Rnordman

PESO Your Way to Sales

For B2B executives, investing in social can feel like a pointless and expensive endeavor. The common feeling is that B2B customers are on LinkedIn and that’s the only place to be that makes sense. While that is partially true, there is a whole world of influencers available across the social spectrum.

Gini takes her PESO model of Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media and employs social to integrate it for authority, thought leadership, and sales conversion for B2Bs. Her successful approach has shown her first-hand that the power of social for B2Bs is in influencing the influencers.

Customers have a gatekeeper that filters their professional purchasing pool. Using social platforms beyond LinkedIn helps B2Bs to network and get past the gatekeeper; allowing a conversation with the customer directly or with somebody that has influence over them.

Adding in a team that coordinates content deployment throughout the online community, she knows how to cast a wide social net that works for B2Bs.

In This Episode

• How B2B social leads to indirectly influencing the customers of your customer
• Why successful social for B2B means moving beyond LinkedIn
• How robust content leads to impactful social variety across all channels
• Why your website does not, and never will, get the most traffic
• How to use numbers to your advantage in marketing

Quotes From This Episode

“Every potential customer in the world has people, either in their organization or outside their organization, who influence their decision.” —@jaybaer

“Pinterest drives a ton of really qualified leads for students, where the other social networks don’t do that.” —@ginidietrich

“You do have content specific to social. You do have Instagram stories that don’t live on your site.” —@ginidietrich (highlight to tweet)

“As social becomes more multimedia, it becomes content in a way that it wasn’t in the past.” —@jaybaer (highlight to tweet)

“PR professionals should have a way to learn about how the industry has evolved.” —@ginidietrich (highlight to tweet)

“It’s not math, it’s data, and you’re going to read it. You’re not doing calculus. You’re not doing algebra. We’re reading data, and we’re using that to make really good decisions.” —@ginidietrich

“My biggest pet peeve from a social and content perspective is that we haven’t figured out how to measure it consistently.” —@ginidietrich

Resources

• Gini Dietrich on Twitter: @ginidietrich
• Arment Dietrich on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
• Spin Sucks
• Spin Sucks Pro
• Spin Sucks Pro Mastermind Group
• Inside PR

What’s your one tip for becoming a social pro?

Gini’s tip is a simple one: you have to participate in social. That means you can’t delegate and you can’t watch from the sidelines. You need to choose something, anything, and at least start from there. If you like writing, create a blog. If you like taking pictures, join Instagram. Find what you love and get good at that via social.

If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who would it be?

Going the timely and political route, Gini would snag some Skype time with Donald Trump to hear his ideas from his own mouth and ask what the heck he’s thinking. At the very least, it would be entertaining.

       

The post Feed the Content Monster with the Help of a Closed-Circle Content Loop appeared first on Copyblogger.

Not all sales conversations end in closed deals–but that doesn’t mean that it’s an entirely losing situation. Learning from these setbacks is necessary for businesses and their sales organizations to grow.

In the typical customer lifecycle, evidence points to 65% of sales being lost due to indifference. Not learning from these mistakes will likely put your reps in the same cycle of nonchalance about getting new business, one of the most important matters for your company.

In the midst of these predicaments, sales managers have the responsibility and authority to steer the team toward more productive approaches. After all, the actions you take after these unfortunate situations determine what you and your team draw from these difficulties.

Is your team in a similar situation? Check out these three productive ways to approach lost deals.

Follow up with the prospect

Making the sale is always on top of any sales organization’s list. It’s the gauge by which a team’s performance is measured. However, there are times that a sale is just not in the cards. Transform this loss into an opportunity for growth–the growth of your relationship with the prospect.

The deal has fallen off, but the prospect is still a prospect. Use this time to build a deeper connection with them.

As a sales manager, it’s best to assign this goal to the person who lost the sale. Besides, they have the most knowledge about what transpired throughout the buyer’s journey. However, there are situations where this might not work; suppose the salesperson is visibly frustrated by the lost deal. If this is so, you have to delegate the task or do it yourself. Whatever the case, have the primary rep introduce the person doing the follow up before starting any substantial conversation. This way, the prospect will not feel like they’re being passed around.

The first order of business is to get directly in touch with the prospect to perform an autopsy of the deal. Yes, it’s fine to contact the prospect and ask why the deal fell through. If possible, meet with them in person at their convenient time. If not, call them over a video conferencing software or over the phone.

Avoid using email for this purpose at all costs. The prospect probably had an equally unpleasant experience–remember, the act of rejecting could be just as distressing as getting rejected–and they may be reluctant to get in touch again. Connecting with them through email gives a big window for them to not respond; it’s too impersonal.

During the meeting or call, make sure that your sincerity clearly comes across. You are not there to convince them to turn their decision around. You are there for two things: First is to get some insight as to why the deal didn’t push through. Second is to continue the relationship with the prospect.

For the purposes of the second point, it’s important to exercise grace and humility, especially when talking directly about their decision. Do not bad mouth your competitors.

Try to provide value whenever you can as they are still your prospects and doing business in the near future still isn’t out of the cards.

Make this post-mortem sequence a regular practice for your teams. Make these calls without expecting the deals to be won back. This is a chance to learn how and what to improve so your chances of winning the next deals go up.

Conduct a post-deal investigation

For high-ticket B2B deals, the sales process is long and sophisticated. The prospect probably talked to several sales reps and maybe even people from other departments. Resources and time have been spent to get their business. To a degree, the team members involved in this big opportunity are probably emotionally invested in the sale.

From the other end of the line, it’s highly likely that your reps have been in touch with several people as well. According to CEB Global, an average of 5.4 people are involved in the sizeable buying decisions.

When a deal of this nature ends with a no, everyone wants to know why. As the sales manager, it is your duty to ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands the factors that contributed to the failure.

The best way to find out is to conduct a post-deal investigation.

Just imagine what happens in a sports team’s locker room after a huge upset. Will the coach be yelling? Saying everything’s alright? Going straight to the game replay?

It depends on the situation.

What needs to be emphasized is that this is a crucial coaching moment. Being sensitive and patient but firm is important.

The key to conducting an effective post-sale investigation is letting your reps and other team members think through the situation independently. Calling them into a huddle just to tell them what you think should’ve happened is ineffective and a waste of everyone’s time.

Go over call recordings, notes, and meeting minutes together. Let the person primarily involved take the lead in examining each step. Ask questions that will guide the team toward making meaningful observations and inferences.

Go over some or all of these:

• Was there a lapse in putting together the prospect’s profile?
• Was it the lack of research that resulted in the failure to use the right messaging?
• Maybe it was a shortcoming on the part of the salesperson handling the call?
• Did they miss buying cues?
• Did they deviate from the sales process?
• Were they not the right person to handle such a call?
• When did the momentum turn?

These questions help everyone see different components of the buyer’s journey objectively. Paired with your sharp coaching sensibilities, these questions help reps turn the negative into positive.

Important note: These meetings shouldn’t be reserved for big deals. Schedule regular review meetings with your sales team. This way, they will always be aware of what to watch out for in-call, and they will develop analytical skills that help them better navigate your sales cycle.

Don’t dwell on the lost deal

Losing deals is part of the game.

As a sales manager, you need to ensure that your reps continue to improve their ability to manage their emotions. Even if it was their shortcomings that cost the sale, the best way to move forward is to do some self-examination. Only through this approach will they do a better job selling to new prospects.

If they didn’t answer questions as thoroughly as you wanted, tell them to hit the product modules and ensure they take that to heart. This way, they’ll be confident and able to answer prospects’ questions about the product in future calls.

For the person most accountable for the lost deal, ask them to think about how to build new relationships with new key decision makers, applying what they’ve learned in this particular loss.

That said, it’s important to always teach and remind them to think as a team.

Watch out for bad behavior that might come out of the woodwork during this tough time. Ill-mannered acts like blaming others don’t have a place in a sales organization. Helping others recognize their weaknesses and help them improve them is the key to healthy team life.

Dust off your shoulders and walk into the next opportunity.

This is what you have to make your reps understand: The only way to recover from the heartbreak of a lost deal is to sell more.

FEE AS FEELING: THE TENTH LAW OF PRICING

Always remember: don’t forget to keep on selling. Put that coffee down, coffee’s for closers only.

Are you a brilliant genius when it comes to search engine optimization? Are you a digital PR god? Do you live and breathe social media marketing? Even if you’re coddled by a sales team or protected by the full force of an agency, developing the skills associated with selling and marketing. In the same vein, are you el jefe of a band of brilliant gurus who take your insane signed contracts with unrealistic sky high promises out the wazoo only to run with it and actually dominate in the end? It’s 2016! Everyone needs to always be selling, always be closing (ABC).

Actually, “needs” is the wrong word for it: everyone should always be closing — or learning how to develop their networks and learning how to speak well and compellingly about your company and your products and services.

Outside of the companies I sold, ran, or owned, none of the companies I actually just worked for offered sales commissions to their employees until I started working for New Media Strategies when I was 32 — I was lucky employee 13.

They offered 20% to anyone in the company who landed clients and since I was a senior guy relegated to a junior position (I really wanted to work at NMS), that 20% was a strong motivator, something I couldn’t replicate when I jumped ship to Edelman Public Affairs. While I did get a bump in salary and position when I made the move to their elite digital team, salary can never touch sales commissions — even doctors, lawyers, lobbyists, kings and queens envy the top sellers.

Yes, you heard me correctly a couple paragraphs back: there are a ton of companies who are willing to offer between 10%-20% commission to anyone who can land them a solid client. You don’t even need to be a member of the company, you just need to sort out some paperwork and bona fides before you start counting your money.

But even if you can line up a string of very grateful and generous partners who would be ecstatic to pay you upwards of 20% or more (often depending on how far towards the goal you can drive the ball), you also need to become a salesman. Yes, a salesman (yes, take a second to recover from throwing up in your mouth a little bit).

Becoming a salesman is inevitable, especially if you don’t want to age out of your industry. I’m 46 right now and there are two paths that can keep me making a professional income well into my 60s or even 70s: become Richard Edelman or Peter Corbett and either rule a multi-generational agency empire or simply become “retire comfortably at 40” rich; or, you can start spinning gold from all of the high-level straw you’ve been collecting over the course of your forty-something-year career.

Selling is hard. People value your connections. There’s a money value and it’s more than the 1%, 4%, etc, that affiliate marketing can offer, and surely a lot more than anything you can get from Google AdSense and Amazon Associates. That said, you can take advantage of contextual advertising and affiliate marketing in a vacuum.

What selling does — and why there’s such a premium on it — is takes you out of that comfortable friendship based stage and holds you accountable for taking the relationship to the next level: financial, business, transactional, service-based, accountable — where you can really put your good name and sterling reputation on the line, vouching for and swearing fealty to the company, brand, service you’re doing the selling for. If you think public speaking is tough for most people, if you think leaning over and making the first move and going for the kiss on the first date is overwhelming, asking someone to trust you and trust their money to someone you work for or partner with can be steps too far for most people — even most salespeople really suck at being salespeople, if you can believe it or not.

As you move throughout your career, you’ll make a lot of friends and colleagues, even if you’re an exceptionally antisocial psychopath. You’ll fill up your LinkedIn and (Plaxo?) and contact database and even your Christmas card list. You’ll fill your pants pockets with business cards, sometimes from MOO and VistaPrints, sometimes Letterpress from Etsy.

I just got off the phone with my old friend Michael Bernstein, developer extraordinaire and former Zope and Plone bestie, and we realized that we’ve been out of touch for probably over a decade. We realized together that while we have so many contacts, so many people with whom we’ve crossed paths, so many people with whom we’ve worked, competed, collaborated, met at conferences, at pubs and bars and meetings, so many besties, BFFs, exes, mentors, and protégés who have come in and out of our lives, across the spectrum of business, experiences, passions, métiers, professions, cultures, and offerings, and yet not even Michael and I could keep in better touch.

I know what I am doing about it. A few weeks ago I explained in painful detail as to what I planned to do — and am doing — when it comes to reviving all of those network connection, at least on LinkedIn, Remember to market to your own influencer network. And it’s going well and has not only brought Mr. Bernstein back into my life but also has resulted in lunches, dinners, drinks, and dozens of calls with people I had connected to absentmindedly on LinkedIn and also with people with whom I had also really been close to, whether it be in the context of business or pleasure.

Also, because I explicitly asked to connect for reasons of business and pleasure, and because I was pointedly looking for business partnerships and professional relationships, I have been able to create quite a potentially profitable and formalize sales channel with a number of exceptional new channel partners — new partners being added weekly!

Selling is to hunting like marketing is to trapping. While trapping might very well still be a form of hunting — I understand that — and while, yes, farming and gathering and gardening are active and not passive, marketing still demands building or choosing the perfect trap for whatever it is you want to catch. (What is fishing? Hunting or trapping? Couldn’t it even be considered farming?)

