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In Win At Losing: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead To Our Greatest Gains, author Sam Weinman examines how setbacks often fuel later breakthroughs, in walks of life ranging from sports to business to politics. In this excerpt he describes how this ideal is ingrained in the culture of Silicon Valley, where some of the most successful companies have emerged from previous failures.

 

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The failed startup entrepreneur in Silicon Valley is as much a cliche now as the out-of-work actor waiting tables in Hollywood. Everyone knows one, or at least has heard of one. According to Professor Shikhar Ghosh, who teaches entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, about 75 percent of startups don’t make money back for investors. The reasons for failure vary, but as he puts it, most “commit suicide as opposed to being murdered”—the damage is usually self-inflicted. 

“Probably the biggest single reason startups fail is they create services that not enough people want,” Ghosh says. “A subcategory of that is a business people are interested in, but not interested enough to part with their money or time.”

A study by the market research firm CB Insights arrived at similar findings. In reviewing the post-mortems of 135 failed startups, the firm constructed a list of 20 reasons startups fail, with everything from burnout to location cited. By far the biggest reason was “not arriving at a market need.”

This dilemma calls to mind the annual PGA Merchandise Show I attend in Orlando. It’s the biggest trade show in golf, with a convention center the size of a small city filled with everything from golf clubs to sweaters to a hundred little gadgets that might allow you to monogram your golf tees. The best description of the PGA Show came from my friend David Owen, who said many of the golf products there are “solutions to problems you didn’t know existed.” I’ve found myself walking across that showroom floor dozens of times chuckling at one far-fetched idea or another. It's less funny when I remember someone put all kinds of time, money, and hope into something no one really wants.

As Professor Ghosh says, the most common mistake made with a startup is in miscalculating a product’s potential. It’s assuming there are scores of golfers who want their initials printed on a golf tee; or that musicians will be lining up for new ways to sell their music. From there, the dominos fall. Entrepreneurs might oversell the idea to investors. Or they inflate internal expectations of what the endeavor will yield. They spend too much time tinkering with a product to get it to work, and not enough time constructing a plan for if it doesn’t. The list of ways you can screw up a startup is long enough to cover several semesters at Harvard. And while no one plans it this way, many who emerge from the depths of a failed business tend to be better off from the experience.

“What I see among entrepreneurs who fail or experience setbacks is that the most resilient of them look at it as a learning opportunity and they grow from it,” says Dr. Michael Freeman, a psychiatrist in the Bay Area who works with many failed entrepreneurs. “They’re able to constructively reflect on it as a way to develop new skills.”

In perhaps no other segment of American culture is failure embraced as freely as the tech industry, where a collapsed startup is rarely a stigma and can often be a credential. It sounds like an odd thing to say about a field so ruthlessly competitive. Yet it is because innovation is inherently paired with risk that mistakes are considered inevitable. The only way to know if a product works is to test it, even if it means subjecting oneself to disapproval. The popular Silicon Valley mantra “Fail fast” reflects a culture that encourages individuals to throw ideas against a wall, then move on if they don’t stick.

“People who are more self aware and are willing to fail in small ways have a much higher likelihood of success,” Ghosh says. “The problem is with those people who are so afraid of failing because they’ve put everything into an idea, when they would have been better off pivoting away and trying something else.”

Thomas Edison had a famous line about a string of unsuccessful ventures in which he said he hadn’t failed, but he had “just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” In a sense, the inventor was ahead of his time in embracing the concept of the micro failure, which is the idea that small setbacks are unavoidable and as a result, shouldn’t be feared.

 When the sports psychologist Dr. Jonathan Fader works with major league baseball players, he reminds them that even the best players make an out two out of every three times at the plate, which should temper the disappointment of a pop fly to center field. “Instead of thinking of it as a global definition of yourself, you think of it as an occurrence,” Fader says. “A micro failure describes an instance, it’s doesn’t describe the person.”

A failed business in Silicon Valley is taught to be viewed in the same light. It’s a swing and a miss as opposed to some larger commentary on your competence. Recognizing as much can be elusive since it’s hard to not wrap your self worth up in something that is consuming your existence. But it helps to know that in the tech world, a lot more people are making outs than getting on base.

Adapted from Win at Losing by Sam Weinman with the permission of TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Copyright © 2016 by Sam Weinman.
All right reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Sam Weinman is the Digital Editor of GolfDigest.com, where, during his tenure, the website has grown to boast the largest digital audience in golf and has been nominated for several National Magazine Awards. Prior to that, he was the lead hockey and golf writer for The Journal News and LoHud.com, during which time he launched the popular hockey blog, "Rangers Report." For more than a decade, Sam's work has regularly appeared in Gannett newspapers around the country, including USA Today, and he has contributed to Golf World, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN the Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He is the recipient of several national writing awards for his coverage of the PGA Tour and the National Hockey League. He lives with his wife and two boys in Rye, NY, where he coaches multiple youth sports teams.

Are you using the right Pinterest tools to manage your Pinterest page? Do you know which ones are the best?

Networks like Tumblr and We Heart It have been out there for longer than Pinterest, but you don’t often come across social media tools dedicated to them. But there are so many just made for Pinterest.

I am amazed at the number of Pinterest tools out there. I already know and use many of them and I come across many more regularly. It just shows the marketing potential Pinterest has.

If you want to take Pinterest marketing seriously you need to invest in the right Pinterest tools. They will save you time and help you devise and execute a more accurate marketing strategy.

So here’s a list of the top Pinterest tools. You don’t have to use all of them. Just choose the ones that you like most, trial them and continue using the ones that suit you best. At the end of the post I have summarised all the tools in an infographic if you are looking for a quick summary.

You can also download a free Pinterest tools checklist by clicking this link. In it I have summarised the pros, cons and costs of all the tools in this post. It should help you find your perfect Pinterest tools quickly.

Click Here to Download Free Pinterest Tools Checklist

I have categorised the various Pinterest tools as Pinterest management tools, Pinterest analytics tools, image creation tools, infographic creation tools, Pin It buttons for websites and miscellaneous tools which are tools that don’t fit into any category, but are still useful.

Check out all the Pinterest tools below…

Pinterest Management Tools

Here are some good Pinterest management tools. You can use them to schedule your pins and to track their performance. They help you spread your pins and can save you a lot of time.

Viraltag:

Viraltag is the tool I use to manage my Pinterest pages and the pages of my clients. I like using it because it has so many features that make it easy to share images on Pinterest. You can also publish images on other networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin and Instagram with Viraltag.

They integrate with Canva so you can create images with Canva and directly share it with Viraltag. They also have their own image editor.

Viraltag also integrates with Google Analytics. The biggest benefit of this is that Viraltag uses your analytics data to find your recommended Pin times i.e. the times at which your site receives the most traffic. You can then add these preset times to your account and begin scheduling your pins.

They have many more features. The only problem with Viraltag is that the analytics are very basic. They can be improved. Here’s my full review of Viraltag.

Tailwind:

Tailwind is another popular Pinterest tool with many advanced features. Their analytics is certainly better than Viraltag’s.

One of their best features is that they suggest relevant images to pin after you schedule your pin. This can save a lot of time.

They also integrate with Hootsuite. You can use Hootsuite’s tabs and streams feature to easily view your published and scheduled pins on Hootsuite itself.

Tailwind can also help you find your best times to pin. Unlike Viraltag, Tailwind finds these times based on engagement levels, not traffic.

The main problem with Tailwind is that you can use it for Pinterest only and no other network. They will be introducing Instagram management features soon though.

Another problem is that their advanced analytics/professional plan is very expensive. It’s $799.99 a month. It’s a huge jump from their basic/plus $15 plan.

Buffer:

If you are a social media manager or a blogger or a business owner that does their own marketing, you have probably already heard of Buffer. It is one of the best management tools. It is easy to use and very affordable. It’s actually one of the top 5 social media tools.

They recently introduced the Pinterest management feature. I have been using it lately and I like it.

It isn’t advanced like Viraltag or Tailwind, but most people will be happy with it. They also have their own image creation tool called Pablo (I have written about it later in the post) that makes it easy to create images for your Pinterest page.

One thing many experienced Pinterest users will like about Buffer is that the text you highlight before pinning will automatically appear in the description. Pinterest had this feature, but they discarded it. I miss it. If you too miss it too, then you should make Buffer your Pinterest management tool.

BoardBooster:

BoardBooster is another popular Pinterest management tool. I see a lot of bloggers using and recommending it.

If you have your own group boards or you contribute to other group boards, BoardBooster will be perfect for you. BoardBooster makes it easy to contribute to group boards, clean up your group boards, see your best performing boards and rank board contributors based on performance.

It’s also very affordable. Your first 100 pins are free and their basic package is only $5 per month. You can pin 500 pins per month with this package. If you don’t pin too often this tool is best for you.

Coschedule:

Coschedule lets you schedule to Pinterest too. It’s great for WordPress users as it integrates with it. You can use it to schedule posts on other popular networks like Google+, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram. You can easily view all the pins along with the other social media updates you have scheduled on your editorial calendar.

It will save you a lot of time and make it easy to organise updates as everything will be in one place.

Viralwoot:

Viralwoot is another useful Pinterest management tool that lets you schedule your pins at the best times. They also offer analytics and a content manager feature that helps you rotate and republish your old pins automatically. You can even use it to find Pinterest influencers.

You can download a free Pinterest tools checklist by clicking this link. In it I have summarised the pros, cons and costs of all the tools in this post. It should help you find your perfect Pinterest tools quickly.

Click Here to Download Free Pinterest Tools Checklist

Pinterest Analytics Tools

You need a good Pinterest analytics tool if you want to analyse your pins. It will help make sure that the strategy you are implementing works. If you regularly analyse your presence, you can make modifications and fortify it.

A good analytics tool will also help you analyse your competitors presence. It will show you what’s getting them results and what isn’t. You can then try out some of these techniques to see if they get you positive results too.

Pinterest Analytics:

Pinterest’s very own analytics is excellent. You can analyse both your page and your website with it and use the data to gain insights on how to drive more engagement and traffic. It tracks impressions, clicks, saves, likes and repins.

You can also view data on the ‘People you reach’. This will help you create and pin content they want to see.

For most businesses this free tool along with a basic management tool will be sufficient. The only big problem with it is that you cannot analyse your competitors Pinterest pages. It also doesn’t track follower growth.

Quintly:

A good Pinterest tool for competitor page analysis is Quintly. You can also analyse your own Pinterest page with it. The results are displayed in graphs to help you compare your performance against your competitors easily.

You can also analyse your blog and other networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin and Google Plus. As the graphs are all displayed in the same place your Pinterest results will be easy to compare against other networks.

The only problem is that it doesn’t track the clicks on your pins. This can be a problem as most businesses use Pinterest to drive traffic. Also most people will find it expensive as pricing starts at $129.

True Social Metrics:

If you want to analyse more social networks (along with your Pinterest page) then True Social Metrics will be perfect for you. It analyses all the social networks Quintly does and it also has analytics for other networks like Slideshare and Vimeo.

If your WordPress blog plays a key role in your Pinterest marketing strategy then you should try them out as they offer very good blog analytics.

The main problem with them is the price as to get Pinterest analytics you need to sign up for the Premium pack. Pricing for this starts at $100 a month.

I am also not satisfied with their customer support. They have a weird sign up process where you have to provide your phone number. I once signed up for an account, but it wasn’t going through, so I contacted them, but they never got back to me.

Curalate:

Curalate was one of the first Pinterest analytics tools I used. They offer very detailed analytics. You can also use them to schedule your pins and run contests.

The biggest drawback with this Pinterest tool is that most people won’t be able to afford it as it costs thousands of dollars a month.

Cyfe:

The problem with most good Saas Pinterest analytics tools is that they are expensive. As you noticed above they are all $100 or more. For those looking for a cheaper alternative, Cyfe is a good option. You can use it for free, but they have a paid version too which is only $19 per month.

They also offer analytics for various other platforms. Having all the data from those networks in one place can save you a lot of time.

Pinterest Image creation Tools

To be successful on Pinterest, you need to be creating original images. They help you stand out. Fortunately there are plenty of tools that make this task easy. Here are the top Pinterest image creation tools…

Canva:

Canva is the most popular image creation tool. A lot of people like using it because it has a lot of good features and is free to use. They also have a paid version, but for most people the free version is sufficient. With the free version you only pay for premium background images/templates.

The only real drawback is that it is not as easy to use as other image creation tools. It will take time for you to master it. Also creating images with it can be expensive if you need to create a lot of original images. $1 per premium image might not seem much, but if you create several it all adds up.

Stencil:

If you don’t mind paying a monthly fee to get access to a lot of background images you will love Stencil. Using their tool you get access to 850,000+ background images. They are royalty and credit free. You can modify these images any way you want on Stencil and share them directly onto Pinterest.

To help you make quick modifications they give you easy access to 200,000+ icons and graphics and ready to add quotes. They also have several ready to use templates. You can read my full review of Stencil in this post.

The main draw back is that with the pro version of this tool you can only create 50 images a month. To create an unlimited number of images, you should get the ‘Unlimited’ package which costs $24 a month.

PicMonkey:

If you find Stencil a bit pricey PicMonkey will be great for you as it only costs $4.99 a month, $3.33 if you pay annually. You can also use them for free. You don’t even have to sign up for an account to do this.

You might not have access to several background photos as you do in Stencil, but they have many templates, overlays, textures and fonts. They also have some good photo editing tools.

The only problem with this tool is that they don’t have a ruler that helps make sure that your elements are aligned properly. This can affect the quality of the final images.

Pablo:

Pablo is a free image editing tool from the same people who created Buffer. This tool gives you access to 600,000+ free images. You can modify them on Pablo by changing sizes, adding text and doing various other things before posting them to Pinterest with Buffer.

They also have some ready to use templates. You can even upload and modify your own images.

Its main drawback is that it is not as advanced as the above mentioned tools, but it is still very effective.

For posting to Pinterest directly with Buffer you will need to get their Awesome plan though which costs $10 per month. But if you want to directly post it to Pinterest or with another tool, you can always download the image and then upload it to Pinterest.

Adobe Spark:

Using Adobe Spark you can create content both on your desktop and your mobile. You can create images, videos and even pages with it. They also have a gallery where you can browse and find images that inspire you.

You start off by choosing the size. They have a preset Pinterest size. After that you choose a theme and your colour palette. The color palette is a great feature for people who have a brand design.

You also have the option to change the background image. You can use Spark to find creative commons-licensed images and directly add them to your image. It also integrates with Creative Cloud, Lightroom, Dropbox and Google Photos. You can easily add images from here. You can also directly upload photos.

There are several more features.

The main problem with this tool is that your images will have the Adobe Spark branding on them. You need a Creative Cloud Membership to get rid of it. For a limited time they are letting people remove the branding, but we aren’t certain how long this option will be available.

Photoshop:

All the above tools are great for basic image creation and editing, but none of them can match Photoshop. Photoshop can help you make some amazing effects.

The main problem with this tool is that just gaining a basic understanding of how to use it will take you hours and days. Mastering it can take months and years. It can be very confusing.

Also it is expensive. You can get the basic plan for $9.99 a month, but this is an annual plan. For a monthly plan you will need to go for the Single App Plan and pricing for this starts at $29.99. But when you get Photoshop Creative Cloud you can also get rid of the branding on your Adobe Spark images.

Illustrator:

Illustrator is my favourite tool. I use it to create more than 90% of my images. It helps me create original illustrations to use in my images. I can either draw them with the pen tool or by using vectors.

There are many more amazing features and they get better when you combine Illustrator with Photoshop.

The main problem with this tool is that just like with Photoshop it can take you a lot of time to learn to use it. Also it is very expensive. You can only get it with the Single App plan which costs $29.99 and you will probably need to get Photoshop as like I mentioned earlier it works well with it. For this you will need to get the All Apps plan which costs $74.99 per month.

Snagit:

I use Snagit for my Screenshots. It is very good as you can take various types of screenshots ranging from the regular one to delayed menu capture to scroll captures.

You can also edit your screenshots by adding text and various other elements like arrows, shapes, colour fills, highlights, etc.

If you want to share a quick tip on Pinterest, you can take a screenshot in seconds, add some stuff to it and pin it.

Awesome Screenshot:

Awesome screenshot is a free screenshot tool. It is actually a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. It is not as advanced as Snagit, but it is free.

Infographics Creation Tools

Infographics do extremely well on Pinterest. They get repinned a lot. They can also drive a good amount of traffic. You just have to figure out a way to visually represent data and tips. The traditional way to do this is by using tools like Photoshop and Illustrator or hiring a designer. As discussed earlier this can be both time consuming and expensive. But luckily many people can create beautiful infographics with tools like the ones below…

Piktochart:

Piktochart has over 500 templates that make it easy for you to design infographics. You start off by picking a template. After that you can add charts, maps, icons and photos. You can then adjust things to make sure all the elements of the infographic are cohesive.

You can even create presentations and printable infographics with it.

Venngage:

Venngage is also very similar to Piktochart. Here again you choose your template, add your items and adjust the design accordingly.

Both Venngage and Piktochart have a drag and drop editor and make it easy to embed and share your infographic.

Pinterest Contest Tools

Contests can be very effective in helping you quickly gain traffic, sales and followers on Pinterest, but the main problem with them is that they can be very time consuming. Here are a couple of tools that can save you hours…

Wishpond:

Wishpond has a suite of tools that help you do everything required to run your Pinterest contests. With it you can set up contest landing pages and collect entries. You can also generate leads and send emails. They even integrate with popular email marketing software if you prefer using them to collect leads. You can run this contest on Facebook, Twitter and your website.

The main problem is that you need the pro plan to split test landing pages. This feature is necessary as you need to test the conversion rates of your landing pages in order to get the most contestants. The pro plan is expensive, costs $119/month.

Woobox:

Woobox helps you create Pin to Win contests with ease. With it you can create landing pages and promote your contest on your website, blog and social media.

