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With over 433 million users LinkedIn has become a hot favorite of content marketers and bloggers who want to drive targeted traffic to their websites. (source)

Being a professional business social network, LinkedIn is the perfect place to promote your blog. Since it’s demographics is not too diverse as on other social media networks, you can easily get in front of the right people and pitch the idea that clicks.

If you want to taste your share of the LinkedIn pie, here are some best tips to drive massive traffic from LinkedIn.

1) Make your profile optimized for exposure.

No matter you are an author of HubSpot blog, if your profile isn’t optimized for more views, no one will see you on LinkedIn. But once you optimize it, add the elements required to get seen on LinkedIn, you can surely get more visits. This is proven by the experience of HubSpot author Joe Chernov who increased his profile views by 25% with just some minor changes.

Here is what you have to do:

a) Change your headline to increase search visibility.

LinkedIn Offers you a headline where you can place keywords to get more views when people search for related queries. Make sure to add your niche details so that relevant readers can find and connect to you.

If you are a freelance blogger, make sure you write freelance writer on your headline or if you are blogging about conversion optimization, make sure you mention the word “conversion optimization” to get an advantage on searches.

LinkedIn also provides you with what others in your industry are using so you can take an ida from there.

b) Add your posts in the summary sections:

LinkedIn provides you a summary section just below your profile details. Leverage it to place links to your most popular blog posts. This might not have any SEO value, but the summary section is the first thing people see when they visit your profile, and if you have a clickable headline, I am sure you can get some eyeballs on your blog.

2) Leverage LinkedIn Groups to get super targeted traffic to your Website:

LinkedIn groups are like Facebook groups (except there is no spamming in the former) where you have thousands of professional members who are eager to discuss the topics you are blogging.

Here is why you should leverage LinkedIn groups in your promotional strategy.

1. The members of the groups are highly targeted, and hence you get in front of leads you would pay for using other social networks.
2. Quality content on LinkedIn can build your brand and help you grow your blog.
3. LinkedIn groups offer great feedback and advice on your writing and so this is a great place to learn something on the go.

Since you have only 50 groups to join at a time, make sure you find the most active and meaningful ones from the vast directory of groups. Here is how you can get more traffic using LinkedIn Groups.

a) Check and join groups:

As our main aim (as of now) is to drive traffic to our website, you must be careful to find out if a group allows posting links in it. You can do it before joining by clicking on the group list and then checking out the description section regarding their linking policies.

At no cost, you’d want to get banned for dropping links at a group that has zero tolerance towards it.

b) Participate in conversations before promotion:

In any social media platform, the key to real engagement and traffic is to interact with your community. When you are new to LinkedIn groups, try monitoring the activity and voice of the members before posting your links.

Here is a screenshot that shows you where to find these posts to interact.

Some groups have a day reserved for link promotions while others have the rule to share one link per week. Make sure you do not violate them.

c) Promote your links:

After initial interactions you can promote your blog article links to the group members. This can be done in two ways. You either add a relevant link while you are posting your update or directly choose the share to LinkedIn groups option while sharing from your website.

d) Participate in conversations:

Your job does not end after posting links on LinkedIn groups; rather they are the starting point to get more interactions, build genuine connections and drive more traffic through them.

3) LinkedIn Pulse: Your new Guest Posting Arena:

LinkedIn Pulse has been a tremendous success since its launch in 2014. The platform allows you to publish your blog posts on the platform and leverage its 433 million users to bat an eye. You can also syndicate your own (already published) blog posts to give them extra exposure.

Here are a few tips to get more views on LinkedIn Pulse.

a) LinkedIn Pulse readers love visual and long-form content:

Noah Kagan researched over 3000 articles on LinkedIn (these articles got an average of 42.5K views, 567 comments, and 138,841 comments) to find out what elements can get your content seen on LinkedIn pulse.

What he found out is, LinkedIn readers are fans of visual content. Each of the posts contained an average of 8 images in them. This number is really surprising as far as I am concerned, but you can always experiment to see what works out for you.

b) List posts and business or self-development posts are on the popular side:

On LinkedIn Pulse, you can always drive traffic back to your site by writing articles that are in your niche. If you have a list post or a “how-to” style post you can easily get more views.

Similarly, business and self-help posts get more visits on the platform. However, if you are not in that niche, you can easily find a topic (here is a list of channels) based on your website niche and post it. Make sure it is long form content and should have video or other multimedia assets (images are allowed).

c) How to make LinkedIn Pulse work for you:

Though LinkedIn Pulse is in itself a blogging platform, you can easily repost your posts there and get additional viewers. If you have a good number of followers or have written a nice post, you can go viral and drive a lot of traffic back to your site.

For example, this post by Johnson Kee got him over 100k page views just because he wrote something that resonated with the audience.

d) Add links back to your site:

Pageviews on Pulse would actually mean nothing if you cannot funnel them as leads back to your site. Since LinkedIn does not allow you to monetize pulse, you should aim at bringing the traffic back to your site where you can funnel them and convert them into sales/subscribers.

The best way is to add internal links (must be catchy enough to make readers click through them). One other thing you can do is to make your footer section a bit optimized so that it gives a brief introduction of your business.

You can add links to your landing pages in this section or provide them with the glimpse of your product if you have any.

4) What not to do on LinkedIn:

Like every other platform, LinkedIn users have their own pet peeves and doing certain things can turn them off. This will result in less interaction and thus less views of your posts. Here are certain things you should avoid to get more impressions.

a) Avoid posting about political and religious stuff:

We all have right to post whatever we want, but not all platform receive updates with an equal eye. In LinkedIn the conversation is more professional and business-related than talking about politics and religious updates.

You can instead post them on Facebook and other social media platforms.

b) Stop posting very personal stuff:

Like I said, personal stuff like the makeup you are wearing, the bike you recently bought or the cat that died leaving you lonely look good on Facebook and the audience there really loves it.

You can skip posting those stuff there because neither your potential leads nor your business associates are interested in those.

BONUS:

This is a paid method, but I can assure you will get quality leads to your website with this method. Also, this method works in conjunction with Facebook ads.

In this method, you have to use your LinkedIn contacts, by exporting them. Then you can actually segment it into industry based contacts so that you can run different campaigns based on various industries.

Then you can upload them to custom audiences in your Facebook ad manager and run a campaign. This method will not have huge impressions but will surely help you reach some gold audience which would otherwise be impossible to reach.

Here is a detailed guide on how to do it.

Wrapping up:

With LinkedIn emerging as a great content marketing platform it’s also turning a favorite of marketers who are interested in B2B connections. Having genuine presence and posting lots of updates can bring you good amount of traffic.

The traffic that LinkedIn sends is always interested in your business because they are there for business. So you get quality leads and lower bounce rates that platform like StumbleUpon and Facebook.

What are your favorite LinkedIn traffic driving strategies? Share them in the comments below.

Most people would think that if it's not good looks that make a man most attractive to women, then it's definitely a sense of humor.

But studies consistently show that altruism is a top quality women are drawn to when they are looking for a relationship.

And a new study in the British Journal of Psychology found that altruistic men may have more sex, too.

The researchers asked unmarried Canadian adults how much they did good deeds like giving money to charity or helping someone get their car out of the snow. They then asked the participants how often they had sex and how many partners they've had.

Men who reported more altruistic acts had more sex — and more partners. For those who were in relationships, good-hearted men were more likely to have had more sex in the last 30 days, too.

In the second experiment of the study, the researchers had undergraduate students say whether they would like to donate money that they might receive for participating to charity. Those who said that they would also tended to have more casual sex, more sex in relationships, and more lifetime sex partners overall.

Another study, published in January 2016 in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, presented 202 women with different men to choose from. The different combinations of choices were either attractive or not, and they either did a good deed or didn't.

The women chose the selfish, attractive men for a one-night stand. But for a long-term relationship, they chose the altruistic man whether he was attractive or not.

A slightly older study, published in The Journal of Social Psychology in 2013, really drives this home. That study found that women valued altruism above other traits as a measure of whether a potential mate would make a good parent. The women also said that altruism was important for short-term relationships, but significantly more women said that the trait mattered for the long term.

Yet another study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in July 2015, analyzed Germans' responses to a large annual survey.

Single people who reported doing good deeds were much more likely to say that they were in a relationship the next year. They also took less time to find a partner than their non-altruistic peers.

All of this is not to say that other traits don't matter. Humor is also important to women selecting a mate, researchers have found. It makes women assume that a man is more intelligent.

A sense of humor is a good indicator of sexual activity, too. In one study, men whom women rated as funnier reported having more sex with more partners.

For building long-term relationships, though, researchers find over and over again that altruism is a crucial and highly desirable trait.

Psychologists have yet to pit humor head-to-head against altruism. It's also important to keep in mind that many of these studies are small, and that people often behave differently in real life than they do in a lab setting, or when responding to a survey. Especially when reporting positive experiences like charity work or sex, men may be more likely to overestimate how much they actually do those things.

And because of the way that these kinds of studies are designed, they can't say conclusively that it's altruism specifically that's attractive. It might be other traits associated with altruism, or that men attractive for other reasons might also happen to be altruistic.

But the large number of studies and the consistent findings in favor of altruism are building a pretty solid case that there are some side benefits to doing good deeds. No matter what, if you're a man seeking a woman — especially for a long-term partnership — helping others can't hurt.

SEE ALSO: 11 qualities in men that women find attractive

DON'T MISS: Here's how people's sex lives change over the course of a relationship

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s how long the average man lasts in bed

It was never guaranteed I would be a father. As a kid, I assumed I would grow up, get married, and have kids. This wasn’t a struggle my wife and I expected to deal with.

For 5 years we struggled to have a child. During this time I thought about all of the conversations and experiences I would one day share with my children.

Today, we are grateful to have two wonderful kids. When my son and daughter were born, my immediate thoughts were about the cool things I could teach them.

Okay, my immediate thoughts were panic. But after that, my thoughts were on teaching.

As a parent, you have a checklist of things you plan to teach your kids. Sports, cooking, and cleaning are usually on this list. Although, they never seem to learn the cleaning part.

What is often overlooked, is teaching your kids about success.

You want them to live a life full of happiness and fulfillment. To do this, there are a few things they need to know about success…

1. You are responsible for your success.

Mom and dad are going to help. Friends and family will offer support. But success is 100% your responsibility. The sooner you understand this, the better.

Circumstances and situations in your life will only determine your success or lack thereof if you allow them too.

As Earl Nightingale said, “We are all self-made but only the successful will admit it.”

2. You are what you think about.

Your thoughts determine your actions and your actions determine your results. The key to success is in your mind. Focusing on negative self-talk, fears, envy, gossip and other cancerous thoughts will not lead you to success.

Proverbs 23:7 proclaims, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Think of your mind as a garden and every thought is a planted seed. Are you planting weeds?

3. You can’t outperform your self-image

If you don’t believe in yourself, don’t expect anyone else to either. If you see yourself as someone who doesn’t deserve success then you will never achieve it.

Self-doubt is your biggest enemy. Spend time working on yourself. This isn’t about having an ego. This is about believing you can achieve your goals.

4. The purpose of influence is to help those without it.

Why strive for success? It’s simple. You are limiting how much you can positively impact others if you’re not successful.

Success isn’t about money alone. It’s about achievement. The more influence you have, the more you can help those who lack it.

The world is in desperate need of positive influencers. Be one of them.

5. You are a product of your environment.

Success and stupidity are both contagious. Everyone in your life is having a significant impact on you. Be sure that impact is positive by surrounding yourself with the right people.

You may out-grow some friends and while that will be hard, it’s natural. You’ll meet new friends who share similar passions and goals.

Some people are in your life for a reason, others for a season.

Your kids are the future leaders of the world. Prepare them by teaching them the principles of success.

The post 5 Things Your Kids Need To Know About Success appeared first on John Michael Morgan - Income Improvement Follows Self Improvement.

We love talking about what makes a great push notification. (Clearly.) But in-app messages are a big deal, too! Not clear on the difference between push notifications and in-app messages? Push notifications are those messages you receive to your home screen when you’re outside of the app, where in-app messages are media-rich messages you receive in the app. Surprisingly though, one-third of all apps don’t use them.

We want to change all that. Because there’s a lot to like about in-app:

• They appear while users are mid-use, so more users see them than push notifications
• Apps who use it see a 27% increase in app launches
• They’ve been known to increase retention 3.5x

We kept our eyes peeled for apps that do in-app messaging well, and we weren’t disappointed. Check out 5 companies that showed us what good in-app looks like to inspire your own strategy.

1. LINKEDIN
Help users discover features.

Your users may be missing out on the feature they need–and the one that would boost engagement with your app. A friendly, informative message is just what they need to discover their new favorite thing about your app. (It’s also a great way to promote exciting new features–we’ll talk about that, too.)

2. DUOLINGO
Tell users what’s different.

Unfamiliar territory can be a little jarring. That goes for changes in an app experience, too. Duolingo gets in front of any potential confusion users may be feeling, and lets them know how it benefits them in a reassuring, conversational tone. For this message, we’d also recommend taking the opportunity to insert more of the Duolingo brand and tone, too.

3. PAPERLESS POST
Onboard new users.

Your onboarding experience is your user’s first introduction to your app; getting it right increases retention rates by 50%. Make sure your users know the lay of the land to make it easier for them to be successful.

4. RUNKEEPER
Show off what’s new.

A great way to encourage your users to try out your cool new feature is while they’re in your app, ready to take it for a spin. Runkeeper’s design is eye-catching, on brand, and conveys a real sense of excitement about Running Groups. Plus, they make sure the benefit–motivation to run and achieve goals–is crystal clear. Letting them dive right into the new feature via the CTA makes it easy for users to try it out, too.

5. UBER
Share important information.

I know, I know–are you a little stressed just seeing this? It can’t all be good news, and Uber makes sure users are aware of something that could negatively impact their experience later on: having a higher than expected fare. And while it’s designed to be noticed (and a little jarring), Uber gets extra points for using copy to make it clear what’s happening, why, and how it serves the user by making more ubers available.

Do you use in-app messages? If not, why? Tell us in the comments.

Your body language, including your hand gestures, can help drive your message home and encourage empathy, especially when you’re giving an important presentation or speaking in public. Here are some specific gestures to keep in mind for your next talk.

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Contrary to popular belief, frugality is not just about saving money. It’s about making the most of your resources, and that includes your time and effort. To make frugality work for you, think of it less as a lifestyle and more of a method.

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“If you have to close bad-fit customers to make your quota, you’re a hustler, a closer… some might even say you’re a good salesperson. But you know what you won’t be?… Working here much longer!”

When I heard the Sales VP say that to her sales org – with the CEO standing by her side – I knew that the time I spent with her and the company’s executive team going over all the ways acquiring bad-fit customers absolutely destroys everything from morale to the value of a company was time well-spent.

Sales had never known what the characteristics of bad-fit customers are or the challenges the rest of the company faces when trying to make those customers successful.

So it wasn’t the fault of the salespeople that bad-fit customers signed on, and the VP of Sales – as well as the CEO – went on to say that; they took ownership for their failures as leaders.

