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As I work with sales organizations across the world, I am frequently asked if the inbound sales philosophy works in an industry defined by a transactional sales process.

Many salespeople find it difficult to overcome price objections, especially when their sales process is short and their product isn’t highly differentiated. However, an increasing number of salespeople are using the inbound sales philosophy in transactional industries with good results.

Here, we'll get a more thorough understanding of transactional selling, how it compares with consultative selling, and how to reconcile the two in a transactional industry.

Explaining value when your prospect is focused on price is a choice every modern salesperson faces with each new customer. While guaranteeing the lowest cost over an extended period of time is definitely a competitive advantage, it's not always the best way for a customer to buy.

It's also not necessarily a good way to build a relationship, unless you can be sure of superior pricing and availability in perpetuity. I often hear reps say, "My customers don’t care about relationships — all they care about is the lowest price," during my sales coaching.

Unfortunately, many salespeople take this at face value without doing their homework. If done properly, leaning into consultative selling can lead to good results — even in transactional industries.

Transactional selling, on its own, isn't always sustainably successful. It's a quick fix method that tends to pay off less than consultative sales in the long run. It doesn't empower prospects to the same extent as consultative selling, and in turn, makes them less inclined to consistently engage with you and your organization.

That said, your industry might naturally lend itself to transactional selling. It could be ingrained in how you operate, but that doesn't mean it has to define the full extent of the sales strategies you use. You can still incorporate elements of consultative sales into your broader sales efforts.

Here are four techniques you can employ to engage in consultative selling in a transactional industry.

Consultative Selling in a Transactional Industry: 4 Strategies

1. Build trust by understanding the end goal.

The inbound sales process is built on trust. One of the ways you can differentiate yourself is by running a comprehensive discovery call that helps you understand the company, the key contacts, the goals, plans, challenges, timeline, purchasing process of your prospect.

Good questions include:

• How often do you purchase?
• Do you leverage single or multiple suppliers?
• Do you have a standard for a great vendor relationship?
• Are there factors other than price that would be valuable to you?
• How are you measured on performance?
• What is the one thing that I can do today that would make your life easier?
• How often do you do source new vendors?
• How long does that take? Is the process easy or hard?
• Are there any services that go along with that?
• How much time does it take for you to source the lowest price?

Regardless of how the prospect is trained to buy, explain that your best customers value their vendor relationship. Sometimes, new clients like to speak to a current client to get industry insight.

Using testimonials or connecting your prospect with a reference to explain a specific experience can be highly effective. Creating a networking group where several of your clients can combine to meet periodically can also help.

2. Act like a consultant to point out areas of cost savings.

During the discovery call, identify ways the prospect can save time, effort, and money (outside of the purchase price) to make the conversation about total cost of ownership rather than just a spot transaction price. Availability, access to inventory, payment terms, purchasing method (invoice or credit card), contract length, and legal terms can all help determine the price.

A good discovery meeting includes questions not just about the current transaction but also the longer-term relationship, and can uncover areas your prospect hasn’t thought about that demonstrate your experience, expertise, and goal of working toward a valuable relationship for everyone.

When a prospect jumps to price right away, it behooves the inbound salesperson to dig in and figure out what that means. Is the purchase price the critical issue or does the cost include installation, training, ongoing support, account management, maintenance or other aspects of the ongoing use of the product? Even if the product is a commodity, there are value-added aspects from having just-in-time availability to delivery you can differentiate yourself on.

Some good questions to ask here include:

• Is a 15% reduction in cost meaningful?
• If I could help you save 10% off the purchase would that have an impact?
• Is there anything other than price that could influence your decision?
• How do you pay for your goods?
• Do you get a guarantee of lowest price?

3. Schedule a quarterly onsite review with your customers.

If you have a current relationship with a client who is mainly focused on price, it may make sense to schedule a time to review the overall relationship and make sure you are providing the most value based on a total cost of ownership. Quarterly reviews are a good way to cycle in and make sure that you are meeting current needs and looking for new one.

Priorities or directions often change in an organization, but salespeople don’t uncover this information because they don’t ask. As an inbound sales rep, you should identify a good-fit account, then connect multiple times to build that relationship.

Check in frequently to determine if there are changes to the business, new needs, extension of a product line, new territories, or new opportunities to help.

A good agenda includes the following elements:

• Welcome and Introduction
• Overview of major updates in prospect’s industry
• Prospect’s purchasing history for the quarter/year
• Delivery schedule
• Forecast for the rest of the year
• Q and A

4. Keep your interactions conversational and genuine.

Consultative selling is a personal game, so it serves you to add a personal edge to your communication when conducting it. As I've said, you need to be able to garner and sustain trust with your prospects — it's hard to do that when your interactions with them leave them on edge. It might be self-explanatory, but you have to put your prospects at ease by keeping your conversations with them … conversational.

Mind blowing stuff, right?

But seriously, you have to keep your communication fluid and, perhaps more importantly, genuine. Be sincerely enthusiastic, and mean what you say. Prospects respond to approachability, but they'll see through phony, ham-handed pandering — and there's often a fine line between the two.

Understand your offering's value, believe in it, and be able to articulate it in accessible, non-imposing language. If you can do that, you'll get considerable mileage out of your consultative selling efforts in a transactional industry

There's tremendous merit to and utility in leveraging consultative sales tactics. And as much as transactional selling is a fact of life in several industries, there's still room to use them in many cases.

No matter the nature of your space or how you sell, it's worth having a thorough understanding of both sides of this sales token — you stand to gain a lot from incorporating consultative sales strategies into your sales efforts in a transactional industry.

Every salesperson has felt that rush of adrenaline—and, let’s face it, dread—that comes when selling to a tough prospect in B2B sales. These prospects are pushy and sometimes even rude, making demands like, “What’ve you got for me? Let’s make this quick!”

But no matter how these customers make you feel initially, they often turn out to be some of your best prospects. Why? Because they tell you exactly what’s on their mind, and they won’t lead you on or waste your time.

By following these six steps, you can push through that initial feeling of fear when dealing with tough B2B customers—and close way more sales:

1. Meet face-to-face with tough prospects. Especially if you’re selling a high-end product or service that requires a serious investment, you absolutely must meet face-to-face with your prospects. Most salespeople try to close sales on the phone without ever meeting prospects in person. Instead, hop in your car—or on a plane, if necessary—and meet them face-to-face.

Meeting tough prospects in person will help you win them over, and increase your close rate many times over. To learn more about this powerful strategy, and other tips to help you dominate your sales competition, check out this article on 3 Crushing Mistakes Most Salespeople Make.

2. Clarify your value proposition. B2B sales can be lucrative and rewarding, but not if you fail to demonstrate your value up front. When you sit down with B2B customers, they’re only thinking one thing: “Is this person creating value for me?” If they decide the answer is “no,” you’re dead in the water.

Take the time to script out and memorize your value proposition. When a tough prospect asks you what you do, you absolutely must have a quick and well-rehearsed response. This way, you can demonstrate your value from the beginning.

3. Don’t back down from your premium pricing. Tough customers can make you want to lower your prices—but don’t! Low prices don’t attract quality prospects. In fact, low prices only attract customers who don’t understand or care about your value. Stick to your premium pricing with tough customers, and you’ll start closing more B2B sales. Plain and simple.

Check out this video to get more details:

4. Get customers to talk about their challenges. When you’re selling to tough prospects, talking about yourself is only going to land you in trouble. These customers have a lot on their minds, and they don’t have time to listen to you. Instead, get them talking about their challenges and goals.

Seek to understand your clients’ challenges and what’s going on in their world. Then show them how your service will solve their problems. Not only will this prepare you to address their needs, but it will also get them to be emotionally involved in the conversation—and likely diffuse any animosity they are showing toward you.

5. Be unemotional and firm. Tough prospects are a lot like schoolyard bullies—if they sense you’re scared or nervous, they’ll eat you for lunch. Next time you’re dealing with a tough prospect, show that you’re totally unfazed by this behavior. Don’t back down. Instead, hold unwaveringly to your script and stick to your approach.

If you show fear or frustration, you might just waste a potential opportunity. Instead, stay unemotional and stand firm when the prospect pushes back. If a client is still pushing you around after the first few minutes, it’s time to start matching the behavior. By rising to their level in tone, pace, and strength, you’ll diffuse their negative energy and retain control.

Watch this video to see exactly what I mean:

6. Offer 3-option proposals. Present an inexpensive option that will still solve your clients’ needs, a middle-of-the-road option, and a premium option way outside of their budget. This method will set the value for what you’re offering, and provide context that will reduce the customer’s need to price shop. You might be surprised to find the prospect actually goes for your premium option. Either way, this method will help you close more sales with tough B2B customers.

As the founder of Sales Strategy Academy, these strategies for closing more B2B sales have been central to growing my business. Have you ever used one of these techniques for closing tough customers in B2B sales? Which strategies will you apply in your next sales meeting? Share your experiences in the comments below.

The Series

In today’s environment of strict regulation and reduction in spending for healthcare, life sciences companies are under pressure to reduce operational costs, increase efficiency and provide greater value to the system—and sales enablement is a crucial component to achieving all of the above.

This series will unpack the elements of sales enablement, and how they can enhance and elevate sales initiatives for life sciences companies. Let’s start with the “what.”

What is Sales Enablement?

Coaching? Training? Content creation? Operations? If you ask experts for an explicit, applied definition of sales enablement, odds are you’ll receive more than one.

In fact, there’s an entire group of practitioners “solely dedicated to the elevation of the sales enablement role and the creation of standards for the profession.” It’s called the Sales Enablement Society, and its mission is to bring clarity, set standards and define best practices for the sales enablement community. But before this group was formed, there was little to no consistency surrounding the definition of sales enablement, its goals or its applications.

It’s apparent that sales enablement is continuously evolving, and its meaning can vary from one organization to the next. But in its broadest scope, Forrester defines sales enablement as:

“…a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.”

So, what does that mean? Let’s break this down a bit.

…a strategic, ongoing process…

Think proactive versus reactive. The complexities of the selling environment are endless—and it takes more than a singular technological solution to solve them. The role of sales enablement is honed in on the perpetual process of actively identifying the most efficient ways for sales reps to successfully sell. Keep in mind that sales enablement involves strategy, not just tactics. This means that sales enablement ≠training; it goes further than just checking the box after onboarding an employee, and can’t be confined to a single event or timeframe.

For a life sciences company, the tactics leveraged within a properly-executed sales enablement strategy would look like:

1. Developing a clinical case study
2. Providing guidelines to reps for how to use the case study
3. Delivering the case study in a way that reps want to receive it
4. Tracking usage and gaining visibility into the performance of the case study
5. Modifying the case study based on those metrics
6. Refine and repeat

…equips all client-facing employees…

More often than not, sales reps have the most customer-facing role in an organization. They’re tasked with being an expert in their field and supplying a wide assortment of segments with insightful, educational information. The role of sales enablement ensures that those who work directly with customers are equipped with relevant content, clearly defined goals and a consistent, compelling message.

For a life sciences company, that means a sales rep heading into a call or meeting is armed with:

• Subject matter specific to the physician specialty, hospital or lab
• Custom, FDA-compliant collateral
• Content that promptly positions the device, drug or tool they are selling

…to have a valuable conversation…

Gone are the days that sales reps can have a “one size fits all” customer call. The discussion can go in so many directions, but sales enablement provides reps with the ability to keep the conversation relevant and personal.

For a life sciences company, the following scenario often occurs:

After weeks of reaching out, a sales rep finally locks down 10 minutes with a target physician, hospital administrator or lab associate—in the next hour. Lucky for them, sales enablement initiatives allow for the rapid accessibility of:

• Specific insight into the physician, hospital or lab’s history with the company
• The current problems their office, hospital or lab might be facing
• How the rep’s drug, device or tool can help alleviate those problems

With this information, the rep can get the most value out of that 10-minute window.

…with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle…

This revolves around a company’s ability to understand what customers need, and when they need it. Sales enablement helps sales reps identify their customers’ needs, pain points and goals at various stages of the buyer’s journey. It also gives reps the confidence they need knowing they will always have access to impactful, relevant content for all customer stakeholders involved in the purchase process.

A sales enablement strategy not only helps reps recognize the right customers, but also ensures they understand the differences between the various stages in the buyer’s journey. Even further, it equips reps with the resources and support necessary to have that valuable customer conversation discussed above.

For a life sciences company, this calls for:

• Implementing a system for managing interactions with current, potential and future accounts (typically a CRM)
• Analyzing data gathered from that system to better understand what stage those accounts are seated at
• Mapping all sales content and collateral to the various stages to help move those accounts along in their decision-making process

…to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.

Sales reps are the primary revenue generators of any organization. Considerable budget dollars are invested in sales each year, because the selling system is directly linked to revenue generation. Sales enablement ensures that leadership has the strategy, resources and support in place to optimize both the sales force and, subsequently, ROI. By directly aligning with revenue goals, sales enablement efforts becomes less of a cost center and more of a revenue driver.

For a life sciences company, this means:

• Investing more resources on the back end of the sale
• Shortening the amount of time spent on the front end of the sale
• Capitalizing on that shortened sales cycle to strengthen and grow relationships

What’s Next?

Although sales enablement is evolving every day, one thing is certain: it isn’t going anywhere.

The next posts in this series will explore who should be involved, how to get it started and why life sciences companies should be thinking strategically about sales enablement.

Are you making these common mistakes in your sales conversations? If so, you’re not alone. But if you can eliminate these common mistakes, you’ll stand out and buyers will enjoy meeting with you.

Sales conversations aren’t always smooth. That’s why buyers avoid them. It’s up to sellers to make these conversations more engaging and less awkward.

The 5 most common reasons sales conversations do not flow naturally are:

• The seller is hyper-focused on a list of questions or on a pre-set agenda. The emphasis seems to be on making it through the list without regard for the underlying purpose of any one question or item on the list.
• The seller is afraid of objections, new information, questions she might not be able to answer, unfamiliar topics and/or of losing the buyer’s interest. She tries to constrain the scope of the conversation so it doesn’t get uncomfortable for her.
• The seller is painstakingly conscious of the time. He starts by apologizing for taking the buyer’s time. He prefaces questions with minimizing statements like “I know you’re busy, but if I could bother you for just one more minute…” He checks his watch frequently.
• The seller is unable to resist the urge to sell. Something! Anything! Right Now!
• The seller is speaking in a language the buyer doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand, using industry jargon or talking about product specifications that are too technical, irrelevant or low value for the buyer.

What’s unfortunate about these awkward sales conversations is they happen with such regularity that buyers have come to expect little more when they meet with sellers.

This is one reason buyers are reluctant to set appointments with sellers and buyers choose automated ordering systems rather than working directly with sellers. No one wants to engage in an awkward, unnatural sales conversations. Sellers who take a more natural approach and have regular conversations – interchanges of ideas with two-way communication – clearly have a better shot at connecting with buyers.

Next Steps:

• To learn more about DISCOVER Questions® and how to conduct natural and effective sales conversations, order your copy of this bestseller from Amazon.com
• When you need sales or management coaching, customized sales training, or a dynamic speaker call us at 408-779-PFPS or book an appointment with Deb.
• Check out these resources for sales managers and front line sellers. New webinars, infographics, research, podcasts and more added every month!

The award-winning CONNECT2Sell Blog is for professional sellers who believe, as we do, that Every Sale Starts with a Connection.

Deb Calvert, “DISCOVER Questions® Get You Connected” author and Top 50 Sales Influencer, is President of People First Productivity Solutions, a UC Berkeley instructor, and a former Sales/Training Director of a Fortune 500 media company. She speaks and writes about the Stop Selling & Start Leading movement and offers sales training, coaching and consulting as well as leadership development programs. She is certified as an executive and sales coach by the ICF and is a Certified Master of The Leadership Challenge®. Deb has worked in every sector and in 14 countries to build leadership capacity, team effectiveness and sales productivity with a “people first” approach.

The post 5 Mistakes You’re Making in Sales Conversations appeared first on People First.

Are you effectively using automation in your email campaigns? An even better question might be – are you even using automation in your email campaigns?

Nowadays the demand for email marketing automation is bigger than ever. If the campaigns you manage lack automation, then it’s only a matter of time before the competition comes around to eat your lunch. In fact, they probably already have, and maybe you’re just now waking up to that fact.

The days of rudimentary batch email blasts are quickly fading away. Be that as it may, there is still a large population of marketers that refuse to step into the world of email automation and triggered emails. Part of that refusal is a misunderstanding of cost vs. benefit, and the other part is simply an inability or unwillingness to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Hopefully, this article serves to dispel a few email automating myths and help a few of you realize it’s not your choice whether or not to seek out a more robust infrastructure; your customers are demanding it.

