CRM

“The biggest mistake I see when companies choose a CRM is that they haven't defined what they really need from the system. This makes it difficult to properly compare systems. They’re more likely to make their choice based on less important factors, like whether they have heard of the system, used it before, or already use software from the same company. When this happens, the system they choose can be too complicated, or doesn’t really do what they need. Making the wrong choice means the CRM isn’t used properly and ends up creating as many problems as it solves.

It takes a bit more time, but I find it best to make a list of what you need and then score the systems against this list -- ideally, weighting the most important features. You’ll end up with an obvious shortlist. Most CRMs now offer a free trial, so you can run tests on your shortlist and figure out which system works best for you and your team.”

Stephen Bavister is a director at LexisClick Inbound Marketing Agency. Stephen started his marketing and sales career building CRMs on MS Access and Lotus Notes. He worked with PwC on their enterprise CRM rollout. At LexisClick, Stephen has given countless businesses advice on choosing a CRM.

3) Overcomplicating Business Goals

“The biggest mistake I see companies making when it comes to using a CRM is over-complicating their needs and ultimately limiting adoption because of it. This is especially true when the leadership team focuses on all the things they want the CRM to do for them (reporting, etc.) and forgets about who will be using the tool and whether it’s actually going to help them sell smarter, better, and faster. I always suggest starting with the seller in mind and making sure first and foremost that they will benefit from using your CRM.”

Dani Buckley is a lifelong learner, coach, speaker, business growth strategist, and General Manager at LeadG2 (part of The Center for Sales Strategy). She helps B2B sales organizations strengthen and humanize the way they market and sell. Dani is unapologetically passionate about challenging the status quo and having those tough conversations with business leaders in order to generate real marketing and sales results.

4) Being Oversold Out-of-the-Box Functionality

“Too often you see companies purchasing CRM software with an idea that it is out-of-the-box and will ‘just work’ for them. They’re investing a lot of money in a CRM, when a handful of Excel documents used to do just fine. The reality is that the ‘out-of-the-box’ functionality provides a platform that can be built upon. To make sure you make the right decision when choosing a CRM, you need to clearly align your short-, medium-, and long-term goals to the platform, and ensure you’ve chosen a CRM that fits your business for your long-term plans. If you take the time to choose a CRM that is perfect for your business based on your objectives and success metrics, it means you won’t have to seek an alternative in the future.”

Curtis Longland is a Solutions Architect at oe:gen ltd., a UK HubSpot and Salesforce partner helping businesses generate leads, arrange meetings, drive sales, and delight customers.

5) Forgetting About Your Sales Strategy

“The biggest mistake companies make choosing a CRM is not fitting it to the goals and strategy of their sales team. If the team finds it too overwhelming or difficult to use consistently, it is a waste. HubSpot's CRM has truly been a gift to my job. Responsiveness is everything in sales. I can't tell you how often customers appreciate how quickly I reply to them, and that's because HubSpot made it so easy."

Christine Verska is Director of Sales at The Creative Momentum. The Creative Momentum is an award-winning full service web design agency located in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in UI/UX, SEO, PPC, inbound marketing, and more.

6) Choosing an Incompatible System

“As your sales organization scales, you will inevitably bring on tools for marketing automation, calling, business intelligence, and sales performance management -- if you don’t have them already. The more seamlessly integrated your CRM is with those tools, the better. It will save you a ton of headaches down the road. You wouldn’t believe how many logistics companies use Ambition just to connect their CRM with other data sources like Cisco, MacLeod, and so forth.”

Jared Houghton is the Chief Sales Officer at Ambition, sales management software that directs real-time metrics, goals, and insights to customer-facing business teams in sales, marketing, and client support. See why Harvard Business Review and AA-ISP made Ambition the expert’s choice for increasing visibility, excitement, and efficiency for managers and reps.

7) Not Knowing the Data Your Sales Team Needs

"I think the biggest mistake people make when choosing a CRM is not thinking about the specific data they need to collect early enough and how the CRM can enable growth and grow with their company. Businesses need to think big picture and about the potential uses of their CRM, not just what they currently want from it. Many companies initially think about a CRM as just a 'sales' tool but all prospects start their relationship with a company via its marketing team."

Joy Clarke is a Digital Account Director for Quattro, a Certified HubSpot Partner and Project Lion alumni, helping manufacturers and SAAS businesses generate leads, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Midlands. Her first ever job truly was on a market stall, and if she can sell sandals in a force 10 gale in Weston-Super-mare, she thanks the great training she received from the start. She's learned that success doesn't come from traditional methods alone, and innovation is key.

