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Copywriting is a balancing act. To succeed, you should have the resolve of the world’s greatest author and the insight of the company’s sharpest salesperson. But that’s not exactly an easy task. You want to get crafty, but you need to make an impact. Your words need to resonate like poetry yet read like…well, copy.

There are a few ways to simultaneously be at your most creative and most persuasive. It’s not as hard as you think. You just need to be patient with your words and honest with yourself—especially if you’re fighting writer’s block or feeling stale. We want to help you break your block and upgrade your copy, so we have a little challenge for you. Try these 7 exercises to help you write better copy. From haikus to colorful language, these challenges will help you get out of your head, refresh, and dive in to deliver your best stuff.

1) Dump Your Thoughts

Distractions will always prevent you from reaching your creative goal, so take a cue from Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, and try her morning pages technique. This challenge asks you to fill three pages of paper with stream-of-consciousness writing. The catch? You have to do it longhand. Per Cameron, you should do it first thing when you wake up. But first thing when you get to work will work too. It doesn’t matter how trivial your thoughts are. The goal is to transfer all that brain chatter and worries to paper and leave them there. Your mind needs to be empty before you can fill it with creativity. From there, move into one-person brainstorm mode, where new ideas will surely wander in. Put them all down with the same fury. There’s no reason to hold back if the brainstorm is just you.

2) Learn Just One More Thing

Whether you’re writing about a topic you’re thoroughly vested in or one fresh to your attention, challenge yourself to go one step farther than your existing knowledge. You never know what you might find, what perspective you might encounter, or what idea might spark your interest. (Case in point: This blog post was inspired by the exercise laid out in HubSpot’s post about generating fresh blog post ideas.) There’s always something more to learn, and knowing more will only sharpen your perspective. Additionally, by going through the works of others, you not only get a refresher course, you have the opportunity to see what angles have been covered before. Insight always, always helps.

3) Corral Your Keywords

When you’re getting ready to write a killer piece for SEO, keywords are key. But don’t render them tacky or useless by saturation. Before you start, write down the 5-10 keywords you’re going after for SEO purposes. They definitely need to play a role, but they can’t be everything. Keep your list for reference, and make sure you’re not underusing and overusing them. You need to be confident in what you want your copy to be remembered and sought out for, while purposefully keeping your keywords from being the only selling points. There are few things that will make your audience cringe more than reading copy that’s frantically and obviously trying to attach itself to specific keywords.

4) Write a Teaser

While you should have a go-to collection of assets that inspire you, sometimes you need some inspiration from left field. To combat the horrific dilemma of writer’s block, or just get the creative juices flowing, try this tactic. Take a break and seek out one new thing to consume. This could be an ad, article, book excerpt, photo essay, video, etc. Whether or not you liked what you found, give yourself the following challenge: In a single paragraph, write a teaser for it. It doesn’t matter if it was an ad from the ‘80s or a random comedy short on YouTube. Write 3-5 sentences that might convince somebody to look at it. This will help spark the “selling” part of your brain by giving you something completely new to market.

5) Color Inside Your Lines

So you’ve written a great piece and you’re ready to publish. Not so fast. Take a quick lap away from your computer, then return to color your copy up. In every single paragraph, there are opportunities to enhance and make your copy more engaging for your readers. Insert more emotional adjectives; choose stronger verbs. The focus is to create live, powerful language that delivers your message. Warning: This totally, absolutely does not mean you bring in buzzwords. In fact, kill them. They’re hollow and should be avoided like the marketing plague they are. By leaning on them, you give off the appearance of desperately trying to fit in. You’re better than that.

6) Create Your Own Blacklist

In the same vein as buzzwords, be wary of the words, phrases, and sentence structures you constantly rely on. Review your recent posts and take note of what you’d like to eliminate or avoid when you write. For example, you might notice that the word “vital” appears 10 times in a single post, or that “In today’s marketplace…” has become your go-to intro. Create your own blacklist document to keep track of everything you want to avoid. Note: This doesn’t mean you can never use the word “vital” again. Just be mindful. Review your blacklist doc regularly to keep your copy fresh.

7) Try the Haiku Method

It may sound obvious, but it’s too often forgotten: Know your intent. What takeaway do you want to give your reader? Whether you’re writing a blog post or an infographic, you need to figure out how you might boil your message down to its beautiful, simple core. If that message is murky the next time you start a new project, try the haiku method. It’s essentially condensing your message and goal into the structure of a haiku. (If you need a refresher, a haiku is a 3-line poem in a specific format: first line has 5 syllables, second line has 7 syllables, third line has 5 syllables.) For example, here’s my haiku for this post:

Give you awesome tips
to write like a freaking boss
by trying new things.

This is a fun creative challenge that forces you to identify exactly what you’re trying to say and provides you with a guiding thesis to craft the rest of your copy around.

We hope these exercises help you shake things up some. Let us know if you try any of them, and please share any of your own writing hacks. We love any and all of them.

Ever have the dream where you’re happily running your freelance business while sipping piña coladas on the beach?

Sure, it sounds awesome, but the reality of working from your smartphone is far from perfect. We are only in the beginning stages of where this technology will be in five years. And most of us haven’t mastered the art of business domination from our mobiles and still run into stressful situations.

Two weeks ago, as I was actually trying to have a relaxing work weekend at camp, I ran into one tech drama after another. Then I realized we have become so accustomed to instant access from our phones that we’re not always prepared for these challenges until we’re sitting in the middle of a lake with no way to communicate with our clients.

While you may not be able to do everything from your phone, you can easily manage your freelance business with these simple tips:

Optimize Your Phone

Apps crash, screens freeze, and you may run out of space. Unless you’re really tech savvy, you may overlook some basic smartphone issues like security. In Top 5 Security Apps for Android Phones, Luke Peters shares both free and paid services that will protect your business and personal smartphone information. This is an essential part of keeping your business safe, especially if you use free wifi.

You’ll also want to learn about your specific phone’s storage capacity and figure out what you want to store directly on your phone and in the cloud. Decide what apps you have to keep and delete the one’s you don’t need. For example, iPhone users have to keep some native apps whether we like them or not. Basically, take the time to learn your phone’s capabilities, weaknesses, tricks and hacks before you run into any issues.

Choose Your Apps Wisely

As a freelancer, you probably use a few apps like Slack, Skype, and maybe Facebook’s Messenger every day. Yet, we don’t want to become overwhelmed with apps just because they exist. Choose the best apps for your business while still keeping your systems streamlined.

Here’re a few freelance-friendly apps to consider:

Trello: We all need help with organization. Trello is a simple, yet powerful tool for managing multiple projects, with multiple people.

Covve: Need a reliable networking app? This address book app anonymously shares address books and can search your contact’s contacts.

PayPal: Want to get paid today? Easily create and send invoices (and also send reminders!).

The idea is to find a balance of platforms, so you’re not wasting time jumping from app to app. Work with clients to find the best way to communicate and don’t be afraid to ask them to try or change an app that’s not working for you.

Learn Where You Won’t Get Reception

This is my biggest stressor. As I mentioned, I recently tried to have a relaxing work weekend at our camp. Instead of lazily answering an email or two while sunning by the lake, I was driving 10 miles down the road to a Dunkin Donuts with free wifi.

Try using an app like OpenSignal which shows you how to get a better network connection. One of the best things about this app is that it’s made to improve as more areas are added to the system. And you can go online and check out where you’ll find the strongest signals for any area beforehand:

Manage Only from Your Mobile

You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to be talking to an important client while driving on a backroad and lose them in the middle of an important negotiation (believe me – it happens). You’re going to need a website that’s not entirely mobile responsive and have to figure it out anyway.

Perhaps the best way to run your business from your smartphone is to consider your mobile a management tool. Maybe we’re not meant to run our entire freelancing empire from our phones, but manage things like communication, invoicing and networking. Don’t try to do everything, just the day’s priorities and save the rest for your office.

Remember, one of the most important aspects of stress-free freelancing is not to work 24/7.

Buy a multi-family property. Live in one unit and rent the others. Make enough money to move out and do it all over again. Do it right, and you’ll earn enough to pay your mortgage plus add to your monthly cash flow.

Will this strategy make you rich? Maybe, maybe not. The concept, dubbed “house hacking,” is nothing new, but real estate experts say it’s potentially a great way to learn the business.

