Rnordman

Carl Landau, a 30-year veteran of magazine publishing, event organizing, and more,  share his insights into hosting a live niche event.

As the brain behind the infamous Camp Niche, Niche Digital Conference, and Super Niche conferences, Landau is more than qualified to share his experiences and know-how on hosting a live event for promoters, associations, and magazine publishers.

Starting a Live Event is Like Starting a Magazine

When you create a magazine, or build a website for that matter, you are looking for an opportunity.

The same theory applies when creating a live niche event: there must be an opportunity. The right amount of opportunity will mean people are interested in attending the event, and more importantly, sponsors and vendors will be interested in highlighting their services. If there is a demand, the event has the potential to succeed.
Landau suggests starting with some research. It’s important to get as many opinions as possible to help determine if the event idea is worthwhile. If event promoters have any hesitation, it’s a good idea to tweak the event to ensure it’s more appealing to a general audience.

Location, Location, Location

Finding the right location is critical to success. It must be centralized to meet the needs of vendors, sponsors, and attendees. So, using a local convention center, hotel meeting room, or outdoor venue is the first step in ensuring attendance. These centers have operational staff who handle the coordination, saving you the hassle of hiring someone to coordinate.

For national events, it is about finding the right city, time of the year, and considering any location factors that could deter people from other counties or states from attending.

Marketing the Network Benefits

The one promoters tend to neglect, but should not, is that of networking. There are two reasons people go to conferences: to learn and to network. Both are equally important; therefore, event organizers must keep these benefits in mind and create an environment that allows them to learn, but also to socialize and network with like-minded professionals.

Landau puts himself in the place of those who have never been to an event before and who are attending alone. He tries to mold his events around opportunities to encourage people who do not know one another to interact. A first-time attendee should not feel awkward at these events; instead, they should feel welcome, casual, and ready to talk.

He suggests integrating activities that break apart groups of those who know one another to encourage people to branch out and meet others.

Having a Good Time is Critical

While educating and offering significant network benefits are crucial, the fact remains that people attend events because they hear about the positive experiences of others. That means you should host an event that has a stellar set of activities.

Landau highlighted how he rented out the NASCAR Hall of Fame for one event, which was highly interactive and even let groups of six work as a pit crew. It was fun, and something an attendee would talk about with others, increasing the likelihood of more participants next year.

These activities can be incorporated into the event’s theme. For example, Landau used a theme of NASCAR, which was why he rented the Hall of Fame. He also points out that themes should be relevant to the area where they are hosted. Themes help tell attendees how much fun they will have at the event.

Listen to the full interview here: 

Building Urgency with Discounted Pricing

Also, having early registration deadlines will help drive early sign-ups. Landau points out that he does four different timelines, each with decreasing discount periods to encourage early bird signups.

Research and Acquire Vendors/Sponsors

Finding the right group of suppliers and sponsors for any event is critical. Landau highly recommends studying other conferences that are of a similar niche and seeing what vendors they use. Add them to your list of probable contacts, then make contact and see who might be interested in your event. They should be related to your industry or the industry you are targeting.

Take the Bad and Spin it for the Good

No event runs 100 percent smoothly, but Landau points out that many of the errors in an event can be caught ahead of time. Event planners should do sound checks to ensure there is no electronic equipment failure, and should always stay in communication with essential team members to ensure they are up-to-date on their tasks.

A live niche event can be wildly successful, so long as a publisher or promoter takes their time preparing for such event and follows the tips Landau has shared today.

The post Niche Live Events: What Does it Take to Get a Huge Audience? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

       

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In 2006, the year HubSpot was founded, inbound marketing was a relatively new term. Marketers were more likely to have heard of and were perhaps starting to embrace content marketing at the time. 11 years later, inbound marketing is a necessity for every business. For a look back to the past compared to where we are now, the SPROUT Content team in Florida recently traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to host a joint HUG (HubSpot User Group) with groups from Baton Rouge, Pensacola and New Orleans.

Jared Broussard of Blinkjar Media and leader of the Baton Rouge HUG welcomed JD Sherman, HubSpot’s Chief Operating Officer with some funny anecdotes of how the Baton Rouge native came to be the guest speaker at this HUG. In reality, it was the devastating flood of August 2016 that prompted JD to return to his hometown and help. He started by showing off some photos of his impressive Louisiana State University sports memorabilia (which was especially cool to this LSU grad). JD focused on how inbound marketing is evolving and how far our industry has come in the past decade. He also provided guidance for companies wanting to adjust their culture to fit today’s inbound world.

How Inbound is Evolving

If you work in marketing, you know that the way people shop for and buy things today has changed and continues to do so.

• 94% skip TV ads
• 94% unsubscribe from email
• 27% of direct mail is never opened, and
• 50% (over 200 million people) are on do not call lists.

Since so many people are ignoring messages, it’s necessary to adopt an inbound marketing approach where you are helpful which will drive people to your products and services.

“Inbound is about the size of your brain, not the width of your wallet.” – JD Sherman

The Internet

JD noted that in 2006, when the Internet was really just getting going, there was a limited supply of content and unlimited demand for it. But in 2017, the shelf space is limitless. “That’s good news and bad news for companies. It’s much more competitive, but it’s much more democratized. It’s becoming more important and more challenging to be found,” said JD.

Content

Flashback to 2006 when the major content type breakthrough was blogs. “A mere mortal could basically publish a newspaper,” JD said. Today, it’s all about video on a mobile device so he advises marketers to create a video for every piece of written content and experiment with Facebook Live. He says it’s time to invest more in video, but also understand you don’t have to have professional, expensive videos.

Social Media

Social media has seen a major shift since 2006. “Facebook was alive, but it wasn’t clear it would be a viable platform. People mostly used Digg and Reddit, where you consumed the content you found interesting and then you left. Today, social media has gone from the drive-through window to the internet cafe. Prospects live in this world constantly, so businesses also have to live there in order to reach them. Engage with your customers there,” said JD.

Search

Google started transforming the world by cataloguing the world’s information and helping you find the answer to a question. Now, Google tries to answer the question for you so you don’t have to go any further.

In 2006, a Google search would reveal paid search at the top of the page or in a sidebar, and then organic results would appear underneath. Today, very often the only thing on the first page is paid search results. According to JD, “Paid search is becoming more important. You need to augment and segment the content you are creating with paid search. Think of it as pouring gas on a fire.”

Websites

In the past, customers would use websites to augment the sales conversation. In 2017, it’s the other way around. Your customers are using your salesperson to augment your website. Customers will only talk to a salesperson when they need to. As we say over and over again at SPROUT Content, your website is your best 24-hour salesperson. Make sure you have a clear buyer’s journey and help them along as much as possible with automation such as Buy Now and form submissions.

Trials

The old warning “buyer beware” certainly applied in 2006 but today the responsibility has flipped to businesses to prove their worth to buyers. That’s because you can now try basically anything before you buy it, even mattresses! For example, Dropbox offers a free 30-day trial, Warby Parker lets you try on glasses at home for free and Casper Mattress features a 100-night trial and free return pick up. All of these offers allow you to experience these company’s products before actually paying for anything. “The consumer is starting to demand this type of experience. They want to know your product’s value before you extract value from them. You earn trust by letting them get started for free, which is why HubSpot now offers a free version of both our CRM and marketing software,” said JD.

Company Culture

The way we do business has also seen a dramatic shift. In 2006, the most important thing you had on your desk was a phone, but today people don’t even have phones in their offices. “So, if you haven’t stopped cold calling, do it now! It can actually have a negative ROI”, according to JD.

We are also changing how we communicate with our coworkers and prospects. In 2006, email was king and though it’s still important, you’ll see many more companies embracing collaboration tools like Slack. At HubSpot, JD revealed that employees started using it with each other on their own before the company adopted it. “Texting is playing a bigger role today too. There’s a ton of texting happening during the buying process now, so you need to shift your sales process to match that,” he said.

All of these strides made by the inbound marketing industry over the past 10 years prove we are moving in the right direction of putting our customers first. By being helpful and relevant, marketers are able to prove our value first without asking for anything in return until trust is built which will ultimately lead to more business.

If you feel like you are relying on old tools and practices that are no longer working for your business, download SPROUT Content’s guide to get back to the future.

When markets, technologies,

or personnel change, sales departments that have run well for years can have a rough time. When too many deals go to “no decision,” and no one can predict which accounts will buy, the traditional “black-box” mentality of the sales department becomes a problem that needs solving.

Of course salespeople do their best to explain what is happening via their stories and anecdotes. Unfortunately, that usually doesn’t solve anything. Worse, these situations are typically not their fault. They are the legacy of the culture that worked in the past.

Yet, there is a way to see inside the sales black box. And like an X-Ray, the results it makes possible are far better than most companies can achieve without it.

One simple change enables this new capability. It is a hallmark of scientific approaches – the operational definition. Operational definitions are an exact description of what words refer to in reality or the procedure used to derive a measurement.

The perfect place to apply them is with qualification criteria. Poor salespeople ignore qualification, and good salespeople obsess about it. Unfortunately most sales departments do not know why they should operationally define them, or how.

Traditional approaches focus remedially on the salesperson. They apply frozen rules to remediate selling behaviors.

Operational definitions provide a standard for observing actual sales opportunities. They assemble everyone’s data into a picture of the system no individual can see.  This helps remove the subjectivity traditionally associated with sales. The structures and processes it reveals within the sales funnel enable corrective action that works. This approach illustrates how companies can diagnose a sales funnel like a doctor diagnoses the human body.

Engage the Team

A team begins by confirming what is working, and not working about their current approach to qualification. Then they brainstorm everything they can about their prospects that is a) observable, and b) that might make them more or less likely to buy.

Their criteria should cover anything the sales team thinks is important, such as the prospect’s demographics, location, their urgency or need, access to decision makers. The team then organizes the questions into a list, with a sequence of possible observations from lowest to highest probability of winning the business. An example is below:

• What is the prospect’s decision-making process?
  • We don’t know their decision making process
  • We know only part of their decision-making process
  • The main contact is only one of the many people involved
  • A committee has been formed, and our contact has influence
  • Main contact is the decision maker/signing authority

A salesperson simply selects the answer that most closely matches their prospect’s situation (as by clicking a radio button). In the background, software can convert their responses into a number, from 1 to 5. The sum of the answers for all questions in the list is a number indicating the quality of the account or sales opportunity.

Sales teams are generally surprised at what they learn.  For one thing, since they worked together to create it, the criteria represents a better theory than anyone could have come up with on their own. For another, it is specific to their market and their products and services, unlike most sales training criteria.

This ability to compare and contrast their opportunities reveals more nuanced insights into what other salespeople have learned.

Align the Team

The higher the quality score, the more likely the prospect is to buy. This means sales opportunities can be prioritized, ensuring the best ones get the right amount of attention.

Inevitably, the new prioritization differs from salespeople’s gut-feel approach. Low scores on questions about the customer’s decision making process, the urgency of their need, or their coaching relationships focus salespeople’s attention. Like a checklist, the format points out tactics for improving their chances to win business. Naturally, salespeople try to improve their scores. Their behaviors become more aligned. This alone has a powerful effect on productivity.

What they do not yet realize is that converting their observations into numbers is a profound capability. When enough assessed opportunities have closed, a statistical analysis can be completed.             This reveals correlations among the questions that cannot be seen through traditional methods.

This is where the X-Ray comes in.

Change the System

The initial list of qualification criteria are often more than 85% accurate in predicting which accounts will buy. However, the likelihood of buying does not gradually increase with the quality scores. Instead, there is a “tipping point” – a narrow range of quality scores above which there is almost 100% chance of winning the business, and below which there is almost no chance. And there is an even more important result.

If a salesperson has done everything in their power to increase the scores on an opportunity and it is still below the tipping point, this is evidence to walk away. Where sales resources are stretched or productivity is low, eliminating low quality deals from the pipeline is a major productivity booster.

Most importantly, the statistics indicate changes that could create improvement. Questions with low correlation to outcomes can be dropped, reducing the amount of information salespeople must collect. In addition, some questions show reverse correlations, indicating the presence of confusion or missing factors.

That was the case with the example above, about the prospect’s decision-making process. Oddly, the data showed the last response (“Main contact is the decision maker/signing authority”) did not indicate likelihood of winning the business.

Discussions with sales people revealed the team’s first attempt had missed the point on this and several other questions. A redesigned question is shown below (underlines indicate improvement over the original question):

• What is the prospect’s decision-making process?
  • They don’t know their decision-making process
  • They have one, but we don’t know it
  • We have partial understanding but they won’t share more
  • We have partial understanding and the will share more
  • We fully understand their decision process

The revised qualification criteria achieved repeatable forecast accuracy of 94%. Further, the data also revealed market segments that were responding differently to the company’s value propositions. This provided clues for making the sales process more effective via interactions on websites and in social media.

Conclusion

Operational definitions are one of many areas where the quality and productivity sciences provide powerful tools that make sales easier. Rather than process for process sake, these tools enable sales and marketing teams to identify work they should stop doing, which releases time for work they should be doing.

Process excellence is not about memorizing rules and implementing tools mindlessly. It is a body of principles that engage your people’s minds to discover better ways of winning more of the right customers, at higher margins and lower costs.