8) Ignoring Valuable Features

“My biggest mistake when choosing a CRM is not considering how the data is entered into the system. It's easy to think that you will remember every detail of the sales conversations that you have with prospects. However, I guarantee you won't be able to remember all of the details. Finding a CRM like HubSpot makes it easy to log all of your calls and emails.”

Raylee Melton is Director of Client Services for SparkReaction. Raylee spends her day helping clients reach their marketing and sales goals, analyzing marketing data, and speaking to groups in the Des Moines area about inbound marketing. She is process driven and is involved in all aspects of our inbound marketing services.

9) Forgetting About the Sales Team's Challenges

"The biggest mistake I see is choosing a CRM that is too focused on organization but doesn't help sales reps work quicker and smarter. One reason I love the HubSpot CRM is because it was designed with the rep in mind, giving them the tools to gain better insight into their opportunities."

Kyle Bento is a Growth Strategist at IMPACT. Kyle empowers you to make marketing decisions that lead to measurable growth. Kyle is passionate about embracing tomorrow's trends and technologies, and when he isn't helping you move gracefully into the future, he retreats to his laboratory, drinks tea, and tries to take over the world.

10) Believing Your CRM Is Your Sales Strategy

“Don’t assume implementing a great CRM will help you to build your sales process. You need to devise a sales strategy first -- ideally, one that's aligned with your buyer journey. It's also helpful to choose a CRM that integrates with marketing automation software. This allows sales managers to see where leads are coming from, what content they're consuming, and when.”

Saher Ghattas is the Chief Revenue Officer and VP Sales/Marketing at Flawless Inbound, a premiere online marketing and sales agency. Saher’s career includes a compelling combination of expertise across sales and marketing, business development, executive coaching, change management, and value creation.

11) Not Getting the Sales Team's Input

“The biggest mistake I’ve seen companies make when choosing a CRM is forgetting about the people who will be using it. There’s no denying that features are important, but if your CRM isn’t salesperson friendly, you won’t get the buy-in you need for its usefulness to be realized. Before you choose a CRM, take advantage of free trials to find out how intuitive the platform is and if the included features will provide a high level of value to your sales team and sales process. Once you’ve identified a tool that offers both, ensure your sales team has access to the appropriate training and support resources that will allow them to learn the tool and get the best use out of it.”

Caleb Edwards is the Founder and CEO of GreenHouse Agency, a growth-focused, creative digital marketing agency in Orlando, Florida. He brings over 16 years of experience developing online growth strategies, is a Gold Addy Award Winner, and is invested in the Orlando’s start-up scene. 

What mistakes did you make when choosing your CRM system? Let us know your learnings and best advice in the comments below.

I hate being called a sales guy.

Call me a business owner. Call me an entrepreneur. Call me an engineer or consultant or professional. Anything but a “sales guy.”

It’s frustrating being labeled as pushy, heavy-handed, and aggressive when heading into a meeting. Especially when none of those traits fit my personality.

But it happens. If you’re in any kind of sales position, I bet it happens to you too.

When most people think “sales guy,” they picture a pushy, overconfident, outspoken salesperson: Someone who will waltz right up to you, vigorously shake your hand, and start breaking down your barriers. Finally, exhausted from the battle, you buy whatever it is they’re selling.

I’m not that guy. And I doubt you are either.

The business owners, consultants, and engineers-turned-salespeople that I know are down to earth. They’re not comfortable forcing people to buy their products and services. It’s not in their nature to be aggressive.

But they do have to sell. Their companies and livelihoods are on the line.

So how do people like us (quiet, humble, a bit introverted) do it? How do we achieve that sales success advertised in movies like Wolf of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross without being cutthroat and slimy? Here are four selling tips for introverts.

1) Invest in Lead Generation Tools

As an introvert, developing new leads can be difficult. Cold-calling strangers isn’t necessarily our strong suit.

Investing in a lead generation tool like HubSpot can help. At the very least, implement inbound marketing concepts to drive leads your way. This approach is much more attractive than pounding pavement to drum up business.

2) Stop Putting Off the Activities You Dread

It’s all too easy to avoid calling or visiting customers by filling your time with administrative work.

Putting yourself “out there” with outreach calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages can be intimidating. But it’s necessary.

Commit yourself to doing a certain amount every day. Then, do it!

I recommend scheduling these tasks first thing in the morning when your willpower is strong.