Using Woobox you can also add a Pinterest tab to your Facebook page for free. I have given detailed instructions on how to do this in this blog post.

Pin It buttons for website

If you want to drive a lot of traffic with Pinterest you don’t want to be the only one pinning from your website. You want other people who visit your website to give you a hand too. The best way to encourage people to pin from your website is by adding Pin It buttons to all or most pages. Here are a couple that simplify this task…

Sumome:

Sumome makes it easy to add both regular Pin It buttons and Pin It buttons for images where a Pin It button appears on an image when you hover over it. I have written more about these buttons in this post.

Sumome me also comes with a lot of other tools. One of them is the Scroll Box. You can use it to get more Pinterest followers. I have provided tips on how to use it to get followers in this post.

The drawback of Sumome is that along with the Pin It button Sumome’s branding will appear and to get rid of it you will need to sign up for a paid account. It’s fairly priced if you are getting less than 50,000 visits. But it can be very expensive to those who get more traffic than this.

Shareaholic:

Using Shareaholic you can add both regular Pin It buttons and Pin It buttons for images. There is some branding, but you can get rid of it.

It doesn’t have all the extra features like Sumome, but it is completely free. The Pin It button and all the other social media share buttons on my site are powered by Shareaholic.

I recommend Sumome and Shareaholic because you can add them to any site, not just WordPress blogs. They also have really good servers which don’t slow down your website.

Miscellaneous Pinterest Tools

Here are a handful of miscellaneous Pinterest tools that don’t fit into any category, but are still very useful.

Pinvolve:

Pinvolve is a really interesting tool. Its main feature is that it takes your latest pins, Instagram photos and Facebook posts and displays them on your Facebook page under a tab. It also converts your Facebook posts to pins and displays them. People can easily pin, tweet or share these pins. You can even get it to automatically share your Pinterest pins on Facebook.

PinGroupie:

PinGroupie is a directory of Pinterest group boards. You can use it to quickly find group boards in any category. I have written a complete guide on how to use Pin Groupie here. In the post I also share tips on how to get invited to the group boards you like.

IFTTT:

The full form of IFTTT is If This Then That. It does exactly what the name suggests. It lets you integrate two services i.e. you can get it to automatically perform a task on another service when you perform a task one. For example this integration will result in an automatic tweet every time you like a pin. This way you can automate various things.

These integrations are called recipes.

IFTTT is free to use.

Zapier:

Zapier is an alternative to IFTTT. They have both free and paid plans. This app has some integrations that you don’t find on IFTTT, but they are very few of them.

You can download a free Pinterest tools checklist by clicking this link. In it I have summarised the pros, cons and costs of all the tools in this post. It should help you find your perfect Pinterest tools quickly.

Click Here to Download Free Pinterest Tools Checklist

Here’s the infographic on the top Pinterest tools…

These are the Pinterest tools you can use to manage your page and overall presence. As aforementioned you don’t have to use all of them. Just browse through the main advantages and disadvantages of the tools. Then pick your favourite and trial them. Many of them have free trials. After you trial them you will find the perfect one.

 Price f(x), a pricing optimization SaaS, has raised €4 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Prague-based Credo Ventures, and London-based Talis Capital. Noteworthy, this is the first outside funding the European startup has taken since it was founded six years ago and despite being profitable for the last three of those. Read More

You are a content marketer. You care about people, about making real content for real humans that adds value and solves problems. After all, that’s the heart of content marketing.

Unfortunately, all that care and human connection often comes at a cost.

Even in the B2B realm, a mere 6% of respondents in CMI’s 2017 research rated their organization’s content marketing maturity level as “sophisticated” — providing accurate measurement to the business and scaling across the organization. The previous survey looked at challenges and found “measuring content effectiveness” was the No. 2 challenge faced by marketers, second only to creating content itself.

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Only 6% of B2B marketers rated their org’s #contentmarketing maturity as sophisticated. @cmicontent #research
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In both those uncomfortable admissions, the keyword is “measure.”

Why do we struggle?

Because most content marketers are technophobic.

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Most #content marketers are technophobic says @iconicontent.
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Certainly, we muscle our way through tools like Google Analytics. But stepping beyond its familiar dashboards to a business intelligence tool that combines data from multiple sources critical to success fills our souls with dread.

Even worse, many of us work with clients or teams who are just as data-averse as we are. (And yes, that’s true of enterprise-level organizations.)

Cumulative data presented by Forbes makes it clear that marketers who put data at the heart of their efforts outperform their counterparts on just about every front: lead generation, customer acquisition and retention, pricing strategies, product improvement, and even customer relationships that extend “beyond campaign execution.”

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Marketers who put data at the heart of efforts outperform counterparts. @Forbes via @iconicontent
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To help you cross the divide, I’ve collected and vetted eight business intelligence tools for technophobic content marketers (like me). The first four are designed for enterprise-level organizations ready to take the full plunge, and the last four are specifically chosen for agencies and entrepreneurs looking to get their feet wet.

Sisense

Two must-have ingredients to integrate data — especially big data — into your content marketing strategy are (1) custom dashboards to monitor what matters and (2) baked-in visualizations to bring data to life. Both ingredients make bridging the gap between numbers and decisions far easier than you’d imagine.

Sisense is one of the few data analytics platforms that excels at both. Designed to be used by people with any degree of technical expertise, Sisense walks new users through the setup process and brings together all your data sources into one interface. It also creates personalized dashboards — or lets you build your own — for executives, marketers, e-commerce managers, and more.

Having one central performance data hub coupled with a personalized, role-specific dashboard means you’ll never overlook important findings. And it means you won’t get overwhelmed.

For content marketers in particular, Sisense can map your customer journey — from off-site audience member, to visitor, to lead, to customer — and isolate the content that moved someone from one stage to the next.

Second, Sisense also includes visualizations within the tool itself. Instead of creating your own reports, charts, and graphs from diverse data sets, you can generate them automatically based on the type of insights you’re looking for. It even published a handy, non-gated data visualization wizard to help you choose the best type of data visualization for your project before going all in.

Cyfe

Compared to Sisense, Cyfe is a far simpler, more DIY solution for large and small companies alike. However, this dual focus — and its modest price tag — doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. With Cyfe, you create your own all-in-one dashboards by adding pre-built widgets that natively integrate with all major data-gathering applications. Plus, with its new Zapier integration, Cyfe offers the largest selection of integrations.

No matter how spread out your data is — online or off — everything is collected in one place. Cyfe doesn’t support unstructured data sources or complex analyses based on blended views, but it’s great for keeping track of what’s happening across the board. No more toggling between platforms like Google Analytics, your CRM, email marketing provider, social networks, keyword campaigns, optimization software, and your internal projects. Cyfe is for people who know what they need to track and want to keep those metrics front-and-center.

Not only does Cyfe save you time, but it also eliminates holes in your data that silos create. Individual platform analytics hide the often widely different performance of traffic versus social shares versus lead generation versus sales. Instead, Cyfe lets you see all that interconnected data at a glance.

Segment

Segment is an all-in-one data connector that goes beyond dashboards and focuses on compiling, integrating, and even helping you optimize over 200 customer-data integrations. Segment sits a layer underneath vital tools for content marketing like Google Analytics (content performance), HubSpot (content creation and promotion), Facebook Ads (content exposure), and Autopilot (email campaigns).

Because Segment relies on its own in-house developers during onboarding, it offers a more full-service product. Once an engineer hooks up Segment to your data providers, you get a full-picture sense of your content’s performance. For a more granular examination, you can build cohorts of users — segments — who’ve taken particular actions and then automate multichannel efforts for better reach and ROI.

Even better, because Segment does more than just aggregate data and gives you direct control over the tools you integrate, your marketing stack becomes just that … your marketing stack, eliminating bottlenecks between departments like marketing and engineering.

ClearStory Data

For content marketers in e-commerce, retail, manufacturing, or B2B organizations, ClearStory Data specializes in gathering data from traditional in-house sources and combines them with outward-facing marketing metrics. When it comes to analyzing both your own and third-party data, few of the other platforms on this list are up to the challenge.

Beyond its wide scope, one feature of ClearStory stands out. Rather than a static dashboard, ClearStory uses what it calls Interactive StoryBoards. For example, if your team publishes a case study, you can pull in live customer data on retention and sales and combine that with analytics on the best marketing channels — social, gated, email, or blog — to use when posting and promoting it.

If you need data-driven inspiration to help with content creation itself, you can add parameters — simply by editing the sources to draw from — and instantly collect the headlines and themes of your company’s most successful case studies to date. Those interactive dashboards also can be shared with other departments — most notably development and sales — to facilitate collaboration throughout the creation and optimization process.

TapClicks

Unlike the previous tools, TapClicks is this list’s first business intelligence platform built especially for agencies and media companies. TapClicks offers a set of pre-built integrations (similar to Cyfe) but still runs the analytics gamut. Accordingly, the platform focuses on combining diverse data sets and sources into comprehensive dashboards.

However, because it’s made for agencies and media companies, TapClicks offers the ability to create white-labeled, client-facing dashboards in addition to internal ones. You can schedule regular client-customized reports to be automatically generated and sent. Proving your ROI to clients becomes a natural and regular part of your routine.

Maybe best of all, TapClicks lets you add margin and mark-up costs to your client’s campaigns that only appear on their end as final invoices. In other words, TapClicks combines the kind of business intelligence insights that drive powerful marketing while making it easy to report and bill.

DashThis

In the same vein as TapClicks, DashThis is primarily a report-generating tool for agencies that ends manual work. As such, it offers a comparable stack of marketing-specific integrations and focuses not on content optimization but on building client-facing dashboards and reports that make highlighting KPIs straightforward. In addition to combining all your analytics in one location, the KPI emphasis makes aligning your agency’s output with your clients’ goals and timetables a breeze.

Naturally, how to optimize and obtain the results depends on how you choose to use the tools, but you won’t need to invest hours gathering information and compiling it.

For content marketers who suffer from serious technophobia but still find themselves using a host of measuring tools, DashThis may be the simplest platform that requires the very least IT expertise. It does one thing — collect and report KPIs — and it does it well.

SumAll

Getting a bit more niched, SumAll is a social media business intelligence tool that enables you to connect unlimited Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Analytics accounts. By gathering comprehensive historical data across those mediums, you get a full picture of your social-media standing. This tool, however, does more than just report. It lets you know your wins and losses to help you plan upcoming content based on the networks you’re targeting.

What makes SumAll stand out is its automated “Insights” reports. By aligning your data with your followers’ and competitors’, SumAll offers proactive guidelines related to hashtags, scheduling, keywords, and influencer outreach. While those insights shouldn’t be treated as gospel, if you’re struggling to make your social media data actionable, this feature gives SumAll a unique advantage.

Qlik Sense

While Qlik offers a suite of business intelligence tools, including products similar to those like Sisense and Segment, my favorite offering is Qlik Sense primarily because it was the first data visualization tool I used. Qlik Sense has nowhere near the exhaustive list of integrations that Cyfe boasts, but if all you’re looking to do is bring your data to life for a presentation or report, it doesn’t get easier.

By engaging your content audience, visual storytelling increases conversions. When coordinating with internal stakeholders, the same is true. Qlik lets you create visualizations, dashboards, and apps for internal or external audiences that answer their most important questions. Think of it as the lowest-hanging analytical fruit.

Its direct integration and drag-and-drop interface lets the most technophobic and even design-phobic marketers make their own representations without scripting, coding, complex SQL questions, or hand-inputting data through Excel. Instead, Qlik collects your data from those sources and guides you through the visualization process one step at a time.

Overcome your fear

The truth is that data-centric marketers, including content marketers, outperform their non-data equivalents on every front.

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Data-centric marketers outperform their non-data equivalents on every front says @iconicontent
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The trick is to find the business intelligence tool that fits your needs whether that’s a full-scale, enterprise-level platform or a simple data visualization tool.

You can overcome your fear.

And remember, the best use of data doesn’t disconnect you from your audience. It drives you deeper into the stories — the real human stories — waiting behind every click.

Want to subscribe to one of the most helpful tools for content marketers? Sign up for CMI’s daily newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Please note:  All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team.  No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used)

The post 8 Business Intelligence Tools for Content Marketers With Technophobia appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

In a controversial experiment, Sweden discovered the benefits of reducing work hours without decreasing pay.

In companies across Europe, a 30- or 35-hour workweek is far from anomalous—but the concept of a shorter workweek (or even a 40-hour workweek) is foreign to most American employers. In fact, according to ABC News, Americans work more hours on average than anyone else in the industrialized world.

But do longer hours really equal more productivity? The short answer is no. Sweden is the most recent country to hop on the shorter workday trend, instituting an experimental program in which workers across a variety of industries work reduced hours for the same pay. While the jury’s still out on the fate of these programs, one things is clear—when downgraded to a six-hour workday, employees are less likely to take sick days, and they become more productive, creative, and optimistic during working hours.

The Six-Hour Workday Experiment

In an attempt to improve the work-life balance of its citizens, the Swedish government recently instituted a study shortening work hours at selected institutions, like the Svartedalens nursing home in Gothenburg, Sweden. During this year-long experiment, employees worked six-hour days, without a reduction in their compensation.

The result? According to the New York Times, residents at the nursing home reported that the standard of care rose significantly after just one week. At the Sahlgrenska University Hospital, employers noticed similar results—employees rarely got sick, were more efficient, and most importantly, were much happier to be at work. “For years, we’ve been told that an eight-hour workday is optimal,” said Anders Hyltander, the executive director of the hospital. “But I think we should let ourselves challenge that view and say, ‘Yes that’s the way it is now, but if you want to increase productivity, be open to new ideas.’”

The Implications of American Work Culture

Since the average American works 38.6 hours per week (according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), a six-hour workday seems like an impossible dream. “The Swedish model will not be easily accepted in the U.S.,” quotes Bloomberg, “because we are a nation of workaholics.”

Even still, companies in the U.S. can certainly learn a thing or two from Sweden’s famous experiment—while maintaining overall productivity and company profits, of course.

The truth is, the experiment conducted in Sweden isn’t the first to suggest that total hours worked doesn’t correlate to employee productivity. As the Economist reminds us, Stanford recently published a study suggesting that higher working hours actually result in decreased labor output. So perhaps, rather than continuing to work at a breakneck pace, it would be wise to take a breather and reconsider the way the American work week is structured.

What Can We Do Differently?

So what can a conscientious employer do? Instituting flextime—a system wherein employees get to choose when their workday starts and finishes—is one way to improve productivity. Although they’re working the same number of hours, employees are likely to be more productive under this system because they feel as though they have increased autonomy over their schedules. Similarly, compressed workweeks, wherein employees work the same number of hours but over four days instead of five, increase the opportunity for productive relaxation by giving employees larger blocks of time to spend outside the office.

In addition to changing the structure of the work week, employers might want to consider the efficiency with which they’re currently running their offices. According to Maria Brath—who founded a startup that participated in Sweden’s experiment—since employees worked fewer hours, they were able to optimize the time they did spend in the office. As one of her employees told the New York Times, “We don’t send unnecessary emails or tie ourselves up in meetings. If you have only six hours to work, you don’t waste your time or other people’s time.”

Internal Operations and Infographics Go Hand-in-Hand

You know those really boring internal emails you get? Or the packets of budget information you have to print off, hand out, and then never read at the end of your fiscal year? What if you could cut out the middleman (the printer, your email, that pointless meeting) while still relaying necessary information to your entire organization? It is possible… with infographics.

While infographics have really only been popular within the last four or so years, they have grown exponentially in that time. We see infographics for everything, from blog images to advertising to data analysis. But while most companies can see the value in creating infographics to be consumed by their clients, customers, or audience, they have a hard time seeing the benefits that infographics can have on the inner workings of their company.

Consider this: by spending a little time designing infographics for internal use, your company could:

1. Go digital – there is no need to print off JPEGs!

Better yet, there’s no need to have a meeting; you can email the infographics to everyone!

2. Increase executive and employee understanding of a specific subject

3. Make it easier to update information monthly, quarterly, yearly with templates

All you have to do is find your previous templates in Easel.ly’s Creation Tool and update the information! No reason to create unique images every time you need to share information.

4. Create multi-use visuals that can be used for:

Training your employees:

To generate summaries and analysis:

Investor materials:

… and finally, you can also use any and all of the above for consumer content! This can include email infographics, webinar infographics, social media marketing, and more! Infographics are versatile and engaging for anyone, whether an employee of a customer – that’s why they’re so great.

BONUS: When you start using infographics for internal purposes, you also stop boring your employees to death!

“Show confidence!”

This was one of the least helpful pieces of advice I received before delivering my first sales presentation. Not only did it lack practical tactics or steps, I didn’t want to just appear confident. I wanted to feel confident.

Confidence is vital in sales. Prospects want to feel like they are making the best possible decision and placing their business and trust with a credible partner. A lack of confidence on the part of a presenter can quickly call that trust into question and give prospects reason to choose another vendor, especially when all things are equal.

I learned more about delivering confident presentations from my training as an actor than from any sales training I’d received. The acting tips below are tactical and proven to work in a craft that knows what it takes to appear confident in front of an audience under all kinds of circumstances.

5 Proven Powerful Acting tips for more Confident Presentations:

1. Sell yourself first

   Even the most skeptical of audiences want to believe in the magic of performance. And even the most jaded of business audiences want to believe that someone (maybe you!) can help them solve their problems or meet their goals. To help them believe, you must first believe that wholeheartedly yourself. Without your belief, your confidence will be nothing but a fragile shell. To reinforce your belief, focus on the value you bring to the table or a success story you’ve had prior to your presentation.

2. Assume equal status

   Even the actor with the fewest number of lines must see her role as integral to the entire production. As a salesperson you too have a potential role in your prospect’s business, so step up and accept it with pride. Don’t apologize for taking up your prospect’s time or excessively thank them for it. Being overly deferential gives an undeserved perception of lower status. Be courteous and respectful at a level appropriate for a respected peer or trusted advisor.