Either way, don’t spend all of your time preparing or storing your food; additionally, you need to stop depending on others to do all of your hunting for you. You have all the tools right now that would allow you to become self-sufficient and avoid the closing doors of automation, robotics, AI, and outsourcing: selling is something only you can do! Only you have the exact friends, family, soul, character, reputation, and experience that you do. No self-aware entity living on the cloud or even the most savvy and brilliant resident of Bengali can replace your network, personal relationships, integrity, and reputation even though, day by day, they’ll handily be able to replace every single one of your products and services.

You pretty psyched? Good! Now, good luck and go git ’em, tiger!

Stop Posting! Engage, Interact and Be Social.

Those who have listened to me speak or had an opportunity to talk with me privately know I am far less concerned about consistency in posting new content to pages and profiles than I am with clients being consistently engaged.

Creating content is vital. Done right it will help create and nurture relationships, it establishes authority and drives action. BUT your content should play a supportive role.

Social media sites are networking opportunities.

They’re about creating engagement and social interaction. Ideally you want it to occur on your content but, that’s not the reality for a small business. Stop fighting to make that happen.

What if you simply started to engage on the content of others?

Things happen when you do:

You become visible. Sitting back and posting content on your pages doesn’t get you seen (at least most of the time). Engaging where others are does. At a minimum, engaging elsewhere at least gets you see by the content author.

You create opportunities. Sitting on your ass will get you nowhere. If you want something you need to make it happen. Being active and engaged is the best way to find and create opportunities.

You drive attention back to your content. Simple psychology. (channeling Wade Harman here). If you add a great, value added comment or are visible on my content often enough, at some point I’m going to get curious. I will look your profile or page. I will read if your content is good (the supporting role I mentioned earlier). I may sign up for a newsletter, fill out a form, or buy. We all get the notifications when other look at our profile on LinkedIn. How often do you go back and look at who checked you out?

The simple act of engaging on the content of others with value added, quality content (had you even considered that your comments are a form of content? That regular commenting is essentially creating consistent, visible content?) will get you and your core content seen. At the very least, it provides for opportunity.

How well does it really work?

Back in July I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed and came across this post from April Torrestorija. April owns Noire & Jet Coffee. It’s a subscription based coffee company (and pardon me for being a coffee snob – it’s pretty damn good coffee at a great price!)

While it’s the type of post most LinkedIn purists hate, I thought it was funny and added a smartass comment. April responded and we had a nice conversation.

Normally when I add a comment on someone else’s post, I’m used to them looking at my profile. In this case, the comment didn’t drive the profile view BUT the resulting interaction peaked MY curiosity. I took the opportunity to learn more about April.

April is in Tucson, AZ. That was an opportunity trigger for me. It was something I could use to further build a relationship with April. I spent 23 years in Tucson. I sent her this private message:

My message lead to an ongoing conversation (we are still in touch with each other), some free advice on her website, April confirmed just this morning she will be attending my October workshop and I have referred others to her site. April also has a resource now she can leverage when she needs to make a connection.

A simple smartass comment grew a relationship, provided a resource for someone else and generated business.

The best part….. It took less than 5 minutes on my feed! That’s a far cry from the time involved to find and create new content, properly post it and work to get others to find it (which still will not likely happen).

Shift How You Approach Social Media: Engage!

You can argue this method works for me because I have good core content already. I have a decade of experience. True but…..

Back in August, Deborah Olive, owner of Deborah Olive Consulting attended one of my LinkedIn workshops. I discussed this concept as part of the class. Deborah listened and put it into practice for herself. Within a couple of weeks, she created an opportunity for herself using my approach:

Deborah’s simple like and comment opened up a relationship opportunity and the potential for business at a local networking event because she was active, visible and engaged. The opportunity was not created by content posted on her profile.

The Bottom Line – Stop, Post Less, Engage More

If you are listening to all of the so-called experts preaching content first, stop and ask yourself how much time and effort are you putting in and what are you getting in return?

Unless you are seeing results like the examples above, I challenge you to post less and spend your time engaging and interacting. Then let me know how much better it’s working for you.

A LinkedIn profile is a staple of contemporary business professionals – virtually everyone has one or is aware that they should.

But that does NOT mean that the average business professional’s LinkedIn profile is up to standard. In fact, there are a lot of very competent business people out there whose LinkedIn profile doesn’t reflect their professionalism.

Here are a few of easiest mistakes to avoid with your LinkedIn profile:

1. Bad headshot or no headshot.

Clear and crisp. Friendly, smiling face. Not necessarily a traditional, formal business shot. But certainly NEVER have no picture. You might as well wear a bag on your head.

2. No phone number in contact information.

They say LinkedIn is the new business card. So why can I not find your phone number on your LinkedIn profile? Are you afraid people might call you? I can probably find your phone number online if I look hard enough, so why are you making it so inconvenient for people to contact you?

3. No email address.

Same as above. Why are you playing “hard to get in contact with”?

4. Bad professional headline.

Don’t waste your professional headline on LinkedIn by simply repeating your job title. Why say you’re a “Financial Advisor” when you can call yourself “The Personal CFO for Busy Physicians”?

5. No summary on your profile.

It’s a free-form space that you can use to give us your elevator pitch. What do you do? Why do you do it? What’s your value proposition. Without a summary, you’re missing your chance to make an impression.

6. No visuals on your summary.

LinkedIn allows you to attach images, videos or slide decks to your summary. Ever been interviewed on the news or featured in an article? Got any good pictures of yourself in action? Good visuals attract attention. And, really, almost anything will be better than just plain text.

7. Leaving the default resume format.

LinkedIn started as a kind of resume posting site, but has evolved into much more. If you’re not looking for a traditional fulltime job, then the default resume format may not be doing much for you. All the sections of your profile can be moved around into a custom order. So, do it. Emphasize your publications, or your credentials, or your volunteer commitments. Sell yourself.

8. Not connecting with people.

What are you doing on a social network if you’re not being social? Accept connection requests from people you know and want to be connected to. Initiate connections after you meet people. (And please don’t tell me the question going through your head right now is “why connect with people on LinkedIn?”)

9. Not paying attention to people.

The easiest and best way to increase your visibility online is to PAY ATTENTION to others. Yup, just like networking in real life: be interested, not interesting. Paying attention to your network will bring many benefits that flagrant self-promotion will never equal.

10. Set it and forget it.

Your LinkedIn profile should be evolving and changing as you do. When you publish new articles or are featured in the media, update your profile. If you haven’t reviewed your profile in a year, you’re missing the point of LinkedIn.

And we haven’t even covered why you aren’t sharing relevant content with your connections on LinkedIn, but that’s a whole other level of thinking.

A good LinkedIn profile is not going to unleash a torrent of qualified prospects (in whatever business you happen to be in) knocking on your door. But a bad LinkedIn profile may send a few packing.

In the automotive industry, we know our customers are doing a ton of research online before they make a purchase in our showroom. If we don’t impress our customers at first glance with our website, provide them excellent downloadable content to help navigate them through their buying journey, and stay connected with them while they are still deciding if and when they are ready to buy, we could be missing out on a large portion of sales volume for the month.

Here’s how to stay connected with you customers until they’re ready to buy.

A Website Built For Mobile Shopping

You need to provide a website experience that is built for mobile devices. When was the last time you looked at your website on a mobile device? Could it use an update? Most shoppers use their mobile device for shopping so if you’re website isn’t providing them with a fast and smooth experience, it’s time to update it or risk losing this connection point with your customers.

Calls to Action

Give your visitors reasons to hit the submit button on your website by including graphically designed calls-to-action buttons throughout your website with offers your customers would find helpful. Include relevant ebooks, your monthly educational newsletter or buying guides for your vehicles to stay connected to your customers and keep your dealership on top of mind as they continue to research before buying.

Lead Nurturing

Often times customers aren’t ready to purchase yet, but staying connected with them is important. By utilizing lead nurturing emails you’re not only able to stay on top of mind with your customers, but also provide them with information to help them make their purchase decision. These automated email campaigns are great because they allow you to segment your buyers to allow your sale steam to focus on those ready to buy now while the lead nurturing campaigns can help you stay connected with those who may not be ready just yet. These emails can include information about your specials, offer at test drive or include some of your educational content like a free checklist.

Stream’s Kick-Start Step:

Think about sales from the customers point of view. Do you see holes you could patch up to stay connected with them? Make a list of areas you can focus on this month and work to improve those areas of communication to always provide the customer with what they need until they are ready to buy.

When you are trying to drill down on a business issue with the largest impact, you need a great sales discovery process that demonstrates your perspective and positive business intent. You need solid questions, if you want to effectively map your value to their business problems.

It is important to understand, however, that you have to ask the tough questions, those that help a prospect realize the impact his/her lack of decision or action is having on their business. These questions make the prospect stand in the moment of pain he/she is experiencing with their current business processes. These questions help both the seller and the buyer. They open the door for a conversation about where the client wants/needs to take the business in the future.

But, you have to earn the right to ask those burning questions. You can’t just go into the conversation and rip someone’s face off. If you start your meeting or call with a hard-hitting, “what are you going to do if” type question, your prospect will shut down. Depending on the question, they may even throw you out.

BUILD BUSINESS ACUMEN IN YOUR SALES DISCOVERY PROCESS

When you begin a discovery session, start with your general questions. Then, with each additional question, move towards the tougher topics. Each question should get a little more uncomfortable. It may get uncomfortable for you, too. Getting comfortable being a little uncomfortable is what it’s all about.

In the interest of full disclosure; I’ve experienced both situations above. I learned early in my career, however, that even the best clients need to know that your intent is about their business first. Asking questions that are focused on the business first and the pain second will make these tougher questions more fluid for you as a seller and the reasoning behind them more clear for the buyer.

Have confidence in yourself as you ask the questions. Of course, this confidence comes from preparation. Remember, you’re having this conversation for a reason. Customers know what you do for a living. If a customer isn’t interested in talking about solving tough business issues, then you’re talking to the wrong person.

Get comfortable with your customer being uncomfortable.

Remember, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. How big is the problem? You have to be willing to help to help the customer fan the flames.

You need to use discovery to get to the negative consequences that are so pressing, your prospect needs to stop them right away. Uncovering that pain is the first step to your buyers (1) correcting the issue and (2) seeing a return on their investment with your company.

One mistake I often see from salespeople, is that they have a tendency to move too quickly from the negative consequences to the positive business outcomes or the success metrics associated with the solution.

It’s human nature for a salesperson. We are “fixers” and we want to help with the products and services that our company has created. It’s obviously more fun to talk about the “positives” than the “pain” they’re experiencing right now. But, if you aren’t comfortable talking to a prospect about those pain points, you’ll never uncover a problem that’s worth solving.

Don’t forget, effective discovery allows you to qualify deals in or out much earlier. If you let your prospect off the hook and jump right into telling him/her about your solution or the value that solution will bring to the business, you won’t have the information you need to move forward or more importantly, move on.

Finish Strong

If it’s time to move forward, remember to finish strong. There’s a lot of you out there that have finished a great sales call and gained great knowledge about the business problem and impact, but weren’t sure how to end the call.

Don’t just ask the generic, “What would be the best next steps?”

Remember, your discovery conversation should’ve been completely focused on the customer. If you executed your discovery right, then your next meeting should focus more on your solution. I always finished my discovery sessions, by first asking if there’s anything I missed in the conversation that should’ve been included. That answer helps fuel my follow-up. Then, I gain commitment on the next part of the conversation. I’ll say something like:

“What I’d like to do is to come back next Tuesday and talk with you about what a solution could potentially look like along with how we do it and how (where) we’ve done it before.”

Because I (1) uncovered the business impact and (2) created urgency during my discovery session, my prospects are more than willing to schedule that next meeting.

You might find yourself wondering how your marketing and sales teams should interact. After all, these seemingly disparate teams play completely different roles within your organization. While it’s true that sales and marketing have different roles, they do have key similarities you can’t ignore.

They both engage with your customers and prospects, and together their actions deliver revenue.

Why Do You Need to Change?

In recent years, your sales team might have noticed that it is getting harder and harder to close deals. This difficulty is directly related to a fundamental shift in how your customers approach purchasing decisions.

The information your sales team offers may no longer align with the requirements of today’s buyers. For example, in the past, salespeople initiated the sales process via direct campaigns like cold calling. That strategy has gone out the window delivering a pitiful average connection rate of only 1 to 3 percent.

These days, buyers don’t wait for your salesperson to call, they start the sale process by going online to search for answers to the problems they face. Consumers no longer approach your sales team looking for basic information: They have already found it online.

The Role of Your Marketing Team

In response to these changes, your marketing department needs to maintain a presence in the online spaces where your buyers are looking for information, establishing a public authoritative voice on LinkedIn and other social media sites, as well as your website.

