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The biggest technology trends emerging this year

For organisations of all shapes and sizes, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the latest digital and technological advances. To help you do this, we’ve looked ahead at those trends that will have a major impact in 2017 - and beyond…

2016 saw significant technological advances in a number of different areas (as we discussed in a post on the Box UK blog towards the end of last year). It doesn’t look like this rapid rate of change will slow anytime soon - so what will everyone be talking about in this year? Here are some of the trends we expect to see dominate:

‘Digital Transformation’

Addressing one of the most talked-about trends in recent years, digital transformation may be fast becoming an overused and increasingly vague term - but with four generations now in the workplace and collaborating across all sorts of projects, digital is more than ever about people working together in new ways. Only when organisations can capture the imagination of their people to encourage them to think digitally - and collaborate and innovate to drive a digital agenda - will they be able to truly operate at the speed of digital.

Security

Last year saw a number of security incidents - this infographic shows the scale of the problem - and the impact of these is likely to increase still further in 2017. With thousands if not millions of homes using the same hardware and software solutions, providers of these products will be seen as excellent ‘hacker targets’ - and this problem will only grow as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to invade our homes. Speaking of which...

The Internet of Things

While still at the early stages of IoT development, we’re set to to see a number of real-world applications become commercially available during 2017, with developments in healthcare, manufacturing and agriculture looking to be particularly exciting. This new approach promises to provide unparalleled levels of connectivity, automation and information-sharing, all while reducing energy demands through ultra-efficient micro integrated circuits. It’s true that the challenge of data/device security is still yet to be resolved, but with so many positive benefits it is difficult to see this trend slowing.

Big Data

The growing prevalence of IoT in B2C and B2B environments will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect on the (big) data capture of both structured and unstructured data, and it’s likely that we’ll see significant growth in this area. Alongside capturing this data, too, the ability to analyse, interpret and act upon data-driven requirements will also become a priority in B2B, having been led by the transactional nature of B2C. Consuming all this new data will require organisations to think differently - they will need to remove silos and take a more holistic and wide-ranging view, making the data available across the organisation in order to best exploit it. This may necessitate significant process change internally.

Telematics

Beyond big data growth, the huge increase in the availability of real-time data will also require major developments in the field of data analysis and predictive analysis to leverage true value. The application of telematics is already impacting dynamic pricing models; particularly in insurance verticals, where vehicle and personal tracking provides real-time and on-going data to inform (and even help lower) premiums. The application of telematics data to sporting and fitness-related fields can also be seen in the performance analytics used everywhere from the rugby field to the velodrome, where athlete data is used to inform real-time adjustments to personalised training plans.

The technology challenge now is how to make the data more accurate. Wearing a belt or having a box fitted to your car, for example, may be much more cumbersome than just using your mobile phone, but it is also much more accurate. Additionally, the provision of all this information is going to create a data explosion; as a result data models will need to become more sophisticated, using only critical data for key analytics to drive dynamic, real-time, personalised decision-making.

Automation

The on-going drive towards automation has been discussed for many years now, and continues to remain an incredibly hot topic. While offshore models have typically been used to reduce costs, as the global cost of living inevitably increases this is becoming a less attractive offer than it once was, and many organisations are therefore looking to the ‘next phase’ in their journey. As one way of driving lower costs is to remove headcount altogether, increased automation and subsequently machine-based learning (discussed further below) will become prevalent in 2017, as robots learn to interact and make decisions in specific circumstances.

In terms of automation within the home, with the increased availability of ultra low-power, connected micro computers the potential to manage most if not all essential home services is now a real possibility. 2016 saw tech giant buyouts of a number of market leaders in this field, paving the way for app-controlled homes in the near future; for example, functions from lighting, heating and electrical outlet control to door locks, CCTV and movement detection can all be set up, monitored and maintained through simple applications.

Artificial Intelligence

As mentioned above, machine-based learning is becoming an increasingly popular area for exploration to achieve cost savings and other efficiencies, and is in turn driving advances in the field of artificial intelligence; led by the requirements of different industries such as the automotive market (think of the buzz around self-driving cars). Organisations that would previously have been limited by a lack of testing capacity or user feedback will suddenly have access to vast amounts of data - Tesla cars, for example, have now driven over a billion miles.

And when combined with the growth in the Internet of Things, AI is also helping realise a new breed of intelligent home automation systems. These systems collate, process and analyse vast sums of data from connected home devices and predictively select patterns that the system thinks will best suit the user/s in the room/home. This application of technology is attracting a lot of interest in the construction industry, particular among suppliers of new-build homes.

Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) - once seen as a fad - is rapidly becoming mainstream, and looks set to grow significantly in 2017. With the ‘big three’ (Oculus, HTC and Sony) all having released their Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) and Google now entering the mobile VR field with their phone-based Daydream HMD, it’s getting easier and easier for people to try VR for themselves and see what the fuss it all about. We’re also hoping to see more in the field of Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) in 2017, with Microsoft’s Hololens leading the way in blurring the lines between the virtual and the real.

And it’s not just the gaming industry that’s seen its potential, following the astronomic popularity of applications such as Pokémon Go. We’re already seeing experimental talk shows in VR, where game makers are interviewed inside their creations, and the viewers can be right there with them. Surgeons and architects are able to visualise the finished result before a single incision is made, or a single brick laid. The Dutch police are trialling AR to help them fight crime; theatre companies are using it in their shows; and the military are using AR glasses in combat. Even IKEA has been experimenting with a virtual kitchen where the user is able to move around and change the style and colour of units.

Additionally, while the development of VR applications is still the reserve of digital agencies, anyone can produce their own VR-enabled 360° photos and movies with one of a number of increasingly affordable cameras. With Facebook and YouTube ready to host your 360°-format media for you, and more and more people ‘getting it’, the audience, technology and publishing platforms are all in alignment - so expect lots more immersive video content on business websites.

Conversational UX

With IoT, AI and VR/AR/MR all moving from niche early-adopter status into mainstream use this year, and organisations’ User Experience (UX) budgets continuing to grow, we’ll also likely see more ‘conversational’ UX in 2017. This approach uses information about a user’s prior behaviour and actions to automate the experience, and with consumers already used to the experience that ‘OK Google’ and Siri provide, it’s little surprise that a hands-on, always-on version in the home is being very well received. For example, Amazon’s Echo device made a big UK splash in Autumn 2016 (heavily discounted to get into UK homes) and a similar device from Google, Google Home, is hot on its heels with a UK release slated for early this year.

In a related move, it looks like the chatbot trend will continue to converge with voice user interfaces to provide apps for the home that you can initiate and navigate vocally; indeed, you can already order takeaways and taxis in this way from JustEat and Uber (via the Amazon Echo device), as well as control your lights, play music and more.

The exciting thing about this market is how fresh the landscape is, and how many unknowns there are around UX and user interaction. Early apps can be clunky, but the potential is massive. Think of the early iPhone App Store days - lots of samey apps, but a brave new world of opportunity, complete with its own gold rush phase. Certainly, there are exciting opportunities for businesses of all sizes.

Efficient design

With many organisations facing a great deal of uncertainty right now, opportunities to minimise risk and reduce waste are becoming a priority. A key example of this is modular design, which uses content and display patterns based on reusable components (rather than traditional templates) to make the design/build process much leaner and faster. This also provides the flexibility to allow products to evolve after the initial work is complete - an important capability in a fast-moving digital landscape.

We’ll also see a lot more designers using software such as InVision, Marvel and UXPin. These ‘hotspot’ tools are really simple to use and help create a navigable journey from static designs. This allows both designers and clients to get a feel for what the final product might look and feel like in a really short space of time.

At the same time as these emerging tools are growing in popularity though, loyalty to some of the giants in this space may be in doubt. For example, many designers are Apple advocates, but is the brand losing its edge? With other organisations launching truly innovative products such as Microsoft’s new Surface Studio, designers may be tempted to make the switch. Also, while Adobe has traditionally had the monopoly on design software this too is starting to change, with the rising popularity of low-cost software such as Sketch, Affinity and Principle.

Over to you

So, those our top predictions of the tech we’ll be talking about in 2017 and beyond. Have we got it right? Let us know in the comments below, and send us your suggestions of trends and advances we might have missed. You can also see how accurate our 2016 predictions were by checking out our review of the year on the Box UK website.

 

Not so long ago, infographics were the content format du jour. Times moved on and now video is the poster child of content marketing, hailed as the answer to all manner of communication challenges. A quick search reveals some impressive credentials: according to various studies, video raises brand awareness, generates trust, boosts engagement, increases conversions and stimulates enquiries.

Not so long ago, infographics were the content format du jour

Given these findings, shouldn’t we simply allocate our entire content budget to video and be done with it?

Oh that marketing were so simple. While video is an undeniably powerful format, there are times when a different type of content will serve you better, and that will depend on what you are trying to achieve.

From funnels to journeys

Have you ever met Aida?

If you’ve studied marketing, then you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to.

Aida, or AIDA to be correct, was one of the first marketing models to try and explain consumer buying behavior. Developed in the nineteenth century, AIDA stands for awareness, interest, desire and action: the four linear stages people were believed to progress through on the way to making a purchase.

Once again, the reality is rather more complex. For starters, we are not always wholly rational beings. Logic and sense go out the window at times, replaced by fairly irrational responses to myriad attitudes, feelings and impulses.

Secondly, the world has changed dramatically since the nineteenth century. The number of media channels we have access to, and marketing messages we are exposed to, has increased innumerably. Good luck to any company that tries to take a potential customer from awareness to action without being at some point interrupted along the way.

Although not completely defunct, the marketing funnel now feels rather outdated. Instead, it is common to see the buying process as ‘journey’, where customers flow both forwards and backwards through the various stages, in response to different stimuli and sources of information.

Although not completely defunct, the marketing funnel now feels rather outdated

And while AIDA sees the job as done when people put their hand in their pocket, the customer journey recognises that the work doesn’t stop there. Just because you have won someone as a client or customer doesn’t mean you will necessarily retain them, and low retention rates are often synonymous with reduced profitability. This means that businesses need to invest time and effort into keeping people happy and engaged beyond the point of purchase.

The customer journey in action

The right content at the right time

When you think about customers being on a long, complicated journey rather than neatly dropping through a funnel, it becomes clear that they will need access to different types of information, delivered in a variety of ways, as they travel along that road.

Imagine the scenario: a startup business is doing well and has grown from 10 employees to over 50 in a few short years, leading to an increased need for HR support. At this stage, one of two things is likely to happen. Either the leadership team will consciously realise it’s time to take action, in which case they will start actively researching their options, probably via an internet search. Alternatively, they will come across information in the course that prompts them to consider the issue more seriously. That could take the form of a social post by a valued contact sharing an interesting piece of content, or an article on an industry news site.

The business has now entered the awareness phase of the customer journey. Customers know they have need for a particular product or service and they are starting to consider their options for addressing that issue. The stakeholders may have a specific provider in mind, but they will almost certainly keep their options fairly open.

Case studies and UGC also help to convert someone from a prospect to a sale

During this early stage, top line material that helps to define the big picture and outline the value of a specific solution, without being too ‘salesly’, can be very effective. Long-form content like blogs, roundtables, ebooks or whitepapers and educational webinars work well for this purpose.

Once the business is confident they understand the issue and supplier landscape, they will begin to evaluate the different solutions on offer, looking at aspects such as functionality, price and reliability. Case studies and testimonials in a variety of formats, fact sheets, product webinars and user generated content (UGC) are the perfect way to provide the information and reassurance needed at this stage. It’s also possible that the researcher will come across new information that causes them reassess to their needs, taking them back into the awareness phase.

Case studies and UGC also help to convert someone from a prospect to a sale, as do price calculators and free trials. Once again, a potential customer may revert to an earlier phase in response to new information that changes the parameters of the search.

Having successfully secured the sale, content has a powerful role to play in ensuring a long and fruitful relationship. Newsletters and magazines are a way to share useful updates and insights, while events and brand communities create a unique opportunity for conversation and interaction.

Providing this content on an exclusive basis shows existing customers that they are valued, helping to foster genuine brand loyalty and reduce the likelihood of them hunting out alternatives.

Content effectiveness across the four stages of the customer journey

Take time to plan

As with many things in marketing, these aren’t hard and fast rules. Some types of content work well at multiple points throughout the customer journey, and prospects will progress through the stages at different rates, so it may be hard to tell where they are at in the process at any given time.

As with many things in marketing, these aren’t hard and fast rules

The whole is also greater than the sum of the parts. One piece of content will only ever take you so far, even if it is well planned and executed. In contrast, several pieces of great content that fit together within a structured plan, and help your customers to make informed decisions over a period of time, will add long term value.

Those caveats aside, it is helpful to bear these phases in mind. Think about the purpose of each piece of content in a strategic way to ensure you are maximising your budget and giving yourself the greatest chance of success with your marketing.

Too often, we succumb to price pressure–even worse, we lead with price, making pricing the center of focus of our sales efforts, then being forced to discount to “win” the business.

What if we started shifting our conversations from discussions of discounting to educating them about the importance, to them, of maintaining our pricing and our profitability?

In complex B2B sales, the profitability and success of the suppliers is critical to the success of customers. What happens to customers who focus only on hammering vendors on price?

1. To meet price goals, suppliers start sacrificing quality or ability to meet commitments. We’ve seen this time after time in various industries. Quality of procured products decline, driving down the quality of the products our customers provide to their customers. The result is their customers are upset and stop buying the products. Returns, warranty, service costs skyrocket, their revenues and profits plummet. But high pressure on prices has to come out of the vendors somewhere, often it’s product quality, delivery, or risk.
2. Perhaps, customers can maintain product quality from their vendors, but what about innovation? Their customers are always changing, forcing them (our customer) to innovate, changing business models, introducing new products and services, and growing. In turn, they need suppliers that are on the same journey, suppliers innovating with them, looking at the end customer needs, understanding the strategies, priorities, growth opportunities of each customer and responding by creating products and services that support their own growth and innovation. As customers start having unreasonable expectations for pricing actions from suppliers, suppliers have less to invest in product development and innovation, and become less able to support the growth of their customers.
3. Pricing pressure reduces investment in sales and marketing. Some customers would see this as a blessing, fewer sales and marketing people make their lives easier—or does it? If we are doing our jobs as marketing and sales professionals, we are helping our customers find new ways to innovate, grow, and serve their customers. We are helping our customers improve their product quality, reduce expense, adapt better practices. We are helping our customers learn and discover, growing in their careers and growing the business. Pricing pressure reduce our ability to fund sales and marketing in helping our customers, we can no longer afford to do these things—where does the customer go to get this help, what does it cost? If they don’t have this help, what happens to them? What risks do they face for their future, how do they manage those without the help of trusted advisors from trusted suppliers?
4. We need fair profits because those profits don’t sit idle, they are invested in growing the organization and it’s capabilities to better support customers. Those profits are invested in new plants, people, acquiring other companies, all of which enable us to do more for and with our customers. If we aren’t able to grow and invest, at all levels, our abilities to serve our customers, helping them grow and invest become limited.

What about the customer that says, “We can always find other suppliers…..” Fundamentally, they’re playing a short game. As suppliers choose not to play that game, dropping out of competing for business, the only ones that are left are the bad ones. Those that compete only on price, continually cutting their investments in R&D, sales/marketing, product quality, investments in their plants. Overtime, the number of alternative suppliers dwindles to a few–each of which since they compete only on low price, becomes very risky. Eventually there own viability becomes questioned, or the risk to the customer skyrockets. Sure, it works for a few years, but long term viability comes into question–first for the supplier, then to the customer.

We’ve seen examples in many industries where customers have so squeezed their supply chains that they ultimately fail, causing the customer to fail.

Our pricing and profit margins exist for a reason. The core is to continue to allow us to grow and innovate by helping our customers grow and innovate.

We need to defend our pricing vigorously, not just for what it means to us, but for what it really means in supporting and growing our customers!

We need to make sure our customers understand this, that they understand our strategies in investing and growing so they may, in turn grow.

We need to defend proudly, our right to fair prices and fair profit margins–because it makes our customers healthier and better.

We have to be prepared to walk away from customer who don’t see the value in our success, profitability, and growth.

We as sales and marketing professionals need to be able to conduct and support these conversations with our customers, not wasting our time looking for approvals for deeper discounts.

I know, you want to cut out admin work. You want to cut out time wasted on bullshit that doesn’t directly impact traction.

It’s hard to pull yourself away from product and marketing for any extended period of time to focus on how efficiently your startup runs internally, but it does have to be done.

Srinivas Kulkarni, writing for ZDNet, reports:

“While it’s very easy to say that when startups are founded, there’s a lot of freedom, liberty and access in terms of work and building the product, technology or service that they offer, it is also important to realize that most startups fail because they don’t learn from their and others’ mistakes. It’s imperative that the experience comes from a process.”

A lot of the problems processes solve can seem like they’re easily fixed on the day they crop up, and it can seem like there’s no point in writing down how you do work when you’re too busy to even get it all done…

But any good startup will scale, analyze the ways it gets work done, and will try to improve its efficiency — that’s just what organizations that succeed do.

Y Combinator president Sam Altman compares running a startup to building a working spaceship from scratch:

“When you start a startup, you get pushed off the side of a cliff with a bag of aerospace parts. You hope they are the parts for a spaceship, and they look like they might be, but it’s impossible to tell when they’re all in a bag […] Every once in a while, it turns out you do have the parts for a spaceship […] Much of the time, you don’t have the parts to make anything at all, and should just try to hit the ground as gently as possible.”

What keeps your startup afloat, as you scramble to assemble the pieces of a spaceship, is a foundation of processes that are proven to get good results.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through what processes are, what problems they solve, then talk about the minimum viable processes your startup needs to keep it efficient without bogging it down in bureaucracy.

What are processes for startups?

Processes are a set of systems that can run without you.

They’re everything from step-by-step guides on how to get a task done, to automations and integrations.

Processes aren’t just software, or tools — they’re that combined with instructions, due dates, assignees, approvals, and explanations.

They can also be managed by other people in other companies. For example, it’s best to outsource payroll in the early days, so you could use a productized service like Intuit, or Paychex, which have both a SaaS platform you can access and humans to run it.

In this case, I’m going to define processes as documents that detail the one best way to do work.

Example processes:

• Salesperson onboarding
• Standup meetings
• Software deployment

All of these processes have one thing in comment: they all have multiple steps, involve the movement and recording of information, and all can be prone to human error.

What early-stage problems do processes solve for startups?

A few example problems:

1. Maker/manager imbalance: you can outsource the making or managing alongside processes that detail exactly how best to do the work.
2. No funding: you can set up (semi-automated) processes with your CRM to reach out to investors
3. Urgent admin work: to stop getting in the way of important long-term goals, you can either create processes for the work and outsource it, or systemize and batch it to make sure it doesn’t become urgent.
4. Scaling: hire and onboard employees more easily with structured processes, plus have set instructions ready for the new hire

What are the most important things to systemize early, and which can wait?

Take advice from Martin Zwilling — ex-IBM developer and CEO of Startup Professionals: implement just one process at a time.

“The simple answer is that you need to implement one process at a time, starting with those things that are most critical to your business, until you feel a relief that things are starting to happen naturally and consistently, without the attendant stress and continual recovery mode. If you feel that the process itself is a burden, you have likely gone too far.”

Martin goes on to list the systems your business needs to have under control in order to grow. You need the most basic business functions nailed down, such as accounting and HR, but also to focus on internal communications, funding, and supporting customers.

Here are the vital processes to get documented as early as possible:

Cash flow report

At the most basic level, you need to record money coming in and going out so you know your burn rate and can predict cash flow.

For that, we’ve got a lean and easily trackable checklist:

You’ll also want to make sure your tax compliance is in order, so run this tax prep checklist once to be safe.

