The other week, I saw a young girl walk up to the counter of a nice department store.

“I really want this toy,” she told the employee. “But I'm $10 short. Can I please have a discount?”

He was clearly amused but said that would be against store policy.

Negotiators sometimes come to an impasse, no matter how much both sides would like to agree. As a salesperson, this usually happens when the prospect asks for a discount or term you simply can’t grant.

If you turn them down outright, as the store employee did to the girl, your prospect might walk away -- and neither of you will get what you want.

The solution? Use the four-part response recommended by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss in his book, “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.”

Chris Voss' Four-Part Negotiation Strategy

“How Am I Supposed to Do That?”

This question immediately puts the ball back in your prospect’s court. Now, the onus is on them to come up with a solution -- rather than on you to concede or refuse.

In addition, they’ll be forced to acknowledge that they’re making a ridiculous or outsized request.

Make sure you sound respectful and genuinely curious. If you sound hostile, this question will backfire.

Here’s an example:

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “Hardware plus support comes to $11,000, right? Is there any way you could knock something off from support? It won’t bring us down to $8,000, but I think I could persuade my boss’s manager with that.”

The buyer essentially admitted his original ask wasn’t feasible -- and better yet, adjusted it.

“Your offer is very generous. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.”

If you ask how you’re supposed to fulfill your prospect’s request and they respond with a variation on, “I don’t know,” then politely but firmly say:

“Your offer is very generous. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.”

As Voss explains, “This well-tested response avoids making a counter-offer, and the use of the word ‘generous’ nurtures your counterpart to live up to the word.”

Saying “I’m sorry” also creates empathy.

Here’s how the salesperson would use this response if her prospect hadn’t softened his request:

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Hmm. Do you have any flexibility in boosting our level of support? She might go for it if we’re getting premium support.”

Rep: “Yes, I can upgrade you to the priority package with no charge.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.”

Does this response sound familiar? Voss says it’s “a little more direct” than your previous statement.

“The ‘can’t do that’ pulls great double duty,’” he adds. “By indicating an inability to perform, it can trigger the other side’s empathy toward you.”

At this point, you’ve said “no” in other words three times. Unless your prospect is extremely set on getting what they’ve asked for, they’ll probably compromise.

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can persuade her at the current price. Are you sure you can’t do $8,000?”

Rep: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.”

Prospect: “I know our department really needs this new equipment … Could you put me in touch with a reference who might be able to sell her on the value?”

Rep: “Definitely -- I’ll send you two contacts by the end of the day.”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Delivered gently, this barely sounds negative at all,” writes Voss.

You’re politely standing firm. If the agreement is salvageable, the buyer will agree to your terms or ask for a different concession. If they keep pressing, it’s likely time to cut your losses or offer a concession.

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can persuade her at the current price.”

Rep: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t go that low.”

Prospect: “From my end, the price is non-negotiable. Are you sure you can’t do $8,000?”

Rep: “I’m sorry, no.”

Prospect: “Let me tell her you can’t do $8,000, show her the ROI information you gave me, and get back to you.”

While holding your ground during a negotiation is hard to do, it’s often necessary to reach a fair deal agreement. This four-part response should make saying "no" easier.

Most buyers are relatively risk-averse. If your product doesn’t live up to your claims, it’ll be their reputation that suffers -- not yours. Even worse, they might be unable to achieve their business goals or solve a pressing problem.

Combine these concerns with a psychological aversion to loss. Because people register losses more acutely than gains, the typical buyer would rather stick with the status quo and risk nothing than change and risk a bad investment.

Here’s the good news: You can tailor your approach to soothe your prospect’s fears. These five guidelines will help you close deals with even the most risk-averse buyers.

How to Close Risk-Averse Prospects

1) Avoid the Word “New”

Your product might be “revolutionary,” “first of its kind,” or “highly advanced” -- but don’t describe it as such.

“New and improved” can actually be a disadvantage in the sales process. Prospects interpret novelty as dangerous, since your product hasn’t yet proven its value or reliability.

Instead, use terms and examples that make the buyer feel safe and speak to their desire to avoid risk.

Here’s an example of how you’d change your messaging:

Before: “Our dental cassettes are made with an innovative silicone rail design that reduces instrument contact by 74%.”

After: “The dental cassettes’ silicone rail design decreases instrument contact by 74%, which significantly lowers chances of infection.”

2) Explain How Easy It Is to Cancel

It’s tempting to gloss over your cancellation or refund policy -- after all, you don’t want the buyer to consider returning your product before she’s bought it in the first place.

But according to an analysis of 25,537 calls by Gong, a sales conversation intelligence SaaS platform, you should highlight how easy it is for customers to change their mind.

Salespeople are 32% more likely to close when they use “risk-reversal” language, such as:

• “It takes less than 10 minutes to cancel … ”
• “You don’t need any tech savvy for implementation … ”
• “We guarantee 99.99% uptime … ”
• “If you’re not happy, you can opt out at any time … ”
• “We offer monthly and quarterly contracts … ”

3) Compare The Prospect’s Company to Similar Ones

Prospects care about results. However, simply telling them about the ROI of your product probably won’t be effective.

A survey from HubSpot Research found only 3% of people consider sales reps trustworthy. That means statements like “You’ll achieve [results] in [time period]” or “Expect to save $X every year” will likely be met with skepticism rather than excitement.

Bringing up the impact similar customers have seen makes a big difference. The buyer might not wholeheartedly trust you, but they will trust another company.

Find an organization you’ve worked with that’s in the same industry as your prospect’s organization, sells to the same market, operates in the same location, deals with the same challenges, and/or sells the same product.

If your prospect still seems unconvinced, consider introducing them to a reference. (This step is best used as a last reserve, since it can slow down the sales process and create work for your customer.)

4) Highlight Your Support, Service, and Security

Don’t give your prospect the impression they’ll be on their own after they sign the contract. Emphasize the hand-holding they’ll receive with services such as:

• Onboarding
• Implementation
• Training
• Support
• Security

For example, you might say: 

“We’ll walk you through everything the product can do and set it up to meet your unique needs. After that, you’ll have a bi-weekly check-in call with a customer success representative for the first four months after purchase. You can alternatively call our support line at any time for help. And if you ever need a response right away, I’m available at this number or by email.”

5) Proactively Address Their Concerns

Pay close attention to your prospect’s questions and their tone of voice. When they spend a long time on a specific aspect of the product or purchase or sound less sure than usual, there’s a good chance they’re worried.

Don’t ignore their hesitation in the hopes it’ll resolve itself. The longer an objection goes unaddressed, the more powerful it typically becomes.

Instead, say something along the lines of, “You seem a little hesitant. What do you think about [topic]?”

You can also say, “Some potential customers fear [undesirable event will happen]. That’s a valid concern. Fortunately, [event] isn’t an issue because [reason].”

This statement simultaneously justifies the buyer’s anxiety and resolves it.

You have faith in your product -- because you consistently see proof it works. Your prospects don’t have the benefit of this first-hand experience. Modify your selling strategy to show buyers why your product is worth the risk.

Search engines digest and rank websites differently each year. Thanks to machine learning, Google algorithms are becoming more intelligent, humanlike, and will soon surpass human intelligence in more than one way.

Google is also gaining greater access to big data through the search results, Google Analytic accounts, and Androids. Google can now easily reformulate its ranking factors in order to monitor even the most subtle signs of user satisfaction.

In the past, we could see the universally applicable ranking factors that referred to all kinds of websites, and these factors indeed were crucial for formulating the final ranking positions. We could also read plenty of articles about Google’s ranking factors: 30 Most Important Google Ranking Factors A Beginner Should Know, or 6 Current Google Ranking Factors You Should Keep Up With. However, ranking factors were never officially revealed by the Googlers, and Google search experts only vaguely mentioned some of them. Now there are no universally applicable ranking factors.

SEO has been taken to the next level

Each business niche today has its individual standards of a high-quality site, and different requirements need to be met to boost visibility. We can observe various SEO best practices among the different industries, and the best part is, sometimes it’s not a matter of industry but a specific query.

For example, a local business needs a well-optimized Google My Business listing, local citations, plenty of positive local reviews, consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone), a geotag to show a business’s exact location with directions, business-related rich snippets, well optimized title tags, descriptions for local keywords, etc.

On the other hand, an e-commerce business that operates globally needs optimizations on a different scale. Global companies need diligent – human – translations, a user-friendly website structure for each location and straightforward navi. They also need to host site versions on a local IP, link to local content relevant to the specific country, build links from local resources and connect with local search engines – Baidu if China, Yandex if Russia, etc.

Most of the known (revealed) ranking factors, which can be found in Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List, for instance, are still up to date; but their level of importance has already changed or is currently changing.

Some ranking factors, like technical standards, make up the necessary foundation and help your website achieve at least some traction, but they won’t guarantee top rankings anymore.

Other factors, like links, still carry the most weight, but according to this Searchmetrics’ white paper, the importance of backlinks is on the decline. A website ranking won’t be determined primarily by backlinks. Links are still considered an important factor, but they’re not the leading one.

The correlations for backlinks remain high, but their importance for a page’s ranking will continue to decline. – Searchmetrics

Google increasingly relies on user intention, content relevancy and behavioral factors – such as how a user interacts with a page – to rank its search results. The search engine is slowly and consequently rolling out the “customer-first” approach.

Google is trying to make its algorithms a mirror image of the heart, mind, soul, and needs of a customer.

^credit

Moreover, real-time indexing intended for the ‘search live coverage carousel’ is predicted to be an important part of the SEO future. It lets publishers surface breaking news more quickly than is currently possible with standard crawling. Also, Google Penguin is real-time. In the past, Penguin was updated periodically, so sites had to wait for the next update to get recrawled and reindexed again to recover finally. Now Penguin’s data is refreshed quickly, and changes are visible faster. It aims to make search results capable of adjusting to the freshly published assets and their enhancements fast.

Content marketing and SEO goals are aligned, and these two specializations are meshing with each other. What can we state for sure? Let’s dive into the deets and specify the top search ranking factors for Google.

1. Content Relevancy

A customer’s journey starts with performing the search, and since the web is noisy with information, ranking high is seriously tricky. It’s not possible to write a mediocre, 500-word article wrapped around a high volume keyword, and expect that it will stand out.

Today’s content strategy should be directed strictly at your marketing personas and delivering accurate content forms and types that meet search intentions. It’s also essential to provide users with the best resource available for a given topic, also known as 10 x content.

You should look at the content writing process holistically by choosing a search term that includes a complete subject area and adjust it to the user intent effectively. Tailor content to your buyer personas, and remember to come up with comprehensive and engaging writing to inspire and educate.

This is a strategy that will win you brand advocates and regular readers who will eagerly await your next release. And having (many) devoted users eventually, translates to ranking high in search results for many related keywords.

*Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule. Google does rank some resources higher even though they don’t have the most relevant content. This is because Google also counts in a brand factor that enables some brands to preserve a more trustworthy and recognizable image than others.

2. User Signals

The approach to content is changing as well. More value is put on user signals determined by the click-through rate, bounce rate and time on site. User behavior can tell a lot about your content.

Click-through rate refers to the average percentage of users that click on a specific result on a search page. This indicates how a particular result compares to other records.

^WordStream

Although the top three results in the search statistically reap the most engagement, people usually read titles and descriptions before they click. So click-through rate also expresses how well-written your title tags and meta descriptions are.

Bounce rate confirms whether your content indeed provides the initially promised benefits (in the title and description) to a searcher who lands on your landing page.

If a page’s text is messy, the design is dated, the user experience is poor, the content isn’t readable, or the page happens to be something completely different than expected, users will inevitably go back to the search results, indicating that there was something wrong with the page. That’s a big fail. Bounce rate reflects single page session where a user leaves a page without any interaction. It also helps with evaluating URL relevance when it’s combined with other quality indicators.

The third measure, the length of time a user spends on a site, shows Google your ability to engage with your resources. Of course, the type of query and its intention is crucial for determining whether time on site is a relevant indicator.

The impact of CTR, bounce rate and time on site has significantly risen in the overall ranking since 2014, according to Searchmetrics.

3. Mobile friendliness

Mobile has a special place in Google’s heart – perhaps because there are reportedly more searches performed on mobile devices than on desktop. Investing in mobile is now imperative. According to Greg Stuart, CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, most CMOs are embracing mobile, but “there is a knowing versus doing gap. They know they need to do it, but how do they do it?”

Mobile friendliness is a highly important ranking factor, so it’s about “time to take action and not just do mobile, but do mobile right.”

Mobile traffic is regularly growing. What’s more, Google recently announced that it’s been experimenting with mobile-first indexing. Although it’s still in the testing phase, this clearly indicates in what direction SEO is heading. Google is about to make the mobile version the main index for ranking websites. Check out this Mobile SEO advice by Barry Schwarz

This is the very last warning call to all those whose sites still perform poorly on mobile to fix this issue before their overall rankings start to decline in the SERPs. If your mobile version isn’t flawless, do something about it, or at least make the mobile experience up to par with the desktop standards.

If you aren’t sure whether your website meets the criteria for being mobile friendly, login to your Search Console account, and view the Mobile Usability section. Google reports any mobile related issues.

Key Takeaway

Google started to update its search algorithms more imperceptibly; the changes are getting more flexible. Review what you know about search ranking factors and put this SEO advice at the top of your 2017 priority list.

This piece is devoted to the top three ranking factors, but of course, there is always more to add. There are many different ranking signals to consider as well like user experience, social media, backlinks and technical issues. All ranking factors combined contribute to your final keywords positions; what is different is the effect each factor has on your rank.

Would you add anything more to this write-up? Let me know in the comments below.

If you think that firing an employee is as simple as channeling Donald Trump circa 2004, you're in for a rude awakening. 

In reality, getting rid of someone on your team is uncomfortable for everyone involved. For advice on how to navigate this über-awkward situation, we turned to Rosalinda Oropeza Randall, an etiquette and civility expert and the author of "Don't Burp in the Boardroom."

Here's the general script template she shared: 

"We recognize that you were instrumental in assisting your department with [whatever project]. However, for the last year we've attempted to work with you on [whatever skill]. We've decided to terminate your employment effective [whenever]."

Randall said the most important thing to do (before you use the template above) is to consult your human resources and/or legal departments — especially if the person you're firing has been a problem employee. They can tell you the specific language you'll need to use.

"There are so many little loopholes and little words you want to avoid using," she cautioned.

For example, if there's a chance that the person being fired might take legal action against the company, your HR department might advise you not to start off with something positive, since they can use that against you. Otherwise, Randall said you can probably acknowledge one positive contribution they made.