Today’s buyers view eight to 14 pieces of information online during their buying journey. Your team must engage with customers in these spaces, just as they would at networking events in the real world, to provide consumers with the answers they seek. Sharing your knowledge builds credibility with your prospects, thereby increasing the chance that they will contact your sales team when they are ready and ultimately convert into paying customers.

Matching Your Sales and Marketing Messages

More importantly, the answers your marketing team provides through the content they share online must match the messages given out by your sales team. Your customers don’t care whether they’re speaking with your sales or your marketing department, so you need to ensure that they get valuable, consistent, and correct information every time, and from every team in your organization.

(This also applies to your post sale customer support team, but that’s a blog for another time.)

Challenges in Enabling Marketing and Sales Interaction

The challenge in getting your marketing and sales teams to communicate is that they speak different languages. Marketing teams commonly send out broad, general messages; while sales teams focus on direct interaction and using the personal touch to close sales.

To convince these two different teams to talk to each other, you need to remind them that they can’t succeed without each other.

The First Step in Sales Enablement

The first step in getting your marketing and sales teams talking is to agree on the customers you desire to work with. Sales teams call this your ideal buyer and your marketers refer to this person as your audience persona.

Talk to your sales team to find out what kinds of customers bring in most of your revenue. Do they come from big organizations or small ones? Where are they located geographically?

Once you have identified this ideal buyer, you must ensure that this is the persona your marketing team is targeting. There is no point in targeting a particular group of people with marketing materials if they are unlikely to convert into customers.

Key Takeaway

Your sales and marketing teams must work together to increase your business’ visibility on and offline, connect with prospects, explore whether or not there is a fit and convert them to customers growing your business.

Don’t let these two teams stop communicating with each other. Encourage them to work together to identify the people who buy your products and align their messages to create a strong overall sales pitch.

In today’s hyper-competitive sales hiring landscape, the interview process can quickly become a daunting and drawn out process. Candidates are required to complete multiple interviews, behavioral assessments, and  psychometric testing. While it’s frustrating when you don’t get the sales job, understanding why you didn’t is your path to future success. Key Takeaways? Know your numbers, come prepared, and communicate with your references.

Here are the top ten reasons why you didn’t get the sales job, and what you can do about it:

1. You didn’t know your numbers

In sales, numbers reign supreme. Simply put, it’s rarely possible to ace an interview without knowing the specifics of your performance metrics. Top sellers know their performance metrics, so be specific in your knowledge. Before attending your next interview, ensure you are able to answer the following questions:

•         What was your quota?
•         How much of your quota was new sales versus repeat business?
•         What was the average deal size?
•         How much of your quota was made up of up-sells?
•         How long was your average sales cycle?
•         How many leads were given to you versus hunted?
•         What percentage of your targets did you achieve in the last year

2. You failed to come prepared

We live in a job market where each open corporate position is met with 250 resumes on average. Hiring managers are too pressed for time to allow for second chances if you fail to come prepared. It becomes clear to an interviewer when a candidate doesn’t know the product, market, industry, or challenges facing an organization. Often, they will be quick to cease communication with a candidate who has failed to commit at the most basic level of spending time to know the company.

The best sales candidates research the history, structure, and competitors of a given company. They go deeper by understanding the corporate strategy, key markets, ideal customer base, and corporate growth targets.

Come prepared with facts, statistics, or your own insights on how the company can surpass their sales goals and you will demonstrate your commitment to the role.

3. You weren’t the right cultural fit

While skills and experience are the first things to be analyzed in an interview process, it’s also important that the organization deems you a good fit for the company culturally. Generally, employers can judge whether or not a salesperson will be a cultural fit by asking you about your personal values and communication style, your understanding of the company’s values, and how you approach conflict, coaching, and feedback.

It can be hard to determine whether or not a candidate will be a good fit with a potential organization solely through the interview process, but employers need to ultimately determine if a candidate will integrate well with the current employees. While it’s frustrating to lose out on a sales job due to lack of cultural fit, studies have shown that 89% of hiring failures are due to cultural fit.

Read more about how to determine if you will be a good cultural fit here.

4. You didn’t use your resume as a selling tool

Your resume should be tailored to the specific skills, experience, and selling environment of each and every job you apply for. Because employers are only interested in hiring A players, you do not have the luxury of coming across as an “almost perfect” fit. You need to display from the first point of contact why you are an exact match for the position available, how your selling history matches this, and how your sales performance makes you a “can’t miss” candidate.

Read here for the best tips on how to construct a standout resume employers can’t say no to.

5.   Your cover letter was not targeted for the position

Much like a resume needs to be tailored for each sales role you apply for, your cover letter needs to add depth and texture to the basic information of your resume. Use your cover letter to tell a compelling story about your work experience. Instead of simply describing how you are a “motivated, driven, or ambitious individual,” give a succinct example about a time when you displayed these characteristics.

A cover letter is used as a way to evaluate a candidates ability to communicate. The best letters address the employer’s requirements in the position they are hiring for. Highlight key sales accomplishments, awards/accolades, sales methodology training, and industry experience.

6.   Another candidate was more qualified

Unfortunately, this is the reality of any job candidacy. Ask the hiring manager for the specific reasons why another candidate was considered a more qualified candidate. It will ultimately aid your job search going forward and provide you insight into what skills and experiences you need to build upon.

Some of the most common reasons another candidate attains a sales job candidacy are because they have:

• More experience selling in the required verticals
• Built out a larger book of business
• A longer proven track record of success
• More experience in a hunting role/developing new business
• Sold into the C-Suite

7. You lacked professionalism when speaking about past employers

Owning responsibility for your performance is a quality top salespeople fully embrace.  While it is possible that your departure from a previous company was under less than ideal circumstances, this should not factor into how you speak about a previous employer in an interview.

If the reason for separation between you and your last employer was due to personal differences or conflict, ensure you speak only to professional differences in the interview. Refrain from speaking badly about a former boss. Maintain a respectful demeanor and keep it professional.

Keep emotions out of any conversations regarding former employers, and always guide the conversation back to what you learned from the experience.

8. You failed to differentiate your value

As we have explained, top performing salespeople are different. The key to value differentiation in the interview process is to display your value early, and display it often. Above and beyond knowing your numbers and demonstrating a successful track record, demonstrate your ability to effectively communicate and build rapport. This is a competency employers need to see in their sales force. From the first point of contact, exhibiting your people skills and ability to establish relationships will gain any employer’s attention.

9. You didn’t leverage your network properly

It’s common knowledge that networking often leads to a job interview. In fact, hiring expert Lou Adler conducted a study which found that well over half of sales roles are filled through networking efforts. Candidates are successful at using networks to learn about positions, but overlook attaining information that will provide an edge in the interview process.

Think through what you would like to know about the culture of the sales team: the scope and expectations of the job, sales methodologies used, unique aspects of the interview process, or any specific requirements the sales team has.

Privately reach out to your professional networks, such as LinkedIn, and you will find the information you need. Be specific rather than general in your questions. You are getting information, not asking how to get the job.

10. Your references didn’t check out

According to a CareerBuilder survey, 62% of employers said that when contacting a reference, the reference didn’t have favorable things to say about the candidate. This is significant because prior to an offer of employment, reference checks are often the last step in the interview process. 

Ensure you have spoken to each reference in advance. Instead of hoping they will provide positive information on your behalf, ask them if they would recommend you to a potential employer. This is a clear way to determine if they will provide a positive reference. Inform your references that they should expect a call from your prospective employer. Remind them of any past accomplishments you had with them. Prepare them to speak to how you performed in your role with them.

Learn from your experience and advance your career

Rejection at some point of your hiring experience is to be expected given the competitive landscape of the sales workforce. While some aspects of job attainment are out of your control, understanding why you didn’t get the sales job will allow you to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Pay attention to the details of your resume and cover letter, be proactive in your communication with references, and know your numbers.

Looking for more insight on your next sales interview? Read this and ace it.

The post Didn’t Get the Sales Job? Here Are 10 Reasons Why appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

Despite their lack of popularity among many sellers, cold calls are still a primary first contact with sales leads.

The most effective cold callers are able to warm up the calls a bit with some simple planning. The following are several tips you can apply to your cold calling routine to improve your appointment setting efficiency.

1. Call the Right People

I’m serious. A common reason sellers develop a negative attitude toward cold calls is that they get tired of the rejection. When you contact people that have very little use for, and interest in your solution, rejection is the likely outcome.

Therefore, before you even pick up the phone, know the exact role of the person you are calling. Match a particular solution with the right buyer persona, prioritise contacts, and call with greater confidence in your ability to get in front of the right people.

2. Plan the Call

Some people view scripted calls as bad news. They think about the robotic, monotone, impersonal approach used by many traditional telemarketers.

However, a call outline or script that is practised well, can allow for greater flexibility regarding the direction of the conversation. It’s all about how you deliver it. Get that right and you will be on the right track to improving your success rate.

Even before you prepare scripts, develop a call blueprint. This map structures the conversation. It allows you to create the formula for the optimum call flow.

3. Deliver a Strong Introduction

A cold call introduction is the first message you deliver that includes who you are and the purpose of the call.

Do not start your call with “I’m sure you are busy so I won’t keep you long…” Don’t delve into your sales pitch. Instead, indicate the general value of your solution and what led you to contact that buyer.

And don’t forget to sound enthusiastic. There is nothing worse than listening to someone giving a sales pitch sounding like they would rather be anywhere else except speaking to you on the phone.

4. Ask Questions First

Engage your contact right away. People are naturally resistant to sales calls, especially when they are obvious.

If you want to have more effective cold calls, use your personality and show sincere interest to ask the prospect about his current business issues. Then, explain why your solution offers an appropriate remedy.

5. Focus on the Meeting

What’s the point of your call? The goal of a cold call is to get a meeting with your prospect. Say too much, and you give the prospect an easy out without ever meeting face-to-face.

Instead, intrigue the buyer with a powerful message about the value of your solution. Then, ask to meet to delve deeper into the issues and challenges they are facing for a specific amount of time, whether 15 or 30 minutes, to talk more in person.

If a buyer tries to get off the phone by saying, “Send me some information,” avoid the temptation to do so. Instead, assert the importance of meeting in person to investigate the business problem in more depth.

At the very least, if you can’t get a meeting straight away, find out more about the company’s buying process and who else is involved in the buying decision.

6. Investigate Alternative Methods

Yes, I know this is slightly self-promotional, however, no matter how you do it, cold calling is time-consuming and stressful for sales reps.

You can alleviate this pressure on your team and help them focus on nurturing opportunities by outsourcing your appointment setting. Internal Results collaborates with sales organisations to communicate your value proposition to chosen targets, and you only pay for actual appointments.

It frees up your team to focus on other areas and ensure you are meeting the right people at the right time in their buying process.

Wrap Up

Don’t fear cold calls. If you want to generate more effective cold calls, plan and execute effective strategies to communicate your value to the right people in the right way.

Emphasise a customer-centric attitude, listen to what your prospects are concerned about, and focus on getting a meeting so that you can take it to the next level.

We are excited to partner with your company to execute your initial contact with targeted prospects. Contact us to discuss your appointment setting goals.

Every year businesses of every size and in every industry are wasting thousands of dollars by going forward with new web design and development projects. And, it’s not just money that is getting wasted. Countless hours of teams of people are being spent over months to get these projects completed. The number of these projects that will ultimately show, literally, no improvement, is staggering! It’s critically important that businesses identify website problems before wasting money on a new website!

Stop Wasting Marketing Budgets

Why is so much money being wasted on these website design and development projects?

They certainly aren’t intending to waste money. These businesses are really trying to fix a problem. Their problems are poor results with their online business goals.

Depending on the type of business or organization, the goals will be different. They may be more sales for a business with an e-commerce site. It may be more sales leads for a b2b company. Or, it may be more members for an organization.

Regardless of the goal, these web design and development projects are begun with the best intentions of fixing the lack of satisfactory results that the business or organization currently is seeing.

Identify Website Problems

Best of intentions mixed with the absence of analysis will result in wasted resources.

Generally, when faced with poor online performance, businesses will, in the vast majority of cases, make the assumption that the problem is their website.

This may be because their website is the only real tangible online thing that they can see. It may be because they are unaware of all of the components necessary to realize online success. Or, it may be a lack of actionable analytics on what is really happening with their online efforts.

Regardless of the reason for diving into a new web design and development project, the fact is that before making this enormous commitment, it’s critically important that businesses identify the real reason that they aren’t getting the results that they want, from their online efforts.

How are professional services firms looking to generate new business?

Professional services plays host to a variety of industries including management consulting, accounting and financial services, integrators and technology development to name a few. The common factor among professional services firms is that it is hard to differentiate and break away from the crowd.

But why is it so difficult?

In the last 20 years the challenges and needs of business have dramatically changed as the buying cycle has become customer controlled and new technology has developed. This resulted in business’s needs changing at such a rate that it often outpaced the rate at which professional services firms could fill that need. This mean that the professional services firms have to stay at the top of their game to be able to provide the ever developing services that business require and stay top of mind with customers.