Meeting/feedback process for other team members

Unlike corporations, you’re not big enough to need massive regular meetings, slide decks and lectures. A quick 10-minute standup each morning will do.

You’ll need meetings for:

• Working with outsourcers
• Product/development
• Discussions on financing
• Marketing projects

Startup Studio CEO Zach Ferres explains:

“You just hired your 10th employee. Everyone isn’t in the same room anymore. The CEO no longer manages every project or interfaces with every team member, and communication starts to break down. Mistakes that would have been avoided by the founding team start to slip through the cracks.”

You can use our standup meeting checklist (found here) to notify participants, track your topics of discussion, and work through the meeting in a structured way, keeping notes and activity logs automatically as you go.

Software deployment process

For software startups, soon as your product starts getting users, you need to make sure updates are deployed properly and that everything doesn’t break.

The easiest way to do this — and to train new development hires to do it properly — is with a checklist. Use the template below as it is, or edit it to reflect the current way you do it.

Fundraising process

In the early days, a significant chunk (60-70%) of time will be spent fundraising: scraping together as much money from investors as possible to try and stay afloat.

Generally, this stage can be broken down into two repeatable processes:

1. Finding investors
2. Pitching investors

Finding investors who will sit through your pitch is the first hurdle, but should be systemized. At Process Street, we’ve built and documented a semi-automated process using Import.io and AngelList:

Once you’ve got their details, contacting and pitching investors over email is as simple as loading them into your CRM and sending out the emails. Invstor has an insanely detailed guide to that part of the process here, which will differ wildly depending on your startup.

Marketing project and growth hack tracking

Even if you’re not getting enough traffic to run huge experiments with lots of variations, in the early days you’ll be relying on testing a lot of your marketing site — landing pages, copy, images, design — and finding out what works best.

You can use this process below to:

• Catalog your marketing projects and A/B testing ideas
• Collaborate with the rest of your team to create marketing material
• Get reminders on when to check in on the experiments
• Create an exportable log of every test you run

Get it here:

Recruiting and employee onboarding

In the early stages, many HR processes like employee relations and performance reviews won’t be 100% necessary…

Hiring and onboarding, however, are vital at any stage.

Like finding investors, recruiting is as much marketing as anything. It’s getting together a list, narrowing it down, persuading, etc. In short, it’s something with a lot of different parts to manage, and something that can be condensed and streamlined with a process.

Straight after recruiting, your next step will be onboarding. That’s mostly things like adding the new hire to Slack and Trello, getting them to set up their accounts, and maybe going through mentoring with an existing team member.

Customer support

Customer service and tech support are necessary for all kinds of companies, from tech companies to ecommerce. Good support can make the difference between an up-sell and an angry cancellation, so it’s important to make a process for it to keep it consistent.

At Process Street, we open-sourced our SaaS support process so you can see how we use our own software to offer support:

We also use support duty as a way to teach our team more about our audience and product. To quote myself in an earlier article, here’s the people who should be on support:

• Engineers built and tested it — they know their shit.
• Salespeople should have an intimate understanding of the product so they can be at their best
• when talking to prospects.
• Marketers also should know the product inside out (along with the target buyers) so they know how to position it.
• Customer support and customer success should be nothing short of power users. They need to know the answer to every question thrown their way.

How to create the minimum viable processes you know you need

Process are great solutions for managing the growing pains in the early days of your startup, but they’re not one-size-fits-all.

Depending on your tools, team, skills, size, and existing methods, the processes I’ve given you in this article may or may not be exactly right for your business, but they will provide a great starting point.

To suit them to your business, assign team members, record structured data, and transform your startup into a lean, process-driven machine, you can use them inside Process Street instead of treating them like guides.

To close up, I thought I’d share this short account from B2B CFO partner and Entrepreneur columnist Joe Worth about a small tech business he once worked for that documented every single process, no matter how small:

“They even spelled out how to clean and stock the company kitchen. I asked the owner why she’d gone to this level of detail, and she told me, ‘I want to act like the company I want to become.’ On an operational level, it was fantastic. I was able to grab the accounting process book put together by the outgoing controller, and within five minutes I was in business.”

For some, systemization is all-or-nothing. For startups, you still need to start somewhere.

When evaluating products/services, B2B technology buyers value hands-on experiences, such as free trials, over marketing collateral from vendors, according to recent research from TrustRadius. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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App developers and publishers continue to have trouble converting users who download their apps into paying customers, according to a new study from AppsFlyer.

In Q3 2016, across both iOS and Android, less than 2% of global app installers turned into buyers. This demonstrates that deriving any meaningful revenue from the majority of apps is an ongoing pain point for developers and publishers. 

The low yield in paying users is a result of a combination of factors, including the inability to retain the majority of app users and market differences across platforms: 

• Keeping users engaged remains an issue for developers. Between 10% and 12% of app users remain engaged with their apps just seven days after installing it, across both iOS and Android. However, that drops to around 4% after 30 days. This comes despite year-over-year (YoY) growth in retention rates for nonorganic users.
• Android users are more engaged, but iOS users spend more. Despite Android users being more likely to regularly engage with an app after installing it, with around 37% of installers engaging with the app on Android versus 35% of iOS users, consumers on iOS are 80% more likely to make a purchase than an Android user.
• Unsurprisingly, users in mature markets are far more likely to make purchases than those in emerging markets. North American consumers have the highest install-to-buyer ratio for iOS and the second-highest for Android, at 2.25% and 1.3%, respectively. Still, even in emerging markets, iOS continues to drive higher purchasing rates than Android. In Latin America, for example, Android users’ install-to-buyer ratio is just 0.4%, while iOS users reach rates as high as 1.2%.

Marketers are slowly succeeding at increasing engagement rates of users, but need to begin seeking new ways to convert these users to buyers at a higher rate. The app ecosystem has long been in an app engagement crisis, driving marketers to seek ways to ensure users keep coming back to their apps. That’s because the longer users are retained, the more opportunities marketers have to engage with them. However, marketers, developers, and publishers alike must find how to turn these users into paying users if they wish to see any return on their investment. This can be done by targeting users with more granular, personalized information aimed at getting users to take part in actions and special events on their apps.

App developers long considered the "pay once and play" model — in which users pay up front an app and aren't prompted to make in-app purchases — the best way to generate revenue. But as more "free-to-download" apps entered the market, users increasingly opted for these experiences. These apps offer microtransactions for in-app goods and services, and in-app ads.

As the app ecosystem expands further, it will become increasingly challenging for developers to compete in a crowded market. Overall, global gross app revenue will double to reach $102 billion by 2020, according to recent projections by App Annie. As a result, app monetization strategies need to shift at least as quickly as consumer trends and preferences in order for developers to capture a piece of this growing market.

Laurie Beaver, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on app monetization that explores the top app monetization strategies under user- and advertising-paid approaches, and the growing combination of both. We will also look at emerging trends that could help developers navigate the fiercely competitive app ecosystem, and address the potential barriers that developers will have to overcome to reap the benefits of the multi-billion dollar market.

Here are some of the key takeaways: 

• The app ecosystem is expanding quickly, and it's becoming increasingly challenging for app developers to compete in a crowded market. 
• To capture a piece of the growing market, app developers must adapt their strategies at least as quickly as consumer trends and preferences change. 
• Developers can choose a user-paid or an advertising-paid approach to monetizing their apps. Different monetization strategies work best with different apps.
• There are a number of widespread challenges that developers must contend with both before and after they enter the app market.  

In full, the report:

• Provides key factors driving the expected growth of global app revenue
• Evaluates the top app monetization strategies
• Looks at emerging trends to help developers navigate the app ecosystem
• Explains the challenges that developers face to compete in the app market
• And much more

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

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Challenges that are part and parcel of new market expansion and product introductions include executing in-depth market research, filling distribution gaps, honing marketing tactics and building internal resources to support the initiative.

Given that leaders are juggling multiple priorities, it’s not surprising that they sometimes fall flat when attempting to scale inside sales to meet expansion goals. After all, there’s a lot involved — creating a sales process, hiring and training sales people, and ensuring they have the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently and successfully.

Let’s take a quick look at each of these challenges and how to tackle them.

• Outline Your Sales Process
  Because your sales process has implications on who you hire and the technology you select, start by defining it.
  Today, there are a couple of approaches to B2B sales — traditional lead generation and, a methodology that’s becoming increasingly popular, account based sales development. Whether you choose lead generation, account-based sales development or both, you need to define your sales process.
  If you’re using lead generation, the process begins when you receive contact information from someone who is interested in your content, product or solution. Your sales team needs a coordinated, step-by-step approach to responding to a lead, nurturing and qualifying it.
  Even before you have a lead, the sales cycle starts with generating awareness. As a result, you capture a lead. Then you go through the qualification stage, defining which leads are marketing qualified. These are ripe for nurturing and turning into leads that are ready for a sales call. What follows is presentations, proposals, and finally customers.
  With account based sales development, your sales and marketing team focus on creating sales opportunities at accounts that can have the greatest impact on your business by reaching out to them via phone, email and social networks.
  The account-based sales process starts with identifying the companies you want to bring into your fold, and the key targets within them based on their relationships to each other. Then business development reps become consultants to chosen accounts, orchestrating a series of personalized steps to move those accounts toward a closed sale.
  This approach recognizes that B2B sales are often not straightforward, especially at large companies. Usually, there are buying teams with an average of more than five people who you have to convince to buy. It embodies the human touch, incorporating phone calls, personal emails and one-on-one social outreach.
• Recruit and Train New Reps
  If you’re looking for reps to work in a traditional lead-based environment, they’ll be responsible for following up on leads to qualify and nurture them. You need educated, goal-oriented individuals who can talk peer-to-peer. They know how to ask the right questions and listen to the answers, so they have the information they need to qualify and nurture leads and deliver sales opportunities.
  Account based sales development reps need all the qualities of those in a lead-based environment plus they must be able to take a strategic approach. They let research guide them to the right people at the right accounts, take a collaborative approach, are good at understanding relationships within organizations and have a natural curiosity about business. Look for seasoned self-starters with strong project management skills. After all, they’re not relying on leads to trigger a phone call.
  You may be able to find reps internally in other areas of your organization. It’s always good to motivate employees with new opportunities. If not, check out LinkedIn where you can learn a lot about people quickly, use your own network or contact a headhunter.
  Once on board, train your reps about your sales process, products and solutions. Training, however, is not a ‘once and done’ thing. Monitor behaviors, provide feedback and improve performance continuously. That’ll motivate reps and improve results.
• Get the Tools
  Once you understand your sales and marketing process, you’ll know what tools you need to support you. Account based marketing relies on technology for predictive analytics, contact data, targeted advertising and website personalization. For lead based marketing, you need a marketing automation tool. For both, you’ll need a robust CRM system that empowers salespeople to track their to-dos, minimize paperwork and measure results.

There are, of course, a lot of other priorities when entering new markets and introducing new products besides scaling your inside sales team. Some companies find they don’t have the time or resources to define sales processes, hire sales people, and select the technology to support them. Instead, they decide to outsource the marketing and sales process to a company that is 100 percent focused on customer acquisition for B2B clients.

A Sales Qualified Lead should not be confused with a Marketing Qualified Lead.

That definition involves understanding the terminology, but also (maybe just as important) the indicators within your own process that alert you to potential customers moving down the funnel.

If you know the terms (prospects, marketing qualified, sales qualified, etc.), but don’t understand how your company determines and segments the leads within your sales process—you’ll end up losing potential clients.

One of the most crucial terms to understand is the sales qualified lead (SQL).

Without a clear series of events that alerts your marketing team and then the sales reps of when a lead is ready to be fit and then closed, you will be pitching leads that aren’t ready and losing those that were ready sooner.

In short, it’s an important step.

Defining Sales Qualified Leads

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A prospective customer that has been researched and vetted — first by an organization’s marketing department and then by its sales team – and is deemed ready for the next stage in the sales process. (Source)

From here on out I’ll refer to a Sales Qualified Lead as an SQL.

Essentially, this is someone who has come to you either by organic means or outreach and has expressed interest in your products to some degree.

After they have expressed enough interest, they are shown to the sales team who then vets the lead further to gauge the lead’s sales readiness. Finally, the lead is cleared and enters into the next stage of the sales process.

The overall process should look similar in any organization with both a sales and marketing team.

How it differs from Marketing Qualified Lead

Obviously, there is some difference between an MQL and an SQL.

How about an illustration?

If one person does all the talking, it’s a lecture. You’re lecturing an audience to entice them to learn more about your product. Giving a grand image of a world that can be created with the things you sell.

Marketing is more of a grand lecture and when your “students” begin to raise their hands—you begin to have a conversation.

Sales (especially with higher ticket items) always involves a conversation.

The biggest difference and indicator that your marketing leads may be sales-ready is their willingness and desire to turn your lecture into a conversation. Not that marketing doesn’t involve interaction.

Social media, opt-in forms, email responses are all types of communication that can happen during the marketing phase. These are commonly known as engagement.

It’s these things (among others) that help a team score the lead to gauge sales-readiness.

The biggest difference between engagement within the marketing funnel and a lead looking for conversation is what/who they interact with. Again, this may differ from one company to another.

A few examples may include:

• Webinar Registration/Attendance: Depending on the content. If it’s geared more toward your target industry/audience, it may not move the leads to sales. Although, if it explains X ways your product improves Y—it could be close.
• Email Response: This is a much clearer indication of sales readiness. If you send a resource or other means of communication via email and the lead responds with some questions, they may be ready to have a fit call.
• Filling Out a Contact Form: Having ways for visitors to reach out on the site could be an easy way to pick out those who were further along in the process than you thought. Be ready, though. The faster the response, the more likely you are to land a conversation.

Interesting: One study shows that you could be up to 100 times more likely to get a conversation with a lead, if you can respond within five minutes. Only 5% of companies strive to do so.

The Step In Between

If you notice, the definition lays out that both sales and marketing are involved before the lead is officially moved in status to an SQL.

In many companies, this is its own separate step called a sales accepted lead (SAL). Here’s a quick breakdown of this typically speedy step.

Once the lead scoring reaches a certain level, the marketing team alerts the sales team. Then, a sales rep schedules (or it’s scheduled for them) a call with the lead to ask some further qualifying questions.

So, we’ve moved from lecture, to engagement, to a conversation.

In this call, you aren’t necessarily trying to pitch them. It’s more to learn if they are a fit for your products.

You’re not trying to establish a secret club through exclusion, but you are trying to avoid clients that don’t need your products.

Once the rep establishes that this is indeed a qualified lead for the sales team it’s an SQL. Meaning that they have not only accepted it, but will move forward with the sales process.

Some of you reading this post either don’t have this step, do have screening/fit calls and don’t call it a separate step, or you may call what we call SAL’s SQL’s (or vice versa).

We admit, it’s a bit sketchy. That’s why we’re looking to define some terms in our series.

What Do We Ask Before Qualifying?

A good rep may know when a lead is going to say yes or no before they do, but why ask a lead if they are ready to be sold?

Depending on the size of your market and price of your product, talking before you sell can be a crucial step in the sales cycle. It helps you identify those who are ready for your process. Doing the work upfront means not having a problem client on your hands.

In many industries (like SaaS and others), selling a client that will only pay you a month or two is like not selling them in the first place.

What can you ask to make sure they’re ready? Here are a couple of tips

• Their Needs: How much will they be able to use your products to improve their current landscape.
• Current Solution: Who, what, and why are they using to currently fulfill the needs that you can. Also, find out why they are looking (if they are) for a replacement.
• Decision Maker: Is this person the honcho who will pay you, a researcher who is gleaning information, or an influencer who is looking to help?
• Ready to Move: Find out if the company is ready to switch solutions and that the budget is there for you to push them into the next step.

The Lead is Sales Qualified, Now What?

You’ve kicked the tires, and so have your leads. What’s next?

The best part about instituting a sales funnel process can be a “traditional” sales rep’s worst nightmare.

If your company has recently moved to a process, reps could be used to being the marketing, sales, and customer service team all-in-one. When this occurs, your newly minted SQL’s could come to a rep that thinks the lead knows nothing.

Repeating information and treating a lead as though they aren’t even slightly educated could be a big problem.

The opposite is also true.

When reps think that only those saying “yes” are making it through, they could get lazy and not fully close all that they could. Then, the sales team could get irritated with marketing for not sending better leads.

Here are some tips to ensure that the maximum percentage of SQL’s go into the Closed-Won folder.

• Prep Work: Since the lead has been moving through a marketing funnel, you have an arsenal of intel on each lead. Look at the resources they’ve downloaded, the path they took through the marketing process, and even the engagement they had with those resources. If you look for insights, that intel will start to tell a story that you can work with on your call.

• Seek to Understand: When you’re ready for a demo, strategy session, or other name for the sales call it’s important to know that you’re trying to solve a problem. This is a different mindset than just selling a product. It’s a conversation, right? Talk with them, not at them. The lecture is over—now you’re looking for a long-term partner.

• Continue Their Story: A big mistake many make is to have this beautiful process of marketing and getting leads to abruptly end that communication with a short and sour final sales process. By making your sales call a continuation of the overall process, instead of the wall at the end of the tunnel, it could mean higher conversions. Ask them questions and finish their process (and yours, too).

The key to having a great process is the ability to define the difference between MQL’s and SQL’s while handling the transfer from the marketing team to the sales team.

You know you’re doing this well when the leads feel like they are walking along the process without any bumps and bruises. This will take building a great bridge between your teams. Communication between the two couldn’t be more important.

If you have a lack of unity between sales and marketing, leads will slip through the cracks. The biggest crack in many organizations is the one between MQL and SQL.

How good is your team’s communication?

Over my decade of B2B sales, I learned that to build a high-performing sales team, you have to hire high achievers. Here’s the key: have the right sales interview questions to ask.

Hiring top-tier salespeople is challenging at the best of times. Selecting and onboarding the wrong candidates can keep your company from meeting important business goals. You also have to consider the time and financial investments required to hire, train, and pay a sales rep who doesn’t work out — not to mention the impact on team morale.

Effective sales interviews can help you find consistent quota hitters, thick-skinned rejection handlers, and adept objection slayers to help grow your business.

Table of Contents

• Interview Tips for Sales Hiring Managers
• Technical Sales Interview Questions
• Situational Sales Interview Questions
• Inside Sales Interview Questions
• Fit and Motivation Sales Interview Questions
• Sales Director Interview Questions
• Software Sales Interview Questions
• Bring On the Right Talent in Your Next Sales Interview

Interview Tips for Sales Hiring Managers

Are you new to conducting job interviews and need some sales interview questions to identify your next superstar? In this post, I’ve gathered some of the best questions I’ve been asked by sales managers — and some of the worst, which made me want to leave the building.

For example, I was once asked to tell the story of a time I lied to a customer to get a deal. The interviewer said he wouldn’t believe me if I said I never lied to close a deal. I didn’t get that job, which was probably for the best in retrospect.

Asking the right interview questions can help you find the best candidates for your organization who can hit the ground running towards hitting quota, or be coached to be a top performer in due time.

Technical Sales Interview Questions

I worked in technology sales for over a decade, so I appreciate how important it is for hiring managers to ensure the sales reps they hire:

• Have strong technical acumen.
• Can learn about your products and their benefits quickly.
• Have a genuine interest in your industry beyond just earning a paycheck.
• Possess the ability to cohesively explain complex concepts in context to a prospect or customer’s role in their company.

Use the following questions to distinguish the sales contenders from the pretenders.

1. How do you, or would you, keep up to date on the latest trends in [your industry] and what matters to your ideal customer profile?