When marketers become aware that campaigns are centered on unique individuals (customers) and their behaviors (personalization), the process becomes immediately apparent that a batch and blast approach is insufficient. Automated and behavior-triggered messages are now table stakes for modern businesses. Any attempt to really focus on customer journey mapping will inevitably point to a need for such technology.

Before you take a plunge into the email automating world, however, you might want to clear the air on a few of the following items.

• Maybe you aren’t ready for it
• Maybe the status quo will forever keep you away from automation

Either way, here are just a few myths that generally get aired when the boss tells you – Hey, let’s automate our campaigns!

Myth #1: Automation is a time saver

The prevailing sentiment of many email marketing noobs is that an automated campaign exists in order to save you time. Marketing automation does have many time-saving elements, but email campaigns aren’t really chief among them. Why not? Because if you are new to marketing automation, setting up an automated campaign can take just as much time as a manual campaign setup – probably longer. If you’re doing a complicated nurture program, for example, with lots of branches, you’ll need to think through all the paths your recipients could choose, and the different content you might use for each. On the other hand, the marketer who’s already got deep experience may well find herself saving time, particularly if she’s been running complicated programs by hand or using multiple tools to achieve what an integrated platform can handle in one go.

After all of the testing and personalization settings have decided and automation and triggered responses installed, you still have to oil this abstract robot. Maintenance will be a regular occurrence because content usually runs stale over time. Also, part of managing a campaign means continuously optimizing your approach by weighing out traditional core metrics and paying attention to details such as user feedback and churn rates. You will probably be making small tweaks all along the way.

One way to manage all this is to get started with simple campaigns. Spend the time up front to really understand how to segment your lists so you can send highly targeted messages to highly likely people. Get into a comfortable groove before building more complicated campaigns. Your email payoff is less likely to be saved time, and more likely to be higher response rates and conversions.

Myth #2: ESP platforms can easily manage every solution

There are many vendor platforms out there promising you the moon, but really they only deliver a wheel of funky cheese. Your goal should be to find a solution that fits your specific needs. Chances are likely you’ll still need to do some coding to create a perfect solution. There are ESPs on the market that make automating email campaigns way more possible to easily execute more than ever before.

What’s most important, I think, is the support side of the platform. Some vendors will simply dump a massive platform on your shoulders and say ‘Good luck!’ A healthy on-boarding process that gives you – the user – the ability to not only ask detailed questions, but to be informed is a must.

Outside of this, setting up an automated campaign can still require significant marketing experience. The need for understanding the movement of things like downstream data integration, attribute tagging, and building out interest category segments is still highly valued and incredibly relevant. These key email marketing skills, and finding talented web developers continue to be some of the leading pain points when implementing an email automation strategy.

Myth #3: Automation will fix bad data

After years of experience sending to purchased lists and targeting stale email addresses, I feel it’s important to echo the need for quality data.

If your list is laden with double opt-in and frequently engaged activists, then more power to you! You’ll get way more out of the email automation experience than everyone else.

But, if your data is imperfect – perhaps your lists are loaded down with dirty data, not validated correctly, or contain a mess of aging undeliverables – then please don’t think automation is your silver bullet. You can’t automate your way out of a filthy dataset, no matter how awesome your strategy might seem.

Simply put, a successful email campaign is a marriage between good strategy and good data. If either side is poisoned, then the two become divorced.

Final Takeaways

Can email automation help you? My experiences say that messages triggered by behavior and personalized to an individual’s interests often lead to significantly higher engagement.

The difficult task is understanding your data, and building campaigns in a way that can optimize changing variables to your benefit. I’m talking about a combination of things that would play into those triggers like timing, frequency, and persuasive content.

Having a creative approach on how to combine all of these items is what will allow you to build out the user’s journey through your online assets. The culmination of which will predicatively end in more users converting.

Part of the brilliance behind automation is getting people to become interested in something they don’t yet know that they are interested in by identifying the correct signals and then nurturing your messaging in order to drive customer behavior. Things like welcome series distribution, abandoned shopping carts, purchases, a post-service ‘thank you,’ and interested but failed CTAs are all opportunities for reasonable engagement.

The point of automating emails isn’t to improve on the balance of your workload, but rather to build on the quality in which your workload is balanced. Effectively navigating this concept will allow your campaigns to have more meaning and your relationships with your recipients to become more meaningful.

The post How to Get Powerful Reviews that Sell More Books appeared first on Copyblogger.

The first time you deliver a message to your prospective client or dream client, you should not expect that message to resonate and drive them to take action, regardless of how compelling your case may be. This is true even if you have real influence, and even if you are positioned as a trusted advisor.

That first salvo, the first time you say something, barely creates awareness. Your dream client may need time for the message to resonate and before they start to notice evidence, signs, and symptoms that what you are saying is true. Awareness doesn’t happen all at once; it develops over time, and with repetition and variations on the theme.

The second time you deliver that same message, it may carry more weight. Because you are continuing to make the case, it proves that you are serious about the change you are recommending. Even if your dream client doesn’t like the idea of change, your consistency and your persistence garners more attention. Your determination gets you heard.

To attempt a real change initiative by messaging someone once or twice is not a serious enough attempt for you to expect your dream client abandon what they are doing and shift directions.

The third time you recommend the same change, while continuing to point to the mounting evidence that you are correct, providing proof that you are not the only one who recognizes these trends. You explain, again, how what you suggest will improve the results for your dream client. As you do this, you may start developing some real traction around the idea. Maybe you will get your dream client to see your vision on the fourth attempt. Or perhaps the fifth.

Too many people place much too much stock in attempting to make a case so compelling and so overwhelming that they can immediately get to “yes” in a single try. If you want a message to resonate and compel action, keep repeating it.

The post If You Want a Message to Stick, Repeat Yourself appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Filling a vacancy might be urgent. Sometimes, the temptation to get warm bodies in can be irresistible. However, the costs associated with that one hire can be far greater than you realise. Poor recruitment outcomes might end up costing a business far more than if it had left the position open to find the right candidate. Costs of recruiting the wrong person have been quantified in many HR studies. The wrong hire can result in outlaying up to one and a half times the new employee’s salary, according to a 2014 article.

This is conservative, according to a recent survey by The Australian, quoted in Business Review Australia. This survey found that a bad hire will cost two and a half times the employee’s salary. To demonstrate, for a new employee on a salary of $70,000, it calculated that you may need to spend $175,000 between the initial recruitment action and the staff member’s eventual departure.

Forbes estimate the costs on a sliding scale — the higher the salary, the more expensive it is to find a replacement.

Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh calculated that the poor decisions made by bad hires, compounded by the costs of their bad hires, came to over $100 million in the first company he founded.

How to estimate the costs of a poor hire

You can estimate the total investment made in a bad hire by breaking it down into the component parts. Some of these will be direct costs and easily quantifiable, others are indirect costs which can only be estimated. Circumstances will be different according to the size of your organisation and the seniority of the recruit.

The percentages are estimates of an annual salary:

• Wasted salary of up to 6 months (63%)
• Recruitment costs and time (5-40%)
• Training costs (and time) (5-20%)
• Impact on rest of team (5-50%)
• Missed business deliverables (infinite!)

(Source: Manager Foundation)

You can develop a calculator to estimate these costs. By inputting data to estimate costs for each step of the process, you can arrive at a calculation that is based on some real cost it takes to actually bring a new person through the door — the time taken, salary of the staff member involved, and externals rather than your gut. Use the following checklist as a starting point:

• Writing a position brief and associated recruitment paperwork
• Advertising, or otherwise sourcing applicants
• Screening and selecting for interview costs
• Conducting interviews and other skills assessments
• Negotiating contract and waiting for their start date
• Induction and orientation
• Productivity losses eg. supervision, rework, over initial hiring period (3 months).

Let’s dig into a few of the costs of a bad hire to how truly detrimental hiring the wrong person can be.

Time spent recruiting

In traditional recruitment, whether done in-house or outsourced to an agency, significant time is invested by management in initiating a recruitment action: preparing and placing an advertisement, dedicating time for interviews, following up references.

Start-up costs

You’re paying the start-up costs of equipment, training and then the salary of someone who is not meeting your expectations. As time passes, it can be tempting to dig even deeper into your staff development budget in the hope that performance will turn around.

Supervision

A poor hire will require more supervision, bringing them up to speed and monitoring their outputs. Managers whose time is drawn away by a needier employee have less time for their own work and less time to manage other staff who are left to cope on their own. Which leads to the next element of a bad hire: lowering of team morale.

Impact on morale

The energy-sapping effect of a staff member who is not pulling their weight can drag down your whole team. The ripples from hiring a poor cultural fit grow ever larger as the impact is felt across the organisation. And the costs mount. A study from the National Business Research Institute found that 37% of employers said a bad hire negatively affected employee morale.

Aligning cultural fit is now recognised as fundamental. Studies indicate that employers who fail to align their business’s values with the recruitment action, criteria and interview questions may be heading towards a poor match. What are the values in your business? How can you communicate your business culture? Are you publicly promoting it via transparent platforms such as JobAdvisor? If you focus on the tasks alone, you might miss aligning with the strategic vision. If you’re focusing on skills and experience—which are, after all, externally validated credentials—you might be swayed by a convincing interview performance.

Tony Hsieh has learned from his mistakes. In a speech from 2013, he acknowledges how wrong he had been to ignore culture in his first company. Despite hiring all the ‘right’ people in terms of skill sets and experience, he ended up with a toxic culture where even he didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. If he, as CEO, felt that way, imagine the impact on his staff. Zappos’ logic now is to hire slowly and fire quickly. Hsieh insists on two sets of interviews: one by the hiring manager looking for experience and ability and a second round with human resources who probe for cultural fit.

Reputational cost and severance

Other factors to consider include the cost of reputational damage, and severance. Poor hires can damage a business’s reputation. If the hire is out of step with your organisation’s values and their views become known to your clients or other stakeholders, the damage can be lasting. The study from the National Business Research Institute found that 18% of employers said the bad hire negatively impacted client relationships and 10% attributed it to a decrease in sales.

Finally, there is the cost of letting the poor hire go. The severance for a poor hire can be astronomical. Merissa Mayer’s choice of Henrique de Castro as her Chief Operating Officer ended up costing Yahoo $109 million, after a tenure of only 15 months.

Even 15 months is too long for Tony Hsieh. Zappos has a policy of offering staff $2000 to leave if they are found to be a poor fit — and usually within a week — which is an innovative way to cap the costs of a poor hire.

Originally published September 13 2016 by Search Party

We all love the sales funnel…at least in concept. Visually, it’s the perfect model: Our leads pour into the top of the funnel. As they move through the middle of the funnel, marketing and sales both qualify the leads. And buyers flow out the bottom.

Or do they?

With the increasing complexity of B2B purchases, sales cycles are becoming longer, and more decision makers and influencers are involved in the buying decision.

It’s time to stop playing a numbers game and just pouring leads into your sales funnel. Now’s the time to flip the traditional sales funnel on its head and create a new model. The image of a sales and marketing pyramid helps you understand that you need to be more responsive to buyers’ needs throughout the sales process. You must assist them as they climb the pyramid and reach the pinnacle—a decision to buy from you.

The Changing Buyer’s Journey

Where once sales were relatively linear—prospects came into your sales funnel and decided either to buy or not to buy—today’s buying patterns have changed. The buyer’s journey is more complex, more fluid and increasingly self-directed. Above all, we know that leads don’t naturally convert into sales. Left to make the journey on their own, buyers easily stray off course:

• Easy Click Comparisons

  With the click of a mouse and a Google search, buyers can find several companies offering similar products/services.

• Omni-Channel Marketing

  With so many more sources of information at buyers’ fingertips (e.g., social media, webinars, digital advertising, blogs, white papers), the buyer’s journey is no longer linear. Buyers can jump in, download some information, fall out, and just as suddenly return and commit to buying. With so many touch points, it’s difficult to know where buyers are in their journey.

• Distractions

  Third-party reviews, customers’ referrals and comments, competitors’ promotions and your own content are all helping to disrupt and distract buyers’ already short attention spans. And when vendors see the sales funnel as a pure numbers game, they’re looking to attract leads—whether committed to buying or not.

Turn the Sales Funnel into a Pyramid

A sales pyramid presents a more accurate model of today’s sales process. It’s a reminder that buyers and vendors must climb several significant steps to reach the top of the pyramid. You need to help them because there is no natural gravitational force downward, drawing them to a decision to buy from you. Instead, leads and prospects need assistance up the pyramid.

As a result, you need a well-defined lead management process that reflects an understanding of each step to the pinnacle. That’s how you’ll be able to transform prospects into customers.

The process includes:

• Target

  The better you understand who your best customers are, the easier it is to target similar prospects. Review your past sales, identify your best customers and use that insight to build a business persona for companies and decision makers with the highest propensity to buy what you have to sell.

• Attract

  When you know your market, you can create a message that speaks directly to buyers’ wants, needs and concerns. Apply this message consistently to content disseminated across all media channels, such as blogs, whitepapers, social media, and webinars.

• Capture

  Once you’ve drawn prospects to your message, you need to give them a reason to ask for more information. Almost half of marketers create highly specialized landing pages for each campaign, offering valuable content, demos, trials and consultations. In addition to building on your targeted message, include a call-to-action that invites leads to sign up for more information. Alternatively, offer an inbound phone number answered by knowledgeable associates who can collect contact information, qualify leads and answer callers’ questions.

• Nurture

  Only about 25% of leads are ready to convert when you capture them. Another 25% are likely not qualified. The remainder will convert at some point, but may choose your competition’s offering instead of yours. If you’re not offering them a helping hand up the pyramid with lead nurturing, it’s good reason for them to stray. With outbound telemarketing and email, marketing can nurture prospects. As they continue to engage and qualify leads, they’re also informing, building trust, and suggesting solutions to real problems. The more personalized the messaging, the better the prospects’ experience. And when they’re ready to buy, you have a better chance that they’ll come to you first.

• Qualify

  When does a marketing-qualified lead become a sales-qualified lead? It’s an important question because sales and marketing are often at odds. Traditionally, marketing has played a numbers game, thinking the more the better. Sadly, that’s not true. Sales wants a few good leads they believe they can close. Unless marketing and sales agree on their definition of a qualified lead, sales reps will fail to follow up on marketing’s leads.

• Engage

  With well-qualified leads in hand, sales is prepared to act. And when marketing consistently updates the company’s system of records or CRM, it’s easier for sales to pick up the ball and continue to build their case and engage prospects in the critical discussions that will ultimately close the sales.

• Measure and Optimize

  Analytics and marketing automation tools have revolutionized our ability to understand the sales and marketing process. Given the increasingly non-linear trajectory of the sales process, tracking prospects’ path to purchase and how they respond to various content and offers becomes more important than ever.

The days of just playing the numbers are past. Today’s marketing and sales teams need to work together to target their best leads with a series of carefully crafted messages and activities that help them climb the sales pyramid. Leads alone are not enough. It’s the ability to convert prospects into customers that raises ROI and increases the bottom line.

There’s no question that B2B marketers are quickly realizing the potential of account-based marketing (ABM). In fact, 97% of marketers achieved a higher return on investment (ROI) with ABM than with any other marketing initiative, according to Alterra. If that’s not proof enough, consider the fact that a number of marketing technology companies have updated their current offerings or created new ones to meet the growing demand for ABM.

So how do you navigate the landscape and choose the best technology to support a repeatable, scalable strategy for your business? Let’s take a look:

ABM 101: A Review of the Basics

At its core, ABM is a strategy that aligns marketing with sales to focus on key accounts and increase the impact of marketing activities on a company’s bottom line.

Traditionally, B2B marketers created broad-based marketing campaigns to attract a large number of prospects. However, ABM flips this approach by encouraging marketers to focus their efforts on a defined set of target accounts that typically generate higher value for the organization.

However, the key is not only to target these high-value accounts as a whole, but also to identify key decision-makers within each one and launch personalized campaigns across channels that resonate with their unique needs and attributes. In many cases, that is easier said than done. To map and manage strategic communications at this level, sales and marketing alignment need to be in lockstep—from shared tactics, to account identification, to targeting and outreach, and continuous feedback.

To do this successfully, you need a solution that can centrally manage named account lists, seamlessly execute multi-channel campaigns efficiently, and effectively to individual target leads within these accounts—at scale—and deliver real-time insights to marketing and sales to act on.

If ABM is right for your organization, it’s critical that you equip yourself for success and choose a solution that will support your strategy.

An ABM solution should have these three essential capabilities to support your strategy and ensure continued, scalable success: account targeting, cross-channel engagement, and account analytics. Let’s take a closer look at these capabilities and what they should include:

1. Targeting and Management of Named Accounts

The first capability to look for in an ABM solution is the comprehensive management of named accounts in a centralized location.