Hacking, real estate-style

The term “hack,” meaning a quick and dirty way to do something better or easier, has become hugely popular across the web. There are life hacks, cleaning hacks, cooking hacks, and even IKEA hacks. House hacking, according to the real estate investment website Bigger Pockets, which coined the popular phrase, is about “buying an owner-occupied multifamily property and getting paid to live for free.”

Everyone has to live somewhere, and no one gets rich by buying and living in an expensive home. “House hacking,” according to Bigger Pockets, “is a great idea in the sense that you are trying to minimize your own housing expenses and use the money you save to acquire properties and generate wealth.”

The concept – viewing housing not as an ever-increasing expense (liability) but as an investment (asset) – is especially appealing to young, single investors who have more flexibility and are less concerned about finding a place to plant roots.

The pros

“House hacking is a fantastic way to use the advantage of home ownership to help keep your mortgage payments low,” says Brad Pauly, broker/owner at Pauly Presley Realty in Austin. “With interest rates still at an all-time low, the ability to own real estate and have a larger percentage of that loan paid off by your renter is a fantastic way to start and continue your investment strategy.”

Pauly explains that with the extra savings in monthly payments, you can make supplemental payments to the principal of your mortgage and lower your long-term note significantly. “Or,” he adds, “just enjoy a lot more disposable income.”

Realtor.com reports that homeowners can gain up to a 7 percent annual appreciation rate by house hacking – a rate that, not coincidentally, is the same as the rise in rents. The site also found that sales of owner-occupied multiplexes increased 24 percent from 2014 to 2015 (versus just 16 percent for single-family homes).

Some multiplexes qualify for special financing. The Federal Housing Administration, for one, offers favorable terms for those borrowing money for multi-family properties. And there are tax advantages, too. Owners can take deductions for depreciation of the rented spaces, which helps offset the taxes that have to be paid on rental income.

“Also,” adds Pauly, “rarely in life do you get to choose your neighbors!”

No reward without risk

Being a landlord takes work. There is upkeep and maintenance. Vacancies to rent and rents to collect. Your neighbors are your tenants – which is all good, until it’s not. And mortgages on multi-unit properties are potentially larger than what you’d pay for a single-family home.

“House hacking has advantages over other ways of growing a real estate portfolio,” says Glenn S. Phillips, CEO of multi-state real estate company Lake Homes Realty, “but, like any approach, it doesn’t eliminate risk or work.”

By living next door to your renters, you can certainly limit some of the risk of their mistreating the property. But when you move to the next property, you lose this advantage. “As you have more properties, you’ll soon have to evaluate and take on renters you don’t live near,” advises Phillips. “While this is the same as other rental management approaches, it does mean that as you grow your portfolio you lose some of the early advantages of [the house-hacking] approach.”

And using a mortgage, instead of cash, for your first properties comes with risk. “Be careful to understand any limitations on the loan with regard to renting the property,” Phillips cautions. “And note that rental property loans can have higher interest rates – not necessarily a deal killer, but definitely something to anticipate.”

As with any large real estate purchase, you’ll want to have an experienced attorney review the transaction to ensure that everything is legally sound and that your interests are protected.

Will you get rich?

Perhaps, says Phillips. “House hacking requires patience to grow a portfolio of properties, but so does any other self-funded means of adding homes to rent.

“The key to success in real estate and rental portfolios is not necessarily the initial approach, but more the financial discipline required, the ability to scale and adapt, and the just plain hard work that most people will not do for long periods of time.”

Are you in it for the long haul?

The best things in life may be free, but that doesn't mean they won't take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire.

That's especially the case when it comes to learning important life skills.

To ascertain which talents are worth the investment, one Quora reader posed the question: "What are the hardest and most useful skills to learn?"

We've highlighted our favorite takeaways, as well as a few other skills we thought were important.

SEE ALSO: 15 things successful 20-somethings do in their spare time

DON'T MISS: The 20 cities where Americans work the hardest

Mastering your sleep

There are so many prescribed sleep hacks out there it's often hard to keep track. But regardless of what you choose, establishing a ritual can help ensure you have restful nights.

Numerous studies show that being consistent with your sleep schedule makes it easier to fall asleep and wake up, and it helps promote better sleep in general.

Empathy

"You can be the most disciplined, brilliant, and even wealthy individual in the world, but if you don't care for or empathize with other people, then you are basically nothing but a sociopath," writes Kamia Taylor.

Empathy, as business owner Jane Wurdwand explains, is a fundamental human ability that has too readily been forsworn by modern business.

"Empathy — the ability to feel what others feel — is what makes good sales and service people truly great. Empathy as in team spirit — esprit d'corps — motivates people to try harder. Empathy drives employees to push beyond their own apathy, to go bigger, because they feel something bigger than just a paycheck," she writes.

Time management

Effective time management is one of the most highly valued skills by employers. While there is no one right way, it's important to find a system that works for you and stick to it, Alina Grzegorzewska explains. 

"The hardest thing to learn for me was how to plan," she writes. "Not to execute what I have planned, but to make so epic a to-do list and to schedule it so thoroughly that I'm really capable of completing all the tasks on the scheduled date."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Private jet charter provider Skyjet realized the opportunity in supplying its niche group of customers with an app featuring on-demand booking, and quickly moved to provide a superior customer experience in the marketplace. Read how the app's real-time pricing tool now processes roughly 1,500 user itineraries on a weekly basis, and has more than 22,000 downloads since its launch.

Pete Walker liked to start each morning with a drive around the fields. Of course, he could monitor his crops by scanning computer screens back in the farmhouse, but he liked to see and smell the tilled soil, sprouting tendrils, bushy trees, and ripe produce for himself. He sat back in the seat of his Jeep, sipped his coffee, and looked out at the horizon. The 23,000 acres of Walker Farms stretched before him under a pale blue, invariably cloudless California sky.

Editor's Note

Pete’s three sisters and two brothers would arrive in an hour for the regularly scheduled board meeting. Though they’d unanimously elected Pete to take over from their aging father, Grant, as CEO of the farm four years before, they were equal shareholders, with a trust that also benefited their children. The first item on the agenda would be this year’s surface-water allocation—which, owing to the state’s extended drought, had come in at zero again. That wasn’t a disaster—the farm had invested in wells to tap groundwater and drip irrigation to use the water efficiently—but it was a disappointment. They’d had to keep 6,000 acres fallow the past three growing seasons, and it pained Pete to do the same again this spring.

Growing up, he’d constantly tailed Grant around the fields, watching him experiment with crops and technologies that would help the farm survive dry spells. Instead of the cotton, grains, and melons they’d grown when Pete was young, Walker now specialized in products that were mainly grown in California, such as almonds, pistachios, and tomatoes; market dominance meant they could pass some of the higher water costs on to consumers. About a decade earlier Pete had also spearheaded a successful expansion into processing almonds, tomatoes, and frozen vegetables; Walker Farms had significant investments in three Central Valley plants.

The question was what to do next. Hope for rain but drill and pump until it came? That had been their strategy so far. But Pete was frustrated and keen to explore more-creative solutions. Walker’s property abutted one of the largest electrical substations in California. A 25-year lease to put solar panels on a parcel of land would generate the same returns as growing tomatoes—without any irrigation headaches. His wife, Sally, sometimes joked that the family should take advantage of still-high land prices, sell the whole operation, and move to a big compound in Seattle, where they’d never complain about lack of rain again.

Organics were another option. They required as much water as any other crop, but the revenues were significantly higher. Organic tomato paste sold for 75 to 80 cents a pound, compared with less than 40 cents for conventional. Land had to be free of pesticides for three years before it could be certified organic, but the fallow 6,000 acres now qualified. The manager of the frozen-vegetables plant was pushing him to make the leap.

As he pulled into the farmhouse driveway, Sam, his younger brother, waved from the kitchen door.

Pete looked at his watch. “You’re early!” he shouted.

“I know,” Sam shouted back, grinning. “But might as well get three full meals of Mom’s cooking while I’m here.”

Walker board meetings were always followed by family fun days. The siblings’ wives and husbands and children would come for a working day on the farm, sandwiches out in the fields, and a big picnic dinner that evening. Pete started these days nervous—it was tough to run a business that supported three generations of your family, navigating disagreements and making tough calls—but by sunset he always managed to relax. This farm and family was his father’s legacy. Keeping it together would be his.

The Meeting

“Zero? You’ve got to be kidding me. How can they give us zero of our allocation again? Rainfall’s up this year—a bit.”