No one told the sales people that Customer Success is when customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with their company. All interactions. With their company.

Every interaction matters: From the first time a prospect interacts with an SDR or AE, to when they convert to a paying customer, through first value delivered, and on to adoption, engagement, and expansion over the rest of the customer’s 3, 5, 7, or 10-year+ lifecycle.

Sales is actually the front line when it comes to Customer Success.

The problem is, except for the situations in which sales is responsible for renewal and expansion, or when a customer who’s struggling contacts the original sales person for help, salespeople are generally fairly disconnected from the customer and their journey to success (or failure).

When I’m talking to a potential consulting client, not only am I responsible for closing the deal, but I also have to work with them. I am acutely aware of the negatives associated with closing a deal I shouldn’t.

But the further you get from actually working with the customer on their journey (or struggle) toward success, the less acutely you feel the pain of that bad-fit customer, and the easier it is to justify closing a customer without success potential.

And while I’ve literally heard a salesperson tell the Customer Success Management team, “I don’t care, that’s post-sales” when it was pointed out that 3 of the 5 “success potential” boxes were empty, most of the time when a bad-fit customer is signed, it isn’t an egregious act.

Why it Happens

Most salespeople don’t wake up in the morning and say “today I close ‘em all and let Customer Success sort ‘em out.” It’s just that they don’t know what makes a prospect a “bad fit.” While maybe they have an idea, it’s that distance from the acute pain of bad-fit customers that allows them to easily put the potential for the customer to not be successful out of their mind and just close them.

Most salespeople aren’t motivated only by incentives like mice or chipmunks or some other analogy that tries to reduce them to something other than human. In fact, it’s that salespeople are human that is the perfect excuse for – and solution to – the problem of signing bad-fit customers.

In situations where the negative consequences are not known for sure – like, where a higher authority hasn’t dictated what those consequences are, for instance – but could be extrapolated if given any actual thought, humans will choose to avoid thinking about the potential downside and focus only on the short-term positive. We’re really good at rationalizing.

So, if a salesperson has not been explicitly told the characteristics of a bad fit customer, why they’re a bad fit, and what the negative consequences of doing business with that customer are, the fact that there is a possibility they might not be a great fit isn’t reason enough for the salesperson to give up that sale, miss their numbers, and take home less pay. It’s an easy decision for them to rationalize.

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Make sure your customers fit your needs as well as you fit theirs. Avoid the pain of bad-fit…
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Spread the Word

What I’ve found is that simply laying out specifically the characteristics of both bad-fit and good-fit customers works really well to keep salespeople from signing bad-fit customers. Explain what happens when someone signs a bad-fit customer, and share who feels the acute pain of those bad-fit customers.

When leadership tells salespeople who they should sign and who they shouldn’t, amazing things can happen. There’s no need for disincentives, clawbacks, or the like.

It turns out that simply knowing what a bad-fit customer looks like and why signing them is a bad idea for everyone will keep the vast majority of salespeople from signing them.

Effects Throughout the Organization

So who feels the acute pain of a bad-fit customer? Well, for starters…

Onboarding / Implementation

Bad-fit customers fail to get initial value from the product in a timely manner (if ever). I see early lifecycle issues as the reason customers cancel or don’t renew all the time.

Product

Bad-fit customers can send product down the wrong path. Product teams shouldn’t spend time adding or fixing features for customers that shouldn’t be customers in the first place.

Support

When a customer is having problems, they contact support. Bad-fit customers contact support a lot, but their problems are not resolvable, hurting the performance metrics of the support teams.

Account Management

Expansion and Renewal require success; bad-fit customers have no success potential. AMs with target metrics are more susceptible to failure when you sell to bad-fit customers.

Customer Success Management

Bad-fit customers will not achieve their Desired Outcome, which is the whole reason the CSM org exists, thus setting them up for frustrating failure.

Shareholders

Bad-fit customers are a drag on growth. They waste resources and cause a poor reputation in the market, and that directly impacts the value of the company.

Sales

Bad-fit customers lengthen sales cycles with other prospects. They cause negative market sentiment, a lack of advocacy, and the need to overcome more and more objections. If you work for a sales leader that allows other salespeople to close bad-fit customers, it’s time to move on. They’re actively making your job harder. If you know another sales person is knowingly closing bad-fit customers, that’s not something to ignore. When you see something, say something since they’re hurting you, too.

Your Customer

More than anyone else, the bad-fit customers you sign feel the pain acutely. The customer trusted you when you said your company could help them solve their problem. They put their reputation on the line. They invested their hard earned money into the deal. And you let them down. The best salespeople can use their customers not just as references with prospects, but for their next sales position. Think about that.

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I could keep going, but hopefully you get the picture.

Bad-fit customers are a drag on growth; they waste resources, hurt morale, increase negative market sentiment, and ultimately hurt everyone involved… including the customer who trusted you.

If that doesn’t jar you into changing your ways, please find another line of work.

 

The post The Acute Pain of Closing Bad-fit Customers appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Success never comes easily, and you’re bound to face challenges along the way. But it’s about your attitude and what you do every day that will help you achieve greatness. Here are a few easy things you can do every day, week, and month to keep you inspired to greatly pursue your calling – whatever it may be. Read for 10 minutes a day “You make it happen by having a positive attitude, by putting a lot of work in it. And having a no fail attitude.” Arien Coppock, Cycling Guide and Travel...

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It’s not news that the role of salespeople and selling is changing.  In the past, salespeople were often the first step in a purchase process, and could significantly influence customer decision-making by controlling information about pricing, availability, competitive advantage, etc.

But in this era of nearly ubiquitous information, customers usually engage with salespeople after they’ve already researched their purchase and in some cases made their purchase decision. Digital commerce and disintermediation have caused many customers to question the importance of having a sales relationship at all. Moreover, companies are learning that true sales success isn’t indicated by the number or size of deals closed; it’s measured by getting and keeping the right customers.

Great salespeople succeed in this new business environment by doing what great brands do.  I laid out seven critical brand-building principles that great brands follow when I wrote my first book.  I’ve now found that these principles are as instrumental to restoring sales to its role as a valuable, sustainable, integral business function as they are to building great brands. 

• Great brands start inside. Great salespeople sell inside first. Just as great brands start brand-building by cultivating a strong brand-led culture inside their organizations, great salespeople know the first step to sales success is actually one taken inside their own companies.  They contribute tremendous value to their organizations through their market insights and direct communication channel with customers.  So they help their companies with product development, marketing strategy, and customer service by serving as the Voice of the Customer internally.
• Great brands avoid selling products. Great salespeople cultivate emotional connections with customers. In the book What Clients Love, Harry Beckwith explains that relatively few businesses actually sell products, services, or even expertise; most sell satisfaction.  “Progressive does not sell car insurance.  It sells comfort:  the comfort of knowing that if you have an accident, they will be at the scene, ready to write a check.”  In the same way, great salespeople don’t try to sell items or programs.  Instead, they appeal to and connect with their clients through emotion, brand story-telling, and thought-leadership.  In doing so they take the attention off price and features and appeal to the feelings customers value and the identities they want to experience and express.
• Great brands ignore trends. Great salespeople don’t imitate, they innovate. Great brands don’t follow what everyone else is doing, nor do they wait to take their lead from customers.  In the same way, great salespeople offer their customers unique perspectives and often seek to push their thinking.  They present a differentiated sales experience by challenging customers’ status quo and teaching them something new and valuable.  They are the “Challengers” that Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson identified in their research into what distinguishes high sales performers.
• Great brands don’t chase customers. Great salespeople attract the best customers for their company. Just as great brands know they’re not for everybody and so they seek to attract loyal and profitable customers through shared values and common interests, great salespeople are selective when engaging prospects.  Research by VoloMetrix, a sales productivity firm, shows that top sellers build deeper relationships with fewer customers rather than casting a wider net of shallower engagement.  Salespeople cultivate profitable, sustainable customer relationships if they’re savvy enough to focus on accounts that inherently represent a good fit with their company instead of trying to close as many deals as possible.
• Great brands sweat the small stuff. Great salespeople create extraordinary experiences that embody their brand. Great salespeople know that they can strengthen their brand if they interpret and reinforce it and its differentiating value throughout the sales experience.  So they examine all the different touchpoints between the customer and the brand in the sales process and seek out opportunities to infuse the most influential ones with the brand’s key values and attributes.  They’re also aware of the power of social selling today and they carefully manage their social network activity to make informed, authentic, personal connections.
• Great brands never have to “give back.” Great salespeople create real value for their customers. Great brands don’t engage in questionable business practices and then try to make up for them with charitable activities and social responsibility programs — they create a positive social impact in the way they design and run their businesses.  Likewise, great salespeople don’t engage with customers simply to make a sale — they look for ways to make their clients more successful.  Leadership consultant Scott Edinger observed, “Sales-training programs rightly focus on finding clients’ ‘pain points.’ But great salespeople also know there’s value in pointing out successes waiting to be exploited.”   They know improving a customer’s condition may not always involve a sale and they do it nonetheless.
• Great brands commit and stay committed. Great salespeople impart the unique value of their brand. Many salespeople feel pressure to gain new business or retain accounts at any cost, but the most effective ones do not give price concessions just to win deals.  They are convinced of the value their company offers and they skillfully help their customers understand it as well.  They employ the techniques put forth by the writers of the book Value Merchants, drawing on their knowledge of what clients value to convey their offer in a way that resonates with them.

Great salespeople implement all of these principles in a cohesive, coordinated approach that mirrors the brand-as-business management approach used by great brands to develop powerful and valuable brands.  Just as great brands cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with their customers, great salespeople cultivate a deep connection between their company  and their client’s business.  To borrow a term, the best salespeople are brand evangelists.

Guy Kawasaki first adopted the term “evangelism” into the business world by applying it to an innovative approach to sales, marketing, and management.  Evangelism, as he defined it, means “convincing people to believe in your product or ideas as much as you do” because evangelists believe that what they offer is truly helpful and valuable to others.

Over the years, many technology companies have developed the role of a technology evangelist or “chief evangelist.”  These people are charged with building up support for a given technology, and then establishing it as a standard in the given industry.  Like these technology evangelists, brand evangelists — that is, great salespeople — build up support within a market for a brand so that it becomes the brand leader in its category.

Importantly, brand evangelism is not another one of the customer-centric or customer-driven sales approaches that have become popular in recent years.  Customer-centric sales and most other sales improvement approaches are pursued for the sole purpose of increasing sales.  Brand evangelism is about engaging customers in a way that produces stronger and more valuable brands and sustaining long-term business success for their companies and their clients.

This is what great salespeople do.

Interest in influencer marketing is skyrocketing. After bumping along at a low level for several years, searches for the term increased by a factor of seven over the past 18 months according to Google Trends.

Recent stats reported by Onalytica explain why marketers are rushing to incorporate influencer research and outreach:

• 84% of marketing professionals now use influencer marketing as a tactic.
• 59% of marketers planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2016.
• 31% of high-growth firms now have a formal employee advocacy program in place
• Why? Because “influencer marketing is more cost-effective than paid advertising and leads to more credible brand recommendations, which 92% of consumers are more likely to trust.”

But influencer marketing can be a waste of resources, or worse—actually damaging to a brand—if done wrong.

Influencer marketing tools can help marketers identify the most relevant and engaging bloggers, journalists, and media outlets in their specific industry segments; reach out to them more effectively; automate low-level, repetitive tasks; and track and monitor results. Here are 28 of the best tools for influencer research and outreach.

1) Klout
Google Review Count: 217,000

Get suggestions for shareable content, track the results of your social sharing activity, monitor your own influencer score and see the scores assigned to other influencers of interest.

Sample review: “Klout allows you to track the impact of your opinions, links, and recommendations across your social graph. It collects data about the content you create, how people interact with that content, and the size and composition of your network. From there, it analyzes the data to find indicators of influence and helps you interpret the data.” — ViralBlog

Pricing: free, or API data by quote

Showcase reviews: InNetwork, ViralBlog

2) Kred
Google Review Count: 55,200

Track and increase your own online influence, and connect with other influencers through the influence network and Kred communities. Use their inbound marketing platform to organize your most influential customers into communities, encourage engagement, and monitor results.

Pricing: individual tool is free; marketing platform is $999 to $10,000 per month

Showcase reviews: InNetwork

3) Newsle
Google Review Count: 46,800

Newsle has now been acquired by and integrated into LinkedIn as a new feature, “Connections In The News.” It lets you see when your connections and companies you follow are mentioned in the news.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Buffer Social

4) Buzzstream
Google Review Count: 26,200

Buzzstream helps you research, prioritize, and find contact information for top influencers on any topic. It also tracks your conversations and follow-up with influencers and supports team collaboration.

Sample review: “BuzzStream enables you turn a website or blog post into a contact record in their database. Bookmark an article by an influential journalist, for example, and BuzzStream will automatically pull in any email addresses and social profiles associated with that journalist. You can even email influencers directly from the platform. ” — PR Daily (PR Tools)

Pricing: $24 to $999 per month

Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger, PR Daily (PR Tools), StoreYa Blog, Robbie Richards

5) Onalytica
Google Review Count: 22,400

Upload or link any piece of content and let Onalytica’s algorithm find the top related influencers. Identify key influencers, engage them, and measure the results and impact of your influencer marketing activities. Onalytica demonstrates the capabilities of its tool by producing data-based lists like the top 100 B2B marketing influencers.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: ViralBlog

6) Little Bird
Google Review Count: 11,100

Find influencers for any topic, explore their ecosystem to build additional connections and engagement, monitor activities, and spot trends.

Sample review: “Little Bird is a great tool for building influencer lists by topic. You feed it a few keywords, and it suggests powerful people to reach out to. It uses advanced data to help you find the perfect influencer. You can pinpoint specific geographic locations and languages. You can also find two (or more) networks with similar interests, and influencers that appeal to both. If influencer marketing is your main mission, it’s a great tool.” — Patrick Whatman on Mention

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Mention, RazorSocial (World)

7) GroupHigh
Google Review Count: 9,750

Search, sort, and filter by a number of criteria to create focused lists from a database of more than 15 million active bloggers, then conduct outreach and monitor results.

Sample review: “Grouphigh is a really powerful blogger research tool. It has a very large database of bloggers with powerful search criteria. Search through the database, identify a short list of bloggers and then analyze each individual blogger. When you want to analyze a blogger you’ll be able to find their contact details, latest blog posts, social profiles and much more.” — RazorSocial (World)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (World)

8) Crowdfire
Google Review Count: 8,620

Find relevant users to follow on Twitter and Instagram, keep track of how your social media updates affect your follower/unfollower stats, and check relationships between accounts.

Sample review: “If you follow lots of prospects and people who might be interested in sharing your content, you will find some will follow back. Others won’t. Crowdfire helps you painlessly ditch the ‘won’t”s.’ Just be careful not to also ditch people you want to follow for other reasons (Sorry, mom.)” — SmallBusinessNewz

Pricing: free to $19.95 per month

Showcase reviews: SmallBusinessNewz

9) Muck Rack
Google Review Count: 7,890

Muck Rack helps PR pros and marketers find relevant journalists and bloggers, receive alerts, and build media lists. It also helps journalists, bloggers, and editors showcase their work, track shares, and grow their following.