It’s no surprise that analytics are integral to your organization’s success. Whether you work for an in-house marketing team or an advertising agency, tracking and reporting metrics provide you and your team with an overview of your performance. They provide you with insights that influence current and future decisions. And they demonstrate return on investment to internal and external stakeholders.

In other words, business metrics show off the value of your team.

Quantifying ROI across internal creative teams brings with it an extra layer of difficulty. Sure, managers can track the productivity of their team’s work by measuring data such as hours billed, expenses incurred, and costs by project. But how do organizations dig a little deeper and track internal business metrics?

Internal business metrics help paint a bigger picture. They illustrate exactly how your team’s gears are cranking. And, perhaps most importantly, they can help identify areas for growth and improvement. To help illustrate how you can measure metrics across both in-house and agency teams, consider the following tips.

Profitability

Money is the lifeblood of any business. That is why it is critical for creative managers to be aware of the financial consequences of their goals and expectations. Although most managers recognize the importance of aligning creative and financial teams, operational and financial integration is unfortunately not a reality for many agencies and in-house teams.

So, how do teams turn things around and start measuring profitability? For starters, it’s important to track cash flow and gross margin. The former can be measured in terms of the average number of days it takes your team to collect accounts receivable (or payments outstanding), and the number of days it takes to pay your vendors. The latter is a fancy term for the percent of sales your company keeps after incurring direct costs associated with producing your services.

In addition to tracking these metrics, it’s up to you to coordinate the usage of resources to ensure that your projects are completed on time and within budget. Sound overwhelming? Luckily, this process is streamlined and simplified, thanks to accounting software designed specifically for creative teams.

Automating the creation of detailed timesheets, expense reports, and vendor invoices enables you to bill clients efficiently and speed up the AR process. It also eliminates disputes over bills by substantiating all charges and speeds up the collection process by notifying managers when they should follow up on past-due receivables.

Customer interactions

In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent said they considered customer satisfaction metrics useful in managing and monitoring their businesses.

Think that measuring customer satisfaction is difficult and reserved exclusively for large teams? Think again. There are quite a few metrics that can be used to measure just this, including Voice of Customer (VOC)—the process of capturing customer expectations, preferences and aversions—or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), which measures how products and services meet or surpass customer expectations. However, perhaps no metric is as popular, or easy to track, as Net Promoter Score (NPS).

In a nutshell, NPS measures the willingness of your customers to recommend your products or services to others. It is a loyalty measurement score that can be used as a proxy to gauge your customer’s overall satisfaction with your organization and the customer’s loyalty to your brand. Responses are collected through surveys that ask participants to rank your organization on a scale of 1 to 10.

While NPS provides your team with a 1,000-foot view, it’s still a metric worth measuring. Not only does customer satisfaction outline how well your organization is serving its customers, it helps identify which internal functions need the most attention.

Employee satisfaction

Just as it’s important to measure your customer interactions, it’s equally essential to track the overall satisfaction of your internal teams. They are the driving force of your agency and in-house team, after all. In fact, finding and retaining talent is the top challenge faced by agency executives, according to a recent survey.

Employee turnover or attrition—the reduction in staff through means such as retirement and resignation—is one of the biggest limitations of growth. The best organizations are cognizant of the realities of turnover; they work hard to combat them. This takes more than simply talking about employee happiness. It requires a conscious effort to rethink what engagement means, hold teams accountable, and provide tools that measure and capture employee feedback.

One easy way to measure the mood of your team members is through an employee satisfaction survey. It may sound simple, but a survey is a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) way to get an accurate reading of your people. As HubSpot outlines, there are numerous feedback tools that help track team engagement. However, no matter what tool you choose, make sure you utilize it.

What other internal metrics are you measuring?

When asked to share the secret of their sales enablement success, most high achievers answer similarly: position your team to make the most of every conversation. And the surefire way to accomplish this? Know the difference between what works and everything else. A dedicated approach to best practices is a great place to start.

Learning and Doing

At many companies, identifying and sharing best practices is a learned skill. One reason is that specific strategies and tactics that may have outperformed in one environment aren’t always neatly transferable. Another is that cross-team alignment and expectations can vary dramatically. Today we’ll illustrate how sales enablement leaders can set themselves up for success by leveraging the power of best practices.

First: Be aware of how important best practices are

In a recent survey by Highspot and Heinz Marketing, we asked 586 sales, marketing, and sales enablement leaders to offer their perspective on a wide variety of sales enablement topics. One of the most intriguing was best practices.

As illustrated below, sales respondents identified a significant gap between the importance of best practices and their company’s relative performance in this same category. Meaning best practices is one of the most pressing needs of the team with the most to gain from them.

Key questions: How do the observations above translate to your environment? Would your sales team rate the importance of identifying best practices at your company similarly? If so, why? If not, why not? With these same metrics in mind, how would they rate your company’s performance?

Whether you’re on the sales, marketing, or sales enablement team, a quantified evaluation of best practices should be a catalyst in every content decision you make.

Second: Invest in closed-loop processes and technology

At Highspot, we do our best to steer clear of sales and marketing jargon. While closed-loop might seem to violate this principle, please bear with us. It remains the term best suited to describe systems that ensure critical participants in the content and communications chain are aware of what content is working, who is doing what, and how the art and science of continuous improvement can drive the results your business needs. Here’s an illustration:

Key questions: How would you describe your company’s sales enablement processes and technology? Are they operating in a closed loop to ensure best practices and critical insights are shared? Or are they residing in silos, leaving reps to fend for themselves and not benefit from peer-to-peer and customer-to-company learning?

If you’ve already infused a closed-loop system into your business, terrific. If not (and you value best practices), we highly recommend prioritizing this approach.

Third: Optimize your sales enablement strategy

Chances are, the pace of your decision-making is faster than ever before. Coupled with the high cost of under-informed decisions, this is driving businesses to rapidly invest in sales enablement technology. Recent data validate this plan of attack.

Via the same survey mentioned above, the specific benefits of sales enablement in identifying best practices in sales are among the most significant of the top categories recently evaluated.

If your key best practices choice centers less on if and more on how, sales enablement is a worthwhile place to continue your exploration. It’s one of the few B2B technologies on which multiple teams can actively collaborate for the strategic and tactical benefit of all. In short, it helps turn best practices into tangible advantages.

One More Thing

Best practices are not for sale. They are available only through experience. By acting on the suggestions above, as well as many others listed in our Best Practices series, you’ll position your company to optimize not only its content (and with it, customer engagement opportunities), but also the full breadth of what you’re learning every day.

If knowledge is power and experience the greatest teacher, then it’s easy to appreciate the role best practices can play in sales enablement success. We want you to make the most of yours.

Sales and marketing often hold different worldviews. Left unreconciled, they can flatten innovative ideas and the career-making opportunities that accompany them. Today we’re investing a few minutes in how to identify differences between perception and reality, and use the results as a launchpad for revenue growth.

The Other Side of the Lens

At one point or another, we’ve all perceived a sales and marketing reality that didn’t exist. We anticipated a behavior that fell short or an opportunity that didn’t materialize. In the final analysis, chances are you, too, vowed it would not happen again. This is about minimizing the probability it will.

A recent study by Highspot and Heinz Marketing captured the points of view of 586 marketing, sales, and sales enablement leaders. The purpose of the study was to learn more about how businesses are using sales enablement to drive sales performance. Among many notable results, differences in perception were among the most interesting. Here’s a snapshot of the importance and self-rated performance of respondents in five key activity areas:

As indicated above, importance-performance gaps vary by team and category. For example, marketers noted relatively small gaps in their ability to make sure the sales team can find needed content, as well as in producing content for sales (15% and 11%, respectively). On the sales side, relatively large gaps were noted in training and coaching the sales team (31%) and producing content for sales (the same category in which marketing perceives a small gap). Among sales enablement respondents, making sure the sales team can find needed content and refining the selling process for greater effectiveness emerged as significant gaps (22% and 20%, respectively).

Knowledge is Power

Though walking in the shoes of your colleagues might lack practical application, the spirit remains valid. Here are five recommendations for identifying content initiatives with the greatest impact on sales, marketing, and sales enablement teams:

1. Know your colleagues’ KPIs. When you do, you’ll have clearer context on their incentives, top strategic priorities, the seasonality in their business, their approach toward specific audiences, and more. How? Simple: Ask them for their scorecards and share yours. (And repeat as necessary.) This is the first step toward testing your perceptions, regardless of which side of the lens you see.
2. Know your colleagues’ pain points. Identify what they’d rather live without. From misguided content and lack of customer insights to technology overload and fragmented systems, there’s room for improvement in every execution plan. Find it, act on it, and reap the ROI. It all starts with candid conversations.
3. Know which pain points can be solved with technology. Sales and marketing have been promised a solution for every ailment, often with underwhelming results. Fortunately, times have changed. Modern sales enablement technology is now capable of driving results that render predecessor versions irrelevant. A little research on the best of what’s currently available is a great place to start.
4. Know what’s working. It’s not uncommon for solutions that work perfectly for marketing (or sales) to be either invisible or ineffective for sales (or marketing). If you value high-performing content made possible by a shared technology, language, scoreboard, and feedback loop, you’ll need a strategy for achieving it. And that strategy begins with (what else?) direct communication and informed analysis. The ball is in your court.
5. Commit and measure. One-off meetings tend to be well-intentioned but lackluster in long-term impact. Sales and marketing leaders who have enacted real change have established a durable, recurring framework for exchanging data and ideas. We want this to be you. Monthly performance reviews of content strategy and execution, sales technology, and processes are a great starting point.

Hard Work + The Right Technology = Higher ROI

Armchair clairvoyance will never replace hard work and on-the-ground understanding. Many of the best sales and marketing pros have indoctrinated these essentials into their sales enablement routine. As proof, each day we hear from marketers using sales enablement to drive higher content ROI via improved content quality and relevance; and from salespeople who are now better prepared to demolish quota using the power of content. It’s a win-win if ever there was one.

To realign your own sales and marketing teams (and technologies), we recommend downloading a copy of State of Sales Enablement 2017. It might be just the silo-busting, revenue-generating, perception-versus-reality intelligence your business needs.

Financial icon Warren Buffett (WIKI) likes to remind investors that the price of something is what you pay for it, while the value is what you get in return. That’s why it’s easy for something cheap to be more expensive in the long run. In fact, prioritizing short-term budgets almost always comes back to haunt you.

I’ve seen this many times over the course of my career.

Business owners and marketing managers will want to save money by passing over something they know has solid value, only to regret it later when having to redo or re-solve a challenge.

One example is that they may forgo investing in an inbound lead generation program that attracts a growing list of leads over time, opting instead for an advertising campaign that creates a sale this week, but stops delivering the moment they stop funding it.

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” – Warren Buffett

What may seem like the safer choice at the time, leaves them starting from scratch again when it’s time to prepare a new effort later. Had they made a more strategic decision the first time, they would enjoy bigger returns over time.

We know, deep down, that reaching goals takes a level of focus and commitment. We conveniently forget all the bits of wisdom we’ve absorbed, however, when time and money are on the line. Most of us struggle with this at some point or another, I think, but lately I seem to be noticing it more than usual.

Today I want to share seven different ways I see where we can confuse sticker prices with bottom-line realities, and how they can really impact our businesses…

1. Choosing Cut-Rate Suppliers

When a competitor undercuts you, how do they do it? Chances are, they rush through a project, curb scope, use inferior components, or skimp on service. Guess what? When your vendors quote unbelievably low prices, they are doing the exact same things.

If you want experienced insights, creativity, and client-focused care, it’s realistic to expect you’ll have to pay market rates. Otherwise, you’re very likely going to be disappointed with the results.

2. Hiring the Wrong Employees or Vendors

No one can run a business on their own. That’s why it’s important to have employees, vendors, and service providers who demonstrate the same ethics and dedication to the job that you do.

Bringing those talented and trusted people onto your team undoubtedly means paying them more. On the other hand, hiring the wrong team members can quickly ruin your reputation, not to mention the relationships you have with customers and colleagues.

3. Choosing Ineffective Training Programs

Hiring the right people isn’t enough. To help them maximize their talents and stay on top of their respective fields, it’s a must to train and motivate them at every turn.

The quality of the training programs you set up is going to dictate whether the days and dollars devoted to them will amount to a valuable investment or not. If you choose training based only on price, you can’t be surprised when you get little or no improvement in employee performance.

4. Failing to Invest in Customer Delight

If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will. Do everything you can to ensure they are as pleased as they could be with you and they’ll have little reason to even think of taking their business elsewhere.

Cut corners when it comes to their satisfaction, though, and you’ll always be at risk of having your buyers take their cash to a competitor. The customer might not always be right, but they are always valuable. Remember that and make your day-to- day decisions accordingly.

5. Under-Funding New Initiatives

In order to become a leader in your market, you have to generate a workable plan and execute it. But, if you don’t put time, thought, or resources behind your inspirations, they are bound to fail from the start.

Then, you end up in a situation where you have the worst of both worlds: your great idea won’t come to life, and the little bit of money you did invest in it has been wasted. If you’re going to move forward with a project, do it in a way that’s likely to succeed. Otherwise, what’s the point?