“It is what it is, Bill,” Pete told his older brother. “I can’t argue with the bureaucrats.” Federal agencies determined how much and to whom water would flow from the Central Valley Project, a multibillion-dollar system of dams, reservoirs, canals, and aqueducts designed to keep the region from drying out, even in the midst of a drought. Maintaining the flow of fresh water in the rivers, to protect the habitat of endangered fish, took legal precedence over delivery to farmers.

“Do we need to start looking at transfers?” Bill asked. California had a nascent system through which farmers could obtain “supplemental” water from sellers in naturally wetter irrigation districts, but it was hugely inefficient. The year before, prices had jumped to $800 per acre-foot of water; this year they would be even higher. Water from Walker’s own wells cost just $200 per acre-foot, and the surface-water allocation—when they could get it—cost even less.

“Costs are still way too steep,” Pete said. “We’re better off using the groundwater we have and keeping fields fallow if we need to. We have enough water to get by.”

“But we can’t go on like this forever,” Bill said. “How long can the government refuse to give us the water we’re supposed to be getting?” Walker Farms hadn’t received 100% of its allocation since 2006.

Mary, the oldest sister, piped up. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is climate change. We have to assume that it’s the new normal.”

“Don’t let Mom hear you talking that ‘quack science,’” her sister Isabel teased. When she and Mary had tried to show their parents An Inconvenient Truth a few years back, their mother had muttered something about “damn liberals” and walked out of the room.

The siblings were of diverse minds politically, but they agreed that temperatures were rising and weather patterns were becoming more volatile. What that meant for the farm over the next two decades or so was up for debate. Some thought it would be debilitating; others, business as usual, because the good years would continue to balance out the bad.

“The obvious answer is to drill more wells,” Bill said. “Everyone else is doing it. If we drill 10 more, we can quit fallowing all that land. It’s our water. It’s right there.”

“But well water’s not as good as surface water: The dissolved salts in it will eventually kill our trees,” Mary said. “And extracting too much groundwater makes the land subside. Anyway, the state government is talking about imposing regulations on drilling.”

“All the more reason to drill the wells now,” Bill countered.

“But that’s just a temporary fix,” Mary insisted. “What we need in the long run is a real water market, like Israel’s or Australia’s. For all the other inputs we need to grow our crops, the government lets supply and demand do their magic. But not water. It just kills me that water doesn’t move to its highest and most productive use. People who get it cheap or even free have almost no incentive to sell it to people for whom it’s more valuable. Only one percent of the water in this state gets traded. One percent!”

“Should we really keep betting the whole farm—pun totally intended—on a diminishing resource?” Isabel asked. “Land prices are so high. If we can’t use the 6,000 acres for another year, why not sell and let someone else worry about the water risk? Wait—didn’t you have a solar proposal to show us, Pete?”

Pete nodded and handed out the relevant documents. One was a brochure picturing an expanse of mirrored panels.

“Wow—that’s ugly,” Sam said.

“Certainly not as pretty as almond trees,” Pete agreed.

“The panels are pretty in their own way,” Isabel said. “Sleek, modern, progressive.”

Pete explained the lease structure and the projected returns. His sister Jane nodded. “So we’d make as much as we would growing tomatoes? Not a bad trade.”

“Except we’d be giving up our ability to farm the land for 25 years,” Bill said. “That’s crazy.”

“In 25 years you might find that we don’t have enough water to keep even 10,000 acres thriving,” Jane shot back. “Guaranteeing a solid return on this parcel will seem like a smart move. We might even want to expand the operation.”

Panels instead of plants all over the farm, Pete thought. He couldn’t picture it. “We should also talk about organics,” he said.

“Yes, we should,” Sam said. After getting his agricultural sciences degree, he’d done an internship at Whole Foods, and he’d been talking Pete’s ear off about organics’ pricing power ever since. “If we want to use the fallow 6,000 acres this year, a few organic crops might be the way to do it. The fields have been clean for three years, so we’ve already absorbed those costs. Of course, we’d have to tap into our groundwater reserves to get them going. But we know we can charge a big premium for the produce: fewer tons per acre, but more dollars per ton.”

Bill jumped in. “We’ve talked about this before, Pete. Do we really want to hitch our cart to that bandwagon? Everyone in the business knows that organics are a sham—no proven health benefits over conventional produce. At some point consumers are going to figure that out.”

“I can introduce you to some very smart people—and millions of grocery store customers—who disagree,” Sam countered. “The category is growing by leaps and bounds, Bill. And even if they’re wrong, they’re still spending money. Why shouldn’t we get in on the game?”

“We can’t keep chasing higher-yield crops to offset our astronomical water costs,” Jane said. “At some point we’ve got to address the root of the problem. Pete, did you have any luck getting in to speak with the governor?”

“Honestly, the bureaucracy is so thick,” Pete said, “it would be a full-time job to navigate it. I’ve got to focus on running the farm.”

His siblings all nodded solemnly. “So what do you think, Pete?” Bill said. “We always have these discussions and share our opinions. But you’re the real expert, and we trust you. What do you think we should do?”

“Let me think about it. We have a few other agenda items to get through. And the kids should be here soon. I don’t want the party to start late on my account.”

The Picnic

Pete was keeping a close eye on seven boys, his sons and nephews, as they clambered up and around one of the big tractors. His mother, Helen, had overseen the production of a spectacular meal—grilled steaks, chicken, and vegetables; potato salad; and strawberry shortcake for dessert—and everyone would soon be heading back home to Mountain View, Monterey, or Ventura. Pete’s family and his parents were the only ones who still lived in the farmhouse.

Grant ambled up behind him. “How was the board meeting this morning?” he asked.

“Good. We miss having you there. You should come.”

“Nope, when I stepped down, I promised your mother and myself that I wouldn’t meddle. You know where I am if you ever need advice.”

“I still can’t believe that zero allocation,” Pete said.

“It is what it is,” said his father.

“But I don’t want to keep so much of the farm fallow again.”

“I wouldn’t either. It’s a waste.”

“We could try experimenting with organics,” Pete said. Grant scowled. “Or consider leasing some land to that solar panel company.”

His father scowled again and said, “Those are your best options?”

“We could plant more almond or pistachio trees. Otherwise, if I want to use those acres, I need either high yields from another crop or guaranteed ones that don’t require me to use water.”

“Water—that is the issue,” Grant said. “When you were growing up, it used to rain more.”

“I remember.”

“So your job is tougher than mine was, son. But I know you can do it. Look at those beautiful almond trees! California is still the best place in the world to be a farmer.”

Question: What should Pete do with the 6,000 acres?

If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication in a forthcoming issue of HBR, please remember to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and email address.

Here is an awesome recipe we have concocted to help you capture sales ready leads for less money. The recipe is one part Buyers Journey, one part HubSpot, and one part Facebook Advertising. Mix it all together and you get a lead generation cocktail. This particular recipe has lowered our client’s lead aquisition costs by 60%.

Before I layout the recipe let me give you a brief overview of what we are creating here. We are building a system that drips your content offsite to your prospects at appropriate intervals while they are considering purchasing from you or one of your competitiors. We do this without using email.

Now let’s get mixing.

Starting with the Buyer’s Journey.

When you Google “buyer’s journey” you will see a similar theme. The journey is usually defined with three stages: awareness, consideration and the decision stage. Maybe you are familiar with what this looks like. Here is a Google search…

We think the buyer’s journey goes beyond these simple charts and funnels. No one seems to be talking about that. Did you know that the buyer’s journey continues to take place off of your website? That’s right- OFF of your website. While your website can be designed to funnel buyers through these various stages with content and offers you may be missing out on what can happen when the buyer leaves your website. That’s where Facebook ads come in. But before we get to Facebook ads I want to show you a trick on how to define your buyer’s journey.

Define your buyer’s journey with HubSpot data:

1. Using the list segmentation tool create a customer list
2. Export that list and bring it into excel
   1. When you export it include the follow fields: Time of first visit, first conversion date, first conversion
3. Once exported add a column called Days Between. This column is a calculation of the time of first visit subtracting the first conversion date.
4. Filter by conversion type
5. Look for where the bulk of first conversions are happening
   1. Find the mode! We want to find the # of days between that occurs most frequently.

Here is a real life example of how we applied this trick for one of our clients. Our client told us the buyer’s journey starts with a quote request. So we filtered our conversion type by quote request in our excel document. Out of 186 customers, 145 had requested a quote on their first visit; 17 had done it within 7 days, and 11 had done it greater than 7 days, but still within 30 days. And then there were some remaining outliers that took 40, 50, 90 days. Since we were looking for the bulk of what people are doing, we found 80% of visitors requested a quote on the first day. By looking at the data it was clear that the buyer’s journey did indeed start with a quote request.