Asking this question helps gauge the candidate's levels of preparation and industry. It also shows whether the candidate knows who your industry’s thought leaders are and which publications and analysts they would listen to for guidance.

You might learn of new trends during this process, so don’t leap to judgment during the interview unless the trend seems made up or antiquated. I recommend you view this question as an opportunity to assess the candidate’s ability to research and prepare for customer meetings.

What to listen for: Does the industry and target market of the candidate’s last job differ from yours? If so, this process will show the candidate’s ability to find trade publications and data sources that the rep might use in customer-facing sales presentations.

Insight from my experience: When I interviewed for an IT security business development role, the hiring manager tasked me with creating a presentation about data security with statistics that could capture a prospect’s interest.

2. Explain a complex concept you understand well. You have five minutes to capture my interest.

This question helps you evaluate the candidate's confidence and ability to think on their feet, much like the “Sell me this pen” exercise. It gives the candidate an opportunity to explain (or, in effect, sell) something they are passionate about or even something related to your industry or company.

What to listen for: While this technically isn’t a question, assessing whether the candidate can effectively demonstrate a concept or process is essential. Listen to hear how concisely they can explain the topic.

Insight from my experience: Like many candidates, I often struggled with keeping my nerves in check during sales interviews — especially when I was asked a classic “gotcha” question like, “What is your biggest flaw?” But, given the opportunity to speak on a topic I knew well, my nerves would ease, and my speaking cadence slowed and smoothed out.

3. In your last position, what percentage of your time did you dedicate to building customer relationships vs. hunting for new clients, and why?

Many large enterprises staff their sales teams with dedicated hunting, farming, and trapping specialists to maintain recurring revenue and land new accounts. Many sales teams in small- to medium-sized companies hire generalists who have essential sales skills across these categories.

What to listen for: This question can help you assess the candidate's ability to prioritize and balance business development and relationship-building activities. It also helps to determine if the candidate is more of a sales hunter, farmer, or trapper.

Insight from my experience: I worked both with sales hunters who had a constant hunger for closing “big game” deals and farmers who preferred to help existing customers get the most from their technology investment. My sales mentor, Carl, had the best balance of account management and business development skills. We sold into government accounts, so fostering strong customer relationships was a great way to motivate clients to take mandatory reference calls from prospects.

4. What are your favorite questions to ask prospects during discovery calls?

Here, you can assess the candidate’s ability to ask open-ended questions when breaking the ice and building credibility with a prospect. It’s also important to gauge a candidate's ability to ask probing questions to qualify for an opportunity and move it forward.

What to listen for: Good salespeople spend more time asking questions than pitching their company’s products and services. Seek out candidates who mention that they ensure and confirm they understand a prospect’s needs before asking questions.

Insight from my experience: I remember working with a non-profit organization prospect who was considering a competitor solution after thoroughly testing my company’s offering. The competitor’s product wasn’t interoperable with the content management system (CMS) they built their website on years before, while my company’s product was built for their website CMS.

I asked the prospect how his organization’s donors and volunteers would feel if they found out that he wasted an opportunity to leverage their existing technology and added weeks to the project timeline. That one question ended as a win for my company.

I have since used that scenario in sales interviews to successfully demonstrate my ability to ask tough questions that moved deals forward.

5. Tell me about a time when you overcame a customer objection. What was the objection, and how did you deal with it?

This question helps the interviewer to test the candidate's problem-solving skills, resilience, and ability to think on their feet. Effective sales professionals need to address objections confidently and empathetically. You should prioritize hiring salespeople who can demonstrate how they can flip an objection into a value-based selling opportunity.

What to listen for: Look for a candidate who can demonstrate how they can flip an objection into a value-based selling opportunity. Preparing to deal with objections — instead of improvising — is critical. Listen for evidence of a process. For example, if you have a usage-based pricing model, the candidate should know how to position it if a pricing objection comes up.

6. What role does social media play in your sales process?

This question helps you find candidates who follow sales trends and align with what’s working, like social selling. Your marketing department may manage social content distribution, yet the 2024 HubSpot Sales Trends report found that 38% of sales reps are trappers who use social media as an integral part of their sales process, and 24% of those surveyed said social media was their favorite selling channel (only 3% less than selling over the phone).

What to look for: Social selling is becoming critical in all industries. If the candidate hasn’t used social media channels like LinkedIn for outreach, prospect research, or business development in the past, make sure they are willing to adopt it for their future on your team.

7. What role does content play in your selling process?

Candidates should understand the important role content plays in the buyer’s journey. Prioritize hiring candidates that have used (or are eager to use) content to:

• Build trust and provide substantial evidence your products and services can address their pain points and business needs.
• Move deals through the sales pipeline, such as using case studies and testimonials to help close a deal.
• Nurture customer loyalty and engagement with existing customers, and inspire them with new ways to use your products and increase their return on investment.

What to look for: Look at the candidate’s social media posts to see if they helped distribute and amplify their former employer’s content before. Ask for any examples of where the candidate used content to generate leads or move a lead forward.

Insight from my experience: I once wrote a LinkedIn article about a Microsoft CRM portal solution I was selling. I shared the post in a LinkedIn group and used a trending hashtag for an upcoming Microsoft partner conference. By simply writing and sharing that post in targeted groups and tying it to discussions about a trending event, I generated several leads and booked a few meetings at the conference.

8. How do you research prospects before a call or meeting? What information do you look for?

This question shows candidates who can identify excellent icebreakers, create a positive atmosphere for prospects, and personalize communication. B2B prospects are more likely to spend time with (and buy from) those who invest the time to understand their business, and in understanding their unique challenges.

What to look for: Neglecting to use LinkedIn or a generative AI tool like HubSpot Breeze to research clients and enrich their account profiles is a recipe for failure in hyper-competitive sales marketplaces. Ensure candidates are searching for professional and personal customer intelligence that can open doors and spark productive sales conversations.

9. If I hired you today, describe your 30-60-90 day plan to be successful.

The best candidates to join your sales team are those who are self-motivated and have a heightened sense of ownership. They understand the importance of:

• Meeting the coworkers that can help them succeed.
• Ramping up on your products and services.
• Learning your company’s policies and standard procedures.
• Getting familiar with the prospects and customers in their assigned territory, industry, or product’s target market.
• The short- and long-term goals of the position.

What to listen for: The candidate should be able to draw on experiences in other roles, projects, or internships to demonstrate initiative, confidence, and enthusiasm for contributing to your team’s success. Candidates who are prepared enough to describe realistic, viable plans for becoming a strong contributor to your organization are more likely to be able to plan their day-to-day sales activities than those who aren’t.

10. What do you think our company/sales organization could do better?

Here, you can see which candidates can find gaps in your organization and propose solutions. If you expect the candidate to help other businesses identify and solve business challenges, they should be able to call out areas of improvement for your own company as well.

This sales interview question serves two purposes:

• You'll learn how much research the candidate did before meeting with you.
• You can assess their creative thinking and problem-solving capabilities.

Insight from my experience: I once found offensive material somehow published on the website of a company I was interviewing with. By pointing it out, I demonstrated that I was doing my research on the company, and I also helped them avoid embarrassing damage to their reputation.

11. How does [your company name] deliver customer value?

This question reveals the candidate’s understanding of your company’s unique selling proposition and their ability to communicate it to potential customers. Hopefully, they will have done their research on your company website or your social media channels and not try to make up something on the spot.

What to listen for: This is another question that shows how much research your candidate has done on your company. If they can’t even slightly articulate the benefits of your product/service, it might mean you need to move on.

12. What’s something you’ve taught yourself lately?

This question gives proactive, self-motivated candidates a chance to shine. You can see who has an excellent professional development ethic and who seeks ways to improve as a salesperson.

What to listen for: You want to hire salespeople who are hungry for new skills and eager to learn better selling strategies. This question helps you find those people. Listen to how thoroughly they describe what they’ve learned and ask which tools they used to learn it.

13. Can you describe your lead qualification process when you connect with new prospects?

This question reveals whether a candidate has strong critical thinking abilities and if they know how to identify important lead qualifiers — such as a prospect’s budget, authority, need, and timeframe (BANT).

What to listen for: The candidate’s response helps you gauge how effectively they qualified prospects in the past and what kind of training they would need to adopt your methodology. It also gives you a sense of their sales training and instincts. Candidates must be able to ask focused questions that decipher whether a prospect is a good fit.

Insight from my experience: When I worked with IBM, we added conditions of satisfaction to BANT (we called it BANTC), which reflected the outcomes that the customer wanted to achieve from their initiative.

Situational Sales Interview Questions

Situational questions let you assess each candidate’s skills and personality. By asking these questions, you can learn the mindset the candidate can bring to the team and your customers.

14. How do you approach short sales cycle transactions differently than deals with long sales cycles?

Candidates can show their understanding of the sales process, their sales experience, and how they would adapt to different situations.

What to listen for: Short cycles call for reps that can close quickly, and long sales cycles require a much more careful, tailored approach. They’re drastically different, and your candidate should recognize this.

Insight from my experience: When I was a team lead, I coached my colleagues to leverage low-value transactional sales conversations to uncover cross-selling opportunities. For example, for existing customers, we discussed the benefits of subscription-tier upgrades, checked to see if the client needed add-on user licenses, and discussed our consulting and training services.

15. When do you stop pursuing a prospect?

This question separates those who are rejection-tolerant from those who aren’t. Giving up on a non-responsive prospect and skillfully addressing objections are apples and oranges.

What to listen for: The right answer depends on your company's process. However, the more persistent a rep is, the better.

Insight from my experience: I once had an interview with a sales executive who said, “I want someone who’s so driven to make a sale, they'd run through a brick wall if they had to." He didn’t say a concrete wall, though, so even he knew there are limits.

I usually encouraged prospects to let me know if they had no interest in speaking with me around attempt five, but I always left the door open to re-engage in future. Trish Bertuzzi, the founder of The Bridge Group, recommends six to eight attempts before throwing in the towel.

16. How do you keep productive with a smile on your face during a hard day?

This question assesses the candidate's resilience and positivity despite tough days. A career in B2C or B2B sales is not for the faint of heart, as working with people with a broad spectrum of personality quirks is challenging.

What to listen for: Assess the person’s attitude toward rejection. Do they need time to shake off an unpleasant conversation, or do they bounce back immediately? Discover the strategies they use to recover and move on. You may need to recommend some coping strategies if the candidate isn’t giving you the answers you are looking for on the other questions on this list.

17. Have you ever turned a prospect away? If so, why?

This question shows the candidate understands your product and is keen on having a strong, qualified pipeline of potential customers.

What to listen for: Selling to everyone and anyone is a recipe for disaster. Make sure your candidate is comfortable turning business away if the potential customer isn’t a good match.

Pro tip: I learned through experience that in sales, chasing rainbows (aka, leads that will never become closed revenue deals) wastes time and resources. It diverts focus from realistic opportunities that have a higher potential for success. Outcomes are more important than effort in many circumstances.

18. Have you ever had a losing streak? If so, how did you turn it around?

This question uncovers highly motivated candidates who are driven to succeed and have a process for bouncing back from failure. As the saying goes, it’s not how many times you fall down but how many times you get up and get back up and get on another sales call that matters.

What to look for: Nearly everyone experiences a setback or misses a goal now and then. Beware of someone who claims they’ve never experienced a downturn. There’s nothing wrong with a temporary slump, provided the candidate learned from it.

19. Did you ever hold a win/loss review meeting after closing/losing a deal? What did you learn from that experience?

This question helps you determine whether the candidate can grow professionally based on customer feedback to improve their sales process. The salesperson and their team can learn what worked during the sales process, what didn’t, and how they can improve on future engagements.

What to listen for: Following up on deals to learn how to do better next time boosts the odds of winning in the future. A salesperson who takes the time to learn from both their successes and failures will be a valuable addition to your team.

Insight from my experience: I found these meetings to be crucial to my development. I once learned from a customer that another client we considered a reference was not happy with how their project was delivered. Although we lost the deal, we recovered the relationship with the reference customer.

20. Describe a time when you had a difficult prospect and how you handled that situation to win the sale.

Every salesperson encounters difficult prospects. Knowing how candidates deal with this prevents you from hiring people who’ll lose valuable leads in your sales pipeline.

What to listen for: The answer to this question shows how candidates approach tough prospects. If they can keep their emotions in check, swallow their pride, and move a deal forward for the company's greater good, that’s a great sign. Listen for a logical explanation of the situation, the steps they took to fix it, and the results of their actions.

Pro tip: Give the candidate grace if it’s clear they didn’t have support from their previous manager to deal with a high-pressure situation. I once needed the support of my manager to navigate a tense relationship with the university where my company was “born” a decade before.

21. How would you exceed expectations in this role?

Hiring a candidate with ambition and drive is crucial. You want people who aspire to not just meet but exceed their quota and other KPI targets. Nobody has a magic crystal ball, but the candidate you hire should have concepts of a plan to ramp up, immerse themselves in your organization’s culture, and do what needs to be done to exceed their quota and other KPIs.

What to listen for: Asking this question helps you identify candidates who make their own luck with hard work, creative thinking, and dedication to delivering customer value.

22. If you started a company tomorrow what would it look like?

This question provides insights into a candidate’s motivation, interests, goals, and entrepreneurial spirit. Many companies embrace an “intrapreneurship” mentality, as it fosters innovation while providing a low-risk environment for curious, creative people to lead initiatives from within your company.

What to listen for: Many salespeople get into the profession because they’re aspiring entrepreneurs. You’ll learn about their future goals and motivators by asking candidates about a fictional company. You’ll also get a taste of how they pitch business ideas.

Insight from my experience: Many successful B2B salespeople have side hustles to earn additional income, provide an emergency safety net, and build skills for their sales roles. My freelance writing career began when I was in sales after volunteering as a communications lead for a non-profit that supported entrepreneurship across Canada.

23. How have you handled working with clients and colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds?

By asking this question, you’ll determine whether a candidate is culturally competent, can adapt to different communication styles, and can work effectively with coworkers, partners, and clients with diverse backgrounds.

Even if the candidate can only speak in English, they should conduct themselves in a respectful and understanding way and work to foster strong, collaborative relationships with people of all races, cultures, genders, and beliefs.

What to listen for: Salespeople should be able to work with anyone, no matter their cultural background. By asking candidates how they’ve handled these scenarios, you’ll learn if they’re fit to work in a diverse and inclusive manner — and if they see the value of this skill.

Inside Sales Interview Questions

Finding candidates who understand the nature of inside sales is an advantage over reps without that type of experience. These questions are more complex and assess how the sales rep candidates have worked through adversity.

24. What’s the best way to establish a relationship with a prospect?

This question identifies candidates who can make meaningful, productive connections with prospects and customers.

What to listen for: Get insight into how they approach and maintain prospect relationships. Communicating over email or via the occasional voicemail is table stakes. But if a candidate claims to collect lead intelligence and build strong rapport over the phone, that’s a good sign.

Insight from my experience: Over my seven years as an inside sales rep, I developed foundational sales and marketing skills like:

• Using data to back up my value-based selling approach.
• Moving prospects down the sales pipeline and maintaining post-sales loyalty and engagement.
• Picking up on cues from tone of voice, silence, and word choice when body language prompts are not visible.
• Active listening and consultative selling.
• Using channels like email, video meetings, instant messaging, and social media to move deals through the funnel.

These skills became especially important for me (and other inside sales pros) during the pandemic when remote selling and interviews became the norm worldwide.

25. Sell me something.

This question assesses the candidate’s ability to create innovative ways of pitching products instantly and addressing objections quickly.

What to listen for: Anything. It could be the classic “Sell me this pen” or “Sell me what you had for lunch today.” Letting them choose what they sell turns a tired question into a glimpse of how well your candidate thinks on the spot.

A great candidate will ask qualifying questions like these before selling the product:

• “What problem are you trying to solve?”
• “What are your success metrics for determining if you have effectively addressed this requirement?”
• “What are you looking for in a solution that addresses your need?”

26. Explain the steps in your sales process from start to finish.

With this question you’ll get insight into a candidate’s understanding of the sales process, their level of experience, knowledge of sales methodologies, and their ability to manage the sales cycle from start to finish.

What to listen for: Determine how well the candidate understands and considers the sales process. They should also explain the tools they use to organize their thoughts and activities, communicate with key stakeholders, and keep the process moving forward. Do they explain their process clearly and cover the key steps: prospect, connect, research/evaluate, present, and close? These are two things you should look for in their answer.

27. Tell me about an objection you had trouble overcoming over the phone. How did you finally move the deal forward?

You’ll see how effectively candidates handle objections and their ability to treat tough conversations with potential clients effectively. The ability to listen and show empathy takes center stage here.

What to listen for: Every salesperson has at least one objection that plagues them. Did the candidate listen to the prospect’s concerns? Did they validate them? Did they help them reach a different conclusion? The answer to this question tells a lot about how your candidate solves problems and thinks strategically.

Insight from my experience: Once, I travelled across Canada to meet a customer who said they felt misinformed and neglected after they bought a solution from the recently acquired company I worked for. Fortunately, I rebuilt enough trust and loyalty with the client that they purchased enough software licensing to more than pay for my round trip.

28. Teach me something.

This question helps you assess a candidate's ability to communicate, present product information clearly, and convince prospects to buy. It’s nearly impossible for a candidate to know what you would want to learn, so consider this a role-playing exercise, not a true learning opportunity.

What to listen for: Selling is about more than listing a product‘s or service’s benefits and features. This question lets your candidate show how well they can share knowledge and walk you through a new concept.

Can the candidate communicate a relatively complex concept effectively? Do they have a deep understanding of it? If they nail the description and are genuinely interested in explaining the concept, they should excel in explaining your product to prospects.

29. Share the steps you took to land your most successful sale.

This question highlights a candidate’s showcase win and demonstrates how they closed the customer. Be sure you look for a sparkle in the candidate’s eye and not a glazed-over expression. Every salesperson remembers their biggest deal fondly, so if the candidate seems to be making things up, they just might be.

What to listen for: Aim to understand the candidate’s thought process. Their answers should showcase their strengths using a real-life example. Successful salespeople are like accomplished fishermen. They love to tell stories of how they got a “bite” from a prospect and “reeled them in” to close a contract. They don’t have to embellish the experience.

30. Tell me about a time you lost a deal. What did you learn from that experience?

This question assesses a candidate’s ability to be self-aware and see loss as a learning experience.

What to listen for: Everyone loses deals, and there’s no shame in admitting and discussing it. The goal of this question is to explore the candidate's lessons learned and how they have improved their sales techniques after losing to a competitor — or the dreaded project cancellation monster.

Insight from my experience: I once found out in a win/loss review meeting that I lost a deal because I responded to a proposal question about how many versions back we maintained support documentation. Our official and published policy was two versions back, so that was how I responded. Yet the company I worked for maintained documentation all the way back to the original version of our software. I should have asked for management help framing the response, but I was concerned about contradicting our published statements. Live and learn!

31. It’s halfway through the quarter, and you’re trending below where you need to be to meet your quota. What will you do during the second half of the quarter to ensure you reach your targets?

Whether you describe this scenario as a challenging quarter, month, or year, you’ll discover how effectively the candidate can course correct to ultimately beat their quota. Most of us get into a professional rut now and then. What separates the contenders from the pretenders is knowing how to rally and recover, be it independently or by asking for help.

What to listen for: Look for processes that showcase the candidate’s problem-solving ability. Maybe they found a way to replace a lost deal with a win they pulled like a rabbit out of a hat. Or maybe they learned a new skill or adopted a sales methodology that led to better outcomes.

32. How do you deal with a full day of rejections?

Escaping rejections entirely is impossible, and sometimes they appear in clusters in a single day. If this happens for an entire day, you need to know how they’ll deal with it. See if they practice healthy habits, like exercise, positive self-talk, or upskilling with a coach or colleague.