As you’re working with sales to identify strategic accounts for your organization, you might use different criteria determine them:

• High yield: drive higher revenue (e.g. Fortune 500 companies)
• Product fit: business needs match your solutions
• Quick wins: short purchase-decision process (e.g. companies with specific sizes or structures)
• Strategic importance: align with your company’s strategy (e.g. acquiring an industry-recognized logo for social proof)
• Competitors: competitors’ prospects and customers
• Territory: specific regions to support sales

Collaborate with your sales team and review your customer relationship management (CRM) history for high-yield and quick win companies. Whatever your criteria are, your solution should enable you to quickly identify existing opportunities from accounts in your database that fit the ‘ideal profile’ you’re looking for in a named account.

You should be able to segment these accounts into lists based on a number of factors such as industry, company size, geographic location, and more and score them based on factors like firmographics, cumulative behaviors, or even predictive capabilities. Make sure you can import your list(s) from your CRM, define them as a specific audience, and modify them at any time.

The right ABM solution will allow you to do all of these strategic activities within a single platform—with access to the data and database you use for traditional broad-based marketing. Additionally, you may want to consider a solution that includes accounts as first class objects and offers fine-tuned account segmentation based on a variety of factors—industry, revenue, pipeline, or current lifecycle value. And if you choose a solution that has built-in account scoring, your marketing and sales teams will be able to prioritize accounts, leveraging existing lead scores or different dimensions—industry, size of business, current pipe, or any other historical data.

2. Personalized Engagement Across Channels

Another key ABM capability is engaging the right people from high-value accounts at multiple touch points throughout the buyer’s journey. This translates into interacting with key decision-makers from named accounts across any channel and device with the right message—from ads to email to your website, and on desktop to mobile, and beyond.

However, considering that on average 5.4 people have to formally sign off on each B2B purchase, according to CEB surveys, stakeholders in any purchasing decision can come from a variety of roles, teams, and locations. And each decision-maker may have unique needs requiring different messaging and content. The right ABM solution can ensure that you reach each decision-maker with the most relevant content to nudge them closer to purchase.

Look for and implement a cross-channel solution that offers ABM natively as a part of its marketing platform so you can deliver personalized, coherent campaigns to your target accounts across the channels they engage on. In addition, your solution should allow you to track engagement levels for each decision-maker and share this data with sales to identify top prospects and high-value opportunities.

An ABM solution that is native to your engagement marketing platform will help you track and manage your ABM target accounts and deliver informed, real-time, and coordinated cross-channel engagement and targeting. Listening and understanding your target accounts’ behaviors equips you to deliver highly personalized messages at exactly the right time. Additionally, an ABM solution that’s native to your engagement marketing platform or marketing automation solution offers complementary capabilities beyond those that standalone ABM solutions can like ad targeting, web personalization, email, event, and more.

3. Analysis of Results Across Target Accounts

Once you have your ABM strategy in place, it’s time to start tracking results and revenue impact. Without a way to deliver measurable results to the marketing and sales team, your efforts can quickly fall short.

Make sure your ABM solution can provide real-time, actionable, and intelligent KPIs to reveal exactly how each target account, or group of accounts, is progressing and the impact of your ABM programs. You should be able to easily view previous and current marketing activities for each account, as well as a score that indicates the status of each one. In addition, make sure you can track interesting or meaningful events have occurred that marketing and sales should be aware of, such as downloading a late-stage piece of content or an account stakeholder scheduling a demo.

Both the marketing and sales teams should have full visibility into how accounts are engaging with personalized content and which content is most successful. A comprehensive ABM solution will provide analysis from a high level, like on your top accounts, all the way down to the specific account level, which ensures a continuous feedback loop.

Marketing and sales collaboration is a foundational element of a successful ABM strategy and a complete ABM solution will cater to and enable this cross-team collaboration. This can manifest as a sales-focused dashboard and view that makes it easy for marketing and sales teams to work together to identify high-value accounts from a particular list, decision-makers that should be prioritized, and hot leads based on certain engagement behaviors.

Choose a Complete ABM Solution

Ideally, it’s best to leverage a sophisticated marketing automation platform with a native ABM solution; this allows you to easily integrate your ABM efforts into your overall marketing strategy, which may still include broad-based marketing. A complete ABM solution that’s native to your engagement marketing platform leverages your existing lead scoring activities, analytics, dashboards, campaigns, and more.

Once you have a platform that covers the three essentials, you can consider adding complementary solutions to enrich and expand your ABM activities, such as targeted advertising, predictive lead scoring, data enrichment, and internal workflow management.

Marketo ABM is the first ABM solution that’s a native part of an engagement marketing platform and marketing automation solution, which has long been recognized as the best lead management solution focused on engagement. With Marketo ABM, marketers can now leverage built-in ABM capabilities (that include the three essential capabilities), on top of a platform that already excels in engaging people and collaborate with sales to drive revenue.

Interested in learning more about how to pick the right ABM solution? Download our ebook The 3 Essential Components of an ABM Solution to understand how to find the right solution that allows you to target and manage key accounts, engage them across channels, and measure your impact.

When we observe a chess grand master in action (or an expert in any other similar strategy-based game), it quickly becomes apparent that they are not merely living in the moment but thinking several moves ahead. Pursuing the most obvious immediate move could store trouble up for the future.

The same, of course, applies to selling. The best sales people pursue long-term strategies - and they also give themselves options that allow them to anticipate and adapt to their prospect’s future behaviour.

Perhaps the best example of this is how top sales people adapt their strategies to their entry path into the prospect. There are really two fundamental paths: top-down and bottom-up, and the strategies that need to be adopted vary significantly between the two.

Of course, there’s an argument that you always want to enter an account from the top down by engaging directly with the ultimate decision maker from the start. It’s an approach that has been the subject of dozens of sales self-improvement books, but the reality is that even the smoothest of sales people often struggle to get an initial audience directly with a C-Level executive.

And as we’ll discover later, if sales people fail to plan ahead, the potential created by that initial senior-level conversation could easily get stuck in the mire of being delegated to a bunch of the prospect organisation’s “experts” who inevitably get asked to look at the idea in more detail.

There’s a different challenge involved when sales people enter below the level of the ultimate decision making authority. Sooner or later they are going to have to navigate a path to power - and it’s normally best to do so with the full support of their initial contact rather than risking conflict by trying to go around them.

THINKING HIGH AND LOW

Just like a chess grand master, successful sales people need to be thinking ahead, regardless of the initial point of contact.

Here’s how a successful C-Level first contact typically pans out: the executive is persuaded that the idea is worth looking at, but concludes that a detailed evaluation needs to be undertaken by their technical or operational experts elsewhere in the organisation.

Being delegated with a mandate can of course be very powerful, but if it is not properly negotiated up front this often leads to the project rapidly losing momentum. It’s probable that the “experts” will end up looking at the new idea through the lens of their current experience - and this is not always a good thing.

These expert evaluators often resent change being foisted upon them. They often lack the “Big Picture” perspective that got the C-Level executive so enthusiastic in the first place. And they often find it easier to identify reasons why the new idea wouldn’t work within the organisation’s existing environment.

This happens far more often than the “Selling to C-Level” evangelists typically like to acknowledge - but it’s a practical and all too-common consequence of adopting a top-down approach without planning ahead.

Faced with this predictable risk, experience suggests that the sales person must accomplish two critical things when their C-level contact suggests that the next step should be to meet other members of the prospect organisation:

1. Pre-negotiate the sales person’s right to loop back directly to the C-Level contact once the conversation with the delegates has taken place, and
2. Set the C-Level’s expectations that it would not be uncommon for his experts to at first report back that they have no need for the solution or that it would not be a good fit, explain that this is usually a function of the expert not necessarily seeing the “big picture”, and agreeing that the dialogue can continue regardless even if this is the initial response

Thinking ahead is also required when entering below the ultimate decision making authority. The goal here is help the initial contact see that it is in their own enlightened self interest to help the sales person navigate to the ultimate decision making authority and to the rest of the decision making team.

It’s usually easier to achieve this once an initial relationship of trust has been established with the initial contact. After that point has been reached, the agreement may flow naturally - but there are a handful of effective techniques that can be applied if it become apparent that a little encouragement might be necessary.

One particularly effective approach is to ask a series of business implication questions that are self-evidently relevant to making the case for change, and yet which the contact is unlikely to personally know the answers to.

Another useful approach can be to share stories of other similar projects, and to explain how the champions’ chances of success were dramatically enhanced by getting the executive and decision making teams on side.

No doubt there are other strategies that will work in your own specific sales environment. The key to making these “think ahead” strategies work is to identify what has turned out to be effective in your own organisation - and to identify the things your sales people wished in retrospect they had known or done to turn around a losing situation.

Gathering these collective experiences together, and coaching every sales person in how to apply them, can help to eliminate some of the most common avoidable errors in managing sales situations. If your sales people anticipate the future, and adapt their sales strategy accordingly, they can help to shape it. But if they only ever live in the here and now, they are likely to remain hapless pawns in somebody else’s game.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A fellow of Association of Professional Sales, Bob Apollo is the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. He works with the leadership teams of high-potential B2B sales organisations to systematically transform their sales performance. Follow him on Twitter at @bobapollo.

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Getting a new business off the ground can be both one of the most rewarding and one of the most overwhelming things a person can do. There’s no other feeling in the world like taking control, making something from nothing, and bringing an idea from your own mind into the world and giving it life. There’s also nothing quite like the feeling of having absolutely zero personal time, being constantly on the run and hustling to keep up, and thinking that the fate of everything in your life hangs by a thread that will break if you make just one wrong decision.

With so much going on, and every decision feeling like it could be the most important one you’ll ever make, it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind and suddenly find yourself feeling disoriented and disorganized. As your business grows and daily operations become more complicated, maintaining your maximum productivity can be a difficult task all in itself.

Below are some tips to help you make the most of your time, get your productivity back on track and get you at least a little bit closer to the sanity you know you once possessed.

Map Out Projects

If you have large projects that will take several days or weeks to complete, map them out on a calendar to stay on top of them. Break the project down into the smallest pieces possible and then schedule each piece on your calendar just as if you were scheduling a meeting with someone.

By mapping out when you plan to take care of each piece of the puzzle, you accomplish two things. First, you’ll work with the project in smaller bits, keeping it from becoming an overwhelming task with a huge looming deadline. And second, you’ll know from the beginning that you have sufficient time to do everything you need to do, eliminating a lot of anxiety and stress from the process.

Find The Best Time For You

Everyone has their own internal schedule. Some people are most productive in the early morning. Others do things better in the afternoon or evening. Pay attention to your own schedule and figure out when you have your most productive hours.

Once you’ve found your happy time, schedule your most challenging tasks during those hours to make them easier to complete. Leave less important or less time consuming tasks for the off hours to give yourself a bit of break when your energy levels are lower.

Maximize Your Time

As you’re scheduling new tasks, look at things you’ve already got scheduled and see if you can fit similar things together. For example, if you’re going to be out of most of the day on Tuesday running to meetings, perhaps you can take advantage of the time on the road to take care of some errands that need to be run rather than spending more time out of the office on Wednesday to get them done.

Set Aside Time Each Day To Plan The Next

The simple act of planning will help you keep things under control and eliminate stress. If you take a few minutes each day to plan out the next day, you’ll never wake up feeling like you’ve been surprised by a deadline or wondering how you’re going to get everything done.

Don’t Forget To Take Breaks

It might seem counterproductive, but taking breaks is an important part of maintaining your mental and physical stamina throughout the day. If you’re working while you stuff your lunch in your mouth and putting off everything other than bathroom urges, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

In addition to a reasonable amount of time to eat a real lunch, you should also take two or three breaks of 10 to 15 minutes throughout the day to let yourself recharge a little bit. Play a game on your computer. Go for a walk outside. Work on your shadow puppet skills. Do whatever helps you relax for a few minutes.

The point is just to let your mind unwind for a few moments and think about something other than work. You’ll feel ten times better when you sit down to get back to the grind.

What do you think?

How about you? Do you make use of any of the suggestions above? Do you have any tips, tricks or mental hacks that you use to help keep things from getting out of hand or boost your own productivity?

Do you want more social shares on your articles?

Some marketers might argue that social shares are a vanity metric that have no bearing on your bottom line.

But even they couldn’t deny the value of the increased reach and exposure that comes with increased social engagement.

As a writer, it wasn’t until recently where I started to discover the formula for creating shareable content. Take a look at a post I published just 8 months ago that received little to no social engagement:

Which sucks because I really liked that article!

Now compare that to some of my more recent posts over the past few months:

Notice a difference?

What’s interesting is that my knowledge as a writer, and the quality of my content hasn’t even changed that much, but the way in which I’ve positioned my articles has.

If you’re interested to know exactly what those changes were, I’ve compiled 13 tricks to help you create more shareable content.

Enjoy!

Sharable Content Trick #1: Develop a Strong Headline

A strong headline can make or break a blog post, regardless of the content. It’s been recommended that bloggers spend up to 80% of their time writing headlines (which seems crazy, right?).

But even if you’re not ready to devote that amount of time to coming up with a headline, there are still some best practices you can apply to help ensure that the time you spent writing the article isn’t wasted. Those are:

• Use numbers when possible
• Try and keep your headlines between 6-8 words
• Use emotional and power words

For help coming up with a high performing headline, try using Co-Schedule’s headline analyzer.

We’ve even compiled some power words for you to use here:

Click here to download this free list as a PDF, or click here to see a list of power words.

Never underestimate the power of a good headline, it can make or break your article.

Sharable Content Trick #2: Tell a Story

Alex Turnbull, CEO of Groove, wrote a guest post on the Buffer blog explaining the power of story in consumable content.

In it he revealed an A/B test he ran on a piece of content, one without a story, and a variation with a story as an introduction.

What he found was that the number of people who scrolled to the bottom on the story variation was 300% higher, and the average time on page was over five times as much.

Logic would follow that the more people that read your content, the more people that can potentially get value out of it and share it.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good your post is if no one gets a chance to read it.

Sharable Content Trick #3: Write for Middle Schoolers

Unless you’re writing academic papers, there’s no need to write at a university level, ever.

In fact, a study by Contently showed that most of the best selling authors of our time write around an 8th grade reading level.

Authors include:

• Seth Godin: Grade 7.5
• Malcolm Gladwell: Grade 8.5
• Sheryl Sandberg: Grade 7.5
• JK Rowling: Grade 7.5
• Tim Ferriss: Grade 8
• Jim Collins: Grade 10
• Shane Snow: Grade 8.5

Simplifying your writing makes content easier to read, easier to understand, and more likely to be shared.

Don’t believe me?

Well when’s the last time you shared an academic journal on social media?

Didn’t think so.

Pro Tip: For a quick snapshot of what grade level you’re currently writing at, try a tool like Hemmingway app to determine what’s easy to read, and what you can change.

Sharable Content Trick #4: Use Short Sentences

On the internet, short sentences work better. That’s a fact.

This might be something difficult to get your head around, especially if were trained to write in university.

To test this theory, take an inventory of all of your favorite bloggers and ask…

How long are their average sentences?
How many sentences do they usually write before going to a new paragraph?

What you’ll probably find is that most professional bloggers that receive a lot of social engagement write in a very short and concise manner.

Marketer Neil Patel suggests never exceeding three sentences per paragraph and always starting a sentence rather than using a comma.

Take a look at one of Neil’s posts:

Notice how most of his sentences are a single line?

Use this strategy to increase the readability of your content and therefore the number of people who will make it to the end to share it.

Sharable Content Trick #5: Give Readers Social Currency

People share content for 6 reasons. Those are based on:

1. Social currency: what makes us look good
2. Triggers: things that are top of mind
3. Emotion: something that makes us feel something
4. Public: what people around us are doing
5. Practical value: things that are useful
6. Stories: something with a good narrative

Now content that you create doesn’t have to match all of those categories, but hitting on at least one of those points can help to incentivise social sharing.

One easy technique is to embed social currency into your post. You can do this by creating content that resonates with your audience and will make them look like good by sharing.

Take a look at one of my recent posts that incorporated social currency:

Take notice of the title “9 Struggles Only a Digital Marketer Would Understand“.

At a glance marketers can quickly identify with the title, and might be inclined to share as it reinforces their sense of self: being a marketer.

It also places them in an exclusive group of people that “get it”.

So now think to yourself, how can you position your content in a way that acts as social currency for your readers?

Pro Tip: For more information on social currency, check out Jonah Berger’s article How to Make Your Content Go Viral.

Sharable Content Trick #6: Make your Content Insanely Useful

Before you get too excited about renaming one of your blog posts to integrate social currency, there is one caveat: your content should be insanely useful and actionable in order to live up to the hype.