This example is an of a B2C company. In B2B selling a quote request most likely will not be the first conversion that takes place. Other events will take up the bulk of the actions like downloadable offers such as ebooks. Following the same steps above look for where the bulk of first customer conversions lie. Then look for the next most common conversion up until they requested a quote/ filled out a contact form.

Taking the journey beyond quote request

After a quote request, leads will be having some conversations with your sales teams. There may be a few meetings before they actually become a customer. Look at your CRM data and see how soon after a quote request sales is having their first contact with the prospect.

The client we were referencing above took two weeks from their customer’s quote request to having the first sales meeting. We found the bulk of customers (that mode again) were closing within 17 days after that first meeting. From the data, we can clearly say that on day 32 the bulk of their customers closed.

This is the journey: quote request= day 1 , meeting= day 15, close= day 32

32 days is a long time! The prospect could have found another solution during this time. You have to use this new journey you defined to keep that from happening!

Using Facebook ads to support the buyer’s journey

It’s time to map out key content to this journey so we can support the buyer’s journey off of the website during the sales process. Let’s get your BEST content in front of them with Facebook ads.

How to find your best performing content with your customers:

1. Go into landing pages tool inside HubSpot
2. Click the analyze tab
3. Select the customer’s tab

What you have in front of you now is the content that is most popular with your customers. This is the KEY content that will be promoted in Facebook ads to support the journey after the quote request.

Map out your key content social ads by days between and journey phase.

The 5 pieces of key content are represented by Ad1- Ad5 on the fancy chart below.

There are four segmented areas on the chart: Quote, Meeting, Close, Beyond (can’t forget those outliers).

Since we have four segments but five key pieces of content for ads, we needed to break up our days in between segments into five.

Sequencing your Facebook ads

This gets a little technical here, sorry. Because we are seeking to place a different piece of content in front of your prospects at each stage of their buyer’s journey we have to build some complex audiences inside of Facebook to do this.

We have two choices here. We can target only the people that filled out a quote request or we can target all visitors (including those that request a quote and those that did not) and hope to generate more quote requests that way. For this client it made sense to target all visitors.

So now we need to set that up in Facebook. Inside of Facebook build out five “custom audiences”.

Custom audience 1= website visits last 3 days

Custom audience 2= website visits last 7 days

Custom audience 3= website visits last 14 days

Custom audience 4= website visits last 31 days

Custom audience 5= website visits last 90 days

Now comes the tricky part

We can’t use these custom audiences directly because everyone would see all the content at once. Instead, we now need to create something called “saved audiences”. We use the above custom audiences inside of these five new “saved audiences”.

Now we create the following five Facebook “saved audiences”. One for each piece of content/stage:

1. For content Asset #1 (includes custom audience #1)
2. For content Asset #2 (includes custom audience #2 [excluding audience #1])
3. For content Asset #3 (includes custom audience #3 [excluding audience #1 and #2])
4. For content Asset #4 (includes custom audience #4 [excluding audience #1 and #2 and #3])
5. For content Asset #5 (includes custom audience #5 [excluding audience #1 and #2 and #3 and #4])

(see example screenshot below of of #3)

Now it’s time to create your ads and ad sets for each piece of content. In this example we created five ad sets. One for each audience. Each ad set contained two ads targeting the same piece of content. You don’t have to run two ads in each ad set. We did that for testing purposes.

That’s it. Now apply your budgets and let your ads run.

Client Results

Using this technique our client’s new lead conversion cost of $8.18 is a small fraction of what they were paying for leads prior to running this type of campaign.

Final Thoughts…

Facebook advertising, when paired with the buyer’s journey can get you sales ready leads for less money. Look at the cost per conversion in the above chart. Only $8.18 per lead! This is by far the lowest cost lead generation program for our client. Relevant content placed systematically in front of prospects as they go through the different stages of their buyer’s journey is a very effective use of ad dollars.

We recorded a webinar on this topic that you can watch right here. In it we cover what I talk about in this blog article but it has live visuals and dives into this strategy a little deeper.

Comment below to get a discussion started- I’d love to hear what you think, what your strategies are and any questions you may have.

 

According to Tim Sanders, former CSO of Yahoo, your biggest enemy isn’t your competitor: It’s the status quo.

“When I go through a sales team’s CRM and look at all the deals they didn’t close, 80% of them are marked ‘no decision,’” he explained at an Enterprise Sales Meetup event on Aug. 3.

“The prospect didn’t go with the competitor -- they decided not to buy anything.”

When you correctly diagnose buyer pain and show them how the cost of not changing, they’re eager to disrupt the status quo. Take a look at these four powerful ways to open the prospect’s eyes and get them to admit their pain.

1) Use Third-Party Examples

You might be tempted to come right out and tell your prospect their current way of doing things isn’t working. But that won't always be effective -- many people (understandably!) dislike hearing that they’re wrong, especially from someone who has a vested interest in convincing them to change their ways.

To make your point convincingly, share an example of a similar company that's seen success.

Imagine you sell timesheet software, and you’re talking to an agency principal who uses a paper timesheet system. While he’s open to the possibility of digital timesheets, he clearly doesn’t think the current set-up is that bad.

Wrong: “Using paper timesheets is inefficient and time-consuming. Plus, they lead to a ton of expensive errors.”

Right: “I helped another agency around your size transition to online timesheets. They were spending far too long reconciling the timesheets -- around 10 hours per week. Now, the software does the same thing in seconds. And there’s also been a 45% increase in accuracy.”

By using a third party to point out where your prospect is falling short, you open the door for their “Eureka!” moment without criticizing them.

2) Give Them a “Pain Menu”

Need a more direct approach? Give the prospect a couple options of pain they might be experiencing.

For example, you could say to the agency owner:

I’ve worked with many firms who use paper timesheets, and most of them struggle to bill clients accurately, estimate how long projects will take, and pay their team members quickly and easily. Do any of those issues resonate with you?”

Even if the issues you named don't resonate, you'll get your prospect's mind working. He might say, “Now that I think about it, we’ve been having trouble meeting deadlines,” or, “No, we’re not having those issues -- but getting my employees to submit their timesheets is a major pain.”

Either way, he’s acknowledged the current system is flawed. Now you can explore potential solutions.

3) Explore the Consequences of No Action

They say that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it’ll immediately hop out. But if you put the frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll stay in there until it’s boiled to death.

Right now, the prospect is the frog. They need to understand the negative consequences of doing nothing -- before it’s too late.

To open their eyes, ask them what will happen if nothing changes. For instance, you might say, “If [process] stays the same, how would that impact the business in one year?”

Follow up with, “How would that impact you personally?” or “How would that impact [you/your team’s] ability to accomplish [priority or goal]?”

4) Dig Into Their Current System

Telling someone to think a certain way usually doesn’t work. For your prospect to fully believe they’ve got a problem, they’ll need to draw their own conclusions.

You can lead them to the right conclusions by asking about their current system. They might get defensive if you immediately probe into its weaknesses -- so start with its strengths. Once they’ve shared an issue or two with you, dig deeper.

Here’s an example:

Rep: Right now you’re using two free apps to send surveys to your customers -- one for text and one for email. What are the benefits of that system?

Prospect: It’s definitely budget-friendly. Plus, both tools are pretty simple. I just type in my questions and press “send.”

Rep: Alright, so ease of use is important to you. What are the drawbacks?

Prospect: Compiling the data from both platforms is annoying, so half the time we don’t do it. I also wish I could send longer surveys. The email app limits you to five.

Rep: Tell me more about what you’d accomplish with longer surveys.

As you can see, this method subtly moves the prospect toward recognizing their pain.

What if you try these strategies and the buyer still refuses to admit anything's wrong? It's probably time to move on. After all, you can’t help someone who doesn’t think they need it.

To reveal why your open-ended questions in sales are more important than any of your spot-on answers, let me relate a conversation I recently had.

A young couple was telling me about their new car buying experience. Her Nissan Cube had been totaled in an accident (fortunately no one was hurt) and she wanted a replacement that offered an interior somewhat like the Cube’s.

They identified the Jeep Renegade fairly quickly as a vehicle that would work for them.

They headed out to a nearby Jeep dealership to take a look.