Sample review: “If you want to maximize your media outreach, Muck Rack Pro is a great addition to a PR toolkit. The paid version of the online tool that helps journalists and sources connect also enables you to receive alerts, organize media lists, send pitches, and conduct unlimited searches. It also provides priority customer support. ” — PR Daily (PR Tools)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (PR Tools), PR Daily (Digital Tools)

10) Inkybee
Google Review Count: 3,110

Find targeted industry influencers, manage your influencer engagement, track coverage, and measure and report on results.

Sample review: “This social-media tool provides a way for you to locate those influencers who can elevate your brand and attract more potential customers. It provides a way for you to search for bloggers and social media celebrities interested in your industry, so you can connect with them.” — Entrepreneur

Pricing: $79 to $249 per month

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger, Entrepreneur, StoreYa Blog, Rebekah Radice

11) Impactana
Google Review Count: 2,940

Discover compelling content for sharing, identify key influencers (blogs and video), analyze social signals to determine what works best with your audience, and measure user engagement.

Sample review: “Impactana is the ultimate in content research with a focus on SEO. Instead of just showing content based on social sharing popularity, you can find content based on high number of backlinks, views, and comments. That can come in handy for outreach purposes when you are looking for relevant in-content links.” — Kristi Hines / Robbie Richards

Pricing: $99 to $699 per month, with enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

12) Gorkana
Google Review Count: 2,730

Owned by Cision, Gorkana offers one of the most comprehensive databases of media contacts in the U.K., along with media monitoring and filtering, social media tracking, and analysis.

Sample review: “The majority of the work we do is on the digital PR and content strategy and creation side and we would be lost without access to (#journorequest and Gorkana) as they make it much easier to find the right influencers to pitch ideas into.” — Simon Penson / Robbie Richards

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

13) Contactually
Google Review Count: 1,960

An influencer CRM tool, Contactually helps connect your work email to automatically create a relationship database, categorize your contacts so you know who to contact and when, craft messages using relevant information, and follow up on schedule.

Sample review: “Contactually is a handy tool that sends you automatic reminders to contact people on your media list to whom you haven’t reached out in a while. The tool also provides contextual information such as social updates and recent conversations, as well as email templates to help you know what to say.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: $29 to $99 per user per month

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, PR Daily (Digital Tools)

14) Pitchbox
Google Review Count: 1,930

Find influencers with contact information and social profiles, craft personalized outreach messages, automate follow-up, and track results. Includes an integrated email client.

Sample review: “I love this tool for pitching article topic ideas to high authority sites. It syncs with your Gmail account, and sends up to 2 automated follow-ups per campaign. It’s also great at tracking responses and can differentiate between an out of office reply versus an actual response.” — Kelsey Reaves / Robbie Richards

Pricing: $95 to $1,500 per month

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

15) ContentMarketer.io
Google Review Count: 1,930

Find influencers and monitor mentions. This toolset also lets you schedule and send personalized outreach emails via your Google account, using pre-built templates and automated follow-up sequences.

Sample review: “If you’re a regular visitor here, you have probably heard me mention Content Marketer a few times. It’s a browser-based tool that’s designed to help marketers streamline their outreach efforts by offering a quick and easy way to find and contact relevant industry influencers. ” — Marketing Insider Group (Content)

Pricing: $9 to $66 per month

Showcase reviews: Express Writers, Marketing Insider Group (Content), Marketing Insider Group (Strategy), Robbie Richards

16) BlogDash
Google Review Count: 1,910

BlogDash offers both a tool to help find, filter, sort, and pitch relevant bloggers individually or in collaboration with a team, and a service that performs custom blogger outreach on your brand’s behalf.

Sample review: “Connect your brand with bloggers with BlogDash. The tool allows users to search for content marketers based on target specifications such as demographic and influence. After connecting with a blogger, you can pitch them your new product or service to get others talking in the blogosphere. ” — Social Media Today

Pricing: free to $199 per month for the tool; outreach services by quote

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today, Viral Blog

17) Prezly
Google Review Count: 1,470

A “PR CRM” system, Prezly lets you create rich influencer profiles, organize and segment contacts, track engagement, craft custom multi-media emails, and build an online newsroom for your brand.

Sample review: “Building a multimedia press release is hard. Making it responsive and email-ready is even harder…Prezly solves this problem by combining multimedia email distribution with custom online newsrooms. Create a multimedia press release in your own custom-branded newsroom, and Prezly automatically generates an email version that you can pitch to journalists. Both the newsroom and the email are responsively designed to look great on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, and every email includes analytics to help you track response rate.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (Digital Tools)

18) FullContact
Google Review Count: 1,420

Control your social, email, and mobile contacts from one dashboard. Manage contacts, keep track of activity, and view extended information about your contacts from within Gmail and your calendar.

Sample review: “If you have a list of influencer email address, but no social profiles, you don’t have to make a long date with Google search to enrich your data. Do it quickly, easily, and automatically with FullContact instead. Using it feels almost magical. Enter an email address or Twitter handle, and get back a list of all the social profiles associated with that email or handle.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: free to $10 per month

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (Digital Tools)

19) Social Crawlytics
Google Review Count: 1,270

Identify key influencers in your market segment, discover where your competitors’ content is being shared and promoted, and monitor your social sharing metrics.

Sample review: “Looking to spy on competitors’ blog post analytics? Social Crawlytics runs a crawl report of a website and tracks which content is shared on which social channels. This is a useful research tool to see what blog post topics are working and which aren’t. Apply this data to your own content calendar. Was a blog post about Twitter chats successful? Construct your own.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (Technology), Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger

20) eCairn
Google Review Count: 881

Find key influencers, identify trending topics, engage with your community, conduct targeted influencer outreach, and measure results for your brand.

Sample review: “eCairn is a blogger and influencer outreach tool that has some robust collaboration and monitoring features. Community mapping and pre-populated community data sets are available at a Pro price.” — ViralBlog

Pricing: contact vendor

Showcase reviews: ViralBlog

21) PeekAnalytics
Google Review Count: 571

Sample review: “If you have a PeekAnalytics account, you can get a social pull score which measures how influential your Twitter audience is across 60+ social networks compared to the average Twitter user (this is a measure of the AUDIENCE, not the INDIVIDUAL – much better metric).” — InNetwork

Pricing: free to $200+ per month

Showcase reviews: InNetwork

22) Personapp
Google Review Count: 229

Sample review: “This app essentially puts a face to all those followers and friends in the social-media world. You can also create specific personas that then interact with this audience. Together, social media becomes more personalized and human.” — Entrepreneur

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Entrepreneur

23) Discoverly
Google Review Count: 175

Instantly see detailed, visual social media influence and demographic information for anyone in your social network while browsing.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Mention

24) Outreachr
Google Review Count: 153

Find key influencers on any topic across more than 40 countries, share content, and track results.

Pricing: free to $145 per month

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today

25) Cision Media Database
Google Review Count: 132

Identify influencers from Cision’s database of more than 300,000 social media contacts across 50 platforms and more than 1.6 contacts in traditional media. Fine-tune outreach with pitching tips and by scanning editorial calendars.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

26) Journalisted
Google Review Count: 76

Specific to the U.K., find articles by subject, search profiles of journalists, compare and find similar articles, and set up alerts to know when selected journalists have published something new.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: B2B PR Sense Blog

27) eGrabber Account-Researcher
Google Review Count: 37

Find influencers and decision makers, capture contact information from social profiles and append email addresses and phone numbers, research conversation-starters for smarter outreach, and track your email conversations.

Sample review: “Here are 5 little-known tools every business should try…eGrabber’s Account-Researcher: One of the reasons LinkedIn works so well is that it tells us exactly how we’re related to the people in our network and the best ways of communicating with them (messages, invitations, introductions and InMails, in that order). LinkedIn’s limitation is with the folks who fall outside of our network; especially if we don’t have $10 for each InMail we want to send. ” — Nikki Woods

Pricing: $49 to $295 per month

Showcase reviews: Nikki Woods

28) JournoRequests
Google Review Count: 18

Another U.K.-specific tool, JournoRequests helps PR professionals find coverage opportunities through daily emails (similar to HARO in the U.S.), and helps journalists find expert sources for stories they are researching.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) offers payments companies an opportunity to expand beyond mobile phones, cards, and point-of-sale devices, to a broad and diverse ecosystem of internet-connected devices.

We forecast that there will be 24 billion connected devices installed globally by 2020, up from nearly 7 billion today. And over 5 billion will be consumer connected devices by 2020, representing a massive expansion of touchpoints that could eventually offer payments functionality.

A recent report from BI Intelligence dives into the budding industry of connected device payments, providing a rundown of the stakeholders driving innovation in wearables, connected cars, and connected home devices. It also gauges the impact of new payment devices on different payments companies, along with how these devices could shift consumer purchasing behavior.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• The Internet of Things is ushering in a new era for payments companies and manufacturers. The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) offers an opportunity to facilitate payments beyond mobile phones, cards, and point-of-sale terminals, on a broad and diverse ecosystem of internet-connected devices. 
• More transactions could eventually pass through connected devices than smartphones. We estimate there will be 24 billion of these devices by 2020, with 5 billion of them being consumer-facing. This represents a massive expansion of touchpoints where payments could be enabled.
• Card networks have developed a basic framework to enable commerce in everyday devices. Visa and MasterCard are creating the underlying infrastructure to support the standardization of payments integration and stake themselves out as the key connected payments gatekeepers. Their payment platforms are universal, allowing digital payments to grow without being tied to the success of a particular manufacturer.
• Consumer-facing IoT companies have much to gain from enabling payments in their devices, including improving the value of the device, being able to cross-sell products through the device, and laying the groundwork for future opportunities to earn incremental revenue. For payments companies, connected payments offer a new revenue stream and an opportunity to gain market share ahead of competitors.
• Wearables, connected cars, and smart home devices will be the top connected payments product categories.

In full, the report:

• Frames the opportunity for embedding commerce capabilities in new devices.
• Explains how a device becomes commerce-enabled.
• Discusses the potential for payment-enabled wearables, connected cars, and smart home devices.
• Examines the impact of connected payments on key stakeholders.

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

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

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The newly released report aims to give "a clear view into how financial service functions can be reimagined" through the implementation of distributed ledger technology, commonly known as blockchain.

In addition to deep dives into how blockchain could be applied in a number of areas — including trade finance, automated compliance, and global payments — the report has six key findings:

• It's about improving processes: Blockchain technology can greatly improve efficiency and simplicity in financial services infrastructure. 
• It won't solve everything: Instead, blockchain should be viewed as one piece in the new foundation of financial services technology. 
• But it's not a one-trick pony either: There are many use cases for the technology. Each will require a particular implementation, and yield different benefits and challenges. 
• Identity is the key: Blockchain's capacity for creating unique units of digital property is what will allow it to expand into new areas such as digitizing fiat currencies. 
• Collaboration will be critical: What's going to hold back the rollout of blockchain technology is that many implementations will require collaboration between legacy players, disruptors, and regulators — which is time-consuming. The irony is that a big part of the value of blockchain technology itself is its ability to automatically achieve consensus between stakeholders.
• It's going to be disruptive: If blockchain is going to be a component of the new foundation of financial services, it's naturally going to "call into question orthodoxies" and "redraw processes."

The report findings aren't conjecture. Over $1.4 billion has been invested in blockchain technology in the past three years, with over 90 firms participating in blockchain groups, and over 90 central banks discussing how to implement blockchain. The report itself is the result of a year of research conducted by WEF and partner Deloitte, and includes input from investment and retail banks, startups, and central banks around the world. 

Blockchain technology is gaining steam among finance firms because of its potential to streamline processes and increase efficiency. The technology could cut costs by up to $20 billion annually by 2022, according to Santander.

That's because blockchain, which operates as a distributed ledger, has the ability to allow multiple parties to transfer and store sensitive information in a space that’s secure, permanent, anonymous, and easily accessible. That could simplify paper-heavy, expensive, or logistically complicated financial systems, like remittances and cross-border transfer, shareholder management and ownership exchange, and securities trading, to name a few. And outside of finance, governments and the music industry are investigating the technology’s potential to simplify record-keeping.

As a result, venture capital firms and financial institutions alike are pouring investment into finding, developing, and testing blockchain use cases. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, have begun researching the technology in-house, or have helped fund startups with products rooted in blockchain. 

Jaime Toplin, research associate for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on blockchain technology that explains how blockchain works, why it has the potential to provide a watershed moment for the financial industry, and the different ways it could be put into practice in the coming years.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Spending on capital markets applications of blockchain is expected to grow at a 52% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019, according to Aite Group, to reach $400 million that year.
• Banks and major financial institutions are working both collaboratively and independently to develop blockchain tech. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, like R3 CEV or Chain. And many are investing in the technology on their own as well.
• Putting blockchain to use for real-world transactions is likely not that far off. If working groups' tests are successful, firms could be using it to transact real value as early as the end of this year and we could see widespread industry application within the next few years. 

In full, the report:

• Examines the funding increases that are pouring into blockchain
• Assesses why blockchain is becoming so popular and what factors are driving up increased research and development
• Explains in full how blockchain technology work and what assets make it valuable and vulnerable
• Identifies pain points in the financial industry and profiles how various firms are using blockchain to solve them
• Demonstrates the challenges to mainstream adoption and their potential solutions

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

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

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

Join the conversation about this story »

Social selling is for millennials, right?

It’s the established wisdom among sales professionals that old-school reps can learn new tricks, but it’s just not in their blood. Like most pieces of established wisdom, however, it is completely wrong.

The First Mistake

For many departments that have been tasked with transitioning their selling process into the digital age, the shift starts like this:

1. Sales leaders put together a social selling pilot program.
2. Teams are formed by generation, with age assumed to be a determining factor in how well sales enablement and social selling training will be adopted.
3. Teams of millennials are assigned to the pilot program and given responsibility for lead generation and inside sales.

Although millennials are known for their social networking skills, does that necessarily mean that members of Generation X won’t excel at social selling? One person wise enough to question that wisdom was Justin Shriber, head of marketing at LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

What LinkedIn SSI Measures

As part of the 2016 Digital Growth Conference, Shriber and his team studied a sample of LinkedIn Social Selling Index scores, breaking them out by age groups.

LinkedIn SSI scores are assessed based on four data inputs measuring how well an individual has:

1. Built a profile and published posts to support a professional brand
2. Used tools to make research and prospecting more efficient
3. Found and shared updates that resulted in deepened relationships
4. Established trust with a wide network of decision makers

The higher the score, the more likely an individual is to excel at social selling.

Shriber compared the SSI scores of sales professionals under the age of 35 (millennials) with those ages 35-45 (Gen X) and those over 45 (mostly Gen Xers, with some baby boomers).

Surprising Results

The results surprisingly showed that Gen X sales professionals posted much higher SSI scores. The highest scores came from the 45-plus group with an average SSI of 34. Next, the 35 to 45 age group was very close with an average SSI score of 33. In contrast, the social-native millennials had an average SSI score of 27. Why?