That's especially true if you're laying someone off or if an entire department has been dissolved and you're not firing someone for poor performance.

But then you'll want to get the point. "People don't want you to dilly dally … when they know that they're inevitably going to be fired," Randall said. 

In closing, you should end on a positive note: "We wish you well and thank you for your service to the company." 

You'll also want to find out other details, like whether you need other people present when you're delivering the news and whether someone needs to escort the employee back to their office and then off the premises.

Yes, it's a cringe-worthy situation. But it doesn't make you a monster. Life will go on for both of you.

SEE ALSO: Here's exactly what to say in 10 of the most awkward moments you'll have at work

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Never say these 6 things to your boss

As we observe momentum building up in Europe around the emerging role of customer success, I’d like to share a few thoughts around this business metamorphosis we are witnessing. While this new role is still very much at experimentation stage as it positions itself in the recurring revenue business model, there are common themes around its practice and impact. This inspired me to create a series of some reflections around recurring themes and which I have called “Customer Success of Things” (CSoT)

What do we mean by Customer Success?

Before we dig further into some common CSoT themes, a definition of customer success is fitting. The notion of customer success has different interpretations and maturity levels depending on countries, sectors, markets and company sizes. The role of customer success for example is quite different in a large enterprise organisation than in a start-up. There is however a common goal:

To fulfil the evolutive expected outcomes of customers through their multi-directional interactions around your company.

Customer success is a mindset and a series of on-going processes and interactions. A customer’s needs, expected outcomes and context at the beginning of their customer journey may change after contract signature or within the licence period. Proactive listening, observation and engagement is necessary to identify health and risk to ensure your solution and company services are constantly providing added value and adapting to signs of change. Customer success thrives on multi-directional positive engagement and communication:

1) Vendors towards customers

2) Customers towards vendors

3) Vendor customers between themselves

4) Vendor customers in exchange with other third parties (peers, prospects, stakeholders, competitors,…)

This CSoT series of posts will share some thoughts on customer success themes. The first one below continues the above definition:

“Customer Success” – Term with a Double Meaning

When On-Demand and SaaS first started (Salesforce.com being one of the pioneers), they observed that to retain client subscriptions it was necessary to proactively engage with customers to help them become successful with your company and solution. So they created the notion of “customer success teams”.

Customer Success Teams

The customer success team is commonly known as the group of actors who relay, usually after contract signature (though not always) to continue to proactively partner customers to achieve their expected outcomes. The foundations for success have already been laid early in the sales cycle by the marketing/business development/sales teams. The customer success team now continues the customer engagement and provision of added value over the whole duration of the licence period until renewal and beyond. Depending on organisations, renewal is also included as part of the role of the customer success team.

So whilst there is a group of people called “customer success team” dedicated to the contractual health and wealth of the customer, other teams have also played their part in the “customer success journey”.

This brings us to the second more holistic notion of customer success.

Customer Success – Company DNA and Global Objective

It has transpired that customer success is not about a team of people trying to please customers and reduce churn. The term “customer success” is a holistic cross-functional objective and responsibility. This means that across the entire customer journey, every single actor has a customer success role to play with clearly defined responsibilities. A customer success mindset is in the DNA of the vendor company running throughout the whole organisation, e.g.

• Management to define the customer success vision, objectives and tempo
• R&D to evolve the product according to customer input and market needs
• Marketing to prospect ideal customers + personas with success potential
• Sales to close and prepare customers ready for on-boarding to success
• Customer success teams to provide proactive engagement and added value
• Support to provide rapid and pertinent replies to customer queries
• Etc…

All teams play a customer success role as customers progress across their journeys to achieve repeated success. For this holistic view of customer success, this often means that existing internal roles are revisited so that each player has clear objectives, responsibilities and engagement aims at each stage of the customer journey. In the recurring revenue model, the post contractual growth potential is so considerable that the traditional notion of pre-sales and post-sales activity is revisited. This necessarily impacts the internal organisation, responsibilities and internal relays.

Conclusion

There are 2 notions around the term “customer success”:

• Customer success organisation = holistic responsibility and objective of the whole organisation to ensure the success potential and achievement of its customers as they move across the customer journey.
• Customer success team = group of actors (usually after the initial contract but sometimes before) responsible for proactively partnering customers to reach their evolutive expected outcomes.

For this internal relay of actors across the customer journey, check out the boomerang recurring revenue flight.

Thanks for taking interest in this post. I look forward to joining you soon to share further thoughts in the “CSoT” series.

At 6:25 a.m. on March 17, 2014, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake shook the greater Los Angeles area. A mere three minutes later, the Los Angeles Times became the first publication to break the story. How did they do it so quickly? Instead of waiting on a human being to research and report, the newspaper used a content robot that sourced information from the U.S. Geological Survey and compiled a simple article in seconds.

A few days later, one of my friends read about the Los Angeles Times news-writing algorithm and asked if I was scared this sort of artificial intelligence would make my job obsolete. And I laughed off the question. Psh. Robots.

But I’d be lying if I said a tiny part of me wasn’t a wee bit nervous.

Innovation can be scary. And naysayers have been prophesying the end of content writing for nearly a decade. But content creators are nothing if not resilient. We know how to pivot, reinvent and champion our cause. And so far we’ve been successful in this endeavor—88 percent of B2B marketers used content marketing in 2016, according to Content Marketing Institute.

But what does the future hold for what is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to marketing? 

Hold onto your hat, my friend. The winds of change are upon us.

1. Interactive Content Will Become Brands’ Hot New Must-Have

This is by no means a recent development, but it is becoming more popular as attention spans shrink and demand for immediate value grows. Quizzes, polls, surveys, calculators and guided self-assessments are visually stimulating and prompt readers to engage almost instantly. According to HubSpot’s The State of Inbound 2016, 42 percent of inbound marketers said creating interactive content is a top marketing priority in 2017.

What this means for you: Traditional blogging, eBooks and whitepapers are still important, but to outpace your competition you’ll need to add visually appealing interactive content to your resource arsenal.

2. Rise of “Fake News” Will Make Content Consumers More Cautious

Throughout 2016, the internet was rife with stories journalist Stephen Armstrong calls “the mix of outright lie, partisan opinion and conspiracy theory.” This fake news smeared presidential candidates, swayed public opinion and even prompted a North Carolina man to fire an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.

In recent weeks, social media outlets have taken measures to curb the spread of fake news and many content consumers have started doing their own fact-checking. We predict this trend will continue, with people becoming less likely to believe everything they read and more likely to avoid outlets that spread falsities.

What this means for you: Be ethical. Publish only well-researched content rooted in fact and never assume your prospects won’t do their homework.

3. Quality Over Quantity Will Reign Supreme

Since Google’s first Panda algorithm update in 2011, great content marketers have been pushing for quality content over quantity. In other words, there is no point in publishing several blog posts per week if they’re not earning traffic. Publishing frequency is just one of many factors that affect a site’s SEO ranking. And we’re going to see this idea evolve.

Instead of regurgitating the same “how-to’s” and top 10 lists as their competitors, the most successful brands will be those that put extra time and effort into their content. Expect to see more investigative journalism style long-form articles and provocative thought pieces produced by brands.

What this means for you: Work with writers trained in journalism who know how to chase a good story, conduct interviews and find a new and exciting angle.

4. Content Dabblers Will Waste a Lot of Money

In the December 2016 issue of the Content Marketing Institute’s print magazine Chief Content Officer, founder Joe Pulizzi warns that dabbling in content—that is, not fully committing to content marketing—is a waste of time. “With content marketing, it’s all or nothing.” Pulizzi says. “Dabblers need not apply.”

Brands that create content without a sound strategy and objective aren’t just going to waste their time, though. They’re also going to waste a lot of money and push good marketing employees out the door.

What this means for you: If your organization doesn’t have a full-fledged editorial calendar, well-planned content strategy tied to company objectives and a reliable method of measuring success, you have two choices: 1) Start doing all of the above (we can help!) or 2) Quit trying and miss out on significant lead generating potential.

5. Content Writers Will Need to Pivot (Again)

Ah, content writers. This career path sure is a rollercoaster. Many started this journey being forced to stuff their copy with keywords to the point of incoherent drivel, then pivoted to become researchers extraordinaire once Google put the kibosh on keyword stuffing and brands (finally) started demanding higher quality material. Now they’re chugging along creating blog posts that are both fun to write and interesting to read.

Time for another shake-up.

As mentioned above, content will morph into different forms over the next few years, and writers will need to acquire new skills to meet the demand. The ability to write short-but-gripping copy for interactive pieces and thoroughly investigated long-form articles that expose and uncover valuable and new information will become critical to their future.

What this means for you: Never (ever, ever) settle for mediocre writing. If you want to stand out from the noise, the copy you publish should be intriguing, enticing and just as well-written as the articles in your favorite magazine. Select content creators carefully and remember: When it comes to content writing, you get what you pay for.

6. Demand Generation Strategy Will Continue Growing in Complexity

In the marketing world, one of the only constants is change. Marketers know they have to continually be learning and evolving their skill set—and that’s half the fun. But for a business trying to quickly fill its sales pipeline with quality leads, all this change can be frustrating. There are few aspects of marketing where this rings truer than in demand generation.

In the past, we’ve talked about content slump: when your space has become so inundated with content contributors, you’re having trouble rising above the noise. Creating brilliant content won’t do much good if no one’s seeing it. Demand generation helps overcome this challenge by attracting and leading prospects right to your content through a mix of owned, earned and paid efforts.

From internally created content to publicity and paid media, the recipe for success changes as often as distribution channels change their rules (which is a lot.) And this constant evolution is speeding up exponentially.

What this means for you: Trying to keep up with the intricate and dynamic world of demand generation often requires the effort of a full-time team of experts. If you don’t have the time or budget to hire a full team, outsourcing to an experienced agency can relieve you of the burden and help you achieve greater success.

7. The Most Engaging Content Will Be Extra-Long or Extra-Short

As we’ve touched on already, content is undergoing a metamorphosis in which the uber short, concise and punchy copy (think billboard style) and lengthy, in-depth, long-form storytelling will become the two most engaging formats.

We’ll see shorter-style copy in places like interactive content and mobile applications—especially as the Internet of Things continues to grow. Long-form content will continue to be offered as eBooks and whitepapers, but we’ll also see ungated long-form editorial-style content edging in on blogs and in specialized publications.

“Rethink your strategy if you’re only dosing your customers with short-form content,” says content thought leader Mark Schaefer. “If the content is worth reading, your customers will value and share in-depth articles.”

What this means for you: It’s time to vary your content length, but only when it makes sense. In other words, don’t create a long-form article for the sake of long-form, but because the information you have to share can’t be summed up in short form.

Moving Forward

Content marketing isn’t dying. In fact, it’s arguably more alive and more important than ever. But the evolution is inevitable and complacency is the kiss of death to your content marketing strategy.

Keep the above seven predictions of the future of content marketing in mind as you plan the next few quarters and welcome change. But remember: While innovative marketing automation can (and should) edge in on some content marketing duties, a robot will never be able to enrapture an audience like a good (human) content creator.

A job interview is your best chance to make a good impression on a future boss and team, and while it’s also a time for them to impress you, you want to make sure you send the right message with your non-verbals. This graphic outlines seven different body language mistakes you won’t want to make, and how to avoid them.

Read more...

You can make the case that, at the outset of 2017, no business can afford not to be a technology company. Technology has so pervaded the day-to-day operations of virtually any company—not to mention the behaviour of its customers—that very few leaders can afford to ignore the prevailing trends. So, we asked five of Canada’s top tech executives to reveal the trends they’re most excited to witness—and participate in—over the year ahead:

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1. Canada will become an AI leader

“I’m a technology optimist. We’re entering a new era in which people will experience computing more naturally and seamlessly in the context of their lives, powered by intelligent assistance and the cloud. This transition is as significant as the move over the last decade from desktops to mobile devices.

“I’m particularly excited to see how advances in artificial intelligence and deep learning research in 2017 will make a material impact on the consumer products we interact with every day. I also expect to see indications of AI making positive contributions to health sciences.

“This is a particularly exciting moment for Canada, which is fast becoming a global powerhouse in AI. The pioneering work of Yoshua Bengio at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms and Geoffrey Hinton, who splits his time between Google Toronto and his lab at University of Toronto, has fostered a rich culture of academic research in Canada. And what we’re seeing right now is academic institutions, large companies, startups, incubators and federal investment coming together to support a shared vision: To make Canada the global leader in AI research. It’s really exciting to see this kind of focus in Canada on a technology that will define innovation for years to ”

—Sam Sebastian, managing director, Google Canada

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2. Every business will undergo digital transformation

“I’m excited to see what’s possible in this new world of digital transformation. Businesses and organizations are now recognizing the essential role technology will play in their ability to not only thrive, but to simply survive in this new digital world. Digital transformation is changing every industry – and we expect 2017 to be a hallmark year for innovation in the areas of clean energy, improved health care, better customer interactions and operational efficiencies. Disruptive technologies such as blockchain, virtual reality and mixed reality, AI and the Internet of Things will have increased demonstrable applications in Canada and around the world. Canadian entrepreneurs and startups have a leading role to play here, keeping our brilliant minds and new graduates here at home in Canada. ”

—Bernadette Wightman, president, Cisco Canada

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3. Social media will pervade all facets of customer behaviour

“Social media is playing a bigger role in every phase of the customer lifecycle: not just as a marketing tool, but for everything from sales to customer service, too. The surge of chatbots on platforms like Facebook Messenger shows just how scalable social customer service can be, and I think we’ll see major progress here in 2017. At the same time, we’re suddenly seeing CEOs and top leadership taking the lead in championing social media for their companies. This all points to a kind of emerging consciousness that social media is the best—and maybe the only—place to reach customers, employees and stakeholders right now.”

—Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO, Hootsuite

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4. Fintech disruption will be the new media disruption

“I’m excited about the change I’m seeing with fintech. Ten years ago is when we disrupted the media industry [at Buytopia, where Romanow was co-founder]. With the recent U.S. election, you can see that the way that we consume media is fundamentally different than the way we did 10 years ago. Now I see that transformation in financial world. I think that the way that we manage, control and invest our money is going to really change in the next 10 years, and a lot of that innovation is happening right now and is coming from Canada. That’s what’s making me excited going into 2017.”

—Michele Romanow, entrepreneur and investor on CBC’s Dragons’ Den

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5. Wearables will integrate more seamlessly into daily life

“Wearables continued to fight and make traction in 2016, but new form factors will open up new possibilities in 2017.