Recently, Hinge Research Institute gathered responses from 530 professional services firms to document current challenges and how this sector is meeting them. Of that number 72% said their greatest challenge was generating new business.

This study found that in order to grow revenue the majority of the professional services firms interviewed (61.9%) were turning to referral marketing.

This makes sense because even though business needs continue to change, current customers, partners and employees can testify to your ability to adapt with the changing ecosystem and provide innovative services and strategies.

But like the varying type and large number of professional services firms that inhabit the professional services sector, the features required to efficiently acquire referrals for your firm can be just as highly numbered and varied.

So how do you go about initiating a referral program?

How to increase professional services’ revenue with referral marketing software

It has become common practice that marketing initiatives now need to incorporate personalization and relationship oriented approaches in order to reach target buyers in this loud and crowded ecosystem.

Referral marketing software harnesses the power of customer, partner, and employees relationships. They do this by introducing your services to their personal and professional network as a trusted advisor.

Unfortunately, firms often don’t have the resources to develop a new initiative like a referral marketing program, no matter how much business growth it can provide. They have to prioritize the needs of current customers over future customers.

Therefore, it’s natural that Hinge Research Institute found the majority of services companies looking to generate referrals (47.8% out of the 61.9%) are deciding to do that with outside resources, aka referral marketing software.

By outsourcing the development of the referral program, professional services firms are able to ensure that they have a referral program that not only integrates with current software, but avoids breakage. And when a program is targeted at such an important group of influencers, it is critical to provide features that keep each group of advocates (customers, partners and employees) engaged and referring repeatedly. Plus, marketers need the ability to obtain detailed insight to optimize the program, and empower sales to register advocates and generate referrals.

With a referral marketing program that enables those actions, professional services companies can go beyond their goal of just generating referrals, but also reach goal two (increase brand visibility of your firm), goal four (increase the visibility of your experts), and goal five (make existing clients more aware of services you offer).

What results can professional services expect from referral software?

As advocates share your brand it increases the visibility of your professional services firm. And because it is coming from a trusted source, the referrals are going to gain more attention than a PPC ad would. That’s why studies have proven that referrals convert 4x more than marketing leads (emarketer).

In terms of goal three, some of your best experts on your company and its offerings are current customers, partners and employees. By galvanizing this group you make their positive opinion of your brand visible to greater numbers of your target buyers. By having your advocates share their expertise with their personal and professional network it increases a prospect’s likeliness to buy by 400% (Nielsen).

And by having a referral program that rewards advocates by offering cash incentives, discounted services, or training, you keep current customers informed and excited about engaging with your business and the services you offer, increasing lifetime value by 16% (Harvard Business Review).

It’s no wonder that so many professional services firms are planning on adopting referral marketing programs to push ahead of competitors. It delivers incredible results by taking one of your most valuable unutilized resources (customers, partners, and employees) and utilizes them for an average conversion rate of 35% from referral to purchase (Amplifinity).

Exploiting the full potential of talent isn’t an easy or quick process. It requires patience, commitment, dedication, and a lot of counseling, among several other things. And for all this, you need coaches and mentors to help guide and steer individuals towards the exploitation of their greatness that’s yet to make its mark.

I’ve often heard people say that they act as coaches for their teams. Some confess to being mentors for individuals who are trying to channelize their talent. But how do you choose when it’s time to be a mentor and when to be a coach?

When Do You Need Coaches and Mentors?

A coach has a short-term agenda that focuses on enhancing performance. Say you’ve implemented a new system and now you require your team to know how to use it. They’ll need a coach to guide them and develop their particular skills to use this system. Another way to look at it is when you share those words of wisdom with your team members that makes them go “Oh wow, I didn’t know you could do it this way!” That’s right, using your expertise and to transfer knowledge and skills is when you as their leader are acting as a coach.

A mentor, on the other hand, as a long-term, planned agenda which focuses on specific developmental needs. In this role, you don’t need to be a subject matter expert. You don’t need to know anything about the individual’s skill. As a mentor, you’re trying to understand what makes people ambitious and drives them towards success. What motivates them, professionally and personally? As a mentor, you’ll have a deeper relationship with your team and then work to extract the best out of them.

What Role Should You Choose To Be?

Ok so it’s clear what coaches and mentors do, but what’s going to work for you and your team? Depending on the situation, a little of both!

One of the key attributes a leader should possess is versatility. You have to be gentle and stern. Brave and cautious. Intuitive and calculated. Similarly, you have to be a coach and a mentor for your team and everyone else that you are professionally linked to.

When you want to develop a specific competency using performance management tools you want to be a coach. On the other hand, you’ll mentor them when you want to develop your talent pool or successors. And that’s because you’ll need to spend extensive time with your team and plan out every step of the way for their development. It’s not a specific skill or competency you’re enhancing, you’re enhancing them holistically.

Does One Formula Work For All?

Remember I said that depending on the situation you’ll need to decide when to be a coach or a mentor? Well, it’s not just situations that happen around the organization. It’s also situations that people are in. What I mean by that is the developmental level individuals are at will also be a factor that’ll help you decide your choice of role.

You see, mentoring is to develop individuals in the long-run. Basically, it’s addressing the needs of tomorrow for your company and team. Now if someone in your team has already reached their glass ceiling, would you be coaching them or mentoring them? Chances are you’ll be coaching them to enhance their skills so that they continue to do what they know, and do it better.

It’s not a bad idea to sometimes stop and think about what role you want to play before you offer advice. I know it isn’t easy switching hats so frequently or even so rapidly. But good coaches and mentors know that if their chosen role isn’t clear, instead of doing good, you’ll be harming the careers of your team members. And that’s definitely not what you want to be known for.

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Amazon’s Alexa Fund was part of a $35 million investment in the smart thermostat maker Ecobee, according to Forbes. Joining the Alexa fund on the investment were Relay Ventures and Thomvest, which marks the fund’s largest investment to date.

This could mean that more Ecobee devices could be coming to market with Alexa functionality. The fund is designed to incentivize developers to work on new services and abilities that can be integrated with voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa.

With many of the company’s existing products already having Alexa functionality, it could mean that the company is looking to release more devices that are compatible with Alexa in the future. Overall, this will help solidify Ecobee as the second-largest smart thermostat manufacturer behind Google’s Nest, which has struggled this year.

Amazon continues to solidify the Echo and Alexa’s status as a market leader just as its competitors are poised to enter the market. Alexa currently has over 3,000 skills, including the ability to turn on your car, order an Uber, and turn off or on numerous smart home devices.

With Google and Samsung both developing a product to be released at some point later this year, and Amazon having recently expanded its offering by expanding including introducing a cheaper Echo Dot, competitors have an uphill battle to fight before they can top Amazon’s dominance in the voice activated speaker market.

Despite this investment, we believe the smart home market is currently stuck in the 'chasm' of the technology adoption curve, in which it is struggling to surpass the early-adopter phase and move to the mass-market phase of adoption.

There are many barriers preventing mass-market smart home adoption: high device prices, limited consumer demand and long device replacement cycles. However, the largest barrier is the technological fragmentation of the smart home ecosystem, in which consumers need multiple networking devices, apps and more to build and run their smart home.

John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the U.S. smart home market that analyzes current consumer demand for the smart home and barriers to widespread adoption. It also analyzes and determines areas of growth and ways to overcome barriers.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Smart home devices are becoming more prevalent throughout the US. We define a smart home device as any stand-alone object found in the home that is connected to the internet, can be either monitored or controlled from a remote location, and has a noncomputing primary function. Multiple smart home devices within a single home form the basis of a smart home ecosystem.
• Currently, the US smart home market as a whole is in the "chasm" of the tech adoption curve. The chasm is the crucial stage between the early-adopter phase and the mass-market phase, in which manufacturers need to prove a need for their devices.
• High prices, coupled with limited consumer demand and long device replacement cycles, are three of the four top barriers preventing the smart home market from moving from the early-adopter stage to the mass-market stage. For example, mass-market consumers will likely wait until their device is broken to replace it. Then they will compare a nonconnected and connected product to see if the benefits make up for the price differential.
• The largest barrier is technological fragmentation within the connected home ecosystem. Currently, there are many networks, standards, and devices being used to connect the smart home, creating interoperability problems and making it confusing for the consumer to set up and control multiple devices. Until interoperability is solved, consumers will have difficulty choosing smart home devices and systems.
• "Closed ecosystems" are the short-term solution to technological fragmentation. Closed ecosystems are composed of devices that are compatible with each other and which can be controlled through a single point.

In full, the report:

• Analyzes the demand of US consumers, based off of survey results
• Forecasts out smart home device growth until 2020
• Determines the current leaders in the market
• Explains how the connected home ecosystem works
• Examines how Apple and Google will play a major role in the development of the smart home
• Some of the companies mentioned in this report include Apple, Google, Nest, August, ADT, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Lowe's, and Honeywell.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the smart home market.

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Do you typically spend your lunch hour scarfing down an unhealthy meal at your desk? Maybe you run out for a quick bite but keep your eyes glued to your smartphone. Or perhaps you just skip lunch altogether.

Experts say your lunch hour is critical for keeping your productivity and energy levels up. Working or rushing through it can be detrimental to your success.

"Your lunch hour is your chance to get refocused, reenergized, and refueled (literally) for the rest of your day," says Michael Kerr, an international business speaker and author of "The Humor Advantage. "Successful people treat it like the half-time show at a football game — an opportunity to regroup and consider how they're going to play out the rest of their day."

Dale Kurow, a New York-based executive coach, agrees. She says the most successful people she knows don't spend their lunch hour at their desk. They use that time to do things like meet new people, exercise, and read. "Being tied to your desk only expands your waistline and rarely results in making a dent in the pile of work awaiting you."

Here are 12 things successful people do during their lunch hours:

They get up and get out

Even on the occasions where you feel you must work through lunch, always get away from your desk — at least for a few minutes. 

That's what successful people do, Kerr says. "In the worst-case scenario, if you have to work through lunch, working in a different location will at least offer up a much needed change of scenery and perspective."

They network

Try and set a goal to have lunch with a different person in your office or network at least once a week, either as an introduction or to catch up.

"You are guaranteed to learn something new about your organization or industry, and may even make some new mentors and friends in the process," says Ryan Kahn, a career coach, founder of The Hired Group, and author of "Hired! The Guide for the Recent Grad."

They get organized

"Take advantage of this short break from work by making a to-do list for your personal life — or even to cross a few items off that list," Kahn says. "Feeling like things are in control and organized in your life outside of work will free up mental energy and reduce stress levels to perform better professionally." 

One day in December 2014, Sergey, the Russia general manager for a multinational consumer goods company, was up early in the morning, watching the ruble’s value slide by the minute. As the currency was crashing, he found himself facing a painful dilemma: either raise prices to recoup the losses and hit his annual target — set in U.S. dollars — or wait it out for another two months and hope that the ruble recovers, since that would give him a leg up on his competitors.

But with the currency changing every day, how much of a price increase should he consider? The 30% that the ruble had dropped since his last quarterly review? Or should it be more, to compensate for the likelihood of further depreciation to come? That would make his product unaffordable for most of his core customers, and they would almost certainly switch to his competitors’ cheaper alternative. There was no good solution.

Over the past 18 months, Sergey’s experience has been echoed in offices in Ukraine, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and many other emerging markets that have faced substantial currency depreciation due to the drop in commodity prices and the flow of capital to the U.S. in anticipation of interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

In a survey of 77 of my company Frontier Strategy Group’s global clients, 88.3% of those in these markets said that currency volatility posed the greatest material risk to their pricing strategy during 2014 and 2015. Given that we are expecting continued emerging market currency depreciation (and a gradual devaluation of the Chinese yuan as the Central Bank of China seeks to maintain China’s export competitiveness), this issue is going to be a significant problem for multinational corporations (MNCs) in 2017, and possibly beyond.

The reason currency volatility is so disruptive to multinational pricing strategies is because depreciation of currencies in international markets affects their earnings in their home currency (USD, for example). Normally, MNCs raise prices in the emerging market, (e.g., Russia) in order to compensate for the depreciation’s effect on their USD earnings, but that means their product can become as much as 40% more expensive overnight. That can lead to market share loss, as well as drops in revenue. In that situation, companies have to sacrifice either margin, market share, or the ability to hit targets set in home market currency.

It’s also a massive operational challenge because companies are not set up to make very frequent pricing changes, whereas currencies can move hugely overnight. For example, the Russian ruble depreciated from being 37 rubles to the dollar in September 2014, to being close to 70 rubles to the dollar in January 2015. MNCs then had to do two, three, or even four rounds of price hikes over the next 12 months to recoup their losses, while local teams were trying to guess currency movements, which is neither a good use of time, nor something they specialize in.