One possibility is that millennials excel at using tools for research and prospecting, but they just don't have as many connections at the level of decision makers. This will probably change over time as they gain experience.

When it comes to relationship-building and personal branding, Gen X professionals tend to have a distinct advantage. In working with over 60,000 sales professionals on social selling techniques, the trainers at Sales for Life have seen how experienced Gen X sales leaders are at establishing and mapping relationships using tools such as LinkedIn. In fact, maybe it’s precisely because Gen Xers had to learn social networking that these professionals tend to be more deliberate and successful when building a personal brand from scratch and plotting out the development of a social media presence.

The Remembered

Gen X has often been referred to as "The Forgotten Generation" -- media hype tends to focus on the rise of millennials and retiring baby boomers. When it comes to social selling, though, Gen X has some memorable skills for increasing SSI scores. Everyone has something to teach to those who are willing to learn.

To learn more about social selling, preorder a copy of Jamie’s new book Social Selling Mastery.

Jamie Shanks is speaking at Inbound Sales Day, a virtual event for 10,000+ salespeople and INBOUND, an in-person event in Boston for sales and marketing professionals.

In case you missed it, LinkedIn announced some “big news” last week: It gave 500 influencers the ability to post videos right in your feeds.

I say “big news” because I think LinkedIn really missed the boat with this move–and it’s indicative of a strategy that may miss an even bigger boat down the road.

These influencer videos are most likely a nod to the burgeoning growth of video across the social web. Can’t you just hear the conversations at LinkedIn HQ?

“Hey, video is blowing up people! We need more videos in our newsfeeds. How do we do that?”

“I know! Let’s ask influencers to post 30 second videos that lack punch and depth and everyone will comment on them and share them!”

I mean, that has to be how the conversation went, right? Why else would they do this?

You see, I think LinkedIn is missing the boat here. The lion’s share of folks on LinkedIn don’t go there to hear from influencers, they spend time there to do one of three things:

• Find a job.
• Learn.
• Or, find out what’s going on with friends/colleagues in their networks (new jobs, etc.0

Now, you could make the argument that people could learn by following these influencers. And, that would be a valid point. But, I would argue most people aren’t seeking out these influencers. If Guy Kawasaki has something interesting to say on a topic I care about (the last time he did that, by the way, it was 2010), I’ll stop and read it. But, I don’t SEEK OUT Guy Kawasaki on LinkedIn. And, I can’t believe anyone does, really.

So, to me, these influencer videos are contrived. They feel forced. And, by and large, they don’t add a ton of value.

Instead, why doesn’t LinkedIn focus on making the user experience even better by figuring out new and better ways for me to connect with people I care about (i.e., colleagues, former managers, college classmates, etc.)?

Since I’m never one to criticize and not offer up ideas, here’s a few free ideas LinkedIn on how to better the user experience:

• Fine-tune the ability to sort contacts. For some reason, LinkedIn recently changed this. I used to be able to filter my contact list by location and a bunch of other factors. Now, I can only do it by first and last name. What good is that? For someone who sifts through his LinkedIn database A LOT, this is a huge perk that they took away. Suggest refining it ASAP.
• Create a new “Ask Me Anything”-like experience. If you really want to exploit the influencers (uh, I mean, give them a better platform from which to speak), why not take a page from Reddit’s book and create an “Ask Me Anything”-type platform within LinkedIn where people would ask these influencers questions about a particular topic in real time? Now THAT’S something I think people would find useful–not these throw-away 30-second videos.
• Offer more robust advertising options. I’ve been frustrated with this for a while now. LinkedIn is such a great platform for so many businesses (and continues to be under-utilized by many). But, ad options still aren’t up to snuff (and, they’re usually more costly than Facebook and Instagram). Why not beef up those options so more companies can participate and engage more effectively? I know this doesn’t really get at the whole “creating a better user experience” angle, but I’d like to see them spend more time here than creating more useless influencer stuff.

That’s my two cents. Your thoughts on the new Influencer videos?

Salespeople are often sloppy, particularly when it comes to structuring and conducting initial/discovery sales calls. What’s perplexing is how many sellers simply take for these hard-earned customer/prospect meetings for granted. Today, it takes so much effort and energy to secure a meeting with a key prospect, yet salespeople don’t prep or plan anywhere near as much as they should. They often wing it. They lose control early in the meeting and never gain it back. They talk too much and present too soon. And maybe most damaging of all, they get perceived as amateurs, and instead of coming across as professional problem-solvers, value-creators and consultants, they end up getting relegated to “vendor” status. Ouch.

Here are 8 Ugly Reasons Sales Calls Derail:

1.  The salesperson forgets the purpose of the meeting (sales call). In many B2B sales roles, particularly in longer, more complex sales, it takes multiple meetings to advance an opportunity and sell something. In most cases, these initial, or early stage sales calls, really should be much more about discovery and learning everything we can about the prospect and their situation. Yet, even in these supposed discovery meetings, salespeople confuse presenting with selling, and rush to get to the presentation stage.

2. They fail to recognize the buyer’s behavioral style. Very early in the sales call, during the rapport building phase, we should be trying to figure out who is in front of us. You don’t need to be a master of the DISC model to discern whether your prospect is more of an extrovert or introvert…whether they’re a highly relational and chatty type who wants to spend 30 minutes talking about SEC football, or a fast-moving, hard-charging, get-to-the-point as fast as possible driver. Yet so often we see salespeople fail to recognize the buyer’s style. The consequences can be deadly, but it’s often fun to see, and hard not to laugh when a fast-talking, hand-flailing, disorganized salesperson fails to grasp that they’re meeting with a cautious analytical who can’t relate to their loud, boisterous, shoot from the hip approach. And it can be even more amusing (and painful) watching a highly relational, long-talking seller not sense the impatient, driven buyer who’s ready to get down to business ASAP.

3. They don’t have a plan. It doesn’t get any plainer or more obvious that this: Sales calls run off the tracks because salespeople don’t own their sales call structure, don’t have a plan, and don’t set up the meeting early on by sharing their agenda. Years ago during a pre-call coaching session, I had a young salesperson tell me he didn’t like to plan out his sales calls because he felt that made them come off as mechanical. Amused, I questioned his approach to which he responded that he liked his calls to be more organic. Well, I had the privilege of sitting through a couple of his organic sales calls, and they were organic alright – an organic mess. You can read more about that experience in Chapter 10 of New Sales. Simplified.

4. Salespeople do the Show Up and Throw Up or Spray and Pray thing. Do I even need to add any descriptive comments here? How often do sellers go in and just verbally vomit all over the prospect? Way too often, I’m afraid. I was leading a session on conducting sales calls for a client a long time ago and a young-gun sales rep named Chip took issue with my description of the all-too-common “show up and throw up” approach. Chip preferred to call it the “spray and pray.” You spray out everything your know and pray you happened to hit on something relevant to the prospect. Sadly, that describes a pretty high percentage of ineffective sales calls today.

5. Sellers make truly lame attempts at doing discovery work and asking probing questions. Despite all that’s been written about conducting solid early-stage sales calls – even referring to them specifically as “Discovery Meetings” – somehow, someway, a good percentage of salespeople are woefully ill-prepared to discover what they need to. One of my mentors (and old sales managers, Donnie Williams) loved to say, “Remember when you were little and they told us there was no such thing as a stupid question? Well, they lied. There are plenty of stupid questions and salespeople ask them on sales calls everyday!” Salespeople not only ask lame questions, but they neither frame their questions well nor ask enough questions. Many come off awkwardly lacking confidence, while others give off the vibe of a prosecuting attorneys cross-examining someone on the witness stand. Some will ask a pathetic generic question like, “Tell me about your pain points.” And way too many salespeople will halt their probing the second they uncover the slightest pain or opportunity. These amateurs start drooling when they think there’s a deal brewing. Instead of continuing their probing to learn more, they start counting commission dollars in their head, and leap immediately to the presentation stage eager to show the prospect that they can help.

6. They’re pathetic at using tools and sales materials. It’s embarrassing to see a sales rep open a brochure, turn to a specific page and then push the brochure across the table. It’s worse watching reps fumble through screens on their iPad trying to find the relevant solution, only to then read the content to the buyer as if it was story time in Kindergarten class. And let’s not even begin to describe the self-focused demos being conducted everyday by salespeople who only know how to click, click, click their way through the software while mentioning canned features without making any tie-in to the prospect’s business issues. As one of our US presidential candidates is fond of saying: It’s a disaster!

7. Salespeople hide from rather than seeking and fleshing out objections. Sometime we refer to this as “happy ears.” Salespeople, preferring to leave the sales call feeling good, don’t dig past the surface or ask the hard questions, even whey they can sense the prospect has discomfort or there are obvious obstacles to advancing the sale. Nothing good happens by ignoring potential obstacles and objections. These un-dealt-with issues almost always come back to bite us later and are usually the cause of deals going dark.

8. They fail to define, secure and schedule next steps. I don’t care if you get a standing ovation from your customer and they tell you that you delivered the best presentation they’ve ever seen. If you leave that room without defining and getting agreement to the customer’s next step, you failed. Notice what I’m saying: It’s not enough to give yourself or your company an assignment. You must get the buyer to agree to their next step, too. It’s a quid pro quo. “How about we do this and you do that?” Not clearly defining the customer’s next step is another cause for sales opportunities going dark. And today, because we have our calendars with us (in our phones) at all times, it’s easier than ever to ask the customer to commit to scheduling the next step.

Which of theses ugly eight sins are you or sales team guilty of committing? If you’re looking for a simple, sound structure and step-by-step guide for conducting highly effective early stage sales calls, check out Chapter 11 in New Sales. Simplified.

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

Sales people are good at looking for prospects or buyers with “pain” or “needs”, those ready for the seller’s “solution”.  I get it, these are more immediate sales, more cooperative buyers even when the motivation is rooted in “pain”, but is that enough.  Most groups I work with, when asked, will tell me that to make quota they will have to close business with more than just the “lower hanging fruit” of self-declared buyers with “pains” or “needs”, they will need to reach beyond this group, and bring other players “into the market”.

A few days ago I was in the back of a room when a pundit was telling a sales audience that they should notional segment their prospects’/buyers’ statements into three types of statements:

• Needs
• Wants
• Nice to haves

They went on to say that successful sales people focus most of their effort on the prospect’s “needs”, a lesser amount of time and effort on the “wants”, and by addressing these two you will win the business.  Don’t waste time on the “Nice to haves”, “because they are likely not funded and usually reflect the individual, not the group, and therefore will not achieve consensus”.  That may be logical on the surface, but I have always found that exploring the “Nice to haves”, usually helps me get the sale, or at times allow me to walk away, without adding much if any time to the sales cycle.

“Nice to haves”, are usually more personal or individual and certainly more subjective that other aspects of the decision around the purchase.  As a result, we know that it is not likely to be the things everyone coalesces around, but it is often a key stop or the critical element in getting to that consensus.  According to the CEB in the Challenger Customer, a buying group is more likely to have discord and failure in deciding the “type” of solution to deploy than in selecting a specific vendor once they have agreed on “solution”.

Against this back drop, it is clear that the clutch that brings people together, is the degree to which their “nice to haves” are part of the consideration and the path forward.  It is the sales person’s ability to help each stakeholder see how the core decision and ultimate deliverable, actually moves them closer to their “nice to haves”.

Don’t look at exploring their “nice to haves” as a waste of time, they are personal and telling.  On the hand you may find that individuals who may not see eye to eye on elements of the decision, may have similarities in their nice to haves.  Creating connections and allegiances on that level could make the difference between one path and another, or one supplier vs. another.  Having two allies you brought together on a personal level can’t hurt.

Knowing their “nice to haves”, will also put you in a good position for future upsells and renewals with the company, based on the rapport you established when you took their individual “nice to haves” into account.  Remember, often the difference between a “want” and a “nice to have”, is the sales person’s ability to make the “nice to have” possible.

The post Leveraging The “Nice To Haves” appeared first on Renbor Sales Solutions Inc..

Social selling is part activity and part reputation. If you're writing insightful comments on your prospects' blogs, responding to their posts, and liking their shared content, you've got the activity bit down pat. But if your LinkedIn profile is three jobs behind and features a headshot you took at your undergrad career fair, you probably have more work to do before you can call yourself a social seller.

If you'd like to start a LinkedIn social selling initiative in earnest, you should begin by revamping your profile. Just as you're finding prospects on LinkedIn and learning more about them, they're looking at your profile to judge if they'd like to do business with you. Don't ruin great messaging and positive interactions with an outdated, sparse, or mistake-riddled LinkedIn profile.

So what should your LinkedIn profile look like? In social selling, you want your LinkedIn profile to be about your buyer's achievements and how you enabled them, instead of about you and your achievements. To show you exactly how to do that, I put together an infographic that breaks down the ideal social selling LinkedIn profile, section by section.

More of a visual learner? Skip straight to the infographic here.

1. Use a professional profile photo.

Profiles with pictures are 14 times more likely to be viewed on LinkedIn. As one of the easiest parts of the profile that you can customize, aim to add a photo first and foremost. Your photo should feel professional without being stiff. A picture of you at your desk, in the office, or a simple friendly headshot will make your profile warm and inviting. Remember to choose a current, high-resolution photo that makes your buyer feel confident in trusting you with their business.

2. Add a value proposition to your headline.

Don't just write your title. Answer two questions: Who do you help and how do you help them? Craft your headline to be a mini value proposition packed with verbs and active language.

For example: "I've helped 200+ B2B companies save over $2 million through outsourcing solutions."

The bonus in this example is the amount of money the person has helped save companies. It speaks to a pain point that just about every B2B professional has — high costs. This headline piques curiosity, and even if the LinkedIn user doesn't align exactly with your value prop, they'll probably stick around just to see how you deliver on your promise.

3. Leverage your cover photo.

Did you know you can customize your Linkedin cover photo? This simple feature on the professional network can make your profile stand out from the rest. Rather than keeping the generic blue gradient cover photo on your profile, consider adding a logo, project snippet, tagline, or even a family photo. The point of the cover photo is twofold: to share who you are at a glance and keep the reader scrolling down your profile.

In the example below, Linda Calvin, JD, Vice President, School of IT at Ivy Tech uses her cover photo to communicate her brand. "Find Your Fierce" is her personal tagline. It clues the visitor into what else they'll find on her profile, including posts about women's empowerment, professional development, and diversity conversations.

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4. Be strategic with your LinkedIn Activity.

If you know your connections on LinkedIn could see your activity, what might you do differently? Well, that's actually the case. The Activity section on your LinkedIn profile reveals your most recent comments, likes, and shared content across the platform along with a snippet of what you said.

This part of your profile can be an authentic way of showing the type of sales professional you are. Are you offering advice or support to your connections? Recommending the products you sell to potential customers? Congratulating a friend on a promotion? All of this and more can be found in your LinkedIn Activity, so be strategic about what content you engage with and how often you engage with it.

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3. Include your contact information.

Although LinkedIn is a great platform to communicate with leads and prospects, you probably aren't spending all day on the site waiting for InMail. That's why it's important to list your email address, phone number, Twitter handle, and blog or company website.