6. Being Reactive Instead of Proactive

Your industry is going to keep moving forward. You can either lead that process from the front of the pack, or constantly find yourself chasing others who are more forward-looking.

It costs time and money to become a trendsetter. You have to invest in expertise, education, and development. Those investments pay off time and time again, however. What’s really expensive is constantly finding yourself behind the ball and struggling to keep up with the latest changes or ideas as a runner up.

7. Ignoring Known Problems

Most of the problems you run into in the course of running your company aren’t going to fix themselves.

The malfunctioning piece of technology won’t suddenly start to work, the failing marketing campaign won’t miraculously turn around, and the under-qualified vendor you chose isn’t going to suddenly start providing premium work.

If you’re afraid to spend time or money fixing the problems that are right in front of you, you’re just inviting them to become bigger and more disruptive in the future.

A big part of running a successful business is determining your budgets and making judicious decisions about what you can and can’t afford. Unless you have unlimited resources (in which case I’d love to do some work for you), you’re going to have to make tough calls and figure out the trade-offs.

As you do, though, remember that an all-too-common mistake is the same one the world’s premier investor warns about again and again. Focus too much on sticker price of something, instead of what you’re going to get in return, and you’re bound to make decisions you’re going to regret later.

The people you are trying to contact are busy. They have hundreds of emails to cope with, as well as an increasing burden of social media activity, on top of all the usual meetings and the work they are supposed to do. Yesterday, I heard of a boss of an international organisation who has told his staff in the UK that he expects them to go home from work at the end of the day and then go back online to deal with emails, reports and so on, from 9 pm. Unpaid. Busy, busy, busy.

Your potential customers or clients are overloaded with material. They are stressed, and they are under pressure to stick to static or decreasing budgets. So, anything you can do to help them will be welcomed with wide open arms.

It turns out that half of all business people now rely solely on online content to make purchasing decisions for their company. That’s right – half of the people who buy things on behalf of their business are now so busy they rely just on what they have read online in order to make their purchasing decisions. The value of online content, therefore, cannot be underestimated.

But with so much content available online, how can you make sure those business buyers get to notice what you are producing?

The answer comes in a new study by DemandGen. This found that trust in the content, how it is shared and what it contains are three crucial elements in grabbing the attention of business-to-business buyers.

Trust is vital

The most important factor in determining whether content is of value is whether the source can be trusted. This finding suggests that whatever content you produce, your reputation is fundamental. An array of factors determine trust, but there are two psychological aspects of trust which are the most important. The first of these is to demonstrate that you see everything from the perspective of the audience you are targeting. Content that is self-focused is untrusted. Content that is entirely from the viewpoint of the reader is the most trusted. Your website, indeed everything your business does needs to be done from the perspective of the customer if your firm is to be trusted.

The other essential psychological component of trust is demonstrating knowledge. The more knowledgeable you appear to be, the more trustworthy you become. That means having a website that is crammed full of knowledge is vital in helping your visitors trust you.

This new study shows the immense value of having a knowledgeable website that is written entirely from the perspective of the visitor.

Sharing matters

The DemandGen study also revealed that the way material is shared is significant. If the material your company produces is shared by other, highly-regarded people, then your content is rated more highly. That’s “social proof” coming into play. However, the research found that it is the way this material is shared that matters most. For those in business, the primary method of sharing is email. Yes, that’s right, email. Business-to-business buyers are happiest with content that is shared with them through email. If that isn’t happening, then content on LinkedIn is the next most favoured. Twitter is used by almost two in three business folk, but after that, the other social networks are not deemed valuable by many.

Once again, this is yet another study which emphasises the value of delivering content through email. In spite of the growing amount of email read each day, it continues to be the preferred method for getting business-related content. Indeed, the research discovered that 94% of people were willing to share their email address, whereas only 33% of people were happy to give their phone number. This clearly shows that people want to receive business communication through email, rather than on the phone.

Form of content is crucial

The final aspect of this study is in the appeal of particular kinds of content. What people want is material that shows them practical things they can do. The “7 steps” or the “how to” kind of content is loved by business-to-business people. Furthermore, they want content that is based on case studies. An article on the “7 steps” showing how a particular company achieved things with those seven steps is the kind of content that people want more frequently.

This is understandable from a psychological perspective. That kind of content is about “identity”. A business person wants to identify with someone like themselves and wants to achieve what people like themselves have done. So, seeing how a similar business produced a particular outcome appeals to this self-identity aspect.

The study also found that business people want content that is “solid”. They respect research, data, and factually-based content more than opinion or theory. Back up your content with research data, and it is more likely to appeal to business people than generalised information.

Three steps to grabbing attention

This research suggests you need to do three things to catch the attention of those busy business people.

1. Produce much more content than you do at the moment. Content is the number one thing on which business buyers are making decisions. The content needs to come from a trustworthy source, which is a knowledgeable source. So, crank up the content production system and schedule more content.
2. Market your content through email and get well-known people in your sector to share it via email as well.
3. Research, study, get data. Fill your content with facts, evidence and research information. Demonstrate how these facts fit in with the outcomes generated by specific case studies.

In other words, it’s time to produce more content, on a more frequent basis that is so well-researched and based on real examples that people cannot help emailing it to their friends.

Close your eyes for a second and imagine your sales funnel. What is it? Where does it live and how does it work? Most of us think of the sales funnel as a collection of possible customers at various stages of commitment to purchase from us. We collect leads, store them and nurture them from our internal database. It’s called a funnel because the wide part is where people become aware of us, and as they become more familiar with what we sell, they start to consider buying, and eventually some of them decide to purchase.

The funnel gets narrower because most people either aren’t ready or aren’t qualified—or maybe they’re just browsing, so those leads remain at higher levels of the funnel or they get discarded. You are, in effect, casting a broad net and picking out the big fish that are your obvious customers at the bottom of the funnel. The problem with this model is that it’s not efficient and it wastes sales and marketing resources. Fortunately, there’s a better way.

The Universal Funnel

Now, close your eyes again and clear your mind of your sales funnel picture. Imagine instead that the world is your funnel. Everybody is a potential customer. They are not just in your contact database being nurtured, but everywhere. Your job is to find people who are ready to buy and are shopping right now. Your target market is a relatively narrow band of the universal funnel that’s in the middle, right above the decision point (or bottom funnel). Instead of casting a broad net, we’re going spearfishing.

But how?

SEO and Demand Generation Campaigns

Let’s start with search engines. People search for a lot of reasons, but one of the most common is shopping—looking for the best options when they already know what they want. Let’s go talk to them. Instead of publishing a bunch of content that’s educational or entertaining and hoping it attracts a large number of top-funnel leads, let’s try a different approach. Let’s pin down exactly what buyers are searching for when they shop for your products and services. Not when they are learning about your industry, company or products in general, but when they are considering buying from you. Phrases like:

• Inbound marketing agencies that specialize in manufacturing in the U.S.
• Best electric toothbrushes for children under 10
• Which Lamborghini dealer in Cleveland has the best customer service?

You can find out which phrases to use a number of ways:

• Ask your customers how they found you. Which phrases did they use to search?
• Conventional keyword research, focusing on long-tail, specific shopping keyword phrases instead of keyword volume.
• Experiment by optimizing content and advertising around different phrases and see which combinations drive the most qualified sales leads.

Now, let’s increase the odds of making a connection with these qualified buyers using demand generation campaigns. Create ads that use the same phrases that buyers search with, promoting content that addresses those topics in a mid-funnel way. An example would be a video that goes into detail about how to use your products to achieve a specific goal, like mowing your yard in half the time. Or maybe it’s a blog post comparing the features of the top three products in your marketplace. Middle-funnel content doesn’t have to be boring or dry. Spice it up, but be specific. Focus on what the buyer is looking for and what she needs to know to make an informed decision.

Now place your ads where your buyers shop. In addition to Google, you want to be highly visible in Facebook, Twitter and other sites where buyers ask their friends for recommendations and write reviews. Just remember, you’re not looking for visits and likes. You’re looking for conversions from qualified buyers. The metrics might not be as gaudy as other types of campaigns, but we’re spearfishing here. Try looking at MQL-SQL conversion rates instead of traffic or lead volume.

What About Your Internal Sales Funnel?

You can also market to the middle of your existing funnel of previously captured leads using the same tactics outlined here. In addition to mid-funnel content and demand generation campaigns, you can also leverage targeted email campaigns. Segment your database based on qualification and behavioral criteria. How often has a lead visited your pricing page? How long do they spend on mid-funnel pages and which pieces of content do they download—top-funnel eBooks or case studies and customer testimonial videos? Increase your chances of success by marketing to people who match these criteria.

Advantages of Mid-Funnel Marketing

I’m not suggesting that we should abandon conventional inbound marketing that emphasizes filling the funnel with top-funnel leads and nurturing them through the buyer’s journey. If you do it right by marketing to well-defined buyer personas, you stand a good chance of capturing qualified leads and gently persuading them to become buyers. By augmenting that strategy with mid-funnel campaigns, you may be able to improve conversion rates and increase sales with a shorter sales cycle. You may also be able to reduce marketing costs by taking a more targeted approach and improve sales efficiency by focusing on leads that are both qualified and ready to buy.

Think a referral system is easy? Think again!

All things being equal, we work with friends. All things not being equal, we work with friends. And when we need a specialist, we ask a friend.

That’s why referral selling is the only prospecting strategy that ensures qualified lead generation. And it only works if you have a referral system in place to ensure sales reps ask for referrals every day.

The business case for referral selling is loud and clear. When sales reps receive referral introductions, they:

• Score meetings with decision-makers, while the competition is still figuring out how to get in
• Reduce the time it takes to close deals
• Spend more time with customers and less time prospecting
• Get in before buyers know they have a need and set the standards by which others are evaluated
• Save you money (There are no expensive marketing costs—just your own sales team out there selling for you.)
• Convert prospects into clients at least 50 percent of the time (Most clients report a conversion rate of more than 70 percent.)

Referral selling is simple, but it’s not easy. If it were, every sales organization would have a system in place to guarantee these results. Yet, fewer than 5 percent of companies have a disciplined, measurable, proactive referral system.

What does it take to guarantee referral prospecting success?

1. Prioritize referrals.

Executives don’t leave important buying decisions to chance. That would be dumb. Their bottom lines—and their reputations—are at stake. So, they ask someone they know well for a referral when they need an expert salesperson to help with a specific project or corporate initiative.

Why, then, do sales leaders leave referral prospecting to chance? They think all they need to do is tell their sales teams to ask for referrals. I call that the “point and tell” syndrome. It doesn’t work.

Referrals don’t just happen, at least not at scale. Yes, occasionally a well-served client will mention your company to another buyer and you’ll magically get a sale. But how often does that really happen?

More importantly, asking for referrals won’t be a priority for your team unless it’s a priority for you. So, if you’re just pointing and telling, they’re probably not asking.

2. Create a referral system.

A referral system is a strategic initiative driven by the executive team. It’s not just one more lead generation initiative or training program to introduce to your organization. It means integrating referral selling into your sales process and making referral selling your #1 outbound prospecting approach.

Successfully shifting your sales team to referral selling means establishing both activity and results metrics, building their referral skills, ensuring accountability for results, and implementing with precision. Help your team understand why referrals are the key to surpassing their quotas.

No other sales or marketing strategy delivers such powerful, predictable results. And it all starts with you—the sales leader.

3. Commit to referrals.

Whether you are CEO, vice president, or a sales manager, you have a central role in your company’s sales process and in the decision to transition to a referral selling strategy. Now’s your chance to change the game. Are you “all in” with referral selling, or just trying it on? Are you telling your team to ask for referrals? Or do you unequivocally believe and trust that you have a referral system in place to drive revenue, save your job, and position your company for sales success? If you’re not committed to the process, your team won’t be either.

Referral selling transforms everything it touches. When you commit to referral selling and integrate it into your sales organization, your team will bring in more qualified leads, foster better long-term relationships with customers, decrease the cost of sales, and generate more revenue. It’s really a no-brainer. While your competition is still playing around on social media, sending cold emails, and trying to identify decision-makers, your sales team will be in the conference room sealing deals.

The shift won’t happen in a day or a week. You don’t get fit in a week; you don’t change business in a week. A full commitment can be life-changing. Change yours—forever.

To learn more about what it takes to boost lead generation with a proven referral system, check out No More Cold Calling’s Referral Sales Program for Account-Based Sellers.

Companies that rely on a partner channel to extend their reach to a broader audience of customers often find it challenging to use traditional communication vehicles for all of the activities related to managing a reseller, dealer or service provider partner channel, including:

• Contract management
• Onboarding, training, and certification
• Communications, marketing collateral fulfillment and co-marketing campaign content distribution
• Setting up processes and requirements for sales forecasting, support best practices and requests for product enhancements

The period of time surrounding the signing of contract agreements is crucial to set the stage for a mutually beneficial and productive relationship with manufacturers, distributors, publishers and each partner in its channel ecosystem.

Fully enabled channel partners have an immediately amplifying impact on your company’s revenue.

A report by the Aberdeen group states,

Properly enabled partner ecosystems grow an average deal size by 5.3% on a year to year basis.