Russia is just one example. When this issue is happening simultaneously in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Poland—all within the same year and likely to continue—it becomes clear that the scale of the problem is much bigger than a one-off disruptive event in a single country. Most MNCs are not equipped to deal with this as a systematic issue. Instead, they treat it ad hoc, one question at a time, over a short period of time.

Our research shows that there are two main ways in which MNC pricing strategies fail in the highly volatile environments struggling with currency depreciation:

1. Companies’ internal processes for emerging markets are not set up to deal with how constant currency volatility affects their pricing.
2. Companies are approaching pricing as a technical issue, instead of a broader strategic question.

Regarding the first point, we found that many MNCs fall short in four areas:

Their processes for determining and changing prices are too rigid, which means they are not set up to respond quickly enough to currency and other changes in local conditions. For example, half the companies we polled make pricing changes once a year, whereas 27% said that changes every six months would be ideal, and 17% said quarterly price changes would be ideal.

Their decisions are too centralized. Pricing decisions tend to be made in regional or global headquarters in order to achieve global or at least regional consistency, but this can undermine business objectives when they do not consider local economic conditions and the prices offered by competitors. For example, one MNC we interviewed would give all local teams price lists fixed in USD and determined by U.S. HQ without consulting them. The firm’s Latin American clients, who had seen substantial local currency depreciation hit their own performance, consequently faced substantially higher prices for the same product. The company’s local team was thus compelled to offer non-monetary incentives to avoid losing customers, including marketing support, consulting services, and others.

Price-setting processes do not involve all the right people. Often, local country teams are informed about the prices they must use, instead of being consulted about what the prices should be. In addition, pricing conversations held at HQ also rarely involve representatives from R&D and supply chain, who can offer creative ways of maintaining profitability while minimizing price increases. One of our clients discovered this when their margins came under pressure from local competitors who did not raise prices following a currency depreciation in APAC. Their supply chain team offered to reformulate products using a different and cheaper technology, so that they could cut down on costs instead of having to raise prices substantially. That enabled them to maintain market share against cheaper Asian players.

They incentivize the wrong priorities. If the priority for the business is margin, but sales targets locally are still set around volume of sales, the execution of a pricing change can be compromised. For instance, one of our B2B clients raised prices by 15-20% following a currency depreciation. However, its sales people, who were incentivized on revenues, not profitability, were worried about losing customers who may refuse to take the price increase and instead switch suppliers. As a result, a substantial number of the sales people did not negotiate price increases with customers, but instead offered clients discounts and lower price increases to keep their business, undermining the consistency of the company’s pricing strategy, and hurting bottom line performance.

The second reason why MNCs are struggling in this period of currency volatility is because pricing is often considered a technical and tactical issue, rather than a strategic one. That can have disastrous consequences. One of our clients learned this as its business in Ukraine was facing rapid currency depreciation, and its finance department, whose ultimate priority was revenue collection, switched to USD pricing. This left the company’s distributors, who could not access U.S. dollars, unable to pay them. Instead of improving financial performance, the switch to USD invoicing caused loss of revenue and market share, because some of the company’s distributors stopped selling its products. A more strategic approach would have been to minimize price increases, invoice in local currency, and take market share away from competitors, even if the short-term cost was higher.

Because many of these problems are likely not going away soon, companies have to start adapting.

MNCs should approach pricing as part of a broader set of strategic questions they need to resolve. Country and regional leadership teams should ask: 1) What is our broad objective in this market? Is it market share? Is it profitability? If we have to put more emphasis on one over the other, which one is it? 2) Whom exactly do we want to serve in this market? Is it middle-class consumers? Small and medium-sized businesses? Large state-owned corporations? Knowing your target segment, how it is changing, and how it will react to price changes can provide clear guidance on what the right pricing strategies may be.

MNCs need to make these decisions regularly and clearly, making sure that their processes for determining prices are adapted to the unique conditions in emerging markets. Only then can local team leaders like Sergey know what they should prioritize as they react to changing conditions on the ground. This clarity will help them make the best decisions for the business, no matter where the ruble goes.

The post Bad Data = Bad Everything appeared first on Sales Hacker.

What is your reaction to that headline? If you are like many in the sales profession you probably thought – “that’s not possible in my industry.”

Unfortunately I have come to believe that the headline is actually a new reality for a large and ever-expanding list of companies and industries.

If you are in the sales profession I plead with you to read through the rest of this post – with an open mind – and then share your comments at the end.

Face it, technology has created many changes in the way we all do business. As importantly, many of these changes are in ways that we never thought possible in the selling profession. I tell my audiences that they should “use tools to tech the tedious and automate the redundant.”

We all enjoy the benefits of technology in making things easier in our daily lives. Much of what we accomplish each day is via an app on our phone, software in the cloud, or in the background of systems that we never even know exist. It is these same advances in technology that are already making salespeople obsolete as their roles are practiced today. We have not connected the dots between the impact  of technology in other areas of our lives and that this same tech can cost us our jobs and our businesses.

NBC News wrote a piece back in 2012 that listed nine jobs that humans may lose to robots. Included on that list were Pharmacists, Drivers, Astronauts, and Sportswriters amongst others. If that story was written today, it would surely include salespeople.

I have been denying the facts myself, even when working with industry-changing technology that is bringing dynamic, massive change to those companies that adapt and embrace it.

Harvard Business Review wrote an article titled “The Trend that is Changing Sales”, outlining the movement from an outbound sales force to an inside sales structure. That trend has accelerated since the article was published and innovative companies are now discovering that they can eliminate their inside sales teams as well, replaced with even more technology and tools.

The pace of change is not slowing down. There are entire industries that are testing and rolling out systems that completely eliminate sales people, clerks, teachers and even lawyers.

Tools like CRM that track and accurately predict when a product is needed, and how savings can be realized by different purchasing options are getting better every day. They can also learn how the customer prefers to be serviced for the ongoing business needs with the advantage that these systems never go on vacation and run 24 hours every day.

Marketing automation tools are now way more efficient and productive than you will ever be able to keep up with.

Online meetings with full HD video and audio from anywhere in the world. Factory tours being conducted via drones and robots.

Online outreach, video and re-targeting are able to laser-focus your information to the exact customers that have a need and an interest in what you are selling.

While these systems do offer tremendous productivity gains and cost savings, they are not yet able to duplicate what the most successful salespeople have always brought to the customer – the human element.

If you want to stay relevant and successful in a sales role, and to justify the premium dollars that you are being paid, double down on your education.

• Educate yourself on the newest tools and technology being deployed in your industry and in your own company. Embrace them and think creatively how you can improve your customers’ experience.
• Read up on the latest thinking from those that are actually walking in your shoes, sales consultants and authors that are living in your reality every day. Be selective about who you choose. There are truly innovative thinkers that are delivering honest, direct and blunt guidance that you can benefit from immediately.
• Improve your communication and strategic thinking skills. Books like High Profit Prospecting, New Sales. Simplified, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need and The Perfect Close are all examples of the books that you must be reading right now. No excuses.
• Attend and actively participate in online training events. Think deeply about what you are hearing and how you can use it in your efforts
• Learn the true value that your products provide to your customers. Ignite the imagination of your customers and help them see how selecting your products will improve their own performance.

Free tickets to a football game or a round of golf are not going to cut it any more. Responding to customers sitting behind your desk no longer require your presence or your commissions. If you are not willing to undertake a pro-active, aggressive campaign to improve your skills, you will be replaced by tech and automation.

What are you going to do? Will you be replaced?

Original article: New Company Launches – Sales People Need Not Apply

©2016 Fill the Funnel. All Rights Reserved.

The post New Company Launches – Sales People Need Not Apply appeared first on Fill the Funnel.

        

Social media spending is predicted to double in the next few years and make up an increasingly larger portion of marketing budgets.

As you expand your company’s user acquisition and retention strategy to include paid social, the person you have at the helm of those efforts will be required to have a diverse skill set and a wealth of experience tto draw from in order to be successful.

Specific responsibilities will vary from company to company, but generally, the function of a growth and acquisition manager is to:

• establish the company’s tactics to executive its growth plan
• strategize around the right channels and allocation of budget
• test results and optimize against hypotheses pertaining both to the advertising strategy itself and customers’ experience moving down the funnel.

Growth and acquisition managers undertake a massive task as they are typically responsible for the execution of paid search, paid social, organic as well as word-of-mouth channels.

When you decide you’re going big on social in particular, here are the four mistakes to avoid when bringing a growth & acquisition manager on board.

Mistake #1 – Prioritizing Social Media Skills Over Analytical Skills

For direct response advertisers, the social interaction weaved throughout networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are really just skins covering a back-end advertising platform.

It’s obviously important that your candidate understands these platforms and how they function in terms of content and consumers.

A candidate with strong social media management chops can show you they have a firm grasp on the right message or engaging the right customer segment. However, if they don’t have the ability to chew through the numbers these platforms continually provide, you can’t be sure your message is getting out cost-effectively.

Facebook, in particular, provides the biggest and fastest feedback mechanism advertisers have ever seen, and – data being the lifeblood of any growth function – the people who can organize and analyze this plethora of data from campaign performance will provide the most value from your social media advertising.

What You Should Look For:

To improve advertising/channel performance: When you’re managing social advertising at scale, people in charge of acquisition need to be able to:

• Review real-time performance information
• Execute regular testing
• Make the appropriate changes.

An example of this would be running A/B tests on a specific ad format or creative. Your candidate would need to be able to understand whether the results show that, after some statistical significance is reached, the specific ad with an image of the guy in a blue shirt performs better than the one with the guy in a red shirt.

You need your candidate to understand what metrics tell that story and what you should do with that information. Utilizing these metrics is what allows them to determine what kind of additional optimization is needed in real-time or for future campaigns.

For attribution purposes: A growth & acquisition manager with a track record of data analysis in previous marketing roles should be able to accurately inform each channel’s value within your attribution model.

To benefit the company at large: Your acquisition role should be filled by someone who can take the numbers and performance trends and articulate them back into your company in a way that can be used in product improvements, creative messaging, customer support, and funnel optimization.

Mistake #2 – Not Factoring In The Scale Of Their Previous Social Media Ad Management Experience

When you’re looking for the right growth and acquisition manager, you want someone who has experience managing social advertising campaigns with similar goals to yours, and with similar budgets.

This is not an automatic disqualifier, but it is something to consider when you are reviewing the candidates.

Small and large social advertising campaigns have very different executions on different platforms. Managing campaigns on Facebook with a $5k monthly budget vs. a $150k monthly budget require two very different approaches (the latter requiring help from a Facebook Marketing Partner – or, ahem, specialists that work with multiple FMPs – to be efficient).

What You Should Look For:

Take into consideration the size and scale of their previous social media advertising campaign management experience. The closer they align with your company’s budget and scale, the better suited that candidate is likely to be to jump in and create effective campaigns from the start.

Mistake #3 – Focusing On A Specific Degree Or Education

There’s no one correct degree or type of experience to look for, since social advertising is constantly evolving and some skills may benefit one type of business over another.

Within our own company, we have people with everything from a criminal justice background to a finance one. If you use a degree or a specific educational institution as the deal breaker in your decision, you may be overlooking fantastic candidates.

That said, we have found that people who do well in this role typically have a degree in business, marketing, or statistics, with a background in quantitative analysis – either through math, economics, or data-driven digital advertising experience.

Basically, someone who lives and breathes spreadsheets.

However, this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

Media planners and buyers with backgrounds in mobile ad spend, display advertising, and search have enough of a foundation to build on that it makes them excellent cross-channel growth and acquisition managers.

What You Should Look For:

In a perfect world – and we’re getting greedy here – the ideal candidate would marry a strong foundation of exceptional analytical and business skills with strong creative ability in persuasive copywriting and/or marketing, but if they appear solid on the quantitative front, you can fill in the gaps in other ways.

Mistake #4 – Expecting Immediate Expertise Immediately

Legendary women’s NCAA basketball coach Pat Summitt said she recruited good, all-around athletes because she knew she could teach them to play basketball.

Likewise, you don’t need to necessarily hire a perfect expert to be your Growth and Acquisition Manager. You’ll still succeed if you find a good, all-around analyst with advertising experience who has the initiative to become an expert on the automated advertising platforms your company uses.

You want someone who is hungry to learn, loves getting their hands dirty, is comfortable with some level of uncertainty as they test different things, and thrives in being challenged as they stay up-to-date on the many changes and challenges acquisition channels can throw your way.

Hiring someone to manage all of this at scale can be challenging – made even more so if you’re not in New York, San Francisco, London, or some other big city.

What You Should Look For:

Hiring an experienced acquisition professional is often more of a challenge and less practical than hiring someone who is smart and ambitious, and checks off enough of the other boxes that they can be trained in the rest.