3. Know your lines

   Every actor has the nightmare of being on stage and forgetting their lines. And every good actor knows the anecdote: Practice and continue to practice until you have your lines down cold. As a salesperson you have more flexibility in what you say and when, however don’t use that as an excuse to under-prepare or wing it. Rehearsing until you have your presentation down cold – whether you use it all or not – gives you a much needed boost in confidence and allows you to go “off-script” without panicking. Learn how to memorize and practice your lines like a professional actor here.

4. Prepare your instrument

   Take a cue from professional actors who know that their voice and body transfer as much information to their audience as their lines, especially in those first few moments. Actors wouldn’t dream of going on stage without first warming up – and neither should you. Doing a few vocal and physical drills before your presentation will give you confidence when you’re in front of prospects.

5. Act as if

   Just like you, sometimes actors simply don’t feel confident — despite all of their rehearsing. “Acting as if” is a powerful acting technique you can use for those times when you’re not feeling it (i.e., large audiences, tricky prospects, rough morning, etc.) “Acting as If” works like this:

• Identify what confident behavior looks and sounds like for you. For example, you may stand taller, gesture more broadly, speak louder, and hold eye contact longer.
• Apply these confident behaviors as you’re practicing (or even in your conversations before your presentation). Push through even when it feels awkward and uncomfortable.
• Maintain those confident behaviors in your presentation. Very soon you will likely find that you have slipped into an actual confident state.

Don’t let confidence elude you during your presentation. Use these 5 acting techniques to deliver a presentation that reassures your prospect they are making the right decision!

When one thinks of the phrase “barcode scanner,” the first thing that comes to mind is usually the check-out counter at the supermarket. And that’s a fine example of the usefulness of barcodes and the machines that read them: Without them, buying groceries would take ages, and supermarkets would often run out of needed items thanks to disorganized inventory control. But barcode scanners are becoming staples of more industries and organizations every day — in ways you might not even have considered.

Barcodes are a relatively humble technology: A series of lines and spaces, representing a numerical code (or, in the case of newer 2D barcodes, squares comprised of dots that hold even more information about a product), which corresponds to a product in a database. They’ve been in common use since the 1970s, which is not something one can say about many other technological advances since that era. And though traditional, 1D barcodes are likely on the way out in the favor of either 2D codes or Digimarc barcodes (where the UPC/EAN is imperceptibly overlaid over the surface of the entire product), use of the basic technology is more prominent than ever.

Here are six industries where barcodes have altered the way people do business, communicate and organize their inventory and fixed assets.

Big-box retailers

Of course big-box retailers use barcodes – you see them on virtually every product you buy. But the ways in which barcodes have changed the scale on which these businesses can work have flown under the radar.

For example, barcodes fundamentally altered the trajectory of Wal-Mart, which is now a behemoth of sales on a global scale. They helped Wal-Mart transform its supply chain, communicating constantly with manufacturers and suppliers and pushing them to produce and deliver their goods faster and more cheaply than ever. From a PBS Frontline report:

Through this knowledge the company has managed to change its relationship with manufacturers and suppliers. It has, according to Lehman, “completely changed the communication process between Wal-Mart and its manufacturers … It really took it from sort of an archaic or old-build way of just maybe communicating with a vendor every 52 weeks out of the year to communicating every day, every hour, every minute…” Wal-Mart “knows what is being sold … [and] what prices are popular, so they are able to say, ‘We want to sell this at a certain price.”

Barcodes have also allowed big retailers to innovate and find the most creative and effective solutions for inventory management. Amazon, which recently overtook Wal-Mart as the biggest name in retailing, uses a “chaotic storage” method of organizing products — throwing incoming products on any available shelf space, but using barcodes to track exactly where that those products are now located and allowing their system to later design the best route through the warehouse to find them again.

Etsy stores and other online home businesses

On the other end of the spectrum, Etsy shop owners and other home businesses have markedly smaller needs than those of their big-box counterparts, but barcodes can still play a vital role. Barcode labels don’t just come in industrial size and strength — a desktop barcode printer can create smaller labels that help craft producers keep track of their latest creations, and ensure that everything is headed to where it belongs. Handling logistics as a one-person business is tough enough, and satisfying customers is often as much about making sure their order arrives on time as anything else.

Healthcare

Barcodes have been of great use in the healthcare industry, where tracking inventory such as medications or surgical equipment is of vital importance and granting access or validation to patients and their families equally so.

One of the greatest benefits of using barcodes over a manual tracking system is the reduction in human error –which in the realm of pharmaceuticals can have devastating results. With a barcode printer that creates wristband barcodes, healthcare professionals can scan the barcode of a patient and ensure they are getting the proper treatment at the right time, as well as check to see if the medication they’re taking is both accurate and in stock for future dosings.

Schools

Keeping track of fixed assets in schools — such as laptops, tablets, laboratory equipment and even textbooks — is crucial for maintaining an accurate accounting, which is often one of the conditions schools need to meet in order to maintain grants. Again, the ramifications of failing to accurately track the location of school assets (especially as these assets become more valuable, such as iPads) are too great to leave up to manual hand counts. When it comes to educational compliance, the costs can add up.

Barcodes help individual schools as well as school districts keep assets safe from theft and mismanagement, and help teachers, administrators and even temporary employees avoid lengthy summer audits where each asset must be accounted for.

Governmental organizations

Government-operated industries such as law enforcement, the military and the fire department/emergency services already must account for a variety of tools and assets that are purchased with public money — it’s expected that recent controversies will spurn the use of even more applications that require tracking, such as body cameras and protective armor. Thus, a tracking system that can account for who checked-out a certain piece of equipment, when they did so and where they did so can be crucial in ensuring every officer, soldier, firefighter and other public worker has what they need to their jobs, when they need it.

A quality asset tracking system is also a boon to taxpayers, who will no longer have to shell out thousands of dollars to cover costly audit times or replacing expensive assets that go missing due to theft or misappropriation. When government organizations can run more effectively, everyone wins.

Professional sports and entertainment

Consider all the assets needed on a fall Sunday, when NFL teams take the field across the country. Everything from security to food to scoreboard and technical production needs to be covered, and one team that found their technological solutions to be lacking was the Arizona Cardinals. The team’s Scoreboard Production department wasn’t tracking hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, sometimes leaving a shortfall during game situations. Labeling the assets with saved the team thousands of labor hours and ensured peace of mind on game day.

The subcategories in each of these industries is nearly endless: For example, barcodes have begun playing a role in consumer nutrition, helping shoppers understand the health value of any item with a barcode. Barcodes and the tools needed to read them are thus proliferating at an amazing rate.

In general, whenever there’s a lot of money at stake and that money is tied up in the use of individual moving parts that can go missing or break down at a moment’s notice, an asset management system — both for inventory and fixed assets — powered by barcodes goes a long way towards getting the most efficient use out of the investments made.

Are you full of performative contradictions? Are you doing what you say one cannot—or should not—do?

• You say that your salespeople should block off time for their most important tasks, like nurturing their dream clients, prospecting, and following up. You want the members of your team to do the things that make a difference and produce results. Are you blocking time for coaching your sales team, the most important activity and the one that generates the highest return on effort?
• You tell your sales team to get out from behind their email and get in front of clients, to go where the action is and make a difference. You tell them not to waste time with the browser and their twelve open tabs. However, you dole out this direction from behind your CRM’s dashboard. Staring at the score never helped anyone win a game. How often do you see a coach with his back to the field of play?
• You want your salespeople to study so they’ll have the business acumen to create value for their prospects and clients, as well as distinguish themselves in a crowded field of “me too” competitors. You want them to read, to educate themselves, to do their homework. Are you better and more widely read than your sales team? Do you have the business acumen to be a peer when you are sitting in front of their clients? Or might you fail the test you ask your team to pass?

Your people will follow your lead. They’re more likely to do what you do than what you say, especially when your words and your actions are in conflict. If you want your people to follow you, you have to lead them. That means you have to embody the values you want them to hold, and demonstrate the actions you want them to take.

Your people will do as you do, not as you say.

The post The Leadership Playbook: Do As I Say, Not As I Do appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Having attended courses by local training providers in Singapore myself and running a Digital Marketing training organization, I sometimes wonder whether these companies are in business to deliver true value or just trying to capitalize on government grants… or a mix of both.

I’d say most, including myself, take both into account. With generous government grants such as SkillsFuture Credit, PIC, and WSQ funding, it’s tempting to dive into the training business without any commitment to deliver quality training. As long as the curriculum covered meets the criteria for government funding, why bother going above and beyond? Sadly, this is the case for a number of training providers here in Singapore.

During my Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA) course at WDA (now divided into SSG and WSG), I was exposed to many effective training delivery methods, where your ability to train was no longer just measured by how good you were at lecturing in front of your slides, but a lot more focused on how adept you are at facilitating group discussions, in-class activities, and experiential learning.

I must say our ACTA facilitator, Josephine Teo, was successful in transferring a great deal of knowledge to us trainees and I highly recommend that all trainers and aspiring trainers sign up for the course.

This opened up my eyes to how much knowledge and skills can be acquired through effective training delivery techniques. At the same time, it made me realise how frustrating it can be when you attend a course but take home virtually nothing useful or applicable.

So what should startups, SMEs, MNCs, and institutions look out for before sending their employees to upgrade their skills at industry-relevant courses?

1. Read the learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are the training objectives that should be met after completing a course. It should be very specific and align with your organizational needs, which is the reason you are sending your employees for training in the first place.

Here’s an example of a detailed learning outcome for a baking course which trains bakery store bakers:

By the end of the course, learners will be able to bake at least 50 Hong Kong style egg tarts in 90 minutes using a preheated oven.

Here’s an example of a brief and sloppy learning outcome for the same course:

By the end of the course, learners will understand and know what is needed to bake an egg tart.

You can clearly see the difference between the two. The first one is well thought out and tells you exactly what you will be able to accomplish after completing the course. The second implies that the course will likely be very general, with lots of theory, and little hands-on activities.

What does this mean for you?

If you see sloppy learning outcomes or even no learning outcomes stated at all. Run the other way.

2. Scope of curriculum, in-class activities, number of topics covered vs. course duration

The topics covered, in-class activities, and scope of the curriculum should all be aligned toward the learning outcomes. This is known as constructive alignment.

In a 2-day course for instance, there are roughly 12 – 15 hours of classroom learning hours (excluding assessment and breaks). If there are too many topics to cover, the trainer will generally skim through the slides and give theory-based lectures in the interest of time.

Without any practical or experiential learning activities such as problem solving through group discussions and jigsaw learning approaches, it will be hard for any meaningful learning to take place. Trainees are often left frustrated and will proclaim “information overload”!

What does this mean for you?

Ask for a detailed outline of the lesson (generally a lesson plan, although training providers may not share this with the client), types of in-class activities, and the breakdown of the timing needed of each topic.

3. Trainer’s profile

You’ve heard the saying “Those who can’t do, teach. And those who can’t teach, do.” This saying does hold some truth to it. This means an expert may be the best person to get a job done, but may be terrible at transferring his or her knowledge and skills.

On the other hand, if you’re good at teaching but you don’t know your stuff, you’ll struggle to explain the topic and convey key concepts. An effective teaching technique is to pull real world examples from past experiences, yet an inexperienced trainer will have little experience to pull from.

I believe you have to be an expert at both in order to really give the best value to your trainees.

What does this mean for you?

Look out for trainers who are well sought after by well-known academic institutions. Some other areas to look at include:

1. Their depth of expertise
2. Past achievements
3. Years of experience in relevant industries
4. Training certifications (such as ACTA)
5. Testimonials of past students who have specifically commended his/her training delivery style.

The key is to look at the specific achievements. Here’s an example of a detailed profile of our social media marketing trainer.

4. Pre-requisites/Assumed Knowledge before taking the course

Ensure your staff have sufficient knowledge before taking a course with basic pre-requisites, otherwise he or she will have trouble understanding certain terms and may have difficulty following along with the lesson.

Be sure to check through the section on assumed skills and knowledge. For WSQ courses, here’s what the competency standards document looks like:

5. Classroom/Training Room layout setting

You may also want to keep in mind the various room layouts and seating arrangements as this will impact the learning experience.

If the course is meant to be interactive with lots of group activities, a cluster style would be ideal. If it is lecture-based or computer-based, a traditional classroom style would be more suitable.

6. Is there any after-training support?

Though this is usually not expected and not a major purchase decision, some after-course support such as being able to email the trainer to clarify any course-related topics would be a value-added benefit.

It’s usually not possible to cover every topic to the fullest detail and it’s common for trainers to miss some points that could only be addressed to case-specific scenarios.

For example, in Microsoft Excel, you may use the same formulas for a variety of scenarios. During the course, the trainer may not have been able to cover all possible scenarios to apply the formulas, and the trainee may have only thought of a potential scenario which he or she might need to clarify regarding its application after the course has ended.

7. Course fees

More expensive doesn’t always equate to better quality. In fact, it’s usually the reasonably priced products (mid-ranged prices) that provide better quality.

You may disagree but I feel that the people who are out to dry out your wallet are usually the ones that don’t pay much attention to their quality of delivery. Whereas those who price their products reasonably are generally the more reasonable type and they take pride in what they do. That’s just my observation.

What does this mean for you?

The next time you’re about to make your purchase decision based on price, check through all the above points before signing that cheque.

The contemporary CEO must not only be expert at addressing the commercial verities of products, markets, and competitors. She must also have the  experience and capability to address business-in-society issues—legislation, regulation, investigation, enforcement and litigation — that now create risk and opportunity in all dimensions of corporate activity.

Recent global developments underscore the importance of these societal issues. The U.S. presidential election and the transition present a confusing (and confused) mix of pro-business and anti-business themes. On the one hand, protectionism, populism, and wide-spread distrust of business’s role in politics is threatening international corporations (think Carrier, Boeing, and tariffs/taxes for off-shoring and outsourcing). On the other, tax reform, infrastructure, deregulation, and the inclusion of more businesspeople in the Cabinet may create opportunities for them. Similarly, whether the Brexit vote last June will help or hurt businesses in the UK and EU is still uncertain.

But the U.S. election and Brexit are only the most recent examples of the pervasive, burgeoning importance to corporations of business-in-society issues. In virtually every country across the globe, a broad range of governmental and ethical issues directly and immediately shape what companies can and cannot do. They present an ever-changing, ever-expanding and often inconsistent array of rules and requests to promote economic growth and to protect workers, consumers, investors, communities and the public welfare.  And they may shift dramatically as the political pendulum swings back and forth in different nations.

Indeed, systematically dealing with the risks of anti-business/anti-globalization proposals and the opportunities of pro-growth policies has become as important for global corporations as addressing product, market, and financial issues.

The challenges of business-in-society issues arise in many different settings. These include legislation, regulation, investigation, enforcement, litigation, ethics, reputation, crisis management, corporate citizenship, and pressures from public officials, NGOs, and the media. In a globalized economy, these challenges arise from pervasive, at times catastrophic, issues in international business: cronyism, antitrust, and labor issues, as well as trade, the environment, taxes, and supply chains.  They stem in confusing and challenging forms from significant geopolitical developments: e.g. populism, nativism and protectionism in the U.S. and EU; Russian resurgence in Eastern Europe; Chinese assertiveness in Southeast Asia; massive corruption in Brazil; and ongoing tribal hatreds and religious conflict in the Middle East. They involve confronting major, recurring global issues that threaten the health of capitalism: e.g. terror, cyberwarfare, pandemics, corruption, inequality, migration, and aging.

CEO acumen on business-in-society issues is thus imperative in addressing fundamental corporate issues, from business strategy to compliance to ethical standards to risk management.

For example, in setting strategy at a large multinational, the CEO has to navigate among different politico-economic systems that range from state capitalism to government-centric industrial policy nations to market-centric mixed economies. This, in turn, involves sorting out different ideologies in those systems about how government should function: from the libertarian to the conservative to the populist to the liberal to the socialist.  To assure legal compliance and mitigate legal hazard, , the CEO and top staff must confront complex, conflicting, and uncertain rules, enforcement practices, and legal cultures across myriad regional, national, and subnational jurisdictions.  The CEO may also want  voluntarily to set global ethical standards beyond what the law requires, in part to forestall additional regulation. Setting such standards involves nuanced balancing of the interests of the corporation and the rights of—and duties to—stakeholders. These ethical questions arise in the whole range of corporate activity from technology and manufacturing to marketing and sales. Or, to take a final example, the CEO’s ability to mitigate risk involves identifying, understanding, and prioritizing the diverse economic and noneconomic threats to the corporation, especially those that present difficult geopolitical, terrorist, or cyber threats. The CEO must then set up robust, cross-functional systems and processes to prevent, mitigate, and respond to those risks, always mindful of the stark challenges in diverse national cultures where the company operates.

The board of directors has an important role in assuring that the CEO brings vital business-in-society perspectives to her job.  It needs to change the critical selection process by assuring that leadership development includes major experience on broad integrity, risk, and public issues—and then choosing a CEO with the requisite breadth and commitment. It needs to focus its oversight function by clearly defining the core operating objectives for the 15 highest priority risks and opportunities that include business and society issues. It needs to tie both cash and equity compensation to the detailed record on those objectives (not just the general movement of the stock market). And it needs to establish robust Risk and Public Responsibility Committees for more complete reviews of this broader set of problems.  The board also needs to ensure that the executives reporting to the CEO are also broad-gauged people who are not just expert in business but have deep understanding of politics, policy, ethics, societal trends, country risk, modern communication, and corporate citizenship.  A salient example is the inside counsel revolution of the past 20 years. In most major U.S. companies, the General Counsel is now a core member of top management — asking not just “is an action legal” but, ultimately, “is it right. ” The GC now has importance and stature comparable to the Chief Financial Officer because the health of the corporation requires that it navigate complex and fast-changing demands from legislators, regulators, investigators, enforcers, and interest group critics across the globe.