Regardless of the size of your partner channel management team, a self-service partner community creates efficiencies, instills partner confidence and empowers partners to be more self-sufficient.

Below, we’ve put together 3 key ways partner-centric companies can leverage a partner community portal to effectively welcome and train new partners for future success.

1. Managing Vital Documents

When you’re welcoming a new partner into your channel, there are several documents you’ll want to share with them and store for future reference. Beyond the initial agreement outlining the terms of the partner relationship, there are other documents which need to be made available in their most recent version:

• Software/service licensing agreements
• Support documents
• Deal/Opportunity registration forms (once approved)
• Master Service Agreements in cases of joint project delivery
• Non-Disclosure Agreements
• Certificates of completion of training courses
• Installation manuals. Engineering blueprints and/or technical guides
• Organization charts and rules of engagement for sales, support, and purchasing
• Escrow agreements for software
• Price sheets

Easily accessing the latest version of these documents is important and with a mobile-friendly document viewer allows partners to review a document before downloading it. As is the ability to apply digital signatures with apps like Adobe Sign. Security roles enable complete access control to documents as well as other content and data.

Providing a platform for partners to independently get up to speed on your products and services, and offering incentives for your partners to get trained up is key to Partner Relationship Management (PRM) success.

2. Content for Onboarding, Training, and Certification

When you create consistent, comprehensive and on-demand partner onboarding and training, it gives all of your partners an equal opportunity to be competitive and effectively represent your product. A self-serve partner portal supports access to many types of onboarding content, including:

• Videos
• eLearning courses
• Quizzes and assessments
• Course completion certificates
• Messaging functions for communication with course instructors or learning content creators

Providing your partners with access to your catalog of courses, on their preferred devices and on- demand is a great way to increase partner engagement. Successful partner programs provide incentives for completing training courses with point systems or badges which can accumulate to higher commission tiers, access to Market Development Funding, or recognition with certification tiers.

Integrating your PRM portal with a CRM application like Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce.com allows you to share information with partners, track courses your partners have completed, key employees on their teams and address any issues which might be standing in the way of developing a strong indirect sales channel.

3. Partner Sales Empowerment

Consider this: A new partner needs more than product knowledge to successfully develop a sales strategy. Channel Managers need to stay on top of the leads and opportunities in which Partners are engaged in order to be an effective resource. Communication and collaboration on deals and opportunities are vital to support a new partner relationship.

Time-consuming phone calls and endless emails trying to track the status of a deal or provide assistance with opportunities can be avoided. A platform promoting visibility into sales activity enables Channel Managers to empower even the newest partners with real-time support.

Integrating the sales portal with your CRM allows your company to react to any bottlenecks in the ramp-up process, provide appropriate and timely feedback and improve your channel relationships.

Onboard, certify, support and manage across channels from the first day with ease – it is possible and the best way to ensure long-lasting and profitable relationships with your partners.

Great marketers are great storytellers. We know a great book or movie, but marketers today have a few seconds to tell a story; seven to eight in fact. If you do a good job in the first seven seconds you might pull through a few more precious seconds or minutes of your prospect’s time.

Fortunately, people want to hear stories. It’s human nature. Great stories move people. Inspire them. Make them feel connected. And feeling connected to others is one of our most basic needs. Sometimes B2B marketers shy away from emotion and stick to facts, but that’s a mistake. Emotion is what separates brands, and there are many emotions that a good marketer can evoke. You have the opportunity to tell stories that engage people and make them feel something about your brand. And ideally, they act on that feeling in the end by buying your product or service.

When Business Gets in the Way

The very tactics employed to drive revenue often distract marketers from their storytelling – and from being great marketers. Think about it. They need to demonstrate ROI, produce metrics that tie their efforts to sales leads, serve up contacts and campaigns (not to mention the outcomes of those campaigns), invest time in marketing attribution…and track results from brand to demand to revenue.

Now, these are clearly all important measurements. The reason companies engage in marketing in the first place is to drive these kinds of results. But here’s the thing: you can’t drive results like this unless you’re telling your story first. The right story. The right way. To the right people. At the right time.

Five Storytelling Tips for B2B Marketers

I decided to tap into the mind of one of the great storytellers of the past century, New York Times bestselling author Kurt Vonnegut. He once shared his thoughts on crafting a good short story, and while his advice was obviously directed at budding authors, many of the lessons apply to B2B marketers as well.

• Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Google calls this “Be there, Be useful.” The point is, you need to make time in your storytime well spent for your audience. You can entertain, provoke, educate, or assist, but your customer should get something out of it. Emotion is a powerful tool, use it.
• Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. Engage prospects who are in an active buying cycle and looking for your products or services specifically. Predictive technologies let you place your story in front of someone when they are most interested in reading it. Help them see that you understand what they want before you start explaining how you fulfill it.
• Start as close to the end as possible. When the sales cycle is shortened, everyone wins. Know exactly where your prospect is on their buying journey – and give them something useful for that stage.
• Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters are, make awful things happen to them in order to show the reader what they are made of. Sadist may be a bit strong, but making the wrong decision has consequences and you want to ensure your customers understand the consequences of the wrong decision, not just the benefits of the right one. Don’t be afraid of controversy. You want people talking, debating, and engaging. Bright colors are noticed, beige fades into the background. Don’t engage in beige marketing, it’s a huge waste of time and money.
• Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. Target, target, target. Know your customer intimately and tailor your marketing to them. There are a multitude of technologies available now to help focus on your specific customer and put your message in front of them, but it must be the right message.

I’d add at least one more to this list: Be different, not just better. Everyone talks about better…blah, blah, blah. Be different, stand out, be noticed. Give people something new to think about.

We’re inundated with content and messages. Only a few break through, and fewer still are remembered. The ones that break through are the ones that cause us to react, that tell a compelling story, and elicit some emotion. Brands that do this well, over and over, are the ones that make the consideration set. So, the next time sales is clamoring for higher quality leads, finance is looking for pipeline numbers and the CEO is scrutinizing your budget again, remember: stick to your story. Because in the end, being a great storyteller – a great marketer – will help you deliver the results they seek.

When Stripe Atlas launched a year ago, it wanted to level the playing field for entrepreneurs in emerging markets so that they could have access to the same tools as people in Silicon Valley.

Now the $9 billion payments company has realized that Atlas is something entrepreneurs throughout the United States want too.

Atlas automates the complicated process of starting a company into a filling out a short web form. Atlas then takes care of incorporating a company in Delaware, setting up a US bank account with a tax ID number, and creating a Stripe account so they can accept payments.

"We wanted to see if we could help entrepreneurs in emerging markets to be on the same playing field as Silicon Valley startups," said Taylor Francis, the lead of the Atlas project, in an interview with Business Insider. "It’s been heartening to see that it’s working."

The company has already helped incorporate thousands of businesses from 124 countries. And on Thursday, Stripe is officially opening Atlas to US entrepreneurs, a group that had been clamoring to use it too, says Francis.

"It’s a slightly different problem, but even in the US, the process was time consuming," Francis said.

A company in a box

The company had designed Atlas to help entrepreneurs in foreign markets understand how to quickly set up a US based company for only $500. Normally the process would include hiring a registered agent in Delaware to physically receive the paperwork and then walking into a US bank at least once to open an account. Atlas automates all of it thanks to its already established partnerships with companies like Silicon Valley Bank, where it opens all of its bank accounts. 

And there's the upside for Stripe, the payments company that's been powering all of this. Atlas sets up all the companies with a Stripe account so they can start receiving payments. Francis said that alone has changed how a lot of the companies do business, using an example of a business owner in Nigeria who used to receive wire payments for his software company.

While it started with a focus on emerging markets, during the course of last year, Francis heard from more and more US entrepreneurs that were looking to save the time and money by using Atlas. It's also struck partnerships with accelerators like Y Combinator and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to help speed up starting a company.

While it's opening up to US entrepreneurs, Atlas will remain an invite-only tool for now. For one, Stripe has to screen to make sure the companies don't fall on the list of prohibited businesses (like gambling or virtual currencies) and to help screen that the way Atlas sets up a company is the correct fit. 

Atlas' process establishes companies as Delaware C-Corp, a good business status if an entrepreneur is planning on raising venture capital and building a high-growth company, but maybe not the best if they prefer to stay solo. 

It also isn't the best option for merchant businesses like opening a restaurant or an Etsy store, although Francis is hesitant to draw the line since so many companies are hybrid across industries these days. To help assuage founder fears, the company is also launching things like forums and Q&As with tax specialists to help entrepreneurs both across the globe and now in the US navigate starting a company.

"There are entrepreneurs who have started many YC companies who have great lawyers on speed dial that have used Atlas. There are also a lot of entrepreneurs in other parts of the country who don’t have the same network," Francis said. "I think it’s all across the spectrum."

SEE ALSO: A new self-driving car startup just spun out of Udacity to challenge Uber with its own autonomous taxi service

Join the conversation about this story »

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Each company may take a different approach to lead generation, but they all have the same goal in mind. No matter what path they take to get there, bringing in leads is what these companies hope to achieve once they reach the end of that path. In order to do that, companies need to find unique ways to bring in their audience. No matter what approach you take, it’s likely that there are a few aspects that you’ll share with every other lead generation campaign out there.

That’s because every lead generation campaign must have these five things. Does yours?

1) An Inticing Offer, Promotion, or Overall Service

What is it that your company has to offer, and are you willing to give away a sample of it to draw in your potential leads? It doesn’t have to be a basket of free of goods. It can be a discount for signing up, 10% off if you refer a friend or share on Facebook, a free whitepaper download, or free shipping on orders for new customers. Does this sound familiar?

2) An Inviting Landing Page

A landing page is any section of a website that is reached by clicking on a hyperlink from another website. That hyperlink can usually be found on a search engine, an advertisement or social media post, or even that same website’s homepage.

Each landing page should have a specific purpose. Typically, that purpose is- you guessed it -to bring in leads. a lead will find your hyperlink elsewhere, and it will ultimately lead them to this page. On this page, they can find out more information about your company, the offer you have and why it fits their needs or desires, and how they can go about getting whatever offer you’re promoting on that landing page. This is usually done by filling out a lead generation form. They get your offer, you get their info. It’s a win-win.

3) A Creative Call-to-Action Piece

So, you’ve figured out what kind of offer you want to use. That’s great. But, how are you going to ultimately lock in this relationship? You need to have a call-to-action, also known as a CTA. Call to actions come in all kinds of phrases, images, links, and attractive buttons. Your call to action is that little thing that will finally provide you with your lead’s information while presenting them with that offer. Sometimes, it’s a “submit” button on a submission form, or a “download button” that when clicked on, will bring them to a form. Either way, you can’t really have a lead generation campaign without one.

4) A Mobile-Friendly Form

So, where will your lead plug in that information about themselves to get that thing you’re offering? In a lead-generation form, of course. The most important thing to remember is that this form needs to be easy to fill out and mobile-friendly. If it can’t be read or filled out on all devices, you’re going to lose out on a lot of leads. Keep it simple. Just ask for a name and an email. You can always get the rest later!

5) A Means of Sharing

Social media is one of the best ways to spread information, but it’s not the only way. Email marketing is still used a lot, too. As long as people have a way of sharing things they like with their friends, that’s good for you. Don’t create any lead generation campaign without making sure you have share icons somewhere on the page. Why wouldn’t you want the chance to take your campaign that much further?

The Mission Suite is a marketing automation service that can help you manage your lead generation campaigns, analyze your efforts, and organize information on the leads you gather. Request a demo to learn more today!

As a precursor to our next academic study around messaging for price increases, we surveyed the market to find out how well they think they’re doing in this area. The findings of that survey are explored below.

“I need you to pay more.”

No matter how you spin it, communicating a price increase message to your customers is tricky business, not least because there’s so much potential for things to go wrong. But, challenging and delicate as this conversation can be, it’s a strategically important conversation that many B2B pros have to handle effectively to hit aggressive growth goals.

Findings from a new Corporate Visions market survey, done in partnership with the International Journal of Sales Transformation, confirm how important it is to execute this conversation well. Nearly two-thirds of B2B professionals (63 percent) believe price increases are “very important” or “mission critical” for maintaining desired profitability and revenue growth.

Unfortunately, as important as this dialogue is for hitting high growth targets, it’s not going over too well with customers. The survey shows that companies lack the confidence, strategy and messaging structure needed to effectively frame price increases to their customers. Low marks across these key areas are resulting in subpar outcomes in this pivotal conversation—which I’m calling the “Why Pay?” message.

How Are Customers Responding?

Nearly 69 percent of respondents in our survey describe their requests for a price increase as “50-50” or worse in terms of how well they go over with customers. While they’re worried about settling for less than they want, there doesn’t seem to be a major concern about long-term damage to customer relationships and loyalty.

On the other hand, that means only about a third of companies think their price increase conversations go the way they want. That means either getting an acceptable increase (26 percent) or getting everything they wanted (5 percent). That’s not exactly a glowing endorsement of how this dialogue is being handled today, and it shows there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

A Confidence Gap?

When asked about their confidence level in the approaches they’re taking to price increase messaging, survey respondents admitted feeling shaky. In fact, just 37 percent are “confident” in their approach to communicating price increases, while only eight percent feel “very confident.” This leaves 55 percent who are unsure about how appropriate or effective their price increase messaging is.