As a salesperson, you have to make it easy for prospects to get in touch with you and that means being present in more than one place.

4. Add keywords to your summary.

Craft a summary around three paragraphs composed of three or fewer sentences each. As you're writing, make sure to include keywords your buyers might search for. Here's how to break down your summary:

• First paragraph: Reiterate your purpose from your headline
• Second paragraph: Get more specific about your work, the projects you've taken on, the results you've driven, and the companies you've worked with. Elaborate on how you've achieved the mission statement set out in your header.
• Third paragraph: Include a clear call-to-action that communicates why and how a buyer should get in touch with you.

For example:

I'm passionate about helping business leaders adopt strategic outsourcing to make their businesses and workforces healthier and more productive.

Through a customized company productivity assessment, I identify areas of opportunity where outsourcing could dramatically impact results. For example, I helped implement an outsourcing program at [Company name] that resulted in a 25% cost reduction and a 30% increase in productivity.

I'm dedicated to partnering with leaders to discover if and how outsourcing can benefit their businesses. Contact me anytime at emma@outsourcingsolutions.com, or call me at 555-123-4567.

5. Display visual content in your summary.

Display two to four pieces of visual content in your LinkedIn summary. Post eye-catching pieces that will be helpful to your buyer. Content like tips sheets, infographics, and recent data work well to get people interested. To take this to the next level, add links to the content that have UTM parameters so you can see just how many people are consuming what you're sharing.

For example, you might add a blog post announcing your company's win of an industry award for "Most Satisfied Customers" and a case study from a big-name client.

6. Provide detail in your experience section.

This section most closely resembles a resume, but you should still keep your prospects in mind as you're filling it out. List your professional positions and titles and include a few sentences to summarize your role at each job.

It's also important to bullet three to five major job duties under each role's paragraph. Mention your quota attainment but keep the spotlight on the results you helped clients achieve along with the methods and tactics you used.

For example:

Sales Representative

Outsourcing Solutions

July 2013 - Present

I work with B2B executives to implement innovative outsourcing programs that drive results. While I've worked with companies of all sizes and verticals, my focus is on the manufacturing industry.

• I help clients identify outsourcing opportunities.
• I work alongside the support team to ensure proper program implementation.
• I consistently achieve 100-150% of quota.

7. List honors and awards you've received.

Sure, bragging on social media gets a bad rap, but the most important product a salesperson sells is themselves. You want your prospects to know that you're capable of getting them the results they're looking for, and honors, accolades, and awards are the best marketing tools for the job.

You'll want to be delicate in the way you go about this part of your profile. Avoid arrogant and boastful language. Instead, opt for a humble approach that centers your achievements around the client.

Here's an example of how you might list an award on your profile:

Rookie of the Year, 2018: I was named Outsourcing Solutions' rookie sales rep of the year for driving outstanding results for clients and my exceptional social selling presence.

8. Add your degrees, online courses, and certifications.

Where you work and the groups you're in aren't the only filters LinkedIn uses to structure your network into first, second, and third-degree connections. Education and certificates can be used to show who you share commonalities with as well.

Include formal degrees like an associate's or a bachelor's degree as well as certificates from accredited schools and reputable companies in the Education and Licenses & certifications sections of your profile. These additions to your LinkedIn profile can help you start conversations with prospects and lend credibility to your experience as a sales professional.

1. Keep your profile up-to-date.

Don't forget to refresh your LinkedIn profile. If you recently received a promotion or gained a new skill or certification, make sure you update your profile with this new information.

This works because you can opt to share this update with your LinkedIn following which sends your profile through the algorithm. People can also share your accomplishment with others who might need your help.

2. Ask for a recommendation.

You can't write your own recommendations, but you can request them. Tapping a coworker you've worked with for six months for a recommendation is a good idea, but an even better idea is to send them one first and request one back.

While a glowing review from your boss or colleague is great, one from a client is even better. Their testimony will drive up your credibility with other buyers and provide you with a valuable reference.

3. Customize your URL to www.linkedin.com/yourname.

Customize your URL to www.linkedin.com/yourname for easy searching, linking, and printing on business cards. If you have a common name, insert your middle initial or a number to set yourself apart. This URL will be much more memorable than a string of unrelated characters that someone would easily forget.

4. Follow people in your industry.

Are you following leaders in your industry? Keep up with individuals who post thought-provoking content and follow topics that are relevant to you.

This will help you stay on top of industry trends, and it will give you talking points when you send your next InMail message to a prospect. Plus, the list of people, companies, and topics you follow can be added to the interest section of your profile.

5. Share articles and blog posts you've written.

Blog articles and other external content perform well on LinkedIn, so don't miss an opportunity to share those with your professional audience. You can share any articles from a third-party site in a post. The best part is that later on, you can add these posts to your Featured section where they'll be highlighted indefinitely.

6. Remove jargon from your profile.

Avoid using buzzwords or jargon in your profile. Not only do they tend to be overused, but they also make your profile more difficult to read. Remember, people like to buy from people they like, so limit the use of internal lingo that excludes the customer and speak their language instead.

Are you unsure if your profile is jargon-free? Take a look at these buzzword and jargon phrases salespeople should avoid.

7. Use hashtags in posts to expand your reach.

Improving your profile relies not only on what you do to it but how others perceive it. To get more people to see your profile, you'll need to expand your reach with hashtags. These short phrases do more than enhance key points in your post. They signal to the LinkedIn community that your post is relevant to a particular topic and that people who are interested in that topic should take a look.

Best practice says to use about three to five hashtags for your LinkedIn post and ensure they're all relevant to the topic. And remember, stay consistent. Growing your audience to improve your LinkedIn profile won't happen overnight. Over time, LinkedIn users who follow the hashtags you use will become familiar with your content and want to engage with it.

8. Add popular posts to your Featured section.

Did you have a LinkedIn article that got above-average engagement? Perhaps your team just published a big sales resource that you want to showcase? Whether it's a post, external scheduling link, or even multi-media content to drive leads, you can use the Featured section of your LinkedIn profile to display it. This section works similarly to a carousel where users can scroll or tap through each piece of content and see what you have to offer.

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LinkedIn for Business Development

1. Use LinkedIn for prospecting.

LinkedIn is a valuable tool for prospecting. See who's commenting on your prospect's posts, and look at the people who have interacted with your posts. People who interact with your prospects and customers might be a good fit for your product.

2. Join groups.

Show buyers you care about what they do by joining the groups you know they're in and engaging with those groups in meaningful ways.

Look for groups related to your industry or area of expertise. Share content and interact with group members. It's a great way to build connections with new people.

3. Engage with others.

Did one of your connections post an interesting piece of content? Add a comment and start a discussion. This will strengthen your relationships and help you gain more visibility on LinkedIn. The more you put yourself out there, the more likely new connections will reach out to you.

4. Post on a regular basis.

Make sure you post regularly. This could be in the form of a status update or a LinkedIn article. Don't forget to share content (e.g., articles and videos) related to your industry. You can even include a call-to-action to attract people to a content download, eBook, or white paper from your company.

5. Send customized invitations to new connections.

Build your network with quantity and quality in mind. Send customized invitations to anyone you've interacted with, either in person or online. It's alright to request someone you've never met, but make sure to personalize the invitation with a reason you'd like to connect that's relevant to them.

For example:

Hello, Paul. I also work in the outsourcing industry and have admired your work in the Denver area. I'd love to connect here.

Thanks, Emma

Click image to enlarge:

Invest time in your LinkedIn presence and see if you're able to source more leads with your new-and-improved profile. Perfecting your LinkedIn profile is crucial in the sales profession — especially if you're a social seller.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As the concept of buyer personas has crept into the conscious of both B2C and B2B Marketing, so has misguided representations of buyer personas become prevalent. With many touted frameworks and processes being representative of buyer personas in name only. These misrepresentations have also led to a tendency to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into crafting buyer personas.

For example, an organization I helped recently had previously utilized a framework, labeled buyer persona in name only, which consisted of a matrix of 15 plus categories. Why do I say labeled in name only? This approach of having 15 plus profile categories amounts to buyer profiling. Yes, buyer profiling can be helpful for sales and marketing automation, for instance. However, what it lacks is the ability to develop a deeper understanding of the buyer story, their goals, and their goal-directed behaviors behind ultimate purchase decisions.

Data Overload

A trend in the last few years has been the rise of an operations mentality and function within marketing. While executing marketing has become more complicated, this does not provide a ticket to make marketing more complicated than it should be. The notion of operations is implicit in science, systems, processes, analytics, and rules.

And, it can be obsessed with filling in neat little boxes and fields.

What this has meant for buyer personas, in particular, is the rise of misguided tendencies to view buyer personas as an exercise in data gathering – that fit into neat little boxes or fields. Enabling analytics and reports on profiling attributes and activities of buyers and customers as gleaned from a database.

When it comes to data on buyers and customers, the old saying “too much of a good thing” comes to mind. Unknowingly, organizations can be afflicted by data creep and process creep as they enter a new era of collecting data on customers. Amounting to severe data overload. The trouble with severe data overload is the focus becomes on data collection as opposed to truly understanding insights that shape a story to be told about buyers and customers. And, more importantly, truly informs on customer strategies.

I am afraid this can happen when companies are misguided in buyer personas, which are buyer personas in name only. Again, the emphasis on in name only for buyer personas are not about buyer profiling data collection.

To Quantify Or Not?

An overarching influence is the urge to quantify anything and everything that is prevalent in business. With the rise of Big Data, I doubt this urge will recede anytime soon. This same urge is being applied to buyer personas. Again, emphasis on in name only. Confusing buyer personas as segmentation and profiling. Looking to quantify buyer personas in as many slice and dice ways as possible.

An interesting irony can take place when it comes to the urge to quantify buyer personas. Buyer personas were originated to offer qualitative (and personalized) understanding of buyer goals, their goal-directed behaviors, their thinking, emotions, and other qualitative drivers. As a means to help inform overall customer strategy. And, as you can guess, most qualitative insights do not fit into neat little boxes and fields.

The combination of matrix and quantification thinking can lead to some outlandish numbers. In the case of the organization with 15 plus categories, they also perceived they needed five different buyer personas based on roles (common in buyer profiling yet incorrect for buyer persona development). This amounted to trying to track a potential of 75 plus categories or fields.

Applying this quantifying approach to content development spun the numbers even higher. They believed there were six stages to a buying process with the operational thinking that for each stage, each buyer role needed unique content. If you do the math, they were looking at trying to develop 450 unique pieces of content!

Buyer Personas Lost In Data Overkill

What happens when buyer persona data collection overkill occurs? An organization’s focus can shift to collecting a mountain of profiling data on buyers and customers. Yet, losing sight of the ability to truly have a deeper understanding of the underlying goals, behaviors, and thinking influencing choices and decisions buyers make.

CMOs implementing a marketing operations approach today will need to be on guard for a runaway focus on buyer and customer data collection. When this affliction is evident, many a CMO I have talked with recently expressed mounting frustration with how a mountain of data on their buyer personas (again – in name only) can tell them very little. Especially regarding why buyers are making decisions on whether to choose their organization or not.

Astonishingly, a belief creeps in that even more data is needed! Triggering an ongoing cycle of meetings, field building, data collecting, and reporting on buyer and customer data. Lost in this cycle are any true buyer insights that can transform marketing.

Know The Difference Between Customer Segmentation, Buyer Profiling, and Buyer Personas

The importance of customer segmentation, buyer profiling, and marketing automation cannot be overstated. it is equally important to recognize that applying an overzealous quantitative approach to buyer personas can do more harm than good. Confusing collecting factual data on buyers as buyer persona development can, in fact, create greater marketing ineffectiveness.

Buyer personas, poorly created due to being confused with data collection profiling, undermines the credibility of buyer personas overall. It behooves CMOs to recall that buyer personas were originally founded for this purpose:

To serve as research-based archetypal representations of buyer key goals, goal-directed behaviors, and attitudes, which informs overall customer strategies.

If CMOs forget this important intent of buyer personas and confuse with operational buyer profiling, they will lose perhaps one of the most valuable decisions tools needed to devise customer-centric strategies.

(I like the following video primarily for two reasons. One it asks a good question – Have digital marketers lost the human touch? Second, it serves as a reminder that buyer profiling data can tell you what buyers did but such data cannot tell you why.)

A recent poll asked 10,000 entrepreneurs and authors what their single biggest business challenge was. Their answer might surprise you.

As a stay-at-home dad who built a 7 figure business on Amazon in just 24 months, Nick Stephenson knows what it takes to build an audience online.

Turns out that’s exactly what 10,000 other entrepreneurs and authors are asking him about nonstop.

Stephenson shared in a recent video that while polling more than 10,000 authors and entrepreneurs who follow him online, their #1 challenge (by a large margin) was the struggle to build an audience.

And in offering a solution, Stephenson revealed a look inside his own unique approach to overcoming the obstacle.

A Counterintuitive Approach To Building Your Audience Online

While many online pundits will say that churning out endless amounts of content is the secret sauce to cultivating a rabid online following, Stephenson says there’s a much more effective (if somewhat counterintuitive) way.

“In my own experience, I realized 99.9 percent of people online hadn’t heard of me or hadn’t seen any of my content online,” says the United Kingdom-based author and entrepreneur. “So I thought, ‘Why not find a way to get my best content in front of the right people?”

However, instead of going the Google route with blogging and SEO or buying Facebook Ads, Stephenson chose a different (and, it turns out, quite effective) route.

Amazon = A Search Engine for Engaged Buyers

“I realized that Amazon.com is an enormous Search Engine that is designed for one singular purpose – to sell products,” he says. “Amazon is the best in the world at turning random online traffic into committed buyers.”

As an author, Stephenson had already spent months studying Amazon’s seemingly endless nuances when it comes to how products are categorized and displayed.

He soon realized that by creating and sharing targeted, niche content – especially free or low-cost eBooks he calls “Reader Magnets” – on Amazon was incredibly effective.

(DOWNLOAD: Reader Magnets – How To Find Your First 10k Readers)

Stephenson builds clickable links into his free and low-cost Kindle books, which drives targeted online traffic to specific landing pages on his website. Readers are invited to share their email in exchange for free training videos or additional content related to the Kindle book they’ve just downloaded or purchased.

More than Just Books

This approach isn’t just limited to the written word, however.

Amazon’s self-publishing platform CreateSpace allows anyone to upload and sell everything from books to audio and video – either in “hard copy” form (CDs, DVDs, etc.) or as digital downloads.

The way CreateSpace works, there is no overhead or supply costs for sellers. Instead, using the “print on demand” model, books, CDs, DVDs or downloads are processed and created as each order comes in, with the purchaser paying all processing and shipping fees as part of the overall price.

Amazon = Ready-Made Audience

Because Amazon users are on the site for one simple reason – to purchase something – Stephenson says it’s the best type of audience an entrepreneur or author can hope for. The key is naming, categorizing and tagging your content so that it gets “found” on Amazon when shoppers type in search terms related to your item.

(WATCH: How To Find Your First 10,000 Readers.)

Stephenson says cracking the code on Amazon is what took him from struggling stay-at-home dad to more than 7 figures in book and online training sales in less than two years.