“Now that we have the investments and R&D in place [Thalmic raised US$120 million in venture capital in October 2016], I’m most excited for 2017 to be the year that we further push the boundaries of human-computer interaction bringing new technologies to market, and become one year closer to our vision of a more seamless future.”

—Stephen Lake, co-founder and CEO, Thalmic Labs

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MORE ON TECHNOLOGY:

• The four technologies that really mattered at CES 2017
• How the Internet of Things is going to transform retail
• Want to build a truly innovative economy? Get a good barista
• Jim Balsillie on how Canada is doing innovation wrong—and how to fix it
• How big data and digital apps are going to transform farming

The post Five Canadian tech leaders on what they’re most excited for in 2017 appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

As key drivers of the revenue team, marketing and sales are constantly looking for the next innovative method to get a competitive edge—particularly in generating revenue for the business.

One method that continues to pique interest is intent data.

Having created numerous products that leverage massive volumes of data in the marketing and sales space, we get asked many questions about how to best leverage intent data. In this blog, I’ll walk you through what intent data is, how to use it to drive revenue, and how to evaluate a vendor:

What is Intent Data?

Intent data is behavioral information collected about an individual’s online activities, combining both topic and context data, which I’ll explain in more detail below.

Topic Data: When you search for something or visit a website, you are expressing an interest in that topic. For example, people who read this article are expressing some level of interest in “intent data.”

There are several different categories of topic data:

• Anonymous 1st Party Behavioral: People visiting your website who are identified by their IP address, which is then mapped to their company’s name. You can use solutions like Demandbase and Marketo Web Personalization to leverage this information to personalize the content displayed.
• Known 1st Party Behavioral: People visiting your website who have also filled out a form online. Because they provided their contact information, they are considered “known.” Using a marketing automation platform, you can then track their page views.
• Anonymous 3rd Party Behavioral: People visiting other websites that you don’t own, but indicate some relevance (e.g. Forbes.com for business professionals). Their IP addresses are collected by vendors like Bombora and Big Willow.
• Known 3rd Party Behavioral: People visiting other websites who have also filled out a form on that site providing their contact information. In this context, they become known to the website owner, and vendors like TechTarget make that information available to marketers.

However, topic interest alone is not all that actionable without knowing the context of the individual.

Context Data: Context is all about gaining insight into who the person is that’s taking the action in question. For example, if the person reading this blog is a marketing professional, it’s possible they are in the process of evaluating a product that leverages intent data. But if the person is an industry analyst, it may be more likely they are writing a report and looking for more information on the subject.

Levels of context range from higher-level, more general information (e.g. Which company does this person work for? What is their official role within the organization?) to really granular, personal insights (e.g. Does this person have expertise in using technologies or best practices associated with my product? Does this lead and company match with my ideal buyer or could they be an influencer?)

Without this context, you’ll be wasting your time and budget engaging with prospects who may be making all the right behavioral signals but will never become customers (e.g. trying to sell your product to the industry analyst).

How to Use Intent Data

Now that we’re clear on what intent data is, let’s go over some specific scenarios in which you can use it to drive revenue.

1. Personalize your website experience for anonymous visitors

When people visit your website before they fill out a form, their activities are considered to be “anonymous.” This term is a bit misleading because the visitor is not, of course, completely anonymous. With the right technology, you can identify the company and/or industry a visitor represents based on IP address alone. However, that visitor is still considered “anonymous” on a personal level. You don’t know who they are or where they fit within their given company or industry. They could be the CEO or CMO—but they could just as easily be an intern or a student.

After you identify visitors “anonymously” on your website and track the pages they view, you can use web personalization to serve customized content to incentivize them to take a specific action. In most scenarios, anonymous personalization is a means to encourage visitors to identify themselves via a form fill so marketing and sales can engage with them (or not).

2. Prioritize inbound leads based on engagement

With the wide adoption of marketing automation, many companies are already using 1st party behavioral data (i.e. context of the individual) to optimize their lead scoring model. This scoring model attempts to quantify the intent of the visitor based on a culmination of activities. For example, when leads visit your product overview page, their lead score will increase by 5. If they visit your pricing page, indicating an even greater interest in buying, it will increase by 10, and so on. Then, when a lead’s score reaches a threshold agreed upon by marketing and sales, an alert is sent to sales to reach out to that prospect.

3^rd party intent data can be incorporated into your existing lead scoring model as well. Consider the scenario where a lead has researched topics related to your product on other websites, but has not yet hit the 1^st party behavioral scoring thresholds set. You shouldn’t wait for them to then hit the behavioral thresholds (e.g. downloading your whitepaper) before engaging with them. If they’re clearly interested, you want to strike while the iron is hot.

3. Nurture known leads with personalized emails

Nascent personalization and lead nurturing leverage job titles to segment inbound leads. The problem? Job titles in the B2B space are not standardized, change frequently, and often give no real insight into the seniority, buying power, or even specific functions the lead serves within their company. This often results in improper categorization, sending unqualified leads to sales, and delivering “personalized”, but irrelevant content to leads.

To most accurately categorize leads and place them in the right nurture campaigns, you must combine their known 1^st and 3^rd party behavioral data to identify not only the context of who they are and their role within the organization but also the topics they are interested in.

4. Identify potential customers who haven’t yet engaged with you yet

Your prospects’ purchasing decisions are strongly influenced before they even reach out to you or visit your website. For example, people consume content within their social media feeds and read reviews on G2Crowd, which shape their opinions and push them in one direction or another. These activities are considered 3rd party behavioral data.

3rd party behavioral data is highly unstructured and the volume is massive. As a result, very few companies possess the budget or expertise to integrate such data into their existing marketing and sales processes. In turn, marketers have increasingly turned to predictive analytics platforms that integrate with marketing automation and CRM platforms to help them sift through the noise to determine which 3rd party topics are actually relevant.

Anonymous 3rd party topic data can be incorporated into predictive account scoring models to determine prospective accounts’ likelihood to buy. This information is used to identify target accounts for outbound initiatives as well as prioritize new inbound inquiries from leads within high scoring accounts.

Questions to Ask an Intent Data Vendor

It’s all too common that people will buy in on the conceptual value of intent data only to be disappointed that the solution they bought cannot be applied to all of their desired use cases.

To ensure your vendor can support your objectives, make sure they can properly tie topic data to buyer context (i.e. intent) by asking the following questions:

1. What level of context can you provide me about the buyer? Company only? Lead only? Ideally, you want both.
2. Can you deliver the context (i.e. company, person, and topic attributes) used in your modeling process so I can use the information in my existing lead and account scoring workflows? Steer clear of “black boxes,” predictive models which don’t let you look “under the hood” and view the data that informed the model.
3. Can I get set up with a quick win and then grow with your offering into more sophisticated uses of intent data?

If your vendor cannot deliver on the above, it will be difficult for you to leverage intent data to its fullest potential. Instead, you’ll risk putting yourself and your organization at risk of buying a solution that doesn’t help you achieve your business objectives.

Are you leveraging intent data today? If so, I’d love to hear how you’re using it and what you think in the comments section below.

 

Active social media profiles are so important to businesses in this digital age. The key word there being “active”. Posting regular social media content provides you credibility by showing off your expertise. It is an essential addition to your other marketing efforts.

However, keeping consistent social media content going on your feeds can be time-consuming. Outsourcing your social media content to an expert team is a huge start to in getting time back to actually run your business.

Once you have your social media content outsourced, you can take that work that is being completed on your behalf and stretch the benefits even further with these 7 repurposing hacks.

1. Facebook Live Videos
79% of all Internet users use Facebook. That is a huge opportunity and audience. As video also becomes more popular, how can you take advantage without having to create completely new content? With a quick review of your analytics, you can see which Facebook posts, shared from your account, have received the most engagement with your audience.

Choose a couple of those posts and “go live” to discuss them. You already have the content you need ready. By just putting it into a different format, video, it only takes a few minutes to engage your audience even more.

2. SlideShare PDFs
Gather some of your best posts, tips, and statistics from Facebook, Twitter, and Linked on a popular topic. Use a simple program like PowerPoint or Keynote to create a slideshow of those related posts.

Upload that presentation to SlideShare and reach a whole new audience with data you already have. Your audience will be thrilled to have all this great information gathered together in one PDF and you can get even more mileage out of the content by sharing the SlideShare PDF across your other social media platforms.

This gives more people a chance to engage with the information that may have missed it the first time around.

3. Tweet-To-Text Quote
Quotes are hugely popular as social media content across all platforms. People love being inspired in small, digestible formats. Turn a popular tweet into a quote graphic by using a simple platform like Canva. Choose the Social Media Graphic template, add your background photo and your quote.

For more engagement, add a re-sharing hashtag directly on the graphic. Then spread across social media land. Viewers will share using the hashtag, which will bring even more shares and traffic to your profiles. This is a wonderful way to reuse your Twitter content in a way that will capture new attention.

4. Facebook To Infographic
Compile a few of your best tips from your Facebook posts into an infographic. Infographics, like quotes, are another form of easily digested information that brings a lot of shares. They make more complicated facts and statistics fun and engaging.

“Infographics make complex information eye catching, shareable and easily digestible. They can help boost engagement on your social media profiles, make your presentations more interesting and transform your marketing materials to have greater impact.” –Canva

Canva has an Infographic Maker with a lot of free graphics for you to use. Once you create an infographic format that you love, simply update the information whenever needed to create a whole new graphic.

5. Combine Tweets Into Moments
Twitter Moments are a way to curate various related tweets into a collection. Use it to gather a few of your tweets in one place to showcase them together and tell a cohesive story.

Click on your profile settings and choose “moments.” You will have an option in your right Twitter sidebar to “Create new moment.” Then give your moment a title and description. If you would like, you can add a cover photo, but this is optional.

Now it is time to add Tweets to your moment. To use Tweets already available on your account, select “Tweets by account.” Your feed will come up and you may select all the tweets that you want to include in the moment. When ready simply hit “publish.” Watch as more people see and share your previously tweeted content.

6. From LinkedIn Post to LinkedIn Pulse
A great way to repurpose tips shared in individual posts on LinkedIn is to combine those posts into a LinkedIn Pulse article. LinkedIn Pulse is a way to brand yourself and your company as an authority in your field. It has a lot of weight in the business world with LinkedIn being the social media platform of choice among professionals.

But, you do not need to take up more time writing articles from scratch. From your dashboard, click “create an article.” Add your headline and copy and paste the best information from your LinkedIn posts into the body. Add any needed subheadings and publish. You have a whole new piece of valuable social media content with a small amount of effort. Don’t forget to share it to Twitter and Facebook.

7. Turn Social Media Posts Into A Newsletter
You want to give your email subscribers great content, but who has the time? Make your email newsletter much easier and time efficient by using it to reshare your most popular posts. It is likely that your followers prefer one social media platform over another.
So, if you combine your most popular posts, from a certain week or month, from your different networks, readers will be receiving content from you that they likely have not seen.

You can say, “Here are our most popular posts from Twitter, Facebook, and Linked this week…” Embed the posts into the newsletter. This makes it easier for you and easy for readers to like, tweet, and share their favorites.

These 7 social media hacks are huge time savers. Use these repurposing ideas on a weekly basis to get extra mileage and ROI from your social media efforts.

With some help, strategy, and clever repurposing methods, you can add immense value to your audience and your business while keeping your time investment to a minimum.

Have a clever social media repurposing hack? Share it in the comments.

The other week, I saw a young girl walk up to the counter of a nice department store.

“I really want this toy,” she told the employee. “But I'm $10 short. Can I please have a discount?”

He was clearly amused but said that would be against store policy.

Negotiators sometimes come to an impasse, no matter how much both sides would like to agree. As a salesperson, this usually happens when the prospect asks for a discount or term you simply can’t grant.

If you turn them down outright, as the store employee did to the girl, your prospect might walk away -- and neither of you will get what you want.

The solution? Use the four-part response recommended by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss in his book, “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.”

Chris Voss' Four-Part Negotiation Strategy

“How Am I Supposed to Do That?”

This question immediately puts the ball back in your prospect’s court. Now, the onus is on them to come up with a solution -- rather than on you to concede or refuse.

In addition, they’ll be forced to acknowledge that they’re making a ridiculous or outsized request.

Make sure you sound respectful and genuinely curious. If you sound hostile, this question will backfire.

Here’s an example:

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “Hardware plus support comes to $11,000, right? Is there any way you could knock something off from support? It won’t bring us down to $8,000, but I think I could persuade my boss’s manager with that.”

The buyer essentially admitted his original ask wasn’t feasible -- and better yet, adjusted it.

“Your offer is very generous. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.”

If you ask how you’re supposed to fulfill your prospect’s request and they respond with a variation on, “I don’t know,” then politely but firmly say:

“Your offer is very generous. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.”

As Voss explains, “This well-tested response avoids making a counter-offer, and the use of the word ‘generous’ nurtures your counterpart to live up to the word.”

Saying “I’m sorry” also creates empathy.

Here’s how the salesperson would use this response if her prospect hadn’t softened his request:

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Hmm. Do you have any flexibility in boosting our level of support? She might go for it if we’re getting premium support.”

Rep: “Yes, I can upgrade you to the priority package with no charge.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.”

Does this response sound familiar? Voss says it’s “a little more direct” than your previous statement.

“The ‘can’t do that’ pulls great double duty,’” he adds. “By indicating an inability to perform, it can trigger the other side’s empathy toward you.”

At this point, you’ve said “no” in other words three times. Unless your prospect is extremely set on getting what they’ve asked for, they’ll probably compromise.

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can persuade her at the current price. Are you sure you can’t do $8,000?”

Rep: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.”

Prospect: “I know our department really needs this new equipment … Could you put me in touch with a reference who might be able to sell her on the value?”

Rep: “Definitely -- I’ll send you two contacts by the end of the day.”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Delivered gently, this barely sounds negative at all,” writes Voss.

You’re politely standing firm. If the agreement is salvageable, the buyer will agree to your terms or ask for a different concession. If they keep pressing, it’s likely time to cut your losses or offer a concession.

Prospect: “My boss is on board, but his manager won’t approve the purchase if it’s over $8,000.”

Rep: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Prospect: “I’m not sure. She’s pretty dead-set on that limit.”

Rep: “That’s a generous offer and I want to make this partnership work. I’m sorry, but $8,000 just doesn’t work for us.”

Prospect: “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can persuade her at the current price.”

Rep: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t go that low.”

Prospect: “From my end, the price is non-negotiable. Are you sure you can’t do $8,000?”

Rep: “I’m sorry, no.”

Prospect: “Let me tell her you can’t do $8,000, show her the ROI information you gave me, and get back to you.”