There’s a term for changing a headline to generate more clicks without changing the underlying content to match the new expectation, and that’s clickbait.

To avoid this, try and infuse as much value as you can into your articles in the form of:

• Free downloads
• Relevant and useful links
• Key takeaways
• Actionable advice

An awesome example of this is from Groove’s blog where they not only lay out a plan of attack for their readers, but they also offer a link to an additonal resource.

By clicking on an inline CTA, users are then brought to a templated Google Sheets version of the plan to help users get started.

The key point to remember is that people should be able to read your content and immediately go and implement the strategies your recommend.

Sharable Content Trick #7: Make it Easy to Share

This might sound obvious, but if you want people to share something, you need to make it easy for them to share. And there’s nothing better to encourage this than built-in share buttons on a blog.

At Wishpond we use Sharaholic, but there’s a number of services which function in a similar way. If you have a WordPress site you can install share button plugins, otherwise there’s a number of places to get some HTML code to get your share buttons up and running.

They are:

• Add This
• AddToAny
• Share This
• Shareaholic

I’m a believer that the specific tool that you use isn’t the most important thing. Ensuring that your content is easy to share is.

Pro Tip: If you’re looking to display the total number of Twitter shares on a blog post, consider using TwitCount since Twitter’s deactivated displaying the number of Tweets on a post.

Sharable Content Trick #8: Write it as a List

List posts are the some of most shareable content online today. And that’s partially due to the fact that lists appeal to the part of our brain that likes to categorize things, it breaks down complex topics into small bite size pieces and gives us the ability to scan and pull out key points that resonate with us.

It’s no wonder that when searching for content, you’ll find that list posts dominate the landscape of most shared content.

Writing your posts as a list doesn’t mean you’re simplifying your content either, in fact, list posts require you to organize your ideas more clearly ahead of time in order to ensure easy deliverability to your readers.

If you want to get started with list posts, the easiest place to start is to think of “best of” or “worst of” posts. This can include things like:

• Strategies
• Locations
• Events
• Tools

For example, this post is written as a list post. Rather than positioning it as “How to Create Shareable Content”, we’ve broken it down as “13 Tricks For Remarkably Sharable Content”..

How can you start using list posts in your content?

Sharable Content Trick #9: Tag Your Content for Social Sharing

So imagine this, you’ve produced some good content, a user has received value from it and is now ready to share it on social.

What’s next?

Assuming you’ve installed some social share buttons they can click “Tweet,” share the post and away they go.

It’s that simple right?

Not quite! A simple mistake that a lot of content creators make is neglecting to add relevant hashtags and forgetting to @mention brands and influencers referenced in their article.

Take a look at this example from our article 100 Marketing Growth Hacks Learned from 5 Years as a Startup. Under this tip we included a “Tweet This” button in order to make it easy for people to share this tip on Twitter.

Once they click “Tweet This” a pre-populated tweet is brought up:

In that Tweet the company used in the example is mentioned (Buffer) as well as a relevant hashtag for the article.

Taking the time to @mention and tag your share messages with the relevant tags is a quick win for added engagement and reach on social.

To add a inline Tweet feature like the one in the example above, check out Click to Tweet.

Sharable Content Trick #10: Leverage Current Events

No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always going to be new updates, releases, and industry-wide events that are going to grab people’s attention.

Take advantage of those events by creating content tailored to a specific audience interested in hearing the story unfold.

At Wishpond, we recently started writing about industry-wide events. This includes things like Instagram and Facebook’s algorithm updates, developments with Snapchat, AdWords announcements, etc.

One such article was an article my colleague Jordan wrote about Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Update.

Articles like this are a great way to leverage current events in order to score more social shares and engagement.

Pro Tip: To stay on top of current events, regularly check sites like Feedly to get a big picture overview of what’s going on in your industry.

Other great examples of this can include references made to current events in pop culture.

Take a look at this article by promoter.io written about NPS ratings:

In it they leveraged the popularity of the show “Strange Things” on Netflix in order to create a blog header image that can resonate with their audience.

Sharable Content Trick #11: Create Emotion

Studies have shown that your content has to have an emotional effect on readers especially if you want them to share it.

But this isn’t limited to positive emotions such as joy, love or optimism.
In fact, negative emotions have been shown to have an equal or even greater effect on the overall shareability of a post if it penetrates deep enough into a user’s psyche and drives them to take action.

Take a look at an article from Business Insider that discoussed the possibility of video views being stolen from YouTube creators on Facebook.

The post itself went viral, but what’s even more interesting than the number of shares was the reaction different YouTube influencers and supporters had to the post.

This is just one example of how you can use emotion to drive social engagement and shares.

Be warned however, writing emotionally-driven content can sometimes backfire, especially if you’re catering to negative emotions such as anger and terror.

The content team at Fractl did a study of top shared content from the image site imgur and found that there were 5 main emotions that consistently came up again and again. They were:

• Curiosity
• Amazement
• Interest
• Astonishment
• Uncertainty

For more on how you can create different types of emotional content, check out Neil Patel’s article 8 Ways to Get More Social Shares Without Annoying Readers.

Sharable Content Trick #12: Use Buzzsumo to Identify Shareable Blog Topics

Rather than shooting in the dark to determine what types of content will perform well in the future, take a lesson from the history books and look through Buzzsumo to see which content performed well in the past.

Take a look at the search results for the keyphrase “landing page optimization”.

Taking stock of what’s already been produced and highly shared will help you hone in on what types of topics are popular, and how you can create similar, equally shareable, content.

The trick is to find popular posts that you can expand on and provide either more advanced strategies, more actionable examples, better data, or simply a more thorough analysis.

Another perk of using this strategy is that since you’re choosing topics based around posts that have already been published, there’s already data on who’s engaged with and shared those posts.

This comes in handy, especially when it comes to doing outreach for your new article.

To see who’s shared a particular article, click “View Shares”.

This will reveal a targeted list of users who you can be sure will find value out of your new article.

Pro Tip: Especially if you’re just starting out, nothing beats getting your hands dirty with some good old fashioned outreach — particularly when new blog traffic is your primary objective.

Use Buzzsumo’s list of sharers as a starting point for this outreach.

Sharable Content Trick #13: Publish (Really) Original Content

Generally speaking, if you want to create something that generates a lot of shares, you either need to:

• Create something substantially more valuable than what already exists (think Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique)
• Relate to current events
• Trigger an emotional response (i.e. cute, inspiring, angry, controversial)
• Create original content

Interestingly enough, creating original content is the easiest of the four. And that’s because original content is based on your own experiences, unique perspective, and data.

This can fall into three broad categories:

• How we did “x”
• Findings from “x” data
• Story of “x”

The problem that most people make is repurposing pre-existing content and then assuming that it’s original content.

Yes you could say it’s original in the sense that you might have given your own unique perspective on the topic or because you categorized the data in a different way. But if you’re not creating your own story, or publishing your own data, then you’ll always be sourcing back to the original article or publisher.

Here’s an example of an unoriginal article linking back to the original source.

Compare this with the original Mailchimp article that now receives both linkbacks and shares.

Creating original content doesn’t need to be super data driven either. Take a look at this example from the Groove blog that discussed how adding one-on-one meetings helped improve their company culture.

By looking for your own stories and data, you step into the ranks of the original content creators that need not link back and source their findings, because they’re the true original.

Once you’ve discovered this you’ll find that you have the monopoly on your story and the social engagement that follows.

Summary

There’s no one secret to creating sharable content, but there are a number of tactics that you can employ to increase the likelihood that someone will share.

As a litmus test of shareability, the next time you create a piece of content consider; if I read this would I want to share it?

If the answer is no (and you feel that your representative of someone in your space), then it might be time to reconsider your topic, add more value, and embed more elements of shareability into your post.

To recap, those are:

1. Develop a strong headline
2. Tell a story
3. Write for middle schoolers
4. Use short sentences
5. Give readers social currency
6. Make your content insanely useful
7. Make it easy to share
8. Write it as a list
9. Tag your content for social sharing
10. Leverage current events
11. Create emotion
12. Use Buzzsumo to identify shareable blog topics
13. Create (really) original content

Have a tip that’s helped your content get shared? Did you find this article useful? Drop me a line in the comments!

In a world where labels reign supreme, how important is your job title? We explain the surprising and sometimes unexpected effects job title can have on your work performance, job satisfaction, and career trajectory.

When it comes to job titles and their impact on salespeople, there are two general schools of thought Sales VP’s, Sales Managers, and HR leaders tend to embrace. One suggests there are risks to inflating or distorting one’s job title. For example, if you are a Customer Guru it can be difficult to determine if your experience lies in handling customer issues or in initiating sales. Conversely, others see creative and imaginative job titles as simple yet powerful ways to increase employee productivity and creativity. This is known as reflective job titling and has been proven to alleviate job burnout and results in employees feeling more connected to and in control of their work life.

The divide on job titling is substantial: for every article on how creative job titles can increase employee engagement, increase retention, and psychologically motivate employees, there are just as many that argue job title inflation is a senseless and impractical practice. Some experts suggest creative or exaggerated job titles are a meaningful and cost free way to reward employees, leading to a higher performance level. However, just as many qualified dissenters believe that simplicity and consistency are best when it comes to employee job titles.

Here, we investigate the question of job title significance as it pertains to the sales world, where job titles can be particularly arbitrary and subjective. Account Managers, Sales Professionals, Business Development Specialists, Client Growth Consultants, and Telemarketers are all effectively salespeople, yet their titles signify a vast array of roles and responsibilities. Whether you recognize it or not, your job title impacts how you view your role in sales.

Responsibilities

When it comes to the responsibilities that your job title denotes, size and scale of your company are key indicators of the accountabilities of your role. You may serve as a Director of Sales at a company of thirty people, but at a Fortune 500 company, your sales role might best be described as a Regional Sales Manager. If you’re in the tech industry, well known for it’s inventive and outside-the-box operating principles, you may find yourself in a Guru Sales Hacker or Growth Expert role. Descriptive and imaginative job titles have been proven to significantly transform employee attitudes and perceptions about their job after retitling. This can lead to greater emotional job satisfaction and company engagement. Conversely, retitling can create unease because the responsibilities of your position might not translate well to other industries, or not be recognized in the same way that more traditional job titles are.

Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations at Google, explains in his book Work Rules! that he was hesitant to assume his current job title because he felt it failed to accurately portray his human resources expertise. Now, however, he appreciates the way the title signifies his connections to the people that make Google run. Ultimately, your job title will be specific to your industry and company, but you also want it to accurately portray your responsibilities, job functions, and the value you deliver to your organization.

Promotion Opportunities

When thinking about promotion opportunities, both within and outside of the company you currently work for, it’s important to have a clear idea of what metrics your current or future employer will use to measure your adequacy for the role. Think through how you can leverage your current job title as a way to strongly position yourself during an interview or performance review. For example, how has your work as an Account Associate set you up to be a great Account Manager? What are you currently doing as an Associate that will serve you as a Manager? The more directly you can draw links between job titles, the more authoritative you will be in your candidacy for the more senior role.

While job titles may appear to be only one small facet of your role in an organization, job title effects who applies for a role and influences who is attracted to the job. In fact, companies use job titles as a recruitment strategy, assuming that candidates who aren’t a cultural fit for their organization will self select out of the job opening. Someone who isn’t interested in being a Sales Guru, who views that job title as too frivolous or jokey, probably won’t fit into the other aspects that comprise the corporate culture. This is something you should consider when researching organizations as a potential employee.

companies use job titles as a recruitment strategy, assuming that candidates who aren’t a cultural fit for their organization will self select out of the job opening

Performance Measurement

The markings of uncommonly good sales organizations are that they are organized, disciplined, and results oriented, with high levels of employee accountability—all of which include well defined rubrics of performance measurement. According to the Peter Principle, however, eventually employees will reach a position where they lack specific competencies. While they will likely not receive further promotions, they will operate in a position where they are inadequate to the demands of the job.

Your job title is what ultimately defines your work accountabilities

Naturally, there is a direct relationship between the Peter Principle and job title because your job title is what ultimately defines your work accountabilities. This makes it even more important to be clear about job title when entering an interview or performance review.

Job Satisfaction

There are strong relationships between organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Organizational commitment can be understood as an individual’s desire to remain part of the same company, even in the face of new job opportunities. It also represents how closely you personally align with the company’s culture and vision.

Evangelia Katsikea et al. published a study explaining that a company’s ability to influence the attitudes and satisfaction levels of its employees is critical to an organization’s success. It further explains that this is particularly true for the sales division of an organization because sales serves as the primary way in which to generate revenue. This is important to job titling because it means that employers will generally be open to how you as an employee want to title your role. In fact, we have seen at Peak that employers are very flexible when it comes to job titles. Hiring Managers often ask us for advice in terms of titling positions because they understand that they can be, again, depending on size, somewhat arbitrary to an organization but also highly important to an employee.

The study also found that the more autonomy, variety, and feedback you receive from your job, the more likely you are to experience job satisfaction. In their research on export sales managers (the primary subjects of their study), job autonomy, variety, and feedback are positively correlated to job satisfaction: a key indicator of employee commitment to a company. One factor in job satisfaction rests on your attitude and feeling toward your job title. The more connected you feel to your title, whether as Account Executive or Sales Guru Extraordinaire, the more likely you are to be engaged in your role.

Irrespective of your level of seniority or industry, your job title influences your perception of yourself, your stress levels in the workplace, and your company to a significant degree.

So How Important Are Job Titles in Sales?

There are those who believe in the psychological benefits of creative and inflated job titles, and others who see value in levelling the playing field and creating an environment of employees driven by factors other than hierarchy.

As an employee, job titles are an integral part of how you understand and differentiate the workforce. They are powerful social symbols and have a surprisingly high effect on emotional stress levels. Whether or not you deem your job title as particularly important or worthy of thought,  they are an essential building block of a company’s culture and will ultimately effect how you view your role.

When evaluating how important job title is to you, consider:

• Your job title should accurately reflect the responsibilities you hold and display the value you add to an organization
• Job titles influence who applies for open positions: there are links to cultural fit and job title
• The best sales organizations have clear performance rubrics that directly tie to your job title
• There are strong relationships between job satisfaction and how accurately you feel your job title reflects your role

To advancing your sales career!

The post What’s In a Name? Job Titles and Your Sales Career appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

This post is to encourage you to get ready for LinkedIn’s newly designed LinkedIn Company Pages. Rethink, re-write, and re-focus your LinkedIn Company Page, so it conveys the message and brand you’ve spent a whole lot of time, money and energy building.

The time is coming when your leadership team may not be able to hide on LinkedIn. The number of C-suite executives, business owners and non-profit leaders who say they are NOT interested in being ‘seen’ on LinkedIn has diminished over the years but still exists.

Let potential clients, business partners, investors, potential employers, or board members view, vet, and get to know you through your LinkedIn profile. It’s often the precursor to a next step—conversation, connection, meeting, etc. Who doesn’t see the value in that?

LinkedIn is getting ready to release an update to Company Pages—thank goodness. They have needed updating for quite some time. The last update was 2013 when they launched Showcase Pages.

I have not seen the new LinkedIn Company Page layout but based on Arik Hanson‘s article What the New (Upcoming) LinkedIn Company Page Format Means for Brands in Business 2 Community and Tim Peterson’s Adweek’s article LinkedIn Looks to Get More Facebooky, LinkedIn will begin releasing this update in September (2016). Remember, LinkedIn rolls out updates randomly and over time. By the way, both of these articles are worth reading.

LinkedIn Company Pages are going to be much simpler and more visual than ever. I will wait for the rollout to write about the features; Arik’s post shares great insight and good screenshots.

Two new features on the beta version of the new Company Page include “Meet Some of our Leaders at ” and “Employee Perspectives.”

Meet Some of our Leaders

LinkedIn will highlight leaders at each company and they will be visible on the Company Page. I can’t tell you how many Company Pages I look at, and I see “LinkedIn Member”, no photo or no content on the profile beyond the most basic information.

It’s now time to hand-off the LinkedIn Company Page to a person in your company who understands and will be attentive to updating executive profiles and posting appropriate, compelling content about the company’s culture, job postings, community service, announcements, press announcements, events and hopefully, great original content.

“Employee Perspectives”

Within the new “Life” tab there will be an “Employee Perspectives” section. This section will feature employees who may have published long-form content using LinkedIn’s Publishing tool. The focus is not on shared updates. Are your employees posting original content on their LinkedIn profiles? A quick look at your employee’s profile will show you if they are publishing. If there is a Post Section above the Summary, they are publishing and may be featured on the company page.