This begins to explain why:

• Nearly four out of five companies (79 percent) in the survey say they want more structure around their messaging for this critical conversation; while

• Another 21 percent are convinced they’re doing well enough.

A related finding that’s just as telling: Fewer than one-third of respondents (32 percent) believe their approach to communicating price increases is “highly structured”—meaning they craft a deliberate communication plan using persuasive messaging techniques, and provide specific recommendations to those who own this responsibility, including skills training on how best to communicate and negotiation pricing to maximize results.

Among the two-thirds of companies lagging in this aspect, the survey found that:

• 23 percent say it’s ad hoc, meaning they have no formal approach in place for this type of conversation, and give license for the responsible parties to handle the development and delivery of this message on their own with the customers.

• 44 percent say their approach is somewhat structured, meaning someone creates a formal communication so the story is consistent, but then either leaves it up to the responsible parties to communicate or send the request via email, before letting the team follow-up with limited messaging direction.

Whenever I mention in a public event that we’re in the process of constructing research around this topic, including academic testing to determine a winning framework, people’s ears prick up: there is an appetite to know when they can get the insight they need to handle this conversation better. These numbers show why there’s interest and urgency around this subject.

But here’s the reality: Most companies know they’re leaving money on the table and getting less than they want, and perhaps even need, from their customers. Ongoing investments in servicing accounts and improving solutions, as well as the rising cost of goods, often end up in the same spot: a post-purchase price increase conversation.

Besides your profitability being on the line, this discussion carries the additional risk of tarnishing relationships, destabilizing the partnership, and possibly damaging customer loyalty in a way that makes them susceptible to a competitive alternative. A success rate of less than 33 percent, as indicated by the survey, shows there’s considerable room for improvement in framing this conversation in a more effective way.

We aim to show you how in forthcoming research, conducted with a professor from U.K. Warwick Business School—stay tuned.

The post Why Pay? How Are Companies Framing Price Increases With Customers? appeared first on Corporate Visions.

“To build a long-term, successful enterprise, when you don’t close a sale, open a relationship.”
– Patricia Fripp, keynote speaker and presentation skills trainer.

Relationships have always been central to a successful business. It is how you get started and stay afloat. It is what you build on.

The problem is that relationships are not easy to develop. It takes time, and hinges on the rapport you establish from your first (and nth) B2B sales call.

Building Rapport in Sales

So, how do you build rapport in sales calls?

First, let’s look at what the word really means. Merriam Webster Dictionary describes rapport as “a relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy.”

From here, we can see the ideals that we need to strive for when talking to a client for the first or nth time:

• You have to be on the same page. (Agreement)
• You should understand each others industry and how a business relationship is mutually beneficial. (Mutual understanding)
• You need to know and understand their business and pain points, and offer possible solutions. (Empathy)

These may seem a lot to compress into a typical B2B sales call, much more for cold calls. But it’s all worth it. Just keep in mind what Bob Burg, referral-based selling guru and co-author of the international bestseller “The Go-Giver,” said: “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.”

Build a sales rapport with your prospects, and see where the relationship takes your business. Here are 7 creative tips to building rapport in sales.

Know Who You’re Talking To

Today, it’s easier to get to know the basics about the person you’re going to speak with. Social media, particularly LinkedIn, is one of your best tools when you do research prior to your call. You can know a person’s designation, business associations, past jobs, and even interests and likes.

Use what you know to establish a connection. Start your conversation with a clear idea about the other person, particularly when it comes to work.

Instead of a: “Hello, Mr. Jones. I called to ask if you’re the person in charge of buying paper for your company.”
Say this: “Hello, Mr. Jones. I understand that you’re the person in charge of buying paper for your company. I have the best options for a start-up company such as yours.”

With the second option, you establish that you know their needs even before they tell you. You have begun the dialogue by communicating your focus on your prospective client.

Connect With The Other Person, and Make It Personal

Your B2B sales calls should never be strictly about work. The person on the other end of the line has a life outside this; and it usually pays to connect on that level too.

Ask how their day is going. If you called after lunch, ask if they had eaten. Tell them about a great café you know about at your prospect’s location. Talk to them about their families, former college or interests.

You will know what to talk about during the course of your B2B sales call through active listening. Get cues from what’s being said. Or, casually ask them questions that let them know you’re interested.

Perhaps your social media research will give you a glimpse of the other person’s personal life. This is actually a gray area. What you learn online can help you establish a connection. However, you can also come off as a creepy stalker. So, again, listen to the cues and know when to interject with your social media information.

Use Disarming Honesty

Small talk happens in almost all kinds of conversations, even B2B sales calls. There’s nothing wrong with this. But, consider veering away from typical responses every now and then, and try an honest reply.

For instance, to the question “How’s your day going?”
Instead of the usual: “Fine. How’s yours?”
Say: “It’s one of those trying days…. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

Honesty is always appreciated, especially when it comes to sales.

People may default to the notion that salespeople will say and do anything just to close the deal. This is one of the toughest walls you face as a sales professional. Being honest and opening yourself up to the other person is a great way to chip away at this wall.

Humor and Compliments Work

When you’ve got a great sense of humor, tell a joke. Laughter goes a long way in establishing a personal bond with your prospect.

Of course, tread carefully. First of all, the joke should be funny. It should also suit the personality of your prospect. You won’t tell a locker room joke to a feminist, right? So, consider what you know about the other person and then decide on using humor to build rapport.

If you’re unsure, stick with sincere compliments. It could be as simple as complimenting them about their website or brochure. This can even work as your foot in – the story of how you realized that you can have a mutually-beneficial business relationship.

The key is sincerity. People will always sense if you’re faking it. So, resist the temptation and keep it honest.

Get a Yes

The first “yes” can lead to more yeses. This is true in most cases. A positive response to even the most basic question, such as “Can I take a minute of your time to talk about how we can help your company?,” indicates interest. It is an opening that you can move forward from.

You will get some “no’s” along the way, yes. But, keep the conversation positive even when you get a ‘no.’ Remember that it is not just about the present; you are trying to establish a relationship. So, even if your prospect gives your proposal a “no,” turn it to a “yes” by suggesting another call in the near future.

Tell a Story

A story is not just about the story. It is also about the storyteller.

When you tell a story – work-related or not – you are revealing a part of yourself to your prospect. It gives them a glimpse of who you are, what you find interesting and what you value. It’s a great way to establish a personal connection with your listener.

Be sensitive to how they respond, and engage with them. Your story is a talking point. There may be some resistance from your prospect when it comes to veering the conversation towards business. Get them to open up with your story.

Talk About Value First

One surefire way to turn off your prospect is to immediately talk about the price of your product. Sure, it may be the cheapest option in the market. It doesn’t matter. If price was the most important factor in a purchasing decision, then the fashion industry would cease to exist.

Value is always more important than price – and your call, especially the first one, should focus on that.

Know about your prospect’s business, industry and pain points. Then, show them how your solution addresses these concerns. Regardless of how much your product is, as long as your prospect sees its value, you can close the deal.

When all your competitors are doing content marketing, standing out is a challenge. Infographics can give you that extra edge, especially with promoting your brand on social media. They get three times as many likes and shares as other content. Done well, infographics don’t just communicate information, but visually engage readers.

But unless you’re a professional designer, it can take a long time to make them from scratch. You need to make the design process fast and easy, so you can improve your marketing ROI. This post will show you six online tools you can use to make your own eye-catching, shareable infographics.

Piktochart

Piktochart is an infographic maker with over 200 design templates available. You can customise templates by filling in text and photo frames, and changing colors, formatting and more. You can also upload your own images or choose from over 4,000 images and icons in the stock library. If you have data, you can import it (from Excel, Google Spreadsheet or SurveyMonkey) and turn it into charts.

Once your infographic is finished, you can share it directly via your website or email. You can also download it in JPEG, PNG or PDF formats. Other benefits include the ability to design your own templates, password and privacy controls, team features and video embeds. The four plans are Lifetime (free), Lite ($15/month), Pro ($29/month) and Pro Team (coming soon). You can check out the library of articles and video tutorials for support. Piktochart is great if you want plenty of template options for your infographics.

Venngage

Venngage has hundreds of infographic templates you can customise, through a range of widgets for different content types. You can change size, orientation, colors, style and text formatting. The stock library has thousands of images, icons, illustrations, maps and more. You can also import data from spreadsheets and export it as a chart in up to 12 styles, and upload your own images.

When you’re done, you can publish your design on your website, share on social media, or download in PNG or PDF formats. You can also design your own template and set up a collection of colors and fonts to reuse. Venngage includes folders, privacy controls and team features. The plans available are Free, Premium ($19/month) and Business ($49/month). You can get support via phone, email, chat, consulting and training. If you want in-depth support and a range of templates, Venngage could be your best choice.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool with plenty of infographic layouts. You can change backgrounds, colors and formatting. You can also upload your own fonts and images. Canva’s stock library has over a million photos and other graphics, with many items free and others $1 each. In Canva, you can edit images, and resize infographics for different social media platforms. You can share your design directly or download in JPEG, PNG or PDF formats.

Canva lets you make custom templates and save a set of colors, logos and fonts to reuse. Other benefits include unlimited folders and storage, team and workflow features and analytics help. Besides the Design School tutorials, you can get priority support and access to an account manager. The plans include Canva (free), Canva for Work ($12.95/month) and Canva Enterprise (coming soon). Canva is a great choice if you’re after value for money and flexibility to make your own designs.

Infogram

Infogram has over 20 infographic designs which you can customise by changing colors, styles, formatting, size and resolution. You can also upload images or choose from over 35 charts and 500 maps. Infogram lets you import and edit data from a range of sources. These include Google Drive, Google Analytics, Excel, Dropbox, Onedrive, public data sources and more. You can make the charts, maps and graphs interactive.

You can share infographics directly from your website or download as PNG, PDF, JPEG, animated GIF or interactive HTML. Infogram offers a custom theme designed for you by their team. Other benefits include plenty of storage (up to 10,000 designs and uploads), folders, team features, and analytics support. Infogram’s plans are Basic (free), Pro ($25/month), Business ($79/month) and Enterprise (price on application). You can get help via an account manager or through training and consulting. Infogram is perfect if you’re planning to do lots of data-heavy infographics.

Easel.ly

Easel.ly has dozens of infographic templates categorized by industry. You can customize them by changing backgrounds, colors, fonts, textures, images, orientation, and size. You can also add images and icons from the library (over 680,000 available), or upload your own images and fonts. Easel.ly lets you draw shapes, insert boxes and charts, embed video and make your own template using a grid tool.

You can save and share designs via your website or email link, or download in JPG and PDF formats. Other benefits include unlimited uploads, group sharing and collaboration features and access to privacy controls. The plans are Free and Pro ($3/month). You can get support via the blog resources (live webinars, e-book downloads, tutorials, and articles) or help from a designer. Easel.ly is one of the best choices if you want affordability, plenty of features and control over your design.

Visme

Visme lets you choose from and customise hundreds of infographic templates. You can change backgrounds, text formatting, colors and styles. You can also select from thousands of charts, graphs, shapes, icons and widgets. You can upload images or choose from the millions in the library. Visme allows you to add interactive features, embed audio and video content, and make your own template.

You can share your design directly on your website or social media, or download in JPEG, PNG, PDF or HTML5 formats. Visme offers unlimited storage, folders, team and workflow features, privacy controls and in-depth analytics features. You can gather marketing data and export it into another program. Visme’s plans are Basic (free), Standard ($15/month), Complete ($28/month) and Team ($84/month). You can get premium support or use the resources in the Visual Learning Center. Visme is a good choice if detailed analytics and multimedia features are important to you.

Conclusion

Now that you know about these six online tools, you can use them to make your own infographics quickly and easily. Click on any of the links to find out more about what’s included, or try out the free starter plans. And you can start looking forward to more content shares on social media.

Originally Published: RM Business Writing

Image: Pixabay

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Those who follow proximity technologies will have noticed a recent resurgence of QR codes, the matrix barcodes invented in 1994 by Denso Wave. Their use is growing again.

Notably, industry leaders such as Google, Twitter, and Samsung have recently added scanners.

This resurgence has been accelerated by the introduction of “touchpoint browsing.” This technology is based on the “Physical Web,” an open source project Google launched to allow interaction with smart devices. It addresses the user experience challenges that have held QR back – privacy, security, and speed. More than anything, users do not like the unknown of where a QR code leads.

QR codes have been declared dead year-after-year, and yet they don’t die. Their utility to the consumer and marketer is too great.

The core value of QR codes is that they allow visitors to point directly to an item of interest. This gives marketers a fast path to digitally respond to that request.

QR codes work from different distances, are broadly available, have relatively high consumer awareness, and they bridge physical and digital better than most available technologies.

Evidence of QR’s resurgence begins at the top. Social apps like Facebook’s Messenger, Kik, and Snapchat are now using proprietary versions of QR codes – Messenger Codes, Kik Codes, and Snapcodes.

More important, Snapchat and Twitter directly support traditional QR codes. Both Google and Samsung have begun supporting QR codes directly on their browsers.