You probably know the sales “ABC” axiom — Always Be Closing — and this is exactly what the salesman they hooked up with did.

As they told me about the experience, they said he constantly pressured them into “sitting down” to go over “the numbers.”

He was doing his best to close and obviously putting his needs above theirs.

They walked off the lot and went to a second dealership.

The salesman there asked a lot of questions, explained that they were family-owned, and when my friends signaled that they were about to leave, he gave them his card and simply said to let him know if he could give them any more information or help them out in any way.

They went back to their car, talked about the good feeling they got from the salesman, and immediately trudged back onto the new car lot and bought the Jeep.

Both salesmen described here wanted to sell the car; there’s no doubt about that.

Both salesmen knew that they had to get their prospects sitting across from them to see what the financial challenges of the sale would be. Only then would they be able to pull together a deal that would be appealing to the buyers.

Why you should lead with open-ended sales questions

The first salesman failed because he was pushing to the “end game” too quickly. The second salesman was successful because his way of “leading” was to let the customer do the leading by asking open-ended questions.

He realized that by asking these questions and giving good answers he could develop:

• Rapport,
• Trust, and
• Respect

This is the premise of content marketing. When these three qualities define the relationship between the salesperson and the customer, sales will happen. And even more importantly: Repeat sales and referrals will happen!

Being able to ask good open-ended questions is one of the most important skills to develop. You must be able to ask questions that are relevant to each specific prospect; you can’t have a list of three questions and apply them to everyone, although you should have a good — and relevant — open-ended question or two that gets the conversation flowing.

When you ask the right questions and — hear this, it’s important — listen to and process the answers, you are well on your way to being seen as an expert and advisor rather than a salesperson.

As soon as your prospects begin to relate to you as a trusted advisor, sales will begin to flow.

What exactly are open-ended sales questions?

I’ve been referring to “open-ended sales questions” here and I want to make sure that you understand exactly what I’m talking about.

Open-ended questions are those where the person will answer in a few sentences, versus a word or two.

Going back to our car salesmen, if one of them were to ask, “Are you planning on buying today?” — that would not be an open-ended question.

However, a question such as, “What features are most important to you?” would be a good open-ended sales question.

How these questions are strung together is a strategy good sales professionals use to lead the conversation. The trick is to listen to the answers, process that information, and use your increased understanding to formulate follow-up questions that allow prospects to see how your product or service will solve their problems…or, frankly, not solve their problems!

If you feel you need help coming up with the best questions, ask if you can shadow the best salesperson you know and carefully listen for the questions that draw out important information from clients and prospects.

Get this skill down and you’ll be on your way to becoming a top salesperson.

No question about it!

Scaling open-ended questions.

The best part of using open-ended questions is that they go beyond one-on-one interactions. You can speak to one to reach many.

The more you thoughtfully listen to your customers the more you can use these conversations to inform the content you create and share.

Listen to your audience’s frequently asked questions and concerns, develop content around these topics, and share it with your audience, online and off.

Have an example of using open-ended questions in your business? Share your experience in the comments section.

Case studies are a hidden gem in the content marketing world. However, sophisticated marketers and sellers realise they often provide the catalyst a curious buyer needs to take action.

The following is a look at some of the primary benefits of lead generation and selling with case studies, and how to do so effectively.

Relevant Application

A case study offers application to information about your company and solutions. When developed effectively, a good case study incorporates people, problems, solutions and experiences that your targeted buyers find easily relatable.

A common approach with case studies is to build a database with studies that align with each of your solutions. Before crafting your stories, it is helpful to develop detailed personas of your customers for each solution. Knowing the traits, circumstances and needs of your prospects helps you prepare stories that matter.

After you create one or more case studies to connect with specific buyer problems and your appropriate solution, you have a story to share that will resonate.

Proof of Success

Case studies prove that you know what you are talking about.

It doesn’t take proven expertise and experience to put up a landing page talking about your company and solutions. A good company typically has a website with product information in place from day one.

However, quality case studies more effectively prove that you have successfully implemented solutions that satisfy buyers. A typical study introduces the problem the buyer faces, the objectives for a solution, the process used to recommend a solution and the results of its execution.

Outline of Your Process

The majority of B2B buyers now conduct initial research online before ever connecting with a provider. This process is often ripe with uncertainty, confusion and hesitation.

Many companies provide adequate information about their solutions on their websites, but buyers remain uncertain about the specific process used to identify, recommend and implement the right solution.

From start to finish, an effective case study depicts your commitment to resolving a buyer’s problems and the positive experience that results when a buyer is completely satisfied. In a sense, case studies extend the value of a testimonial and show that problem-resolving is your focus.

A Compelling Story

Perhaps the simplest reason case studies help sell is because they allow you to present a compelling story. More than information sheets or solution pages, case studies enable you to appeal to the emotions of a buyer.

A well-developed and delivered story has the power to influence people much more than rational information. Because of this, your case study may serve as the final catalyst that triggers a response from your lead generation system.

Advertisers often say that “Every great ad tells a story.” With case studies, your marketing tool is literally a story about your brand with a happy ending.

Conclusion

Don’t get so caught up with blog posts, information sheets and whitepapers that you overlook the compelling ability of a case study to tell your story. Case studies help you relate to customers and show genuine empathy and expertise in resolving a buyer’s problem.

LinkedIn has stated that B2B executives are 5x more likely to engage with an organisation that gives them new insights about the business they are in.

When used correctly in your marketing efforts, case studies allow you to generate better leads by

(1) validating the value of your products and solutions in addressing buyers needs and

(2) helping identify new solutions to solving business problems for your target audience.

Two points that, according to the CMO Council, are two of the most influential content topics to B2B executives .

Don’t be so fast to acquiesce on price. Instead, defend your price and firmly establish your value. Deb Calvert, your on-air sales coach, interviewed top sales influercer Anthony Iannarino about why and how to defend your price and strengthen your position.

You know how hard it can be to do that! Empowered buyers are demanding price discounts, deals and negotiated rates. It’s so tempting to shave the cost and close the sale… But that short-term solution could be costing you more than you realize.

So don’t do it. Instead, check out this illuminating interview from the archives of CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals. Iannarino will share his secrets so you can confidently defend your price and convey  your value to buyers.

Excerpts from Deb Calvert’s talk with Anthony Iannarino on Why and How to Defend your Price

Deb: “Why do we need to spend time talking about how to defend your price? What is it that you’re observing or sensing out there that has gotten your attention?”

Anthony: “The key to giving these clients that we’re working working with the real outcomes that they need, to help them get the real results that they need, is this: We have to create value for them. That means we have to price that value in a way that a lot of us couldn’t deliver. And when we don’t defend our price, we stop capturing the profit that we need to deliver those outcomes. And then we fail our customers. It’s all about the value that you create, and you have to defend your price because that’s how you defend the value that you’re creating.”

Deb: “Why do sellers cave on price? What’s going on?”

Anthony: “Because there’s a lot of different reasons that sales people feel that they need to cave on price. The first (and probably the easiest one) to discover is that the salesperson doesn’t really believe that they created the value to justify the higher price. They don’t believe in the product. They don’t believe that it’s different from their competitors’. It’s easy to carry around that belief and say ‘If my price was just lower I could beat this competitor… they’re beating me on price because mine’s too high.’ If you don’t believe that you’re creating more value, if you don’t believe that your work justifies the higher price, you’re gonna cave on price because you don’t have it in your heart to be confident and stand firm on your price because it’s the right level of value.”

Tune in to find out more as Anthony Iannarino explains why and how to defend your price!

Once you listen to this interview, you’ll think twice before caving on price again. Iannarino tells it like it is, and he’ll convince to defend your price! That’s why there’s no better way to maximize your windshield time than by listening to CONNECT! Online Radio for Sales Professionals, the place where you’ll learn to cut out continuances, put an end to pending and stop stalling out in sales.

 

The post Defend Your Price! Anthony Iannarino Tells You How appeared first on People First.

It’s an election year in the U.S. – and the two primary party candidates have very different plans for the country. Across the pond, Brexit has placed the UK in limbo within the European Union. Foreign companies in Britain wonder if they should move their European base to the continent. Meanwhile, Turkey just experienced a failed coup. With changes like these, you never know the market impact.

When it comes to sales, operating in an uncertain market can take a business toll. Prospects can postpone purchasing decisions, meaning that you need to work a bigger pool or expand into new markets – to avoid a sales slowdown. Further, with shifting economies, you can’t just base your numbers on what you did last quarter – making them difficult to assess. Your sales rep productivity becomes even more important.