What to listen for: Rejections are going to happen in this job, and this question can help you get an idea of the candidate’s mindset and how they motivate themselves during slumps.

33. Pretend I’m a prospect who didn’t answer the phone. Leave me a voicemail.

This question helps you learn if candidates can leave a voicemail that a prospect will be compelled to respond to. Their voicemail should be brief and relevant while making it clear why you (in the role play) should call them back.

What to listen for: Prospects and even gatekeepers often use their voicemail to screen calls. Reps will encounter prospect voicemail inboxes many times during the day. This question can give you insight into how the candidate turns a missed connection into an opportunity.

Pro tip: The candidate may not follow your team’s voicemail script, but give them points for saying who is calling, why, and how to connect. Watch for how they pique interest and show value while setting expectations for the next touchpoint.

34. What’s your favorite question to gauge need and interest?

This question shows a candidate building rapport, establishing trust, and gathering vital sales information from prospects. The question, “What keeps you up at night?” is completely played out. A better sales interview question is, “What are your top business priorities for the coming year, and how do you see our services supporting those goals?”

This sales question helps build rapport with a prospect and helps them consider how your services could support them in meeting their goals.

What to listen for: While this question may be tough to answer on the fly without information about a company or product, the rep should still be able to provide an idea of how they’d qualify prospects.

Fit and Motivation Sales Interview Questions

These interview questions evaluate whether a candidate has the right motivation for the job. They help you learn what drives the candidate to work hard and better understand their ability to perform.

35. What’s worse: not meeting a quota every single month or not having happy customers?

This question shows a candidate’s values and priorities. Some will choose customer satisfaction over quota and vice versa.

What to listen for: Depending on your company’s goals, either answer could be right. But beware of reps who prioritize quotas over truly giving customers what they need — or withholding what they don’t. If you have a recurring revenue-focused business, focusing on maintaining your customer base and your reputation may be better for your business in the long run than missing your new customer acquisition goals.

36. What’s your least favorite part of the sales process?

This question helps you know if their weaknesses will be a problem. For instance, if cold calling or contract revenue recognition readiness are central to your sales processes, candidates who dislike those key responsibilities may not be a fit for your company.

What to listen for: If their least favorite part of the process is also the most important part at your company, that’s probably a red flag. Ask them how they make their least favorite responsibility tolerable or more enjoyable. This question can also alert you to areas that need coaching.

Insight from my experience: I found that my favorite and least favorite part of the sales process varied by company. At one company, I had a small territory to work with, and the cold call volume expectations were high. The company I worked for paid a telemarketing company to prospect into the same businesses I was, so I often heard I was the second or third person from my company they had heard from that week.

37. What motivates you?

This question helps you align and match (if possible) a candidate’s motivators with your reward system. Many salespeople are “coin-operated” and prefer a compensation plan that is based on their individual contribution to company growth, while others are content with an incentive plan that is based on team or company-wide performance.

What to listen for: Money, achievement, helping customers, being #1 — there are a lot of potential answers to this question. What makes an excellent answer versus a bad one will hinge on your company’s culture. Many salespeople are motivated to get out of bed in the morning to help their customers solve business problems. Make sure the candidate’s motivations align with your company culture.

38. What is your ultimate career goal?

By asking this question, you’ll find out if your company can provide the growth opportunities at a pace that matches what candidates aspire to. If the candidate shows promise, and your team can prepare them to meet their long-term goal (within your company or beyond) it could increase their engagement and commitment.

What to listen for: A lack of growth opportunities can cause salespeople to look for new jobs. If the candidate expresses a desire to pursue a career move your company can’t provide, you might need to hire again sooner than you’d like. That said, someone’s ultimate goal may be years off, and working on your team could be a means to an end. Asking the classic, “Where do you see yourself in X years?” question might be a better way to gauge the candidate’s near-term ambition.

39. What made you want to get into sales?

This question explores the candidate’s personal motivations and helps you determine whether the candidate has a real passion for sales. Maybe their career took an unexpected turn, or they may have been pressured into it. The candidate may really enjoy helping companies to solve business problems, or they may enjoy meeting new people or being in a competitive role.

What to listen for: Though likely part of the motivation, high commission earning potential is not the ideal answer to this question for most businesses. I was passionate about how digital transformation could help organizations better serve their customers, employees, students, and other stakeholders — though I admit commission payments were appreciated.

40. What’s your take on selling collaboratively vs. owning your sales from end-to-end?

This question identifies candidates who prefer to be “lone wolves” versus those who believe in teamwork.

What to listen for: Collaboration might be less important at some organizations than others, but candidates who aren't willing to collaborate at all likely won’t make pleasant co-workers. Their independent-minded attitude may also be a detriment to knowledge sharing.

41. Describe a time when you had to collaborate with someone who had a different cultural or personal background than you are used to. How did you navigate their unique working habits or communication styles?

This question reveals candidates' interpersonal skills, which are crucial for building and maintaining relationships with colleagues, partners, and clients.

What to listen for: As mentioned earlier, succeeding in a diverse sales team environment demands that candidates have EQ and social intuition to work with all types of people. You want a candidate who recognizes and respects these differences. Their response can tell you if they’re ready to join a winning team full of diverse individuals.

42. From a business role perspective, whom are you most comfortable selling to and why?

This question shows candidates who researched your company and know who you sell to. Some sales professionals have strong technical acumen and prefer to work with technology leaders, while others prefer to work with VP-level or C-Suite executives who “hold the purse strings” and control budgetary decisions.

What to listen for: Listen for responses that describe an ideal buyer versus a demographic with no tie-in to the buying process. Depending on your product or service, the second type of response might pose a problem.

43. What’s your opinion of the role of learning in sales?

This question identifies candidates with a growth and continuous improvement mindset. If your industry is in a constant state of change — like technology or life sciences — curiosity and a hunger for learning are real assets.

What to listen for: Being thrown for a loop by this question is a sign your candidate isn’t a lifelong learner — an increasingly important trait for salespeople. An ideal candidate should communicate their willingness to learn and grow in their role.

44. What are three adjectives former clients would use to describe your personality and selling style?

Asking this question can surface some of the personality traits of your potential hire that resonated with their clients. Some industries and customer profiles align with certain personality types. Many companies have candidates take personality assessment tests like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® to identify their candidates' true personality traits such as intuition and perception.

What to listen for: Look for characteristics like charisma, curiosity, responsiveness, helpfulness, and having a consultative sales approach — the latter of which is increasingly important in today’s B2B sales. It’s a plus if the candidate provides examples of when they exemplified each trait.

45. How would you describe the culture at your last company?

This question gives you an overview of a candidate’s last employer and the kind of working environment they are accustomed to. Asking a follow-up question about how they liked the culture could be key to seeing how they could “assimilate” into your organization.

What to listen for: You’ll learn a lot about what the candidate values, how they work with others, and what kind of leadership they thrive under. If they complain about long hours or rigid goals and your company thrives off the energy created by late nights and challenging numbers, it’s probably not the right fit.

You’d also want to know if their previous employer’s culture was inclusive or accepting of people from different backgrounds. You want to bring on staff who are compatible with your team's culture. If the candidate was not in an inclusive environment, look for a constructive response on how the last company could have done better.

46. Describe your ideal sales manager.

This question helps you explore the candidate’s expectations of you as their manager and the leadership style they are most comfortable with. I had some great managers who were excellent sales coaches, and I had others with strengths in the HR realm.

What to listen for: Asking a candidate to describe their ideal manager shows you how autonomous they are, how they approach working relationships, and how they overcome challenges. Look for a candidate who can work independently and is comfortable taking direction from their higher-ups.

47. What core values should every salesperson possess?

This question shows whether the candidate’s values align with yours, your team’s, and those of your business.

What to listen for: To learn where their moral compass lies, listen for answers like “putting the prospect’s needs first,” “patience,” and “humility.” The candidate’s values should align with your company's values to ensure a good fit.

48. Which of your life’s accomplishments are you most proud of?

This might seem like a tall order, but the answer illustrates your candidate’s values and motivations. I have answered this question with personal accomplishments and professional ones.

What to listen for: If the candidate tells a story of overcoming great odds to achieve a specific goal, that signals a driven and highly motivated salesperson. If a candidate’s most valuable accomplishment is finishing all seven seasons of Love is Blind, you should probably move on.

Sales Director Interview Questions

Sales directors must be capable of developing and implementing strong sales strategies for a team. Use these questions to gauge their understanding of the market, recent trends, and their confidence to deliver.

49. How would you describe your management style?

This question demonstrates which managers are hands-on in helping their reps meet their quotas, and which ones prefer to watch from the sidelines: coaching style vs. general manager style, if you’re a sports fan. I had both throughout my career.

What to listen for: An effective sales executive should be able to manage and inspire a team. As they share attributes about their management style, consider if these traits fit your company culture and the needs of your team.

50. Tell me about a time you had to motivate an underperforming team member.

With this question you can identify potential team mentors or even managers who can help transform underperforming reps into quota crushers.

What to listen for: Sales leaders are often responsible for inspiring and motivating reps. The answer to this question should provide some insight on how they would develop their team members who need a little extra help to reach their goals.

51. Can you describe a situation when you had to implement a new process or system? How did your team respond?

This question reveals a candidate’s ability to enact change and handle resistance from reps who want to stick to the old processes.

What to listen for: You can gain valuable insight into how they handle change management. You want to ensure your sales leaders can effectively manage the implementation of new systems and that they can address the concerns of your sales team during transitions.

Insight from my experience: I’ve been asked this question, and have a great learning opportunity that I used to answer it: I remember leading the adoption and upgrades of a corporate CRM system that was integrated with our deskphones. The system was less than user-friendly, and there were a number of delays that slowed the process down. Fortunately, my team was patient with the process despite many hiccups.

52. What is your leadership superpower?

This question highlights a candidate’s leadership strengths and lets them share what differentiates them from other sales leaders.

What to listen for: Listen for specifics. An excellent sales manager must have done many appraisals and identified their superpower over the years.

53. Tell me about a time you had to adjust your sales strategy to reach your targets.

This question allows the candidate to demonstrate how they can respond to changing circumstances and pivot as required.

What to listen for: Every successful sales professional has had to change tactics at some point. Listen closely for the unique lessons they share.

54. How do you establish trust with members of your team?

This question vets candidates to identify team builders and collaborators who every rep can count on. The sales teams I worked on had strong rules of engagement and territory definitions, so

What to listen for: As a leader, establishing trust with a new team is essential to the job description. The answer to this question will tell you how your candidate approaches building trust and how important teamwork is to them.

55. What’s one way [your company] could improve our sales strategy?

This is an example of a question that can be very challenging for a candidate to answer unless they have been a customer, or you gave them a comprehensive description of their sales strategy.

If you ask this question, give the candidate the flexibility to offer a unique strategy they’ve encountered, even if you are already using this strategy. If you are going to ask a question about a way to improve the way you do business, the candidate can’t be expected to have insider information unless you provide it.

What to listen for: You want to attract the best and the brightest salespeople to your sales team. Listen for thoughtful answers that show preparation and familiarity with your company’s current practices.

Insight from my experience: A VP of sales once asked me what characteristics or experiences I had that no one else he was interviewing had. I wasn’t standing outside the office checking out who he was interviewing, so I didn’t have the intel to answer that question. I said as much during my answer, but the interviewer wanted something specific. Maybe it was the look on my face while I answered the question, but he didn’t hire me then or since.

56. What is the most difficult piece of feedback you’ve ever received? How has that shaped your approach as a sales leader?

This question shows how the potential sales director uses feedback to iterate on their processes and drive results. Feedback from a colleague or leader can motivate you to be introspective and take steps to improve on something. Or you can ignore it, and risk improving the habits that others observe as a shortcoming.

What to listen for: Although difficult feedback can be challenging to give and receive, it can be necessary to grow in one’s career. Having the candidate share feedback they’ve taken to heart and acted upon lets you glimpse how they’ve grown over time.

57. Would you rather have a toxic overachiever or a supportive underperformer on your team? Why?

This question gives insight into how a candidate thinks about the problem and the steps they’d take to correct the toxicity, underperformance, or both.

What to listen for: In a management or executive role, the candidate will frequently face situations like this. On the one hand, you want your team to meet their targets. On the other hand, a toxic team member can bring negativity into an organization (even if they’re exceeding quotas). There’s no right answer to this question; it will depend on the candidate and the situation.

58. How do you know it’s time to let someone go?

This question reveals a potential manager who can make the tough call when necessary.

What to listen for: See how the candidate approaches team management as a leader, even when there are tough decisions to be made.

Software Sales Interview Questions

You need to bring on sales reps who will advocate for your product on a technical level. When asking software sales questions, assess the candidate for their experience, understanding of metrics, and their ability to create a strong narrative behind the software for a client.

59. Share the steps you take to learn about a new piece of technology.

This question helps understand which candidates can learn about products quickly. There are many learning styles, ranging from visual learners that can learn from reading and watching videos.

What to listen for: Technology is constantly changing. This question gives you a good idea of how your candidate would take steps to learn about new product offerings. Auditory learners can hear someone talk about a topic, and interactive learners (like me) learn best by jumping into an application, then clicking buttons and links to experiment with the tech. No answer is really negative in this case — unless someone says they ignore the tech, hoping it just goes away.

60. How would you explain the features of a complex piece of software to a prospect who is not as well-versed in technology?

This question assesses a candidate’s communication skills and ability to tailor their presentation to a specific audience. It can be easy for technically savvy salespeople to come across as condescending to a non-technical audience. Great salespeople will respectfully focus on the business benefits of the technology and give the prospect credit for what they specialize in.

What to listen for: The ability to explain complex concepts is an art for software sales reps. Have the candidate discuss a hypothetical situation where they explain a software offering to you in easy-to-understand terms.

61. What is one improvement [your company] can make to [featured piece of software]?

You’ll see which candidates can find gaps in software and propose solutions. This question requires the kind of preparation that doesn’t come from reading a company’s website. The candidate should go to review websites like Capterra, or social media sites like Reddit, to get inspiration from customers or industry analysts.

What to listen for: You want a team of creative problem-solvers and innovators. This question allows your candidate to share their ideas, which ideally translates to how they would share ideas as a member of your team.

62. What was the last book you read or podcast you listened to?

This question identifies candidates with a growth mindset who learn from the sales industry's best. I often mentioned Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sell or Die podcast, or his Sales Bible when asked this question.

What to listen for: Individuals who are committed to continuous learning make inspiring team members. By asking this question, you get a glimpse into what kind of content the candidate consumes and how they continue to build their skills.

Bring On the Right Talent in Your Next Sales Interview

To hire a well-rounded sales rep, you have to ask the right questions to see how a candidate really thinks. This will help you improve your team’s performance and help you hit your business goals.

I hope you’ll use this guide in your next round of interviews — and find the candidates you’ve been looking for.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

You know what they say about habits: it takes just 21 days, or three weeks, to make or break one. Yet for something that takes such a short time to develop, bad habits can have a massive impact on your life. And often we don’t even realize that we’re developing them until it’s too late.

This is especially true when they happen to be related to your job. That’s why we’re calling out five bad habits that you may or may not realize are stunting your sales growth, and how you can replace them with practices proven to improve your sales productivity and performance.

Diving Head-First into Lead Lists

The drive to make things happen is the mark of a good salesperson. However, this sometimes translates into an over-eagerness that ultimately causes more harm than good. Exhibit A: receiving a list of tens, hundreds or even thousands of leads, and diving in head-first. Most often, the logic is to prioritize those leads that have historically been the easiest to close – but “easiest” doesn’t necessarily translate into “most valuable.” This type of approach results in reps ignoring an average of 50% of marketing leads.

Break this bad habit by taking the time to identify the characteristics of the leads that result in the most value for your business. One way to do this is by segmenting leads by various dimensions such as lead source, industry, company size, contact title, etc. and then calculating and comparing their lead yields as shown in the example below. To learn about lead yield in more detail, download this free resource.

Focusing on Activities and Not Outcomes

Most teams have activity goals that they’re expected to meet on a regular basis: calls made, meetings set, emails sent, etc. While these metrics are great for bolstering productivity and keeping reps on pace, they can often cause reps and managers alike to lose sight of the larger goal: closing business. While hitting your call quota for the week is great, if none of these calls connected you with a decision maker or resulted in follow-up conversations, it’s hardly cause for celebration.

To avoid this type of tunnel vision, it’s important to make sure that your activity goals are based on actual conversion rates rather than gut feelings. Don’t just tell reps to send 50 emails a day because you think that should be enough to secure 3 conversations; dig into your sales data and figure out, on average, how many emails it takes for a rep to make contact, and base your target on this. In doing this exercise, you will also discover the activities that convert the best for your business. Perhaps channeling the energy it takes to send those 50 emails into making just 20 more calls would make a much larger impact.

Separating Yourself from Other Departments

As a salesperson, it can sometimes feel as though all of the pressure is on you, and it’s no secret that frustrations can sometimes arise between sales and other departments. Why is marketing claiming that they own that lead? Why did support get frustrated when you reached out to that one client for an upsell? When it comes to situations like these, it can become easy to feel as though there is a divide between you and other departments.

The truth is that at the end of the day everyone at your company should be striving toward the same goal: revenue. And making this dream a reality is much easier when everyone keeps the lines of communication open. For example, companies where sales and marketing work in harmony are 67% better at closing deals! One of the best ways to make this happen and keep everyone on the same page is by integrating your sales platform with other business tools, such as marketing automation or support systems. For more details on why and how you should make this happen, check out this blog post.

Entering Things in Your CRM Later

No sales rep likes having to interrupt his or her activity flow to enter information into a CRM. In fact, it can be quite tempting to just jot down a few thoughts or make a mental note and move right on to your next call. You can just enter all of this information at once at the end of the day, right? Procrastination aside, lack of a mobile CRM forces some field reps to return to their desks at the end of a long day to document their activities and outcomes.

Did you know that people forget 40% of what they’ve learned in just 20 minutes? As such, think of how much valuable sales data is lost each time you put off entering information into your CRM. The good news is that there is more than one way to nip this nasty habit in the bud. First of all, choose a CRM that is easy and intuitive to use. Second, leverage a solution that provides automatic data capture for activities like emailing, calling, booking meetings, etc. Finally, don’t forget to find a CRM that offers a native mobile application so that your field reps can enter and access the information they need anytime, anywhere. And for more insight into the type of sales platform your reps actually want to use, download this free white paper.

Checking Reports on a Weekly Basis

Chances are that you have a weekly all-hands sales meeting, where reps and managers alike share metrics and provide updates on where they stand against their quotas. This is great, and super important for keeping everyone in the sales org on the same page. However, if you find yourself pulling reports and crunching numbers every Tuesday to prep for your meeting on Wednesday, we have a problem.

While weekly reporting was a major undertaking and satisfactory achievement twenty years ago, today, the best sales reps and managers check their key reports multiple times a day. And thanks to the development of real-time dashboards and lightning-speed data analysis, this is totally possible with minimal effort on your part. Once you define the top 3-5 metrics for your team, build these numbers into a sales dashboard that can be kept open and refreshed with the click of a button.

Creating Healthy Sales Habits

It’s never too late to start creating healthy sales habits. By following these 5 simple tips, you can start drastically improving your sales growth in just three weeks.

Picture, if you will, a house. What comes to mind? Four walls, square windows, a rectangular door? Changes are there’s a lot of right angles.

But one look at a home built by LA-based Binishells is all it takes to realize that this construction company is doing things differently — and thinking outside the box.