Much of this renewed interest is due to the extraordinary success of QR codes in China through the WeChat messaging app.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, WeChat’s founder, Allen Zhang said that the “entry point for mobile internet is the QR code.” WeChat users use QR codes for everything from exchanging business cards to mobile payments to accessing promotions.

Now, incorporating QR Codes into the Physical Web with “touchpoint browsing” has the potential to make QR codes the global entry point for the mobile internet.

Touchpoint browsing fundamentally changes the QR experience from one of scanning, waiting, and hoping the end destination has content of value, to an experience of instant previews of a QR code’s function.

This experience is enabled by a server that speeds and secures the transaction, enhancing that experience by adding intelligence to ensure that users get the most useful content possible.

Touchpoint browsing allows users to choose to interact with nearby content. It also incorporates other digital touchpoints, including Physical Web beacons and NFC tags.

Visible QR codes are easy to access through the camera on a user’s smartphone. Physical Web beacons can be accessed from further away and can be displayed as a list of selections. NFC tags work with a touch to launch an interaction with something in reach.

By this diversity, touchpoint browsing gives the marketer options to provide the best user interface for any interaction, while giving the consumer the simplest way to express a need.

Because QR, NFC and Physical Web beacons are all URL-based technologies, each is also compatible with one or more popular applications such as Snapchat, Twitter, or Chrome.

Where does QR go from here? With the user experience hurdles overcome, QR is primed for much broader adoption as tools for consumer-directed engagement.

Beyond this, they will likely play a key role as triggers for augmented reality interactions. One thing is for sure is that you can expect to see many more QR codes in the future.

Let’s say your sales team closes a huge deal. Then one year later, that client decides not to renew. What went wrong?

If you’re not sure, it may be time to reexamine your onboarding process. Customer success teams in businesses with recurring revenue spend a significant portion of their time strategizing ways to get a leg up on churn using reactive approaches, without taking the proper steps to build success from day one. When implemented correctly, onboarding sets your customers up for success and can help your organization increase product adoption, decrease time to value and improve retention.

Continue reading to learn about 4 common onboarding mistakes and how to avoid them:

1. Setting Unrealistic Objectives

Even if your product is the best on the market, be careful not to overpromise and under-deliver. There’s nothing that leaves a bad taste in customers’ mouths quite like failing to meet their expectations. This kind of disappointment will often fuel a negative dialogue about their experience and drive them to start looking for another solution, which can better meet their needs.

To combat this, nail your sales handoff and schedule an introductory call in the first few days. Gather any information discussed in the sales process and prepare for challenges in advance. When you’re speaking to your customer, ask what his/her team is looking to accomplish and be honest about your product’s capabilities.

Use the customer’s goals as a benchmark when working with new clients to determine specific and attainable business objectives and refer to previous examples to guide them towards success. Additionally, empower your customer success team to take a prescriptive approach based on their previous experience with clients. Think about it this way: every user is unique, but many of them share similar pain points. As such, you should understand where others in their position have seen success.

2. Not Providing True Value

Onboarding is a crucial time for both you and your customers. This is when your product is still the “shiny new toy” they’re excited to play with. But be aware – this novelty quickly wears off. If, by that point, you haven’t shown them any value beyond the bells and whistles, you’ll likely have difficulty with retention at renewal time.

So, what can you do? Don’t focus too much on your product’s features. Instead, emphasize the benefits you can provide, such as increased efficiency or insight into key data points. Then let users experience them through training.

A Learning Management System (LMS) like Skilljar can help you train users more effectively. For example, you’re able to categorize content by job function, so trainees can select relevant courses for their needs and interests.

Once the customer has the right knowledge, reinforce behaviors with other tactics like drip campaigns for new users, in-app messaging, and customer success outreach.

3. Failing to Follow Up

Again, it’s important to consider the time frame here. While your customers are still learning how to use your product, they expect to hear from you. Sending a welcome email with a few tips isn’t enough; you should work toward implementing a process with defined reactive and proactive touchpoints.

This means reactively responding to any questions or complaints ASAP, but also taking advantage of other opportunities to engage. If you are leveraging an LMS for on-demand training and onboarding, you may consider integrating it with your marketing automation software, as well. That way, you can send automated emails, celebrating onboarding milestones and encouraging users to complete training.

Of course, while automation is a time-saver, it does not eliminate the need for a more personal and proactive touch. Check in with your clients via phone on a weekly (or at least monthly) basis to ensure they’re on track for success.

4. Ignoring the Data

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a customer success professional is to rely solely on anecdotal evidence. Maybe customer X seemed happy when you last spoke. But how do they really compare to customers Y & Z? The only way to know for sure is to analyze the data you have at hand.

With this in mind, review your analytics. Work with your product and finance teams to determine if there are any specific actions your best customers take or features they utilize. Integrate these key activities into your onboarding processes and drive healthy behaviors among your new customers. Alternatively, try to determine at what stage in the process people are dropping off and strategize ways to mitigate the drop off. Understanding this type of information can help you improve onboarding and reduce churn.

Marketing a new software product can be one of the most challenging roles in a SaaS startup—especially when you are defining a new market or trying to displace a commonly-held practice. By its very nature, you are fighting an uphill battle against large incumbents or a major adversity to change, and you are doing so with a tiny marketing budget. You are tasked with showing potential customers and the industry at large that your solution is inevitable and a force to be reckoned with.

This becomes even more difficult—and important to do well—when you’re selling into the enterprise. Below I’ve detailed 10 different tactics to help you compete with an incumbent and punch above your weight class based on my experiences at Salesforce and while building and marketing enterprise cloud startups at High Alpha.

1. Do Something Meaningfully Different

Alex Bard, the CEO of Campaign Monitor and former GM of Salesforce’s Service Cloud visited High Alpha last year and spoke with us a great deal around competing with large incumbents. He noted:

“If there’s a gorilla in your space, what are you going to do that they can’t do? You need to build something meaningfully different when going up against an incumbent—something they aren’t able to do.”

When thinking about your positioning and early marketing programs, determine what will make you “meaningfully different.” When Salesforce was an early-stage startup, their cloud-based multi-tenancy and fundamental new approach to subscription billing was their meaningful differentiator. Oracle and Siebel Systems could not easily disrupt their entire way of doing business to shift to a cloud subscription offering. By throwing out their lead forms, Drift, a sales communications platform, also did something that was “meaningfully different”. Do something that your “gorilla” incumbent either can’t afford or isn’t nimble enough to do.

2. Challenge the Status Quo

As part of your messaging and positioning, you need to tie your product and brand into a larger meta industry narrative. Salesforce has been the king of this ever since the slide below made its debut around 2003, showing the industry transformation over time from mainframes and client/server platforms to cloud software. They still use a version of this slide even today, building beyond the cloud revolution to the social, mobile, IoT, and AI revolutions.

What was more powerful in Salesforce’s early positioning and marketing, though, was how they went about their differentiation as a part of this larger industry narrative. Do you remember Salesforce’s “No Software” logo? Even though Salesforce’s product is technically “software”, the message behind it was a pivotal part of their success that helped them displace the incumbents like Siebel, Oracle, and other on-premise software giants. The logo and mascot were their way of showing the fundamental difference between Salesforce and the current state of the industry that sold software in a box.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Price for Value

Young companies can sometimes be afraid of putting out proposals attached to big figures. Sometimes, though, a potential enterprise customer will evaluate you based on the confidence—and sophistication—of your pricing. You may think that lower prices are a sign of a better deal or higher value, but it may actually make you look inferior. Don’t settle for being average—you should hear some resistance to your pricing. In Harry Beckwith’s book Selling the Invisible, he argues that 15 to 20% of people should resist your pricing.

Pricing doesn’t always fall on the shoulders of the marketer, but if it does for you, don’t be afraid to increase your pricing if your price tag doesn’t equate to the value you’re providing. OpenView recently put together some amazing research on the state of SaaS pricing if you’d like more research and stats on SaaS pricing.

4. Strategically Define Your Competitors

Even if the current state of your software cannot displace a large incumbent fully, you should think strategically about who you associate with as your competitors and rivals. It adds a level of credibility when you’re comparing your product and company to industry gorillas instead of other budding SaaS startups. From day one, Salesforce compared itself constantly to Siebel Systems, Oracle, and SAP. Box even took on Microsoft SharePoint directly—and very publicly—in early 2010 by putting up billboards like the one below.

5. Get on Analysts’ Radar

Even if you don’t fit squarely into a Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave report, find a way to get on the relevant analysts’ radars. You most likely don’t need to pay a big agency to manage analyst relations at this stage—just sign up to give Forrester and Gartner free briefings every 6 months to a year to stay on their radar. Analyst firms need to know about emerging and disrupting technologies as badly as you want to be included in that analyst report. Analyst firms don’t ever want to be in a position where a customer asks about an up-and-coming software they’re thinking about purchasing and they don’t have any insight or research to give them. Find industry-specific analyst firms to focus on like SiriusDecisions if your buyer is a sales, marketing, or product leader.

6. Create a Remarkable Onboarding and Customer Experience

Going back to the idea of doing something your competitors can’t do, as a smaller startup, you have the ability to tailor your onboarding experience. Give your customers some of the most personal, remarkable experiences while onboarding or during key milestones like the annual renewal. You should give your customers a white-glove treatment that your competitors aren’t able to provide. This could take the form of handwritten thank you notes, thank you messages on social media, or personalized customer gifts—like memorabilia from a customer’s alma mater. By definition, remarkable experiences are experiences worthy of remark—or experiences your customers will tell others about.

7. Design Everything

When I say design everything, I don’t just mean the aesthetics — you have to holistically look at all the experiences your audiences have with your brand and intentionally structure and “design” them. At High Alpha, we call this Design with a capital “D”.

Is there intentionality and thoughtfulness behind your email newsletter signup process? What is your process for asking a customer to do a case study with you? How do you “launch” a new eBook or content asset?

All of these processes should be designed and thought out with a very specific purpose and end goal in mind. This goes a long way in conveying your sophistication and importance you place on your brand.

I recently heard Justin Zalewski, User Experience Design Lead at Studio Science, put it this way:

“Today’s companies succeed by creating a better customer experience, and they do this by investing in Design — I’m talking about Design as a methodology and not simply making their apps pretty.”

8. Develop a Drumbeat

Your marketing needs a constant drumbeat of activity and momentum—from product launches to press releases. Having a well-defined drumbeat can leave a major impact in the sophistication of your marketing efforts. Get on a regular cadence of strategic press releases, product rollouts, and industry events. Think about what success as a whole looks like and break that down into chapters, pages, sentences, and specific words. You don’t want to be known for crying wolf, so be sure to not overwhelm your audience. I would recommend coordinated activity or a press announcement every 3 to 4 weeks.

A drumbeat strategy, though, isn’t just about constant activity—it’s about making sure your entire team and company can rally behind the key components of your drumbeat, know why they are important, and see how that correlates to the overall direction of the company.

9. Don’t Be a Social Zombie

Coinciding with your drumbeat approach, you shouldn’t have zombie digital accounts. If you’re going to have a blog or link to social accounts from your website, they need to be active to some degree. It’s better to not have a Twitter account at all than to have an inactive, “zombie” account.

10. Dominate Customer Reviews

Your customers can be one of the most influential marketing assets you have. Make your customers successful and let them market your product on your behalf. Ask your customers to leave product reviews on G2 Crowd, Capterra, and other public software review sites. Getting your customers to talk about your brand and product can have a major impact on being able to punch above your weight class.

The post Fundamentals of Startup Marketing: How to Punch Above Your Weight Class appeared first on OpenView Labs.

There are many roadblocks and hurdles that block the path for true Sales and Marketing alignment. Oftentimes it seems like the two departments are competing entities rather than members of the same team striving towards the same goals. Overcoming the obstacles that divide and cause disharmony requires a level of honest self-assessment. And, as with any exercise designed to increase collaboration and reduce friction, the first step is identifying a problem.

One of the major disconnects that occurs between Marketing and Sales is the struggle to stay consistent with branding and messaging. Developing a brand and a voice is obviously critical for every organization – Harvard Business Review reports that 64% of survey respondents cited having shared values as the reason they established a relationship with the brand – but the degree to which each department invests in this endeavor can, and does, vary.

The difference is a result of job function and sensibilities. Marketing invests hundreds of hours of hard work to develop and propagate a brand that resonates with buyers. This requires planning, research, and execution on a carefully crafted plan. The result, then, is something that Marketing is deeply invested in and cares about maintaining. Sales on the other hand is primarily concerned with meeting buyers’ needs and guiding them through their journey to ultimately close new business. These aren’t necessarily diametrically-opposed interests, but these different goals can result in inconsistencies.

Sales may not be as committed to maintaining consistent branding as they move to close deals. If a piece of content is slightly out-of-date in terms of messaging or branding but a fit for the situation they might find it beneficial to send anyways – especially with Marketing often too busy to fulfill one-off requests. As such, an understandable situation can lead to a growing rift between the two departments; Marketing starts to view Sales as too care-free and Sales views Marketing as inflexible and domineering about branding.

To resolve any potential issues here are some steps Marketing can take to keep Sales on-brand; and ultimately, improve Sales and Marketing alignment.

1) Store content in one easily accessible, searchable repository.