Conclusion

No matter whether you’re hiring someone who is experienced and strategic or eager and green, you must be dedicated to arming them with the tools and resources they need to continually learn, test intelligently, and truly reap the most out of your acquisition efforts.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a great meeting with one of our customers. But it didn’t start out that way.

It started slowly and our content was missing the mark. Fortunately for our team, we were able to “read the room” and discern from our customers’ behaviors and postures which direction we should take the discussion. Based on those cues, we altered the content of our presentation and even the order in which we presented, and we turned what could have been an unsuccessful meeting into a very productive one, with a positive outcome.

After the meeting, it struck me that this was a microcosm of the challenges facing today’s marketers: how to foster this type of responsive, flexible dialogue with prospects, customers, and influencers; sense and respond based on their behaviors, preferences, and actions; and do all of this across millions of interactions a day.

Today’s marketers need to be able to conduct millions of 1:1 dialogues like this daily, at scale, with the speed and precision of a person-to-person conversation. To do this, it’s critical to adopt engagement marketing, leveraging a sophisticated marketing automation platform.

In this blog, I’ll reveal three engagement marketing lessons we learned in our meeting and how they’re applicable to marketing, the campaigns you run, and the technologies you use:

1. Pay Attention to Inactivity

Responding to lack of behavior is just as important as responding to behavior; sometimes, it’s even more critical. In our meeting, an uncomfortable silence and lack of questions indicated we were on the wrong track, so we revised our presentation and “woke up the room.” Similarly, while the main purpose of your marketing programs is to get customers and prospects to do something, you need to be able to discern the reasons why they don’t respond the way you prefer. Don’t just continue marketing to them with the same message or content in a “spray and pray” methodology. Instead, revise your delivery, content, even the mode of communication.

2. Personalize Your Message

During our presentation, we were able to tailor the discussion based on our participant’s desired outcomes. But for your marketing campaigns, that’s difficult to do at the scale and volume of today’s business without technology. With an engagement marketing platform, you can leverage technology like web personalization and dynamic content to tailor each digital experience (web, mobile, content delivery, etc.) based on a buyer’s digital footprint, industry, geography, and more.

3. Use the Right Content

We changed the examples we used and even showed different slides to our customers that we thought would resonate better, and it worked. The proper engagement marketing tool can help you do that at scale and volume across all of your marketing programs. In fact, studies show that people respond better to relevant content. According to MarketingSherpa, 82% of prospects value content made for their specific industries, and 67% say the same of content created for their specific job functions. So, make sure you’ve aligned your content creation with your campaigns so that you can properly respond and target your audience not just with a generic offering, but with one that’s relevant to each buyer at that moment in time.

Your buyers are bombarded with so many messages each day, and they’re tired of being talked at; they want to be engaged with. While that’s easy to do in a meeting, it’s much harder to do across millions of interactions daily in a way that’s scalable, flexible, and fast. As the #1 internal customer/beneficiary of our marketing team and technology here at Marketo, I’m fortunate that we have the technology that “thinks on its feet” and helps us engage in many 1:1 conversations daily around the world. Is your team empowered with the tools and knowledge they need to do the same?

Customization and personalization aren’t the same thing. Technically, any email can be personalized by adding basic details about your prospect like their name and company.

Personalization is better than a truly generic email, but it’s not enough. Buyers can tell the difference between a canned template and an email that’s specifically written for them -- and they’re far more receptive to the latter.

Crafting a unique email shows your prospects they’re worth your time and energy, and increases its relevance to their needs. As a result, they feel more valued and are more likely to take action.

The Challenge of Customization

When a LeadGenius sales rep customized the subject lines of his prospecting emails, his open rate went from 37% to 86%. Meanwhile, the Rocketbolt sales team saw a 10-15% uplift in response rates after they began personalizing their email content.

Despite its high ROI, many reps feel customization is too time-consuming. They argue they could send canned emails to five prospects in the time it would take to write a custom message to one.

But customization can scale -- if you do it right.

1) Adapt Your Tone

An executive in a buttoned-up industry will probably be turned off by an ultra-casual email, while a more formal message likely won’t resonate with a more junior employee in a startup environment. Adjust your level of formality to your buyer’s persona so your messaging has the best possible chance of making an impact.

You should also factor in your prospect’s personality, which you can intuit by researching them on LinkedIn and Twitter. How do they describe themselves? How do others describe them? What content do they post? All of these things give you clues into their character.

Take a look at the different ways you could write one line depending on the specific buyer:

• Serious: "Congratulations on acquiring OpenSky -- I’m excited to see how your scale and resources will help the platform advance."
• Neutral: "Congratulations on the OpenSky acquisition -- excited to see how your team takes the platform to the next level."
• Informal: "Congrats on the OpenSky acquisition -- with your scale and resources, the platform will take off."

2) Include Unique Details

Aim to add two or three unique details to every message. This level of customization makes it obvious to your prospect that you’re not blasting hundreds of other people with the same email.

Finding these details won’t take an excessive amount of time. Here are some ideas for what to include:

• A mutual connection: Referral sales expert Bill Cates says referencing a mutual connection lets you “borrow” trust from that person. You’ll instantly be transformed from a stranger to a known entity.
• An excerpt from a customer testimonial: Find a glowing review on your customer’s website, Yelp page, or other third-party review site and copy a snippet. Then paste it in your email with the note, “Your customers are clearly impressed with [prospect’s product] -- as [customer] said … ”
• The name of a current employee: Figure out who the likely user of your product will be, then use their name when suggesting an idea or providing a solution. For example, you might say, “I have some ideas Chelsea, your social media manager, could use to boost your Instagram followers.”
• An uncommon commonality: The more rare the similarity, the more impactful it will be. Pique your prospect’s interest by including your commonality in your subject line, like so: “Fellow water polo player at Bentley.” Then expand on that commonality in your first sentence; for example: “I saw on LinkedIn you played water polo for Bentley -- I played for the team from 2006 to 2009.”
• Something you liked about their content: Saying you “loved their post on [topic]” won’t mean much to your prospect. After all, there’s no proof you actually read the article. Go one step further and mention a specific detail or line that resonated with you.
• A quote from Glassdoor: Browsing through the Glassdoor reviews for your prospect’s company gives you insight into their culture and values. It’s also a potential goldmine for details. Look for a highly positive line, then add it your email with a sentence like, “I can tell [company] is a fantastic place to work -- as one of your employees said on Glassdoor … ”
• Their social profiles: Twitter and LinkedIn are invaluable resources for reps, but they’re not the only social networks at your disposal. Search GitHub, Quora, StackExchange, Reddit, and/or Inbound.org to see if your prospect has an account. Mention one of their contributions: “I saw your Quora question about video conferencing apps. Have you ever tried Zonks?”
• A trigger event: Any change in your prospect’s situation that makes their need for your product more pressing should be front and center in your email. Combine this context with further research to really drive your point home.

3) Make Sure the Email Sounds Like You

Before you press “Send,” read the email out loud. If any lines or phrases sound unnatural, rewrite them so they’re closer to your actual communication style. It’s important for emails to sound like you: Not only will they feel more human to your prospect, but when you connect on the phone, they’ll already feel familiar with you.

Most salespeople think “customizing” a template means tailoring it to individual buyers, but it also means tweaking the template so it’s unique to you. You’re the one whose name is appearing above it -- not whoever came up with the original version.

Next time you write a prospecting email, ask yourself if it could work for a different buyer if you swapped out the basic details. If the answer is “Yes,” don’t send it. The customization process might take longer -- but your efforts will be more than repaid with higher response rates and stronger relationships.

The pressures to build a solid Demand Generation Strategy that is perpetual with content marketing that converts is high. So much so, that at times marketers may resort to tactics that might fall into the questionable practices category. Do you recognize any of the following content marketing misses?

One piece to rule them all:
It’s the blend-o-matic of content approaches; there’s nothing this super-piece doesn’t try to do. Engage? Check. Nurture? Check. Convert? Check.

Bait and switch:
This is a content program that’s a little like a well-prepared politician’s message. No matter the question, the answer is always the same — XYZ product.

                                                     *Image via livingoutli.org
Always the bridesmaid:
When a program has really good high level, thought leadership content, but if that’s all, there’s nothing to support the buyer in the middle and later stages of the buyer journey.

We’ve all seen and (if we’re honest) probably been guilty of some level of the foibles above as content marketing has matured. Luckily, there is an approach that will deliver on the promise of solid content marketing that converts.

1. Lower your expectations:
Honestly, most marketers expect too much from their content assets. Not because content marketing can’t work, but because they’re trying to create all-purpose content that engages, nurtures and converts, all in one piece. That’s asking a lot of a piece of content.

It’s just not that simple to buy most B2B solutions. To think one asset could answer all of the questions that need answering when buying today’s complex solutions is unrealistic. Not to mention how disconnected the dialogue would be to go from high level issues down to solution level detail in one sitting. Your buyers could get whiplash.

2. Get real:
Earn your buyers’ trust by delivering on the promise of the content. If buyers care about an issue, even if you don’t have a direct line to your solution, you can become a trusted advisor by beginning your dialogue on that issue. The dialogue doesn’t have to stay at that level, but to stay a trusted advisor, you need to align to where the buyer is at any given time

3. Keep pace:
If you’re only producing thought leadership content, you’ll still need a lot of hand-holding during the middle of the funnel. You’ll probably pass off leads that have a higher number of false positives because you are unable to gauge buyer readiness based on engagement with your thought leadership content. To maintain a dialogue with buyers and move buyers along as much as possible before they interact with sales, you’re going to need to cover content that helps them at least prepare for a buying decision. It doesn’t mean it’s all about your product either. Most industries have gaps worth exploiting in the decision making content arena. If you develop content based on buyer research, you’ll be able to provide value with all stages of your content from engagement, nurturing and conversion.

How do you get there?

It can’t be overstated to start with the buyers. Learn about the steps they take when they buy solutions like yours through live interviews.

Make sure to listen for cues that start or “trigger” the buying cycle. It’s different across industries, companies, and personas, but if you speak with enough people, you’ll have a good stable of buying triggers to rally your engagement content around.

You’ll also need to listen for all the steps that happen in between recognizing the need to solve a problem and choosing a vendor. These steps vary, but they are distinct, and you can develop useful nurture content to speak to each of these steps.

Bonus Tip: No one wants to slow down sales with content marketing so always make sure to provide buyers with a way to raise their hand and let you know they’re ready to speak to sales. Make sure these types of “express-lanes” or “accelerators” are always visible and consistent across your content marketing program.

To create content that converts, acknowledge and learn about the multiple steps involved in buying complex solutions and your content marketing program can support buyers every step of the way.

Author: Lee Anne Wimberly @lwimberly Senior Director, Strategy for ANNUITAS

The post 3 Ways To Create Content That Converts appeared first on ANNUITAS.

It’s 8.30. You walk down the corridor, coffee in hand. You can already hear the chattering. You enter the room and look around. Phones are ringing and fingertips are dancing across the keyboards. You can hear the excitement in the voice of your team members. The energy is electrifying.

Slam. Someone hangs up the phone, spins around in their chair, winks and says, “That’s $5,000 before noon, folks.” The cheering is equal to that of a crowd at Madison Square Garden.

You smile. This is going to be a good day.

*Beep beep beep*

Then comes your rude awakening.

The sound of your alarm every morning is brutal. You hit snooze. For a while now, your morning routine has consisted of staring at the ceiling for 8 minutes before you manage to pull yourself out of bed.

You dream of a sales team that’s crushing their quotas on a daily basis and a team culture that’s both supportive and competitive.

But that’s not the case. They’re struggling every day. They’re not closing deals. They don’t even seem to know how to qualify leads anymore. Revenue is down and quite frankly—you’re in trouble.

It’s your job to fix it. The good news? Your dream is not far off. Here’s how to turn an underperforming sales team around.

Start from the beginning: Where did things go wrong?

You contemplate setting higher sales targets, shifting your performance KPIs, and maybe even firing some of your team.

In theory, these might seem like good ideas, but they can also make things worse. At best, they’re quick fixes.

Many sales managers tend to have the kind of reflexive thinking that ends up making the problem worse. Why? They never figured out what caused all these issues in the first place.

Let’s take a look at how you can get there.

Getting to the root cause of the problem

Often when things go wrong, we seek to blame rather than to solve. Have you ever had a conversation with a child and they kept asking you “Why?” Regardless of your response, their next question was always “Why?” It’s very likely that you ended the conversation with a firm, and for the child very unsatisfying, “because.”

Well, guess what? While this is an excellent way for a child to drive their parents crazy, it’s also the same approach that turned Toyota into a $500 billion company. The company pioneered a problem-solving methodology known as the 5 whys model.

Let’s take a look.

The 5 whys model

The 5 whys model has been praised by the startup community as the quickest way to identify the root cause of a problem. We’re going to take a look at how it works, the limitations to the model and what you can do to improve it.