The importance of business-in-society issues is reflected, ultimately, in the fundamental mission of the global enterprise: the fusion of high performance with high integrity and sound risk management.

This is the essence of corporate citizenship. It should include CEO leadership on substantive public policy that secures, in a broad and balanced way, public goods that the market cannot create — and that avoids narrowly self-interested crony capitalism (the cause of much public antipathy). It also entails following political processes that address the dysfunction in our political culture: through restraint on money, fairness in facts, balance in solutions, nonpartisanship in politics, and coalitions broader than narrow business associations.

Accomplishing this performance with integrity mission hinges on integrating business-in-the-economy and business-in-society perspectives. Failing to do so can lead to severe corporate damage, as the performance and integrity scandals of this century demonstrate – think of Enron, Worldcom, Siemens, BP, VW, and Wells Fargo, to name only a few of the possible examples.

But succeeding at this mission can achieve more than avoiding catastrophe. It also creates value and benefits in the corporation, in the marketplace, and in the broader world community — and ultimately creates the basic trust which is the foundation for corporate durability and sustainability and which endures beyond changes in governments.

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part interview featuring Christoph Janz. In the first installment, Janz outlined a smart hiring strategy for founders going after Series A or B.

As a partner at Point Nine Capital, a VC firm based in Berlin that invests all across Europe, Christoph Janz has seen his share of pitch decks, both good and bad. And, because his firm maintains a strong focus on early-stage companies in two specific sectors – SaaS and online marketplaces – he has developed a particular eye for what works well for these kinds of businesses. Because of his specialized experience, Janz has some tactical, actionable advice to to help early-stage founders create a winning pitch deck that will help them get to their Series A or B round.

Make sure your deck is well articulated and self explanatory.

While Janz typically recommends a more-or-less typical deck format that answers the standard questions about product, market, competition, team, and so forth, he emphasizes that a winning pitch deck must be well done in terms of messaging and terminology. It must be polished, well designed, and able to stand on its own merits. “If I look at a pitch deck on my own, without the benefit of additional context that might be provided in a conversation or presentation, it needs to first catch my interest and then do a really good job of articulating the problem,” says Janz. “From there, it needs to make a convincing argument that the company has a great solution to that problem.”

Use your data, but make sure it’s understandable.

“There are a lot of basics for a founder to keep in mind, such as estimated market size,” says Janz. “But in addition to sharing that information, you need to be sure the people you’re pitching can understand how you’ve calculated your figures. What data source did you use? Did you use a bottom-up calculation, or is it a number from some kind of research firm?”

In other words, details matter. “We see decks all the time in which there are charts without axes descriptions and market-size numbers without any cited sources,” says Janz. “That just means we have to ask for additional details, and that causes delays and makes the process more difficult.”

The same goes for companies that have already launched and want to incorporate metrics in their decks. “If a company already has some metrics to share, those numbers should be part of the pitch deck,” says Janz. “But it’s important that the right metrics are shown and that they are easily understandable. Focus on the right numbers and present them so outsiders can understand them.”

While he recommends using data to tell your story, Janz also warns against putting too many numbers in the actual deck. “When you pitch for a series A or a series B, you need to have a lot more data as backup for your pitch deck,” he explains. “You probably don’t want to include all of the data in the deck, but you need to have it ready so you can answer the questions you’ll get once someone has expressed interest. It’s a wise move for founders to prepare all their numbers and data points beforehand because it will allow them to preempt ninety percent of the due diligence questions and ensure that the process goes so much more smoothly.”

Focus on the story, not the showmanship.

Though it may surprise some, Janz and his team don’t put a lot of emphasis on the actual presentation of a pitch deck. “It’s not super important to us,” he says. “We work a little differently than the typical model in which the CEO or founding team present to the VC partnership. That scenario is quite rare in our case. We usually have a series of conversations with the founders rather than a formal presentation.” So, for Janz, it’s less about presentation skills than it is about how smart the pitching team is and how well they understand their market.

As Michael Wolfe of Point Nine Capital explains in this blog post, there is no one formula for a pitch deck, but there is a lot of advice that can be applied to many companies. “Take the time to build a great pitch deck,“ Wolfe writes. “Not only will it help you raise money, but it will help crystallize your strategy and plans, will help get your team on the same page, will give you content you can use to recruit new team members, and will serve as a foundation for future fundraising.”

The post How to Create the Perfect Pitch Deck appeared first on OpenView Labs.

  Would you pay $85.00 for a rock wrapped in leather?  I suspect it’s not high up on your gift list, but for somebody it sure is. Check this out: Nordstrom is selling a rock for $85.00. Does that have you thinking, “Who in their right mind would buy that?”   Clearly somebody would (and is!), because […]

Is your sales team performing at its full potential?

If not, helping them get there may simply be a matter of keeping your team inspired and feeling engaged with your company.

Whether you are a sales manager, director or VP, you have the ability to motivate your sales reps to focus on their goals and improve their overall productivity.

With that in mind, let us discuss a few ways you can improve your team’s sales performance.

 

How to Incite Your Team’s Sales

 

1.   Create an environment based on trust

 

Interactions between a manager and an employee can sometimes be tense or uncomfortable because of the nature of the relationship.

But in order to create a successful business, you must develop comfort and trust with your sales team so they can perform confidently.

One great way to build trust is by showing respect and appreciation to your salespeople in a genuine way.

Why is this important?

Showing appreciation is crucial because 50% of employees who are thanked by their managers feel an improvement in trust and overall business relationship.

And that sense of comfort can lead to an increase in happiness and sales productivity.

 

2. Recognize your sales team’s hard work

Showing your team appreciation can be a great way to help motivate them to sell more.

Here are a few ways you can effectively acknowledge your sales reps:

1: Praise specific accomplishments. The last thing your sales team wants to hear is a generic “thank you” after working hard.

Be specific about the praise you give them by saying something like, “I appreciate your integrity and the respect you give to your customers as you sell to them.”

2: Give them your full attention. Do not attempt to multitask as you show thanks to your salespeople. When you compliment their hard work, make sure you are not simultaneously checking emails or trying to hold multiple conversations.

3: Show appreciation for them in front of their peers. You may have noticed that many salespeople value public recognition. Make your sales reps feel important and celebrate their success with others on their team—recognition drives productivity.

4: Write a handwritten “thank you” note. Sure, “thank you” emails are nice, but a thoughtful note to a salesperson you are recognizing will likely be more appreciated.

Not only that, but they can keep the note on their desks as motivation to continue to work hard.

 

3. Turn the sales process into a game

 

Salespeople tend to enjoy, if not thrive, in competitive situations.

One great way to bring a little competition into the office is to make a game out of selling.

By doing this, you can make the sales process more entertaining while also promoting teamwork.

To help you accomplish this, here are a few games you can utilize that will incentivize your team to make more sales:

• Game 1 – Sales Bingo. Start out by giving your sales team custom-made bingo cards with different products or sales amounts. As each salesperson (or team of salespeople) sells a product or earns an amount on that card, they mark it off with an X. Similar to a standard game of Bingo, the first salesperson (or sales team) to mark Xs across the board wins.

• Game 2 – Boss For a Day Prize. Instead of a cash bonus, offer your top sales performer the chance to be boss for a day. Stepping into management’s shoes can give the sales rep a valuable lesson on the importance of meeting quotas, and could also prepare them for a future management role.

• Game 3 – Scavenger Hunts. Split your sales reps into multiple teams and provide them with a list of several items or services your company offers. The first team to sell one of each wins a prize.

• Game 4 – Leaving Early Prize. Everyone loves to leave the office a little earlier, so why not make a game of it? Hold a quick meeting to announce a team quota for the last few days of the month. If your team hits their sales goals, reward everyone on the team by allowing them to leave early on the last Friday of the month.

 

4. Manage your team the way they need you to

As you may know, salespeople have a wide variety of personalities, ambitions and methods of learning.

With that said, it is important to remember that you cannot treat and manage every sales rep the same way. By generalizing the learning and working styles of your salespeople, you could end up alienating many of them.

 

How can you find out what they need from you as a sales manager?

By asking them questions like:

• What motivates you on a daily basis?
• What are your short-term and long-term goals?
• What do you need to achieve in order to reach your goals?
• How do you prefer to be appreciated or rewarded after accomplishing a task?
• How can we measure your success and progress as you strive to meet your goals?
• What are some things that can get in the way of you reaching your goals?
• What can we do to make sure those things are avoided?
• What kind of structure do you need in order to perform your job most effectively?
• How should I keep you accountable for reaching your goals, without coming across as too negative?
• What is the best way to approach you if you fail to meet your sales commitments?

 

When you ask questions like these, you give your salespeople the opportunity to explain their preferred management style.

These kinds of questions show that you actually care about their development, which in turn builds trust.

In addition, you are learning valuable information on how to handle your team as a manager, while allowing them to focus on their goals.

 

Final Thoughts

 

As a sales manager, director or VP, motivating a group of individuals can be extremely challenging.

But the common thread with the above tips is that they focus on your sales team rather than your needs or the needs of your business.

According to a Westminster College survey, 69% of employees would actually work harder if they felt their efforts were more appreciated.

By making your team the primary focus, you are showing your reps that you truly value and appreciate them.

And when your sales reps feel valued and recognized for their hard work, a sense of trust is built, their productivity skyrockets and they feel inspired to work even harder to sell.

 

 

The post 4 Ways to Inspire Your Team To Sell, Sell, Sell! appeared first on SalesDrive, LLC.

Would you rather buy this candle…

Or this candle?

And which would you be willing to pay a bit more for?

They’re both candles. They have one job: make my house smell like the holidays.

But call me crazy if the second description doesn’t make me want to buy that candle right now. Even without seeing the thing.

Product descriptions matter.

If you’re still using the copy (actually, let’s call it what it is: text) that your manufacturer provides to sell your product — or you simply aren’t using unique product descriptions — I’m going to help you out today.

We’ll talk about a multitude of elements of an MVP product description, but first, a few ground rules:

1. The more complex the product, the more need you have for a detailed product description that adequately addresses fears, concerns, and buyer barriers.
2. Your product description exists #1 to inform, #2 to persuade.
3. Thou shalt always provide photos.

Let’s dive in.

Basic Elements of Product Descriptions

1. Include what it’s made of (aka materials)

Product description 101: Materials.

Tell me what the thing is made of or in the case of a service business product, what it includes.

If I’m thinking about buying a shirt from you, I’d like to be sure that it’s made of cotton and not, say, bees.

If I’m thinking about buying a water bottle from you, I want to know that it doesn’t contain any BPA.

What’s it made of?

Booster Tip

Make sure to note if your product is made locally, or from organic or fair-trade materials. This is an easy way to build trust in your products’ quality.

2. List detailed measurements and dimensions

Ever bought furniture, such as a sofa on Craigslist, and realized an hour later that it didn’t fit inside your house?

Oh, that was just me? Cool.

The dimensions of your physical retail products need to be clearly stated, so your prospect knows whether your company’s horsehair anoraks will fit him.

If you’re selling clothing, it’s not enough to have “small, medium, large” options, because sizing is all over the board these days.

You’ll need to include the measurements for each part of the body that your clothing touches, covers, or wraps.

Booster Tip

Better yet, link to an in-depth Sizing Guide like this one so measurement-inclined shoppers can buy your clothing confidently, and not get stuck in an uncomfortable situation.

3. Format like your reader is in a hurry

Formatting is just as important as the copy itself when it comes to product descriptions, because it’s what draws attention to (or away) from your description.

Let’s zip through some crucial formatting considerations: Photos, bullet points, paragraph breaks, buttons and mobile optimization.

Photos. Please invest in great photos. Please.

Not only is a picture worth 1,000 words, it could be worth 1,000 conversions.

So how can you make your products look fashion-magazine good without the fashion mag editorial budget?

Your photos should be:

• Shot in bright, natural light
• High-resolutions, so your readers can zoom in (Don’t be afraid of close-ups!)
• Taken from multiple different angles

Booster Tip

If your product is small enough (eg. a pair of wireless headphones), take photos of someone actually using or holding it. Showing your product ON or NEAR a person helps make its dimensions apparent.

And, if your product is complicated, film a short video of it in use.

Use bolding, bullets and headers to make info scannable.

Just make things easy for your visitors, please.

• Selective bolding and headers draw your reader’s eyes where you want them most
• Bullets are an excellent way to group product specifications
• And presenting information in small chunks, offset by icons, can help improve comprehension and retention

Chunk information so it’s easier to process, like Fitbit does.

Don’t overlook your button copy opportunities.

Your buttons probably say something like “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now.” And that copy probably serves you just fine most of the time.

But if you’re a chronic overachiever (AKA ecommerce optimizer), try testing button copy that speaks to what your user will get, instead of the action they need to take.

Example: Instead of button copy that reads, “Download Your Conversion Optimization Ebook Now,” test a button that reads “101 Ways to Make More Sales Right Now.”

Don’t forget to test click-trigger copy that tells people exactly what’ll happen when they click that gorgeous “Buy” button of yours.

This should be a given: make sure you’ve got a great mobile UX.

If your ecommerce site isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re not going to win with customers. And you’re not going to win with Google.

How to Write “I Must Have That” Product Description Copy

Let’s talk about everybody’s favorite thing: words.

Great product description copy makes it impossible for the reader not to be enticed.

And to entice your reader, you’ve got to be enticed by your own product.

Fall in love with it. Use it in non-indicated ways. Use it in ways you’re not supposed to. Indulge in the details.

And then…

1. Write for the person who would LOVE this

Chances are, if you’re selling high-performance sportswear, you know who your target market is.

It’s the same whether you’re selling organic baby blankets, lactose-free ice cream, entomologist-quality butterfly collection kits, etc.

No matter what type of copy you’re writing, you’re writing for ONE person, not a horde of strangers.

Be clear about that in your copy. Speak to that one specific prospect’s frustration, pain, and desires — that is persuasive copy.

Opaqueness is a tantalizing promise when it comes to leggings.

When you write for one person, that person feels like you understand them. So they click “Add to Cart.” And you get paid.

2. Paint a picture of how it feels to use your product

One shortcut to addressing your prospect’s deepest, darkest desires? Describe how it would look or feel for them to have your product in their hands, on their bodies, or in their mouths. Hit all the senses.

Luxury brands do a great job of painting a picture because they have to. When you’re selling a high-price luxury item, you’re not selling the item. You’re selling status, exclusivity, indulgence.

Straight from ONE SINGLE STURGEON to you and your beloved.

3. Keep your tone consistent with your brand

Continuing with the luxury brand theme: Kate Spade makes whimsical, highly conceptual purses that seem like a super-fun “why not?” purchase.

So cute!

The product and the brand are known for being droll but sophisticated, and the product description for this bunny purse nails that tricky tone balance.

Feel like buying me this purse?

4. Make them feel something

If there’s one surefire way to get someone to buy, it’s appealing to emotions.

Emotional appeal has long been a tactic in marketing and advertising, way before those horrific vintage ads aimed at making women feel worthless and unattractive for being “overweight” started appearing. You know the ones.

I bet this ad hit a lot of women right in the feels, and not in a good way.

Buffer published a great post about the science of emotion in marketing, and which emotions spur the reader to take action (share, buy, refuse).

Emotions don’t always make sense. They’re not always practical. Which is why they can be helpful for convincing a prospect to buy something they might not need, practically speaking.

For example, I didn’t know I needed a Giant Carrot Body Pillow for Loneliness until I read this Etsy product description.

5. Connect features with benefits

Features are what your product is or includes, like “64G memory card” or “Reinforced stitching.”

Benefits are what your product does for your buyer, like “Never worry about running out of room for your vacation photos,” or “Durably constructed, so you can wear them for years.”

Booster Tip

Put this technique to use when you’re listing materials or construction, like Zappos:

Combine features (side zipper) with benefits (easy on and off).

6. Banish cliches and empty phrases

Hey, ACUVUE, just wondering: What exactly is “crisp vision”?

Is it the same as being able to see? Oh, it is? Then why didn’t you just say that?

If you find yourself defaulting to meaningless filler descriptors like “leading-edge,” “first-class,” or my very favorite nothing-phrase, “high quality,” take a step back from your laptop.

Figure out what you’re actually trying to say when you default to lazy cliches. Then just say that thing instead.

7. Use sticky or sensory words

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take a bite of “Velvety, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate mousse handmade with organic 60% cacao” than plain old “chocolate mousse.”

The first makes me think of this:

H/T Magic Bullet Blog nom nom nom

And the second makes me think of this:

Doing the photog a favor by not crediting this image.

Language that appeals to touch, taste, smell, and sound can light up an area of the brain known as the somatosensory cortex. That’s why a sentence like “The chilly water lapped at her ankles” has more impact than “She stuck her feet in the pool.”

Aim to make your prospects’ somatosensory cortices light up.

8. Use lively language

Alliteration is one of the easiest ways to make your product description copy shine.

Take a look at the last sentence of ModCloth’s description here: “Check out this dashing design in a host of other haute hues!”

Just make sure you’re not unwittingly using unattractive sounds in your quest to alliterate, since the words you choose can actually evoke psychological associations in your reader’s mind.

Also, match your product to words that feel like the product. For example:

• Describing a lemon-flavored soda? Stick to words that evoke lightness and bubbliness, like “sparkling,” “effervescent,” “bright,” “fizzy,” “fresh”… you get the point.
• Describing a mahogany desk? Use words that evoke solidity and strength, like “sturdy,” “weighty,” “permanent,” “substantial,” “reliable,” etc.

As much as I love puns, use them with caution. You never want to confuse your reader about what your product actually includes.

From “I Must Have That” to “I Must Have That Right Now”

1. Create a sense of urgency

People hate to miss out on something they want — and when they want something, they want it now.