Binishells president and CEO Nicolò Bini is continuing the work of his father, who developed the technology for these domed buildings back in the 1960s. It’s something Bini refers to as “building 2.0” — a cleaner, safer, less wasteful and more cost-efficient way of doing construction.
It doesn’t hurt that it looks really cool, too. Read more...

More about Hyatt Incubator, Supported, Sponsored, and Lifestyle

Google has convinced the world that its way of advertising is the best way. But a new period of doubt is setting in. The post Under Pressure to Prove Its Ads Actually Work, Google Opens Up appeared first on WIRED.

Tech jobs tend to pay well — even if you aren't working at a tech company.

That's according to job site Paysa, which analyzes over 35 million salary data points for over 100,000 companies along with tens of millions of résumés in order to break down the frequency of certain skill sets.

Paysa identified some of the best-paying tech positions that don't require you to work at a top company like Netflix or Google in order to make bank. They pay well regardless of who signs the paycheck.

Paysa uses average pay as a metric instead of median pay in order to reflect the skewed, asymmetric pay data of equity and bonuses. The company groups together data points (including c-suite salaries) collected from job postings to learn which occupations snag the best salaries across the board.

Below, find 10 tech gigs that pay well, no matter where you are.

SEE ALSO: See the downtown Manhattan office where a fraction of IBM's global team works on technology of the future

10. Financial analyst

Financial analysts provide financial and investment guidance.

Average total pay: $86,128

Average base salary: $59,059

Percent of all titles: 0.58%

9. Programmer analyst

Financial analysts provide financial and investment guidance.

Average total pay: $88,226

Average base salary: $64,842

Percent of all titles: 0.85%

8. Systems analyst

Programmer analysts program and repair computer systems.

Average total pay $88,827

Average base salary: $65,639

Percent of all titles: 0.79%

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The ecommerce market continues to grow worldwide with sales of close to $400 billion in 2016 and this figure is expected to increase again in 2017. The world of ecommerce is a very rewarding one but also a very competitive one. With that in mind, here’s four ways you can stay ahead of your competition.

#1. Customer service

Providing excellent customer service is a great way to ensure customer retention and build loyalty. On the other hand, many consumers who have a bad customer experience will never return and an estimated 95% will tell friends and family about their unpleasant shopping experience.

Word-of-mouth is a great way for businesses to gain new customers. I have had great customer service experiences with Amazon in the past and this has helped the organisation build customer loyalty with me. I have also told friends and family in conversation as well as through social media about my customer experience.

Recent research conducted by Medalllia, revealed that customers who had the best experiences stay six times longer and spend 140% more than those who had poor experiences. With accessibility to information about companies easier than ever through the Internet and social media, the return on investment from providing great customer service is likely to increase in comparison to traditional methods.

Even Ryanair, a company who in the past has focused its business model on profit and neglected customer service including the unwanted title of Which? worst brand for customer service, has recently had a shift in mindset and improved the customer experience including removing that awful “musical” tune when you land. And the result? Happier customers and increased profits, illustrating it “pays to be nice to your customers”.

#2. Search Optimisation

The first step in selling your products is to have them listed on Amazon or your own webstore. The next step is more challenging, you have to attract customers to your page to buy these products. With billions of buyers out there looking to snap up a bargain and high competition amongst sellers greater than ever, one way of attracting customers is focusing on search engine optimisation (SEO).

The majority of people searching for goods on the Internet will use a search engine or a search bar within a site. Try to imagine yourself as the customer and think about what search terms you would use to find your goods. Like most customers, I wouldn’t use punctuation or capitalisation when searching, so avoid using this in your product titles.

Instead, ensure your product keywords are included in your listings and optimised accordingly. Make your title as descriptive as possible and reflective on buyers’ search terms. If you’re interested in finding out more about SEO for your business, Business Insider has provided a great article covering ten basics to get you started.

#3. Competitive pricing

Price is an extremely important purchasing factor for consumers especially during the holiday season when companies are competing against each other. It can be time-consuming to update your prices manually especially if you have hundreds or even thousands of products. Repricing software can automatically update your prices based on your own price rules (including min and max prices) so you can focus on providing excellent customer service.

#4. Promotions

Everyone likes to feel like they are getting a bargain especially over the holiday season. It doesn’t always have to result in slashing your prices and profit. Here’s some other ideas which may help you attract customers and help ensure they have a good customer service:

• cross-selling
• free shipping
• free gifts when you spend X amount
• up-selling and gift-wrapping.

All you have to do is discover which one(s) work best for your business.

Conclusion

So there for have it. Four ways to boost sales: exceeding customer expectations, search optimisation, competitive pricing and incentives such as free shipping.

The overall theme is ensuring your customer has a good experience and you exceed their expectations. This can be achieved by making your products easy to find using keywords, offering a high quality product, delivering these on time and responding to any customer queries within a reasonable time period.

Hopefully there are a few ideas here that you can take from this article and implement in your ecommerce business. Each business is unique and what works for one may not necessarily work for another.

Every year around the holidays, my family brings out a Christmas themed puzzle. It is in fact the same 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle that my wife put together each year as a young girl. We usually bring it out after Thanksgiving and over the following weeks, my four kids, my wife and I slowly piece it together.

Even though I’ve put this puzzle together many, many times, finding the right piece to fit in the right spot can still be incredibly time consuming and frustrating. With the top of our dining room table filled with hundreds of small pieces, I will endlessly scan the many colors and shapes thinking that any moment I’ll spot the exact piece for which I’m looking.

Yet, it rarely works out that way. The right piece does not easily reveal itself. However, when I decide to concentrate just on the Christmas tree or the reindeer, removing the other pieces that don’t relate, I more readily find what I need. Suddenly, with the right focus, the needed puzzle piece magically appears, even though it had been under my nose the entire time.

I’m convinced that the solutions for many of our organizational challenges are within our reach, maybe even under noses. Our ideas, resources, and past experiences offer rich possible solutions, but for some reason we may not fully see it. Like a display of individual puzzle pieces laid in front us, the right piece is there somewhere, but we may need some guidance to find it.

One of the greatest puzzles that we face is creating environments where employees at every level are committed to the purpose of their organization. After surveying over 80,000 people, Gallup stated that only 32% of employees are engaged in their jobs, while 68% were either not engaged or actively disengaged. Too often employees are delivering their work only with their hands, while their heart is not in it.

What can you do to build higher levels of commitment on your team? How can you help engage the hearts and minds of your employees and not just their hands and feet? Here are five ways that leaders can earn the heart of their workforce (Aiken & Keller, 2009). Focusing on these five conversations will help you find the right piece in the commitment puzzle in your organization.

Five Ways to Earn the Heart and Minds of Your Employees

The first and most popular way of earning the heart of an employee is through communicating the organization’s results. It is exciting to be part of something that is profitable and is growing market share. It can be rewarding to see how much money is being saved and how the stock price is moving up. While this can be a powerful link to the organization, this approach can be tremendously overused and overly relied on.

Social psychology research indicates that only about 20% of employees and leaders are energized solely by operational results. Talking about increasing productivity and cost savings is critical, but that is not going to tap into most of your employees. There are four other conversations that will engage the other 80% of your workforce.

Rarely, if ever, does someone come to work to fail. People want to shine and to be successful. They want to use their expertise and clearly understand what is expected of them. They want others to find value in what they do. They want to add to the discussion and to the product or service in meaningful ways. They want to build a career. They want to be challenged. They want to make a difference.

Yet, too often, they may not understand the impact their work has on the organization’s purpose. Or perhaps they receive confusing or misaligned expectations from upper management. Providing transparent and straightforward feedback in an environment that stretches and grows people is key in helping others support the team, department, and organization. Connecting one’s day-to-day tasks to the greater vision, engages and energizes another large segment of your organization.

Some employees may not mind ambiguous or frequently changing direction from their boss. They also may not care as much what The Street says about the organization’s stock price. What drives them is how their work benefits their customers. They are strongly motivated by making the customer’s life better in some way.

Whether it is building an app that delivers up-to-date information, serving delicious food on a special occasion, or making someone feel more comfortable after a medical procedure, many employees are most motivated by their direct or indirect impact on their customers. Leaders who clearly articulate internal and external customer needs, provide the necessary resources to take care of those needs, and recognize employees when they address the needs, tap into another critical avenue toward building organizational commitment.

How does my community benefit from what I do every day? How will the world be a better place for my family and friends because of what I do? How will the environment be positively impacted because of what I contribute? Higher percentages of the workforce are concerned not just about operational results but about societal results. They want to make a difference not just for their customers now, but for humanity tomorrow.

While some of this perspective can be attributed to the rise of younger generations, it is a powerful motivator for many people…of all ages. As a leader, emphasize how your team benefits others outside of the organization. Talk about how the planet is better, how sustainability is promoted, and how neighborhoods are renewed because of what each person in the organization does. Don’t make stuff up, just look at work activities in a different light and you’ll engage another group of your workforce.

How do you build unity among team members? How do you enable friendships? Earlier in my career I worked at the corporate office of Kohl’s Department Stores. I had the privilege of working with smart, experienced, and considerate team members. I looked forward to seeing them, working with them, and navigating organizational challenges with them. They helped me feel engaged.

The power of peers to support, educate, and stretch each other is too often an underutilized commitment tool. Encourage members of your team to get to know each other—their styles, their preferences, their strengths, and their opportunities. Build open communication so new ideas can be shared and added to. And spend time as a team in less structured ways to foster personal connections that will sustain people in rough times.

Ultimately, the team leader is the voice and determines how to focus on each of these commitment enhancing conversations. The leader is the representative of the organization and has the responsibility to create an environment where employees can thrive. Is it too hard to share all five commitment approaches at once? Maybe so, but can you strive to use at least three of them or even four? Each of these five approaches, especially when they are all used, will help you sharply increase your focus on engaging your people.

Creating employee commitment, just like finding the right puzzle piece, can be a challenging and sometimes frustrating experience, even though the answer may be right under your nose. However, with a clear focus and helpful strategies, the right pieces will fall into place. Using the five ways of building organizational commitment will help you look at your team in new ways to earn their hearts and minds. Connect the pieces together for your employees and their commitment will create a vibrant picture of success.

To help remind you of the Five Ways to Earn the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees, we created an infographic for you that you can download and or print. Click here to download your FREE copy of the “5 Ways to Earn the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees Infographic

This post is the fourth installment of our new series, The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing. For eight weeks, we’re featuring a new article that covers a specific area of focus in email! Want a sneak peek into the content? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing. It’s easy to become obsessed with the latest and greatest “tricks” in email marketing: the formula for creating an effective subject line; the perfect call-to-action copy that will influence more of your subscribers; the ideal way to design an email that will bypass the spam filter. While it’s certainly a good thing to stay on top of the latest email marketing best practices, there is one key to boosting subscriber engagement that is often overlooked. And that’s sending valuable content your subscribers expect and want to receive from you. But how do you know if you’re sending relevant emails? What does “valuable content” actually mean? In this post, we’ll dive deeper into what it takes to create engaging content and how you can apply it to your emails today. Prefer to listen to this blog post? Check out the podcast adaptation of this post or watch the YouTube video:

So what is valuable email content, anyway?

The dictionary definition of “valuable” is “worth a great deal of money; extremely useful or important.” So content that is valuable to your subscribers should first and foremost be useful and important. As a result, the goal of every email you send and the foundation of your email content strategy should be to help your audience.

“I approach email marketing as the chance to open up a conversation. Of course, I have goals and objectives for my emails but I always look at what value I can add to the person reading my email before asking them to do anything.” – Mark Asquith, Excellence Expected

[bctt tweet=”I have goals and objectives for my emails, but I always look at what value I can add. – Mark Asquith”]

To help you craft useful emails your subscribers won’t be able to find anywhere else, there are 5 questions to use as a litmus test for your content.

1. Is it useful?

The best way to create helpful content is to take what you know about your specific audience and brainstorm topics that addresses their needs and goals.

Using your subscriber/customer personas, you can identify ways to provide solutions to specific problems, help them achieve their goals, keep them up-to-date on industry news and so on – just be sure the education you provide ties back to your business.

To deliver this educational content via email, you can send either a broadcast or a follow up.

Broadcasts are one-time emails you can send to deliver time-sensitive information, such as a newsletter, blog updates or information about an upcoming sale or event.

In this email newsletter below from food blogger Meghan Young, for example, she shares her latest blog post:

Follow ups (also known as autoresponders) are emails you can create and schedule in advance to be automatically delivered to subscribers the moment they sign up to your list. Since these emails can run for weeks, months or years at a time, the content is usually evergreen (not time-sensitive).

Some follow up emails you might schedule include welcome emails, an educational course or a lead nurturing series.

Before determining which type of email you want to send, you should identify the goal of your message. Then, make sure it’s clearly conveyed to readers.

“I also make sure to be super clear on where the value is within the email for the reader. I only ever ask them to take one action and ensure that they know exactly what taking that action will result in.” – Mark Asquith

[bctt tweet=”I make sure to be clear on where the value is within the email for the reader. – Mark Asquith”]

2. Is it interesting?

To create interesting content, there are a few writing principles to keep in mind.

First, choose a tone that works best for your audience. In many cases, taking a conversational tone can improve readability and help your brand appear more relatable.

However, if your audience expects a more formal tone because it’s more appropriate for your industry, then keep it formal. Again, reference your audience persona to confirm you’re writing in a way that’s most appealing to them.

“I treat my subscribers like I would someone I really respect and admire. I know some people who are very intelligent and discerning are on my email list and they read my stuff. So I don’t talk down to people, and I make it worthwhile to read my emails. I even bury jokes in the “P.S.” and small font at the end just to delight and surprise people who are paying attention.” – John Corcoran, Smart Business Revolution

[bctt tweet=”I treat my subscribers like I would someone I really respect and admire. – John Corcoran “]

Second, organize your email content in a way that’s easy for subscribers to read and skim. In today’s fast-paced world, you may only have a few seconds to showcase the value of your email. So make it as easy as possible for them to understand.

To accomplish this, structure your content so the most important information is at the top. Additionally, use headlines, subheadlines and bullet points to break up large chunks of text. To emphasize important parts of your message, try bolding, italicizing or underlining words and phrases.

3. Is it unique?

As you consider what you want to write about in your emails, you may find that your topics have already been covered by someone else. But that doesn’t mean you can’t jump in on the conversation.

In order to make your content stand out from the rest, try taking a new angle on the topic. By doing so, you’ll be able to stand out from competitors and establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche.

I also encourage you to try new content mediums where your competitors may not have big audiences. If your industry is flooded with blog posts and ebooks, experiment with other forms of communication like podcasts or video.

As you test different angles, keep an eye on your email performance to see what resonates best with your audience. To help you really stand out in the inbox, optimize your subject line to include specific references to what subscribers will learn in your email!

4. Is it what you promised in your sign up form?

A big reason why subscribers disengage with an email list is because the emails no longer deliver the value they were expecting.

When it comes to sending valuable emails, the expectations you set in your sign up form play a huge role. By telling people what you’ll be sending them in your emails (as well as how often they’ll receive them) before they sign up to your list, they’ll know what they’re getting into. Plus, you’ll be more likely to attract the right subscribers.

This will also prevent any unpleasant surprises for your subscribers, which could lead to spam complaints and unsubscribes.

Check out the sign up form from the previous example from food blogger, Meghan Young:

In the sign up form, she tells me what kind of content to expect in my inbox and how often it’ll arrive.

Once you’ve verified that you’re setting clear expectations, it’s time to follow up on your promise by delivering that content.

5. Does it align with your business goals?

Whether you send emails to build an audience, grow your business or both, the content you send should help achieve your goals.

When you’re not directly promoting a product or your service, consider how you can still give your subscribers opportunities to connect with you and become a customer. As you provide educational content, show how your business can also be an answer to their problem and include links back to your website.

Maybe there are ways you can include customer case studies or testimonials, or even share user-generated content from your social followers.

As long as you regularly deliver valuable content, providing opportunities for them to turn into customers should feel like a natural element of your emails, rather than a sales push.

If you keep these elements in mind, you’ll be creating valuable email content in no time.

Create addictive content

While all five of these tactics are great ways to craft engaging content for your audience, I encourage you to choose one and give it a try in your next email!

To learn even more ways to improve your email content (like what to write in your subject lines and welcome emails), check out The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing!

There are many steps you can take to ensure your direct mail materials get noticed and read. Opting for quality graphics and professionally written copy, and including incentives that are irresistible to your target audience is a good place to start. But did you know that there are ways to extend the life of your direct mail postcard or brochure that can generate even more revenue for your business?

Direct mail has consistently demonstrated the potential to create a lasting effect on consumers, and part of this is its proven ability to trigger a positive emotional response. But physical mail offers something else that digital advertising doesn’t: staying power.

Mail-Out Materials that Stick Around

Many postal studies show that consumers have a strong tendency to keep, display, and share certain types of direct mail materials, including:

• coupons,
• restaurant menus, and
• sales flyers

Not only are about two-thirds of potential customers inclined to keep mail they feel offers immediate or future value, they’re also very apt to display that mail in highly visible locations inside their homes. This provides an outstanding opportunity for your brand to engage with prospects on multiple occasions – over an extended period of time – and all for the price of a single mail-out.

Research from the US Postal Service confirms that 81% of recipients read their mail daily and, because of its tangible nature, tend to “save mailed coupons for future use and share mailings with others.”

So, just how much extra life can you expect to squeeze out of your double-duty postcard or brochure?

Surveys have suggested that, depending on the format, many direct mail recipients keep print materials from a few days to a month, or longer. In fact, an in-depth study conducted by the Canada Post Corporation, established that this is indeed the case for:

• product and service coupons (67%),
• restaurant menus (77%),
• promotional mail (41%), and
• retail flyers (61%)

Getting a Foot in the Door

Just as important as the keeping of direct mail postcards and brochures, is the fact that consumers love to share them. Even if a well-crafted offer doesn’t meet the immediate needs of the person who opens it, they’re far more likely to pass that coupon or sales discount along to someone they know, than they are an email or social media promotion.

Print mail is memorable, and can ultimately be a joy to receive. In today’s noisy digital world, consumers have begun to recognize direct mail as a more intimate bid for their attention – and their response to this personalized approach has been to:

• visit a physical place of business almost twice as often
• visit a company website more than two-thirds of the time

Companies that take the time to research their clients and prospects, and to design direct mail communications that are relevant and offer long-term value, are being rewarded with an invitation into the homes and lives of their customers. And there’s nothing more effective than a foot-in-the-door to nurture a lasting relationship.

The use of hashtags has become so prominent in content, particularly on social media, that it has penetrated pop culture. Jimmy Fallon has produced skits with celebrity guests poking fun at the hashtag phenomenon.

Hashtags are much more than a pop culture trend, though. Understanding how to use them in your marketing and lead generation strategies carries tremendous weight.

However, make sure you are keeping with your company’s Tone of Voice across all of your social media platforms.

Branding and Reinforcement

The term “hashtag” aligns closely with the conventional marketing concept “tagline”. Hashtags, in much the same way as a slogan or tagline, can depict the central theme of a branded advertising campaign.

In some cases, this relationship is straightforward, such as when Intel uses #IntelInside in promotional campaigns. Intel is leveraging its long-running, recognisable slogan.

Often, though, companies introduce innovative content or social campaigns to appeal to a particular audience or to glamourize otherwise dull products.

General Electric has been dubbed the “most exciting boring brand” because it has effectively used awe-inspiring photos and video content to showcase companies using their brands to get the job done.

GE often uses a simple hashtag approach in representing its value, such as #GE #Transportation on it’s Instagram account where it has 271,000 followers.

Social Search Extension

If you value search engine optimisation, you should value hashtags on social channels for the same reasons.

Hashtags are integral to the user search process on leading social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Last year LinkedIn also introduced the use of hashtags to users of their mobile app.