If you don’t have employees publishing, you may want to reconsider this strategy. Publishing is particularly effective for your sales team, technical support or specialists, and your thought leaders. If you are currently publishing blog content, and it’s from the company, not a person, reconsider this too. You are likely to build greater credibility with content authored by an individual.

7 questions to prepare for the upcoming LinkedIn Company Page redesign:

1. How does our executive team look on LinkedIn?
2. How do our client-facing employees look on LinkedIn?
3. What is our LinkedIn strategy?
4. Can someone discern our culture, employment opportunities on LinkedIn?
5. Can they apply for a job through LinkedIn?
6. Are we promoting relevant content to potential Followers? Clients? Prospects? Talent? Investors? Partners?
7. Do our employees know how to maximize their LinkedIn profile and our LinkedIn Company Page to share our updates with their networks?

Consider your LinkedIn Company Page a tool to promote your company and employees, showcase expertise and leadership, feature your culture and attract new talent, not a shiny new object to set up and forget. Once again, don’t hand this off to someone who doesn’t care, isn’t creative and doesn’t get the bigger picture.

Check out our LinkedIn Company Page for updates and articles we find interesting and relevant or our Tools Page for complimentary resources.

This is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

Digital disruption is rocking the payments industry. But merchants, consumers, and the companies that help move money between them are all feeling its effects differently.

For banks, card networks, and processors, the digital revolution is bringing new opportunities — and new challenges. With new ways to pay emerging, incumbent firms can take advantage of solid brand recognition and large customer bases to woo new customers and keep those they already have.

And for consumers, the digital revolution is providing more choice and making their lives easier. Digital wallets are simplifying purchases, allowing users to pay online with only a username and password and in-store with just a swipe of their thumb. 

In a new report, BI Intelligence explores the digital payments ecosystem today, its growth drivers, and where the industry is headed. It begins by tracing the path of an in-store card payment from processing to settlement across the key stakeholders. That process is central to understanding payments, and has changed slowly in the face of disruption. The report also forecasts growth and defines drivers for key digital payment types through 2021. Finally, it highlights five trends that are changing payments, looking at how disparate factors, such as surprise elections and fraud surges, are sparking change across the ecosystem.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Digital growth is accelerating the pace at which payments are becoming faster, cheaper, and more convenient. That benefits both nimble startups and legacy providers that invest in innovation.
• Mobile payments are continuing to take off. On mobile devices, e-commerce, P2P payments, remittances, and in-store payments are each expected to rise as customer engagement shifts from more established channels.
• Power is shifting to companies that control the customer experience. As the selling power of physical storefronts shifts to digital devices, the companies that control the apps and platforms that occupy users’ attentions are increasingly encroaching on payment providers’ territory. 
• Alternative technologies are moving from the idea stage to reality. Widespread investments in blockchain technology last year are beginning to result in services hitting the market, promising to further squeeze margins for payments providers. 

In full, the report:

• Traces the path of an in-store card payment from processing to settlement across the key stakeholders.  
• Forecasts growth and defines drivers for key digital payment types through 2021.
• Highlights five trends that are changing payments, looking at how disparate factors, such as surprise elections and fraud surges, are sparking change across the ecosystem.

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When you enter the world of sales, you must be prepared to learn.

I still remember my first year in sales. I absorbed everything I could. Read every sales book I could get my hands on. Familiarized myself with Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, David H. Sandler, and David Ogilvy. Listened to all the tips from veterans who were willing to share.

For most salespeople, the first year is all about learning the core principles of sales. You still get the occasional sharing of tricks to get the close but what sticks are the principles.

I learned so much–but as I progressed in the sales field, I realized some of these principles are really not as cut and dried as they seem. These tenets could really wreak havoc on your goals depending on your interpretation of them.

For this post, I put together five principles that a lot of salespeople get wrong.

The product sells itself

Selling is not easy. That’s probably the first thing that you need to accept when you start working in sales. There’s no single quote or guide you can follow that would make everything magically easy.

Joining a company because their product is amazing is one thing. Thinking that the product sells itself and that you don’t really need to put the effort in is another.

No matter how good a product is, be it technically, aesthetically, or as a direct solution to problems, it won’t sell itself. It takes a lot to build and market a good product. Without competent salespeople and a good marketing team, a product won’t see much success.

This brings up another point: the common perception that those in sales are the bottom of the barrel. Salespeople sometimes let this thought get into their heads. For many companies, this feeling of being “outsiders” causes some great reps to lose steam and run off.

The reality is that if you don’t succeed, the company doesn’t. Think of the company as a huge team. Each one plays a specific position, requiring specific skill sets. Everyone is critical to company’s success.

The only thing that matters in business is sales

Mark Cuban said it best, “There has never been a business that succeeded without sales.”

So, how do reps misinterpret this? By thinking they’re the most important people in the company.

Buyer’s journeys today–especially in business-to-business selling–have become more sophisticated. There are more touch points. Most would require more people and resources to close deals.

Gone are the days of the salesman stereotype: an attache-case-clutching, suit-wearing, old-car-driving middle-aged man, sweating as he speaks to a prospect from a telephone booth.

You don’t go for the close on the first sign of human life from the other end of the line.

Salespeople need to know that they’re not in a silo. They have to work with other departments of the company to make sales. They have to know about the updates on the product, know which content from marketing has made an impact on prospects, and what issues current clients are having. You will only get these valuable pieces of information if you see yourself as part of a machine, not a compartmentalized organization within the company.

The customer is always right

There are two common ways this gets misinterpreted.

Number 1: Some reps assume the customer always knows what they need so they let them control the sales process.

A lot of salespeople take what the lead first says as the real issue that needs to be dealt with. It might not sound harmful to make this assumption–but a lot of times, you miss the real issues if you go with the first one you hear or see. Being a salesperson requires the willingness to dig deep and read into what the prospect is saying. Think of it as being a doctor and the prospect is a patient coming to you with issues. What they’re describing are merely symptoms; it’s your job to find the root problems.
Number 2: The buyer is not always right but you don’t have to tell them they’re wrong.

Grant Cardone shared a great point with us in a previous article. He said, “The greatest salespeople, no matter what the buyer says, states or demands, under no circumstances, ever disagrees or makes the buyer wrong or suggests their request is impossible.”

Now, if you read closely and try to absorb what Grant is saying here, he’s not saying that the buyer is never wrong. He’s saying that an effective salesperson knows that you never tell the buyer they’re wrong.

In fact, in my experience, customers are often wrong. Grant mentions that customers even lie. That doesn’t mean you have to make it known or call them out. This will only make them defensive and put yourself in the “enemy” position. You’ve just made them less likely to agree with you.

The presentation makes or breaks the sale

Do you obsess over your demos and powerpoint presentations? In the past, I’ve seen reps literally spend more time putting together a perfect slideshow than actually getting prospects on the phone. On calls, they focus on getting the opportunity to present what they prepared rather than being sensitive to buying signals.

Yes, presentations are important. Live and screenshare demos are the way we communicate benefits and features in action. However, you are still more important than the presentation. Don’t become so dependent on your slides that you lose sight of what’s important in the conversation. Stick to the sales process, constantly qualify the person on the other end, and pitch a presentation if you need to.

Remember Sandler Rule #15: The best presentation is the one the prospect never sees.

Be a consultant, not a vendor

Consultative sales gets the win these days. The more you give value to your prospect, the more they are willing to enter a partnership with you. In other words, the more helpful you are, the more deals you close.

However, it’s crucial for salespeople to continuously be vigilant and watch whether a sales conversation is actually moving the prospect along the sales funnel.

Sometimes, reps get caught up in being consultants. They dig up solutions for the prospect’s problems. They do the research and groundwork–maybe too much. Finally, they put together the specific solution for a prospect’s problem.

After all that, did the prospect buy? Sometimes they don’t.

Remember, the reason you are helping is to make them realize that your solution matches their need. If a prospect still isn’t ready to pull the trigger after you’ve spent significant time and resources to match their needs, it’s important to evaluate if that’s really an opportunity or if it’s time to move on.

Be a consultant but don’t forget that you are a salesperson. Be sensitive to buying signals and confirm them throughout the sales process. Make your time meaningful by making each effort contribute to the sale.

—
Anybody in sales should know how to use what they learn to help their context. Business is such a complex field to work in, and people have different circumstances needing different approaches. Being mindful of how we apply the core principles of sales to our own sales stories and processes is crucial for continuous success.

It’s the incessant challenge of modern marketers everywhere: attracting a steady stream of relevant visitors to your website by creating and publishing high-quality content.

You might believe that you lack the needed time and patience to consistently create content and manage your other responsibilities, but ignoring content creation could limit your success. Convert visitors into customers by using the following tools to speed and simplify your content creation so that you get amazing results from your online presence.

FIND THE RIGHT TOPIC

You know you want to publish an article or video, but choosing a topic can sometimes seem impossible Online tools that can identify topics will stir your creativity and help you uncover popular topics that you can write about from your perspective. Give the following websites a try and you’ll have all the ideas you’ll need to captivate your audience and win customers.

1. HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

Type a few keywords into the HubSpot blog topic tool to get a list of topics that will last you for the entire week. Enroll in a free HubSpot subscription, and the tool will give you enough topics to last for a year! Armed with your list of topics, you can jump into writing without delay.

2. BuzzSumo

Use information obtained from BuzzSumo to improve your odds of creating content that will gain social traction. Enter keywords into the site’s search box and you’ll find out some of the most popular titles and topics on the web. The tool removes the guesswork from topic selection by telling you what people share on social media.

3. Feedly

Find content that accelerates your marketing effort using the Feedly content aggregator. The tool collects online content relevant to your industry or market and presents it to you in a manageable format. Add your favorite websites to your feed and you’ll receive a steady stream of content that will inspire material for your website.

WRITE AN AMAZING HEADLINE

Grab attention online by crafting fantastic headlines that attract visitors to your site. Without an exciting title, your website and social media profiles will seem lifeless. Knowing that you need a captivating title doesn’t make writing one easy. Improve the quality of your titles using the following tools.

4. ContentIdeator

Punch-in some keywords into the ContentIdeator search box and you’ll get all the inspiration you need to create compelling headlines that will attract readers and build a loyal following. The free version of the tool generates title lists. You can get access to source material by paying for premium access.

5. Emotional Marketing Headline Analyzer

Make successful headlines by measuring their emotional appeal. Enter your title and category and the tool will rate your title based on its Emotional Marketing Value. The tool also gives you other information that will help you write titles that appeal to your target audience.

POLISH YOUR WRITING

You have a fantastic topic and title, so start writing. As you express yourself, you must also pay attention to proper spelling and grammar. Proofread your text and then use an online tool to find any overlooked errors.

6. Grammarly

Use the free version of Grammarly to check your text for spelling and other critical errors. Pay for the premium version to see and correct advanced errors that impact your content quality.

7. Hemingway Editor

Find and resolve complex sentences and other common writing errors to make your content bold and your message clear. Hemingway Editor lets you paste your content into a free, easy-to-use online window — or download the premium desktop app to make your writing easier to read than ever before.

8. Contently

Unify your content creation effort with Contently, a tool that will help manage your content marketing strategy, whether you’re working by yourself or with your team.

The website supplies effective organization tools that will track the progress of your campaigns and manage deadlines, so your business will always have a fresh and authoritative online presence. The tool seamlessly integrates remote workers into your projects, making it a perfect fit if you have a distributed or hybrid workforce.

GO VISUAL

Diverse content attracts a larger audience and eliminates the monotony of a text-only website. Add videos and images to every article you write to generate excitement and build online authority. It can take a long time to create visual content so use the following shortcuts to quickly add pizzazz to your online presence.

9. Canva

Use the pre-fabricated templates at Canva to make affordable mind-blowing images. Add design elements such as shapes and text to your custom canvas and you’ll soon have professional-looking content without hiring a design team. Use Canva to create all your marketing collateral including presentations and fliers as well as your website content.

10. Piktochart

Infographics simplify complicated ideas by putting them into an entertaining graphic format. Piktochart gives you tools for creating stunning Infographics without investing in expensive design software. Start with pre-built templates and add text and images using a drag-and-drop interface.

Content creation requires time and effort but supplies your business with a steady stream of prospects that you can convert into customers. The above tools simplify your efforts by helping you quickly find topics and generate titles that you can use to create fantastic text and visual content. Don’t limit yourself to the tools on this list. Instead, keep looking for other valuable tools that will make creating content even easier and more fun. Choose the tools that suit your style and organization and start publishing fabulous content today.

Image credits: spinster cardigan, Pixabay1, Pixabay2

The post 10 Tools That Will Help You Create Amazing Content appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

        

Comments

• This is an extremely helpful post, Jill. I am in a Digital ... by Caroline Brown
• Very nice list, Jill. Thank you for sharing with the world. I ... by dude

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Ever since Facebook bought Oculus back in 2014, virtual reality (VR) has been on the minds of everyone who tries to keep up with the latest business technology trends.

Although VR technology has existed in one form or another for many years, it’s just now becoming commercially viable, and that has huge implications for businesses in every industry.

Even among early-adopters, VR is widely seen as the sole property of gaming or entertainment, but that’s simply not the case anymore.

As technology progresses, virtual and augmented reality could fundamentally change the way humans do business with each other—and not just in the far-distant future, either …

Here are some of the ways VR technology is changing the way the world does business:

Corporate Training

In industries with steep learning curves, VR provides an outstanding opportunity for immersive training. Employees can perform high-risk tasks over and over again in the virtual world without any real consequences.

Many medical schools worldwide are already using VR technology, both to broadcast live surgeries to students, and also to perform realistic practice operations.

With continuing work-based education becoming an increased focus for businesses worldwide, VR technology provides an opportunity to invest in employees in a revolutionary, highly effective manner, improving workforce productivity in the process.

Sales and Marketing

Every day, marketers all over the world struggle with a very real problem—how do you get people to pay for a product or service they’ve never tried before?

VR technology makes free trials and product tests possible nearly anywhere, effectively solving this dilemma.

Prospective homeowners can tour houses before they’re even built. Car enthusiasts can test-drive Audi R-8’s from their living room sofas. Airline executives can tour Airbus prototypes without ever setting foot in a hangar.

VR is also broadening the horizons of marketing research.

What if you could hold virtual focus groups in your company’s factory, or in the grocery store aisle where your products are sold? Businesses are performing more accurate, in-depth qualitative research than ever before as a result of innovative VR practices.

Human Resources

With VR technology, distance is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

A candidate in Singapore can join an office tour or group interview in Chicago. A freelancer in Kolkata can sit down and discuss specific project details with his client in Manchester.

The immersive experience provided by VR is infinitely more powerful and productive than email or even phone calls ever could be. As such, VR is changing the way companies interact with the world around them.

It’s changing the modern idea of what comprises an “office,” too.

The idea of “working from anywhere” used to be the sole province of freelancers and journalists, but VR technology is extending that lifestyle to even the most desk-bound employees.

Companies that regularly employ remote employees or consultants are increasing productivity and communication by integrating VR into their HR systems.

Modeling and Design

Long before marketers begin using VR technology to sell products, designers and engineers should be using it to model them.

Lockheed Martin, an early adopter of industrial VR, uses what they call the Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory to virtually create and test spacecraft before building physical prototypes.

Ford says that its engineers save as much as $8 million every year by testing elements of new cars virtually before prototyping them. Virtual engineering and design aren’t just for Tony Stark anymore—they’re becoming widespread among forward-thinking companies.

While the initial cost of creating virtual design programs may put off some prospective buyers, the fact remains that it’s cheaper to create things virtually than it is to build them physically.

For this reason alone, it’s very reasonable to assume that the future of industrial design lies in VR.

Media

Much has already been written about the potential of VR in the fields of media and communications. In fact, most gaming and entertainment companies are already heavily invested in VR development.

But what about branded media?

VR is changing the way businesses interact with consumers, too. Think about it for a moment—what if you could enter an advertisement and walk around in it?

Talk about interactive messaging …

Immersive branding experiences with VR are promising to become a hugely lucrative experiment. Many industry leaders and ad specialists are predicting that VR will be the future of modern advertising.

So, whether you’re already on the bandwagon or not, don’t sleep on VR …

It’s for real.

1. Cold calling is dead.
2. 57 – 90% of the buying process is complete before a sales rep needs to get involved.
3. Marketing and sales are aligned  

Do you agree these are lies?