“The audience on Amazon is geared for selling,” he says. “Once you understand and view the platform in that fashion, you’ll begin to see the massive opportunity in front of you.”

Objections are an inherent part of a sales professional’s job. It is virtually impossible to get through a sales opportunity without hearing at least one sales objection from the customer.

It could be as simple as a direct question to gain better understanding, or it could be as subtle as trying to assess a competitor’s claim. It could also be as uncertain as trying to second guess other decision makers within the customer’s organization.

Recognizing and addressing sales objections is critical to moving opportunities through the sales pipeline. Working with customers to resolve their concerns builds trust and credibility, as sales professionals demonstrate their commitment to truly meeting customers’ needs — not just pushing their company’s products.

In today’s environment of ultra-informed buyers, customers increasingly push back against canned sales messages and unclear benefits. They test potential partners, throwing up objections that are sometimes raised only to see how the sales professional will act. They want to know their questions will be answered and their concerns addressed. As a result, sales professionals have to demonstrate their ability to handle objections and keep the dialogue moving in order to be seen as credible and valued partners.

4 Steps to Successfully Resolving Sales Objections

To do this takes four simple steps, which together form the basis of Richardson’s objection resolution model:

1. Neutrally acknowledge the objection
2. Ask open-ended questions to understand what is really driving the objection
3. Position a response, based on the customer’s answers to these questions
4. Check to be sure that the response satisfies the customer’s concern

Long Term Benefits of Successfully Resolving Sales Objections

By honing skills in objection resolution, sales professionals gain benefits beyond any specific sale.

• They maintain and strengthen relationships with prospects and customers.
• They move the sales cycle forward without being defensive or confrontational.
• They keep sales dialogues positive, focused, and consultative.
• They gain confidence in handling tough conversations.
• They don’t devalue their own solution.

Sometimes, customers have strong feelings about their objections and display strong emotions. Or they have bad information or mistaken impressions. Whatever the content or context of the objection, sales professionals strengthen their credibility by showing empathy to diffuse any negativity, while avoiding their own defensiveness or aggressiveness. They reinforce relationships by asking questions and demonstrating sincere interest in learning more.

Unless sales professionals truly understand customers’ concerns, their responses cannot be as on-target and specific as they would be if they knew the whole picture. Just as important, sales professionals should probe to find out the nature of the concern, who specifically is concerned, and what has provoked the particular concern to be raised at this time.

Not every objection can be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction. And it is likely that some deals will be lost — and maybe even some relationships. Still, the best approach, when it comes to objections, is to be prepared and to handle them with expressed concern for uncovering and meeting customers’ real needs. That is something no customer can object to.

Learn more about how Richardson’s customized approach to sales training can help you learn how to successfully overcome sales objections. Download our complementary consultative sales training brochure or contact us directly at info@richardson.com.

The post 4 Simple Steps to Resolving Sales Objections appeared first on Richardson Sales Training and Enablement Blog.

Amazon has been fighting a battle against fake reviews recently, but false reviews are only part of the problem with seller marketing on the platform. Amazon product descriptions read like bad advertisements from direct mailers in the 1990s. In a world where consumers are getting savvier about where and how they spend their -earned cash, no ecommerce seller can afford to overlook the quality of content.

Playing Operation: Dissecting a Bad Amazon Post

I often find myself researching products on other sites to verify the brand quality and product description accuracy because the content I find on Amazon seems inherently untrustworthy. Here are some of the red flags that make an Amazon post seem less than honorable:

• Random capitalization: Some Amazon sellers think shouting via text or using aLtErNaTiNg (alternating) capitalization will make content seem more interesting. In reality, these tactics make descriptions difficult to read and cheapen the overall effect. Use all-caps or intermittent caps in moderation.

• Excessive wordiness: A product description that describes the same benefit in five different ways makes it seem like its marketers are trying too hard. Saying something is “anti-aging” in one bullet point and in another suggesting its “youthful” qualities is redundant.

• Keyword-stuffed titles: Amazon is a vast marketplace, but top-quality products do not need four lines of text in the title. Choose your terms carefully and keep titles short.

Even an untrained eye will notice an Amazon post that tries too hard to make an impact. Rarely do these content-marketing gimmicks actually influence a purchase. Instead, many purchasers look for:

• Product pictures and videos
• Brands they already know and trust
• The best prices on cheap supplies
• Best sellers
• Recommended products from third-party sites
• Video, picture, and written reviews that resonate with their own opinions

In the end, a description can enhance the purchasing experience, but it will not make or break a purchasing decision. With that in mind, sellers can use some simple tips to create compelling, straightforward Amazon descriptions that highlight a product and add value to the shopping experience.

Nine Ways to Develop and Market Helpful Amazon Product Content

The next time you launch a product on Amazon or update your product description, use these tips to keep your content honest, engaging, and helpful for the people who use the site:

1. Word limits indicate the maximum, not the required length. Amazon’s description rules indicate a seller should not exceed 200 words for the product title. Avoid trying to create a title that’s 200 words long. Instead, use the fewest and most impactful words possible to describe the product. If you’re worried about keywords for search engine optimization purposes, focus more on sprinkling relevant keywords throughout the content instead of focusing it in one location.

2. Use bullet points, but give them some structure. Unless each bullet point contains only a full word, preface each with a simple topic or category. If you’re describing a hair dryer, for instance, write:

• Package contents: Comes with diffuser, concentrator, and hairdryer.
• Speed: 2000-watt motor delivers faster drying times.

Instead of:

• A diffuser works well for curly hair and a concentrator increases the airflow for sleek styles.
• 2000-watt motor offers higher speeds.

The first example qualifies the bullet point instead of just making a series of marketing statements.

3. Always answer the basic questions. In grammar school, every story includes an answer to the basic questions of who, what, where, when, and why. Use the same questions to provide a complete product story for your audience. Include who the product is for, what the product features, etc. Use real-world information about your audience to answer questions they might ask before making a purchasing decision.

4. Keep it simple. Answer everything your prospective purchaser might need to know and then leave it alone. You don’t need numerous fancy-sounding adjectives or repeated phrases to drive home the point. Instead, spend more time accurately filling out product categories and the complete product form before you post it. Research the top keywords and avoid adding them to every sentence you write. Your content should first and foremost appeal to your buyer.

5. Use multimedia to enhance your post. If the opportunity arises, you can post several images of your product and a video to showcase its features. The right image or video could change someone’s mind about making a purchase if he or she still has questions after reading the description.

6. Answer all questions. Once you launch a product on Amazon, don’t set it and forget it. As your product picks up reviews and purchases, the real work of managing a profile begins. Answer questions posted about the product, and review your content regularly. If several people wonder the same thing, consider adding that fact to the overall product description.

7. Use strong review practices. Every seller wants nice reviews to earn more sales, but modern consumers know to take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt. Use ethical practices to boost honest reviews. You can offer a freebie or discount in exchange for a review, just don’t try to dictate the content of the review afterward. Images and video reviews can really enhance your Amazon SEO and overall sales.

8. Edit constantly. Once an advertisement goes to press, you may not have an opportunity to make changes. Online, however, you can always go back and update your profile to optimize your writing for search engines and readers. Edit your content for grammar and style, but also for impact. If your product isn’t selling as well as you hoped, consider reworking the product description and trying again. Each iteration of your description should come closer to what buyers want to read.

9. Produce offsite content prolifically after a launch. Flood social media pages, company blogs, and third-party sites with information about discounts, sales, or the merits of a product launch on Amazon to increase visibility in the marketplace.

Amazon product descriptions seem like a simple part of a marketing strategy, but they can underpin an entire product marketing campaign. With the right written descriptions, your product won’t have to work as hard to shine among competitor brands and offerings. Keep it honest, keep it short, and keep it optimized to realize month after month of success on one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world.

Recent studies show 87% of B2B sales and marketing leaders are using LinkedIn and other social media platforms, but less than 1 in 5 can clearly prove and demonstrate social media ROI. I believe it’s because the attention and efforts are on the top of the funnel instead of thinking about the complete buyer’s journey.

A recent MarketingLand.com article, “5 CMOs Who Are Turning To LinkedIn,” shows how CMOs at Xerox, Lithium, Wiley, XOJet and G2 Crowd are focused on brand awareness and brand engagement instead of buyer engagement. Below I analyze their ideas, thoughts, and actions – and show you how they are focused on the top of the funnel.

Xerox is Focused on Reaching Prospects with their Content – not Engaging Prospects using Content

Xerox CMO John Kennedy mentioned that they are using LinkedIn to share content with their followers. Through company page updates and sponsored updates, Xerox is supplying their audience with e-books, SlideShare presentations, and blog articles that offer advice on how to work better. He stated that “hopefully, we’ll provide useful resources that can help those who follow us perform better; and as a result, engender interest in the Xerox brand along the way.”

That’s a lot of hopefuls. Hopefully, prospects will find and read Xerox’s content, hopefully, they will find it useful and hopefully, the content they read will generate interest in the Xerox brand in the process. You see, John is using the word “hopefully” because he cannot directly tie these LinkedIn actions to sales opportunities or even revenue.

Because they are just focused on reach and getting brand awareness, there is no predictive marketing. However, when you focus on the complete funnel and pay strict attention to the next step actions prospects are taking as you build the relationship, you can put a process in place that you know will lead to revenue.

Wiley is Focused on Click-Through Rates and Leads (Even if the Leads do not move further)

Wiley’s CMO, Clay Stobaugh, mentioned that they’re focused on sponsored updates and sponsored Inmails, since they are getting amazing click-through rates. He’s just focused on leads and getting people into the funnel. Focusing just on leads causes misaligned goals with sales (leads vs. revenue) and marketing teams optimizing for cost per lead rather than true business growth.

It seems like there is misalignment here, as Clay does not mention how many of the prospects who clicked through became paying customers, or how this paid media opportunity is driving real business growth.

Forrester reports that 99% of leads don’t convert, and LinkedIn says 87% of leads don’t convert. So it doesn’t matter how many clickthroughs are becoming leads if they are not moving forward. By focusing on the top of the funnel, you may get a low cost per lead, but your cost of business growth will be high (and that’s the metric that should count!)

Lithium is using LinkedIn to fill the Funnel and then letting Marketing Automation Programs take over

Their CMO, Kathy Keim, understands that the volume of leads from these updates are less than other social media platforms. And she says that marketers should spend less time on volume at the top of the funnel and more on what is driving through to a qualified sales opportunity. I totally agree with that, but I don’t agree with how Lithium is driving prospects to a qualified sales opportunity. They’re letting marketing automation programs take over once they get a prospect into the funnel using updates.

But what about those leads that are resistant to sales and marketing messages and do not want to move forward without a real relationship? What about those B2B buyers who are looking for vendors that can turn their vision into a clear path to value? You can only do that if you take the time to build a real relationship instead of treating prospects like a lead – which is exactly what you’re doing when you let your marketing automation take over.

By just using it for a top of the funnel tool (instead of using LinkedIn to directly engage and interact with their prospects on a 1-on-1 level to help grow relationships) Lithium is missing out on opportunities. Prospects are using LinkedIn throughout the complete buying process to make their buying decision, which means you should be thinking beyond the top of the funnel.

XOJET and G2Crowd is using LinkedIn for Brand Building and an Extension to their Website

XOJET CMO Shari Jones is currently utilizing LinkedIn for two core functions – brand building and recruitment. Their marketing efforts are concentrated on their company page – which is top of the funnel. She’s failing to understand that LinkedIn is not about engaging with brands! B2B buyers on LinkedIn are looking for access to broaden networks that can help them (not brands – but with actual visible experts) and they want relevant context to connect with those vendors.

G2 Crowd’s CMO, Adrienne Weissman, stated that they are using their LinkedIn company page as an extension to their website. On their company page, they are sharing relevant content with their followers and specific audiences.

These companies are taking the first step to building long-term value using LinkedIn. They are building a following and establishing their brand as an expert resource with the content they are sharing on their LinkedIn company page. But, building long-term value that leads to ROI and revenue requires further educating your prospects via a nurturing flow and real relationship building that has prospects comfortably moving forward.

These Marketing Leaders are not realizing the real power of LinkedIn:

“The Ability to Target Key Decision Makers, Build a Relationship and Leverage those Relationships to Transition these Prospects through each Stage of the Buying Cycle”

LinkedIn marketing is simply becoming a numbers game. My recent LinkedIn marketing study shows this. I asked sales and marketing leaders as well as some well-recognized, trusted social media marketing experts and firm owners: What metrics are most important to you? What are you paying attention to?

Most of the sales and marketing leaders and social media experts chose clicks, profile, and platform post views, website traffic, and superficial metrics like shares, comments, and likes. They chose these metrics over:

• Next step actions beyond the click, like, and comment
• Marketing qualified and sales qualified leads
• Revenue

That’s why most of the sales and marketing leaders were mainly getting visibility and reach, and that’s about it. The sales and marketing leaders who were regularly driving demand and creating sales opportunities (not leads, but actual opportunities that went past the initial interest stage) were focused on revenue objectives. They were focused on having the right tools, content, and processes to helped them meet revenue objectives using LinkedIn.

Remember, you can’t create a path to LinkedIn revenue and ROI if all of your focus is on: how much you expanded your network, how many people you’re reaching with your content and sales messages, and what your click-through rate is on sponsored updates. And, it’s time we focus on achieving revenue objectives. My recent webinar shows how to go from lead to revenue using LinkedIn. Click here to watch the on-demand webinar.

In the ongoing push to attract new prospects, generate leads and nurture leads into new business, B2B firms can fail to exert the proper amount of focus, time and effort on existing clients. But like all relationships, clients deserve ongoing development and nurturing.

Yet, it’s a well-known fact that it’s much less expensive to keep an existing client than it is to gain a new one. And for many firms—especially services firms that sell to other businesses or organizations—existing clients represent a substantial portion of their overall revenue AND future pipeline. In fact, many B2B firms are increasingly taking a hard look at their Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost metrics and are looking for effective ways to boost those numbers.

So while attracting new clients is obviously an important goal of B2B marketing and business development, nurturing and further developing existing clients should also be part of your ongoing efforts. Here are a few “client nurturing” ideas that could help your client development:

1. Get out and talk to your clients

Everyone understands how valuable and important it is to have face-time with your clients. But with the busy-ness of the work week and a packed schedule of new business meetings, it’s not always easy to make time to regularly go out and meet with existing clients. And while talking to clients might seem more like a sales or business development activity, if conducted properly, face-to-face client meetings can also strengthen relationships.

In addition to checking the pulse of the relationship and discussing existing projects or engagements, client meetings should also serve as an opportunity to gain valuable intel from your clients. Ask open-ended questions. What’s keeping them up at night? What challenges or opportunities are they facing? Marketing and business development teams can gain rich insights when you listen more and talk less.

2. Leverage Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategy focused on fewer, specific targets, as opposed to marketing to the masses. And ABM is useful not just for attracting new clients, but also retaining existing clients as well. ABM works to deploy marketing’s resources to assist with client development by creating an account-specific marketing strategy aimed at reaching, engaging, nurturing and growing the account.