While holding your ground during a negotiation is hard to do, it’s often necessary to reach a fair deal agreement. This four-part response should make saying "no" easier.

• Visible Alpha, a startup backed by five banks, is acquiring ONEaccess.
• The two firms help investors answer two key questions in the equity research world.
• What is your investment recommendation based on? And how valuable is your research?

Wall Street research analysts have lots of ways to communicate their opinions to investor clients.

They can say that a stock is a buy or a sell. They can be "overweight" or "underweight" a stock. They can be above consensus or below. They can be neutral or have a hold rating. But what are those opinions based on?

Visible Alpha, a Wall Street startup backed by banks including UBS and Morgan Stanley, is set up to help investors understand exactly that. Now the firm is acquiring ONEaccess, another startup that helps firms find corporate access events and track their consumption of research.

Visible Alpha aims to standardize the analyst models and forecast data that underpins those analyst recommendations like buy, sell, or hold. In effect, it allows analysts to show their work and for investors to see it and compare it.

"Research analysts spend a lot of time analyzing data, and they put that into their research, but for clients, they want to see that quantified," Scott Rosen, the CEO at Visible Alpha, told Business Insider. "They're saying: 'Show me your underlying assumptions.'"

ONEaccess helps investors track their research consumption, a key requirement with coming European regulations that will require investors to put a monetary value on the research they consume.

"Both companies have focused on optimizing the investment management workflow, but we've tackled different aspects of it," Mike Stepanovich, the CEO of ONEaccess said. "By coming together, we are able to solve both sides of the equation for our clients, and we are already receiving positive feedback from them."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A Harvard Business professor explains the failed case against Steve Cohen

The value of triggered email marketing campaigns to engage and retain consumers has been proven time and again, yet many retailers are not yet taking advantage of its potential.

The results of a recent study of retailers, which was reported on by Laurie Sullivan at Email Marketing Daily, indicated that only about a third of respondents said they have been sending reactive, triggered emails for two years or more, and 22% of respondents are not sending any type of triggered emails at all. These are surprising findings because retailers who do use triggered emails report that they achieve click-through rates of 56%, open rates of 50%, and on-site conversions and purchase completions of 44%.

“Triggered emails are some of the most effective ways to use email marketing automation,” writes Kevin Ho, at Wishpond. ‘When compared to a plain email drip campaign, triggered email marketing can mean higher engagement, higher click through rates, increased customer retention and increased overall customer and lead satisfaction.”

Ho encourages marketers to use triggered emails “for onboarding, lead nurturing and to optimize your conversion process. Remember, the more that you know about your users, the better you can cater to their specific needs, based on exactly where they are within your sales funnel. Using trigger-based emails you’ll be able to cut down on the total number of emails you’re sending, while increasing their overall impact.”

Douglas Karr writes on the MarTec Blog that “if you’re an email marketer, you should be working to incorporate as many types of triggered emails you can to increase engagement, acquisition, retention and upsell opportunities.”

“Because triggered email campaigns are behaviorally targeted and timed when a subscriber is expecting them, they achieve superior results when compared to business as usual (BAU) email campaigns like newsletters,” Karr writes. Those results include 197% higher open rates, 203-percent higher click-to-open rates and 406% higher click-through rates.

10 types of triggered emails

He describes ten types of triggered emails that he considers effective at creating and nurturing engagement with customers:

1. Welcome – This message “sets” the new relationship and provides guidance for the behavior you wish to establish.
2. Onboarding – These messages provide a “push” to new subscribers to help them set up their account or begin utilizing your platform or store.
3. Early activation – These messages are designed to entice not-yet engaged subscribers to become active with your brand.
4. Reactivation – These messages reengage subscribers who haven’t responded or clicked through within the purchase cycle.
5. Remarketing – These messages, which are also known as “abandoned shopping cart” messages, “continue to drive the most conversions for email marketers, especially in the e-commerce space,” Karr writes.
6. Transactional – These are messages regarding purchase confirmations, back orders, shipping confirmations and returns or refunds, etc.
7. Account notifications – These messages inform consumers of changes to their account, like password updates, changes to email, profile changes, etc.
8. Personal events – These are messages pertaining to birthdays, anniversaries, and other personal milestones.
9. Milestone – These messages offer congratulations to subscribers that have reached a specific milestone with your brand.
10. Real-time triggers – These are weather, location, and event-based triggers that facilitate deeper engagement with your prospects or customers.

Creating and implementing an email campaign that uses automated triggered messages can be a rather daunting proposition, but the potential results make navigating a steep learning curve worthwhile.

“At its core, triggered emails are simple,” writes Ho. “But they can quickly become complex as you start to stack the amount of specific conditions required to trigger an email.” To help get newbies started, Ho has compiled six examples of “real-life trigger-based emails” that can serve as “an entry point into the world of triggered emails.” He shares a welcome message, a “getting set-up” message, an empty queue message, two shopping cart abandonment messages and an inactivity message.

Start using triggered email marketing campaigns today

“Not sure where to start?” asks Chris Frasier at Click Z. “If email marketing automation is new to your business, start small,” he suggests. “Automate a single part of your total program, so that you can more easily test and analyze changes in opens, clicks and conversions. Continue to test and optimize regularly to maximize revenue-generating opportunities. You may need to adjust series cadence, creative, copy, promotions and offers, or content.”

And it turns out that right now might be the best time of year to get started with triggered messages, because they can help you capture sales that you have missed during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Or so writes Heike Young at Business 2 Community. “Take down the holiday design elements; it’s time for a new year,” she suggests.

“Set up triggered emails so customers are notified if a product in their holiday wish list comes back in stock. Offer recommendations for products that would perfectly accompany what customers received over the holidays.”

It’s a new year and you want to make it your best yet. You want to make a change for the better simply to step up your game. Despite the reasons, despite the timing, you’ve got a lot to look forward to, assuming you know where to go from there.

Be smart, make money. Sometimes it really is simple. At least that was Master Yoda’s take on things when he uttered his famous Star Wars line “do or do not…there is no try.” In sales, that is about as clear-cut a guideline to success as you can get.

So once you make the decision to ‘do,’ what happens next? More often than not, the story ends there. There are any number of reasons people fail, but lack of focus and direction is among the most common.

1. You Won’t Write Them Down

Research on the success rate of those who write their goals down versus those who don’t is murky. Statistics range from 80 to 97 percent of people who are more likely to fail because they didn’t write down what they sought to achieve.

Sources as reliable as Harvard University claim the main reason why three percent of a graduating class in 1979 made significantly more money 20 years later is because they wrote their goals down.

Despite the variation, the truth is clear. As many as 97 percent of us are doomed to fail from the start because we missed one of the most important first steps anyone can take.

Multiple studies have been discussed in the business realm in recent years supporting the validity of the concept of success being linked to writing down your goals…. but, you’re better than that, right? YOU don’t need to write your goals down.

2. You Won’t Make Them SMART

Mapping out your goals in a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely way is considered a gold standard method of goal-setting. Beyond being easy to understand, SMART goals have been changing the goal-setting landscape for more than half a century.

How you opt to put pen to paper is almost as crucial as writing it down in the first place. While many business plans outline a vision, goals and steps to get there, it’s what happens every day that brings a plan to life. More often than not, this is where success to this point gets tripped up. It’s easier to see the big number without being able to see the individual steps, a hurdle that can result in a trying game of catch-up that often ends in defeat.

In one study, Dr. Edwin Locke determined 90 percent of the time, the practice of using SMART goals resulted in higher performance than less specific goals. But don’t worry, the hope and wish goals you have, even though you didn’t write them down… you got this.

3. You Won’t Stay on Track

What do those numbers mean for you? What does writing it down and being SMART mean for your sales quota? For your business? For your life?

Everything.

Most importantly, once you’ve put the effort in to lay a firm foundation, the time is now to stay on track. No two sales people are the same, nor are their businesses or strategies. Yet there are tried and true tools anyone can use to go the extra mile toward the finish line.

Let’s Get Started

In order to develop the specific behavioral steps needed to hit your goals, we need to begin with the end in mind. Being that this is a sales goals exercise, I hope (assume?) one of your goals is an income or revenue number. In creating your roadmap, we will start with the income goal you want to achieve and work backwards with the math to determine the activities you will need to perform on a consistent basis. If you find the numbers and ratios off a bit, start conservative and you can adjust once you begin to track more accurate data.

Goals

My desired pre-tax income or revenue goal for 2017 is: __________

My annual base salary is: __________

The incremental income I need to meet my desired pre-tax income goals for 2017 is: __________

Facts

The average value of my sales contract is: __________

The percentage of commission I am paid on each sale is: __________

My average commission per sale is: __________

New sales I need to make over the course of the year to achieve my desired pre-tax income: __________

Sales Activities

On average, I have to send _____ proposals to get a closed deal.

In order to send one proposal, I have to have _____ discovery calls (first meetings).

In order to schedule a discovery call (first meeting) I have to reach out to _____ prospects.

Work Schedule

How many hours per day do you truly work? _____ (be honest)

Not including weekends, how many vacation days, sick days, or holidays do you anticipate? _____

Roadmap

We know you want to make a change. We know you’ve got a lot to look forward to this year. That’s why we created the 2017 Sales Roadmap to help keep you on track and accomplish your specific sales goals. The worksheet above was one exercise from the Roadmap. You can download the full action-oriented workbook and let us guide you through the rest of the steps to make this year is your best ever.

You know what it takes and now you have the tools – so, don’t let anything stop you.

The post Achieve Your 2017 Sales Goals with this Workbook appeared first on OpenView Labs.

The interface design of automobiles hasn't changed much over the decades. And when auto designers or engineers start mucking around with established conventions, care must be taken; in several cases, people have been killed by unconventionally-designed shifters*, for instance. But now new technology is prompting a new design problem, which is how an autonomous car can communicate the "hand-off" between human and machine.

Automotive safety technology company Autoliv proposes that the design of the steering wheel itself ought signal this, er, peaceful transition of power. But I am not at all sure I agree with their execution. Have a look at their Z Force Drive steering wheel:

Let's tackle these features in the order they were presented. First off, I think the "feature" whereby the LEDs "chase" the driver's hands around the wheel isn't just silly—it's distracting, completely unnecessary and provides no functional value.

That the steering wheel knows when the driver's hands are and aren't on the wheel is certainly an intelligent feature, and one that ought be standard kit.

As for the bit about the different colors: Autoliv is proposing blue for when the driver is controlling the car, green for when the car is driving itself, and red for when the car wants you to grab the wheel. I would argue that there's no need for the blue; you already know when your own hands are on the wheel.

Also, during the act of driving, it seems common sense that you want as few distractions as possible for the driver, whose eyes ought be on the road. When I'm driving—particularly at night—I don't want a circular row of blue lights within my line of sight, and in a closer plane of focus than the dashboard.

The part about answering the phone seems particularly crazy to me--but admittedly, I hold the unpopular view that people oughn't speak on the phone at all, whether by speaker or not, while manually driving; I see too many motorists in Manhattan who are yapping away and allowing their driving to suffer as a result. So I think having the green and red lights on the steering wheel, and having to look down and tap them to engage or disengage a call, would be too distracting. I also think we've got a cognitive dissonance issue here, as green and red are already used to indicate other modes of operation.

There are a couple of additional features not seen in the video above. In the video below, we've cued it up to show you this bit after the phone call part:

As a driver, I don't want to be able to press on the steering wheel to increase or decrease speed; I don't need a second means of acceleration/deceleration beyond the pedals, and I'd worry about accidentally activating these features via the steering wheel. The potential for unwanted results seems too great here.

Here's another segment we've cued up. As a positive, Autoliv has thought out what the car should do if it asks the driver to take control and the driver refuses:

Pulling off the road seems a good solution—where possible. Something I've wondered about is what will happen when someone has fallen asleep during autonomous driving and is then suddenly asked to retake control of the car.

It's probably not fair to criticize Autoliv for the features I don't like, as the Z Force Drive is just a concept. Also, the company has been around for sixty years and thus, when it comes down to execution, presumably gets things right more than they get them wrong. Additionally, they helped pioneer a number of automotive safety features.

The design of the Z Force Drive does not appeal to me, but the company is at least trying to tackle a problem that all autonomous cars will have to confront. What remains to be seen is whether their concept will be embraced by manufacturers, or is just an experimental and evolutionary step towards the solution.

See Also:

* When Bad UI Design Kills: Is Poor Shift Lever Design to Blame for Death of Star Trek Actor?

* Gearshift Lever's Design May have Caused Woman to Drive Onto Train Tracks

- Turning a Steering Wheel into a Feeling Wheel

- Auto Design Fail: Ford's Experimental "Wrist-Twist" Steering Wheel(s) from 1965

Writing an article for Forbes, noted marketing entrepreneur Neil Patel noted that 90 percent of startup companies fail within a year.

According to his piece, failure to plan and execute an effective marketing strategy is among one of the most common reasons that new businesses go under.

The challenge is to implement impactful marketing that drives sales leads in an affordable manner.

The following is a look at several tips to maximise a tight marketing budget as a startup company to drive sales leads and achieve success.

Pinpoint Precise Target Markets

Much of the waste in marketing expenditures is based on attempts to reach the wrong types of buyers.

Before you invest, prepare detailed buyer personas that identify the exact types of sales leads you want for each solution you offer.

Include demographic, firmographic and geographic descriptors in your personas.

This will allow you to picture your ideal client profile and map their buyer journey to your content.

Develop a Social Media Plan

Startup operators often realise that social media is a low-cost opportunity to promote.

However, few go through the necessary planning steps to develop a social strategy that achieves marketing results.

Your social marketing plan should involve the same steps as other marketing strategies, including how it coordinates with other tactics.

Identify the social channels on which your target markets exist.

Figure out how those prospects use each channel. Only create accounts on social media platforms on which you can consistently post impactful content.

You can read more about social selling on the post entitled “How To Generate Better Leads With Social Selling”

Develop campaigns to deliver your messages, but also engage social users through replies, shares and other conversational strategies.

After you achieve organic social success, look at paid advertising opportunities to extend your reach within your target markets.

Create and Distribute Content

We recently discussed that increased content production is a major marketing trend for 2017 in our popular post “4 Content Marketing Trends You Need To Know About“.

Your content strategy should emphasise addressing the questions your targeted buyer personas have throughout their journeys, from awareness to consideration and decision.

After you create a message framework that outlines content plans for each persona, the costs of production are efficient relative to traditional advertising.

Continue to keep your message in front of the right buyers and guide them through their journey until you arrive at conversion-ready sales leads.