Including targeted hashtags in your social posts is akin to integrating keywords on your web and blog content.

People searching for related topics and phrases are more likely to discover your message.

Additionally, the hashtag conveys to the social channel what your message and profile are about, which simplifies the platform’s ability to recommend your profile to potential followers that have an interest in your broadcasts. Reaching more people is beneficial to your lead generation.

Creating Conversations

Creating or participating in social conversations is another purpose of hashtags.

Brands often use concise, catchy hashtags to strike up a conversation or drive engagement with users.

During the Super Bowl, for instance, the hashtag #SuperBowl was used by brands to attract attention from people paying attention to the big game.

Twitter chats, or scheduled conversations around a particular topic, are another way to use hashtags to start or participate in discussions. Your brand may want to host a chat on a relevant topic, and a clever hashtag keeps users in sync.

When successful, Twitter chats can lead to hashtags becoming trending topics.

There is a very useful series of posts covering this in much greater details on the Twitter Chat page.

Remember that you are engaging with people, so make sure to participate on a personal level. If done correctly, you can boost your brand advocates over time.

Show Personality or Humour

Although some companies place too much emphasis on this factor, hashtags do allow you a way to project personality or humour while remaining professional. Funny, witty or relevant hashtags can enhance the emotional appeal of your content.

A hospitality services company might use #GetYourPicnicOn, for instance, as a way to highlight an outdoor food event that it helps facilitate. This hashtag could be part of an ongoing campaign, or simply a one-off message designed to invoke humour or thought in one message.

Use Your Conversations As Content

If you do decide to run a Twitter chat, use the questions and comments from participants to generate blog posts for your site. It should contain many of the keywords relevant to your industry and will also help with your SEO.

Also, not everyone will be able to make it to your chat, so synopsise the best of it and send it to your email lists to encourage others to join.

Should you manage to get some industry influencers taking part, ask them to share your content once you have it completed.

Wrap Up

There are a lot of benefits to efficient hashtag use in content, social sharing and lead generation strategies.

However, you have to understand their purpose and your intended objectives to maximise results.

Inspire and engage people with your Twitter chats and use the outcomes to create a larger audience for your brand.

The request for proposal became a tool of choice in B2B communication for plenty of good reasons. For one thing, RFPs seem to offer a practical way of explaining what services are being sought. As a business owner, it can be appealing to simply say, “This is what we need. Now tell us what you’ll deliver.”

At the same time, RFPs force potential vendors to compete by allowing a business to look at them side by side and compare apples to apples. When two service providers write proposals about the same project, it’s easy for a business owner to look at price points and skill sets and then decide which would provide the best bang for the proverbial buck.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s time for the business community to let the RFP die. While it might seem like an RFP facilitates communication, much ends up being lost in translation.

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It might seem like an RFP facilitates communication, much ends up lost in translation.
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Let the Chef Cook the Meal

There’s a certain irony to the logic behind an RFP.

In theory, you’re approaching a vendor because you respect what its skill set has to offer your business. Ostensibly, you should want this expert you’re seeking to take a good look at your company and discuss what is necessary to meet your goals. However, with an RFP, you’re taking a position that states you already know what you want or need, and now you just want the experts to explain how they can and will perform a series of tasks to meet those expectations—no more, no less.

In truth, this might not do anything to further your company’s goals. The whole point of approaching vendors is to let them drive the conversation a little bit to discover how they can deliver the maximum value. A list of tasks provided in an RFP doesn’t do that. If anything, it limits the vendors by not allowing them to flex whatever expertise they have to offer.

When you go to a fancy restaurant, for example, you rely on the expertise of a chef to provide you with something delicious. If you order a dish and then try to change it by saying, “Hold this, and take out that, and I’d like to have it prepared in this way,” you ignore the expertise of the chef and entirely miss the point of fine dining.

Your company has specific pain points that have to be mentioned. But those should come up naturally in the course of conversations you’re having with the experts you’re considering working with—not crammed into a list of demands. If you’re going to a company to take advantage of its expertise in certain practice areas, let them show it off. An RFP doesn’t help them do that.

3 Nails in the RFP Coffin

The reasons we need to put the RFP out to pasture can be boiled down to three main issues.

1. RFPs Establish Tasks, Not Goals

Success in the modern market is driven by a series of micro-moments that lead to a sale—key action points that drive consumers to convert. Seizing upon these opportunities involves using everything at one’s disposal to create a comprehensive strategy, not simply running down a specific checklist the way an RFP does.

For example, one of our clients had an RFP asking for SEO and a logo redesign. All they wanted was a proposal for those two tasks, but I decided to look at their analytics and data, and I quickly realized that the logo and SEO weren’t the problems; the problem was how they were set up for search—people weren’t searching for what they had to offer.

This client didn’t actually know what they needed, but because they had heard somewhere that SEO and logos were common issues, they didn’t think to ask about anything else. What they really needed was to talk with an expert about their goals as a company and then let us use our expertise to explain how those goals would best be achieved.

Bottom line: You need to make sure that you’re identifying why you need help, not just what you want help with.

2. RFPs Are Inherently Non-Collaborative

When you’re looking for an agency to work with, you want a partner to provide fresh perspective, not an adversary you’re wringing for value. A narrow list of demands will lead to limited results, whereas an open conversation that includes the sharing of big data will help define your company’s goals and generate a meaningful course for moving forward.

For instance, I’ve had clients tell me they’ve been marketing for a year, everything is great, and they’re seeing growth. But when I pull up their analytics, I see that they’ve actually had zero growth in the past year because all they’ve been doing is retargeting efforts. They kept giving RFPs to agencies that outlined what they wanted, but they never sat down with an expert to go over their data and pinpoint what was really going on or where they wanted to go next.

Instead of an RFP, you want to have a more general conversation about your company’s goals and to share your performance metrics with your potential partners. You can’t come up with an effective solution without that collaborative effort.

3. RFPs Are Reactive, Not Proactive

It may be tempting to send out RFPs, sit back, and hope the best solutions find you, but that’s not how business works. Success comes to those who actively search for what they want, not those who wait around with their fingers crossed.

Seek out the best vendor for your needs by reaching out to your network. Read through relevant publications to see who’s getting press, which can be a good benchmark for credibility. Find out who has accomplished goals similar to yours for other businesses.

In the end, it’s pretty simple: Just do your research. Be proactive, and put in the legwork to find the service provider who will best suit your needs. Is there an old saying about birds putting out RFPs to find adequate worms? No. That’s not how it goes. Said birds head out early and get those worms.

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Buyer personas? Good. A/B testing? Good. What about A/B testing buyer personas?

Constructing buyer personas is useful for any business. Buyer personas determine the ways in which individuals can interact with your business. To sell a product or service to a prospective customer, you have to understand how that prospective customer buys.

Designing one landing page or running one Facebook ad just doesn’t work anymore. Unfortunately, there is no foolproof, one-size-fits-all methodology when it comes to getting more clicks, sign ups or conversions.

You need to have a set of specific buyer personas in place and tailor your content accordingly. If not, you’re conducting your marketing efforts rather blindly.

Types of Buyer Personas

In Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, online marketing experts Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg suggest that all customers can be split up into four buyer personas: competitive, spontaneous, methodical and humanistic. Although there are four distinct buyer personas, every person who sees a Facebook ad, opens an email or visits a landing page is going to ask themselves the same question: What’s in it for me?

The competitive buyer makes up 5-10% of the buyer persona spectrum. They value speed and efficiency and make decisions quickly. The competitive buyer is primarily motivated by the competitive advantage they could gain, regardless of cost. If you want the competitive buyer to convert, you have to blatantly state the benefits and the advantage they have to gain with the evidence to back it up. The competitive buyer is very data-driven.

The spontaneous buyer makes up 25-35% of the spectrum. They’re easy-going and make decisions quickly, but unlike the competitive buyer who is motivated by logic and numbers, the spontaneous buyer is motivated by emotion. If you want the spontaneous buyer to convert, you have to make them feel like they’re trying something new and exciting for the first time. The spontaneous buyer tends to be easily distracted, so make sure your messaging and design get right to the point without being too plain or boring.

The methodical buyer makes up the largest chunk of the spectrum: 45%, according to the Eisenberg brothers. They are in no rush to make a decision. The methodical buyer is driven by logic and doesn’t make a decision without researching the facts and evidence. If they have questions, they want answers. They’re the type of buyer who reads the fine print. To get the methodical buyer to convert, you have to hawk your credibility and share as much pertinent information necessary to debunk any skepticism.

The humanistic buyer makes up 15% of the spectrum. Emotionally driven, the humanistic buyer is more motivated by being able to relate to something rather than by numbers. They are most interested in buying something that can help them. Imagery, storytelling, testimonials and any messaging that evokes emotion are particularly effective ways to reach the humanistic buyer.

How to Create Buyer Personas

The Eisenberg brothers’ buyer personas separate customers based on the speed of their decisions and how they behave when making a purchase, but those four categories aren’t the be all, end all of buyer personas.

Your business is unique, and so are your buyer personas.

Researching and creating unique buyer personas is a smart move for any business because it will provide valuable insight into how to appeal to your customers. Otherwise, you’re taking a shot in the dark. If you don’t know exactly which prospective customers you’re going after, how can you expect to convert them successfully?

Instead of assuming what your customers will respond to, you’ll KNOW what they’ll respond to.

Buyer personas go beyond the obvious details (age, gender, geographic location, etc.) and get way more specific. Think demographics, personality traits, interests, beliefs and motivations. Together, those characteristics represent one type of ideal customer. The customer is even given a name and considered to be an actual person. Here’s a great example:

Image Source

There are lots of questions to ask when creating buyer personas. Ultimately, your primary objective is to get as specific as possible. If there’s one thing you can never do enough of, it’s research. Ask yourself:

What’s a day in the life? Determine your persona’s typical day, including their job responsibilities and what they do outside of work. What are their job hours? Do they spend more time at work or home? Where would they rather be? What do they do to blow off steam or have fun?

Don’t make the mistake of creating personas in silos. In real life, personas interact with one another. If you want your personas to be of us, incorporate their relationships with other personas, like a supervisor’s relationship with a subordinate employee. This provides a much deeper understanding of a persona’s behaviors, pain points and obstacles.

To really understand what it’s like to walk in a persona’s shoes, write it in the first-person. First-person wording is much more insightful than a third-person explanation.

What are their objectives? You want your message to resonate. To do that, you have to know what your persona’s goals and responsibilities are.

What are their pain points? Get granular when identifying your persona’s problems. How do these problems make them feel? For example, your persona isn’t frustrated by “inefficiencies” in the workplace; they’re frustrated by a convoluted workflow that prevents them from reaching deadlines.

In the uber-competitive business climate we live in, fully fleshing out your buyer personas is worth your while. According to a 2016 benchmark study conducted by Cintell, a customer intelligence platform that helps businesses better understand their customers, 71% of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals use personas, compared to the 37% who simply meet goals and the 26% who miss goals entirely. Increased website traffic, improved open and click-through rates, more revenue and more leads are just a few of the benefits you can expect from creating a robust arsenal of buyer personas.

Your buyer personas are fictional versions of your actual buyers, but they are based on actual data. How do you get that data? Heat maps, the search terms used to find your business, the content they view, customer feedback, Facebook Insights, etc.

Another method not typically included in that list of “actual data” is A/B testing, which can provide keen insights into your buyers by using customer behavior to fine tune your personas.

A/B Testing Basics

A/B testing is a critical component of any marketing plan and is hopefully already a part of your efforts. For those who are unfamiliar, A/B testing is like conducting a scientific experiment (flashback to high school biology): There is a control group and an experimental group, or variation.

An A/B test pits one variable against another, like a green CTA button versus a red one, or one landing page layout versus another, to see which performs better.

Experimenting with different headlines, wording, landing page layout and CTA buttons can lead you in the direction of higher conversion rates and more revenue.

How to Analyze A/B Tests

Launch your control (A) first. Once it’s been up and running for 24 to 48 hours, it’s time to analyze. Ask yourself:

• How is the control performing?
• What are you trying to improve upon? Conversions? Sign ups? Social sharing? Click-throughs?
• What could be influencing its performance?
• What could be changed to improve its performance?

Once you establish the areas that can be improved upon, you can create and launch your variation (B).

To be able to assess performance accurately, both variations need to be running at the same time for enough time to see substantial results. So, how much time is enough?

It depends, but the amount of traffic is often the determining factor. For example, if you’re A/B testing Facebook ads typically don’t get a lot of traction, it will take longer to run the A/B test. The only exception is if you’re testing timing, say with finding the best time to send out emails.

There are a number of tools you can use to analyze results. Some are pricey; some are free; some are built-in. Tools like Optimizely and Kissmetrics A/B Test Report provide super in-depth data. Apps like Hemingway and Grammarly can help you tighten up your copy and make it easier to read. WordPress plugins like Nelio A/B Testing and Simple Page Tester allow you to track visits, heat maps and more. MailChimp already has built-in A/B testing.

You can also set up a free Google Alert, which will help you determine which AdWords or organic search terms may be worth testing. It also enables you to keep tabs on your competitors’ messaging. You’ll get an email for any new mentions of a keyword, phrase, company, etc.

Testing 1, 2, 3…

Some of your buyer persona details may be open to interpretation, but A/B testing gives you hard and fast evidence of your persona’s likes, dislikes, wants, needs and beliefs.

Pretend you’re a pastry chef known creating exquisite wedding cakes. As an experienced and in-demand pastry chef, you know that your buyer is typically a bride who needs to book with you at least 6 to 12 months out, especially if they’re getting married during the summer. You also know that your buyer is mainly motivated by fear: fear that if they don’t book soon, their big day won’t include an expertly crafted cake. Their wedding may be a year away, but your availability is already dwindling. In turn, your messaging will speak to that fear.

But you’d be making a mistake by only speaking to that motivation. Don’t isolate the buyers who aren’t driven by fear. A simple A/B test will help you determine which type of buyer persona makes up the bulk of your audience.

To figure it out, you’d A/B test two landing pages: one that is fear-based and one that focuses on your talent as a seasoned pastry chef and the quality of your services, complete with testimonials that prove you are the best of the best. Both landing pages include an opt-in form that asks for a name, email and wedding date to get more information about pricing, availability and scheduling a tasting.

Whichever landing page has a higher conversion rate is your real buyer persona.

An A/B test will give you concrete evidence as to why the buyer took a particular action. You’ll know whether they’re more motivated by fear or what they have to gain; whether they respond to positive or negative language; and what key selling point made them hit the “submit” button.

Each buyer persona is looking to get something different out of your website and content. With A/B testing, you don’t have to leave it to chance. Once you’ve conducted enough A/B tests to know what makes your buyer persona tick, you’ll know exactly how to resonate with them. It becomes formulaic.

Update Your Buyer Personas

Creating buyer personas isn’t a once and done deal. Buyers change and evolve; naturally, personas can become dated and irrelevant over time. If you want your personas to deliver value to your business, you have to update them continuously.

In the aforementioned Cintell study, nearly 65% of companies that updated their personas within the last 6 months exceeded their lead and revenue goals. In fact, those companies that exceeded revenue goals were 7.4 times more likely to have updated their personas within the last 6 months than their underperforming competition. Keep your personas fresh and relevant by revisiting them at least every 6 months. Assign a point person to keep personas up to date.

That Cintell study also found that fewer than 30% of survey participants could confidently report that at least half of their organization would be able to name their personas and cite their attributes. If you’ve taken the time to flesh out and A/B test your personas, don’t let that hard work go to waste. Make sure your team understands the significance of buyer personas and the value that they add. Distribute your buyer persona insights to your marketing team, so your research will be utilized.

Once you’ve identified your buyer personas through A/B testing, you’ll be able to create landing pages, blog posts, emails, Facebook ads and other types of messaging that your buyers will truly be interested in. And because buyer personas are dynamic in nature, you can always fix what isn’t working, and you can always make something that is working work even better.

Imagine a prospect is making the tough decision between using your company or your competitor. At the last minute they discover something a bit “off” about your company’s online profile. Which company will get the sale?

It could be a review, a lack of publicity, a problem with your Wikipedia page, or many other things. How does reputation play into the buyers journey?

There are a host of factors at play in the process of turning a potential customer into a person who is using your services or buying your product. This is the “customer journey,” and there are various hurdles for you to scale successfully to bring a new client to your business through this journey. Understanding how your reputation fits into the journey is an important part of facilitating a positive end result.

How Reputation Affects Customer Journey

Consider the following two scenarios, each a different example of a customer journey.

Scenario One

Eli is interested in buying a new refrigerator. He does some comparison shopping online, selecting two models that fit the style, availability, and price he’s looking for. He then turns to the reviews. Refrigerator A has four and a half stars and feedback from a hundred previous purchasers. Refrigerator B has five stars, but just one review. He purchases refrigerator A.

Scenario Two

Miranda is interested in buying a new refrigerator. She types “what is the best refrigerator” into a search engine box. Millions of results appear, but like most people she only looks at the first few listings, then she refines and searches again. After refining her search she notes a few brands seem to have good search results, so she focuses on those, ultimately purchasing a refrigerator from one of those manufacturer’s websites.

Although these scenarios are different, they share one thing in common. What ultimately determined which company won the sale was the reputation of the seller – in customer reviews in Eli’s case, and in generalized search results in Miranda’s case.

Why Customer Experience Matters

No company is in the business of losing business. To grow is to convert potential customers into (ideally) recurring customers. This is done by optimizing customer journeys to lead directly to a company’s product or service, and ensuring that when they get there, the company’s immaculate reputation seals the deal. Reputation is about trust bestowed on a company by third-parties.

Reputation is trust bestowed on a company by third parties

Positive customer experiences have a multiplying power, bringing in new business as well as keeping current customers onboard. However, it’s much harder to pull in a first-time customer than it is to keep existing customers. This is because while existing customers can use their own experiences to make judgments, new customers must rely on what other people are saying about a business in order to make a buying decision and the field is larger.

A study from Dimensional Research found that 88% of people have had their customer journey impacted by online reviews. That’s a hefty percentage, and all the more proof that modern companies need to monitor and manage their reputations online.

The Steps of a Customer Journey

The graph above depicts the buyers journey and the content used to help people along the path to becoming a customer.

The customer journey can be broken down into three distinct parts: Awareness, Consideration and Decision. From a reputation management perspective we are concerned with the journey in a slightly more nuanced way. We know people comparison shop, so we want a brand to shine when compared to others. This is how we see the journey:

Customer journeys differ based on the product or service in question. For example, a customer looking for a yoga studio to join may look at location, price, and how the class schedule aligns with their own schedule during the journey. A customer looking to purchase a new guitar will be more concerned with qualities of the guitar: its price, style, function, and availability.

Regardless of the product or service, at some point in the journey a customer is likely to interact with the opinions of others – whether it’s the next-door neighbor, the guy behind the desk at the guitar store, or an anonymous commenter online. This last one can keep a business from ever interacting with a prospective customer in the first place if it’s not better than the competition.

As a business, you have the power to tailor the details of your product or service in a way that is most likely to bring in the customers you want. Once you bring a potential customer far enough down the road that their last consideration is your reputation, it’s up to you to cultivate an environment in which a new client will feel comfortable taking the final step.

Devising a Customer Experience Strategy

Your reputation is going to exist with or without your own efforts, so why leave it to chance? Do what you can within the confines of your time, energy, and budget to assure you have a positive reputation in the eyes of your customers. Here’s how you can enhance the “brand comparison” part of the journey.

Perform market analyses to understand how customers are searching for and buying your products and services. Are they going straight to your Yelp page or comparison shopping on another website? You can often find this information in your website analytics.