3. Consider clients when developing your content strategy and editorial calendar

We’ve previous stressed the importance of creating content for every stage of the customer lifecycle. Remember, the end goal of your marketing is not to turn prospects into clients; the end goal is to turn prospects into promoters. So as you plan your content, consider the topics that would specifically be of interest to existing clients. Make the mission of your blog to be a destination, not just for new prospects and leads, but existing clients as well.

4. Host “clients only” webinars and events

While webinars and other events are often used for new business development, they can also be used to nurture existing client relationships. Take a topic you’ve identified in your editorial calendar and consider developing a webinar or seminar on that topic and extending the invitation to existing clients only. Let your clients know that you’ve geared it specifically for them in an effort to keep them informed of the latest trends, best practices or industry issues. In-person “client appreciation” events are also a great for client development and provide a way to get in front of clients, while showing them some love along the way.

5. Create an on-boarding drip campaign for new clients

Take a page from the B2C world and consider creating a multi-touchpoint drip campaign for new clients as part of your on-boarding process. Similar to how you would plan out a lead nurturing campaign, consider the type of content and information that new clients would find useful and schedule a series of targeted emails. One of those emails could be a brief survey asking them to rate their level of satisfaction so far or to identify any issue that needs to be addressed. No news isn’t always good news, so the more you can engage new clients at the beginning of the relationship, the better opportunity you will have to keep them in the long run.

6. Brag about your clients on social media

This should go without saying, but your clients’ success should be your success. So take the opportunity to brag on your clients (not brag on what you’ve done for your clients) on your social media channels. Share their wins, their accolades and their content. Retweet. @mention. Like. Share. Link to. This will speak loudly to your clients (and potential clients) that you are invested in and energized by their success.

7. Create client-centric case studies

The emphasis is on “client-centric.” Many case studies are so company-focused, they do a great job of telling what work you did for the client, but not necessarily what your work did for the client. But with case studies, there is a great opportunity to emphasize shared success. While highlighting your work along the way, the end goal and the client’s success should always be the focal point. Whether in written form or video, think about creating a case study that your clients are not only willing to, but are actually eager to, share with their clients. That should a motivating factor.

8. Co-present with a client at an industry conference

Along similar lines, another great way to nurture client relationships (while also demonstrating your expertise in the process) is to co-present with a client at an industry tradeshow or conference. Whether a plenary session, keynote, workshop or breakout session, choose an industry conference that your client regularly attends and identify a topic that you can speak on together. It might be built around a case study, lessons learned or innovations gleaned from a recent project together. Even if you drive the presentation and the client is more of a supporting act, your client will appreciate the inclusion and recognition and presenting together in a public forum will build comradery.

9. Communicate regularly

To underscore the emphasis on communicating and talking to clients, I’ve circled back to this idea. Regular, consistent, intentional communication with your clients is absolutely critical. This includes face-to-face meetings (remember #1), check-in calls and web conferences, email communication, etc. Just like your personal relationships, regular and beyond-surface level communication is a vital ingredient to the ongoing health of the relationship. And here’s a sobering reminder: if you’re not taking the time to talk to your clients, chances are your competitors are. Don’t be out of their sight, or you may find you’re out of their mind.

It’s easy to become so consumed with the latest prospect that you ignore or neglect the existing client right in front of you. It happens, but its not going to help you in your quest for long-term, profitable client relationships. While you focus on lead generation and lead nurturing, don’t forget to nurture clients along the way.

Kshhhh… Mission Control, Mission Control… This is your sales manager, come in. We have a sales problem. My reps are wasting too much selling time performing non-revenue performing tasks. How can I help them spend more time actually selling? Over.

Does this mayday call sound familiar?

Unfortunately, too many managers deal with this sales problem on a regular basis. While technology (in theory) improves speed and accuracy of certain daily tasks, the more tools reps have to monitor, manage, maintain, and update, can actually slow their productivity significantly.

Even the captains at Accenture say that 64.3% of most sales reps’ time is eclipsed by non-selling activities, and that only 33% is spent actively selling.

This wouldn’t be such a glaring problem if it wasn’t for the fact that, according to a Salesforce study last year, sales productivity is a top driver for hitting new revenue targets.

But where does all of that selling time go?

McKinsey Global Institute reports that 28% of a rep’s day is spent reading or responding to emails, while 19% of the day is simply spent gathering information. And while these are important tasks to cover, they’re common problems for office workers in just about every role.

The real culprit stealing salespeoples’ selling time may actually be the aspect of their job that is meant to give them the most benefit: their CRM.

Implisit found that the average sales rep spends almost 4 hours every week updating their CRM system.

That’s more wasted selling time than the average employee spends on the usual productivity-sucking suspects — coffee breaks, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — combined.

How exactly does time spent in a CRM spiral so far out of control?

The main malefactor here is Tasks. Nearly half of the time Salesforce users spend on updates is spent on Tasks. And Tasks related to leads take up 18% of sales professionals weekly updates, while Contacts take up around 17%.

How many of these updates are being made each week? According to the same Implisit study, the average sales rep updates over 60 records per day, or over 300 updates per week, in order to keep their Salesforce CRM fully up-to-date. And a whopping 21% of sales reps make over 500 updates per week to Salesforce.

So, what’s the solution?

Sales professionals know that CRM isn’t going anywhere. (Remember: CRM or It Didn’t Happen…) So how do you fix these productivity problems? It’s actually easier than you may think. That’s why we created our newest eBook “Houston, We Have a Sales Problem.”

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DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK TODAY

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Find out two of the steps to take when trying to find out where all of the selling time goes, and how to get it back to earth:

Step 1: Get The Right Information at the Right Time

Communication is a constant challenge for growing businesses and established enterprises, alike.

The issue here is that sales enablement programs are often broken or, in some cases, don’t exist at all, making it difficult for sales reps to find the right information at the right time.

Thankfully, sales tools like SalesLoft compile all the relevant messaging and content for each stage of the sales cycle, allowing sales reps to send information to prospects with a single click. Just imagine this: no more searching through emails or content repositories — all of the right information is right at the sales team’s fingertips, ready to launch. (Read: more selling time for all!)

Step 2: Make Automatic CRM Updates

The amount of manual work that goes into updating a CRM system is no secret.

Many CRMs like Salesforce are even taking steps and making acquisitions to help automate some of the most common selling time stealing tasks. However, that automation is years from being implemented, and sales teams need help now.

That’s why the best sales tools in the universe sync automatically with CRM. When a rep completes a task in one of the platforms, the appropriate record is then automatically updated, with no additional effort on the part of the rep. It saves time, resources, and allows your sales team to focus on the activity that truly matters: selling time.

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Download your copy of the eBook today to launch into greater detail on each of these issues, how deeply they impact a sales organization, and what using the right sales tools can do to solve them.

The post Where Does All the Selling Time Go? appeared first on SalesLoft.

Anyone working in client-based outsourced lead gen knows this conversation all too well:

Vendor: Can you give me an idea of what profile you are looking for in regards to contact data procurement?

Client: We ONLY want to talk to folks in the C-level suite, from companies with over 500 million in annual revenue.We do not want our reps taking calls with anyone with a lower title, especially since they are most likely not the decision maker.

There you go – you’ve just been “c-bombed.” As a client success manager, there are few things more shortsighted than limiting a calling campaign to just one cluster of high level titles. I did some digging in the QuotaFactory platform, and discovered a valuable stat when it came to passing leads in the C-suite. Of all the leads our SDRs passed in 2014 that have gone to a next step in our client’s sales process, less than 10% had titles in the C-Suite.

I get it, clients want qualified opportunities with the person who controls the strings within an organization. However, you are doing your lead gen teams a disservice by not allowing them to prospect multiple levels of an organization. Here’s why;

For starters, C-Level executives in large organizations are simply not as acquainted with pains and needs as those actually managing the day to day operations. Much of what makes our client’s solutions valuable to a prospect is that it can specifically address actual challenges an organization is experiencing. It is very difficult to extract this information from someone who can’t tell you firsthand what these challenges are.

Second, gatekeepers will screen your calls and emails, and may road block you. All the charm in the world won’t get you passed a gatekeeper who’s got it out for cold callers! Sure, there are strategies for getting around them, but at the end of the day you are more likely to get in front of a C-Level prospect by getting a referral from a lower level person at the company. How do you get that referral? C-Level executive assistants are typically pretty adept at pointing you to the correct person in a lower level of the business. Try reaching out to managers, directors, department heads, and VP’s, and persuade them to bring your solution to the attention of the C-level suite.

Finally, C-Level executives are incredibly busy people and are constantly traveling, or in and out of meeting, etc. There needs to be a reasonable level of expectation on the client side regarding getting these executives to agree to give 30 minutes of their time for a demo/discovery call. A great strategy here is to set up a meeting with the lower level person, and then ask who they would like to include from the C-level suite.

This blog is not being written to discount calling into the C-suite as a whole, but rather to demonstrate that the most successful campaigns have the balance of the targets our SDRs are reaching out to. Our philosophy here at QuotaFactory is that getting 3 or 4 contacts of varying levels within one organization is much better than restricting ourselves to just C-level titles.

Try expanding your team’s calling efforts beyond the C-level suite, and see where these lower level contacts lead them!

Today, businesses have a wealth of terrific choices when it comes to applications and platforms for both sales and service, including commercial products from software vendors, as well as applications that have been built in-house. Many businesses have tackled optimizing their sales process with cloud software at one point in time, and the tools for the customer support department at another. The result? Silos in process and technology that often create disconnected customer experiences because businesses lack the 360-degree view they need of each individual customer to deliver the kind of experience that customers expect.

When considering a cloud platform as your next solution to connect sales and service, you need to find a platform that serves both business and IT interests: both sides are essential in keeping your customers happy. To find the right fit, you must keep in mind a variety of factors.

Download the free e-book to learn more about how you can transform your business with sales and service on one platform.

1. Trust

As with any technology, security, availability, and performance are essential factors when choosing a cloud provider. Ensure that the cloud solution you choose is built around a robust and flexible security architecture. Speak with providers about how they will protect your data and give you visibility into system performance and security.

2. Customer Success

When choosing a cloud platform, find one that prioritizes your own success. Your cloud provider should offer robust training, success services, and community resources to ensure you’re making the most of your investment.

3. Innovation

Cloud computing has gained critical mass in the marketplace, which means it’s easier than ever to find a cloud platform solution. But this doesn’t mean you should just go with anyone – choose a cloud provider that’s market-tested and delivers innovation often, future-proofing the technology and your investment.

4. Multitenancy

Multitenancy is a fundamental technology that true cloud platforms use to share IT resources cost-effectively and securely. When every customer’s apps are built on the same code base, it not only leads to massive cost savings, but also allows customizations and new apps to be created at lightning speed.

5. Ability to Scale Fast

Not all cloud platforms will give you the ability to customize, extend, and scale according to your business needs. You need a cloud platform that can innovate without ever losing your business’s unique customizations or integrations. Salesforce is the only company that provides three major innovation releases every year, to all customers, without ever losing customizations or integrations.

6. Customizable – Extensible with Your Own Apps

It’s not just about the cloud platform — it’s also about what you can do with it. Find a cloud platform that will empower your team to build apps fast, and you’ll set up your IT department to add value through rapid innovation.

7. Open Ecosystem

Once you move to the cloud, you’ll realize you’re not alone. Hundreds of thousands of companies use cloud solutions, so your provider should help you connect with a community of experts and partners who can help you extend the power of your platform and innovate faster.

8. Complete CRM

When it comes to managing customer relationships, the best cloud solutions connect your entire business around the customer, from sales, service, and marketing to communities, IT, and analytics. Choose a cloud provider that sees the big picture and can help get you there.

Want to learn more about how businesses can go for growth with connected sales and service? Download the free e-book.

Look at the sales rep sitting to your right. Then look at the sales rep sitting to your left. Want to be three times more likely to crush your yearly sales quota than those reps?

... Is that a real question?

Here’s what you need to know: Sales professionals who use LinkedIn for social selling are 300% more likely to exceed their yearly sales quota than those who don’t. 

But social selling can seem overwhelming. What goes into a winning strategy? How much time should you spend on each activity? Where do those activities fit in your schedule?

If concerns like these have stopped you from fully hopping on the social selling train, great news. We’ve broken down what you should be doing on LinkedIn every day, week, month, and quarter. With the details out of the way, you can focus on connecting and closing.

Once a Day

1) Look at Your Network’s Announcements

The sooner you reach out after a trigger event occurs, the better -- in fact, 50% of sales go to the first salesperson to contact the prospect.

Enter: LinkedIn’s “keep in touch” box.

This tool gives you a quick, easy way to stay up-to-date on everything that happens in your contacts’ professional lives. When someone in your network has a work anniversary, gets promoted, or starts a new job, it’ll show up here.

This feature is useful even if the person isn’t currently a good product fit. Their situation could always change -- by keeping the connection alive, you’ll have an advantage if and when they do become a qualified lead. Plus, you never know when you’ll need an introduction. Buyers are five times more likely to respond if you’re reaching out through a mutual connection. 

2) Browse Your News Feed

Spend a couple minutes per day scrolling through your news feed. This section used to include your connections’ professional updates (promotions, work anniversaries, etc.), but now it’s limited to the posts they’ve liked, shared, and commented on.

If you see an opportunity to add value, jump in. Adding an insightful comment to another user’s discussion or linking to a relevant article increases your credibility. It also helps you gain visibility -- not only will the original poster see your reply, but all of their connections will see it too.

3) See Who’s Viewed Your Profile

A profile view can be a valuable trigger event -- if you leverage it appropriately. Some reps send generic messages like:

Not only are these types of messages boring and non-personalized, but they don’t add any value. You’ll see far more success with a message like this one:

For more tips, check out our blog post on what to do when someone looks at your LinkedIn profile.  

4) Send Connection Requests

The most successful reps are always expanding their network. Case in point: Salespeople who exceed quota send approximately 150% more connection requests per month.

One connection request per day might sound like a lot, but thanks to LinkedIn’s advanced search features, finding qualified prospects is relatively simple.

HubSpot Managing Editor Emma Brudner also recommends requesting anyone with whom you’ve had a meaningful interaction -- either in-person or online.

Nurturing individual high-quality connections is important even if you practice account-based sales. Since an average of 5.4 people are now involved in each B2B purchase, you should connect with as many decision makers as possible. 

(Struggling to find the right words? Use this connection request template.) 

Bonus: View Recommended Leads

If you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you’ll get suggested leads based on custom criteria like your prospect’s job, authority, company size, location, and more. It’s a great tool for consistently building out your pipeline.

To set up your future self for success, devote some time each day to browsing your recommended prospects and adding any promising ones to your leads list.

Once a Week

1) Comment on Content

Build your reputation as a thought leader by adding insightful comments to your prospects’ content. Not only will you generate conversations, but consistently adding value will enhance your credibility and trustworthiness.

Not sure what to say? Check out these 30 ideas for kickstarting interactions. 

2) Post in a Couple Groups

Users who participate in groups get four times as many profile views. In other words, drawing prospects to your profile can be as straightforward as commenting on a discussion.