Most buyers, particularly in B2B, investigate solutions online before interacting with providers. Meeting them on their digital turf enables more efficient selling cycles.

Retain Top Customers with CRM

It is common for a startup to focus on attracting customers and maintaining operations. To endure, you need a plan for capturing and maintaining core relationships from day one.

A customer relationship management programme allows to track opportunities as they move through the sales cycle, and then maintain profiles of your customers over time.

Deep customer profiles enable effective long-term communication and retention programmes that drive repeat sales and referrals.

Wrap Up

It is virtually impossible to efficiently use a marketing budget without a plan that defines your audience and message strategy.

However, with these pieces in place, you can execute affordable methods of reaching your targeted buyers.

There are a number of elements that contribute to the success of a direct mail postcard – great design, problem-solving content, and mailing to the right audience at just the right time, to name a few – but how much thought have you put into the prices you’re charging? When it comes to punching up your pricing, getting a handle on how consumers respond to certain cost characteristics offers some fascinating insights into how you can improve the impact of your next direct mail offer.

Your Pricing Strategy

Struggling to find just the right pricing strategy is an ongoing challenge for many companies. You need to keep pace with the competition, but you also need to turn a profit. And in some industries, this can be an awfully fine line to walk. Prices that are too high or too low can:

• limit the growth of your business, and
• lead to trouble in the cash flow department

While you probably recognize that your profit lies somewhere between your costs and the prices you’re charging, what many businesses don’t fully understand is that:

The amount of that profit is largely defined by how much value your customers place on whatever it is that you’re selling.

The more your product or service is worth to them, the more your clients will be willing to pay for it. Figuring out who your clients are is the best way to understand the criteria they use in their purchasing decisions, and the benefits they’re looking to gain when they do decide to buy. Do they appreciate the fact that your product is always reliable, or that your service is fast and convenient? Or is it your competitive pricing that’s the main drive behind choosing to buy from you? Asking for and paying close attention to customer feedback plays a pivotal role in deciding how much you can charge.

Some of the other tactics you should make use of when putting together your pricing structure include:

• staying on top of competitors’ prices,
• introducing tiered pricing to further encourage those who buy from you regularly, and
• experimenting with various pricing tactics

Once you’ve landed on an effective approach, remember that the best pricing strategy should remain a work in progress. Be sure to review yours on a regular basis, and to tweak it as demand and profitability dictate.

Proven Pricing Techniques

Some of the best pricing techniques stem from studies in consumer psychology. Did you know for example that when a potential buyer is faced with too many choices in a given moment, that they’ll often opt out of the purchasing process entirely? It’s true! And when it comes to the art of selling, a single moment is often all you get to entice a customer to buy.

That’s one of the reasons why direct mail postcards are such effective marketing tools. When done right, a postcard captures your customer’s attention and gets your message across in a format that’s brief, compelling, and simple to understand. And by enhancing your message with a time-sensitive offer that’s also easy to act on, direct mail postcards give your mail-out audience the opportunity they need to focus on one important choice at a time: deciding to buy from you.

Here are a few simple but proven tips that can help you to fine-tune the price points on your next direct mail offering:

1. When you know what you need to charge for your product or service, but your pricing isn’t quite as competitive as you’d like it to be, try taking advantage of a behavior known as anchoring. Market your item alongside an equally desirable but more expensive option, and your customers will tend to look more favorably on the value that’s offered by the lower-priced choice.
2. Did you know that we tend to read the price $1,500.00 as “one-thousand-five-hundred”, and the price $1500 as “fifteen hundred”? More to the point, did you know that studies show the more syllables there are in a number, the higher we sense it to be? Just a little something to keep in mind when drafting the pricing copy for your next direct mail postcard.
3. Breaking your subscription or membership fee down into a daily, weekly, or monthly amount is a proven way to sway the buying decision in your favor. This simple tactic makes your service seem less expensive to a potential customer than it would if you described it in terms of its annual rate.
4. The number “9” continues to exert a powerful influence over buyers – one that’s far more effective than pricing that ends with any other number. Despite KNOWING that $999 is almost the same thing as $1000, our subconscious tends to PERCEIVE it as significantly less. Even when a similar product is selling for $990, consumers will opt for the price tag ending in a “9” as much as 25% more often!

Honesty is Still the Best Policy

Tips and tactics aside, it’s important that your business is always as upfront as possible about its pricing structure. Don’t be tempted to bury fees or hide extra charges in the hopes that customers will simply “buy now, and ask questions later.” Nobody likes to feel scammed. And thanks to the online world we live in, you can rightly assume that not only is every would-be client a well-educated consumer, they’re also ready, willing, and perfectly capable of letting others know exactly what they think about your less than honest approach to pricing.

As a senior marketing executive, you likely spend your day juggling an ever-changing list of priorities. When it is time to create your annual budget, you may view the task as an annoyance rather than an opportunity. However, the act of creating your budget gives you the chance to review what you have done, consider what you want to accomplish during the coming months and create a map that can help you achieve your goals. Unless you avoid the most common marketing budget pitfalls, though, you could find that your budgeted funds fail to generate the results that you want. Here is a list of the 10 most common errors that occur when planning a marketing budget.

Not Having A Solid Marketing Plan

Successful marketing requires money, but it also requires a great deal of preparation. Without a solid marketing plan, you are not prepared to make decisions that ensure that you are spending your budgeted funds appropriately, wisely and effectively. A strong plan will include at least the following:

• In-depth knowledge of your target market
• Your competitive position within your target market
• Your strategies and tactics
• Your plan to differentiate yourself from competitors
• Your KPIs to measure success

Once you have a solid marketing plan, your budget is easier to prepare, becoming something of a supporting document for the execution of your plan.

Not Engaging Business Partners

Marketing teams sometimes forget that they exist for a purpose: to help the company achieve its business goals. Achieving the marketing goals can be meaningless if they are not aligned with the company’s goals. Every marketing budget should be designed to support the company’s business goals. Otherwise, marketers can find themselves scrambling to shift priorities and objectives without having sufficient funds remaining in the budget. This means that marketing executives must communicate with other executives and leaders to gain a thorough understanding of the overall objectives and strategy. Engaging with business partners also gives marketers the opportunity to enlist support for marketing efforts. For example, marketing automation relies heavily on database quality, but marketers typically have little control over collecting, maintaining and scrubbing the data.

Relying Too Much On Historical Budgets

Last year’s budget can be an excellent starting point for creating the marketing budget for next year, but it is only a starting point. Even if all goals were met and the allocation of funds proved accurate, there is no guarantee that the same formula will work next year. Technology is evolving rapidly, your competitors are making changes and your customers are expecting more from you. You have to base your new budget on what you want to accomplish rather than what you accomplished in previous years.

Getting Too Detailed

Marketers sometimes “paint themselves into a corner” by being too specific when preparing a budget. To illustrate, suppose you learn in December that a new software called DuzItAll is scheduled to be released in six months. The product sounds as if it would be perfect for automating all of your marketing efforts, but it carries a substantial price tag. You create a line item in your budget devoted to the purchase of DuzItAll. However, the software is never released because the company folds. You now have to reallocate the funds, which may require obtaining approval from the CEO or CFO. Avoid complications by ensuring that your budget categories are vague enough to give you a little room to maneuver.

Devoting Too Little To Marketing For Existing Customers

Acquiring new customers is great, but you will spend up to 700 percent more to gain a new customer than it would cost to retain an existing customer, according to Bain & Company. Furthermore, the likelihood of closing a sale with a new acquisition is in the 5 percent to 20 percent range, while the likelihood of selling to an existing customer is between 60 percent and 70 percent. Despite these statistics, however, many B2B marketers devote a disproportional part of their budget to customer acquisition rather than customer retention. A better method is to ensure that your budget contains provisions for engaging and nurturing existing customers.

Mismanaging Timeline

The timeline is especially critical if your budget is based on a percentage of sales. Since a campaign will need to be initiated before you can expect sales, the marketing costs will be incurred before the revenue is realized. The marketing budget for a given period should not be based on the sales projections for the same period. Instead, the budget should include these additional up-front costs to avoid overspending later in the year.

Ignoring Actual Needs

Marketers are often presented with a problem for which there is no easy solution. For example, a CEO might say that marketing efforts must generate 1,000 leads per quarter next year but only approve a budget that could not possibly produce more than 300 leads. Obviously, either the marketing goals or the marketing budget must be revised. Too often, however, marketers accept the goals and the budget, ignoring the realities of the situation. Be prepared to dissent; document your case and resolve the conflict before you finalize your budget.

Incorrect Or Excessive Metrics

Finding the right metrics to measure your progress can be challenging. If you try to measure everything, your team can lose focus and be so distracted that the most critical KPIs are overlooked. However, if you are measuring the wrong things, you will not be able to track your progress against your goals. Take the time to prioritize your objectives and develop a clear set of metrics for each strategic objective.

Starting Too Late

You should allow yourself ample time to create your budget. Otherwise, you could find yourself rushing to complete it, which means that you could overlook vital areas. One area that often causes delays involves communicating with other stakeholders. It may take time to align the goals of the marketing, sales, accounting and production departments. For example, if you establish a marketing budget to generate 5,000 leads a month, you have to know whether sales can handle that many. If not, you will just be wasting your money. Because compromises may need to be made, you should allow yourself extra time to fine-tune your budget.

Treating Budgets As An Annual Task

Your budget work does not end as soon as you have created the budget and received approval. You should have a plan to review the numbers frequently throughout the year. Compare spend with return, evaluate the impact of certain activities and assess whether you need to change the focus of your efforts. You may find that you need to reallocate funds to a tactic that would give you more reach in your target market, for example, or you may discover that you need to make some mid-campaign adjustments.

In the final analysis, your budget should be a tool to help you achieve your goals rather than an unyielding taskmaster. Getting it right is critical, so it is well worth your time to do so. Avoid these common pitfalls can help you ensure that you will have a budget that lets you be more effective.

Monday morning, 10:00 a.m. Meeting time.

You’ve got an appointment with a major prospect who seems really interested in your product. You take a deep breath, lean back in your chair, and stare at the phone in eager anticipation. Any time now.

• 10:05 a.m.: Nothing. But they’re probably just late, right? These things happen.
• 10:10 a.m.: That’s odd. But they’re probably on their way to the phone right now.
• 10:15 a.m.: Still nothing. You decide to take the initiative and call, but get no answer.
• 10:30 a.m.: No call. No text. No email. No doubt: You’ve got yourself another no-show.

Maybe they just forgot, or perhaps they lost interest. Either way, it doesn’t make the situation any less frustrating, especially when they’re the ninth no-show this month (and you’re not even halfway through the month yet).

There’s nothing more infuriating than investing your time in a prospect only to have them go dark without warning.

Sure, you can argue that no-shows are just a part of the sales process. And you’d be right: Occasionally they are just a part of the job. But if they’re a regular occurrence, you’ve got a problem.

Let’s talk about the steps you can take to ensure that your prospects don’t just show up for meetings; they’re excited to be there and eager to move forward.

How many no-shows is too many?

Think you’ve got a no-show problem? Let’s confirm that. What’s your no-show rate?

Most people I ask have no idea. If that’s you, here’s a quick way to calculate it: Divide your total number of no-shows by the total number of scheduled meetings.

For example: If you had 50 meetings scheduled for the last month and 15 of them were no-shows, your no-show rate would be 15/50, or 30%.

So how many no-shows are too many? That depends on what stage of the sales funnel your no-shows happen.

Top-of-funnel no-shows

No-shows at the top of the funnel are prospects you’ve only just met.

If you do a lot of cold prospecting, no-shows are just a part of the deal; it’s almost impossible to entirely eliminate them. But, as a general rule, these no-show rates should never exceed 20%.

Bottom-of-funnel no-shows

No-shows at the bottom of the funnel are those you’ve already invested substantial time and energy into. You've pitched them, managed their objections, learned about their needs, and have done everything you can to schedule them for a meeting.

If you’re getting cancellations and no-shows at this stage of the sales process, something is wrong. As a general rule, your bottom-of-funnel no-show rates should never exceed 10%.

“Is it something I said?” Why prospects don’t show up

Before we talk about reducing no-show rates, let’s take a look at what’s causing them in the first place. Generally speaking, no-shows happen for one of two reasons: Emergencies or priorities.

Emergencies

Emergencies are the reason it’s impossible to have a “zero” no-show rate. Unexpected crises happen and, when they arise, they often make it inconvenient or impossible to meet.

This could be anything from a family emergency to a last-minute board meeting. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to eliminate external emergencies.

Priorities

More often than not, no-shows are the result of a prospect prioritizing another task over your appointment. Sometimes this is intentional, other times it’s accidental.

This could be anything from the prospect just forgetting your meeting to actively choosing another meeting over yours. Thankfully, you have almost full control over your level of priority with a prospect.

9 scheduling tips to get prospects to show the hell up

When a prospect no-shows, it’s tempting to place all the blame on them. How dare they, right?

But more often than not, most of the blame is with the salesperson. The scheduling process directly influences the likelihood of no-shows and cancellations.

As a salesperson, think of the scheduling process as a sales pitch. Manage their objections first (we put together a free objection management template to help). Then, offer an irresistible value proposition that makes your prospects interested not only in your product, but in your meeting.

Here’s how.

1. Own responsibility for scheduling

In any sales process, it’s not the prospect’s responsibility to buy. It’s the salesperson’s responsibility to sell. [Tweet this!]

Many salespeople claim to know this, then go on to delegate all scheduling responsibility to the prospect. They’ll write a great sales email then end it with something like, “Let me know when you’d like to connect in the next few weeks.”

With a sign-off like that, you’ll probably never hear from them again; they don’t want the pressure of making that decision so they’ll put it off until they forget about it.

Instead of delegating responsibility, take full ownership of scheduling by providing a clear call-to-action. This call-to-action should communicate the following three elements:

• Two different meeting times: Always offer at least two options to your prospect. If neither work, they’ll either let you know or offer a few alternatives. Be sure to include the length of the meeting as well!
• Value: What exactly is the prospect going to get out of this meeting? Why is it worth their time? What are you going to accomplish?
• Medium: Where will the meeting take place? In-person? Over the phone? Via Skype?

As a salesperson, the entirety of the sales process is your responsibility. If you start delegating control now, you’ll never get it back.

2. Be respectful (and use common sense)

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling or who you’re selling to; certain times and days just suck for meetings. Use common sense and don’t schedule during those times. For example, no one wants to meet during:

• Monday mornings: Monday mornings are usually a hectic time of internal meetings and weekend catch-up.
• Friday afternoons: On a Friday afternoon, the only thing on your prospect’s mind is wrapping up work and getting to the weekend as soon as possible.
• Holidays and vacations: The days immediately before or after a holiday/vacation are incredibly busy, and prospects aren’t likely to prioritize your meeting over their time off.