Are they primarily finding you through your social media efforts or by following your backlinks from other sites (called a “referral”)? Take into consideration the purchasing behaviors that are typical of your industry, as well as the product influences and ad strategies that most commonly lead to successfully bringing in more customers, and then adapt your marketing strategies as needed.

Next, be a human. Really connect with your customers, rather than seeing them as numbers on an analytics dashboard – we aren’t bashing dashboards, we love them. This has to be done proactively, and, in many cases, retroactively. Inspire good reviews by listening to your customers, knowing their preferences, and providing exceptional customer service.

Successful Businesses Focus on Customer Experience

Participants of Dimensional Research’s study said that customer service was the number one factor impacting their trust in a vendor. 45% of them share their bad customer service experiences online, compared to the 30% who share their good experiences. That’s unfortunate because it can mean that one slip up is worth more than one good deed.

It’s worth it for the continued success of your business to put as much care into providing top-notch customer service as you do to your other areas of innovation. Hire the people that share your values (if you have good values!), stay focused on the end goals, always treat your customers with respect, and you won’t have to wait long to see the ROI.

The Importance of Consistency

A 2014 report from McKinsey found that satisfaction on customer journeys is a 30% more predictive measure of a customer’s overall satisfaction than happiness for an individual interaction. When customers were satisfied with their journeys, this:

• Increased overall customer satisfaction by 20%
• Lifted revenue by 15%
• Reduced the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%

Consistency in the customer journey means taking care to maximize each step, from inquiry to post-purchase activity. It means being diligent in responding to inquiries from potential clients as well as providing solutions to current customers when needed.

The customer’s journey lasts as long as they continue to use your product or service. Enhancing their experience from first inquiry to last use isn’t just necessary for growing and sustaining your business, it’s a crucial part of building a client base in today’s Internet-centered marketplace.

Committing to an enterprise-level purchase is a stressful decision for most B2B buyers. There are real consequences to the business if a vendor performs badly, such as angry customers, lost revenue, or fines associated with failing to follow regulations. An individual’s promotion (or job) could be on the line if things don’t go as planned. Which is one reason big decisions tend to be made by committee—the responsibility and risk is spread out.

Because of this, buyers are wary. B2B salespeople have learned that earning the business takes more than building rapport, a thorough needs analysis, and clear alignment of value. The vendor who wins is usually the one who has best been able to convince decision-makers that their company can be trusted to deliver what’s being promised.

But building trust is challenging—buyers aren’t going to take your word for it. They need proof. Case studies are an ideal form of proof for a couple of reasons:

1. Case studies create credibility.

Prospects can see that a real company is achieving real results, and this company is publicly going on record as being happy with their experience with you. Case studies are particularly powerful if you have a few for each industry you serve—so you can share the most relevant ones with prospects. Prospects usually know who the key players are in their industry in their geographic area, and the social proof packs a stronger punch when prospects recognize your customers.

2. Case studies educate, in an easy-to-digest format.

Stories are popular because they’re easy to follow. Prospects can learn why a customer chose your solution, how it was implemented, how it solved challenges, and what you and your customer did to ensure success—all without struggling to get through a boring litany of information. Stories are interesting.

B2B buyers look to case studies to help them make a decision between vendors that meet their criteria. A recent Hawkeye study showed that 71% of B2B buyers in the awareness stage and 77% in the evaluation stage cited that case studies are the most influential types of content. DemanGen Report’s 2016 study found a similar percentage: 73% of B2B buyers reported relying on case studies when making purchase decisions.

This is where the marketing team can really shine and demonstrate their value—supplying the sales team with these convincing case studies that turn wary buyers into ready-to-get-started customers. One of the easiest ways to help the sales team shorten the sales cycle is to keep an ever-growing library of case studies for every industry and business type that you work with.

After you spend enough time on the phone with prospects, you can usually tell when a call is going well. Some reps can even gauge how likely a specific buyer is to close by the time they hang up.

However, knowing exactly what you did to make the call successful is trickier. Was it your tone of voice? The time of day you called? The questions you asked? All or none of the above?

Thanks to TalkIQ and other tools that use AI to analyze sales calls, now it’s much easier to identify the key characteristics of sales conversations that lead to deals. Follow these four data-backed guidelines to start running better calls.

1) Use Your Organization’s Keywords

Using the right words can make or break your chances of getting the buyer’s attention -- and ultimately, their business. TalkIQ found that using keywords in the beginning of a sales call dramatically increases the length of the conversation.

In addition, using keywords make salespeople 60% more likely to close. Yet reps only use five or more keywords on less than 5% of calls -- a huge missed opportunity.

TalkIQ defines a keyword as one of an organization’s top 10 most important terms or phrases. These keywords typically link back to your company’s value proposition and your product’s main benefits; for example, a salesperson who sells a vendor management system might use the following keywords: “Secure,” “simple,” “efficient,” and so on. If you don’t know your keywords, hold a brainstorming session with your team or ask Marketing for their suggestions. Your sales emails may also hold clues: Review your most successful subject lines and messages to see if they contain any common words.

Try to use at least two or three keywords in the first 30 seconds of your calls. If you’re reaching out to a buyer for the first time, craft your surprising insight or value-adding suggestion around a few keywords.

Here’s an example:

“Hi Travis, it’s Gloria from Stabyle. I saw on LinkedIn your company hires a lot of freelancers -- my clients in similar situations say it’s hard to manage freelance teams securely and efficiently. Would you be interested in hearing a couple suggestions about how to simplify this process?”

2) Speak a Little Faster

The psychological principle of mirroring suggests that imitating the buyer’s speed of delivery subconsciously makes them like you more.

But according to TalkIQ’s research, salespeople should aim to talk more quickly than their prospects. Sales conversations lasted nine times longer when reps spoke 20% faster.

One explanation might be speaking quickly makes you seem more enthusiastic and engaged. Try listening to your last calls and gauging how passionate you sound. Although you never want to come across as cheesy or fake, you might be suggesting boredom or indifference without realizing it.

3) Take Your Time

You might be speeding up your rate of delivery, but don’t rush through the call itself. Conversations that led to closed deals were approximately 1.8 times longer than those resulting in lost deals.

This statistic highlights the importance of asking prospects questions. When you engage them with thoughtful, relevant, and specific inquiries, they’re far likelier to stay on the line. After all, few buyers are interested in drawing out a one-sided discussion or listening to a dry recitation of your sales pitch.

With this in mind, prepare two or more questions for every call. These should either challenge your prospect’s worldview, delve into a challenge they’re likely facing, or help you identify an area for adding value.

Periodically check in with the other salespeople on your team to see which questions they’re having the most success with. This will help you keep your arsenal of questions up-to-date and effective.

4) Cut Down on Filler Words

Ridding your speech of “um,” “like,” “ah,” and other filler words is easier said than done. But it might be worth it: TalkIQ’s analysis found longer sales calls included 30% less filler words than shorter calls.

Saying filler words can make you seem less confident, which harms your credibility and may damage your rapport with the buyer. Try to pause instead -- not only will you sound more collected, you’ll also project thoughtfulness. It’s a double win.

Incorporate these takeaways into your sales call strategy, and you should see the impact on your win rate.

The hottest SaaS businesses now put their pricing online, according to a recent OpenView study. In fact, SaaS 2.0 companies are twice as likely to publish their pricing compared to older public SaaS businesses. But the decision to publish pricing is a rather recent one. In fact, most organizations that put their pricing online have only started doing so over the past few years. And the added publicity around product pricing has encouraged these companies to invest heavily not only in determining the actual prices to offer, but how those numbers should be displayed online.

Despite the recent rush to publish pricing, there is a dearth of resources around how companies should actually build optimized packages and pricing pages. Recent questions I’ve been asked include:

• Should I put the most expensive plan on the left or the right of the page?
• Do I need to publish Enterprise pricing too or should I tell people to “contact us”?
• Do the prices need to end in $9 or $9.99?
• How do I growth-hack my way to higher conversion?

These are all valid questions. And getting the answers right can significantly improve and optimize your pricing pages and conversion rates. So here, I’m sharing my top 7 tips for optimizing pricing pages. And, while I’m all for nifty growth hacks, these tips go back to basics to help you get the fundamentals of your pricing page right. If your pricing page doesn’t have the basics down, no amount of growth hacking will get you to a large and enduring business. Special thanks to Steven Forth, Co-Founder of TeamFit and pricing guru, for adding his expertise.

1. Reinforce your value proposition, over and over again

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You visit a pricing page and it says “Select your plan.” There are three plans usually something like Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Each plan has a long list of features associated with it, and of course Enterprise has the most. Not terribly exciting or differentiated, right?

Now consider Typeform, the online form and survey software. Typeform makes it exceedingly clear (and human) as to who should buy each of their plans, and why they should buy. The pricing page comes across as helpful, rather than sales-y, and keeps things simple while providing all the necessary information. Their Basic package is for those who want to “get to know Typeform”, and it offers “the essentials for getting better answers online” – ie Typeform’s main value prop.

Or, you could upgrade to Pro, which offers “more power & personalization,” like customized endings, branching and skip logic, email notifications and more. And then there’s Pro+, which has “advanced features for brands” and includes options to buy multiple seats per account.

2. Incorporate more than one value metric into your pricing

In setting up your pricing, you’ll want to have a main value metric that you believe best reflects how customers perceive the value of your product. This will become the main unit that determines what price a customer pays. (In all likelihood, it’s number of users, but make sure that’s right for you!). The thing is, you don’t need to stop there. The other value metrics on your list can become fences between different packages, guiding your users and indirectly influencing the price customers pay.

Take Hootsuite, the social media management software, as an example. Hootsuite’s main value metric is clearly the number of users. Other value metrics on their list also include the size of the team that would access Hootsuite, number of social profiles, number of app integrations, number of custom branded URLs and number of social campaigns. Each of these metrics becomes a fence between their Personal, Team, Business and Enterprise packages, which enables Hootsuite to charge 10 times the price per user for businesses compared to individuals.

3. Speak directly to your different target buyers and personas

Your customers don’t all look the same. Neither should their pricing. Having one-size-fits-all pricing automatically means that some potential buyers will come to your website and feel like you do not serve people like them. A best-in-class pricing page speaks clearly to the different needs, personas and use cases of your target buyers.

I especially love how LinkedIn has tackled this. As a first step, they ask how you want to unlock the power of LinkedIn – is it to get hired, to grow your network, unlock sales opportunities or find talent? Depending on your objective, they offer a plan (or plans) with the exact things that will make you successful.

This wasn’t necessarily a no-brainer path for LinkedIn to take. Their packages share a number of features in common – InMail™ messages, unlimited people browsing, who’s viewed your profile and advanced insights. That would have made it easy for LinkedIn to offer broad sweeping packages with more features and InMails™, but it would likely fall flat for a large portion of the market.

4. Ensure that each package has a clear role in your revenue generation

Write out the role you want each package to play in your revenue generation and set clear targets for what percentage of customers will join each tier, how many people will migrate upwards in tiers, what level of churn is acceptable for each and so forth. As Steven Forth described to me, “If a tier is not doing its job in your revenue model, ask if you got the design of the tier (and its fences) wrong or if the revenue model needs to be adjusted. Pricing should be tracked daily and management should discuss it at least monthly.”

Here’s an example: You offer a freemium package as a way to attract as many users as possible, and 1,000 people sign up for it. How do you know whether that’s good and in line with your business objectives? What’s your goal for how many of them should convert to paying customers? How much support burden and other costs did you assume that each user will take up? How much have you budgeted to acquire freemium users? Setting clear goals for freemium will make it much easier to decide how to evolve the product over time to drive the best outcome for your business.

5. Emphasize benefits rather than just features

Your Product team probably built out a detailed matrix of what features go in each tier so they could build out all the right feature permissions and settings. Did that feature matrix get dumped on your pricing page as-is, leading to confusion and eye-rolls across your target buyers? Be honest.

There is a better, more human approach to consider. Let’s look at Trello.

While their pricing page is maybe a tad lengthy, the feature messaging is crisp and compelling. Instead of saying that their Business Class package comes with role-based controls and permissions, Trello explains that you can “maintain control with immediate, one-click access removal for former members” and can “stay secure by controlling who can create public or private boards.” That sounds much more useful and interesting to a buyer, and gives a sense of what using Trello would be like.

6. Put lingering fears to rest

For many businesses, your pricing page is your top-performing sales rep. It has the difficult job of convincing your buyer to pull the trigger on their purchase, and do so right this second instead of continuing to research other options.

Slack smartly puts buyers’ fears to rest with their “Wall of Love,” a rotating compilation of tweets from their users emphasizing how much they love the product, which shows up right under their pricing. And below that they showcase that they have thousands of happy customers, including world leading consumer and B2B brands. In the words of the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, “How bad can that be?”

Other ways to overcome lingering doubt include having mouseover text explaining features you think users might not understand, listing out answers to frequently asked questions and / or enabling a live chat service to help buyers who get stuck.

7. Nudge buyers with insights from behavioral psychology

At this point it goes without saying that companies can nudge buyers into making different, more profitable decisions through behavioral psychology insights. There are a ton of resources on the subject. Here are a few to keep in mind:

• Anchoring: Introducing a higher tier, more expensive package to get buyers to trade up
• Guiding: Highlighting the most popular plan to visually guide buyers to selecting it
• Simplicity: Minimizing the number of choices on the screen to reduce buyer paralysis
• Charm prices: Experimenting with prices that end in “9” – although this doesn’t always work in B2B!
• Deal effect: Making certain packages look like a bargain through pricing or communication

Evernote, for instance, focuses buyers’ attention on their Premium plan, which costs $69.99 per year. They make it look like a great deal because it includes 10 times the amount of new uploads (10GB vs. 1GB) for only 2 times the price of their Plus package, and double the number of features (16 features in Premium vs. only 8 in Plus). Who wants to pass up on that deal?

What other pricing page tips do you have? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

The post Seven Tips to Optimize Your SaaS Pricing Page appeared first on OpenView Labs.

The most critical component of a successful account-based marketing program is focusing your marketing and sales efforts on the right target accounts. Working with the right accounts isn’t the only thing you need for success, but it will be impossible to build a successful ABM program if you target the wrong accounts.

Selecting target accounts is obviously an essential step when you are initially implementing ABM, but managing your list of target accounts is an ongoing task. Over time, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to add companies to, and remove companies from, your target account list. To make these decisions wisely, it’s important to remember what makes a company an attractive target for ABM in the first place.

Most ABM practitioners select their target accounts by identifying businesses that resemble their best existing customers, an approach that’s commonly called look-alike modeling. Look-alike modeling is usually effective because it will identify companies with the attributes that make them good targets for ABM.

The following diagram depicts the factors that make a prospect organization attractive for account-based marketing. At the most basic level, attractiveness is a function of high value potential and high buying potential. In other words, does the prospect have the potential to become a large and profitable customer for your company, and is there a strong likelihood that the prospect will purchase your product or service?

As the diagram illustrates, high buying potential is also a function of two factors – fit and buying interest. The underlying idea of fit is suitability. Does your product or service effectively address a need or a challenge that the prospect is likely to have, and can your company effectively market to, sell to, and serve the prospect?

The second component of high buying potential is buying interest, which refers to whether a prospect has engaged in behaviors that show an inclination to evaluate or purchase the kind of product or service that your company offers. Indicators of buying interest include direct interactions between a prospect and your company, and other behaviors – usually online – that indicate the prospect may be interested in the kind of product or service your company provides.

Fit and buying interest are both important “markers” of high buying potential, but fit is far more important for ABM purposes, and here’s why.

At any given moment in time, a large majority of your most attractive prospects – those with high potential value and good fit – will not be involved in an active buying process for the kind of product or service that you offer, and won’t score well on buying interest. Therefore, if you put too much emphasis on buying interest when initially selecting your ABM target accounts, you will omit prospects that you should be targeting.

The same principle applies when you’re managing your list of target accounts. At any given point in time, many of the companies on your list may not show significant indications of buying interest. That may mean they’re not likely to buy in the near-term future, but it doesn’t mean that they are unlikely to buy in the longer term. If you remove such companies from your target account list, you’ll be abandoning the opportunity to influence the perceptions and preferences of future buyers.

Successful account-based marketing requires long-term thinking and consistency. The objective is to focus your marketing and sales efforts on those prospects that are likely to become large and profitable customers. Identifying prospects with a high level of buying interest can be valuable because it enables you to use a more appropriate mix of marketing and sales tactics. But when high potential value and good fit exist, an apparent lack of immediate buying interest doesn’t justify removing an account from your ABM program.

Top illustration courtesy of Jason Taellious via Flickr CC.

One of the abiding urban myths that misinforms sales pipeline management is the idea that salespeople need at least 3* pipeline coverage in order to achieve their quota. Where this “golden number” came from, nobody seems to know, but it’s a fair bet that it dates back beyond the Neolithic.

Another widespread urban myth is the idea that whenever you have a bigger sales pipeline, you end up selling more. It’s the sort of misconception that leads marketing teams to drive to create an ever-larger number of MQLs without any regard for how many of them ever actually result in any revenue.

The simple fact is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of what the optimum coverage ratio for any specific sales pipeline is…

In my experience, one of the things that distinguishes top sales performers from the rest is that they have too much respect for their own time to waste it pursuing opportunities that they have no realistic chance of winning – while their less-discriminating colleagues cling onto every available opportunity until long past its sell-by date, often because they misguidedly fear that qualifying out will make their pipeline look smaller.

This is not always just the sale person’s fault – sales managers are often to blame as well, by focusing more on the size of the sales person’s pipeline than the quality of the opportunities it contains.

If we’re to address this issue, we need to turn to rational methodology, and not urban myth. We need to instrument our sales pipelines so that we can identify the root causes of success and failure, and the behaviours that result in winning outcomes.

There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that pipelines that are too large to manage are just as problematic as pipelines that don’t contain enough opportunity in the first place. For every sales environment, there is an optimal range of pipeline coverage – it just isn’t the same in every situation.

Here are a few of the factors that most commonly impact pipeline conversion efficiency:

• Type of business (new customer vs. cross-sell vs. up-sell vs. renewal)
• Type of purchase (required vs. considered)
• Complexity of selling/buying process
• Number of stakeholders involved in decision
• Deal value (and approval level required)
• Experience of sales person
• Adoption of sales process

Some of these factors impact the efficiency and predictability of the sales pipeline as a whole – others reflect predictable differences between the performances of different product offerings or even individual sales people.

Applying a single, untested (and often unmeasured) universal pipeline coverage target makes no sense at all. And with the emergence of sales analytics into the mainstream, there’s no excuse for not knowing what the real optimum target ought to be across a range of different sales scenarios.

I’ll be addressing this point in my upcoming webinar with the Association of Professional Sales on the 4^th April, on the subject “Why size isn’t everything: assessing the true value of your organisation’s sales pipeline”.

But back to that mythical 3* coverage ratio: the team at InsightSquared (the leading sales analytics platform for salesforce.com users) have done a great job of debunking the myth in this excellent article.

Their research shows that companies that emphasise quantity over quality in their sales pipelines tend to have much lower quality leads within their sales pipelines – and far lower conversion ratios. They also found that big deals (2x or more above average) tend to have lower likelihoods of closing and longer sales cycles.

Analytics can also show which sales people are more efficient than others in converting initial interest into sales action. Studying and comparing the shape of individual sales people’s funnels can highlight where some are more effective than others – and suggest ways in which targeted coaching can improve performance.

My own experience of applying sales analytics has convincingly proven that better-qualified opportunities (using rational, consistent qualification criteria) have a measurably higher conversion rate and shorter sales cycles.

In fact, it’s pretty clear that the old 3* sales pipeline coverage mindset really ought to be long past its retirement date. There’s simply no excuse for not adopting a smarter, situational and evidence-based approach.