Urgency and scarcity tactics play on those tendencies, triggering FOMO in shoppers and pushing them toward purchasing.

Amazon has incorporated urgency into its product pages for a while now, positioning a seemingly innocuous bolded “Want it tomorrow?” and countdown timer near the “Add to Cart” button.

By tomorrow, you could be an intrepid backpacker.

And if you’re super worried that Spencer’s Gifts will run out of Silver Maiden Mother Crone Chalices, you’ll be swayed by the “Hurry! Only 9 left in stock!” note on the product page.

2. Stick some social proof on there

“Social proof” shows shoppers they’re not the first to consider buying, and that they’re not making a bad decision if they do choose to buy.

Like the IRS, social proof takes tons of different forms:

• Starred ratings
• Reviews
• Testimonials
• Client logos
• Case studies
• Certification badges
• Press/publicity

If you’ve ever clicked on a product with no sales, seen “Be the first to buy!,” and bounced, it’s at least partially because that page lacked social proof.

Seals, badges, and certifications are effective types of social proof. Here, Patagonia’s “Editor’s Choice” seal helps novice gear-buyers understand they’re making a solid choice.

You’re probably already using social proof like reviews and ratings on your ecommerce site.

But have you considered using those reviews to make your product descriptions more compelling?

Mine your reviews, both positive and negative, and use them to directly address fears and unexpected benefits in your product description.

If a reviewer says, “I was afraid this drone wouldn’t be powerful enough to reach my neighbor’s yard,” add something like this to your description: “Afraid it won’t be powerful enough? Its rechargeable lithium-ion battery means you can fly clear across your whole neighborhood – as many times as you want!”

3. Update product descriptions when it’s topical

Check out the last two bullet points in Cards Against Humanity’s latest product description iteration:

You could even build a mini-campaign around current events, which CAH also did:

4. Feature the makers

Make your product feel personal by mentioning or even showcasing the people who actually make the thing.

L.L. Bean’s got it down:

Remember the candle from the beginning of this post? Here’s how Uncommon Goods highlights the makers:

5. Put a bow on it with security features

Security features, like SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption and antivirus software “trust seals,” can sometimes help assuage prospects’ fear of having their information stolen.

If this lock ever goes missing from PayPal.com, there’s a biiiiig problem.

But test wisely, because while SSL encryption can affirm trust and even affect your rank in Google, displaying trust seals might introduce fear where there was none before — potentially decreasing your conversions.

When Are Product Descriptions Not Important?

Trick question. They’re always important.

But sometimes, they’re a little less important — so you might want to make them shorter.

Detailed product descriptions are a teensy bit less important in these cases:

• When you know someone needs something — so they’re probably going to buy it anyway. I’m guessing that’s why this Walgreens toilet paper product page is so boring.

• When you’ve already done most of the work of winning the sale. For example, if you’ve nurtured a lead through email, and you’ve gotten them to click through to the product page, a long-ass description might be distracting. Which could hurt your conversions.

Well, we did it. We got to the end of the post. Let your family know you’re still alive.

One last thing: With every idea we’ve talked about here, test, test, and test again!

Then come back here and tell me about your test results.

I’ll just be here, sniffing my candle…

Let me ask you a serious question.

Do you want to compete with Walmart?

My guess is no.

Not many businesses try to compete with Walmart.

Walmart stores have everything under the sun, for every kind of person … at the lowest possible prices.

Successful businesses – especially successful small businesses – usually don’t compete with the Walmarts of the world. Instead, they zero in on a target buyer, create offerings for that specific type of person, and market and sell those offerings in a very targeted and strategic way.

These businesses serve a particular subset of customers (think scrapbooking aficionados or Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts) using the power of niche marketing.

The Difference Between Niche Marketing and General Marketing

Niche marketers are masters of positioning. They make it crystal clear who they serve and how.

General marketers use more of a shotgun approach, spraying marketing efforts at a wide audience and hoping to hit one or two interested buyers.

Here’s a simple breakdown to get your gears turning:

I already gave you the example of Walmart as a company who uses general marketing practices. Here’s an example of a company that uses niche marketing …

Arianne Foulks and her team at Aeolidia specialize in designing online shops for creative e-commerce brands using the Shopify platform.

Should YOU Be Using Niche Marketing?

For general marketers, brand recognition is everything. Think Target, Subway, and Tylenol. These companies spend millions of dollars each year to get their brands in as many places as possible.

If you’re a smaller business, or you simply serve a narrower audience than these generalist brands, you need a different approach. Niche marketing can help.

Niche marketing works well for companies with smaller budgets. Simply put, marketing to a smaller, more targeted audience takes you out of the arena of competing with generalist giants who have massive advertising budgets. Niche marketers focus their resources on customers they know best, and are able to serve those customers better because of it.

Niche marketing also works better for SEO purposes. When people search online for a product or service to solve their problem, they search for specific terms. Having specific market terms in your content will serve up that content faster in SERPs (search engine results pages).

Finally, niche marketing drives more email opt-ins because a niche audience is more passionate about what you’re selling. No one gets excited about t-shirts … but there’s a slew of people who would opt-in for content about using t-shirts to promote their brands.

If this all sounds good to you, then you might want to consider using a niche marketing approach.

Ready to Use Niche Marketing? Start With These Strategies

In niche marketing, success stems less from how much budget you spend and more from having a customer-focused approach.

1. Tailor your content to your audience. Use targeted, “insider” terms for keywords in your marketing messaging, content, and social media. Think of words and phrases that your target customers would use while they searched for a solution like yours. This is one of the few times I will tell you that a bit of jargon can work wonders. Use words your customers would use – and use them correctly – to connect with your audience. This strategically placed jargon might even earn you a little “street cred.”
2. Encourage your audience to share, repost, retweet, and invite friends to join your mailing list. Niche customers love to share their passion with the people they know – so use this as an opportunity to grow your audience with social proof.
3. If your product lines lean toward the broad or all-purpose, break them down further into niche offerings. Then create targeted marketing campaigns for each of the niched-down products and services.
4. Build customer loyalty by creating a VIP mailing list. Send exclusive deals, sales, events, and inside info to your fans and customers. Look at how Under Armour – a company that began by offering moisture-wicking compression shirts to active people – does it on their website with a pop-up welcome mat offering free shipping in exchange for the visitor’s email address.

The “Trick” to Niche Marketing Is Focusing on Your Audience

All successful niche marketing campaigns have one thing in common: They connect with and engage a very specific audience.

Are you a smaller business with a tight marketing budget? Can you zero in your marketing efforts on a narrow cross-section of buyers? Do you know your target buyers intimately (can you speak their language? do you know where they hang out online?)?

If you answered “yes” to those questions, you are in a prime position to use niche marketing.

On average, how many of your deals end in “no decision”? According to CSO Insight’s’ 2016 survey of 675 companies, 23.8% of forecast deals wind up in this category.

There are several potential reasons for this outcome.

First, an internal event beyond your control occurred at the prospect’s company: Your point of contact left her job, the company changed direction, there was an unexpected budget problem, and so on.

Second, you didn’t create enough urgency. The prospect has a legitimate challenge, but you didn’t reveal the immediate and significant costs of inaction.

Third, the prospect wasn’t a good fit. Your product didn’t answer all of their needs or add significant value to their life.

Fourth, the prospect never intended to buy in the first place. Some prospects talk to salespeople knowing they’re not ready or in the right position to sign off on a purchase.

Although none of these outcomes are ideal, there is a silver lining. Apart from the first item on the list, you can eliminate all these blockers. By keeping an eye out for the six red flags below during each stage of the sales process, you can pinpoint when a deal is about to be lost.

Connect

During the Connect Stage, salespeople reach out to prospects via phone, email, and/or social media. Buyers might know little -- or nothing -- about the reps’ products, companies, or brands, which can make them hesitant to engage. In addition, salespeople haven’t yet established a relationship.

1) They Don’t Show Up to Your Scheduled Meetings

Everyone has the occasional scheduling conflict, so you shouldn’t automatically count out prospects who cancel on you. But if a prospect repeatedly reschedules -- or worse, simply doesn’t show up -- he’s not serious about buying.

People reveal their priorities by how they spend their time. When someone isn’t willing to spend time speaking with you, it’s clear they’re more focused on other objectives.

2) They Tell You They’re Doing Research

Sometimes, your prospect will say, “My boss asked me to research X, but we’re not going to receive proposals or ask for any presentations until [next quarter/next year].”

In these situations, you have a choice. You can work with the buyer regardless, hoping she’ll reward your hard work now with her business later. Or you can politely delay working with her so you can focus your attention on prospects that are ready to buy right now.

The right decision depends on your pipeline’s health, the potential deal size, whether a good fit exists, and more.

Explore

The Explore stage, which typically includes one or more discovery conversations, allows salespeople to dig into their prospects’ specific situation and challenges and figure out whether there’s a need for their product. Unsurprisingly, the lack of a true need is a major pothole. Reps may also struggle with buyers who aren’t committed to immediate change.

1) You Can’t Establish a Need

Your prospect might have budget, purchasing authority, and an obvious interest in your product, but if you can’t identify a compelling need, they’re probably not a serious buyer.

The status quo is incredibly hard to change. It’s challenging enough to make a change when there’s a clear opportunity cost to inaction. When there’s no problem with the buyer’s current situation, it’s almost impossible -- meaning you should focus your efforts on prospects who you can actually help.

Consider disqualifying prospects who can’t tell you what problem they’re trying to solve. (Unless, of course, you’ve diagnosed a pain point they’re not aware of yet.)

You should also challenge buyers who say, “[Campaign or business area] is [doing well/hitting its targets/right where it needs to be].”

Reply with something along the lines of, “I’m glad to hear that. But I have to ask, if everything is going according to plan, then why did you start researching [product]?”

2) The Prospect Can’t Explain “Why Now”

You can also spot a prospect who’s not serious by their lack of urgency. The buyer might have a legitimate problem, but unless they have a reason to address it now, they won’t buy.

Here are several triggers that could compel a purchase:

• They just discovered the problem or pinpointed its cause
• The situation recently worsened
• Their priorities or strategies changed
• The market shifted
• Their budget increased or decreased

Any of the above drivers signal true buying intent. But if your prospect gives you a vague answer like, “Doing X seems important,” or “My boss asked me to look into Y,” you should be on red alert.

Take a look at this sample dialogue to see how you might gauge your prospect’s buying intent:

Rep: “Mobile banking has been on the rise for the past three years. Why haven’t you already invested in a consumer app?”

Prospect: “Well, I don’t know. It just seems like a good time.”

Rep: “Building a mobile app is an expensive and time-consuming investment. Do you want to build one?”

Prospect: “I mean, I think it could be worthwhile … ”

Rep: “How committed are you to starting this project in one month?”

Prospect: “That feels a little soon.”

This conversation should make the salesperson hesitant to move forward.

Advise

In the Advise stage, reps deliver personalized presentations and insight to their prospects. They show buyers how to overcome the challenges they’re facing or meet the objectives they’re striving toward. But if their prospects aren’t interested in changing the status quo or bringing in the appropriate stakeholders, the deal will falter.

1) They Won’t Complete Any Homework

Every deal requires a significant time investment from the rep: He’s researching his prospect, advising her, sending her helpful materials, and more. This work pays for itself when the contract is signed -- but to make sure a deal is likely to close, the rep should ask the buyer to do some work of her own.

HubSpot sales representative Sam Belt suggests assigning homework. These are the three criteria the homework should meet:

1. Educational: Whether you’re asking buyers to read a relevant piece of content, sign up for a free trial and experiment with software, watch a video, or attend an event, make sure they get something out of the experience.
2. Significant: If your homework is too easy, it won’t deter non-serious prospects.
3. Structured: Explicitly lay out your expectations, the process, the deadline, and any suggestions. Buyers shouldn’t struggle to figure out what to do or how to do it -- that’s a waste of their time and energy.

Explain your rationale when you ask your prospect to complete an assignment.

For example, you might say, “Will you please send me a list of your employees who will be using the product by Thursday? I’ll draft an implementation plan.”

If the prospect balks, they’re probably not seriously considering a purchase. But if they agree, you should feel more confident about the likelihood they’ll close.

2) They Haven’t Involved Other Stakeholders

It’s a sure sign the buyer isn’t serious if they haven’t brought in the other stakeholders by the time you’ve reached the Advise stage.

Successful salespeople suss out the decision making process in the Explore stage. Once they know who else has a say, reps should attempt to get face time with those stakeholders or ask their champion to advocate for them.

But there are two potential obstacles. First, the prospect might not mention she’s not the sole decision maker, even when directly asked.

Buyers usually do this when they’re doing preliminary product research and don’t plan on buying anything in the near future. If you discover later on she needs her manager’s approval for all purchases, take the initial omission as a red flag.

Second, your prospect might tell you about the other stakeholders -- but prevent you from contacting them. If you’re blocked from working with the buying committee or purchasing authority, the deal probably isn’t going anywhere.

Knowing who might buy and who won’t will give you a serious leg up. Once you’ve stopped working with low-probability prospects, you can reinvest those hours into the ones who truly want your product.

I’m starting to get serious about investing for retirement. When you’re in your 20s, retirement seems so far off that it’s hard to be motivated to save much. Even in my mid-30s, I thought I had plenty of time. Once I realized that I needed to be saving a big wad of dough each month if I plan to to reach my goals, I began researching investment vehicles, mutual funds, and individual stocks. I wanted to minimize risk as much as possible, while maximizing my odds of a strong return.

Marketing is a bit like putting money into your 401(k) or IRA — even though you aren’t guaranteed a return, if you make smart investments you’re likely to get a decent return over time.

With marketing, you can’t be absolutely certain that any given campaign will deliver the results you expect. But there are ways to drastically reduce your risk. One of those ways is to make sure you’ve built out accurate buyer personas before you start a campaign. The better you understand the people you’re trying to sell to, the greater success you’ll have.

If You’re Not Convinced. . .

• Using buyer personas in an email campaign improved open rate by 2x and clickthrough rate by 5x. (MLT Creative)
• Behaviorally targeted ads are twice as effective as non-targeted ads. (HiP)
• Using marketing personas made websites 2-5 times more effective and easier to use by targeted users. (HubSpot)
• [Personalized emails] drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. (HubSpot)
• Buyers are 48% more likely to consider solution providers that personalize their marketing to address their specific business issues. (ITSMA)
• B2B organizations that exceed annual revenue goals are more likely than worse-performing organizations to use a wide range of sources to research the demographics and psychographics of their prospects. Organizations that exceed annual revenue goals are also more likely to create detailed personas that outline buyers’ motivators and fears as well as their roles in the purchase process. (Cintell)
• In a study performed by Relevance, only 15% of respondents found buyer personas to be “significantly effective” — however, the same study revealed that only 15% of respondents used in-depth, qualitative research to build their buyer personas. Coincidence? (Relevance)

The Key to Building Buyer Personas that Reduce Risk

Those last two stats are particularly enlightening. Not just any buyer personas will increase your marketing’s chance of success. You need personas that are accurate, thorough, and that dig deep into the psychology of your buyers. How can you get the knowledge you need to build these personas? Here’s the process I use.

1. Create a list of what you want to learn. I include the following:

• gender percentages
• age range
• job title
• industry
• what his or her typical day looks like
• what he or she feels is needed (in relation to the problem your product or service solves)
• what his or her short-term goals are
• what his or her long-term goals are
• what he or she fears
• what his or her buying research process looks like
• websites he or she uses
• publications he or she reads
• social media platforms he or she is active on
• what’s important when choosing a product or service provider
• what formats of content he or she likes best

2. Start the research process.

• For B2B, look through the websites of their trade associations and the media kits of their industry publications for insight on demographics.
• For B2C, look through the websites and media kits of consumer magazines you know they read.
• For B2B, look through their LinkedIn industry groups and online forums to learn how they describe their needs and frustrations.
• For B2C, look through social media accounts of people who fall into your target group and watch for how they describe their frustrations as well as things they get excited about.
• Look at the case studies of your competitors or other companies targeting the same audience for information on common pain points.
• Interview your ideal clients and/or prospects, asking these questions:
  • When did you realize you needed help with [the problem your product or service solves]?
  • Tell me more about that problem — how it manifests itself in your work week/life.
  • What do you look for in a product or service provider?
  • What’s your typical method of researching potential products or service providers?
  • What websites do you use on a regular basis?
  • What social media platforms are you active on?
  • What publications do you read?
  • How do you prefer to learn information? Webinars, podcasts, eBooks, blogs, videos, one-sheet PDFs, infographics?
• Survey your email list with the same types of questions as those listed above.

If you skimp on your buyer personas, you’re cheating yourself out of the best return on your marketing investment. Strong buyer personas will help your marketing team to better understand what will motivate your prospects to purchase and enable your copywriters to craft effective messages that will move them action.

In 2011 I was tasked with scaling a sales team at a small company called Udemy. Having no real sales floor experience, I took a completely different approach. I built a highly technical process, sometime over complicating things, that would help our resource constrained marketplace scale like Amazon.

A few months in we created the first Sales Hacker meetup, where we’d share hacks on all things sales. From using the programing language Python to scrape data from the web, to  leveraging new sales email automation tools like ToutApp, and building virtual SDR teams through TaskUs and Upwork to set up demos with less overhead.

Fast forward 5 years and our little tech bubble is producing sales and marketing technologies at breakneck speeds. This is both promising and worrisome for buyers and sellers. On the one hand, any advantage you can get you should be grateful for. On the other hand, there’s a lot of bad training and poor judgement being accelerated.

That said, 2017 is going to be another great year for sales. The technologies are more developed. The reps and managers are wiser. And the industry as a whole has gotten attention that has brought talent in like never before.

So what’s next? Let’s dive in on this years top 10 trends and predictions as we head into 2017.