The problem is, most of your prospects don’t realize they feel that way. They’ll gladly schedule something for those times but, when the meeting finally rolls around, they’re likely to no-show or cancel in favor of something or someone else.

Each prospect will also have their own scheduling preferences. Find out what those are early on, because your effort to make their life easier won’t go unnoticed and you’re less likely to have to deal with a no-show situation.

3. Never schedule more than 2 weeks in advance

Whenever possible, don’t schedule anything more than seven days in advance. If that isn’t realistic, take a look at the next 14 days. And if even that doesn’t work, don’t schedule a meeting at all.

Sure, your prospects are probably willing to schedule something for next month when their calendar is clear. But in the next 30 days, that calendar is going to fill up. And the more time passes between your initial meeting, the less important you’ll be.

By the time that appointment finally rolls around, they’ve likely forgotten who you are and why they’re meeting with you. And you know what happens then: Another no-show.

So as a general rule: If you can’t schedule a meeting within the next 14 days, agree to touch base again in two weeks and take another look at the calendar.

4. Use the power of "right the fuck now" to set follow-up appointments

When you’re on the phone with an interested prospect, you have their full attention; they’re engaged and you’ve got a comfortable, influential rapport. So why would you end the call with a comment like, “I’ll send you a few meeting times once we’re off the phone and we’ll get something on the calendar.”

In the best case scenario, the salesperson sends an email within 15 minutes. But even after 15 minutes, much of your prospect’s excitement has deteriorated because they’ve moved on to other tasks.

So why wait? If you’ve got them on the phone, use the power of "right the fuck now" and schedule something then and there. Even better, send the calendar invite while they’re still on the line.

5. Turn event invites into sales pitches

Speaking of calendar invites, are yours optimized to reduce no-show rates? Probably not. When most people send a calendar invite, it looks something like this:

But let’s be honest: Does that invite make you want to follow-through on the appointment? Sure, you might out of obligation, but it definitely doesn’t leave you feeling excited. Is it any surprise prospects opt out?

Instead of simple reminders, think of calendar invites as sales emails.

And what’s the most important part of an email? The subject line. Like a subject line, your event title should be attention-grabbing.

Instead of something vague and uninspiring like “Demo,” why not try a title like:

• "30 minutes to decide your next CRM"
• "Deciding if Close.io is the right fit"
• "Exploring Close.io’s CRM capabilities"

But don’t stop with the title. You can also use the notes section as a mini-pitch for the event. Here are three things to include in your event notes:

• Contact information: Include your name, company, website, and the medium you’ll be communicating over (including the phone number/Skype username, and who will call whom).
• Agenda: Clearly communicate the action items you’re going to accomplish at this meeting.
• Value: What value are those action items going to generate for the prospect? What are they getting out of this exchange?

Your calendar event should be a mini sales pitch. That way, even if you aren’t actively talking with your prospect, you’re still selling them on your product and appointment every time they review their schedule.

6. Follow up. Relentlessly.

Although calendar invites are a great reminder, don’t assume they’re enough to get your prospect to show up. As with any part of the sales process, the key to success is following up.

A few days before the meeting, reach out via whatever medium is most effective. This could be phone calls, texts, emails, or even social media. (Our inside sales CRM makes all of this very easy. Integrated calling, emailing and texting enable you to send reminders with a few mouse clicks, and using integration links makes it very easy to send tweets at prospects. With our Clearbit integration, you can automatically enrich your leads with their social media profiles.)

But remember: You’re not just there to remind them of the appointment. You’re there to remind them of the value they’re going to get out of the appointment. Don’t sell the product, sell the meeting.

Quick note: Following up doesn’t end just because someone was a no-show. If someone doesn’t show up, don’t assume they aren’t interested. Assume they either forgot or had an emergency, then continue to reach out until you get a response.

If you’ve sent six to eight follow-up emails and still haven’t heard back, send the break-up email. You’ll be amazed at how many responses you get with a subject line like, “Goodbye from Close.io.”

7. Lay a (gentle) guilt trip

This next tactic should be used cautiously. It can be very effective, but it’s also easy to cross the line of sales ethics and honesty.

But first, a quick psychology lesson. As humans, we’re driven by two forces: Experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain. And most people will do more to avoid pain than they will do to seek pleasure.

When following up on a scheduled appointment, you can dramatically increase the likelihood of your prospect showing up by leveraging their desire to avoid pain with a (very) gentle guilt trip.

Here’s how: A day or two before the meeting, send an email outlining the time and energy you’ve invested. For example:

Canceling a meeting after an email like that would mean wasting a large chunk of your time and disappointing multiple people. With that on the line, your prospect is much more likely to show up.

But don’t go overboard. There’s no need to embellish or exaggerate to get your point across. No deal should be built on a false foundation.

8. Leverage your time with a virtual assistant

You weren’t hired to set appointments; you were hired to close deals. But the busier you get, the more time you’ll spend managing your calendar. And the more time you spend managing your calendar, the less time you spend selling.

If you spend more than a few hours each week on scheduling, you might want to look into a virtual assistant. They’ve become increasingly affordable over the past few years and, in many cases, if they allow you to close even one more deal, they’ve paid for themselves.

This arrangement isn’t right for everyone but, in many cases, it’s a valuable investment with a high (and near-immediate) ROI.

Not ready to commit to a virtual assistant? Check out these 13 scheduling tools for salespeople.

9. Show the hell up

The example you set is the example your prospect will follow.

Even one cancellation, reschedule, or no-show is enough to tell your prospect, “There are more important things than this deal, and it’s okay if you feel that way, too.”

Nothing short of a major emergency should stand in the way of your commitments. And if something does come up, let your prospect know as soon as possible. Then make every effort to set up another meeting. For example:

Note how the email doesn’t excuse the cancellation as “no big deal,” clearly communicates the value that would have been generated at the meeting, and offers alternate times for the prospect to receive that value.

Wait, I’m still getting no-shows! Now what?

Even if you do everything outlined above, you’re still going to get no-shows. It’s just a part of the sales process.

As a salesperson, you need to accept that. But more importantly, you need to plan for it. The worst thing you can do is assume it won’t happen. It will and, when it does, you’ll suddenly have a 30–60 minute void in your day.

Unless you prepare for that void, you’ll end up filling it with random, pointless, unproductive crap. And there are few things that will stymie your success as much as wasting time.

So any time you have a meeting scheduled, have a backup plan. If the appointment falls through, you need to know exactly how you’re going to spend that time.

Ultimately this can be spent however you see fit, but try to find tasks that are just as valuable as the appointment would have been.

It won’t necessarily take away the sting and frustration of a no-show, but it will give you something productive to channel that energy into. That can make all the difference between a total upset and a minor annoyance.

And with that, you’re ready to crush your no-show rates. Give these strategies a try and, in a couple weeks, come back and share your experience in the comments below. I’ll look forward to hearing how it went!

 

 

Frustrated by prospects' objections or excuses on why they can't attend meetings? The objection management template will have you handling objections like a pro in no time. 

Recommended resources:

13 scheduling tools for salespeople
Want to optimize your scheduling process without hiring a virtual assistant? Take a look at these 13 tools and reduce one of the biggest time-wasters in sales.

10 time management tips to crush the coming year
Not sure what to do with the extra time following a no-show? Check out these 10 tips and you’ll be productive in no time.

10 prospects that are wasting your time (and how to spot them)
Some prospects are better off as no-shows. In fact, some prospects shouldn’t be pursued at all. Make sure you’re chasing the right prospects with this handy guide.

Chances are if you are in sales, social media is already a prominent part of your personal life. And now, thanks to social selling, it’s hopefully a big part of your professional life as well. Incorporating social media into the workplace has brought many opportunities, but also many questions. You may be wondering how to best navigate social networks with your sales prospecting goals in mind. There are many answers including leveraging a page out of Ben Green’s playbook and utilize his social media tips.

One thing I instill during social selling training is ensure you do everything you can to gather insights into your prospect’s or client’s business needs. Then, map out a plan as to how your company’s product, service or solution can best address those issues. One amazing way to do this is via social media networks. Remember first and foremost, when you are leveraging social networks for growing your business, your primary focus is to gain leads, not followers.

With this in mind, here are 4 social media tips to help you shape your social selling strategy and explode your sales pipeline!

Focus on LinkedIn, Twitter and Social Video

In B2B sales, you will want to use LinkedIn, Twitter and Social Video the majority of your time while researching, engaging and communicating with prospects on social networks. As you already know, LinkedIn is the home base for professional networking, and it’s where you’ll gain the most insights into your prospect’s industry. It’s also a good idea to follow your prospect on Twitter, since tweeting is a popular means of expressing likes, dislikes, and opinions in general, and will provide important insights regarding some of the larger issues that your potential client cares about.

What about Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat? Ah, now you face the interesting quandary of do I engage with them there or not… In the beginning, reserve these channels for research purposes only. Refrain from friend requesting your prospect on Facebook as an example, as it may come across as intrusive and a violation of boundaries. I promise you will know when it’s the right time to connect with them. You’ll feel it in your gut when your relationship is Facebook ready. And when you do – ask to connect. For me generally, I am mid sales cycle or have closed out a deal when I asked to connect to their Facebook account.

However, you should leverage Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram to find the Big Fish on the wall! What do I mean by that? I started in software sales 19 years ago, and in the old days we used to walk into our prospects office and the first thing we’d look for were pictures. Pictures of the big fish on the wall, kids, spouse, etc. Why? For no other reason than to take the first 10-15 min of the hour-long meeting to build personal rapport and a relationship. Given that most times we don’t even meet with clients and prospects in their personal office (thanks to corporate America reducing workspace and implementing “work from home”), leveraging Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram for personal pictures will help you find the “big fish”.

Don’t Fake the Funk: Avoid Clickbait

In content marketing, there’s this thing called clickbait, which is defined as “internet content, especially that of a sensational or provocative nature, whose main purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a certain web page.” Clickbait gives you a bad rap, mostly because, as a rule, it overpromises and under delivers.

A great example of this in sales is start a note with a subject line that says “RE: Interesting Topic.” What do we hope? The prospect will open the email because they assumed the “RE:” meant you both were already engaged in a conversation. Another example would be if you choose to engage with long blog posts on LinkedIn or anywhere else for that matter. Promising to deliver say “8 things you should know about…” In the title of your article but really not delivering 8 things would turn a lot of people off.

Same thing on social media.

• Don’t Fake the Funk!
• Don’t try to send someone a message via LinkedIn InMail or Messaging with a GREAT subject line asking for a meeting but offering him or her no value AND not personalizing your message.
• Don’t try and do it on email either

What could be the results? Once upon a time, I was testing out open rates and experimenting with different subject lines for an email campaign. I made the decision to title an email “RE: (whatever my subject line was) to give the perception we were already engaged in a conversation. The result?

#MyBrandSucked

I ticked off a bunch of people off. Many individuals had opened the email, confused about what the original chain was even about, and, upon realizing there was no original chain, got angry with me. From a metrics standpoint, my email open rate went up, but my unsubscribe rate did too!

Lesson learned: don’t resort to cheap tricks to get people to read your content. It’s not worth it!

Challenge the Status Quo and Provide Value

Use social networks as an opportunity to challenge the status quo and provide value to prospective customers. Basically: craft your messaging strategy so it focuses on what you can do to make your prospect’s life easier, rather than just asking for 15 min of their time. If you do your due diligence and write an informed and thoughtful outreach message, that meeting will happen.

Don’t Offend your Prospects with Crappy Messages

There are few things more irksome than getting a cold email from a sales rep trying to book an appointment that offers no value, is a canned and clearly automated email and overlooks how they can help solve my business problems.

Take CyberCoders, for example. The technical recruiting company has my resume on file and frequently contacts me regarding job recommendations. One would think it would be for Sales Leadership roles right? Wrong! I receive garbage auto-generated emails from 9 out of 10 cyber coder recruiters for positions like Project Manager! Really?

Why is this happening? It is because I listed program management within my resumes keywords contained within the Applicant Tracking System. As a sales leader this is an important skill. But if the recruiters took the time to actually READ my LinkedIn profile or resume they would quickly discover I’ve never been a Project Manager. What’s more, recruiters will aggressively follow up with me and say “Just checking in on my note” to repeatedly try and gauge what my interest level is.

This type of “spray and pray” sales approach that is not personalized makes #YourBrandSuck – TOTALLY Suck!

So, whatever you do…

#DontDoNormal

Make sure to do your due diligence to avoid sending out crappy content that wastes your prospects’ time!

Hopefully, these social media tips have given you some insights into how to navigate social media like a pro. Subscribe to my blog now to receive helpful sales, social media and social selling tips on a regular basis.

As an added Bonus I’ve included our latest video for sales and marketers which answers the question: “What should my Twitter Bio say?”

Most nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have separate and distinct marketing and development functions. Historically, this separation of critical activities has been done for good reason – to bring specific focus on building awareness for the mission and driving fundraising. However, there is significant opportunity in closer collaboration.

Not only are these two functional areas aligned in service to the key audiences and supporters of the organization, they both are employing similar tactics to understand the needs and motivations of those audiences. At best, disjointed insights efforts are costly, and at worst, they work at cross-purposes through confused messaging in the marketplace.

Collaborating on insights and market data should be the rule, but instead, it’s rare. Alignment of marketing and fundraising is critical to a nonprofit’s success in effectively engaging donors and driving growth. Creating a compelling customer experience relies heavily on your NPO’s ability to align goals, audience insights, and your compelling, six-second story across marketing and development departments.

Now for those of you working in Marketing or Fundraising today — those of you who feel like you need to bolster your skills to take on this challenge — the great news is that there are many specialized courses available to help you get started. Even if you’re just looking for a quick refresher or some innovative ideas, it’s become easy to access because a wide range of colleges and universities currently offer their Marketing Masters programs online. So, don’t let a perceived lack of skills or capability hold you back!

As we head into the New Year, you have an amazing opportunity to not only deliver on your mission more effectively but also to shift your NPO’s marketing performance to the Top Right. Download our newest whitepaper Striking the Right Balance Between Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising Teams now and learn how collaboration can help your NPO form richer and more fruitful relationships with people who care about your mission and work.

Stick With the Basics: The Three Finger Close

By Richard F. Libin, President, APB, rlibin@apb.cc, www.apb.cc

How many times have you excitedly tried the latest options, tricks, tips or “magic bullets” for sales and marketing only to fail? A strategy of constantly embracing the latest, newest or best, only delivers one thing: failure. It causes salespeople to try to win business the hard way. They overlook the three most important, basic steps in every sale. To close a deal, three things must happen.