In late August I asked industry experts that same question and asked them to substantiate their answers. The team of experts includes:

Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions, CEO and Business Strategist

Dave Brock, Partners in EXCELLENCE, President

Deb Calvert, People First Productivity Solutions, President

Ginger Conlon, GingerConlon.com, Chief Editor of CustomerAlchemy.net

Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing, President

Dave Kurlan, Kurlan & Associates, Inc., CEO

Dave Stein, Dave Stein, Inc., Principal

Ruth Stevens, eMarketing Strategy, President

Mike Weinberg, The New Sales Coach, Principal

Today we will take on the second of the three lies: 57 – 90% of the buying process is complete before a sales rep needs to get involved. Here are their comments:

Dave Brock: “The customer is wherever they are in their buying process.  We get them where they are at and have to work with them from that point on.  The issue is, should we be waiting until the customer is ready for us to be engaged or should be offering greater leadership by engaging earlier.  Too many sales people use the 57-90% figure as an excuse to wait.  But when they do that, they minimize their ability to shift the customer’s thinking, to get them to consider different points of view, to create differentiated value.  It’s like responding to the RFP that you haven’t written.  Your only way to win is by price and even that is low odds.  High performers don’t care about this.  They engage the customer as early as they can.  They create the greatest value when they incite the customer to change in the first place.”

Ardath Albee: “Research finds that sellers can be involved in all stages of the buying process if they bring value to the conversation. And, sitting around waiting for a buyer to decide to reach out to you is not an effective strategy. The challenge is in doing the work to truly understand your buyers and bring that value they’re looking for. In my opinion, marketing should be helping sellers get into conversations earlier. It is possible. I’ve helped my clients do so.”

Dave Stein: Wrong. Your customer only spends about 2% or less of their time buying from you. If you wait until there is an active opportunity, it’s too late. The world’s most effective sellers get into selected, targeted accounts before there is an initiative, drive demand, build credibility, and are in the position to help the customer determine where they might be headed and how to best get there.”

Deb Calvert: “The CEB reports that buyers now work their way 67% through the buying process before engaging with a seller. Buyers resist sellers until it's time to negotiate and place an order. Buyers are looking for transactions. That's not to say that sellers should wait until that point to get involved. On the contrary, sellers need to find ways to transcend the sales transaction and get buyers' interest earlier in the sales process. To do this, sellers need to replace off-putting selling behaviors with behaviors buyers will gravitate to. Buyers do not want to be sold. They do want to interact with sellers who exhibit leadership behaviors -- sellers who will inspire, challenge and enable them.” To learn more about the movement, to Stop Selling & Start Leading™, click here.

Matt Heinz: “I believe the statistic we see is worded a little differently, I.e. some percentage in that range of the buying journey is completed before buyers proactively reach out to sellers.  But that doesn’t mean sellers can’t provide value from the very beginning of the process.  You earn the right to be in earlier by engaging in challenging, value-added conversations.  What are you teaching your customers? How are you helping them uncover and/or reframe issues they have in their business?  How does your content earn you the right to get some of their attention earlier – establishing trust, credibility and preference for your brand before that 57-90% of the process is done?  That’s the opportunity…”

Dave Kurlan: “While prospects are certainly further along than they have been in the past, the percentages being propagated by marketing firms with something to sell has been exaggerated. The real change is not the distance as much as the condition that prospects are more knowledgeable than ever before, making traditional salespeople redundant and obsolete.  Salespeople must be the value in order to overcome the redundancy and must have consultative selling skills to steer the conversation back to an earlier stage in the sales/buying processes.”

Ginger Conlon: “I don't consider this a "lie." It's more of an "it depends" situation. I think this statistic very much depends on the industry, product, and circumstance. In some cases, a prospective buyer may get a referral from a colleague and contact a salesperson at the beginning of the purchase process; in other cases, that same buyer might conduct detailed research into several companies' options before contacting the salespeople for those companies.

Mike Weinberg: “As far as this bogus straw man statistic (that buyers go 57% or 67% or 80% through the process before engaging with a salesperson) being propagated by the Kool-Aid pushers trying to sell you their inbound product or social selling course, forget about it. They’re crazy and they’re wrong. As I’ve been saying for years, the ONLY time that statistic is true is when foolish, lazy sales reps who live in reactive mode sit on their assess all day waiting for a warm lead. I don’t care what data these “experts” quote; it’s simply not true. I’m not smoking something or living in an alternative universe. My clients’ sales teams are getting in front of prospects early in the game, often before they’re shopping, and they’re building relationships and helping to share buying criteria - way prior to the buyer being 67% through the process. And it looks like I’m not the only one seeing this: http://labs.openviewpartners.com/67-percent-buying-process-before-sales-myth/#.V8cn5pMrLox

My take: I cannot say it any better than Julie Schwartz, senior vice president, research and thought leadership at marketing research, consulting and training firm ITSMA: “It’s widely believed that 60% to 70% of the buying process is over before prospects want to engage with a salesperson. The premise is that there is so much information available online that salespeople are thought to be unnecessary in the early stages. ITSMA’s data says that for high consideration technology solutions, this is a myth. In fact, we believe just the opposite: 70% of B2B technology solution buyers want to engage with sales reps before they identify their short list. In fact, buyers perceive value in interacting with sales at every stage of the buying process—even the early stages.”

If you are selling a relatively low-priced commodity, then it is probably OK if you go the inbound, arrive late route. If you are selling a more strategic, more complex product or solution, you better get in early. The earlier the better.   

In case you missed it, read part one of this series and see for yourself if cold-calling is dead.

Look for Part Three of this series – Sales and marketing are aligned. 

The secret to exactly how to find an email address by name, so rather than leading with a dreaded cold call, you can warm up the interaction ahead of time!

Cold Calling has been around for a long time and it has a deservedly bad reputation. Ask 100 people what they think about cold calling and those 100 people will say…

“Cold Calling Sucks!”

But, that’s not exactly the case with this new email outreach technology. Here’s one example of how to find an email address by name using the latest in search technology.

Does Cold Emailing Work?

Sales legend Jill Konrath recently shared a cold email that got her attention…

Most people will quickly scan through their email inbox in the morning looking for any important messages. I typically browse by sender name.

Here is one she found from a name she did not recognize, so she checked the subject.

Subject: cold prospecting ideas?

A subject she was interested it, so she opened.

A quick message followed:

I learned about your consulting practice in an article I read on a sales website. I’m doing some research and would like to ask you two quick questions:

1. As a sales consultant, have you ever heard of cold emailing as a prospecting technique?
2. After you read (link to article), do you think this is a good prospecting technique?

This caught her attention. She was interested. He didn’t waste any time trying to pitch anything. He simply started a compelling conversation around something she was interested in. He also didn’t waste time talking about himself or his company. A full signature was included, with links, so she was able to review them on her own.

She replied, and they took the conversation offline from there. A sales opportunity created.

If he did this same approach with the phone, leaving a voicemail, would she have responded?

No Chance.

Cold email outreach is an underutilized method to generate leads. Most people shy away from it, because they think it’s spam (it isn’t and here’s why).

HOWEVER…You need to be careful.

You only should send to people who would be interested in your product.

How to Find an Email Address by Name, Job Title, Location, Industry, or Business Size

LinkedIn is one of the best resources for this, almost every business professional has a profile these days, and with one search you can find them all.

You Can Find Leads Segmented by:

• Job Title: I want only people who are VP of Marketing
• Location: I want only people in Phoenix
• Industry: I want only people in the Automotive industry
• Business Size: I want only people who work for a company with 50+ employees

(and many other ways).

Imagine that.. Finding the email address to all…

…VPs of Marketing.

…HR Directors.

…Biotechnology founders.

The sales possibilities are endless!

REMEMBER: The selection of the list you are going to use is by far the most important decision you are going to make in this entire equation. It doesn’t matter how well you do everything else. If you are working with a tired, exhausted list of people who have no interest in what you are selling. In fact, when it comes to marketing, the most important element is always…

How Well You Target Your Prospects!

Sweet little Mary the secretary ain’t gonna buy your software (or even let your email through).. no matter how good your sales pitch is. You need to target the right person!

It Is The Quality Of The List You

Are Using And The Quality Of Your

Message That Really Determines Whether

Your Marketing Campaign Works… Or… Fails!

LeadFuze has developed a new piece of software to amplify your lead generation efforts…

Introducing Automated Outreach Emails to Your Prospect Lists

Imagine searching for your target market from within the app or on LinkedIn, adding the ideal prospects for your solution and the software immediately queuing up a personalized conversational outreach email to them the moment you click the “add” button?

We’ve spent months researching, dissecting, and studying the best aspects and biggest shortfalls of today’s cold email prospecting and sending tools.

During the design process we focused on designing something to make your life easier. And we kept circling back to three goals:

1. Make it easy to find the (correct) contact info for your specific target market
2. Make it easy to send one-to-one email outreach messages to your prospects
3. Integrate them both together in the same app, so you can spend more time talking to real prospects who actually want to talk with you!

So with the above as our focus, today we launch the biggest feature upgrade to ever come out of LeadFuze. We hope it has a dramatic impact in how you generate leads, and that it makes your life easier along the way.

FIND YOUR IDEAL PROSPECTS

Search for prospects within the app or on LinkedIn and our software automatically uncovers the following information:

• Email Address and Phone Number
• Company, Domain, and Job Title
• Social Media Profiles

We use several third party data providers as well as our own system to track down contact information. You no longer need to use an assortment of tools to find the information you need.

AUTOMATED OUTREACH

Automate personalized outreach by creating a series of emails. If prospects don’t respond within a designated amount of time, your follow-up emails will go out automatically!

• Create a series of emails that go out automatically
• Split test emails
• CAN-SPAM compliant
• Bounces are automatically detected so you’ll get credit back into your account for prospecting

All you have to do is add prospects to a list and all the outreach is handled for you.

REAL-TIME REPORTING

See how effective each individual email is and make adjustments accordingly.

• Open rates, click-throughs, responses tracked for each email individually
• Split test emails in your sequence to optimize performance
• Sales managers get free “Report” access without needing to pay for a license!

Other Key Improvements:

• NEW User Interface – Sleek dashboard making it easy to use
• Email Sending (directly in app) – Connect your gmail and send mass one-to-one emails
• Advanced Reporting – Prospects added, email open rates, responses generated, etc.

This move puts us one step closer to our goal: to help our customers keep their sales pipeline full.

I’m excited to hear what you think!

LinkedIn recently revealed an eye-opening look at what type of content the site does (and does not) give prominent display to on the network.

LinkedIn is on a mission to change your mind.

“You may think of LinkedIn as primarily a site where people upload their digital résumé,” the company notes in a new eBook. “But 9 billion content impressions per week are delivered in the LinkedIn feed – more than 15 times the job postings in the feed.

“These stats reveal that LinkedIn has become a destination where professionals consume high-quality content from professional publishers like The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, and even from peers who are sharing content in the feed.”

Out with the Old

LinkedIn remains bound and determined to move beyond its well-worn reputation as a site for job seekers and hiring managers.

Its most recent eBook, “Spotlight on Tactics,” delves deeply into how LinkedIn’s internal marketing staff utilizes content marketing on the world’s largest social media platform for professionals.

With nearly 450 million members in 200 countries, and with 2 new members joining the platform every second, LinkedIn has a very distinctive (and captive) audience.

“LinkedIn presents a unique opportunity for brands. It’s the first time in the history of media you can reach the world’s professionals in one place,” the company notes in its new eBook. “With LinkedIn, you’re targeting a quality audience in a professional context.

“And, you can interact them in a very meaningful way: By sharing valuable content through products tailored to how professionals engage. By doing so, you become part of your audience’s conversations and education on the platform.”

Teaching Sells

Therein lies the key – the more you can position yourself as an expert in your respective niche through the content you create and share on LinkedIn, the easier it is to attract and engage with the professionals who want what you’re selling.

(WATCH: 5 Simple Tips to Generate More Sales on LinkedIn.)

LinkedIn’s new eBook notes that it is seeing more and more professionals using the site as their go-to resource for professionally-themed content, industry news, training resources and more.

“As we all search for the right destinations to find the best information, there are fewer places where we’re gathering in large numbers,” it says. “Think Amazon for buying stuff, Facebook for connecting with friends and family, and YouTube for watching videos.

“In the same way, the world’s professionals are coming to LinkedIn specifically to connect to brands, opportunities and their networks, and engaging with high-quality content across the platform.”

Big on Blogging

LinkedIn recently revamped its entire blogging platform in hopes of encouraging more members to blog on the site more frequently. It also indexes every piece of content you publish on the site and encourages the use of keywords and hashtags to help others “find” your content when searching on the site.

“It’s important because content is essential to influencing decisions,” according to the eBook. “A study by Google shows that 10 pieces of content are consumed before a purchasing decision is made. As a marketer, you want to influence the outcome of the purchasing decision, and content is your best way to do that. Simply put, people are consuming content at every turn.”

In today’s marketplace, content is currency. Without it, you’ll be hard-pressed to attract new customers online or deepen existing relationships.

And when it comes to the professional and B2B marketplace, LinkedIn continues to be the best venue online to create, share and utilize your content to generate leads and win new business.

The following is a guest blog post from Martin Zhel, author at MailMunch and CEO and founder of Orior Creative. He helps startup companies grow their traffic, leads and revenue with the power of content marketing. 

One of the great things about blogging is that it perfectly fits into so many other digital marketing strategies you might already have in place. And if you’re not yet using it to grow your email list and nurture an engaged community of readers, you could be missing out on some huge business opportunities.

According to a Hubspot study, B2B marketers who blog generate 67 percent more leads than those who do not. Sixty-seven percent! 

So why does blogging help marketers get so many more leads? Well, there are three main reasons:

1) Blogging tends to generate high-quality traffic. People read your posts because they’re interested in the topic that’s presented. As a result, they are more likely to share that content, which can drive even more traffic to your site.

2) It can bring traffic to your site, even when you’re not doing anything. Once you optimize your posts with the right keywords and content, each blog post becomes a new page that is indexed by Google that could rank for new keywords – which can bring you more search traffic and new email subscribers for years.

3) The more blog posts you create the more traffic and leads you generate.

However, while blogging can be wildly effective, it can also be difficult to get great results. Some companies struggle to bring traffic to their blog, don’t write valuable blog content or fail to convert their blog readers into email subscribers.

But by following a few proven guidelines, you can avoid these blogging pitfalls. In my last six years working as a conversion optimization expert, I’ve learned the four key things you need to do to run a successful blog and grow an email list with blogging, which we’ll dive right into.

1. Create amazing pre opt-in content

HubSpot said this best, “If your blog content sucks, no one will want to become a regular reader.”

To ensure your readers will want to engage with your content, you need to bring value to your audience. After all, quality content will bring you loyal readership and more subscribers. The more relevant a blog post is, the more likely your readers will share it with others, which can drive even more traffic to your site – which will ultimately help you grow your email list faster.

To get the most out of your content, you should focus on the following:

Offer tons of value before you ask for the opt-in.

According to the reciprocity principle, when someone does something good for us, we feel obligated to do something back in return. In other words, when that person asks us for a favor, it becomes extremely hard for us to say “no.” And this can come in handy as you think about your blog and list building strategies.

So how can you apply the reciprocity rule to blogging?

All you have to do is focus on offering as much value as you can in your content. Create the most useful, detailed and action-oriented blog posts in your niche and your audience will love you.

Then, when they come across a sign up form on your blog, they’ll be much more likely to give you their email address so they don’t miss any of your valuable content.

Choose topics that solve big problems or achieve big goals.

To discover your audience’s big problems or goals, find out what matters to them.

To do this, start by conducting a little keyword research. This is a good way to begin as the monthly search volumes for each keyword show how much demand there is for a certain topic.

You can also survey and interview your customers (whether over the phone, in person at a conference or through social media) to find more about their challenges and goals. And if you have a sales and support team, be sure to collect information from them about the questions your customers ask – this can give you more insight into their concerns and needs.

You can also check community sites like Quora and Reddit, where you’ll learn the kind of questions your target audience is asking. For example, if you visit Quora, you can try typing in the main keyword that describes your service or product. Let’s imagine that this is “Link building.”

After doing a search on Quora for this keyword, you’ll see all the questions that people ask related to that topic in your search results.

Questions with more views, upvotes and comments tend to be more relevant and popular, so you can get a sense of common topics your target audience wants to learn more about. These popular questions can then be turned into or inspire a new blog post. For instance, looking at the search above you could decide to write a blog post called “Should You Buy Links?” or “Is Link Building Dead?”

Write high-quality, well-researched blog posts.

The goal of your blog posts should be to give the most valuable and detailed information on your topic.

To make this happen, your content should be actionable, not just theoretical. In other words, people must understand:

1) How to apply the information they’ve learned so they can get the same results.

2) The specific actions they need to take.

Be sure to support the points you make in your post with relevant case studies, statistics, research on the topic, etc. This brings more credibility to the statements you make in your blog post, which will encourage readers to implement the tactics you share.

You should also structure your content in a way that makes it easier for people to read. This means you should:

1) Use short paragraphs. Researchers for The Poynter Institute found that short-paragraph format encourages reading, whereas longer paragraphs discourage people from finishing a story.