One of the first steps any organization can take is also one of the more difficult tasks to undertake. To ensure that every piece of content that is used externally is up-to-date, a central library needs to exist. This library should house every piece of content an organization has and would use in the future.

What makes this difficult is that very often content is housed in a number of disparate places, and attempting to track down each and every piece can be time-consuming and rage-inducing. Even beginning to try and find what systems are in place to store content can require dozens of conversations and hours of digging for files.

But the rewards for finding the content and transferring it to one centralized location are nearly limitless. For starters, Ring DNA found that sales reps spend 30 hours a month just searching for and creating content. That inability to find content is instantly alleviated with a content library, and Sales can spend time doing what they do best: selling.

In addition to saving time simply by serving as a one-stop shop for content, implementing a solution that allows for categorization and tagging further reduces the time Sales spends searching for the right piece. By properly tagging each piece of content, Sales can easily search through what may be thousands of pieces and find the right one in seconds, instead of manually combing a huge database.

Finally, a central content repository also reduces the chances that outdated and off-brand materials will be sent externally. Keeping content in only one location allows Marketing to control the message and easily replace out-of-date materials with the newest version. Thus, maintaining the integrity of their brand while delighting their sales counterparts.

2) Build content profiles for Sales.

Even with a sortable cache of content in place, it can still be a daunting task for a rep to find the right content specific to the selling situation. In large organizations sales reps will have their assigned territories, and due to their targeted focus, will have no use for large swaths of an organization’s content.

An easy way to combat this issue, and save Sales even more time, is to institute built-out content profiles. These profiles provide sales reps with a lightning-quick way to access the content that they use most – without having to wade through pages of material they have no need for.

By building content profiles for the distinctive sales roles, Marketing prevents possible cross-contamination of sending content that may have been designed for one vertical, but not be applicable to another.

Content profiles are a perfect addition to a central content library as they provide Marketing with another avenue for not only controlling branding and messaging, but also because they give Sales an easy way to access the content they need, when they need it.

3) Allow Sales to create their own one-off content.

The idea of giving Sales the power to create their own content generally send chills up the spines of marketers. With no Marketing oversight, there’s no way to monitor the content for consistent branding and messaging. Without the ability to create their own content though, Sales is stuck waiting for Marketing to hopefully find the time to fulfill a new one-off request.

To give each team what they really want, a platform needs to give Marketing the ultimate control over a piece, but allow Sales to add the personalization necessary to resonate with their buyer.

To position the greater Sales and Marketing teams to find success, content becomes a living, breathing thing. Areas of content become configurable, so that Sales can input custom information that will speak more to a buyer’s personal experiences. Suddenly, content becomes more than just a single piece, it is flexible and has the ability to be molded to any situation.

Using this solution, Marketing retains control of the areas of the content that should never be changed – ensuring consistent branding and messaging. But, they also loosen the reins on Sales and afford them the opportunity to create personalized one-off pieces that will improve their chances of closing a deal.

Sales and Marketing alignment is a difficult goal to achieve, but solutions to bridge the gap between the two departments are easier to find than you think.

Much of the information does not reach the objective simply because it has not arrived at the right time. Failure to close its target after spending a lot of energy to produce quality content is frustrating…

Indeed, for your Inbound Marketing strategy to be a success, it is not enough to broadcast quality content, it must be shared when users are connected and they need it! So, how to succeed this feat and optimize your SEO strategy in 2017?

1. CONSTANTLY LEARN ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE

Do you know your clients? You will not be able to capture them if you have not established their habits of information consumption, nor when they take action.

You may already know enough about those on your current list. But do not rest on your laurels! Trends are constantly evolving, the habits of your prospects as well. You must then evolve with your audience.

Every seasoned entrepreneur knows that the customer who buys again becomes potential until the next purchase. Collecting data will allow you to correlate your company’s goals with information held on your prospects.

Extracting these data from your internal sources, social networks, and your website, to analyze them, will allow you to learn more about your clients’ journey, the stages of the purchase cycle and the contents consulted.

2. DEVELOP A DIAGRAM OF THE BUY CYCLE OF YOUR BUYERS PERSONA

But how to analyze this data and use it for your Inbound Marketing strategy? This is best done by experts, such as the Data Scientist, who will set the life cycle (and the value of that cycle) of the prospect.

These professionals, able to segment your market and study the profiles accurately, will identify the path of each of your typical clients and can even carry out predictive analyses.

They will develop a clear pattern of the decision cycle, the intelligence steps and the timing of conversion. This, in the long run, will help you to provide the right content, at the right time, on the right place of distribution.

3. PROGRAM THE RIGHT DAY, AT THE RIGHT TIME

You have the target, you have his habits, and you have the message, but when to publish it? Since everything on-line is available at any time, you may be wondering what it’s like to schedule dates and times to send information.

Do not forget that your persona buyers are not connected permanently and that you are not alone on the web!

Sending a message too soon, compared to their connection time, will drown you under a thread of other news. Sending publications too often will tire them and push them to unsubscribe. Sending too late a message will cause you to permanently lose a conversion.

Yes, the strategy Inbound Marketing remains a maze of precisions that aim to convert your prospects to the best! These measures are essential to generate more leads and turn them into customers.

Help you analysts’ work, but also analytical tools of social networks to know precisely the habits of the target. Also test by publishing at different times, to know when the users are reactive.

Some will connect early in the morning, having their breakfast, and come back in the evening after dinner. Others will take advantage of their 10-hour break to check their personal emails and have a social networking tour around lunchtime.

Sometimes, especially among professionals, it is possible to observe two phases of connection: the one to personal social networks, which will be done in public transport and on weekends, and that dedicated to professional platforms, upon arrival at work, during a waiting period between appointments, etc.

4. ADAPT THE BROADCAST FORMAT

Once you have analyzed your data, you know exactly who to target what type of content and when. But in what form?

Again, a user may not and will not necessarily want to see the same information as a person on a computer. Try to download an ebook to your smartphone … it’s often difficult!

A mobile consultant with his Twitter feed will rather read a computer graphic, watch a video or view a blog post. Conversely, a surfer surfing quietly on Facebook at night will be more willing to download an ebook, read a case study or feedback.

The mode of diffusion is clearly involved in the perception of the message. The period specified for a specific content type must be in symbiosis with the browsing mode and mood of the prospect. This is again the work of analysts and has construction experience your buyer’s persona that will help to optimize the broadcast format.

The right time is both the time your customers read you and the one that reads to them. Optimizing the distribution of your content depends on the need to be in phase with your audience. This is why it is necessary to regularly analyze the data left by your leads, to test different types of content, in order to gradually create a map of the experience punctuated by the cycle of the decision of your prospects. The more accurate it is, the more your content will guarantee the performance of your Inbound Marketing strategy.

Everyone knows that time is money, but perhaps sales folks are the only ones to realize just how true this saying actually is. Every second you spend with an uncertain prospect is time that you could be spending generating more business. And of course, lengthy sales cycles can also hit you where it hurts the most – your forecast – when unexpected.

Every salesperson dreams of the quick close, but the reality is that these unicorns are few and far between. However, there are definite reasons behind why some sales drag out longer than others, and real strategies your team can use to speed things along. Here are three hurdles that may be slowing down your sales cycle, and how to clear them.

You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Of course you want to believe that your company’s solution is the silver bullet for every business out there. But the reality is that leveraging your product or service is not everyone’s number one priority – and that’s okay. What’s not okay is failing to identify who these people are and adjust your lead generation and outreach strategies accordingly.

One way to do this is to first determine how long your recently won deals sat in your pipeline. It also helps to look at those that were lost but spent considerable time in one pipeline stage or another before dropping out.

Next, take any deals that took longer than what you have determined is a reasonable cycle length for your business, and segment them by various lead profile dimensions. These include:
– Lead source
– Contact title
– Company size
– Company industry
– Number of decision makers
– Solutions already in use

Do you notice any trends? Are these deals mostly from a particular industry, or using a certain competitive solution? If so, it may be time to rethink the way you prioritize leads with these characteristics to help shorten your average sales cycle and help reps focus on prospects with a faster time to close.

However, it’s important to make sure that you’re not ruling out any prospects whose lengthy sales cycles are accommodated for by high deal values. To make sure that you’re not sacrificing value for speed, you should also examine their lead yield.

Your sales process isn’t doing you any favors.

A good sales process is the backbone of any successful sales organization. By establishing a common language and set of expectations, a sales process keeps sales reps from veering off course, as well as provides leadership with the ability to easily track deal progression. However, sometimes companies forget that, while consistently adhering to your process steps is critical, your sales process is supposed to work for your organization – not the other way around.

Often, slow sales cycles can be the product of unnecessary or misplaced process steps that a company has simply been conditioned to take. As such, the best organizations consistently review and revise their sales processes to make sure every step counts. One quick and effective way to do this is to utilize a stage duration analysis report like the one shown below.

This report allows you to see, on average, how much time deals are spending in each of your sales pipeline stages. If you notice deals getting hung up or dropping out in a certain spot, it’s time to reevaluate the information and actions required in the process steps for that stage.

Pro Tip: Some process steps can’t be avoided, but can be sped up. Choose a CRM or sales platform with the ability to automatically capture data around activities like calling and emailing to help streamline these necessary yet time-consuming tasks.

Your reps are too focused on “the close.”

This probably seems pretty ironic – how can focusing on closing actually delay closing? But it can. When reps are so focused on getting a deal to the final stages, they often miss critical steps and opportunities for influence throughout the entire sales cycle. This can backfire and cause deals to stall right at the end of the road as potential customers are still coming to grips with what’s happening.

As Base sales manager Mason Davis advises, “The best results come from when you take the stress out of the close. As long as you know when it’s coming and there are no unknowns, it makes everyone feel a lot more comfortable. It’s actually all about having mini closes that lead up to it. They don’t have to agree to anything upfront, but they know that IF we get to a certain place, certain things will happen.”

Davis recommends building this strategy into your sales cycle to help keep momentum going. “Ask questions like, ‘After this demo, if you like what you see, would you be willing to agree to a proof of concept?’ You still have to prove that you are the right solution, but you are prepping them to take next steps and move toward the close.”

All Clear

Ideally, your sales cycle should function as a well-oiled machine. But just like any other machine, it needs routine maintenance to keep it functioning at top speed. Try these three tips for a faster sales cycle, and for advice on how to more effectively construct your sales pipeline from the ground-up, download this free eBook: 3 Keys to Unlocking a Scientific Sales Pipeline.

Convincing your end client that the returns of a content marketing budget are well worth the investment doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right information to back up your claims, your client will jump at the promise of a surefire thing. Content marketing is a cornerstone of any successful business. Here are three ways to prove the positive returns on investment (ROI) of a content marketing budget to your end clients.

Numbers Don’t Lie – Use Statistics to Back Your Claim

If you hear something along the lines of, “At the end of the day, we just don’t have room in the budget for this,” when discussing content marketing, the issue is lack of education. The Internet is replete with resources, data, and statistics that showcase how important content marketing is to a company.

Many companies fall prey to the disillusionment of the success of marketing efforts and call it quits before giving it a chance to succeed. If you’re encountering resistance and C-suite objections to putting money into content marketing, use these statistics to inform your argument:

• The Content Marketing Institute recently published its B2B Content Marketing 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, which highlights all the ways content marketing top performers benefit from their efforts. The study shows that the most successful content marketers are extremely committed (91%), realistic about what content marketing can achieve (91%), and measure content marketing ROI (88%). Your client’s competitors are investing in content marketing, so why isn’t your client?
• The cost of content marketing is 62% less than traditional marketing. DemandMetric published a study that shows the myriad benefits and returns of content marketing. This statistic can help your end client realize that great content is always a great investment and often a better investment than traditional marketing efforts. Cost does not always purport value.
• According to Hubspot, 65% of companies report lead and traffic generation as their top marketing challenges. Lead generation is the number one reason businesses invest in content marketing strategies. If your end client is struggling with lead generation – and the statistics make this a high probability – content marketing is one of the best ways to improve these efforts.

There is no end to the amount of data that point to the effectiveness of a good content marketing strategy. Consumers respond positively to content that is poignant, well thought-out, and relevant. Your end client can boost its reputation and authority as a brand by investing in content marketing.

Help Them Measure ROI

Part of the problem with getting clients to commit to a content marketing budget is the inability to track its ROI due to unrealistic expectations. Many clients fail to realize how great the returns can really be and throw in the towel without even trying. Measuring content marketing’s ROI requires tracking the right metrics to measure content performance. This isn’t vanity metrics, such as the number of likes a social media post receives. It’s the real goals of the campaign – generating leads, traffic, and/or sales.

First, identify end client’s goals for the marketing strategy. This will directly influence how you measure ROI. For example, say your client’s main goal is lead generation. Your client likely thinks the number of social shares the campaign receives is an accurate interpretation of how the marketing efforts went. This is far from the truth, however, and a major misconception that leads to marketers quitting too soon. Instead, your client needs to measure the metrics at the bottom of the sales funnel. These occur when the customer is in the decision stage. They focus on click-throughs and conversions and can include:

• Free trial or demo requests
• Revenue contribution
• Cost per lead
• Cost per sold
• Value of opportunities
• Win rate

The metrics that will truly determine your end client’s content marketing ROI will depend on what your client’s goals were for the campaign. Be your end client’s guide in understanding and measuring ROI, so your client doesn’t fall into the trap of misconstrued expectations and want to pull out too soon. Once your client sees the very real ROI of content marketing, the C-suite will be hard-pressed to find a reason to say no.