So how does it work? You simply begin with a statement of the problem, i.e. “My team is underperforming.” Next, you ask “Why?” and you continue to ask “Why?” in response to each statement until you’ve arrived at what’s actually causing the problem.

Here’s what the conversation could look like.

Sales manager: My sales team is underperforming.

You: Why is your team underperforming?

Sales manager: Nobody seems to be giving their best effort.

You: Why are they not giving it their best effort?

Sales manager: They're not personally invested in their success. They just come in, do the day-to-day work, and leave at 5 p.m. sharp.

You: Why are they not personally invested?

Sales manager: I think it’s because we only reward the top sales rep, and everyone sees the top position as out of their reach.

You: Why do they think the top position is out of their reach?

Sales manager: Because Jeff has been the top rep ever since he started and they’ve pretty much given up on trying to even compete with him.

You: Why have they given up on trying to compete with him?

Sales manager: Well, he’s better than everyone by a long shot.

Aha!

In this situation, you’ve discovered—in less than two minutes—that your reps aren't motivated to perform as well as your top performer. Voila.

Limitations to the 5 whys

While the 5 whys approach can be a powerful problem-solving technique, it comes with limitations.

1. Single cause issue. It assumes that there’s only one cause behind the effect.
2. Deductive thinking. Often, problem solving doesn’t take place where the problem occurred. This leads to the discussion not being grounded in what actually happened.
3. Confirmation bias. The person asking the questions will jump to conclusions because they’ve “seen this happen before.”

Here are four simple ways to improve your use of the 5 whys model:

• Use a timeline. Identify the events that detail how the problem occurred.
• “Go and See.” Observe what is actually happening, rather than make assumptions as to what might be happening.
• Gather data. Demonstrate that the answer to any of the whys is plausible.
• Ask again. For each of the causes your sales reps come up with, ask them another five whys.

A starting point

Despite its limitations, using the 5 whys model offers you a great way to explore the potential issue at hand and open up the lines of communication. It will assist you in challenging your assumptions and identify the areas in which the issue lies. And once you’ve done this, you can start looking at solutions to the problem.

Next, let's take a look at the three most common causes of an underperforming sales team and how you and your sales team can get out of a rut.

1. Did you hire the right salespeople?

Good sales managers ask themselves this question constantly. But it's not just about deals closed or leads qualified—it's about your team working together. It’s about your sales culture.

To illustrate this, let’s look at an example.

The LA SWAT team used to be a volunteer task force within the LAPD that took on the most dangerous missions. These volunteers were skilled at combat, and many of them had unique experiences, such as the Vietnam War. But because they weren't a cohesive team, the early SWAT teams suffered from sky-high mortality rates.

Members of the SWAT team face life and death situations every day. For them, having the right people isn't just important. It's the difference between waking up the next day—and knowing that your teammates will too.

Today, the SWAT team no longer consists of volunteers. Each candidate has to go through a six-day selection process during which they need to meet mental as well as physical criteria.

One of the most challenging tests is called “Hogan’s Alley.” This is a mock street scene where candidates are confronted with surprise situations in which they need to make life or death decisions. This includes whether or not to shoot a suspect or deciding whether a person is a friend or an enemy.

During these tests, candidates need to demonstrate that they can think clearly and make a decision while they’re exhausted, and even physically hurt.

While this is an extreme example, it’s an approach to hiring that can be applied to any team. In order to not just survive, but to thrive as a business, you need to make sure you have the right people onboard.

You don't want just good sales reps, you want sales reps who are cultural fits to work for your company. Map out your desired skill sets and personality traits and use them as a guide in your hiring process.

You'll find that your existing employees fall into three camps.

Great sales reps, great fits

They aren't just your money makers—they're the future of your company. Incentivize them to stick around. Put them in leadership positions, get them in front of your most important prospects and help them reach their career goals.

Great sales reps, bad fits

These are people who are great sales reps, but they're in the wrong place. Maybe they don't believe in your product, or they're better suited selling to a different type of customer. You need to get rid of them before their toxic attitude destroys your team.

Bad sales reps

The killer instinct doesn't come naturally to the majority of people. This is something that can’t be taught. No amount of intellect or positive attitude can make up for it.

Cut your losses quickly by letting go of sales reps that are either in the wrong business or the wrong career as soon as possible.

While firing people is never easy, you’re doing both them and yourself a disservice by keeping them around.

Join our upcoming webinar, “How to hire the right salespeople (and keep them)”, on Tuesday, September 20, 2016 9 a.m. (Pacific Time)/12 noon (Eastern Time).

2. Is there a strong team culture?

The tech community loves to say that culture is something that happens “organically.” As XPLANE founder Dave Gray points out, this doesn't mean we should just sit back and wait for it to happen. It won't.

As a sales manager, it's your job to keep a finger on the pulse of the culture and provide support. Create a roadmap for your sales culture using Gray's culture mapping technique.

Below are the key elements to focus on.

• Outcomes. These are the objectives that you want your culture to achieve. It can be that your staff loves coming into work or that all your employees perform at their best.
• Behaviors. Look at how individual behaviors influence the team and their ability to achieve your desired outcome. Reward encouragement and teamwork, but reprimand behaviors that bring down morale. If there's a toxic person on the team, get rid of him or her ASAP.
• Enablers and blockers. Check to see whether you have tools and people who make the job easier and more efficient, or if you have tools and people who inhibit people from doing their jobs well.

Download Gray’s culture map here (PDF) and start moving your sales team in the right direction.

Great reps bring in the revenue, but your sales culture will determine whether those reps will stick around.

3. Are your salespeople motivated?

Hustle. That’s what great salespeople are all about. And no salesperson is going to hustle when the compensation isn’t worth the work they put in.

But compensation isn't just about the money. It's about how you value a rep's hard work, and incentivize them to do better.

One of the most common causes of an unmotivated sales team is a complex compensation plan. Harvard Business School's Dr. Doug J. Chung spent half a lifetime researching motivation and sales compensation plans.

The result? Well, it doesn’t take a Harvard degree to grasp where things can go wrong. Chung found that there were three main factors to consider when designing your compensation plan.

1. Salary vs. compensation. This depends on the reliability of your industry's sales cycle. If you're in a seasonal sales business, you can't reward reps for blind luck. If sales don't fluctuate based on these outside factors, compensation should be directly tied to performance.
2. Timing. The influence timing has on reps directly correlates to how naturally motivated they are. Similar to great students, great reps just need a year-end bonus to motivate them, but middle-road and low performers need more frequent benchmarks (like quizzes) to keep them on track.
3. Ratcheting. Many companies increase sales quotas of top performers year-to-year to get them to strive higher and higher. Chung's studies indicated that this is actually detrimental to morale. This means that top performers are penalized for succeeding rather than rewarded. An alternative is to give over-achievement bonuses, where yearly benchmarks stay the same, but hitting an even loftier goal is rewarded with more.

It’s simple: When salespeople don’t know what they're getting for the work they put in, they're going to be less motivated.

Structure your compensation plan in a way so that it incentivizes each type of sales rep on your team to improve and get better—one plan does not fit all.

Drive your sales team to continuously improve

Sales teams don't become great overnight. They become great because they work at it continuously. This is why your role as the sales manager is crucial. It's your job to help your sales team succeed. It begins and ends with you.

Accept responsibility

Swedish economist Tobias Fredberg found a fascinating pattern by examining how dozens of CEOs spoke in interview transcripts. CEOs who had successfully turned a company around shared the same way of speaking.

They personally took the blame for problems—using the words “I” and “me”—and passed the credit to the team for successes—using the words “us” and “we.”

As the sales manager, you're responsible for your team. When stuff goes wrong, it's up to you to step up to the plate and be accountable for your own actions. That's what being a good leader means—and that's what will inspire autonomy and leadership from within your team.

The benefits are huge.

• Ownership over problems. If you assume that every problem is yours to either fix or delegate, then nothing will ever fall through the cracks. Establishing clear ownership over responsibilities and starting from the ground up is how you empower your team to succeed.
• No cost to morale. Blaming members of the team and taking credit for successes will make team members feel under-appreciated. They'll feel like you're picking on them and taking their hard-earned glory.
• Transparency. If you take it upon yourself to know the going-ons of the team, your sales reps will feel more comfortable telling you about potential stumbling blocks they're encountering. Otherwise, you'll be unaware of an issue until it spirals out of control and blows up in your face.

When your team is doing well in the day-to-day, you can step back and watch everyone succeed. But at pivotal times, you need to personally bring on change and see your vision through.

Lead by example

Most people are natural skeptics. If you claim that something will work, they'll need to see it to believe it. Instead of telling them, show them. Get into the weeds and start making cold calls, drafting emails, and closing deals right in front of your team. Inspire them and set an example.

• Show concrete expectations. Instead of telling them how to close deals, give your team an example that they can actually learn from. Don't be the boss who sets impossible expectations without lifting a finger.
• Mentor your reps. Give your sales reps someone to look up to. If your employees enter into a mentor-mentee relationship, they'll be eager to learn and improve. They're also more likely to stick around, as they’ll see their position as a learning opportunity.
• Diagnose flaws in your systems. You might find a problem with a sales script, or an issue with how the team is finding leads. You’re not always this close to the action—take advantage of it.

You can set all the expectations in the world, but the only way to facilitate success is to give your team an example to follow.

Create a culture of motivation

A few years back I went to visit a company that has an international sales group. The group was divided into teams by country, so all reps that were selling to the same country sat together. When one country's team was underperforming, the sales reps were quick to assume that there wasn't a market for them.

But the CEO knew better. His solution was to take some of the star sellers from other teams and place them next to the under-performers. The stars were still making the calls to their respective countries, they just were doing it in the struggling team's cubicle. Within a few days, one rep started closing deals, and within a few weeks, the whole team started outperforming.

All your sales reps are going to have a slightly different secret to success, so you'll want to create an environment where they can learn from one another. Here's how to keep the motivation going, even when you step out of the room.

• Acknowledge the strongest players on the team. If your sales reps know who's best, they know who to look to for answers.
• Have sales reps workshop their pitches together. Sales rooms often feel like a hostile dog-eat-dog environment. But you want success to inspire your reps, not weigh them down. Have them work out kinks in their workflow together.
• Facilitate some friendly competition. Many sales groups shy away from leaderboards because they feel that it only encourages the top few reps to duke it out for #1. Try creating tiered leaderboards, or even a tiered commission structure to encourage your reps to shoot for the higher tier.

At the end of the day, you can't always hover over your sales reps' shoulders. A business like that isn't scalable, and will collapse. Your people are the building blocks of your company—not how many deals you close, or your MRR. Building a culture where people motivate and inspire each other means knowing when to get out of the way.

Getting on the track to success

Often, as soon as an entire team agrees that there’s an issue, you’ll see a shift in focus. Your salespeople will start questioning roles, processes and the direction.

If it seems chaotic for a while—let it happen. This is a good thing.

It’s always challenging to face a problem when you don’t know exactly what the problem is. It will take work both from you and your sales reps to align and bring your team back on a good path.

Remember to be patient. Things won’t change overnight. The very first thing you try to turn things around is likely to fail, and that’s okay. Keep trying until you have the culture, the goals and the vision that will help your salespeople crush it.

Soon enough, you’ll be walking down that hallway and enter a room full of energy and excitement. Your salespeople will be closing deals again and there will be no alarm to wake you up.

Except for the sound of a sale, of course.

Recommended reading:

Toxic sales culture? Here’s what happened and what to do about it
If your sales team is struggling with a toxic culture, there are likely two culprits behind this: bad hires and bad incentives. Here's how to remove negativity.

Spot bad fits early: 20 red flags for sales hiring
I've been hiring (and firing) sales reps for years now. Here are the top 20 red flags you should look for during sales hiring.

Startups: This is how you design a winning sales commission structure
If you're faced with the challenge of developing a commission or compensation structure for your salespeople, here are two ways you can go about it.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to talk to a business owner and marketing director about a website redesign they were planning.

Naturally, they had a lot of questions.

They wanted to know about process. They had questions about how to portray their growing company in a more professional light since they just raised their prices and service levels.

We discussed branding and how to make their company’s marketing message resonate with medical practice administrators and other high-level business managers they wanted to reach.

They wanted to know if a website was supposed to be “informative” or whether it should be a lead generation tool.

All wonderful questions.

You might be having the same thoughts. Where should you start? You have a traditional sales organization and while you might be interested in all this inbound marketing stuff — or at least a website redesign — does it really make sense for your company right now?

The truth is there’s a really simple way to make your website a better sales tool that will feed your sales team with a growing lead list daily, and it doesn’t involve redesigning your website.

What’s the simplest way to make your company website a lead generation tool?

The companies we speak with that are thinking about website redesign want to make their website a lead generation tool and use it to sell more products or services. They want to be able to know which companies visit their website so they can build their lead list. They want a website that either puts leads in Salesforce or another CRM.