Fortunately, new sales technologies are emerging that help alleviate the pain of market uncertainty. These technologies take away a lot of the sales guesswork, accelerate sales process, and increase rep productivity. Leveraging powerful analytics and advanced automation, they make it easier for your business to ride out market shifts by letting your organization:

1. Run fast and run deep

In an uncertain market, you need more activity to get the same result. To generate more sales activity, you can 1) hire more reps or 2) speed your sales processes. Sales automation lets you speed your sales processes and increase the level of sales activities – without hiring new reps or making existing reps work 24/7.

Say you want to try out a new market to offset a slowdown in another. With automated email and call scheduling, you can build and implement a campaign far faster – letting you much more easily test the viability of that vertical.

Sales automation lets you touch more prospects, faster, and more efficiently. Whether it’s through pre-built email templates, group email, or email and call sequencing, automation takes time-consuming grunt work off reps so that they get more time in the day to sell. To stay competitive, sales automation has become a necessity.

2. Get the facts

Going with your ‘gut instinct’ in an uncertain market is perilous business. If you’re wrong, you may not have the ability to recover. Getting data based insight into what’s going on in your pipeline is essential.

You need to understand how many activities and what type of activities are needed for your reps to move deals through the pipeline. You need these insights on a regular basis, as they can fluctuate along with the market.

Engagement analytics can provide this data – showing you what activities your team typically needs to get a quality connect. These analytics also give you a real-time view into the activities your team has done – so that you can monitor to be sure that the levels are on track. If they’re not, you can coach reps to what is needed based on actual behaviors. With analytics, it’s easy to make every rep behave like your top rep – even in a downturn.

3. Focus on what matters most

You never want your team to waste time on poor prospects, but, in a slower economy, prioritizing your focus is even more important. If a prospect is a ‘no,’ you need to know ASAP, so you don’t waste precious time.

Sales analytics help prioritize leads by showing which prospects are most engaged with your outreach. By prioritizing prospects, companies are increasing connect rates up to 35% – getting more demos, more qualified leads, and more pipeline – all critical to keep going strong in an uncertain market.

4. Become a customer champion

Make the engagement about their needs – not about yours. Do your homework, so that you understand their business challenges. Surprisingly, in my experience, most sales people don’t do this, so if you do, it really makes you stand out from the pack.

Sales analytics can also give you valuable insights into prospects’ areas of interest, so you can personalize your outreach accordingly. According to sales strategist Tiffani Bova, Innovation Analyst at Salesforce, if buyers don’t believe sales people understand their needs, they lose trust. In fact, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger asserts that “trust surpasses knowledge” as the #1 key to success. Analytics help sales understand where the customer is in the buying process and give them visibility into their pain points, so you can build that trust.

Selling in an uncertain market is never a sure thing. However, by using sales technology, your business can help offset some of the unknown – letting you more effectively minimize the impact to your business.

As I mentioned a while back, I keynoted at Search Insider Summit in Key Largo earlier this year. One of the main threads of that conference was on attribution, which attempts to give the proper credit to marketing tactics.We discuss this at some length in Outside-In Marketing: Using Big Data to Guide Your Content Marketing. The object of this article is to give you a taste of what’s in the book.

Most of you are familiar with the challenge: your boss wants to focus on getting more leads and, based on his reading of the data, the way to do that is to improve conversations at the last step of the buyer journey. You know so-called last touch attribution is not the only way to improve the volume and quality of leads. It is probably not the best way. But how do you prove it?

Until you prove it, your marketing budgets will focus on the bottom of the funnel at the expense of the top of the funnel. The result is predictable: a lack of focus on the experiences that could attract new buyers, and only incremental improvement in leads and wins.

If you can’t prove it at scale, try proving it in a small test case. You can usually get funding to at least try a new way of giving the proper credit to top-of-funnel activities. When you do, your trial can turn the religion of last-touch attribution into the science of an attribution model that works for your business and its digital buyers.

Attribution science

The first step towards attribution science is to decide not to test any preconceived attribution model–last touch, first touch, all touches, etc. All your current models could be inadequate to your buyers and their journeys. Rather than starting with a preconceived model, look at the data you have, and see if you can discover any patterns. Focus on the most successful experiences and try to find common best practices. Then test these practices in your trial. The idea is to let the data guide you in what attribution model works best.

One thing your data might tell you is that you have a measurement problem. You could, for example, only measure the quality of your assets (white papers, case studies, videos demos, etc.) based on the number of quality responses they generate. But, try as you like, you can’t find anything distinctive about the assets that are performing the best. A common reason is your digital journey is complex, and you are not measuring all the variables.

Before you begin your test, make sure you are at least measuring these things:

• Tracking: Cookie every user and measure each users’ entire journey. A common thing that digital marketers miss is the users who enter your website through natural search. Many pixel-based measuring systems only measure visitors who originally arrive from paid media clicks. When you start tracking organic search visitors in the same way, you can see the whole customer journey for all of your potential buyers.One thing you will find is that every direct referral (those that come from direct URL typing or bookmarks) has its origins in another kind of referral, either paid or organic. You can’t attribute anything to direct referrals unless you can track them back to their origin–a visit that precedes the direct load. When you start attributing direct traffic to their ultimate source, it will be a revelation.
• Ungated responses: Buyers don’t download assets they can’t find. Google doesn’t index assets that require a registration. So the only way they find your assets if you put a registration in front of them is through your digital experiences. That severely limits potential buyer interactions with your key assets.The other main problem with requiring registrations is abandonment. Look at the abandonment rates on your registrations. If they are high, it’s because you are not giving enough value in exchange for the effort required to fill out the form. How do potential buyers know they will get equal value? When in doubt, they abandon.If you put your registration in the middle of the asset, the asset can be available to every potential buyer and it can generate more quality responses. For example, if you have an e-book, give the first chapter away and require registration for the rest. When you give your potential buyers a taste of what they will get when they register, you get a much more accurate picture of the value of your assets.
• Site architecture: Besides over gating, the main way sites challenge users is through confusing user journeys. The way to measure to what extent your site provides elegant user journeys is by analyzing the links. Numerous link analysis tools are available that can measure the relevance of a call to action to the experience it sends people, and can replicate this measurement at scale. When you correlate these results to the bounce rates that occur when a user lands on one experience from another, you can get a good sense of the choke points.

If you are confident you can measure user interactions accurately, it’s time for marketing science.

Testing Hypotheses

All science starts with a hypothesis. In the case of digital marketing, your digital experiences can be so complex it is tough to know where to start. This is where looking for patterns in your current user behavior data can help. You might find that certain content types don’t seem to work at all in certain places in the buy cycle. For example, white papers are particularly bad at helping people figure out if a product is right for them. You might find that certain experiences seem to work pretty well for certain stages in the buyer journey. For example, demo videos have a low abandonment rate and a high response rate in the consideration phase.

These discoveries could be starting points of hypotheses. For example, “If every potential buyer could see a demo video when they are considering different products in a category, quality response rates will go up across the board.” That’s a hypothesis. To see whether it is worth doing a proper test, compare the buyer journeys for products that have the demo video and those that don’t. If you see a pattern, start building a test.

Sticking to our hypothesis, we could conduct an A/B test where the same experiences either contain a demo video or don’t. Perhaps in one version, the call to action is a demo video and the other is a white paper on the same topic. If you replicate this test in a representative sample, you have scientific proof that your hypothesis is right or not.

What does this have to do about attribution? The idea is to string these hypotheses together for at least one buyer journey and product family and see what’s working and what isn’t. If you measure everything and build your tests well, the correct attribution model will emerge. Then replicate it for other buyers and products. Not all buyers are alike. And not all products require the same journey steps. So expect some variation.

Device tracking

What I have outlined above is a good approach to attribution if you can track a user on a single device. If your buyers use multiple devices for the same journey, tracking is challenging, to say the least. But we will leave that kind of attribution to another article. For now, you should have enough to start building a scientific attribution model that is tuned to your buyers and your business.

When you’re involved in the inbound marketing world, you hear the phrase “buyer’s journey” a lot. It’s used when we discuss audience personas and when we try to figure out where to find prospects and how to reach out to them. But in case you need a simple, clear picture of what the buyer’s journey truly is, or you want an easy way to explain it to your clients and coworkers, listen up.

Content is great, but you need context to make it all count. The context for content is the buyer’s journey itself.