Don’t stop until you hit your goal -- after that, you can procrastinate all you want.
If absolutely necessary, work with someone who’s more outgoing. Where you may be struggle to open doors, an extroverted partner will excel.

3) Don’t Forget Your Prospects’ Emotions

Do you rely on logic to persuade customers?

Remember prospects justify their purchases with logic … but buy based on emotion. With that in mind, incorporate their desires and fears into your sales pitch. Think through how your customer feels dealing with the problems they face daily. Then, wrap those emotions into your pitch.

4) Maximize Your Reach Without Burning Out

Developing new relationships is key to advancing your career and/or growing a business. However, for an introvert, these activities can be exhausting. 

When you feel yourself getting tired of the face-to-face interactions, it’s time to regroup and recharge.

If you know you have to be “on” for a meeting or conference, try to pencil in a little time to relax.  Even if you’re still working, try to do so from a quiet and comfortable place.
Finally, consider how you can use other communications skills, such as writing or social media, to connect with others.  This will allow you to communicate at your own time and pace. 

Why the Obnoxious Sales Pro is a Dying Breed

I turn away nearly every person that knocks on my door and try as hard as possible to avoid salespeople when shopping for a new car, at the store, and so on.

Those loud-mouthed, obnoxious salespeople are intrusive. They push and pitch and persuade. I don’t benefit from these interactions.

Modern sales professionals are much more successful because they identify their customers’ needs, listen to their requirements, and help them get maximum ROI from your product.

Your customers may see you at first as a stereotypical salesperson. But following these guidelines will help you build a connection and add value to their lives -- which will lead them to see you as an irreplaceable asset.

The sales will follow.

When Anthony first saw Nigel Green’s article about developing listening skills for salespeople, he knew it was time to ask him to be a guest on In The Arena. Anthony and Nigel met long ago through a mutual acquaintance but it was that post that reminded Anthony how much Nigel has to share with salespeople about listening, sales effectiveness, and scaling a sales force. This conversation is a powerful demonstration of that. You’ll learn some of the most common things salespeople do wrong in sales calls instead of listening to their prospects, practical things you can do to improve your listening skills, and common mistakes made in scaling a sales team. Nigel Green on the Vital Role of Listening Skills for Salespeople - Ep 90Click To Tweet Everyone communicates, but few listen. It’s especially true in sales. Listening is about understanding. Said that way it makes perfect sense why salespeople need to be among the most intentional listeners on the planet. It’s only as we listen that we are able to understand what our prospects truly need, which is the only way we can know if we have the solution to that need. Nigel Green has built a career in sales management and is the founder and CEO of Evergreen, a B2B sales consulting firm. He consults for companies needing to improve their sales teams and is a sales coach for executives eager to grow their business by making sales process improvements. His insights into the skill of listening point out things every salesperson needs to master, so pay close attention to what he shares in this conversation. You won’t know what to offer a prospect if you don’t listen to what they need. Nigel Green tells the story of a time in the early stages of his sales career when his manager gave him a gift - a performance improvement plan. His sales were lagging and he needed to identify his weaknesses and build them into strengths. He spent time with the top sales performers in his company, expecting to discover their magical formulas for sales pitches and perfect closes. He was disappointed because he learned neither. But what he did learn was invaluable to his future success: the top performers knew how to ask questions and truly listen to their prospects. That skillset makes all the difference on a number of levels. You can hear Nigel describe the importance and power of listening skills for salespeople, on this episode of In The Arena. You won’t know what to offer a prospect if you don’t listen to what they needClick To Tweet Why would top performers not be on a performance improvement plan? As Nigel Green told the story of how he was placed on a performance improvement plan early in his career by his sales manager, Anthony commented that he believes everyone needs to be on a performance improvement plan. Think about it: even the top performers should desire to become better at what they do. Improving performance is the name of the game. It’s likely why you are considering listening to this podcast episode. If so, you’re in the right place because Nigel and Anthony discuss one of the most important skills you can ever have as a salesperson: the skill of listening. When speed to scale is what you want, you have to differentiate roles in the organization. For successful sales organizations, the time comes when the volume of incoming leads demands that the team scale. It’s a great problem we’d all like to have. When that happens, a common mistake is to assume that the roles and responsibilities that currently exist within the team are going to be adequate to support the increased weight and volume of incoming clients. It’s typically not true. Nigel Green shares why it’s vital that growing organizations simplify role responsibilities and diversify the team as they move to scale, on this episode. When speed to scale is what you want, you have to differentiate roles in the organizationClick To Tweet Outline of this great episode [2:54] How Anthony met Lewis Howes and their rel...