1. The Big Ones

Microsoft buying LinkedIn was huge. Like MASSIVE. Salesforce and competitors are not happy. I’ve read articles from people saying that LinkedIn has stalled, or usage is declining, or ad revenue is weak, etc, but the crowdsourced database they have can be the heartbeat of any sales org.

If I asked 1000 people about their tech stack, 90% plus would probably say they use a CRM and maybe Salesforce would have the majority share of those users. But if I asked them what else was in their stack, 90% plus would also say they use LinkedIn, and there’s no competitors there. They are the Band-Aid or Kleenex brand of professional social networks.

In last years predictions we had LinkedIn going into the CRM space. Well a big player in the CRM space bought LinkedIn because LinkedIn has the data. A ton of hot companies are trying to build predictive solutions, and databases that provide insights into buying patterns, and act as data vendors, and it’s a humongous business. But nobody has a stranglehold on the most up to date data like LinkedIn does.

The kicker is, I’m curious to see how they capitalize on it. They won’t pull back from Salesforce, at least not right away. If Microsoft wants to take on Salesforce they’ll need to buy a lot more companies in the space (and get really serious about marketing but that’s next).

I think you’ll see these companies and more, aggressively spend in 2017. There are two other interesting things to keep an eye on.

• Google is putting more effort into the G Suite. They hired the ex-VMware founder and CEO to take over, and put some real heavy hitting VPs around her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they buy a CRM on top of Gmail like Streak or ProsperWorks. It makes a ton of sense too. There’s a lot of money to be made in selling to the sales org these days, and more and more companies are moving from Outlook to Gmail. It’s too logical.
• Salesforce is still a major acquisition target for someone. How about Amazon? Salesforce just switched all of their cloud infrastructure to Amazon data centers. They have the cash. Microsoft is likely out now, so it really leaves them and Oracle, which I thought would happen in 2016, because Benioff would’ve been the best Larry Ellison successor. I really like Salesforce as a standalone company though. I think they have a lot of potential to continue their ascent in SaaS and the public markets.

Separate from LinkedIn/Microsoft aggressively spending, they’ll need to start figuring out how to compete with Salesforce’s marketing engine. This is where Salesforce sets themselves apart. They’re a marketing company. 300,000 people come to town for Dreamforce every year. Then, they also have a roadshow. They clearly understand the importance of unbiased sales thought leadership, hence the partnership with Sales Hacker. If you teach someone to fish, they’ll go to you when they’re ready to buy a fishing pole, bait, and tackle.

I wonder how LinkedIn/Microsoft will enter the ring here. They have a massive opportunity to be the go-to place for all things sales, yet haven’t capitalized on it to date. Just see how Medium curates it’s content into niche periodicals. It’s against my best interest to go into to much detail here, but if done right, every sales professional should be glued to LinkedIn like every teenager to Snapchat. The metric that matters here is Daily Active Users. And the higher that gets, the more possibilities they have for producing revenue (training, ads, premium features, etc).

LinkedIn still sees themselves as a social selling company. Either they don’t understand the bigger data picture, or they’re worried about being a Social Network and a B2B database. Which is justified. But until that’s clear, it will be tough for them to compete for eyeballs and dollars, even with Microsoft behind them. It’s time to double down on being a premier player in the sales space, and to do that, they need to nail The Show (AKA marketing).

2. The Little Ones

That leads me to the next logical event to play out in the near future. Roll ups. There has been so much Seed and Angel money floating around, that anyone can build an app for sales and enter the marketplace. I see a lot of companies in the $500k to $2m ARR range that have somewhat stalled. The Series A money is much harder to get with slow growth and only startup logos.

So the bigger companies and even medium size private companies will jump into the action of rolling up these stalled out Series A ready companies. And some will even merge into one single company instead of two unnecessary competitors. We’re already seeing that outside of sales with the VTS/Hightower merger. I think this will ramp up in 2017. There are too many similar point plays and not enough differentiated platforms. I think we’ll see PE funds started just for these scenarios, and not just in sales and marketing. Sales and marketing, just happens to be very ready for it.

3. Crowdsourcing: Data, Reviews, & Networks

Jigsaw once sold to Salesforce for $300m and was renamed Data.com. They created a way for people to update other people’s contact info, and in exchange, you received contact info for people you didn’t know, that someone else had updated. This is crowdsourced data, and now they’re doing it again with Owler.

Here’s another reason why LinkedIn is key. They have the most up to date data because it’s done by the user. If only they used to collect things like “what’s in your tech stack” or “when did you buy X product”, “what do you think of it”, or “how much did you pay”?

This is where the market is going. Companies like G2Crowd and TrustRadius are giving you crowdsourced reviews for tech products, similar to Yelp or Amazon reviews. They go pretty far to make sure you actually bought and it’s a real review. At some point, when these platforms hit critical mass, and I’m not saying it’s in 2017 but when they do, this is going to change the way we buy and sell SaaS. For now, I know quite a few people who are using it not to discover products, but to evaluate products further down the sales process.

Emissary.io is another interesting model that allows you to find people who worked in certain silos of an organization you’re trying to sell to, and will tell you how to sell to the individuals that make the decisions. For example, you’re working on a deal with the Marketing department at a Fortune 500 company. They’ll connect you to the ex-VP of that product value who will tell you who to talk to and how to sell to them. This is the newest gadget in your Account Based Sales/Marketing strategy.

Speaking of Account Based strategies…

4. Setting Yourself Apart

When I wrote Hacking Sales, I wrote it from the perspective of selling at a startup or through a go-to-market strategy with limited resources. We had to build sales at scale. Now it’s safe to say we’ve coupled sales automation and bad/no training and created a monster. Sales Automation or Acceleration or whatever you want to call it is here to support, not take over. I love that we can use technology to our advantage. We just need to make sure we train people well enough to use it.

Let’s start with outbound emailing. If you’re blasting emails to lists without segmenting, without personalizing, and without caring, then you’ll get the same crappy results as everyone else until you move on to the next job and fizzle out of sales in 5 years. If you send 100 emails in the same time it takes to send 1 email, but with both have a 1 person conversion, it’s not a draw. The person who sent 100 emails loses. They may have burned bridges, or their email server, or worse.

But this section isn’t about bad practices as much as it is about setting yourself apart. Or as a good friend once said, Angles of Asymmetric Warfare. AKA If everyone is sending emails, doing phone calls, and walking through a 21-step, 7-day cadence, what are you doing to set yourself apart? I know people who are doing interesting things in direct mail again. Using real, in-depth research is another way to do it. But this is crucial, and will become a focus for reps and orgs again, as companies look to grow ACV (Average Contract Value) and do bigger deals. How are you setting yourselves apart from the rest of the solicitors?

This is why I’m excited about the next level of Account Based Sales & Marketing. There’s a certain type of creativity that becomes an orgs most valuable asset when it comes to breaking into an account. What channels do you go through, what sets you apart, what level of research do you do, and what research really matters?

5. The Truth About Technology

I’m not talking about emailing here. We’ve harped on email as an industry, so I won’t keep doing it. You can read more in our How Not To Send Crappy Emails eBook.

What I am talking about is all of these new buzz words. In 2016, the buzzword to add to some area of your homepage was “Account Based _____”. In 2017, it’s a variation of Sales Bots, Sales AI, or Machine Learning. Some of it is complete BS. Like adding the words AI or Machine Learning to something all of a sudden turns your product into Jarvis from Ironman. Or just because your domain ends in .ai doesn’t really mean that it’s using any real advanced AI.

Most companies are doing either one, or both of these things.

• Doing a lot of it manually using outsourcers, and trying to figure out AI as they go.
• Throwing a ton of developer resources behind building actual AI, selling it as AI, but it’s only halfway there.

But this is all irrelevant ramblings, because the truth is, it’s VC subsidized sales help, and you should take advantage of it and stop being stubborn about change. Things are changing. It’s good.

Here’s my point. X.ai helps you better schedule meetings. Troops.ai helps you better log things in Salesforce and stay on top of your tasks. I know a few companies in stealth doing some amazing things to help your reps make sure they’re following up. Gong and ExecVision help your reps make better calls. Take advantage of these tools and hope that they can figure it out before the money runs out. Because if they do, your team will save a ton of time, and be endlessly more efficient, and it’ll be cheap compared to the alternative.

Again, these are here to support reps and managers, not replace. Don’t get those two things confused, and you’ll be just fine.

6. Sales & Marketing Have Morphed

The Account Based Everything hype is just the beginning. The truth is, Sales & Marketing at the top of the funnel have morphed. The whole org is working together on lead gen and demand gen. We’re seeing more and more SDRs report to Marketing every day. The best sales and marketing teams are figuring out the numbers they need to back into for the year end goals, and work together to understand what amount of leads they need to hit for each market segment, and how acquire them. They work as a team.

Some orgs are even ditching the MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) acronyms and are going with a unified PQL (Product Qualified Lead). This makes total sense, as product/company fit should be the be all end all. Stay tuned at SalesHacker.com for more content on PQLs coming soon. We’ll see more advancements come from this over the course of 2017.

7. Texting

Yes texting. We’re seeing more and more companies leverage texting in their sales processes. Some swear by it to confirm discovery phone calls, others use it to lock in deals and get the contract signed in the final stages.

People are ditching their works phone lines, and direct dial numbers are pure gold. Buyers are even more routinely ignoring voicemail and are interested more in going by text. I for one, set my voicemail up to say “please do not leave a voicemail as I do not check it. Instead, text this number or email me”.

The one thing missing right now is that there’s very few ways to log texts into Salesforce. I’m not sure there’s a standalone business here (yet), but it would be a valuable piece of a Salesforce logging platform. Text’s place in sales is only going to grow.

8. Predicting Predictive

Over the past few years, Predictive Analytics tools for sales has been a roller coaster. A few companies liquidated in the form of acqui-hires, others just kind of went into slumber after big hires and large rounds raised. The hype train left the station here back in 2015. 2016 was somewhat quiet, but I can tell they’re beginning to come on strong again.

A few that come to mind are Collective (i) and Everstring. Collective (i) uses the data from how a buyer buys, not how your team typically sells. Everstring uses the patterns that would make someone a likely buyer of yours. Both are taking a slightly different angle at how predictive works with your sales team. I’ve been seeing positive results with companies using the newer predictive tools. More than when this popped in 2015.

9. Acquisition Speculation

Ok so I brought up roll ups and massive acquisitions, but what’s really going to happen? Who’s buying the losers or laggards or just simply, the ones that aren’t going to be first or second in their category? Vista scoped up Marketo and Cvent last year and should continue their buying spree. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle started to get into the sales arms race. There’s SAP too.

Then Salesforce and Microsoft should end up playing offense and defense. This will make it interesting for bidding wars between the up and coming startups.

Amazon and Google are sneaky dark horses to enter the race as well. Maybe IBM too?

There’s always smaller acquisitions to companies like CallidusCloud. Startups have lots of great options. But it’s going to happen sooner than later.

What worries me from a startup’s perspective is the race to the bottom these big companies can create. They can acquire a company, and then bundle it into their package for next to nothing. So they can tell you we’ll acquire you, or your competitor, but not both. And when we do, we’ll give them out for free.

Essentially Salesforce can do this with Wave when competing against Domo or Insightsquared, with Pardot when competing against Marketo or Hubspot, with SalesforceIQ when competing with Salesloft or Outreach. They make their money on the CRM licenses and use access to these platforms as an added perk.

The counter argument that the startup has is that it would still cost you more time and more money to hire a consultant to set everything up. We’ll see how this continues to play out in the marketplace.

10. And Finally, Sales Hacker

We’ve been around for about 3 years now, and are really excited about 2017. It’s the first time we feel like we’re ahead of the game, and understand our business and the marketplace. Like a startup, it takes a while to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and where the market is going.

We know our conference schedule, what virtual events we want to do, we’re rolling out some local exclusive VP Sales events, and we’ve nailed growth in quite a few interesting areas. We’re psyched. Now it’s just about executing.

We’ll be running 3 conferences in 2017:

–The Revenue Summit – SF – March 7/8

2000+ Sales & Marketers (Pre-sale tickets on sale now!)

–Sales Machine – NYC – June 13/14

1500+ Enterprise Sales leaders

-Sales Stack – Europe – Sept

1000+ Salespeople Focused on Leveraging Technology

*Sign up at Sales Hacker.com for updates.

We have some amazing partners we’re excited to grow with including Gainsight, Terminus, and Salesforce, as well as some big research and advisory brands to be announced in Q1.

Our Sales Hacker Membership is getting more and more awesome every month. We partnered with Skaled to bring you some of the best sales training around for any SDRs or AEs. Check it out here.

As for in-person training, get in touch with us because we specialize in that too. Happy customers include CallidusCloud, Terminus, PushPay, Udemy and more.

Thanks for reading and hope we can keep providing value for you in the new year. Please feel free to discuss, push back, or add-on in the comments.

See you in 2017!

Max

The post Sales Hacker’s Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017 appeared first on Sales Hacker.

How to Help Sales Develop Higher-Quality Leads

Producing higher-quality and quantity of leads continues to be a top challenge for companies. Smart management can help Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) improve the quality and quantity of the leads they generate.

Here are four tips to help you manage and motivate your team to see better results:

1. Promote a strong relationship between Field Sales Representatives (FSRs) and SDRs

The support between the Sales Development Representative and the Field Sales Representative is one of the most critical in your organization. But too often it goes undervalued.

Involve SDRs in Field sales calls. This educates your SDRs and provides real-world training. It sets the tone for a collaborative work environment. And it is very rewarding and motivating for the SDR to see when a sales occurs!

These are just a few of the significant benefits your company is likely to realize when you include SDRs in sales meetings.

2. Prepare For the Day

This tip comes from personal experience. Early in my career, I learned the hard way how important it is to have prepared, printed lists for your daily calls. While it’s rare that you may not be able to access your network or CRM one day, it does happen. You can avoid wasting a lot of time by taking one small precaution to have a backup or printed copy of your list.

This is one simple but impactful preparation tips in my free e-book, How to Help Sales Development Representatives Produce Higher-Quality Leads.

3. Remove Obstacles

Lack of a well-prepared call list is a huge time-waster for many SDRs. Companies should NOT require SDRs to look up the name of the company, the prospect’s name, title, and contact information. Help make the best of your SDR’s time by giving the SDR all the details in the CRM, including name, phone numbers and email, so they can use their pre-call research time most effectively.

These are just some of the many needless obstacles that you can remove, to help your SDRs produce better quality leads. See my free e-book for more!

4. Share Customer Success Stories

Nothing sells like success. Stories to prospects about how you enabled others like them to succeed are one of the most powerful sales tools around. Yet many companies don’t provide materials that help SDRs articulate challenges their customers had, the solutions that your company offered or the results the customer achieved. There are many formats you can use to make this information available! Whether you write case studies, get testimonials, or create a cheat sheet, make this information accessible to your SDRs.

If you found these tips helpful, you may want to download my new FREE ebook: How to Help Sales Development Representatives Produce Higher-Quality Leads.

Get all the details on 4 steps to help you improve lead quality while leveraging the resources you already have.

Calling prospects in the last few weeks of Q4 means you’ll hear a season-specific objection: “Can you call me back after the holidays?”

There are three potential reasons you’ll hear this line.

First, your prospect might be interested in learning more but has a legitimate reason to postpone your conversation. Maybe he’s already used up his budget, his team or department is still finalizing next year’s strategy, or he needs to review his current vendor before deciding whether to stay or switch.

Along similar lines, holiday conflicts may be getting in the way. He’s focused on tying up loose ends before he goes on vacation, or a coworker he’d need approval from is gone.

Lastly, the buyer may be blowing you off. He’s hoping you’ll forget about him. If you reach out again in January, he’ll give you another excuse.

It doesn’t matter what the reason is -- don’t say you’ll call back in January and hang up. You’ll end the call without providing any value or learning new information.

These 13 alternative responses will help you figure out why the buyer is delaying and potentially overcome his reluctance to talk.

If They Object During the First Connect

If a prospect asks you to call back without knowing anything about who you are, what you do, and how you can help, she's probably hoping you’ll hang up and never call back. Show her you’re worth his time and pique her interest with an insightful question or suggestion.

1) “Do you have five minutes now to discuss your [goals for X, current approach toward Y, strategy for Z]? If I don’t think we can help, you won’t have to worry about me chasing you in January. If we can help and the timing would be better then, I’ll call back.”

This response shows you’re trying to determine mutual fit. Knowing you’re not trying to sell her right then and there will put the buyer at ease, making her likelier to agree to spend a little longer on the phone. Earn more credibility with a few relevant questions grounded in research and you might wrap up the conversation by scheduling another meeting.

2) “If your company is like mine, it won’t be this quiet until next December. This might be a great opportunity to talk about your needs.”

Most prospects aren’t enthusiastic about starting a new project in December -- they want to finish their existing work and get out of the office. To change the buyer's mind, point out it’s actually an ideal time to speak with you: Most companies have wrapped up major projects, so he can focus on the conversation without the usual interruptions and distractions.

In addition, remind him that it’s better to start planning now and begin the new year with some irons already in the fire rather than scrambling in January -- initiative his boss will appreciate as well.

3) “I understand. How has [recent trigger event] impacted your workload?”

Asking about a compelling event immediately gives you credibility and shows the buyer you’ve done your research. She’ll feel obligated to respond -- and once she’s given you some context, follow up with something along the lines of:

“Many of my clients experience similar [issues, bottlenecks]. I have some ideas for dealing with them. Would you like to hear those?”

4) “I’m going to develop a few suggestions for [prospect’s company] around [likely challenge] before our next conversation. Would you mind answering a few questions to ensure I’m coming up with relevant recommendations?”

Once you’ve engaged the buyer in a meaningful dialogue, you may find he's no longer eager to hang up. But even if you only gather a few key details before your prospect says he needs to go, you’ll be better prepared for the next conversation.