It seems logical that leaving more comments would lead to more views. However, only thought-provoking and insightful comments lead to clicks -- so it’s far better to leave two high-quality observations than 10 throwaway ones.

LinkedIn suggests posting in different groups each week until you’ve rotated through your entire list. This strategy works well if you belong to 25-plus groups. But if you’re in fewer, it’s more productive to concentrate on your four or five most active groups.

Once a Month

1) Audit Your Groups

You can join up to 50 LinkedIn groups. Maxing out that limit is highly recommended, since groups are a great way to create common ground with prospects. (Even if you have nothing in common with a person, you can always join the same group and get a look at what they care about!) But of course, not all groups are created equal.

To make sure you’re fully leveraging this feature, go through your current groups once a month and unsubscribe from any inactive or unproductive ones.

2) Follow New Influencers

Following the same influencers as your prospects helps you understand what engages and motivates them. Every four weeks or so, go through the profile of your most recent connections and see who’s included in the influencer section.

Every time you see an unfamiliar name, click “Follow.”

(Referencing an influencer’s post is also a good way to personalize your message. For example, you might write, “Loved your comment on Guy Kawasaki’s post on the five-hour workday. Here's a resource you might find interesting.”)

Once a Quarter

1) Request a Recommendation

Nothing boosts your credibility like a glowing recommendation -- or five. However, it’s a mistake to ignore this section and let it get stale. As a rule of thumb, you should request at least one new recommendation per quarter.

Why? It’s very possible your goals will have changed from the last time you looked for references. Maybe three months ago you were looking for a job, so you reached out to former managers and coworkers to sing your praises. Now that you’re in your new role and hoping to attract prospects, you should source testimonials from happy customers.

Plus, if all of your recommendations are from one year ago, people might wonder if you haven’t done anything impressive since then.

If you're not sure how to ask, check out this LinkedIn recommendation request template.

2) Update Your Current Job Description

Most professionals only write the description for their current job once. But you’re constantly leveling up in your skills and abilities -- so your profile should reflect your latest, most impressive achievements.

Of course, remember who your target audience is. If you want to engage with prospects, don’t update your LinkedIn profile when you qualify for President's Club. You should, however, update it when one of your customers lets you know they’ve decreased internal paperwork by 40% since buying your filesharing software.

3) Check Your Social Selling Score

Social selling may seem like more of an art than a science. However, LinkedIn has found a way to quantify your performance using four main elements: Your professional brand, your prospecting abilities, your engagement, and your connection skills. Each is scored out of 25, giving you a total score out of 100. 

Checking this score lets you gauge your progress. If it continually improves from quarter to quarter, you’ll know your efforts are working. But if it flatlines or decreases, adjust your strategy.

Social selling isn’t something you can do in five minutes per day. It takes time, energy, and long-term commitment. But hey, if it can make you 300% more likely to exceed quota, it’s worth giving a shot.

Salespeople have a credibility problem. Only 3% of people consider sales representatives to be trustworthy -- meaning that you’re fighting to overcome a poor reputation from the first second you reach out to a prospect.

To become a trusted advisor, you have to be conscious of both what you’re saying and what prospects actually hear.

Read on to learn how buyers interpret these 26 common statements from reps.

1) “This isn’t a sales pitch.”

What the rep means: “I want to see if you’re a good fit for my product before I do any selling.”

What the prospect hears: “This is a sales pitch.”

2) “I’ll only take five minutes of your time.”

What the rep means: “I’ll take the next five minutes to uncover your pain points. If I can address them, I’ll schedule another call.”

What the prospect hears: “I’ll only take five minutes of your time -- unless you let me keep talking, in which case I’ll take 30.”

3) “I’m not trying to sell you anything right now.”

What the rep means: “It’s too early to know whether or not you’re a good fit.”

What the prospect hears: “I’m not going for the hard close today, but it’s coming.”

4) “How are you doing?”

What the rep means: “I don’t want to dive right into the call, so how are you doing?”

What the prospect hears: “I don’t care how you’re doing, but my manager told me I should build rapport.”

5) “We’re the most cutting-edge option on the market.”

What the rep means: “Saying ‘cutting-edge’ makes me look smart, right?”

What the prospect hears: “I’m trying to make our product sound more exciting with meaningless jargon.”

6) “Our product will revolutionize how you do X.”

What the rep means: “Our product will noticeably improve how you do X.”

What the prospect hears: “Our product may incrementally improve how you do X.”

7) “If you could [cut costs by 50%, increase revenue by 10X, generate 3,000 more leads per month], is that something you’d be interested in?”

What the rep means: “Why wouldn’t you be interested in our product?”

What the prospect hears: “Will you answer this clearly rhetorical question so I can keep talking?”

8) “Don’t you like saving money?”

What the rep means: “No, seriously: Why wouldn’t you be interested in our product?”

What the prospect hears: “I’m going to treat you like a five-year-old.”

9) “We try to achieve X for our clients.”

What the rep means: “We strive to do X, but once in a while we fall short.”

What the prospect hears: “We only manage to attain X for our clients 50% of the time.”

10) “Many of our customers see X results.”

What the rep means: “Half of our customers see X results.”

What the prospect hears: “A small percentage of our customers see X results.”

11) “Yes, that’s definitely a possibility.”

What the rep means: “That could be a possibility, but I don’t want to oversell.”

What the prospect hears: “I have no idea whether or not that’s a possibility.”

12) “Haven’t heard from you, so I wanted to check in.”

What the rep means: “I’m trying to get on your radar again.”

What the prospect hears: “The end of the month is coming up and I’m getting nervous I’ll miss my quota.”

(Psst: Check out 23 better alternatives to the “just checking in” email.)

13) “I know you must be just as busy as I am … ”

What the rep means: “We’ve both got full schedules.”

What the prospect hears: “I don’t know -- or care -- what your schedule looks like, but I think I’m pretty hot stuff.”

14) “I’m leaving you a voicemail as a follow-up to my email yesterday.”

What the rep means: “I know you’re busy, but I’m hopeful I can reach you if I’m persistent.”

What the prospect hears: “I'm going to keep annoying you until you respond.”

(In fact, inside sales expert Trish Bertuzzi doesn’t think you should ever mention previous touchpoints on voicemails: See #4 on this list.)

15) “Honestly … ”

What the rep means: “I’m about to drop a truth bomb.”

What the prospect hears: “Everything I’ve told you up until this point has been a lie.”

16) “The competition’s product sucks.”

What the rep means: “The competition’s product is okay.”

What the prospect hears: “The competition’s product is actually pretty impressive, and I’m scared you’ll choose us over them.”

17) “Without this product, your business cannot survive.”

What the rep means: “Our product will have a significant impact on your bottom line.”

What the prospect hears: “I only care about getting you to sign a deal, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to help you.”

18) “What will it take to earn your business?”

What the rep means: “Can you fill me in on your priorities?”

What the prospect hears: “I only care about getting you to sign a deal, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to help you.”

19) “Can I speak to the decision maker?”

What the rep means: “I don’t want to waste everyone’s time selling to the wrong person.”

What the prospect hears: “You’re not important, and I don’t want to spend any more time on you.”

20) “As I said before … ”

What the rep means: “I know I’m repeating myself, but hear me out …”

What the prospect hears: “I’m frustrated that I need to repeat myself.”

21) “I really like you, so I’m going to give you a deal.”

What the rep means: “I wonder if I can tap into the rapport we created.”

What the prospect hears: “I give this deal to everyone.”

22) “I can give you a 20% discount if you buy today.”

What the rep means: “I’m ready to close this deal.”

What the prospect hears: “I want to pressure you into buying today.”

23) “Let me check in with my manager.”

What the rep means: “I don’t think those terms are feasible, but I’ll ask my manager first.”

What the prospect hears: “I’m going to tell you no, but I don’t want to be the bad guy.”

24) “There’s no catch here.”

What the rep means: “Seriously, there’s no catch.”

What the prospect hears: “Watch out for the catch.”

25) “I’m going to take off my salesperson hat and talk to you directly.”

What the rep means: “I need you to let down your guard for a bit.”

What the prospect hears: “I’m still talking as a rep, but I want you to trust me.”

26) “I’m sorry, that’s just our company policy.”

What the rep means: “I wish I could help you, but my hands are tied.”

>What the prospect hears: “I’m not even going to try to help you.”

To win the buyer’s trust, steer away from these 26 statements and explain exactly what your objectives are. Even better, don’t say anything manipulative or even slightly untrue. The more straight-forward you are, the greater the chance prospects will hear exactly what you mean.

Author: Daniel Kushner

We’re in the age where marketing is recognized as the foundation for business growth. Therefore, marketers have to devote time to determining exactly how each marketing dollar will be spent so they can optimize the ROI.

However, this can be hard if you’re just launching new campaigns for the first time and don’t have valuable historical data to rely on, especially if you’re venturing into a new channel. The way forward starts with outlining a detailed budget based on what you know about your company and your overarching goals. From the insights you gain from each investment, you can then adjust your understanding of your budget based on individual ROI metrics from campaigns. You might use a variety of metrics to determine your ROI (e.g. first-touch, last-touch, or multi touch attribution), but whichever you choose, seeing that end result can inform your budget decisions so you can allocate budget to the most effective channels.

Before you have valuable, historical metrics to inform your campaign optimization and budget allocation, here’s a sample marketing budget breakdown that you can use as a guide:

Campaign Planning and Content Creation: 40-50%

To understand what returns you should be seeing on your marketing investments, you need to start with focused campaigns based on your goals. Ideally, your goals should map to each stage of the customer lifecycle. For instance, if your broad goal is awareness or branding, you might want to invest in a campaign that differentiates your brand from your competitors and offers value to your prospects so they come to associate your brand with value. If your goal is more focused on customer retention and growth, then your campaigns should be focused on how to keep your customers happy and make them more successful with complementary products or services.

Whatever your campaign objectives are, it’s likely that content will serve as the meat of them. Yet according to Content Marketing Institute, only 32% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy, even though 88% are using content as a part of their core marketing mix. Digital content such as blog, social media posts, videos, ebooks, infographics, and the like all play a role in evolving a brand story that solidifies your standing in the market and makes your prospects want to interact with your company, the first step in the customer journey toward converting them into satisfied customers. In addition to creating a scalable content creation process, you may need to seek out the services of vendors or consultants to help you refine your plans. You’ll also need dedicated writers to produce your content, and if your collateral needs exceed your marketing team’s capacity, you may need to hire a freelancer.

Paid Advertising: 20-30%

While much of digital marketing content depends on organic reach—that is, reaching users of specific online outlets without paying for the privilege—paid advertising gives enterprises a leg up in the market. It’s especially important for brands that want to establish a market presence or enter an entirely new segment of the market.

For example, your company may have developed a new product targeting a drastically different buyer persona than you normally do. Paid marketing, be it in the form of online cost-per-click ads, social media ads, print ads, or even TV or radio commercials, can help you get attention right away, whereas unpaid, “organic” marketing may take longer to reach your intended audience. With paid advertising, you directly pay the channel that you’re advertising on for access to their audience. And if you do your research, you’ll know exactly which ones to invest in to reach your target audience. These outlets typically provide the statistics you need to first calculate the ROI of placing an ad with them. An ad that costs money to place and then has another per click cost is only worth the investment if you are guaranteed to reach prospects with a high rate of likely conversion.

While sometimes an afterthought in the age of “free” marketing, paid advertising provides some of the most direct and immediate measures of ROI available. That is, you can count dollar-for-dollar exactly which advertisement brought in a certain number of conversions or a certain amount of revenue. Digital advertising is especially worthwhile, given the ease of publishing ads and the fact that the biggest channels (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Target) offer excellent targeting options.

Workforce Marketing: 10%

Your workforce is an extremely powerful part of your marketing arm. Workforce marketing consists of aligning every member of your team behind company goals through increased education and advocacy-strengthening efforts. It might include internal meetings, events, and marketing collateral that “sells” employees on company culture and goals. These things don’t come free, but they’re well worth the investment as you build up employee knowledge, motivation, and morale. Beyond the this, the internal goodwill can be a major force in attracting both new leads and new hires.

Consider implementing an employee advocacy program, where you can invest in morale-building, educational seminars or create a free competition among departments. Allowing your employees to market for you enables you to reach new audiences and entices prospects on a personal level. As an internal investment, the ROI can be measured by tracking the number of leads brought in through your employee advocacy program. With a robust marketing automation platform, you can set social referral campaigns across major social media platforms that tracks referrals and their corresponding responses. This is also a great program to run for customer advocates as well, but if you’re just launching it, you may want to test the waters on your internal workforce first.

Software and Tools: 10%

Software and tools streamline and automate essential tasks, saving you precious time, money, and human resources, and letting you analyze and refine your marketing activities in much more intuitive ways. With the right solutions in place, you can assess the performance of every campaign and asset that you push out. You can also track key performance metrics to determine the success of each of your efforts for both current and past campaigns, which provides you with clear ROI projections.

• A marketing automation platform, or engagement marketing platform, helps you streamline, automate, and measure your marketing tasks and workflows to increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster. With it, you can increase demand, engage your buyers throughout the entire customer lifecycle, and measure the effectiveness of each campaign and channel.
• A content management system (CMS) provides an efficient means of letting the right individuals in your organization publish and organize content across your web presence.
• A customer relationship management (CRM) tool provides complete oversight and detailed recording of buyer interactions and touchpoints, letting you track a customer’s progress through your sales funnel and enabling close analysis of what works in each relationship. By syncing your marketing automation platform with your CRM, you can improve sales and marketing alignment so that both teams are always up to date on each prospect’s interactions with your company.
• A social media management platform lets you manage your social campaigns by setting an editorial calendar, allowing you to monitor real-time social media conversations about your brand, products, and industry, identify immediate engagement possibilities, and analyze the impact of participation across each social platform.

Most importantly, these tools provide you the analytics and insight you need to determine and prove ROI. Although you can calculate some metrics manually, the bigger your marketing efforts grow, the more you will need the technology to handle all the data points flowing in from various places about your customers. The investment in this technology is the upfront portion of working out how ROI fits into your budget.

Events: 5-10%

A corporate presence at large industry events or your own company’s events can quickly deepen your market presence, showing prospects that you’re a real-world company with a unique identity. Events, be it tradeshows, conventions, conferences, or roadshows, can be prime opportunities to show prospects and customers, in a personal setting, why you and your solutions matter.

Costs can include registration fees, travel expenses, and collateral. Hosting your own event includes some of the above, plus venue rentals, catering, promotions, and other miscellaneous operating fees. It’s fairly simple to track how many fruitful conversations result from in-person contact. The impact of an event is measurable in a number of ways. For example, when prospects register for your event, visit your booth, or attend your session, a tangible lead is created.

In the thick of assessing marketing needs and trying to implement new campaigns, you often can’t see the forest for the trees. But with a well-planned budget that breaks down each activity with clear expectations of the investment you’re putting in and the value you’re getting out, you’ll be able to relax and focus on each marketing task, knowing that you’re building a strong foundation for your company’s continued growth.

How do you approach budget allocation in new areas or campaigns? I’d love to hear more in the comments below.

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A High-Level B2B Marketing Budget Breakdown was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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