• First, the customer has to want or be shown the PRODUCT.
• Second, the customer needs to understand why this is the place to do BUSINESS.
• Third, the customer has to want to buy from this SALESPERSON.

We call this the Three Finger Close. It’s straightforward and simple.

The Product

Above all salespeople must understand that their job is not to sell but to create a positive experience and help customers find and buy the exact product or service that meets their needs, wants and desires. Salespeople must demonstrate a sincere interest in each individual customer, give information and help them find the right product or service. Salespeople must:

1. Be 100% present and work with a single-minded focus for each customer.
2. Ask probing questions to develop an understanding of the customers’ unique needs, wants and desires. It’s not about what the salesperson thinks; it’s all about what the customer thinks.
3. Listen, learn and empathize with the customers, understand problems from their point-of-view and discover essential details in order to successfully guide the selection process and find an exact fit.
4. Help the customers “try it on.” The salesperson should guide customers as they experience the products’ features that will satisfy their needs, wants and desires.

The Business

Every customer has a choice. If they don’t like your business they leave, go down the street, find the same product, or shop on line and ultimately buy from the competition. Relying on a “great deal” to court customers is usually a last ditch effort that doesn’t work. Why? Because price is not a significant variable. Above all salespeople must make sure customers know that this is the place to do business. They must demonstrate that the business is behind them during the transaction and for the long-term. When this happens you are on your way to converting customers to clients who return repeatedly.

First impressions matter. The business should look professional image from the moment a customer makes first contact, whether online, on the phone or in person. Take customers on a tour of your business or facility. Point out training certificates earned by the staff to show that the business invests in its people. Build value and show customers that the entire organization is there to support and care for them. Talk about the organization’s involvement in the community– Little League, school teams or fundraising, events, charities, etc. Create a brag wall for plaques, photos and other mementos showing this involvement.

The Salesperson

Consumers have a deep-seated desire to trust the salesperson they are doing business with. This trust is built on three pillars:

• Sincerity – a salesperson’s ability to genuinely listen and take an interest in the customer’s needs, wants and desires
• Respect – the manner in which the salesperson treats the customer and his ability to make the customer feel like he is a VIP, the most important person in the store at that particular time
• Honesty – a belief that the salesperson is truly speaking the truth

            Building trust is directly related to attitude. Try this: Write down 10 reasons you like the business where you are employed. Then share them with your customers. If you are excited about working for your employer, your enthusiasm will be contagious. Customers will see that you are passionate about your job, that you work in a fun, exciting place, and ultimately, they will want to buy from you.

The Three Finger Close = $ale

            Every successful sale requires that these three things happen – customers must want the product, value the opportunity to buy from your business, and want to buy from the salesperson. Salespeople must develop a friendly trust-based relationship with their customer; help customers select a product that meets their needs, wants and desires; and build value by showcasing the depth of commitment the business makes to serve its clients and community well after the sale. Remember, your job is to help customers buy, and part of this is helping them pick the three most important parts of the sale – the product, the business and the salesperson.

Richard F. Libin has written two acclaimed books that help people of all walks of life improve their sales skills, because as he says, “everyone is a selling something. His most recent book, “Who Knew?” (www.who-knew.com), was published in January 2017, and his first book, “Who Stopped the Sale?” (www.whostoppedthesale.com), is now in its second edition. As president of APB-Automotive Profit Builders, Inc., a firm with more than 48 years experience working with both sales and service professionals, he helps his clientele, through personnel development and technology, to build customer satisfaction and maximize gross profits in their businesses. Mr. Libin can be reached at rlibin@apb.cc or 508-626-9200 or www.apb.cc.

As the world welcomes the New Year and still plans for new resolutions, Google seems to be ready with its upgrades and strategies already. All the Search Engine Optimization practitioners out there need to upgrade their plans now. In 2017, the new word for SEO is ‘Trust.’ Yes! With Google focusing on relevancy-oriented search, trust is at the core of this approach without which, one is just not ‘relevant.’

What’s the challenge?

Well, the challenge is regarding visibility and trust, especially for those who are new. To garner trust, enhancing your visibility is the first thing you have to do. Think it simple: out of the billion posts in Google, if a reader doesn’t find you in the first place, expecting him or her to share your post is futile, isn’t it?

There’s a solution!

We have a solution, relax! SEO is the key here. As long as we adhere to Google’s rules, we can certainly expand our reach and gain profitability in this more competitive 2017. However, before jumping on to the latest SEO strategies, let’s check out the updates first.

The core aim of the search engine giant is to give the most relevant search results in the fastest possible time. Again, there have been updates in Google’s many algorithms, and it seems there is no stopping to Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates. The motive is to eradicate scams and boost user experience to the highest level.

Google’s new strategies are going to keep business owners on their toes for sure, as consumers today are smarter and know exactly what they require. Let’s have a look at the 6 major strategies to win over SEO in 2017.

6 smart and strong SEO strategies for 2017

1. “Loading…”
Google is certainly not a place to test patience; the company is more concerned about user’s experience. So, first thing – increase your website’s page loading speed.

Strategy?

Varvy Page Speed tool, GTMetrix, Google’s Page Speed, are some of the tools that you can use.

2. Content marketing: Content is still on the throne!

In 2017, you just have to push up this factor. As Google says, “Create tremendously high-valued contents that will work as anchors for your website.”

So, focus on content marketing. The search engine recommends high trafficked sites like LinkedIn, Quora, WiseLike, etc. for content marketing that would drastically push you up the SERP.

Strategy?

• Create keyword specific contents that are largely relevant
• Put at least 1 link back to the main website (the primary domain)

3. Google – towards a mobile-only strategy
By now, you must have noticed that Google is gradually moving towards mobile only world. With their research showing a drastic rise in mobile searches, you need to optimize your website accordingly to be in pace with their changed focus.

Strategy?

• Choose a responsive design for your website
• Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) initiative is more focused on augmenting mobile loading time.

4. Engage more; socialize more

The next thing this search engine giant wants you to learn is – to engage more and be social. You need to build your reputation more strategically.

Strategy?

• Share your content
• Be interested in them whom you want to take attention towards you
• Most importantly, add value to all your conversations

5. Videos – they cast that SEO magic

Who doesn’t know the popularity of YouTube! This proves clearly that video marketing can boost a content and hence, a website to a much higher level.

Strategy?

• Create more informative videos
• Go for something that stores a value for the people
• Description of the video must be keyword optimized

6. Voice search

While this has already gained some popularity, 2017 is expecting to go beyond recognition of voice. As per data, around 56% of adults say, they enjoy voice search. And 55% of teenagers use this technology regularly.

Strategy?

SEO practitioners should not limit themselves to just text-based queries. Rather, they must scrutinize voice innovation and make necessary changes.

3 major pillars to dominate SERP in 2017

Apart from the above-mentioned strategies, there are three other factors (considered as the ‘pillars of trust’) that are integral to Google’s relevancy-oriented approach.

1st – Authority :

If you can link your site to those that are high profile, your website will be more trusted by Google.

2nd – Age :

This refers to the moment when Google has recognized your domain, i.e. the index age. Well, no shortcuts; you actually have to do some activity in your domain after purchasing it. Only then will Google notice you.

3rd – Content :

The readers are far away from these SEO, algorithm and such stuff. They are in the lookout for valuable contents. Create more of such contents.

Well, from all these above, we can conclude that 2017 would be big for us. To take on future challenges, be ready with these upcoming trends.

When you are selling a SaaS product, you really need to think about what you’re actually selling.

At PeopleMetrics we realize that we’re not only selling software, we’re selling a service. It seems like an obvious truth (after all, they are called Software-as-a-Service products), but many SaaS companies lose sight of the service side of things – they strive toward the goal of a no-touch sales organization. They want the product to stand on its own and be self-sufficient so they don’t need to talk to customers. But, at the end of the day, PeopleMetrics is selling an incredibly critical service that ultimately helps drive the experience people have with our customers’ product or service…so our goal needs to be making our customers and end users successful.

The First Interaction

PeopleMetrics puts a lot of focus on creating customer success and creating it quickly. Our team looks at every aspect and detail of a user’s first interaction with the software to be sure that they are optimizing the experience from every angle.

While we acknowledge that some customers prefer to self-serve, we’ve found that many of them appreciate our Customer Success Managers walking them through the system — especially in the beginning when they are launching their customer experience program. Thinking about customer success starts with our on-boarding process and ensuring that the initial experience is incredible. We want our end-users to feel like they’re getting real value. Immediately.

Over the course of 16 years, we have identified three steps that have been instrumental in our customers’ success:

1. Hire a Dedicated Customer Success Team

We have a team that owns customer success – their entire job is to make sure that on-boarding is great and to constantly be in touch with customers to ensure they are having the experience they expect and we are creating perpetual business value. Our customer success team works to improve every aspect of those first five minutes, from the speed of the system to the interface screens to the copy on the page. Having a dedicated customer success team has helped us maintain a lot of focus and energy on making the first interaction with our platform a great experience.

2. Intellectual Curiosity

Many companies are afraid to ask the hard questions – that’s not us. We’ve found that asking a few direct questions is very beneficial to both parties, and we’ve made it a key element of driving success with our customers.

Although our team can learn a lot about a customer based on product usage, organizational role, and the use case, we take the conversation a lot further. Throughout our on-boarding process and during the early stages of the program going live, we ask the customer about their experiences with our product and specifically how it has met the use cases we are expected to support. This conversation has two objectives: first, we’re learning directly from the customer what it is they’re trying to do (which helps us to help them); and second, we’re educating them about what’s possible with the product and the features they might not have been exposed to.

3. Trust the Metrics

PeopleMetrics (and our clients) are not doing ourselves justice if we’re not measuring everything. One of the benefits of being a SaaS product is that you can collect a lot of metrics because you have all the data, so we measure the things our clients care about. That’s how we help you improve the metrics – from Net Promoter Score, to Customer Effort Scores, to Competitive Benchmarks. The PeopleMetrics team is laser-focused on that first interaction and obsessed with how long it takes a new user not only to access the system, but to start driving value internally for their organization.

The combination of these steps – hiring a customer success lead, asking questions, and measuring everything – ultimately gives PeopleMetrics and our team more insight into customer needs and goals. Looking at all the data associated with our customers’ usage of our product has brought us to a point where we better understand each customer.

However, despite the wealth of data available, our attention never strays from the ultimate goal: To have customers who are happy, who are using the product, and seeing the tangible value it delivers. It’s a never-ending task, which is why we’re always measuring and always improving.

The beginning of the new calendar year frequently corresponds with the start of a new performance period. As a result, managers and leaders everywhere are preparing for those annual conversations designed to establish the goals and objectives that employees will work toward for the next twelve months.

Today, few managers make the overt mistakes that characterized goal-setting in the past. In 2017, leaders typically know better than to simply roll their own objectives down, assigning them to the next level via one-way communication. They appreciate the value of dialogue, clarity and even negotiation in some cases.

Even still, many managers fail to make the most of this pivotal employee touch-point. They fail to ensure that goals and objectives are actually achieved. And it’s all because they fail to build BUY-IN.

While ‘buy-in,’ or an emotional connection to and support for a goal, is critical to attaining it, BUY-IN also serves as an acrostic to remind leaders of five critical components of the goal setting equation. Effective managers—ones whose employees are more likely to succeed— make sure to incorporate the following into their planning, conversations, and actions.

Business context – Winding your employees up and pointing them in the right direction with specific instructions may deliver short-term results. But over the longer-haul, most organizations want to develop employees who can think independently, make judgment calls, and respond nimbly to changing conditions. This requires more than a goal; it requires an understanding of the bigger picture, of how work fits into the organizational strategy, and of why the goal matters. When employees have this information, they can navigate the complexity of the workplace and deliver on agreed-upon outcomes.

Understanding (of skills required) – In addition to understanding the ‘what’ of a goal, employees benefit from understanding the ‘how’ as well. When managers take the time to outline the competencies, skills and behaviors that ensure success, it helps employees to deliver results within organizational norms. It also clarifies learning priorities to ensure success.

Yardstick (by which to validate progress) – Goals are more likely to be attained if they are measurable. And tangible black-and-white metrics are the clearest and most unambiguous form of measurement. But too many managers and employees alike spend an inordinate amount of timing trying to wrap numbers around goals that simply don’t lend themselves to them. Sometimes forcing goals to be “SMART” is an exercise in process rather than a valuable tool for employee performance… and that’s not very smart. Another approach is simply to ensure that you and the other person can validate that the goal has been accomplished. Sometimes a binary (yes or no, did or didn’t) solution is simpler and more helpful overall.

Information (about performance) – Gamify work by agreeing on goals and then routinely and systematically providing the information employees need to monitor their own progress. Let them keep track. Let them plot a path forward. Let them own their own performance. Unless a leader will add value by sharing the data, self-monitoring is more satisfying and effective. (It also builds a level of business acumen in employees and helps to build leadership skills at all levels of the organization.)

Necessary support – Too frequently goal setting is the last discussion about objectives until the performance evaluation meeting comes around. This is clearly not a best practice. Ongoing support should permeate the entire performance period with routine conversations, feedback, encouragement, resources, roadblock removal, coaching, and recognition.

When employees experience BUY-IN, they have the context, framework, information and support required not just to focus and work on goals, but also to really rise to the challenge, to enhance their ability to contribute, and to help the organization meet important targets.

Image: www.dreamstime.com

There are hundreds of trade shows every year, but it’s financially and physically impossible for one brand to be at every one of these events. How can you choose which trade shows you should attend? Follow these tips:

Understand the audience.

There are two main types of trade shows: consumer only shows, which are open to the general public, and trade only shows, where the attendees are retail buyers, wholesale distributors, and other industry influencers. Determining which audience you want to reach is one of the first decisions you have to make. If you want to sell directly to the end consumer, choose consumer only shows, however if you are hoping to expand your distribution and network with people who can help you grow your business, choose the trade only shows.

Look up past shows.

Do a quick Google search of each of the shows you are interested in attending. You should be able to find a list of exhibitors who have participated in the last few events, as well as pictures and reviews from people who have attended. Use this information to determine if the trade show is worth your time and money. What have other people said about the show? Were some of your competitors listed as past exhibitors? Did the booths look like put together and professional? Answering these questions will help you decide whether the trade show is a good fit for your brand.

Consider other marketing opportunities.