5) “I can certainly call you back in January, but I won’t be able to fully enjoy the holiday knowing [prospect’s company] hasn’t made any progress on [pain point]. To ease my mind, can I offer you a few suggestions on solving [pain point]?”

A tongue-in-cheek answer will catch the buyer off-guard in a good way, making her more receptive to your offer. And once you’ve proven your expertise, your prospect will likely be eager to hear more.

Make sure you don’t launch into your sales pitch: You’ll lose all the goodwill you just generated.

6) “Are you free on [specific date and time]?”

If the buyer presents a valid reason for waiting until January, don’t keep pushing. Lock down a firm date for your follow-up call instead -- and consider assigning some homework. If the prospect completes a mutually beneficial task before your next meeting (like outlining his current process or reading a blog post), he’ll be more invested in the deal. You won’t have trouble picking things back up in the new year.

This question also comes in handy when you suspect your prospect is putting you off. If he becomes flustered or avoids committing to another conversation, transition to another one of the suggested connect call responses (like #1 or #3).

If They Object After the Discovery Call

At this stage of the sales conversation, you’ve learned about the buyer’s challenges and situation -- but she's still in the dark about how your product can help. To secure a next meeting, remind her why taking action is important.

1) “If we wait until next quarter to solve [issue], you’ll [lose X amount per day, fall behind in Y, decrease your yearly revenue by Z percent]. Will that have a significant impact on your business?”

Put your prospect’s potential losses at the top of his mind. She’ll instantly be more motivated to stay on the line.

2) “If you wait until next quarter to do X, you’ll miss [opportunity]. Would capitalizing on [opportunity] significantly affect your [company, team, career]?”

If your prospect typically talks about seizing opportunities rather than fixing problems, use the same approach as question #1, but with a positive twist. He’s probably more motivated by progress and visions of a better future than FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) tactics.

3) “[Prospect name], are you still hoping to accomplish X by [date]? Meeting that deadline will be impossible if we wait until January.”

Have you established a date by which the buyer needs to act? Alert her to the dangers of delaying. She'll see his goal slipping out of sight -- unless he takes action now.

If They Object After the Demo or Presentation

Most objections that arise during this stage concern features or pricing. If the buyer is asking you to call back next month, one of four things has happened:

1. He's just gotten new information that significantly changes his situation.
2. He's decided the product isn’t a good fit but wants to avoid telling you ‘no.’
3. He's unintentionally held back crucial details.
4. He's still considering other vendors or digesting what he learned during your presentation (which usually means you didn’t incite enough urgency).

To figure out whether you should give up on a deal or keep trying, probe into the reason for the delay or test his interest with new information.

1) “Yes, I can call back. So I have the necessary context, how will your situation be different in January?”

This question helps you figure out whether the buyer has a genuine reason for postponing your conversation. If she says she’s interested in buying but doesn’t have any budget left, ask her to commit now and offer to back-date the contract.

If her circumstances will look significantly different in January, use that information to suggest next steps. As an example, a new executive is coming in and your contact isn’t sure how she’ll shake things up. You might reply, “I recently worked with a customer in the same position -- we developed a proposal she gave to the new leader in their first week. Not only did she make a great first impression, her department got twice as much funding as the year before. Is that something you’d be interested in doing?”

If your prospect doesn’t have a convincing justification, think about moving on. You want to spend January mapping out your sales plan for the rest of the year, not pestering lukewarm leads.

2) “Why did you wait to raise this objection?”

At this point, you’ve both invested significant time and resources into advancing the deal to this stage. You’re justified in calling him out for the unexpected delay.

However, not all prospects will respond well to such a direct style. If the buyer tends to avoid conflict, asking this question may permanently damage the relationship.

Here are two softer versions:

“Could you help me understand why you’re questioning the timing of the deal [now, so late in the process]? This information may change my recommendations.”

“Last time we spoke, you said [you’d do X, you’d have an answer, relevant event would happen] by [date]. Is that no longer the case?”

3) “I don’t want to spend more of your time -- or mine -- if you’re not interested. Do you see [product] as a potential fit for [prospect’s company], or do I have permission to close your file?”

Being straightforward encourages your prospect to be honest as well. Whether she's decided on a different course or simply needed a little push, you’ll get the answer you need to determine your next step.

4) “As a heads up, we’re offering [discount/promotion] -- but only until the end of the year.”

If you’re following up with a good-fit prospect or someone who’s gone dark, a time-sensitive promotion can help incite some much-needed urgency.

Steer clear of this tactic if you’re reaching out to a buyer for the first time. You’re lacking crucial information about his needs and timeline, not to mention his awareness of the problem in the first place. Prematurely offering discounts can also weaken your negotiating position from the get-go, lessen your product’s perceived value, and make you seem too eager to close.

5) "Typically, when someone asks me to call back next quarter after we've reviewed the product together, it means they've actually decided not to buy. Would you say that's the case here?"

HubSpot account executive Mike Rogewitz recommends using the "Negative Reverse Selling Approach" when you want to call out your prospect's lack of interest. 

"Essentially, you’re getting them to realize they’re bullshitting you," he explains.

But it can definitely ruffle some feathers, so save it for situations you're 90% or more confident the buyer is going to ghost.

With these 14 responses up your sleeve, you won’t be stumped by requests to call back in the new year.

With just a couple days left until the end of the year, many salespeople are busy with the time-honored tradition of performance reviews and goal setting to guide their 2017 sales efforts. Those who aren’t scrambling to meet their year-end targets are probably eager to check these boxes, finalize their bonus calculations, and coast into the new year.

If this sounds like your plan for the next few days, you could be missing out on a few more important activities.

The end of the year certainly lends itself to reflection and goal setting, but it’s also a great time to make meaningful progress on the things you usually file away as “important, but not urgent.” The reality is, you’re not the only one that feels like checking out until after the ball drops – and when everyone else goes dark, that means fewer distractions to keep you from getting a head start on Q1.

The best salespeople I know use the month of December to assess what they learned over the previous eleven months and develop a plan for crushing their first quarter sales goals. If checking out during the holidays is what you need to recharge your batteries, go for it. But, if you’re interested in gaining a competitive advantage over your competition, read on to learn how to make the most of this holiday season.

1. Check In With Your Favorite Customers

The traditional image of a sales person is the hunter-gatherer, hell-bent on tracking down prospects and bringing home the bacon. This is a necessary part of the job, but if the tempo around your office has slowed down, now is a great time to strengthen your relationships with existing customers.

Customers are going through a lot of the same year-end activities that you are, so consider asking them how their year went. Listen for opportunities to help them get better in the next year, but file them away for now. This call isn’t about selling, it’s about nurturing the relationship. You don’t want to be the guy (or gal) that only calls to ask for more business.

Checking in at the end of the year with a no pressure discussion about the customer’s situation provides a ton of value. Recognizing them for their loyalty and taking a genuine interest in the future of their business can strengthen personal connections at a time when people are feeling both social and generous. These conversations can often lead to up-sells, contract renewals, or referrals that shore up your pipeline for 2017.

2. Warm Up A Relationship That Has Cooled Off

If we look at the other side of the coin, the holidays are also a great time to reconnect with some of those old relationships that may have dropped off your radar.

The end of the year means there are residual budgets to be spent, next year budgets to be finalized, and more relaxed gatekeepers. All of this adds up to greater access to decision-makers and more opportunities to rekindle relationships that may have cooled.

Assuming things are going well at the prospect, people are usually more generous with their time and resources at the end of the year. Lead with a compelling, value-added conversation rationale and you might find decision-makers more willing to schedule a meeting in January than they were back in July. Even if you don’t secure a formal meeting, you’ll still be keeping your name at the top of a prospect’s mind.

3. Give Your Pipeline A Check-up

A recent study of 62 B2B companies, conducted by the Sales Management Association, revealed that 44% of executives think their organization is ineffective at managing their sales pipeline.

Truthfully, pipeline management should be a daily or weekly practice, but our natural tendency to reflect back at the end of the year makes it a great time to also look at your pipeline through a more clinical lens.

If you were to objectively assess your pipeline, how healthy would you say it is? If you’re not sure how to answer that question, be consider what you might learn about your sales effectiveness by considering last year’s:

• Stage Velocity – What did your velocity look like at each stage? How long did it take a prospect to become a qualified lead? How long until that qualified lead become a pursuit?How does your actual velocity compare to your expectations? Where are the roadblocks? At what stage did leads get “stuck” – and why?
• Pipeline Leaks – Did your funnel have any leaks? Were there points where a large percentage of prospects drop off? What could be causing this and how can you patch that leak going forward?

• Lead Distribution – Was your pipeline balanced? Did you have plenty of leads coming in, but very few closing (read: possible leak)? Did you have plenty of opportunities in later stages, but very few new leads coming in (read: more prospecting needed)?

• Data Integrity – If you see something that shocks you, ask yourself how accurate the CRM data behind your pipeline report might be. Is there missing or inaccurate data? How might that be impacting what you see on your dashboard?

“Getting right” with respect to your pipeline can put you in a very strong position going into the new year. While everyone else struggles to get up-to-speed coming off of their holiday break, you’ll already have a plan in place to start aggressively chipping away at your quota. Invest the time now, while there are no distractions (or excuses) and thank yourself later when you have more time to dive in to meaningful work.

4. Audit Your Collateral/Review Your Processes

If we’re being honest, when was the last time you sat down and reviewed your marketing collateral to assess whether the information is accurate and the messaging is targeted at the true needs of your customers?

You may not regularly review your sales materials, but a substantial number of your customers do. If some feature descriptions seem off or a value proposition doesn’t hit home, they notice – and that can make the difference between a win and a loss.

Your marketing department does their best to research customer needs and create collateral that strikes a chord with your target audience. But their efforts are often targeted at serving the rule, not the exception. If what you actually hear from the people sitting across the table doesn’t jive with what’s in your brochure, you’re missing an important improvement opportunity.

The slower operating tempo of December lends itself to conducting an inventory of your collateral and determining how you can best use them in real-world selling scenarios. Maybe the message is on point, but you realize that the brochure you’ve been using for SMBs might be better suited for an enterprise sale. Maybe you’ll discover that there is an updated version of a product overview that never made its way to your hard drive (whoops!).

Regardless of whether you uncover opportunities to improve the content or utilization of your collateral, the end of the year is the best time to review and submit feedback to marketing.

5. Initiate Knowledge Sharing

We all know that learning is important. That’s why companies invest time, resources, and many thousands of dollars creating and distributing manuals, training programs, and learning management systems to give their employees to knowledge and skills they need to excel. But is it working?

Unfortunately, a study conducted by International Data Corporation suggests that Fortune 500 companies lose billions of dollars every year by failing to efficiently share knowledge within their organization. This lack of communication results in operating inefficiencies, repeated mistakes, project delays, and a host of other corporate maladies.

So, why is it that we often take our annual review forms and file them away in a drawer or on a shelf? We all take time to talk about what went well and where we have opportunities to improve, but how many of us share those insights with someone other than our manager? How many of us consult with our team members to see if we’re struggling with some of the same challenges?

If you want to be the rising tide that lifts all boats, initiate a conversation among your peers about experiences, both positive and negative, and the lessons you’ve learned over the last twelve months. The discussion can (and should) be about both internal and customer-facing interactions. This level of knowledge sharing has been shown to significantly improve overall performance, as described by Harvard Business Professor David A. Garvin:

“Ideas carry maximum impact when they are shared broadly rather than held in a few hands… open up boundaries and stimulate the exchange of ideas. Boundaries inhibit the flow of information; they keep individuals and groups isolated and reinforce preconceptions…General Electric CEO Jack Welch considers this to be such a powerful stimulant of change that he has made “boundarylessness” a cornerstone of the company’s strategy for the 1990s.”

Carve out an hour to exchange successes, failures, and ideas with your team. You’ll be surprised by the number of insights that surface to help everyone perform at a higher level in 2017.

The Bottom Line (and a quick win)

If this all sounds great, but not great enough to inspire you to keep your foot on the gas, this easy win could be a suitable compromise. This might sound a little odd, but hear me out. What if you did your spring cleaning…in December?

You: You can’t be serious…

Me: I am serious, and here’s why…

A cluttered workspace, either physical or digital, has been scientifically proven to have a detrimental effect on productivity.

• Neuroscientists at Princeton University used MRI scans to prove that operating in a cluttered environment has a detrimental effect of focus and efficiency.
• Researchers at UCLA found that levels of certain stress hormones spike when we are distracted from a core task by the need to sift through physical clutter.

There are hundreds of studies just like these that confirm the negative impacts that clutter and disorganization can have on our lives.

However, it is important to note that we’re talking about more than just a messy desk here. What about all of those unaddressed emails sitting in your inbox? Or that missing/inaccurate CRM data we talked about before? Or that labyrinth of files and folders you call a hard drive?

These things weigh on us and can easily sap the energy from an otherwise productive week. Cleaning up the physical and digital spaces we occupy isn’t hard, it’s just inconvenient…and there’s no better time to do it than when everyone else has checked out for the year.

Look, it’s easy to pat yourself on the back, clear your calendar, and glide into the new year. If you choose to do that, nobody would fault you for it. But, for those who have done that in the past, you might have noticed that it can take some time to hit your stride when you get back to the office in January.

If you want to avoid losing two weeks while you recover from your holiday hangover, make the most out of the next few days by checking off some of these end-of-year activities. Do that, and you’ll be on your way to successful selling in 2017.

If marketers and salespeople knew exactly why people bought their products, it would be a lot easier to pedal their wares. The problem is there’s a lot of nuance when it comes to why people do what they do. Some are overwhelmed by choice and opt for what’s easiest while others need to examine every possible angle before they decide. Without knowing who a person is before they’re approached, a salesperson could inadvertently say the wrong thing and kill the sale altogether. Scott Gillum, a B2B marketing expert, identifies the different groups as needles, seekers, loyalists, and legacies, and you can use his categorization to develop your own selling strategies.

Birds of a feather

Regardless of how professional (or even robotic) a client might seem, they are driven by the emotions they feel throughout the day. While people may change throughout the course of the time you work with them, it’s helpful to get a firm handle on which groups have the most connection to your brand and which are always looking for a better deal. This can help with both long-term clients and prospects alike. While a salesperson’s script can have some flexibility, depending on who they’re selling to, there should be certain expectations based on which group a person falls into. On average, close to 80% of marketing leads do not end up as sales, so this is a topic that likely needs your attention.

1. The Needle

Gillum states that up to 15% of all buyers are those who fall into the “right place, right time” category. Essentially the salesperson happened upon them at a time when the client realized they had a problem that quickly needed a resolution. Handling this account requires recognizing that these people aren’t necessarily looking to be upsold or cross-sold on new products, and they might never look beyond the transactional nature of their relationship with your brand. However, it is possible to develop an affection to your company (if not undying enthusiasm) through both dependable work and flexibility though. This is a time to focus on practicality for them: reduce their risks, limit your own mistakes, and never give them a reason to look elsewhere.

2. The Seeker

This is a customer that actively comes to your company to see what you can do for them, and they can represent up to 20% of your customer base. They know what the issue is, and they’re looking to you to convince them that you can fix it. This is a time to really impress them, because they may be actively seeking out your competitors in the process. You won’t know if these people will make it to the Loyalist level when you first meet them, but they do have that potential. The takeaway for salespeople to remember is that it’s very different for someone to come to you with a problem than to approach them with a solution they may not need. It’s a big opportunity that many businesses fail at because they’re focused too much on making the sale or proclaiming superiority over competitors than really selling the Seeker on the answer to their prayers.

3. The Loyalist

These are the people who have already decided that you’re the company for them, and likely make up between a quarter and a third of your business. They tell their colleagues about you in an effort to get you even more business, and they’re interested in learning about your new offerings practically before you think of them. In order to keep them in this category, you need to stay on top of their account and recognize their continued loyalty in a way that singles them out from the Needles and the Seekers. These people are the easiest clients to work with, and do not necessarily need a lot of attention. However, the attention you do show them should make it clear that you see their devotion and appreciate it. Salespeople need to stay alert though because these accounts are easy to push to the background.

4. The Legacy

This is often the client-side contact that takes over after the Loyalist, Needle, or Seeker has left their role. They don’t really know your business, but they know you understand how their company works and will continue to use you out of convenience. It can be frustrating for both parties involved because you want to please them, but the client may be resentful they’re not carving out enough of a unique role by picking their own vendors to work with. Though this person might not want to develop a connection with your company, it’s still important to see where they’re coming from and to continue giving them excellent, consistent service.

According to an Adobe Digital Index report titled “The ROI from Marketing to Existing Customers,” online retailers spend approximately 80 percent of their marketing budget on acquiring new customers.

However, for every one percent of shoppers who return on a subsequent visit, overall revenue increases by 10 percent.

That makes customer retention more valuable than customer acquisition.

So, how do you retain the customers you have? What can you do to promote customer engagement over time? The answer lies in employing the same type of inbound marketing techniques that attracted your customer to your brand in the first place.

Here are some simple strategies to keep your customers engaged after the purchase:

1. Continue to provide relevant information.

Remember when you were working so hard to get your customer to convert? You provided all kinds of information to move that customer through your sale pipeline.

Here’s a reality check. Your customer still needs relevant, useful information. Provide relevant information on your website by including how-to videos, tutorials, and blog posts that highlight tips and tricks that are truly of use to your audience.

Include third-party content that is related to your product or services. In this way, you establish yourself as an expert in your field, and as a valuable source of information for your existing customers. This makes your website the go-to destination for relevant material.

2. Post links and build a community.

One source offers this tip: “Make it easy to connect to your other social platforms by posting links. Even though Facebook is the Mac Daddy, customers also like to connect on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or through your blog.”

Create social media groups that center around your industry and the interests of your customers. Use the demographic information you captured about your audience in the original conversion process to get inspiration as to what type of social media groups and communities your customers might join.