2) Write short sentences. According to a research made by American Press Institute, readers understand more than 90 percent of what they’re reading when the average sentence length is 14 words. At 43 words, comprehension drops to less than 10 percent.

3) Eliminate fluff and get straight to the point. Be concise and get to the point in your writing. If you’re using words like very, little and rather in a sentence, make sure it brings value and adds meaning to your sentence. If not, it’s better to eliminate them. 

4) Make your content easy to read and view. Since many people skim blog posts, be sure to organize your post so that it’s easy for them to do so. Use subheadings and bullet points to help break up your content, and include images that illustrate your points. In the top 100 highest ranking blogs on the internet, there is at least one image for every 350 words, according to a study by Blog Pros.

2. Offer the right type of lead magnet

Great lead magnets resolve problems or answer questions that are very important to your audience. Here are a few tips that’ll help you create lead magnets that answer your audience’s biggest questions:

Understand what people want to learn.

To understand what kind of lead magnet content your audience will want, you can use the same process I outlined above for finding a blog post topic. You can once again use surveys, interviews, sales/support calls and analytics tools.

Remember, your lead magnets must offer premium content. When people opt-in for them, they should feel like what you’re giving them is far more valuable than what they would find for free on your blog.

Create page-level targeting lead magnets.

Visitors come to your site for various reasons. Some want to learn more about how to grow their email list, while others want to know how to increase their traffic.

Since people are interested in different topics, you can’t convert all your visitors with the same offer. Instead, it is much smarter to create page-level targeting lead magnets based on the content of your pages. Just check out the following example.

By using a content upgrade (a lead magnet that is an expansion on the topic of your blog post), Backlinko managed to increase its conversion rates from 0.54 percent to 4.82 percent.

Writing a blog post on the top 10 tips to converting more website traffic? Offer a content upgrade that will give them the top 20 tips to converting more website traffic if they opt in.

You could even consider creating a different lead magnet for each main topic you cover on your blog, or even for popular new blog posts.

To create your page-level targeting offers, you can use a tool like MailMunch, which allows users to easily set up a new lead magnet for each blog post. You can use opt-in forms such as sidebars, exit popups, slide boxes, top bars and embedded forms.

3. Place your opt-in forms in the right places

Here are the places to put your opt-in forms in order to generate the highest conversion rates:

Add it to a blog post.

Backlinko is well-known for using a yellow box within his blog posts that promote content upgrades as a way to convert visitors into email subscribers.

The first time he implemented this strategy, he increased his conversion rates by 785 percent.

Before using the content upgrade, only two percent of people clicked on Brian’s side bar. So to improve that, he decided to create a post-specific resource for his top performing pages on the blog.

For example, the conversion rate for one of this blog posts was only 0.54 percent. To improve that he created a checklist for the post and placed it in a yellow box within the post. He also promoted the checklist at the end of the post.

The result was a 785 percent increase in conversions!

To learn how to implement the content upgrade for your blog posts as well, check out this guide by Backlinko.

Use exit-intent pop up forms.

Food craft blogger Nikki McGonigal found that her exit-intent popups drive 1375 percent  more email subscribers than her sidebar.

An exit-intent pop up is less intrusive than a pop up that appears while your scrolling and it’s a good opportunity to get visitors to subscribe before they leave your site.

Try scroll box forms.

Buffer found that their scroll box is accountable for 36.7 percent of their sign ups, making it their best converting opt-in form.

Their scroll box appears on the lower right side of the screen when the user scrolls 60 percent down the page. This way, it doesn’t interrupt the experience of the visitor and only appears once the reader has engaged with the content.

Consider the top bar form.

A top bar is always visible at the top of a website. With its help, ProBlogger managed to increase conversion rates by 25 percent. The advantage of top bars is that no matter how far a visitor scrolls down, they can still see your call-to-action.

4. Promote your blog posts like crazy

The more people you drive to your blog posts, the more people you will convert into email subscribers.

It’s that simple.

So don’t rely on the “Publish and Pray” approach. Instead, spend the majority of your time promoting your blog post.

You can do that by:

Reaching out to influencers.

Reaching out to other influencers (bloggers, writers, etc.) is one of the best ways to promote your content.

If they like it, they’ll share it with their social media followers and link to you in their blog posts. As a result, you could get tons of social media, referral and search traffic.

To find influencers who might share your blog posts, you can use BuzzSumo. Just type a relevant keyword or phrase to find a list of influencers who you can filter based on reach, authority, influence and engagement.

Once you find relevant influencers, you can export your list and start reaching out.

Sharing it on your social media channels.

Share your content on all social media channels where you’re active, such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Be sure to pick the right time to share your content. People may tell you there’s an optimal time to post on social media, but your audience might be different, so you should always use your own data.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to share your content more than once. According to Buffer, reposting your content on social media can get you far better results than sharing it just once.

Using content discovery platforms (such as Outbrain and Quuu).

These platforms will give you easy access to an audience that may find your content interesting.

For example, Quuu allows you to promote your content to influencers who will share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. According to Jason Quey from TheStorytellerMarketer.com, he saw an increase of 116 percent in his Twitter traffic after using Quuu.

Ready to grow your email list from your blog?

As you can tell, there are a number of different ways in which you can grow your email list from your blog – and there are many tactics that didn’t make it to this post!

But as long as you focus on understanding audience’s needs, offer valuable content and create relevant lead magnets, you’ll be gaining new subscribers in no time.

Have other ideas on how to use your blog for list building? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

The post The 4 Best Ways To Grow Your Email List with Blogging appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

3 rules to inform your content marketing strategy

Many B2B companies are still adapting to the new opportunities of content marketing, and too many are still playing by the old rules. This involves with massively wordy, downloadable eBooks and content designed for the Desktop Era. Content marketing has changed along with the larger trends in technology and with shifting consumer preferences for how people access information and engage with content online, and your B2B content marketing strategies need to change along with it!

Here are some new rules of content marketing that any B2B firm can benefit from:

Make it "mobile first."

Mobile devices now represent a majority of internet usage, and many people are using smartphones as their primary device for accessing the Internet. But mobile devices aren’t just for teenagers or millennials, and they’re not just for consumers – more and more B2B buyers are using mobile devices to conduct research about new products, and even to make purchase decisions.

According to a March 2015 study from Google and Millward Brown Digital, 42% of B2B buyers use mobile devices while doing their research doing the B2B purchasing process, and there has been 91% growth during the past two years in use of mobile devices during the B2B buying process, including 3x growth in mobile queries for B2B sales. B2B purchase rates have increased 22% in the past two years, and 49% of B2B product researchers are using their mobile devices to do product research while at work. What does this all mean? Basically: if your content marketing is still set up for the age of desktops, you're missing out on big opportunities. Your website and any content or communications that you present to your prospects needs to be mobile-friendly.

Make it human.

B2B buyers are people, too! They want to see real human stories that help connect with authentic human emotions and that assuage their worries and establish trust. Use emotionally impactful case studies - how did your solution relieve stress and create big wins? Use real people's stories - get video testimonials from your customers talking about how your solution helped make their life better. Did you know that online video is one of the fastest-growing areas of B2B content marketing? According to the Google and Millward Brown study, 70% of B2B buyers and researchers are now watching online videos throughout their path to purchase, which represents a 52% increase during the past 2 years. 48% of B2B researchers watch 30 or more minutes of online B2B-related videos during their research, and 20% watch 60 minutes or more. Online videos might be one of the best ways to educate your buyers and put a human face on your company – before your prospects ever talk to one of your sales people.

Make it creative!

B2B content marketing is often too technical and "business-like." But just as mobile devices are opening up huge new opportunities to communicate and connect with people, we are still discovering new possibilities for how B2B content can be conceptualized and delivered more creatively. Don't be afraid to try some creative new ways to deliver the message. It’s OK to use humor, personality, and even a bit of irreverence to stand out. After all, the Internet is more cluttered than ever before with bland, forgettable content – why not try some new things and be ready to make a splash? For example, awhile ago, I wrote an article for Entrepreneur called “6 Things ‘Better Call Saul’ Can Teach You About Finding Customers,” based on the hit TV show spinoff from “Breaking Bad.” It’s OK to find creative ways to tie your message into broader trends and even pop culture stories, as long as you add value for your readers and build credibility along the way.

Even though the B2B content marketing world is more crowded and competitive and click-baity than ever, I really do believe we are on the cusp of some exciting times and innovative possibilities. Companies that find ways to use their content marketing to tell authentic human stories will be the winners.

Gregg Schwartz is the vice president of sales and marketing at Strategic Sales & Marketing, a lead-generation firm based in Connecticut. His company helps technology companies and various startups and small-to-mid-size businesses in the business-to-business sales category generate sales leads and improve their sales processes.

Events and conferences are a huge part of B2B marketing. They are a place to learn about emerging trends and connect with like-minded individuals and potential customers. If you ask marketers their main reason for investing in events, a majority of them will say “lead generation.” But only focusing on lead generation, leaves a lot of potential revenue on the table.

Instead, using events as a bottom-of-funnel channel will help Sales close more deals and increase the ROI of your event spend. Everything we do in marketing should lead to revenue, why would field marketing be any different?

Here’s why field marketing should really just be sales.

Marketing events give you the chance to meet and talk face to face. When that interaction is simply used to scan badges or hand out branded swag, you’re only brushing the surface of the full event potential. Instead of spending all your time designing the best-looking event space, or the coolest swag that will draw every attendee to your booth, focus on attracting the right prospects. A single interaction with a qualified account will always be more valuable than 100 interactions with prospects who have no need for your product.

Engaging with target accounts during an event is a more valuable touchpoint than a typical website visit. You don’t have full control over the content the target account sees on your website or how long they spend there, but with an in-person interaction, you get their undivided attention and can control the flow of information, which can include a product demo, conversation with sales reps and/or customer references.

Who are the key stakeholders?

The most important part of field marketing is the planning process. Marketing and Sales should work together to map out the goals of the event, which prospects your company wants to target, and how to get them to meet you and discuss your product.

Prior to the event, the sales team should create a target account/contact list. Which companies are current open opportunities in Salesforce? Who within those companies are you trying to reach? Are there any account you really want to sell but have yet to interact with?

Sales should answer these, and other similar questions, in the months leading up to the event. The answers to the questions will make up the list of accounts you want to engage during the event. Marketing and Sales can then work together to brainstorm the best way to reach each contact or account.

How do you reach stakeholders?

There are a number of ways to have valuable interactions during events and what works will be different for everyone. But for any company, the best way to reach key stakeholders is to go and get them.

For us, we’ve found that an environment that combines current customers with target prospects, and our sales team or C-suite, delivers a high ROI.

Current customers can be some of your best salespeople because they are active users and have no reason to be anything but honest about their experiences with your product.

Sales dinners or happy hours are a great way to pair these customers with key stakeholders you want to close. Reach out to specific contacts at accounts you want to engage and invite them to be your guest at dinner during the event. You will have the undivided attention of those that attend and enjoy a nice dinner in the process.

Outside of dinners, there are other creative ways to draw key contacts to your booth. In 2015, Influitive created a wild west “Most Wanted” list for Dreamforce. If an attendee brought a key stakeholder from the most wanted list to the Influitive booth, they would both receive $50. Fun, creative ideas like this not only get people talking, but they bring all the right contacts straight to your salespeople.

This concept would have never worked without a detailed marketing plan and defined Sales list of key targets, prior to the event.

How do you measure if event efforts are working?

Multi-touch, omni-channel marketing attribution will accurately measure the success of your event, along with all other online and offline campaigns, so you know what’s working or not. Once the event is over, contacts you interacted with will be uploaded to Salesforce and the most advanced marketing attribution will track movement post event, giving revenue credit to the key touchpoints through the funnel on a contact’s journey toward a closed customer.

This is important because it will tell you if a prospect who talked to you at the booth visited your website and downloaded content after the event. Or, if prior leads or opportunities transitioned deeper into the funnel by requesting a demo after the event.

A separate Salesforce campaign can be set up specifically for the dinner. With this, you’ll want to track upsells of the current customers who attended, velocity and close rates post dinner.

True event ROI is determined by how much revenue the event creates for the company, not how many new leads you upload.

Ideally, events should increase sales velocity and lead to closed deals. Salespeople aren’t there to hand out swag (anyone can do that), they are there to develop connections with target accounts and have interactions that turn them into new customers.

Sponsoring events, designing the event booth, and all logistics around company attendance, from flights to hotel rooms, can quickly add up in price. Make the most of that cost by focusing events on closed deals and revenue, not leads and top of the funnel interactions.

Successful people know they are what they read.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, for example, spends 80% of his day reading.

So what is the first source that highly influential people check when they wake up?

Here are some resources leaders across industries use to sustain their morning reading habits:

SEE ALSO: 23 successful people who wake up incredibly early

DON'T MISS: 10 books every new grad should read

Warren Buffett starts his days with an assortment of national and local news

The billionaire investor tells CNBC he reads the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Omaha World-Herald, and the American Banker in the mornings. That's a hefty list to get through.

Mark Zuckerberg, unsurprisingly, starts his day on Facebook

In a Facebook Live session with Jerry Seinfeld, the Facebook cofounder and CEO tells the comedian that the very first thing he does in the morning, even before he gets out of bed to use the bathroom or puts in his contact lenses, is check his phone.

He says that he starts by looking at Facebook — "I like to know what's going on in the world" — and then checks his messages on Messenger and What'sApp. "On a good, calm day, it'll probably take no more than a few minutes," he tells Seinfeld.

Jeffrey Immelt reads his papers in a very particular fashion

"I typically read the Wall Street Journal, from the center section out," the General Electric CEO told Fast Company. "Then I'll go to the Financial Times and scan the FTIndex and the second section. I'll read the New York Times business page and throw the rest away. I look at USA Today, the sports section first, business page second, and life third. I'll turn to Page Six of the New York Post and then a little bit on business."

LinkedIn is what you make it. You control your public profile, your connections, and the social shares visible in your home stream. So, go all-in and make it your best.

Dear Reid Hoffman,

I am sure you have heard it all before.

“I haven’t used LinkedIn in over a year.”

“LinkedIn Groups are a waste of time.”

“There are too many fake profiles and spammers on LinkedIn.”

“LinkedIn is not as fun or interesting as Twitter or Facebook.”

“LinkedIn is dead.”

Congratulations. You did well.

I can only wish that my 6-year-old daughter grows up and follows your lead to co-develop a sucky social media network like LinkedIn so she can sell it to Microsoft for $26 billion dollars.

Your mom and dad must be proud.

Denny

Why Does Your LinkedIn Suck?

Let’s unpack this with a comparison to physical professional networking.

1. LinkedIn Connection Strategies.

Who you connect with depends upon your purpose for social media networking.

If you primarily want to continue and strengthen existing physical connections, then your focus on LinkedIn should be with those you know personally and have previously met physically. With this connection strategy, you are letting the physical drive the social media networking.

Your targeted connections here may include people you know from current and past relations from education, work experiences, and those you have met from business, professional meetings, and conferences.

However, would you attend a physical networking event and only say hello to the people you already know?

Instead, a good physical networker will use the time and place to reinforce existing relationships and develop new relationships. On LinkedIn you can let the social media drive the physical networking and take the initiative to find and connect on LinkedIn with those with a potential of meeting in the physical at a later time.

Your targeted connections here may include people you may want to know who: (1) are members of local career/industry clubs or organizations; (2) attend and speak at your favored regional or national professional conferences; (3) are nearby alumni; and/or (4) are local with like-minded career interests (use Advanced Search with a location and/or keyword filter; or join and search in career-focused LinkedIn Groups).

Ideally, to go all-in and maximize your benefits for using LinkedIn you should also let learning drive your social media networking, with no restrictions on geography or prior meeting (use Advanced Search with keyword filters to find those with like-minded career interests).

For example, when I physically meet someone, I collect their business card, find them on LinkedIn and connect (physical drives social media). I also search for and accept invites to connect from anyone that is a local student, academic, or professional and the potential to meet someday at a networking event (social media drives physical).

And, I search and connect with like-minds and near-minds regardless of geography (learning drives social media). Some are influencers or favorite bloggers in my career focus of digital and social media marketing, and others are just interesting students or professionals who have found me and expressed an interest in the content that I share on LinkedIn about marketing, digital marketing, and personal branding.

If you don’t have a purpose for using LinkedIn along with a strategy for filtering or choosing connections, then you may soon find your LinkedIn home stream and messages filled with spammers, automated sales funnel advocates, and overzealous self-promoters.

Remember, you are in control of your connections.

There are telltale signs to look for when considering connection requests or searching for new connections. You should not connect if you find an incomplete or suspicious profile (with no photo, vague details), or if their recent social share activity shows excessive self-promotion or sales pitches.