Some trade shows will have more marketing opportunities for you than others, so do your research before making any decisions. For example, you may be able to sign up as a guest speaker at trade shows that offer seminars. At others, you may be able to purchase a spot in the event’s newsletter or on their blog. The price may be included in the cost of your exhibitor fees, or they may offer it to you at a lower rate if you do choose to exhibit.

Check the booth locations.

When it comes to trade shows, it’s all about location, location, location. The location of your booth will have a huge impact on your success at the event, so you should never sign up for a trade show without looking to see what spaces they have available. It’s important to ensure you are not located on a dead end aisle with limited foot traffic. You should also find out where your competitors are located and discuss with your team whether you want to stay close or distance yourself from their booths. Ask the event organizer where the food stations, entrances, escalators, and elevators are so you can visualize where people will be walking when you look at the floor plan. Remember, even if you think the event is a good fit for your brand, if there’s not a decent space available on the exhibitor floor, it’s probably not worth the investment.

Have you already decided which trade shows you’re going to attend this year? Tell us which ones you’ve decided on in the comments below!

You’re hiring a new employee and you’ve done the hard work of attracting, prescreening, and shortlisting your candidates. Now for the last crucial step in the process: how to conduct an interview.

Figuring out how to interview candidates the right way can be stressful and confusing.

That’s why I created this handy pocket guide on how to conduct an interview in 6 simple steps, including a list of sample questions at the end.

Step 1: Develop job-related questions by talking to employees currently in the role.

• What are the employee’s daily responsibilities?
• What are the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics (KSAOs) required for success?
• Which of the above are you willing to train in a new employee?

You need to have a good idea of what a bad, average, good, and great answer to each question you create looks like.

One of the best ways to figure out what’s requires to be successful in the role is to assess your existing top performers.

Step 2: Ask the right types of questions by sticking to behavioural and situational interview questions.

For a situational interview question (“What would you do in…”), you can describe a major job requirement that the candidate will be doing on the job.

Using an example of a sales rep, you can ask candidates how they prospect for leads, and have them walk you through their approach.

For a behavioural interview question (“Tell me about a time when you…”), ask the candidate how they handled situations that are likely to happen in the role you’re hiring for.

Step 3: Include a job-related test.

One of the best ways to predict a candidate’s future on-the-job performance is to give candidates a test of their on-the-job performance.

For roles such as sales, job-related tests tend to be straightforward: get candidates to write you a mock cold prospecting email or conduct a mock sales call about your product or service.

Step 4: Follow the (modified) KISS principle – Keep It Simple & Structured

How to conduct an interview that’s structured: Ask all the candidates the same questions, in the same order.

If you don’t follow a structure, and instead conduct slightly different interviews for each candidate, you won’t be able to compare across candidates in a fair and objective way.

Step 5: Create an interview scorecard using a rating scale.

Create a simple rating scale (e.g., 1 = Bad, 2 = Average, 3 = Good, 4 = Great) and use it to rate your candidates’ answers during the interview.

Record or take a few notes about candidates’ answers to justify the ratings you give.

Using a rating scale ensures you can use candidates’ overall scores to compare them with each other instead of relying on gut instinct and first impressions.

An example of an interview scorecard

Remember: our gut instincts can be very unreliable especially when it comes to candidates who are often masters at selling themselves. Use the data to hire instead.

Step 6: All things being equal, hire the candidate with the highest interview score.

Congratulations on your fantastic new hire!

Bonus step: When possible, conduct interviews with more than one interviewer to get multiple perspectives of the candidates.

Group interviews are often more reliable and accurate because they tend to “average out” any one interviewer’s biases.

Now that you know how to conduct an interview properly, it’s time to find even more fantastic new hires!

Best interview questions for a sales role

Prospecting

Imagine you have to find leads for our company from scratch. What’s the first thing you would do? What tools would you use?

Qualifying leads

How do you decide when you’ve done enough research on a prospect?

Objection handling

Tell me about a time when a prospect told you, “It’s too expensive/I don’t have the budget/I don’t have the authority to make the purchase/I don’t have time right now.” How did you respond? What specific actions did you take?

Closing

How do you decide when a prospect is ready to close a deal? What specific tactics do you use?

Failed deals

Tell me about a time when you failed to close a deal. What would you would have said or done differently?

Account management

Give me your best example of going above and beyond to keep a customer happy.

Time management

How do you decide how to prioritize your time between prospecting new leads and managing existing accounts?

 

DID YOU KNOW THAT AROUND 85% OF NEW PRODUCTS FAIL? HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL WENT AS FAR AS SAYING THAT THIS NUMBER CAN RISE TO AROUND 95%. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE A PART OF THAT SMALL, SUCCESSFUL PERCENTAGE?

I have over 25 years experience in sales and marketing, and over 9 years experience in Social Media and Digital Marketing. I have had great successes, but I have also had great losses and because of this; I understand what it takes to launch a new product and the importance of this.

Did you know that 84% of customer say that is important that a company is innovate, and improving/adding new products/services to their line? The questions is; what are you doing to be as innovative as possible?

As someone who has just launched a new business, and new online courses around my speciality in Social Media and Digital Marketing, I wanted to share with you the process I went through, in the hope that it can do for you, what it did for me and create a great product launch checklist

PRODUCT

When launching a new product/service, the first part is actually the product itself. I have broken the product launch checklist down into 4 sections.

1. LEGAL & COMMERCIAL

Have you thought about everything that is needed from a legal standpoint when launching a product? Is the business registered, do you have your T&C’s? If you work with suppliers, do you have contracts in place?

2. PRODUCT PROPOSITION

Part of building a new product or service is doing your research, and finding a need in the market. I knew who my target customer was, and that online courses were what THEY wanted. You then need to think about a NAME for your product/service.

When I launched Think Digital First, I had this name in mind, as an extension to my book Think #Digital First but this took a lot of research. Sit down with a group of people, and have a brainstorming session. Think about your competition, and your USP. WHY are your target audience going to buy your product and more importantly; what PAIN are you solving?

3. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Now it’s time to develop your product. When I built Think Digital First and the online courses I now deliver, I had to make sure that everything was in place to run them successfully and this included getting my team ready, finding the software to run the courses as well as making sure the course runs smoothly by testing it.

4. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

This is one of the most important steps. To make your new product/service or business a success, you must offer a great customer experience. Ask yourself the following questions;

• Can your target audience FIND your products easily?
• Can your target audience BUY your products easily?
• How do they RECEIVE your product/service?
• How are you offering SUPPORT and REFUNDS if necessary?

PROMOTION

After you have decided on your product, how you are going to position it, and how your customers can get hold of it; you then need to think about promotion and this is broken down into 5 different sections.

1. PRESS

When launching a new product/service, you must think about how you are going to share this with the world, and this is where press comes in. Are you going to write a Press Release and if so, do you have all of the journalist and news outlet contacts for your industry?

2. MARKETING COMMUNICATION

You now need to think about how you are going to market the product to your target audience. Are you going to have a launch event? When I launched Think Digital First I reached out to all of my audience via Social Media and email to tell them about it.

Think about how you can entice your audience by offering a promotion for being one of the first people to be a part of your new launch; this is what I did for my 6 Week Social Media Bootcamp.

3. LEAD GENERATION

There are various tools I use for lead generation purposes. I use Openr to promote a product/service of mine (this could be free or paid) on my latest blogs, and I will set up email autoresponders for my free guides/resources with an upsell at the end to one of my paid courses.

4. INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Part of having a successful launch is having your team around you communicating on a daily basis. When I launched Think Digital First, I was having daily meetings (face-to-face or remotely) with my team, including my website designer to iron out all problems. Are you going to do the same?

5. COLLATERAL

Collateral to me, means having content ready to support your new product/service. This could be in the form of White Papers, Infographics, Blogs, Guest Blogs, and Email Marketing.

PRICING

This is going to be one of the most difficult stages to launching a new product/service. This is broken down into 4 sections.

1. CHANNEL PRICING

Because I work with various partners when running my live online courses, I have different channel pricing. There is always a discount for those that come from partners of mine, and this is something you will need to account for.

2. PRICING STRUCTURE

Do you have a pricing strategy in place? Each of my online courses has a different pricing structure based on the length of the course, and how much content they will receive and how much of my time I give to the course in terms of live trainings. Part of my pricing strategy is to offer a discounted ticket price to a “team member” of someone who has paid for a full-price ticket.

3. PRICING TOOLS

Tools are an extremely important part of launching a new product/service if you want to save time and make your process a lot smoother. When it comes to pricing tools, I use spreadsheets to keep track of income, as well as using PayPal to take payments that include VAT which is all set up before I promote a product so that there are no issues.

4. COMPETITIVE PRICING ANALYSIS

Do you know how much your competitor is selling a similar product/service to you, and more importantly; are YOU making sure your prices are competitive? Do your research, and make sure that your target audience do not choose a competitor of yours because they can get the product MUCH cheaper.

CHANNELS TO MARKET

With all the logistics in place for launching your product/service, you now need to sit down and work out HOW you are going to market your business, and this can be broken down into 3 sections.

1. CHANNEL PLANS

Having channels in place to market your product/service is crucial. Think about your partners, and set up meetings to put a plan in place. When I knew I was launching a host of online courses, I reach out to all of the events, and organisations I work with to put a plan in place for marketing.

2. CHANNEL STRATEGY

This is where you look at all of the sales channels, and put a strategy in place. This is where you need to think your partners, and take the plans from the previous point, and turn them into a working, and successful strategy.

3. CHANNEL STOCK

If you have a physical product, this is something you are going to have to pay close attention to. The last thing you want is a partner of yours selling your products, when you can’t provide the product because it is sold out.

LAUNCH PLANS

Whilst we have covered plans above, the type of “plan” you now must create is around launching your product/service.

Ask yourself the following questions for pre launch;

• Do you have a launch date set?
• Is your marketing strategy finished, and ready to be implemented?
• Are your sales targets in place?

Ask yourself the following questions for post launch;

• Have you done your analysis?
• Are you meeting your sales targets?
• Have you gathered feedback from your customers?
• How happy are your partners with the launch?

SUPPORT

On-going support after the launch is very important, as post launch is where you find out HOW well your launch went, and what you could do BETTER.

Are all of your processes working nicely, or do they need a relook? Have you analysed your statistics to see if there is anything you can do better? This is something I do after every live session has begun, to make sure that I am reaching my audience, and giving them what they NEED.

I hope that the above will help you have a great launch for your new product/service, and don’t forget to always be looking at ways to improve what you are offering; research is key.

To help you promote your new product/service on Social Media I have a very special “challenge” that is completely FREE OF CHARGE.

Do you feel confused about which platform to use to promote YOUR business? Baffled as to why you can’t seem to grow your followers? You have a great business but nobody knows about it and you’re frustrated that the time you spend on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or youTube is not helping you get new customers.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU?

• Your Followers are not converting into SALES?
• You don’t have a MARKETING plan?
• You’re not GROWING your followers and don’t know why?
• You STRUGGLE to share content consistency?

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WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

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Statisitcs from vision critical: https://www.visioncritical.com/stats-product-innovation/

Here’s a copy-and-paste template you can use to transform your LinkedIn profile into a client-attracting piece of content.

If you’re going to use LinkedIn to generate business for yourself, you’ll want to make sure your LinkedIn profile isn’t inadvertently scaring prospects away.

The world’s largest social network for professionals is vast, and, if you’re like many others on LinkedIn, your profile might read like a virtual résumé, telling the world where you work and what your job duties are.

There’s just one problem – nobody is interested in you!

Instead, they are interested in themselves, and when they scan your LinkedIn profile, they are looking to quickly ascertain whether or not you can help solve their key professional problems or challenges.

Creating a Client-Facing LinkedIn Profile

As a result, you must create what I call a “client-facing” LinkedIn profile.

This approach is especially critical with your LinkedIn Profile Summary, which is typically the first text that anyone will read when they’re scrolling through dozens of LinkedIn profiles looking for the right fit for their business needs.

Your goal is to stop that scroll!

So rather than lead with a list of your accolades and titles, you want your LinkedIn profile to be formatted around this concept: How can I quickly and simply explain who it is I serve, how I help them achieve their goals and the products or services I provide to make it happen?

The more quickly, simply and accurately you can lay out the key audiences you serve and how you help those audiences achieve their goals by providing a specific type of product or service, the easier it is to win new business on LinkedIn.

Make This the First Sentence of LinkedIn Profile

Having helped rewrite hundreds of LinkedIn profiles for clients over the past five years, I’ve created a specific, fill-in-the-blank template that anyone can use to immediately turn their profile from virtual résumé into client-attracting content.

Here’s the first sentence you’ll want to use: “WHAT I DO: I help [my target audience] achieve [their top goal] by providing [my product or service].”

Now, the reason you put “WHAT I DO” in all-caps is that, to this point, LinkedIn doesn’t let you format the text on your summary page. You can’t use bold or italics or certain fonts; it’s all plain text.

Using ALL CAPS to highlight key phrases within your profile catches the attention of online readers long enough to stop the scroll and get them engaging with your text.

Using this approach, the first sentence of your LinkedIn summary instantly identifies your target audience, tells that audience how you help them achieve their goals or solve their problems, and it explains how you do it (the service or product you provide).

It’s that simple! And you should carry this same formula throughout the rest of your summary, answering other questions like “WHO I SERVE” and “WHAT MAKES ME UNIQUE” as you help potential clients understand who you work with and what makes you better, unique or different when compared to the competition.

You can also uses phrases like “WHAT OTHERS SAY” to insert client testimonials directly into the text of your profile page.

With LinkedIn, the Riches are in the Niches

With nearly 500 million members in 200 countries, and with two new members joining every second, LinkedIn is the best “professional” search engine on the planet.

Case in point: LinkedIn’s internal search engine allows you to create targeted lists of thousands of professionals based on their job title, industry type, company name, physical location, where they attended school and much more.

Think about how powerful and targeted your approach can be as a result!

If you know, for example, that hospital CFOs are one of your top audiences, you can set up a LinkedIn profile that reads like this: “WHAT I DO: I help Hospital CFOs increase revenue and reduce expenses by providing industry-specific healthcare accounting software.”

See how “niche” and specific that is?

Now, imagine reaching out and connecting with thousands of hospital CFOs, all of whom are looking for ways to increase revenue and reduce expenses. If they read the first sentence of your profile and see how you solve one of their top challenges, they’re going to want to connect and talk more!

So, if you haven’t already, download this template and reformat your LinkedIn profile so that it becomes client-facing. Make sure as well to identify and appeal to a handful of targeted, niche audiences.

Once you do, it’s going to get way easier to win new business on the world’s largest social network for professionals!