3. Keep the conversation alive.

Someone has said that, “Even if your customers love your product, and your team provided stellar service throughout the sale, past buyers probably aren’t thinking about you much anymore. Just as the old cliche states: “Out of sight, out of mind.” That’s why it’s important for you to stay in touch throughout all points of the product life cycle. If your previous customers don’t hear from you until it’s time for them to buy again, you’re about as good as a stranger. Encourage loyalty by maintaining an ongoing conversation.”

So, how do you use inbound marketing techniques to accomplish this? Monitor social media platforms where your customers are and join the discussion. Comment on topics related to your industry, answer questions, and ask some of your own. In a word, converse.

4. Host virtual events for your customers.

Consider sponsoring a webinar or online conference for your customers occasionally. You can highlight speakers from your own business or invite guest speakers from related industries. Announce the event on social media platforms, your website, and via email invitations. As with all your content, the topic of your webinar should be relevant to your customers and their relationship with your brand.

The bottom line

Putting genuine effort into engaging and retaining existing customers makes good business sense. If you can build loyalty in your customer base and foster a long-term relationship with existing customers, your business will maintain a solid position in the marketplace.

Engage your customers by using the same inbound marketing solutions that attracted them to your brand originally. Continue to provide relevant content that addresses issues your customers might face, keep your brand front and center on social media platforms, and maintain an ongoing conversation with existing customers through your website, social media communities, and sponsored virtual events. Focus on building strong relationships that engender loyalty to your brand among your existing customers.

Engaging inbound marketing techniques play a large role in building loyalty with customers, but these approaches are also very effective in business-to-business campaigns. Get your free copy of our B2B Guide to Inbound Marketing to learn more about incorporating inbound strategies into your B2B marketing plan.

This article originally appeared on the Inbound 281 blog and is republished with permission.

Brands drive attention and income off awareness, but they derive their real value from their ability to shift and sustain longer term sentiment.

It’s tempting to monitor brand value in real-time: for what’s popular, by who gets mentioned and by whom, in what those mentions do to a stock price in the moment. And doing that changes how brands react: they focus on a switching game based on keeping up with what’s trending; they absorb themselves in social media replies that ameliorate criticism or highlight praise; they push out more and more content in the hope that they can gain authority in a world bang full of marketing noise. And all of this keeps them busy. Very busy indeed.

Many think that this is how they build brands. By marketing in the moment. By engaging in the to and fro of one smartass bringing it to another. Or the momentary triumph of a hashtag. They’re half right. Awareness and timeliness are important but they forget that, like journalism, much of what passes for marketing today is just news, just entertainment, just stuff to read and pass the time – and that its impact on commerce is passing, at best.

The strategic focus for every brand can’t just be on what everyone is chatting about or reacting to in the moment. It has to be how your brand will look to drive and direct a long-term change in sentiment in order to generate and leverage greater value. I say a change in sentiment because, just as economies don’t stand still, neither do inclinations, and therefore the demands on brands to excel change over time. Accuracy is a powerful driver, for example, until everyone is accurate. Then it becomes a hygiene factor. As needs change, so do hopes – and as hopes change, the opportunities to inspire and excite as a brand must also change to reflect what consumers value in that time.

The hard part here is knowing when to change sentiment, why and to what? That’s because the ceilings and walls that govern the need for changes in sentiment are glass. Brands can see through them, but at some point they will discover that they have plateaued with the sentiment they have and that they will need to change how they are perceived. A challenger brand can grow and grow … but at some point, if it succeeds, it must look to lead a shift in sentiment to authority or credibility. Challenging alone will only take it so far.

Good repositioning takes time. Because it’s built on the understanding that while people react quickly, they change (behaviors, attitudes and preferences) slowly.

Hence the two-speed dilemma. Brands must transact money, goods, opinions and products now. But they also need to be actively planning how they will be more and more valued over time, and how they will need to change in order to make that happen.

Here’s a simple way to frame that for the year (and years) ahead:

• Over the next three years we will need to become more and more …
• Our plans over the next 12 months are to do the following …
• This is how we’ll keep our customers’ attention over the year ahead …
• This is why doing that will get us one third of the way towards changing how our customers think of us and why they choose to value us more highly.

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Once you’ve found a high-performing email or voicemail template, it’s tempting to use it again and again.

However, consistently updating your messaging is crucial.

You should refine or completely alter your sales playbook in an iterative way so you’re always taking into account the latest details you’ve learned on the floor. In addition, your prospects’ industries, most common priorities and challenges, and preferences are constantly shifting. To be successful, you must track and adapt to these changes.

Several situations necessitate a new template. When any of these five events happen, it’s usually time to create new emails or voicemail outlines.

1) Your Strategy Is Overused

In the sales world, clever formulas tend to spread quickly.

Maybe you come up with a funny connect email on Tuesday. By next Tuesday, four of your prospects have shared it with their sales teams. By that Friday, 20 salespeople have added it to their email library -- and by the time the month is over, half the buyers you contact have already seen your message in some shape or form. They’ll be less amused than when the contents were fresh.

To avoid sounding like every other salesperson out there, vary your messaging as soon as you see it appear somewhere else. And be wary of imitating other reps’ soundbites or templates too closely. If you think they’re worth imitating, chances are, the other sellers in your space do too, so put your own spin on things before you lift a best practice.

2) Your Messaging Doesn’t Feel Authentic

Are your emails, voicemails, and positioning statements full of jargon, buzzwords, and hyperbole? Do you sound more like a product brochure than a person? If you were selling to a friend, would you be embarrassed by your messages?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of those questions, edit yourself. Messaging that feels off to you will feel off to your prospects as well. You’ll seem less genuine, which makes it harder to form a productive, mutually trusting relationship down the line.

As a thought exercise, rewrite your existing templates as though you were talking to yourself. This mindset will help you hone in on the phrasing and examples that don’t feel like “you.” As an added benefit, you’ll naturally use less forced, more casual language.

Don’t use your rewritten content word-for-word, since it will probably be too familiar for your prospects. Instead, create new content that strikes a balance between your existing templates and your rewritten ones.

3) Marketing’s Messaging Changes

Sales and Marketing should always be in sync; after all, it’s confusing for buyers to get information from a customer case study and then hear conflicting information from a salesperson.

If your team has a dedicated marketer, set up regular lines of communication so you’re always on the same page. That might be monthly meetings, an email alias for updates and announcements, training sessions, or some combination of the above.

If your organization doesn’t have anyone specifically devoted to product marketing, you can still arrange regular check-ins with the employees who create bottom-of-the-funnel content (such as product pages, product videos, customer testimonials, and so forth).

Finally, it’s a good idea to browse your organization’s website once a month or so (depending on how frequently it’s updated) to make sure your messaging doesn’t contradict anything.

4) Your Ideal Customer Changes

Companies frequently update, add, or remove specific buyer personas. Be conscious of which personas you’re targeting with your templates. When your organization’s strategy changes, adapt your messaging accordingly.

For example, maybe one of your email sequences is a hit with recruiting managers, while another does well with directors of culture. If your company decides to sell exclusively to recruiting managers, it would be wise to delete the second sequence and create more like the first.

(Not sure which messaging resonates with which audiences? Try A/B testing your emails. Send 10 versions of one template and 10 versions of another template to the same persona and see which template receives more responses. Repeat this exercise with different templates and personas.)

5) You Discover a New Statistic or Insight

Prospects are likelier to work with salespeople who offer unique suggestions, new data, and innovative solutions to their challenges. Strive to include helpful, relevant tips and surprising facts in your conversations with buyers -- whether those conversations take place via email, voicemail, or verbal dialogue.

To keep your guidance helpful, relevant, and surprising, periodically change it. A stat that was impressive five months ago could be old news today. If you haven’t updated your content with a new one, buyers won’t feel motivated to respond and learn more.

You might feel intimidated by the idea of consistently finding share-worthy information. However, your customers can be a fantastic resource. Periodically review your notes to find their most common problems. Then, analyze the various problem-solving approaches they tried. Were any significantly more successful? You can suggest those strategies to future prospects.

In addition, keep track of industry news and develop ideas on how buyers should react to and/or take advantage of these events.

Lastly, remember you have an unparalleled view into your prospect’s competition. This access lets you identify industry, product, and/or market-wide trends. For example, maybe you observe that 30% of your prospects have invested in a certain solution type. As long as you don’t share specific names, you can pass this detail along to buyers.

Creating new templates takes time and energy, but it’ll pay off in a higher response rate. Stay alert for these five events so your messaging is as effective as possible.

You only have 13 more days to clean out your pipeline in 2016 and turn it into revenue.

Yet, prospects at this time will naturally want to push the decision off to next year. They have many “urgent” last minute things they want to get done. They also have difficulty getting buy-in from other stakeholders in the organization since the stakeholders have their own end-of-year things they need to get done too.

While the end of the year means more distractions, there’s also more opportunity. Many companies need to use up this year’s budget and finalize next year’s budget. As a result, there’s a 5x increase in spending in the final week of the fiscal year compared to spending in the average week.

Here are 6 things you can do to push people through to the finish line!

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1. Save your prospects time in 2017

The B2B sales process can take months. And for many companies, it’s only getting longer—53% of B2B buyers reported that the length of their purchase cycle has increased. You can either watch prospects delay making a decision or help them finish one more task before the year ends.

There was a reason they wanted to buy: They believed your product could provide value to their business. Tell them if they purchase now, you can help them import their data, invite users, or create a workflow to kickstart January 2017. Otherwise, they’ll waste that month on purchasing or onboarding.

2. Make them an offer they can't refuse

Run a special end of year promotion, or give the prospect a special deal. There are four kinds of incentives SaaS businesses can offer:

1. Discount: "If you buy before the end of the year, you'll get a 10% discount, so you'll save [x] dollars next year per seat that you buy now."
2. Special features or higher tier plans: "If you buy now, you're going to get the business version of our product for the basic price plan." It's basically also a discount—the difference is that you increase the value rather than lower the price.
3. Buy 1, get 2: "If you buy by the end of the year, you'll get a free seat for every seat that you purchase. So if you buy three seats, you'll actually get six seats." Buy 1, get 1 free works for SaaS businesses too :)
4. Special services: "If you buy this week, you're going to get our Advanced Customer Acquisition training package for free." Think about special support packages, consulting packages, training, onboarding ... whatever it is. Make any kind of special service to help them succeed with your SaaS product free.  

However, don’t use discounts as a crutch all the time. According to research by Price Intelligently, while SaaS discounts can help you reach your sales goals, there are drawbacks. Customers who receive aggressive discounts are more price sensitive, churn at a higher rate, and have a lower lifetime value.

The best deals have a limited time frame and target prospects who are on the fence.  

If you want to learn how to get more customers without discounts or short-term tactics, get your free copy of our soon-to-be-released B2B customer acquisition guide for startups!

3. Save them from upcoming price increases

As your product grows and matures, and you offer more value, you're probably going to increase its price.  Let existing customers and prospects know in advance. It's a great incentive for them to make a quick buying decision so that they can lock in at the current (lower) pricing.

When we increased the prices for our sales CRM, we grandfathered existing customers and current trial accounts. We also gave them the option to add new user seats at the old prices if they did it within the 14-day period before the price increase. However, after 14 days, they would have to pay the new (higher) prices.

This led to a huge bump in sold seats for Close.io during the 14-day period and our average customer lifetime value increased by over 10%. Customers saved money and we closed more deals. That’s a win-win.

4. Give them exclusive limited access

If your product is new, or you release a major new plan, you can invite prospects to a limited alpha or beta.

For instance, before we started Close.io, we ran ElasticSales, an on-demand sales team for startups. We gave ourselves one month to find a customer. Yet, by telling prospects we were running a limited beta with only two spots, we had seven companies that wanted to pay us money in only 2 weeks.  

Tell your prospect:

• "This looks like a really great fit, but I want you to know that we are going to run a limited alpha—which means that only 10 companies will get access to our product. We currently have around 40 companies interested in participating. We're now trying to identify which ones will be the best candidates for this alpha so that we'll be able to support and turn them into massive success stories."
• "You'll have to make a decision within ____ (the next x days/weeks) because we'll launch the alpha on ____ (state a date)."
• "It's first-come, first-served. So whenever one company that we believe to be a great fit decides to go ahead, they get the next limited spot."
• "We only have four more spots left, let's make sure that we don't lose this opportunity. So let me give you all the information and support you need to be able to make a decision as quickly as possible."

By limiting access to your product, you create scarcity, which creates urgency to make a decision and enhances the perceived value of your offer.

5. Ask your manager to reach out (backchannel sales)

Tried everything and still at a roadblock? Don’t go at it alone. Get help by asking your manager (or someone else) to follow up with the prospect.

Prospects typically distrust salespeople, assuming that salespeople only want to make a quick dollar. Trying harder to convince them that your solution is valuable and worth buying can backfire. They’ll just think, “Of course, what a typical salesperson.” Backchannel sales, or selling by involving other people, works because it can reassure prospects they’re not being tricked or conned.

Having your manager follow up with a prospect is simple. Tell your manager, “This deal needs a little nudge. Can you help me? Please send this prospect an email, you can just copy and paste the following.”

Make sure the email contains the context around the deal, the contact details, and the copy-and-paste ready message so they only need to hit send. 20 seconds of their time. That’s all it takes to possibly close a deal faster.

6. When nothing else works—ask for a personal favor

You’d be surprised how many times salespeople successfully ask the prospect to buy now as a personal favor. “You’d make my year if you just pull the trigger now, even if payment starts in January. Do me a favor and help me make this the greatest year of my career and buy now!”

Asking a prospect for help shifts the conversation’s dynamics. They aren’t used to salespeople opening up to them this way. By putting your guard down, they’ll put theirs down too.

Missed pipeline in December is your kickstart in January

With all this pushing to convert your pipeline, never forget that you only want to close successful customers and that lost opportunities in December are fresh opportunities in January.

Make sure to follow up like a champ and you’ll turn a lot of these postponed deals in 2016 into big deals in 2017.

A little gift from us to you

Want to pick the brains of 2 successful startup CEOs? Hiten Shah and I created “The ultimate guide to growing your B2B startup from 0 to 1,000+ customers”—and we’re giving it away for free! We have grown several successful startups from zero and are going to show you how to do the same, no matter what stage you’re at.

Recommended reading

SaaS sales: How to create urgency to close deals NOW
How can you accelerate a sale when a prospect is delaying the purchasing decision? Three SaaS sales strategies + four tactics to create urgency and close the deal faster.

Prospect says they'll buy soon? Ask this question!
You're on a sales call with a prospect, and the say they'll buy soon. Here's the question you should ask them to seal this deal.

Are your prospects postponing the purchase? Do this!
Have a prospect who would be a perfect fit, yet puts off the purchase indefinitely? Here's how buying your product becomes a priority for your prospect...

I was reading a book by Dan Kennedy yesterday and he quoted another author on the topic of achieving what you want. I don’t remember the other author’s name, or even the quote exactly, but it was something like this:

“To win, forget results. Focus on process.”

As an example, he explained that if you want to improve your golf score, you don’t focus on hitting hole-in-ones. You focus on fundamentals like your grip and your swing, and the results will naturally follow.

Likewise, in negotiating, he explained that there’s no way to force someone to give in to your demands, unless of course you’re in the Mafia – as The Godfather put it, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse!”

The same is true in sales. You cannot control the outcome of a sale. There are too many variables – the prospect’s ability to pay, their real need or desire for the product, whether the prospect can even make the buying decision or if it must go to committee, and so on.

However, there is one thing you CAN control in sales. One and only one thing. And those are our sales activities.

Control Sales Activities To Get More Sales

I’ve said many times that in sales, you’re paid ONLY for completed sales. You’re not paid for going to appointments, for time spent driving in your car, for cold calling, for going to sales meetings & mandatory training, and so on. The ONLY thing you get paid a commission for is a completed sale.

No exceptions.

But far too many salespeople, and especially sales managers, don’t seem to understand this. Remember my article about the myth that “if X number of sales equals X number of appointments and X percentage of appointments turns into a sale and each sale is worth X, then each cold call puts X dollars in your pocket!”

Of course that old line is a lie and a sham, because if it were true, companies would pay salespeople per cold call, not per completed sale!

The truth is that no one really cares how or where you get your leads. All they care about is that you bring in completed sales. That’s why we have sales quotas. Only the dumbest and most mismanaged of companies have activity quotas. (But, sadly, some actually do.)

To Get More Sales, Forget About Sales Results

Unfortunately, to go back to the golf analogy, most salespeople shoot for the hole-in-one. They don’t focus on the fundamentals.

That’s also why most salespeople fail.

The truth of the matter is that, unless you’re The Godfather, you can’t force people to buy. All you can do is take them through a natural, logical sales process that induces them to buy.

In the books Napoleon Hill wrote on sales – he spent part of his early career as a sales trainer – he explained that a good salesperson never has to use “closes.” A good salesperson takes the prospect through a natural process that induces them to simply and willingly BUY in the end.

A Sales Process That Works – and One That Doesn’t

If you’re going to expect sales success, you must begin each and every sales interaction correctly, right from the start – remember, focus on the process, not the result!

The absolute worst way to begin a sales transaction is with a cold call. For starters, 80% of decision makers simply don’t take them anymore (source: University of North Carolina’s Business School), so you’re restricted to dealing with the 20% of the market that is bombarded with salespeople, and has extremely high sales resistance as a result.

You also put yourself in a position of weakness. A basic law of negotiation is that the person who displays, up-front, that they have a need is in the weak position, and by making a cold call, you communicate that you need a sale.

The key to sales success, and a correct sales process that DOES result in sales is, therefore, to stop cold calling. Forever.

And let’s face it – there’s really no sense in continuing to cold call when even university studies have concluded that 4 out of 5 people will never respond. That’s pretty bad odds. And in terms of actual sales results, it’s even worse than that.

In today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, skip low-results activities like cold calling and focus on leveraged, high-return methods to prospect for new customers.