Understanding the buyer’s journey is the key to knowing when marketing and sales should be involved, and also how they should be working together. It determines how you work to help your prospects along their way and breaks down into three phases:

The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

Awareness

Overview: Your persona knows that they have an issue, but they need to determine what it is specifically, in order to begin looking for the right solutions.

Buyer questions: “What’s wrong? How do I fix it?”

The awareness stage is about letting your audience know that you are a valuable and credible source for the answers they seek. Buyers are busy scouring the internet to learn more about how other people have experienced similar problems and come through successful. The read blogs, ask their colleagues and reach out to see who can help them out.

Provide them with the stories and guides they are looking for, so that they know you understand their need, and are prepared to address it.

Consideration

Overview: Your persona is on their way toward finding a solution, but they want to make sure they have all of the background information they need to make a well-informed decision.

Buyer questions: “Who can help me? Do they address all of my concerns?”

For a B2B company, this is the stage where you become even more involved in your buyer’s journey. It’s where they take the leap from skimming your website to actually reaching out to you, and you need to be ready to reach back.

The buyer is gathering all of the information they can get regarding the solution they need, all while checking out those possible solutions and seeing if they stack up.

By seeking out new solutions and tools, the buyer learns about the functionality and capabilities a solution needs to have if it is going to help them succeed. Their list of solutions, despite seeming endless, is actually becoming narrower as the buyer determines that some no longer cover their needs.

Decision

Overview: Your persona has done their research, and has narrowed their choices. They only thing left to do is to buy.

Buyer questions: “Why buy now? Why buy from you?”

The buyer is ready to purchase, but needs those last few fears calmed, and those last few questions answered. They are looking for comparisons – ways to see how one solution or tool is better than another. They need assurance that they are making the very best possible choice, and need help getting over any last hurdles.

Be transparent about how your solution stacks up against the others, and don’t let them go digging for that information elsewhere. Transparency helps you seem more trustworthy. Give them demos or trials when possible, and let them know exactly what they can expect from your service.

If possible, offer them a guarantee, one personalized for your offer or product. Help them know that they are safe in your hands and that their problem will be solved, without a doubt.

How to Leverage the Buyer’s Journey

Every business is different, and the needs of your buyer will vary as well. Just as you need to know who your buyer personas are, you need to have a clear understanding of the issues they face, the questions they have and, most importantly, how they interact with your business along that journey.

Learn more about how buyers seek your company out as a valued resource. Determine what touchpoints you will have with them as they go along, and make sure they are getting the answers and help they need at each stage of their journey.

Creating content and workflows to back up each stage of the buyer’s journey can be a lot of work, but it’s the heart of inbound marketing, and it’s how you attract your audience by helping them along their way.

If you aren’t sure where to start, get to know your personas better. Sit down with other key executives, and work to answer who your target audience is, what their pain points are and how they go about seeking solutions to their problems. (Psst! The persona worksheet template below is a great starting point.)

Have any insights into the buyer’s journey that help you address your own audience’s needs? Comment below.

Shifting to Outcome-based Accountability and Revenue Metrics

While cost-per-lead measurement has been the de facto favorite for evaluating marketing programs, we are seeing radical and positive shifts in how marketing is evaluating qualified leads.

For one, there is greater recognition that marketing should deliver qualified leads that are fully vetted, closeable and likely to convert through the buyer’s journey.

Marketing must align its B2B lead generation activities and resources with deeper-in-the-funnel outcomes. Some trends in the industry:

• Marketing’s mission includes direct responsibility for a higher portion of revenue.

• Depending on a marketing resource’s role and level, parts of compensation can be tied to performance metrics like overall revenue and deeper-in-the-funnel outcomes.

• Marketing KPIs are moving from top-of-the-funnel expense metrics to deeper-in-the-funnel actionable indicators like pipeline deals.

For these trends to positively impact overall sales success, I need to re-emphasize that qualified leads must be fully vetted, possess the potential for high close value, and be highly convertible. The reality is qualified leads with these characteristics will cost more and will not fit inside cookie cutter cost-per-lead measurement criteria.

In the search for the holy grail of marketing KPIs, we want ones that do the following:

• Demonstrate the impact of early-stage activity on later-stage outcomes.

• Correctly emphasize the ROI value of qualified leads over their cost.

• Tie B2B lead generation activity to overall revenue and profits.

• Identify the most successful marketing initiatives.

• Deliver insights that can be leveraged to run future high-return activity.

The cost-per-lead metric accomplishes none of the above.

Cost-Per-Lead

Cost-per-lead is not the correct metric for measuring marketing initiative success for the following reasons:

• It incorrectly incents volume over quality.

• It incorrectly emphasizes cost over ROI value.

• It doesn’t deliver high quality, high value or more convertible leads.

• It adds costs when sales discovers many leads don’t meet criteria.

• It is appears too early in the funnel to be meaningful in measuring outcomes.

• It is not actionable in planning and predicting future investments.

So if not cost-per-lead, what are the right marketing KPIs?

Here are the marketing KPI’s that I recommend:  

Lead-to-Pipeline Conversions (MQLs-to-SALs)

The lead-to-pipeline conversion ratio demonstrates solid marketing and sales alignment: acceptance demonstrates sales’ confirmation that these are the qualified leads they need and expect.

Lead-to-Opportunity Conversions (SALs to SQLs)

This ratio confirms that marketing is on target with delivery of qualified leads that convert to forecastable opportunities.

Cost-Per-Opportunity (Cost-Per-SQL)

A more accurate depiction than cost-per-lead, cost-per-opportunity ties costs to outcome-based performance. Opportunities in this stage act as confirmation that leads are meeting requirements around quality, value and convertibility. Meeting these thresholds can naturally require greater investments than programs evaluated on a cost-per-lead basis.

ROI

This is where the dust settles and high level conclusions can be drawn—at both the collective and individual initiative level. It’s fairly common when all is said and done to find that leads, opportunities and sales that cost more do so for a reason: they generate greater marketing ROI.

The right KPIs go beyond cost-per-lead to reveal the B2B lead generation programs and investment levels needed to meet corporate growth and revenue targets, as well as investor and analyst expectations.

Concluding Comments

Selecting and applying the right marketing KPIs are driven by the nature of the sale, how a lead is defined, and the compelling need to evaluate B2B lead generation activity based on lead quality, lead value and lead convertibility. For these reasons, deeper-in-the-funnel, outcome-based numbers are required. Only these types of metrics can be successfully leveraged to plan future initiatives that can be predicted—based on a track record—to help sales sell more, sell better and sell faster.

I might also add a comment on how much a complex sale lead should cost. More than you think, but probably a lot less than you are paying when all factors are considered. Is it possible to create high-quality, high-value and convertible leads to support a field sales force selling a $100,000-plus solution for $350 per lead? Frankly, no. Over the past 20 years, the average cost-per-opportunity for a relatively complex sale has ranged from the high triple-digit to low four-digit range—and these programs returned excellent ROI. Companies that reduce budgets, increase lead quotas and dump more poor quality leads on sales faster than ever before are shooting themselves in the foot.

I encourage you to join with me to put the final nails in the cost-per-lead coffin and affirm it is not an acceptable metric for measuring the success of marketing investments for the B2B complex sale.

Let’s make 2016 the year to embrace marketing KPIs that are outcome-based, strategically predictive, and fully aligned with both sales success and overall revenue generation.

Increase Your Leads and Sales With LinkedIn

Is your business ready to accelerate your lead generation beyond a website?

Would you like to establish your brand as an industry expert?

According to LinkedIn the social network, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, is the world’s largest professional network:

In order to attract more interested prospects your business needs to tap into this powerful resource. According to an article on Top Dog Social Media LinkedIn is 277 percent more effective than other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to connect with both influencers and leads. With the right strategy in place you can make this as an effective social selling tool.

Building relationships is the best place to start with your connections and professional groups. By providing helpful feedback, comments, and valuable information you can attract them to your business.

It’s important to make these activities a regular part of your marketing schedule in order to be successful. There are several ways you can attract more leads and sales without directly approaching your network:

Invest in the new LinkedIn Advertising – This tool (formally part of LinkedIn Accelerator) gives your brand the ability to grow your leads, go beyond InMail, generate a sponsored ad, and more. According the LinkedIn, you can use this paid resource to better connect with influencers in your industry with precise B2B targeting. Hubspot‘s sponsored content resulted in 400% more leads within their target market:

Build relationships with InMail – If you are not ready to add advertising to your budget then your business can create a meaningful email to your contacts such as a new product announcement or a new idea that they can weigh in on. The focus should only be to build a relationship and the interest in what you have to offer will follow. Avoid mass emails in order to appear as a spammer, which can also hurt your reputation.