If you’d like to learn more, be sure to register for the webinar.

Sales mentorship programs' value is multifaceted — these kinds of initiatives can help accelerate recent hires' development, provide veteran reps with leadership experience, and bolster a sales org's long-term success. That said, structuring and implementing one of these programs is much easier said than done.

Here, we'll review why sales mentorship programs are so effective, get a solid sales mentorship outline, and go over the steps you need to take to implement one of your own. Let's dive in.

Sales Mentoring: What's in it for the mentor?

Several top sales organizations implement mentorship programs for a number of reasons — namely to ramp new salespeople and groom senior reps for leadership roles. They're valuable arrangements that can help both mentors and mentees grow.

That said, participating in one of these programs can be tough on the seasoned sales reps who assume mentor roles — taking on one of these positions means piling additional responsibilities onto their existing workload.

So if you're a veteran rep considering participating in a mentorship program, you should know the long-term benefits one of these roles can pose for your professional development and the success of your sales org. These include:

Knowledge and Skill Development

The best mentors are committed to the organization and want to give back to junior reps by sharpening their skills through training. They also see the value in acting as a resource to put context behind each sales interaction as their mentees gain experience.

The most obvious benefit of a mentorship program might be how it impacts the organization's bottom line. By putting one of these programs in place, leadership is actively investing in a sales team's development. And as a senior sales rep, you stand to gain from your team collectively developing — at least indirectly.

Beyond that, helping a new team member hone their skills, you can get a refresher on your role's fundamentals — keeping your own skills that much sharper. As Roman philosopher Seneca put it, "While we teach, we learn." In other words, the process of explaining something to someone else increases your competency as well.

Increasing Engagement

Implementing a mentorship program at your company increases employee engagement — especially when new reps are first onboarding. New hires tend to excel at companies faster when they have someone to reliably show them the ropes, and mentors often find their work more meaningful when they get to impart their knowledge and expertise to mentees. In turn, all parties involved become more engaged.

Improved Morale

Everyone knows that sales is challenging — particularly when prospect after prospect is saying "no." Consistent rejection can naturally take a toll on morale, feeding into a nasty cycle of underperformance. Sales mentorship programs give both mentors and mentees the opportunity to break away from it for a little while and focus on what needs to be done to make it go right.

Leadership Development

Aside from being more engaged with the organization, mentorship provides mentors with the space to develop leadership skills in the workplace — making for more engaged senior reps in the short-term and more effective leaders, down the line.

Mentorship Program Outline

1. Identify primary goals.

When constructing an effective mentorship program, you need to start with a firm understanding of what you want mentors and mentees to gain from it. Set solid primary goals.

Are you trying to minimize turnover? Improve overall activity? Increase engagement from all parties involved? Pin down what you want to see from your ideal program, and use that insight to shape how you structure yours.

2. Agree on meeting cadence.

Once you know what you want out of your program, you need to establish an appropriate meeting cadence that allows your mentors and mentees to connect consistently — without commanding too much time out of their day-to-days.

The cadence you land on will depend on your sales org's needs and how involved you want your program to be. Once or twice a week — with the flexibility for mentors and mentees to book some time on each other's calendars — will probably be enough. But if you feel like that cadence is insufficient or excessive, you can experiment with other schedules.

3. Align on expectations.

Once you have your goals identified and an appropriate meeting cadence set, you need to set certain parameters for how the mentorship program is going to function. Will mentors be expected to regularly put agendas in place? Who is going to set meeting times? Will mentees have homework?

Ask all of these questions and more when constructing your mentorship program. You want to have some degree of consistency across these arrangements — setting baseline expectations and ensuring that your mentors and mentees abide by them are central components of a productive mentorship program.

4. Define how you'll measure success.

You can't know if your program is effective if you have no concept of what "effective" is supposed to look like. Look at the goals you set before implementing your program, and determine hard metrics that can help you gauge whether you've achieved them.

Those might be related to activity, pipeline development, broader morale, revenue generation, or any other improvements you'd like to see in how your sales org operates. Assign relevant KPIs to those goals, and measure how they either improve or stall after your mentorship program has run its course.

1. Incentivize mentorship.

Shocking as this might sound, mentorship programs can't exist without mentors — and assuming one of these roles is rarely convenient. Mentors are essentially taking on extra work when they sign up for these kinds of programs, so if you want to maximize your pool of potential mentors, you might need to sweeten the pot.

Let them know enrolling in your mentorship program is an opportunity to demonstrate leadership — one that won't go unnoticed or unappreciated. Make it understood that successfully fulfilling one of these roles could factor into compensation or promotion decisions. One way or another, add a little oomph to the opportunity that can make it that much more appealing.

2. Have a "kick-off" meeting.

Once a mentor and mentee have been connected, arrange a face-to-face conversation between them — along with the manager who oversees their broader team. Management should raise some key questions to get the other parties talking about the program. Those could include:

• "Where do you see yourself in two years? 10 years?"

• "Do you have a plan to get there?"

• "How do you learn best?"

• "What day and time do you prefer to meet each week?"

Questions like these are both disarming and practical. For one, they give mentors and mentees some space to get to know each other in a professional context. They also offer perspective on how both parties communicate and set the stage for effective goal setting.

3. Clearly define roles and responsibilities for mentor and mentee.

"What's in it for me?" This answer needs to be clearly defined in the vetting process for pairing two reps together. If you match people arbitrarily, the relationship won't help either one. It's crucial to have the manager involved in pairing the two employees. A new rep that is having trouble with the team's CRM and a senior rep who wants to pursue a career in sales ops would be one perfect scenario.

4. Build a playbook.

Create a tangible playbook you can print out and stick to a calendar. Just like a good workout guide, having measurable, regularly spaced milestones leads to faster progress. It's easy for reps to get tied up with customers — but a weekly face-to-face should take place regardless of how busy either rep is.

The playbook should be assembled by the manager overseeing the program with the support and feedback of the first few participants. This is a work in progress but should become a fixed asset after the first few iterations. A successful playbook includes a checklist that builds skills in the order that reps will need them. Identify which skills are needed on day one versus day 90, and write your playbook to fit.

For example, if the role is predominantly outbound, start with calling scripts, email templates, and competitive intelligence — as your reps will need to book appointments before product demos. The mentor can then join the first few meetings with customers to demonstrate how to run an initial discovery call.

5. Share best practices.

Sponsor a monthly lunch for all the mentors to show your appreciation for their help, as well as facilitate discussion about what is working and what's not. Make sure there is a specific topic for each meeting. Ask mentors where their mentees are currently falling short in the sales process or which types of questions they're hearing across the board.

Once the team identifies two to three common themes, focus on those for the month. You don't want mentees to become overwhelmed. These meetings also help identify areas that need helpful content from the sales enablement team, so future reps won't need to look to their mentors for answers.

6. Plan an exit strategy.

New reps must "graduate" at some point, or they will never stop leaning on senior reps. Depending on your sales cycle and the amount of coaching required, these weekly meetings should last a minimum of six to nine months. The time necessary to become fully independent varies for every organization, so use a presentation or quarterly business review.

7. Measure and quantify value.

Know your key metrics before you implement a mentorship program so it's clear if the investment is paying off. You should measure:

• Activity (phone calls, emails, meetings)
• Pipeline development (new opportunities created, proposals)
• Revenue (deals closed, time to close, ACV)

You'll also be able to see if mentees are making progress through milestones like the moment where the new rep goes from asking questions to answering them. These are hard to quantify but easy to understand when you see them firsthand.

Most reps tend to rely on "just-in-time learning," also known as, "I have gotten a question for the first time, I'm going to hit my mute button and ask the salesperson sitting next to me." If the program is working, there should be a point where the rookie rep can answer 99% of those on their own.

8. Showcase small victories.

The continued success of the program depends on continually highlighting its wins. For instance, ask an executive to tell the story of a great team accomplishment at an all-hands meeting.

You want your veteran reps to feel recognized by management. The new reps on your team should be excited to work with people capable of getting them ramped up quickly.

If you have an internal wiki, use it to recognize people. This provides a repository of the program that people can tie their names to.

9. Make room for feedback.

You can only get so much out of your mentorship program in the long run if you don't gauge whether it's working for everyone involved. That's why you need to give mentors and mentees the space to offer feedback — both on how their counterparts are performing and the program itself.

Make sure both parties feel comfortable voicing both praise and frustration with how the partnership is going. Hear everyone out, and try to remain impartial. Also, be open and receptive to concerns about elements of the program like meeting cadence, expectations, and rigor.

If you neglect this step, you're selling your program short. Structuring an effective sales mentorship arrangement is an ongoing process. There's almost always room for improvement, so listen to what both mentors and mentees have to say, and incorporate their feedback — especially if multiple participants raise the same issues.

Sales mentorship programs have tremendous potential to aid the professional development of everyone involved — all while offering a big-time boost to a sales org's operations. But putting together and sustaining a successful one can be tricky, and if you mismanage yours, mentorship can seem like more of a chore than a valuable learning experience.

Still, you want your reps to build relationships that will last their entire careers, learn from one another, and ultimately grow both personally and professionally — an effective sales mentorship program can do all that and more.

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

A good conversationalist knows that asking closed-ended questions is no way to make real friends.

Similarly, in marketing research, there are certain limitations inherent to closed-ended questions.

There’s a lot of value in asking both open and closed questions in a survey. This article, however, will dive into the intricacies of asking and acting upon open-ended questions in your research.

Closed vs Open Ended Questions in Survey Design

A closed-ended question is a question where the answers are limited to a set of structured confines. This could be “yes/no,” “true/false,” or scale-based questions, but what’s common to all closed-ended questions is there is a limit set on the number of answers you’ll receive.

Here’s an example of a closed-ended question in the context of website research:

Image Source

An open-ended question is the opposite of a closed-ended question, designed to encourage full and elaborate responses that are entirely free of restraint. They’re great for eliciting deeper connections, emotions, and insights you may not have thought of prior to designing the survey.

Here’s an example of an open-ended conversion research question:

Essentially, the difference is that, while any survey question elicits attitudinal responses, closed-ended questions result in quantitative data where open-ended questions are inherently qualitative. You can codify them and quantify them later, but it’s more work, and in their raw form, they are qualitative.

It’s often the case that closed-ended and open-ended questions are used in conjunction. It’s easier to answer a Yes/No question, so if you lead with that, you’ll often get greater participation in the follow-up qualitative question (from what we’ve seen anyway).

Open-Ended Questions Provide Greater Insight and Connection

It’s not just in survey design and market research that you can use the power of open-ended questions for greater insight.

If you’re doing customer interviews, it’s with these questions that you’ll get the most value. If you’re doing sales, open-ended questions lead to greater connection. In client meetings, open-ended questions facilitate greater communication and understanding.

SalesHacker put out an article about transforming boring closed-ended questions into what they call “hyper open-ended questions”:

Image Source

While some look a bit cringey to me on paper (Gosh “Target”), I’m sure they spur a better conversation than the closed-ended ones.

Open-Ended Questions in Customer and Client Interviews

HubSpot wrote an article on open-ended questions and gave this short list of example questions to ask (specifically in regard to in-person client meetings):

• What are the top priorities in your business at the moment?
• What are some of the best decisions you’ve made related to ____________?
• How are you feeling about your current situation related to _____________?
• If we were meeting five (10, 20) years from today, what must happen for you to feel good about your situation related to ___________?
• What opportunities do you see on your horizon?
• What challenges do you see in making this happen?
• If we were to work together on this, what are the top two or three outcomes you’d like to see?
• How will you be measuring our success related to these outcomes?
• What’s the biggest risk for you to not make progress on this situation?

In regards to customer interviews, UserVoice gave these 7 examples, useful for any product manager:

• What do you think of this product?
• What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?
• What should we stop doing?
• Can you give me an example?
• Why and Why Not? (always helpful for elaboration)
• What annoys you about this product the most?
• How does or doesn’t this product solve problem X for you?

All of these examples are specific to the situation and individual role or problem but they all have this in common: they’re designed to elicit meaty, valuable responses.

Transitioning from the customer interview questions, which are very useful for a product manager developing and validating a product with customers, I’ll go over some specific use cases for user experience, CRO, and digital marketing…

How to Use Open-Ended Questions for Conversion Optimization Research

We can learn a lot with surveys for UX and CRO. You can:

• Uncover UX issues
• Locate process bottlenecks
• Understand root causes of abandonment
• Distinguish visitor segments whose different motivations for similar on-site activity are undetected by analytics
• Identify demand for new products or improvements to existing products
• Figure out who the customer is, feeding into accurate customer personas
• Decipher what their intent is. What are they trying to achieve? How can we help them do that?
• Find out how they shop (comparison to competitors, which benefits they seek, what words they use, etc)

Similarly, user testing and other forms of qualitative insight can be super valuable for optimization. And, of course, there’s a trick to how you derive insight from whichever qualitative method you’re using. According to Susan Farrell from NN/g, open-ended questions are especially valuable in 1-on-1 usability testing where you’re exploring questions that may not have limited answers:

Susan Farrell:

“Closed-ended questions are often good for surveys, because you get higher response rates when users don’t have to type so much. Also, answers to closed-ended questions can easily be analyzed statistically, which is what you usually want to do with survey data.

However, in one-on-one usability testing, you want to get richer data than what’s provided from simple yes/no answers. If you test with 5 users, it’s not interesting to report that, say, 60% of users answered “yes” to a certain question. No statistical significance, whatsoever. If you can get users to talk in depth about a question, however, you can absolutely derive valid information from 5 users. Not statistical insights, but qualitative insights.”

NN/g also gave a super handy list of when you should use open-ended questions. Here are some of the methods and situations where you would do that:

In a screening questionnaire, when recruiting participants for a usability study (for example, “How often do you shop online?”)

• While conducting design research, such as on:
  • Which problems to solve
  • What kind of solution to provide
  • Who to design for
• For exploratory studies, such as:
  • Qualitative usability testing
  • RITE (paper prototype) design research
  • Interviews and other field studies
  • Diary studies
  • Persona research
  • Use-case research
  • Task analysis
• During the initial development of a closed-ended survey instrument: To derive the list of response categories for a closed-ended question, you can start by asking a corresponding open-ended question of a smaller number of people.

There is lots of well-founded skepticism for attitudinal data and observational research in general. When you can access and analyze large enough datasets, you can bring quantitative behavioral data to the table that usually provides greater insights than simply asking people what they think.

However, when planning preliminary tests or doing early stage customer and product development, this type of research can help you lead and prioritize product features and experiments.

How We’ve Used Open-Ended Questions for Conversion Research

Both open-ended questions and closed-ended questions have been a big part of the design, development, and marketing process at CXL Institute.

Here’s an example of an on-site poll we put on the Institute home page. It asked a closed-ended question (Do you have any questions?) and then allowed the person to follow up if so with an open-ended response:

Here’s another example of a poll that asks a closed-ended question first and allows further elaboration on the second question:

Similarly, we often run customer surveys to attempt to get more insights from our customers as well as those on our email list who haven’t purchased. Here’s an example of the latter:

Then we will also run closed-ended questions, as well, when we want to quantify traits that we’ve already discovered through open-ended research and exploration. We knew the following were the top motivations for the Institute (at the time), and we wanted to quantify the proportions and further analyze each segment:

This is a big part of our conversion research when we start a client engagement as well. Here’s an example survey we would send out to recent customers:

In general, a good strategy to use in survey design is to turn useless closed-ended questions into open-ended questions that trigger better responses. The key word here is “useless.”

If you plan on doing something with the quantitative data, such as segmenting your customers via NPS, building user personas with scale-based questions, or tracking the user satisfaction during different stages of feature development, closed-ended questions are the way go.

But if you honestly ask yourself what you plan on doing with the data and your answer is weak, attempt to tease out more qualitative insight via open-ended questions.

An easy way to do that, if you can’t fully reform the question, is simply to ask the person to elaborate.

“Did you find value in this process?” If so, please explain further. If not, tell us how we can improve.”

Avinash Kaushik really summed it up well in this article:

Avinash Kaushik

“Any good survey consists of most questions that respondents rate on a scale and sometimes a question or two that is open ended. This leads to a proportional amount of attention to be paid during analysis on computing Averages and Medians and Totals. The greatest nuggets of insights are in open-ended questions because it is Voice of the Customer speaking directly to you (not cookies and shopper_ids but customers).

Questions such as: What task were you not able to complete today on our website? If you came to purchase but did not, why not?

Use the quantitative analysis to find pockets of “customer discontent”, but read the open-ended responses to add color to the numbers. Remember your Director’s and VP’s can argue with numbers and brush them aside, but few can ignore the actual words of our customers. Deploy this weapon.”

More Example of Questions to Ask with On-Site Surveys

With a customer survey, you’ll want to strategically architect your questions to reflect your specific situation. With on-site surveys, that’s true too, but the questions that work on on-site surveys are generally more applicable to a broad suite of sites and companies, because they’re all dealing with anonymized traffic.

So here are some questions you can steal for your research purposes:

• What’s the purpose of your visit today? (establishes user intent)
• Why are you here today? (also established user intent)
• Were you able to find the information you were looking for? (can identify missing information on the site – best asked on product pages)
• What made you not complete the purchase today? (identifies friction – only ask this as exit survey on checkout pages, and beware that some people are still considering the purchase.)
• Is there anything holding you back from completing a purchase? Y/N (and then ask for explanation – again, this identifies sources of friction)
• Do you have any questions you haven’t been able to find answers to? Y/N <– (identifies sources of friction, missing information on the site)
• Were you able to complete your tasks on this website today? Y/N, and when No is select, ask “Why not” (identifies friction and missing info)

Common Mistakes with Open-Ended Questions

The main and most common mistake with open-ended questions – with research and analysis in general – is the inclusion of bias (or artifacts, if you want to use the academic term).

This is when the researcher unconsciously adds a personal opinion into the scientific process or when that opinion or expectation is unintentionally communicated to the research respondents.

There’s been a lot written about bias, especially on this site, so I won’t write a book about it here. But it’s important to note that bias can inject itself at any stage of the process – into the questions you ask, how you codify answers, or how you take action upon the “insights.”

For example, it’s common to analyze qualitative data by coding and clustering common responses. Suppose you’re looking at three or four separate answers that on face value appear to have a degree of commonality:

• “I liked the logo.”
• “The logo was cool.”
• “The logo made the site.”
• “The logo stood out.”

You could lump all of these into a category called “positive comments about the logo,” but just imagine the amount of bias that could inject itself into this categorization structure.

As Dr. Rob Balon noted:

Dr. Rob Balon:

“The most critical part of avoiding the blind spot is to recognize that even the most objective among us has one. Above all, you want to avoid the temptation to default to that bias-ridden comfort zone.

That’s the first step in conducting effective qualitative research.”

Other common mistakes are what you would think: analyzing your data incorrectly (treating qualitative like quantitative data when you shouldn’t), surveying the wrong people (and getting accurate but unhelpful insights), ignoring business & strategy objectives and blindly asking questions, and asking unhelpful questions.

Most of these can be solved with a bit of rigor and some strategic foresight.

Conclusion

Closed-ended and open-ended questions both have their place in research.

Closed-ended questions allow for a quantitative approach, especially useful for segmenting, persona building, and time-based analysis (are you improving or not?). Open-ended questions attempt to dive deeper, teasing out the why behind the actions or closed-ended responses. They’re great for deeper insights, connection, and for learning things you may not have thought to ask.

When building surveys or conducting customer interviews, employ both strategically to get the best value from your research.

  We have to stop the nonsense of thinking a lead is a lead and start getting serious about the quality of the leads we get. I see far too much time spent by not only sales but also marketing at the top of the sales funnel, doing nothing but gathering leads that don’t go […]