Show Your Clients Real Life Examples

If your end client still isn’t convinced of the ROI of a content marketing budget, break out real-world examples of content marketing working wonders for brands. There’s nothing like seeing real examples to convince a client of the value of content marketing. Here are some grade-A cases of content marketing delivering returns for a brand:

• Denny’s social media presence. Denny’s is active on Tumblr and Twitter, and it always pulls through with a consistent voice – that of a funny, quirky teenager. Denny’s knows how to engage with its audience with humorous and often random posts, photos, and emojis. The brand’s efforts have paid off – Denny’s boasts more than 368,000 followers on Twitter and 121,000 likes on Facebook.

• Coca Cola’s Share-a-Coke campaign. This piece of content marketing genius earned the company a more than 2% rise in U.S. sales. Putting names on Coke bottles amassed incredible social media shares and consumer engagement – achieving the brand’s two campaign goals – increasing sales and engaging with customers.

• New York Times, combining the old with the new. The New York Times manages to stay relevant in a world that has a decreasing need for print newspaper by incorporating the latest tech trends in its content marketing strategy. Recently, the Times created a free app and partnered with Google Cardboard to give users a virtual reality experience. Your clients can stay relevant in a changing environment by finding ways to accommodate all types of audience members.

• Whole Foods, helping customers. Whole Foods’ content marketing strategy hinges on being a friendly and helpful source of information. Instead of pushing sales on people, Whole Foods works hard to establish itself as a resource on all things healthy and earth-conscious. By creating inclusive, proactive content and publishing tips for readers, this grocery chain truly helps its audience.

Proving the ROI of a content marketing budget can facilitate the success of your own marketing team, as well as the success of your end client’s business. When you can prove the returns of a content marketing investment, you empower your end clients to be the best they can be.

There are two general strategies for keeping your sales pipeline full: You can do a little bit of work every day for a steady trickle of leads, or you can use a high-impact strategy to meet a lot of new prospects at once. The most successful salespeople combine both methods.

One of the most powerful ways to find a significant number of new clients at once is hosting an exclusive, private event. While it may sound like a lot of work at first, this doesn’t have to be complicated -- and the payoff can be huge. Check out these five simple steps to creating an event that brings customers straight to your door, so you can crush your sales goals:

1) Choose a venue that feels exclusive

People love to be included in events that feel upscale. To give your event a high-end feel, choose your venue carefully. A country club, nice hotel, or tastefully decorated venue will pique the interest of high-level prospects and make them excited to attend. In addition, your own perceived value will rise -- helping your prospects see you come across as a true expert before they meet you.

For more tips like this, check out the video below:

2) Invite both prospects and clients

When you get your top customers and your ideal prospects in the same room, magic happens. Your clients naturally talk about the results they’ve seen from your offering, essentially doing your selling for you. Testimonials are a powerful tool for closing more sales -- and nothing is better than in-person, unprompted ones from your satisfied customers.

3) Seek out introductions

An upcoming event is the perfect opportunity to seek out introductions from everyone in your network. Ask family, friends, and current clients to introduce you to others who may want to attend, and encourage customers you invite to bring someone with them. People who are typically hesitant to share others’ contact information are often much more excited to introduce you when an invitation to an exclusive event is on the table.

4) Prepare to offer value

Add value to your event by sharing industry best practices. Your position as a salesperson gives you a bird’s eye view of what works and what doesn’t -- and your prospects and customers are eager to learn what you know. For example, you could discuss the latest market trends and how the most successful companies have responded or the innovation you’ve observed in a particular business area.

This highlights your domain expertise and will help you set far more sales meetings.

5) Plan another event

Once you’ve hosted a successful exclusive event, your clients and prospects will see first-hand the value you have to offer. They’ll be eager to attend your next event -- and invite even more people to join them. I personally host two of these events each year to keep that momentum going. This keeps your sales pipeline full year-round.

Have you ever hosted an exclusive event for customers and prospects? If so, what results did you see? If not, how will you use these tips to plan your first one? Share your experiences and plans in the comments below. Check out this free 9-Day Sales Intensive for more powerful strategies to transform your sales approach.

The present-day business industry is complex and competitive more than ever. With the current demands from clients, a company is obliged to cope with these interactions to be able to thrive. One instrument used by progressive companies to deal with the changes in corporate milieus is sales management software, or Customer Relationship Management software (CRMs). With the fast-paced flow of demands, sales teams need to maintain their efficiency and dependability, which is where sales management tools come in.

Certain factors should be considered when choosing the right software for your company. In your decision-making process, you’ll need to undergo further research about the software available online, and consider things like: Will it blend seamlessly with your current sales operation? Will it be accessible for your agents when they report offsite or onsite? Will it be conducive to support your company’s social media functions? Will it come with easy to comprehend functions? And, will your software provider cater to your complaints if you eventually encounter troubles with their product?

To help with your decision, here is a list of software for sales management. Everything on the list has free trial versions which provides companies the liberty to experience each CRM, and help ease the process of choosing the software for you.

Infusionsoft

16 years of supporting small-scale businesses through the assistance of experts who have been successful in the sales industry, Infusionsoft helps you with: analyzing business leads by optimizing your engagement with your audience, improving your business’ conversion rates to directly cater to clients, bettering your fluency in e-commerce with a “seamless online shopping experience, 24/7,” guiding you with following up your sales process, and maximizing your time to be able to focus on other tasks vital to your operations.

OnContact CRM

With its built-in Marketing Automation, Contact Center and Mobile functionality, what is there to not favor about OnContact CRM? This software’s selling point is its “all-inclusive single price” that provides an easier purchasing decision for your clients. 15 years of existence in the sales industry has helped OnContact support businesses by assisting them with tedious sales operations tasks to allow them to streamline their transaction processes.

NetSuite CRM

Boasting a volume of 40,000 clients, NetSuite accommodates the needs of various business sizes, industries, roles, and software. This CRM powered by Oracle provides its clients a “real-time, 360-degree view of your customers.” NetSuite assists its users in gathering and analyzing leads until these turn into actual opportunities for your company to grow. Besides the traditional functions of a CRM, NetSuite provides you with “quotations, order management, commissions, sales forecasting and integrated e-commerce capabilities.”

Maximizer CRM

“We Help Businesses Grow” happens to be the tagline Maximzer sells to its clients. This software equips your company with a competitive advantage by maximizing lead generation, managing pipelines to shorten sales cycles, helping you close more deals and increase revenue, and allowing you to deliver exceptional customer service. Transparent in their website is a list of figures from one of their case studies to show their effectivity as a CRM software. Here are the numbers from that company alone: 30% increase in sales calls, 20% growth in revenue, and 70% productivity savings.

Salesforce Work

Salesforce guarantees your business efficient service, and effective marketing. This software has created what they call Cloud Services, a division that dedicates its services to maximizing your business’ ROI. Salesforce also developed a personalized Standard Success Plan for the smoothening of your processes. To aid you further in your day-to-day operations, Salesforce gives you the opportunity to work with their specialists and consultants to act as your corporate advisors; and, educates you by training you and certifying you as experts in the sales industry that guarantees an 80% ROI for you.

TeamWox

TeamWox enterprise management system is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. The software prides itself with providing your organization the transparency it needs to improve employee productivity and reduce your company’s costs. Listed in their site are the assistive measures they provide like: Human Resource Management, Task Management, Documents Management, IP PBX Phone System and Voice Communication, CRM, Corporate Social Tools (Forum, Live Chat), Corporate Search System, Analytics (Report) and Accounting, Customer Support: Help Desk and Online Assistant, and Email Client.

Base

As simple as its name is, the Base software provides a simplified navigation through its interface. The app works efficiently in any device it is installed to (i.e. laptop or smartphone operating on either Android or iOS). Base is rated as the #1 mobile sales app. It guarantees 6-times faster implementation of data, seamless tracking of your team’s activity, data syncing in real time, and gives you insights based on the data it collates.

Pipedrive

An organized sales process is what Pipedrive guarantees. The software does this by providing you with helpful tools like: a feature that helps you plan your employees’ activities, holistic data tracking function, an online manager that liaises your deals with your clients, and an assisting function that just makes your work a lot less tedious.

SalesCloud by Sales Force

SalesCloud is one of the innovators in the CRM game that is slowly revolutionizing the whole playing field. Through this employment of advanced technology, SalesCloud is able to efficiently provide its users real-time data, all you need is just to log in and let technology deliver you information like: generated leads, customer satisfaction, social media and mobile customer interaction, and predictions of customer demands.

Act!

One of the more cost-efficient CRM software available online, Act!, in a nutshell, provides companies with solutions in organizing prospect and customer details, ensuring email delivery, product and service marketing, and driving sales results.

Never rush the decision-making process when choosing your company’s online sales management software. Remember that your chosen software should easily be adapted to by the whole team, and benefit the sales management system. While a software’s price should be a consideration, also keep in mind the added value of streamlining your sales operations it will contribute to your business’ growth. Lastly, make sure that the CRM software you choose is fitting to your sales team’s objectives, requirements, and expectations by involving everyone in the deliberation. If you still practice traditional methods in running your sales team, and you find them lacking in results, it is high-time that you seek the assistance of a CRM that will ensure that you, your sales team, and the audience you cater to are all free from stress.

In the past four years, I've noticed an insidious trend in professional sales. It's a misinterpretation of the term 'social selling': Salespeople cruise along doing non-selling tasks, occasionally researching, emailing, and grooming their social network ... all while treating the phone like it's covered with spiders.

The only thing that works in new business development, whether for inside sales or in the field, is the right combinations of effective activity ... and lots of it!

Any sales floor that sounds like people are snoozing is in trouble. I was talking with someone last week who told me their company's salespeople must book booths to make prospecting calls so they do not disturb others on the sales floor.

So many businesses and salespeople have confused 'social selling' with 'social marketing.' Social platforms certainly play an essential role for researching prospects and creating a strong personal brand that evidences insight and credibility. But selling is all about engaging the buyer in a meaningful two-way conversation, and the human voice is like nothing else for achieving just that.

If 'outbound' activities do not culminate in phone calls then the methodology for creating sales pipeline is just a recipe for failure.

Every sales person must personally 'own' and masterfully execute these three things if they are to succeed in high-value, or any form of business-to-business, selling:

1. The right narrative
2. The right combinations
3. The right mindset

Let's dive into each element individually.

1) A Compelling Value Proposition

The first significant prerequisite for elevating the way we sell is to create the right 'value narrative.' Instead of leading with who we are and what we do, we should instead lead with why a conversation should matter to the other person. We need to grab their interest with the worthwhile business or personal outcomes that we can help them achieve.

Precede each call with social marketing activities in the days or weeks prior. This gets you into your prospect's orbit without any hard-selling.

2) A Successful Outreach Strategy

First thing in the morning, before the others arrive at the office, you're hammering away with your outreach strategy:

• Call their cell phone
• If you don't get a live voice on the other end, leave a voicemail. Make your message confident and to-the-point. Focus on the value they'll derive from a conversation with you, and don't mention your products or solutions.
• Immediately send a LinkedIn InMail or connection request (with context) 
• Send them an email.

Spend two to three minutes per contact on your prepared list. Ideally, you're working from your CRM or 'dialing software,' but a sheet of paper will do the trick. Never blame technology for your failure to drive the necessary level of intelligent activity required to achieve the success you need.

Here is a step-by-step guide on using these advanced techniques leveraging the power of Sales Navigator.

3) A Winning Mindset

You need the right mindset as well. Spend minimum of two hours every single day prospecting, or setting up conversations and meetings with potential clients. This daily activity is critical, regardless of how revenue you're currently bringing in and how busy you are with existing clients. Before you go home each day, make sure you have your list of 30-50 calls to make first thing in the morning.

I cannot tell you how many salespeople I meet who just won't accept responsibility for the creation of their own pipeline. Treat leads from your website, channel, marketing or inside sales team as a bonus. You must own your own success, fight for it, and work for it to be worthy of it.

Be your own SDR, and time-block two hours every day for proactive call prospecting.

The video interview below discusses where 'social selling' has gone wrong. Can you believe that one company is cited for removing phones from the sales area altogether? Complete lunacy in my view. On the other hand, no one should be making purely cold calls because 'warming up a call' is incredibly easy, thanks to tools such as LinkedIn and your CRM.

Build your personal brand in non-selling time. Use social media and LinkedIn to support your sales strategy, but don't use it to hide like a coward from the phone. Come and join the conversation on April 4 in Sydney at the Sales Masterminds breakfast event and challenge me in Q&A if you disagree.

If you valued this article, please share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation, or ask questions so feel free to add a comment on this post. Please follow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles, and visit me at www.tonyhughes.com.au if you are looking for a keynote speaker. Go to www.RSVPselling.com for sales methodologies that generate pipeline and manage complex opportunities.

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

We dread them. We dodge them. We deny, debate and discourage them. 

What would happen if, instead, we genuinely appreciated our buyers' objections? 

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