Regardless, at any time you can unfollow a connection’s posts that you find annoying or uninteresting while keeping them as a connection, or you can completely remove them as a connection (click on drop down in top right of any of their posts).

Advanced tip – Always initiate a potential connection from their profile so you can include a personalized request in your invitation. In some cases, you may need to refer to their business card, review their LinkedIn public profile, or search the web for their email. With an email, you can choose “Other” to make a connection (Connect>How do you know ____?).

“As with physical networking, on LinkedIn you have to take the initiative and the control to connect with people you know, people you want to know, and like-minds that add value to your networking, personal brand, and career.”

2. LinkedIn Profile Strategies.

On LinkedIn: Your photo is your approach. Your headline is your introduction. Your summary is your elevator pitch. Your profile is your resume. And, your social activity is your networking.

Regardless of how you find others or how others find you, it is even more important to attend to what others find when they visit your LinkedIn Profile.

You only get one chance to make your digital first impression.

Most visitors will only give your LinkedIn public profile a 5 to 15 second scan. This short review could result in a new connection or a prompting for a longer more thorough examination of your profile.

Just as you would dress the part for physical networking, so goes it for social media networking on LinkedIn.

1) Photo.

Your LinkedIn photo should be of high quality. Never a selfie. Never holding a fish (or a hobby shot). Never a group shot (or of you and a piece of another from a group shot). Just you. Authentic. Unfiltered. And, smiling.

A recent professional headshot is best so you are more easily recognized in a thumbnail photo accompanying a social share or in person at a physical networking event.

2) Headline.

Your LinkedIn headline should include keywords that networking acquaintances, like-minded others, and potential employers or social recruiters may use to find you in a LinkedIn search (keyword SEO). Never default to your most recent job title. Instead, state your current job status and career focus using popular keywords and titles most often used on LinkedIn. Conduct a keyword search and browse other LinkedIn headlines by those in your career field and industry for ideas.

For example: in the Experience section of LinkedIn I use my official job title, “Professor of Marketing.” Yet, in my LinkedIn headline I use the more searchable keywords of “Digital Marketing Professor” along with other keywords of my career focus that include Social Media Marketing and Personal Branding.

3) Summary.

Your LinkedIn summary is basically your elevator pitch. It should continue what you presented in your LinkedIn headline and give others a reason to dig deeper into your profile.

However, a bulleted list of skills and accomplishments is boring. And, redundant.

Instead, grab the reader’s attention by telling your personal brand story. This is a first-person written story about your career passion, career milestones, and an added dose of personality. How did you get to where you are today? Where do you want to go tomorrow? Or, why do you love what you do?

Your summary should be easily readable (short paragraphs, spacing between paragraphs, good grammar and spelling). Make it interesting enough to prompt continued reading of your full profile. Search and browse other LinkedIn summaries by those in your career field and industry for ideas. Write several alternative drafts. Find someone for honest feedback and proofreading.

At the end of your summary, include a call to action (CTA) that explains why others should connect with you and include your business email so that potential connections can use the Other box and connect with you without paying for InMail.

Advanced tip: The Muse provides some good advice and examples about writing the LinkedIn Summary section.

4) Remaining profile.

Though fodder for another blog post, the rest of your LinkedIn profile should match the details of your resume (including education, experiences, etc.). Then expanded to include career relevant content such as: courses and projects (if a near or recent grad), publications (especially if you are an academic, blogger, or book author), skills & endorsements, recommendations, and more. Continue to build your profile until LinkedIn says you are an All-Star.

Again, your privacy is in your control and you can choose which sections you want visible in your public profile versus what is visible after connecting (go to Public Profile in your Account Settings).

Advanced tip: While updating your LinkedIn profile, be sure to turn off your update notifications so as not to annoy your current connections with all the minor edits (see the “Notify your network?” box in the right column).

3. LinkedIn Social Activity Strategies.

Alas, as explained in a previous blog post, you should not let LinkedIn be a place where your resume goes to die.

Your social activity on LinkedIn will keep you noticed and remembered by your connections and others considering connection.

However, mistakes are made as to what truly represents social media networking on LinkedIn.

Again, this is best understood when compared to physical networking.

1) Don’t be anti-social.

To not social share and social engage with others on LinkedIn is the equivalent to missing a networking event or attending and acting smart but looking dumb as a technologically preoccupied wallflower.

You go unnoticed.

You are forgotten.

Instead, give social sharing and social engagement on LinkedIn a try. On LinkedIn, efforts of quality rather than quantity are of most importance for personal branding.

There are numerous ways to social share on LinkedIn. Begin by finding and sharing links to current and interesting content about your career focus that is educational (how-to, why-to), informative (news, announcements), or inspirational (favorite quotes).

Continue being sociable by responding to the social shares of others.

2) Don’t be a link dropper.

To only social share “links” with your connections or to only “like” the social shares of others is the equivalent to attending a networking event and walking around and shaking hands without saying a word.

You are acknowledging their presence, but not really being social.

It is not social media networking if you are not being social.

Instead, show others your authenticity (the real you), your authority (your expertise on a subject), and your willingness to converse/engage by always adding relevant comment to your social shares and to the social shares of others. Let them know why they should read what you have read and shared, or that you really did read and learn from what they have shared.

3) Don’t be a social media robot.

To only social share as “sales messages” or “self-promotion” is the equivalent to walking around a networking event and shaking hands, quickly delivering your elevator pitch, exchanging business cards, and moving on.

A robot could do this and for some on LinkedIn, one-click automation does their social sharing without any attempt at being social or building a relationship.

You should not automate your personal brand.

Instead, you should limit your self-promotion or sales messages to an occasional share along with a majority of social sharing that adds value to your relationship with your connections.

Excessive self-promotion and sales pitches are the quickest ways to get your social shares unfollowed and possibly even lose a connection. With a couple of clicks, connections can disconnect with you and tell LinkedIn that you are a spammer. Then your account could spend an unknown number of days with restrictions in LinkedIn jail, and repeat offenses could end in account suspension or termination.

Rather than using an old school practice of outbound marketing that disrupts the flow of a connection’s home stream, an inbound social selling approach is recommended. This is where you directly engage and share valuable content that adds value and positively sells your personal brand while subtly and indirectly prompting potential customers to contact you or your company.

“Social selling begins with social and ends in selling, with a whole lot of relationship required in the middle.”

The Take-Away.

LinkedIn is unlike other social media networks and to go all-in requires that you use it differently and professionally.

Connecting to anyone and everyone, uploading your resume content without adding more to your profile, and the absence of social sharing and engagement, will ensure a sucky LinkedIn experience.

LinkedIn sucks when you do.

What are your recommended best practices to get more out of LinkedIn to benefit your personal brand?

This article originally appeared on Digital Self Marketing Advantage and has been republished with permission.

Historically, most marketing efforts focused on identifying potential customers and finding ways to convert them into paying customers. Today, however, we can use the tools and metrics of Big Data to paint a more complex picture of the relationship between a business and a customer. This approach is called Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM).

Why CLM Matters

Think of it like trying to strike up a conversation with someone you don’t really know. You don’t want to force a conversation and risk driving the other person away, and yet this is what many businesses do with their marketing, particularly when they send someone lots of offers just because they clicked on an email once. At the same time, if you play it too cool, the other person might forget about you and move on.

CLM is all about reaching out to customers and potential customers at the most opportune moment. A well-executed CLM strategy optimizes the customer’s progress all the way down the marketing funnel. Using demographic and behavioral data to target specific messages and offers to people at each stage of the customer lifecycle, CLM marketers can turn first-time buyers into loyal customers, while also retaining or winning back customers who might otherwise have been lost.

The end goal of CLM is to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), which is the net profit a business can hope to make from a customer from their first purchase to their last. It’s based on how long the business expects to retain a customer, as well as how much that customer is likely to spend over time. Because it’s a prediction, there are a number of different ways to calculate CLV, from back-of-the-envelope methods with many assumptions to sophisticated techniques that rely on machine learning, data mining, and predictive modeling. The key point here is that CLM is about maximizing the value of customers over the long term, rather than finding ways to maximize revenue in the short term (by means of aggressive upselling, for example).

Stages of the Customer Lifecycle

While the exact stages of a customer lifecycle will vary between individuals, segments, businesses, and industries, there are a few stages most CLM systems will have in common.

• Potential customers, also called prospects, are people who have demonstrated some interest in your business, perhaps by following your business on social media or signing up for emails, but who haven’t yet made a purchase.

• First-time customers are customers who have made a single purchase.

• Active customers are those who are regular, repeat buyers with predictable behavior (i.e., they make a purchase every 2-3 weeks).

• At-risk customers are formerly active customers whose behavior suggests that they are falling off (i.e., they used to make purchases every 2-3 weeks, but now make them less than once a month).

• Lost (or churned) customers are formerly active customers who have stopped buying and are unlikely to return.

CLM leverages the power of data to first identify what stage a customer is at and then target specific offers and communications to engage those customers and turn first-time or at-risk customers into active customers. These insights can be based on a mix of demographic and behavioral data, and can combine with customer segmentation and dynamic content in powerful ways to deliver personalized offers to customers at exactly the right time.

For example, an e-commerce retailer might send every first-time buyer a special offer for 20 percent off in hopes of converting them into active customers, while simultaneously reaching out to their active customers about a new loyalty program that allows them to preview new products or services before they’re available to the rest of the site. The takeaway is that customers at different stages in the customer lifecycle will be most receptive to different types of offers and messaging. CLM is all about figuring out what stage your customers are at and which offers are most likely to engage them.

The value here is two-fold. First, the insights from CLM can help you identify your most valuable cohorts based on real data and allow you to test, execute, and evaluate new strategies for engaging them. Second, CLM allows you to optimize your marketing, engagement, and retention efforts across segments and cohorts, reducing your marketing spend while increasing its efficacy. For instance, you might find that although men aged 25-40 make up only 5% of your customers they account for 30% of your revenue. With this knowledge, you can target specific ads to first-time customers in this cohort with the goal of converting more of them into (highly profitable) customers.

Tools for Managing the Customer Lifecycle

CLM falls under the broader category of marketing automation, which refers to software and processes designed to optimize marketing efforts across multiple channels while automating repetitive marketing tasks. If you’re already using a marketing platform for automation (like Magento, Shopify, or OpenCart), you should look for a CLM tool that integrates with your existing platform.

In general, a good CLM suite should provide tools that allow you to identify your most valuable customer segments, quantify the value of social channels, optimize your advertising spend, and automate emails by segment and event.

RJMetrics is a popular business intelligence and analytics tool that offers cohort and churn analysis, email segmentation, and revenue analytics. Metrilo, RetentionGrid, and Custora are some other marketing analytics platforms that focus on CLM for e-commerce and integrate with most of the major marketing automation platforms.

The Talent to Implement a CLM Strategy

A winning CLM strategy is a coordinated effort between marketing, data, and design. At a minimum, you might need a marketing strategist, an experienced email marketer, and possibly a data analyst to help interpret results. Other experts include web designers and copywriters to help develop the creative assets for your campaigns. Looking to find high-quality freelancers to get a campaign up and running? Upwork can connect you to a network of more than 12 million freelancers.

The decision to outsource your inside sales function is not one to take lightly. However, if you look closely, there are often clear signs that your company could benefit from bringing in expert help for B2B appointment setting.

The following are several of the strongest indications that now is the time to outsource your inside sales.

1. You Struggle to Find Capable Staff

It is rare that a typical sales organisation has staff that excels and thrives in B2B appointment setting. In fact, typical reps view this role as a necessary evil to get to the nurturing and sales development stages.

As an expert in lead generation, Internal Results has a full team of professional sales reps prepared to understand and represent your business. You can let your team focus on its nurturing strengths.

2. You Lack Experienced and Proven Appointment Setters

Even if you have capable staff, you may lack employees with proven success in efficiently landing appointments. If your prospect-to-meeting ratio is low, why not take the time to look for a partner that can deliver more appointments.

With Internal Results, you only pay for established meetings.

3. You Need to Filter and Nurture Inbound Leads

In addition to making prospecting calls, your inside sales function should enable you to filter and nurture inbound leads. Internal Results collaborates with your team to develop an implementation plan, which establishes guidelines for updating your CRM system and organising leads.

Your reps then take over and begin to nurture targeted contacts with thorough, accurate profile information.

4. Missed Opportunities are Mounting

Ask yourself, “Are your teams following up with leads from your company events and marketing efforts?” If the answer is a resounding, “No!” you are missing significant nurturing opportunities.

These live events are a great way to generate high-potential leads, but you need someone to successfully call on them. Our team will communicate with your leads in a timely manner to help you get meetings when opportunities are strongest.

5. Managing Sales Resources Has Become Challenging

If you are struggling to manage your sales resources, you have another strong sign that outsourcing inside sales is a viable option. It makes sense to allocate your resources to the elements of the sales process that you have the greatest strengths in.

By outsourcing, you gain the expertise that a quality leader in this field offers in landing appointments with the right people at the right time.

You can dedicate your resources, including coaching time, to nurturing and development.

Wrap Up

Some sales leaders get overwhelmed by trying to tackle lead generation obstacles internally. In B2B appointment setting, your best opportunity for success may include bringing in an expert partner like Internal Results for inside sales.

There is a lot you stand to gain byworking with a partner on some or all of your inside sales processes:

• Perhaps you are a startup looking to upscale your operations and want to keep overheads to a minimum;
• or you would rather have your top sales people focused on closing business deals, not finding them;
• maybe you are planning on breaking into new markets or territories and don’t have the skill-set to command new meetings just yet.

No matter what it is you’re trying to sell on the internet, a sales funnel is the best way to do it. This is the most systematic way to build trust, to build a relationship and to encourage people to want your brand before making a sale – and it is incredibly powerful when done well.

What is a Sales Funnel?

So what exactly is a sales funnel? What will you be using it for? How does it work? And how can you tap into its power for yourself?

In essence, a sales funnel can be imagined like a funnel for customers. You start out with a broad opening to capture as many leads as possible (opt-in) and then you gradually narrow those leads down to only the most engaged and interested customers so that you can sell to them. All the while, you’ll be building trust, building engagement and priming them to buy your product or service.

You can also think about this as a ladder, with each rung taking your customers closer to the top where you’ll eventually sell to them.

In practice, what this means is a series of different marketing strategies, each arranged in such a way as to build more and more targeted leads for your business. So you might start with a simple ad, or a blog post and then move on to an email list, then a ‘free report’, then a seminar, then a small product sale and then a big sale.

Each of these marketing stages is a rung on a ladder, it’s a little further down the funnel. And each time a customer clicks on the next link or follows you to the next step, they are becoming more and more likely to buy from you.

As mentioned, there’s a good chance you’ll have encountered different sales funnels in your travel around the web: and you may even have bought products from others through this method. You might have come across a blog and signed up to the mailing list for instance, and then been told to click on the link therein in order to see a free seminar. And then maybe the free seminar asked you to sign up for the next seminar which would cost a little money.

And you may have come across it on YouTube too. Let’s look at a fictional, somewhat inscrutable business man, (We will call him Sam), who is willing to use everything at his disposal to capture new leads and sales – even when that involves a bit of bare-face lying. But he still employs a sales funnel very well. Sam talks about his cars or his massive house and this makes you want to watch – even if only because it annoys you.

At the end of the video, he offers to show you how to get his three most important tips for making money. And because it’s free, why wouldn’t you click it? Only at this point, you’re becoming more and more involved with his brand and more and more likely to become a paying customer. When you watch this ‘free’ video, which is on his site or channel, you’ll then be told you can get even more information by signing up for a free report. In fact, this report is key to understanding the video. If you do this, then Sam now has your details and the confirmation that you’re interested in what he has to sell!

You’ve gone from a ‘cold lead’ (someone on YouTube, targeted based on your video watching choices), to a ‘warm lead’ (someone who has demonstrated an interest) to eventually a ‘qualified lead’.

The way Sam does this is a little transparent and a little cynical – but it’s how many of the big names operate. And it’s exactly what you should be doing if you want to make sales. Note that this doesn’t mean you have to con people like Sam! Just that you need to think about your marketing strategy in steps and stages and understand the psychology in the way you’re dealing with people.

Many new entrepreneurs fail to learn this up front and struggle with filling their client list. Still, others find that they just don’t have the sales mindset. In both these situations, although you need to know a general concept, you can outsource most of the work. The professional(s) you choose will need to know precisely how to employ these kinds of techniques, how to execute your sales plan perfectly and how to write persuasive copy. With a well-oiled sales funnel that people simply can’t ignore, you will build a massive following so that you don’t just have visitors and fans – you have loyal customers!