Here’s one trick that’s so simple, you may not have thought of it.

Don’t redesign your website… yet.

For your company, it might be best to “test the waters” with your existing website to see if they can generate leads and increase sales.

Our advice to the company I spoke with last week was to take “baby steps” by first moving their existing website from the current platform (Wix) to HubSpot.

This first “baby step” will provide 6 benefits to their company:

• HubSpot includes a feature that tracks all companies that visit your website, how many times they’ve visited and what pages they viewed. The sales staff can use this visit list as a lead list for prospecting.
• HubSpot includes a free CRM. The company sales staff uses Excel to manage their lead lists now. The CRM will help them be more organized, track conversations and manage sales documents or email templates so nothing falls between the cracks.
• The HubSpot website manager (called the “COS,” or Content Optimization System”) will be easy for the marketing director to update more frequently.
• The HubSpot website manager also provides a platform that’s easy to develop later when new content is needed.
• The company can add call to action buttons and landing pages for lead generation offers as they write them — even starting with the company brochure, whitepapers and other collateral.
• Moving the website to a platform that gives you lead intelligence requires less investment than a full website redesign.

As the company I spoke with embraces these new tools, they stand a much better chance of identifying and closing new business. As that happens, there’s more money to invest in redesigning the website and adding some lead magnets to significantly increase leads for the sales team.

Did you know that simply putting your website on a different platform can give you insight into what prospects are visiting your website? Do you use your website to build a lead list? Does your sales team prospect companies that visit your website?

Last week I led a two-day new business development workshop for a client on the west coast. What a treat to work with this company. Great culture. Proud heritage. Engaged executive team. True consultative sellers. Fun outspoken people. We had a blast. The two days flew by.

During day one, we got into a “healthy” discussion about the role and effectiveness of business development reps (BDRs) and the leads they were contributing to the sales team’s funnel. As you might imagine, there were differing views on how dependent seller’s should be on leads and appointments produced by the BDRs. Then, at just the right moment, and delivered with perfect tone and attitude, a top-producing true blue sales hunter dropped this gem on the room:

“Appointments set for us by the BDRs should be viewed the same way we view the Social Security portion of our retirement income – as gravy.”

 And there you have it. I’ve never heard it put better.

I doubt that there are too many (or any) people reading sales blogs and books who are “hoping,” or counting on Social Security payments to sustain them in retirement. Similarly, I don’t know a single A-player sales hunter who lives completely dependent on others (or the company) to provide sales opportunities and keep the funnel full.

Yet, so many salespeople live everyday in reactive mode, as victims, hoping for good leads to be served up for them on a silver platter. This is 180 degrees opposite of how top-producing consistent quota-crushers operate. Sales winners take full personal responsibility for keeping their pipelines healthy and full, and doing whatever is necessary – including prospecting – to make that happen.

And while we are on the topic of top sales producers, personal responsibility for results, and prospecting, let me take this opportunity to point you to a fantastic book I’ve mentioned before that officially releases this week. I was honored that Mark Hunter  asked me to write the introduction for High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results. You will not only really enjoy reading High-Profit Prospecting, you are going to benefit greatly from it. For a quick taste of what’s in the book and why it’s very much needed today, watch this short video where I shared a few thoughts with Mark Hunter:

Excerpts from my Introduction to High-Profit Prospecting:

“In a powerful, clear, actionable way, Mark Hunter provides exactly what you need to find the best leads and drive breakthrough sales results! In a logical, easy to follow progression, Hunter walks the reader step-by-step through the why’s and how’s of effective prospecting. With a sharp sword he slays the myths about prospecting and silences today’s idiot (supposed) sales gurus who wrongly proclaim that prospecting is dead (Chapter 2). From there he tackles your attitude, mindset, and motivation (Chapter 3) – all of which are absolutely critical because what we believe and what drives us has an even greater effect on our results than our selling skills.”

“Chapters 4 through 8 help you plan your attack, point out the pitfalls and traps along the way, provide helpful definitions (contrasting prospects and suspects), and most importantly, make the case that Time. Is. Your. Most. Precious. Resource. Don’t blow through Chapter 6. Let Hunter’s message soak in. Prospecting doesn’t call you. There is always something more attractive, more urgent or easier to do. If you don’t carve out blocks of time for prospecting it won’t happen. And the harsh reality is that you might have a killer sales personality, the best phone technique, and sharpest sales story, but if you don’t take back control of your calendar and set appointments with yourself to prospect, it won’t happen. I like to say that no one defaults to prospecting mode, and Hunter drives home that point as clear as day.”

“…The balance of the book (Chapters 20-24) will stretch you and raise your game to new levels. Hunter shows you how to do the tough stuff…how to succeed getting past (or befriending) high-level gatekeepers; how to navigate the maze and run the gauntlet during complex enterprise level prospecting; why, how and when (literally when –as in exact times of day) to prospect right into the C-Suite. The material in these closing chapters is priceless. Mark Hunter shares how he masterfully prospected into the highest levels of big organizations and he provides the roadmap and instructions so you can do it, too.”

“Are you ready to stop living in reactive mode, as a victim of whatever leads happen to come your way? Would you like to learn what top sales producers do day-in and day-out to keep their pipelines full? Then grab a pen and a pad and turn the page. Your pipeline, your sales, the profit you contribute to your company, and your career are about to dramatically improve.”

High-Profit Prospecting is already selling like crazy on Amazon. Head over to get your copy now.

The days of one-size-fits-all campaigns and casting a wide net in the hopes of catching your best prospects are long gone.

B2B marketers are getting more sophisticated with their segmentation and targeting by focusing on the audiences with which they’ll have the most impact, and tailoring messages to resonate with each distinct audience segment. However, both identifying and effectively reaching the right audiences remains challenging.

That’s where predictive marketing comes in.

According to Demand Metric, marketers who use predictive have good intelligence on target markets and improve the close rate of sales efforts

Here are five ways that predictive – with its access to better customer data and algorithmic machine learning – helps marketers be more sophisticated with segmentation and hone in on their best audiences and future customers.

1. Discover top new markets to enter

Why this segment? Whether you’re a market leader or a growing business, the only way to continuously drive customer and business growth is to expand to new markets. Now while this opens up new opportunities, you are entering uncharted territory and relying solely on historical success won’t cut it.

How predictive helps: Predictive offers an additional layer of data science that predicts your likelihood of success with new prospects. This lets you build your Ideal Customer Profile in target territories or verticals and identify the top opportunities within them. Then as you start targeting these new prospects the algorithms will learn which company profiles and attributes lead to success and refine your new market segments to zero in on your most promising prospects.

2. Reach in-market prospects

Why this segment? Timing is everything. You may have a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile and a messaging strategy that appeals to buyer needs. But if you target your accounts too early or too late in their buying journey your marketing programs will fall flat.

How predictive helps: With predictive, you can optimize your marketing programs to reach prospects as they are actively moving through the buyer’s journey. Develop campaigns that target prospects within your Ideal Customer Profile when they are most receptive and are showing buying signals such as searching keywords related to your product or space, website browsing patterns, and content downloads for related solutions. Similarly, target prospects who have had recent company events, such as an acquisition or a product announcement, that would indicate they may be in need of your solution.

3. Customize segments unique to your business

Why this segment? You’ve identified your Ideal Customer Profile, built detailed personas, created campaigns tailored to their unique needs, and now you’re ready to target them but you don’t have the audience attributes available to create your desired segment. Sound familiar? Even if you are laser focused on the right audience, data providers and marketing platforms typically only offer standard audience attributes, such as firmographics and technographics, to build your segment.

How predictive helps: Predictive doesn’t limit you to ‘cookie-cutter’ audiences. It lets you define audience attributes directly from your CRM and create customized segments that capture your unique target audience. As an added bonus, with predictive you can seamlessly refine your segments for each business goal. That means that as your marketing goals change from driving MQLs at the top of the funnel to delivering SALs mid-funnel and ultimately driving closed deals at the bottom of the funnel, you can have the right audience segments unique to each objective ready to go.

4. Identify the best untapped opportunities

Why this segment? Let’s face it, you don’t always know which audiences you should be targeting. You know that within your broader Ideal Customer Profile there are sub-segments with which you have a greater immediate opportunity. Now if only you had a crystal ball…

How predictive helps: Predictive is your crystal ball. Predictive marketing platforms guide you to your next customers by giving you an insider’s view into your full market potential and mapping out your previous successes and future opportunities within it. Predictive platforms also offer automated recommendations that surface the customer segments and accounts with the highest propensity to convert. These recommendations are generated continuously by analyzing millions of business signals and take into account your latest customer trends, enabling you to continue to find the best leads for your marketing and sales outreach.

5. Drive high-propensity leads through the funnel

Why this segment? Just as it’s challenging to fill the funnel with the right prospects, it’s challenging to prioritize the right leads throughout the funnel.

How predictive helps: Predictive helps you push leads through the funnel faster. It lets you segment and prioritize your leads using advanced scoring capabilities that rank prospects based on firmographics, technographics, buying intent, and other signals that indicate they are likely to convert. With this insight you can then assign each of these segments to the right nurture track and send the best leads directly to sales.

Conclusion

With predictive marketing, you have an unprecedented tool to drill down to the right segments and identify the right accounts for any marketing objective. This helps you get more focused with your marketing activity and ultimately lower acquisition costs, accelerate your pipeline, and drive revenue.

Learn more about the impact of predictive segmentation on your marketing efforts, and how to build targeted segments in our Segmentation & Targeting playbook.

Community Development for Small Business

Many people feel that they have to wait until their business reaches a certain size before they have the credibility to create a community. In fact, it doesn’t matter what the size of your company or client listing; a business should be focused on raising brand awareness early on.

By joining niche communities and sharing your expertise freely you can connect with members who could benefit from your business. This is a slow process of “give and take”, in which you offer valuable insight in hopes of gaining their trust; while it is a crucial step in brand awareness, it is also time consuming.

Most new business owners are not able to hire help as soon as they open the doors; this means that they are responsible for the full operations of their business. It is important to recognize the need to streamline your business so you have more time to run it. This requires the use of online marketing techniques to help your small business connect with potential customers and developing community.

Online Marketing Tools for Small Business

With a plethora of potent online marketing tools at your disposal it’s easy to lose yourself with the different marketing channels and software.

One of the best methods to use for the development of your community is email marketing. This very powerful tool is perfect for brands looking to connect with their customers and increase engagement. Now I know you have heard those people who are saying that email marketing is dead. Well, here is my advice on that, “Don’t listen!” For those who need to be convinced by the numbers here are a few statistics. These stats show why it still remains one of the best lead generation methods around.

• For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $42
• 96% of online consumers use email
• 90% of consumers check their email once a day

We don’t suggest flooding your subscribing customers with daily emails complete with the latest sales. Email marketing can be a powerful tool and successful if implemented properly. Here are a few tips to help your small business tap into the power of email marketing.

1. It’s About the Old and the New

When businesses think about growing their list they go in with the mindset that the more emails they have, the better their chances of making a sale. Although there is some truth to this, what they forget is that with each new lead added they have to walk them through the “trust factor” before they actually buy. You need to nurture the ones you already have on your list so that they stay in the “ready to buy” mode while you are converting the new leads; this means developing email content that also provides value to those who have already been converted to clients.

2. Make It Specific and Personal

People hate to receive what looks like bulk emails; persistent sales pitches are sure to end up in the spam box. Customers like to know that the email sent to them was sent with care and personal attention. Email companies have also cracked down on this and also spam any emails that do not personally address the receiver. Email marketing tools such as MailChimp help you design customized newsletters, welcome emails, and notifications which can be personalized per subscriber. It offers various templates for sales, discount offerings, and other features small business owners can benefit from.

3. Identify Your Target Audience

Email marketing is an effective way to gauge if you are really capturing your audience’s attention. Looking online marketing platforms like GetResponse and Hubspot, you’re able to access stats regarding email campaigns and subscriber activity. With this information you can get a better understanding of your most active demographic, how they interact with your emails, the content that held most interest, and what content didn’t receive any activity.

If you want to get even more specific with your engagement you can also section off your list. Sections allow you to speak to your audience, according to where they are in your process.

4. Catch Them On The Go!

With consumers able to access a variety of services such as emails from mobile devices, you drastically decrease your ability to reach your audience if your emails are not delivered in a mobile friendly format. Think about it this way, how often do you stay on a website or read through and email that does not easily fit on your screen.

Successful Email Marketing Campaigns for Small Business

Email Marketing is most successful for those who understand the importance of communicating with their intended audience; not simply using it to push sales through. You want to make sure that you are making the information valuable and easy to access. Most importantly, you want to make sure that you are engaging ALL the people in your community.

Email marketing campaigns can be used to boost a small businesses productivity and revenue by allowing efficient communication with new or potential customers. Are you ready for the next level in business? If so, then it’s time to start implementing email marketing into your business plan.