Re-purpose your content – As you publish on your blog LinkedIn also provides their own platform to publish articles or re-purpose previously published articles. Use this feature to bring more subscribers to your website and connect with your readers through comments. Additionally you can track who your readers are through their analytics:

Exchange ideas in professional groups – These targeted communities are a great way to learn more about your industry as well as provide helpful information to others and establish credibility. According to the rules of each group you can share informational articles, and provide useful comments on member posts. These are places to leave the sales message out and instead contribute something of value.

Monitor daily notifications -Each day your business will want to check on your new connections, comments, published posts, and group activity. Be ready to communicate with your connections in a way that is personal, helpful and open. Sharing content on your other social networks can also be helpful in building relationships beyond LinkedIn.

Post something new daily – Increase the level of interest on LinkedIn with your articles, a video, quotes, ect. As you share your knowledge, expertise, and updates on what you are doing in your industry you can attract more interested connections and prospects. This information can also be promoted on your company page, which can attract a good number of followers.

With these steps your business can attract new leads from LinkedIn, which can be converted into sales as you nurture your relationships. The more effort you put into the process the better the outcome. Use this social network to build more brand awareness as you establish yourself as an expert in your field.

LinkedIn recently unveiled a new feature that makes engaging with prospective customers, investors or potential employers easier than ever.

When it comes to generating more business for yourself using an online platform like LinkedIn, few factors are as important as speed.

The ability to quickly engage someone while he or she is interacting with your content or viewing your LinkedIn profile is a fantastic way to strike up instant conversations with warm, inbound sales leads or potential employers curious about what you might have to offer.

It’s all become possible because LinkedIn is both hosting the world’s largest professional cocktail party (via the content you share on LinkedIn, your profile page, etc.) and acting as a virtual emcee by constantly introducing guests to one another.

New Connections, Quick Conversations

Now, LinkedIn has taken its professional courtship services to a level that would make contestants on “The Bachelor” envious.

If you don’t already have access, you should soon see the name and face of each and every new LinkedIn connection you make automatically dropping into your LinkedIn inbox.

Along with that person’s name and professional title, you’ll also receive one of two messages based on whether you’re the one doing the inviting or the accepting.

For people who have invited you to connect, once you accept their invitation, you get a message inside your inbox that says, “[Person’s name] is now a connection” along with any personal text they put into their invite.

For people you have invited to connect, and who have accepted your invitation, you get a message that says, “[Person’s name] accepted your invitation” along with a recap of whatever customized message you used as part of your invite text.

That gives you instant context and access to send a personalized, 1-on-1 message to your new connection, kicking off a real-time conversation via back-and-forth messaging, similar to texting or instant messaging services.

Relationship-Based Selling Rules on LinkedIn

Given LinkedIn’s increasing desire to facilitate the facilitate the exchange of professionally-themed products and services between professionals on the network, this latest development makes the process even smoother than before.

Here’s a step-by-step example of how it can work:

Step 1 – You utilize LinkedIn Search to find your ideal prospects.

Step 2 – You send those prospects personalized invitations to connect.

Step 3 – As each new prospect accepts your invite, you instantly send him or her a 1-on-1 message.

Step 4 – You send a message thanking the prospect for connecting, warming him or her up by noting a personal item gleaned from his or her profile (where he or she lives, went to school, hobbies, etc.) and begin building a relationship based around how you can help him or her professionally.

Step 5 – You read, react and listen to what your new connection is saying, and offer up the appropriate advice, tips, tools and resources based on what you think the situation merits.

Don’t Propose on the First Date!

The key is not rushing too fast into trying to consummate your newfound professional relationships by turning them into instant sales.

Rather, it’s about building longer-term, value-based relationships while also netting some “quick wins” along the way.

Timing, as always, can be everything, and the more targeted the prospects or potential customers/employers you connect to, the more likely you are to find someone who has an immediate need and is ready to jump on what you have to offer.

Assuming, of course, that you’ve first created a killer LinkedIn profile by making it clear how you help your target audience achieve their professional goals, the courtship can move more quickly than an episode of reality-television dating if done correctly!

Speed + Specificity = Success on LinkedIn

It’s all based around understanding how to combine the speed and context LinkedIn loads into each and every interaction you have on the network, along with what goes into a crafting an effective sales funnel for your business or personal brand.

Having spent 48 straight months studying how to sell products and services on LinkedIn, it’s become clear to me that a “give-first” model of content marketing, combined with the classic “Know, Like and Trust” elements that go into building any successful professional relationship works best.

Thankfully, LinkedIn keeps making it easier than ever to execute this type of strategy. And, with Microsoft purchasing LinkedIn and promising to integrate many of its most popular products and platforms into the network, things are only going to get better – and easier – moving forward.

Welcome to "The Pipeline" — a weekly column from HubSpot, featuring actionable advice and insight from real sales leaders.

A while back, I was at the park, and my phone rang. I rarely get phone calls, and I usually ignore them. This time, something felt different. I decided to pick up. Bad move — it was a salesperson.

Him: Hi this is Sean calling from Bulletproof Lead Gen. Do you have a min—

Me: Hey, I’m not interested. Have a great day. *hangs up*

My response is what we as salespeople face every single day. In fact, when my team and I talk to sales teams, one of the challenges we hear most about is prospecting. Finding qualified prospects is hard enough — but your work isn’t done once you find qualified prospects who match your buyer persona.

You still need to keep them interested enough to listen and buy from you and not a competitor. Here are five soundbites that we’ve found top sales reps use to develop interest in prospects and keep the conversation moving toward the close.

5 Phrases Top Salespeople Say on Prospecting Calls

1. An introduction baked with credibility.

There was nothing offensive about Sean’s introduction. He was polite and sounded well-meaning. But the moment he asked for a minute of my time, my instinctive answer was no. He didn’t explain why he called or why I should give him my time. I was relaxing in the park — not waiting for a sales pitch.

Here’s what Sean could have said instead to get my attention.

“Hi, this is Sean calling from Bulletproof Lead Gen. I’m calling because I saw that you downloaded an ebook about generating more leads earlier today. I’ve helped dozens of companies grow their leads and revenue. Would you be interested in having a conversation about how I can help your business?”

With this type of introduction, the rep immediately explains what made him call and how he hopes to help me. I’d be open to learning how I could improve my business even if I had no intentions of buying anything.

2. A business-oriented value proposition.

Value propositions often take the following form: “My product will help you achieve X, Y, and Z. Here are its 147 features.”

This approach sucks. Translate that monologue into a narrative about exactly how those features will make your prospect’s life better. By offering tangible outcomes, you make it more clear that your product or service is valuable and worth your prospect’s time.

Here’s an example of an effective value proposition written by sales expert Jill Konrath:

“We help large companies reduce the cost of their employee benefits programs without impacting benefit levels. With the spiraling costs of healthcare today, this is a critical issue for most businesses. One of our recent clients, a large manufacturing company similar to yours, was struggling with how to reduce spending in this area. We saved them over $800,000 in just six months. Plus, they didn’t cut any services to their employees, nor did their employees have to pay more.”

3. A rapport-builder.

Research shows only 3% of buyers think salespeople are trustworthy. Building rapport is an essential part of building trust with your prospect. If a prospect doesn’t trust you, they won’t buy.

Proper rapport-building requires research to find talking points with your prospect. That could mean finding their LinkedIn or Twitter profiles, their website, or other content and information they’ve shared.

Here are three examples of questions that can help you build rapport:

• “I see that your company is located in [NAME OF CITY]. I went there on a trip last month. Is your office located right in the city? Have you ever been to [NAME OF RESTAURANT / OTHER LOCATION]?”
• “I saw on your LinkedIn that you previously held a role as [ROLE] and now you’re doing [CURRENT ROLE]. How did you make that transition?”
• “I saw on Twitter that you just visited [COUNTRY]. What was the highlight of your trip?”

4. The second-level questions.

Listening doesn’t just mean being quiet and letting the prospect speak. You have to demonstrate that you’re listening. This means asking second-level questions — questions that build on the ones you’ve asked before and require inferences on your part.

Below are two phrases you can use to show that you’re open and eager to hear what your prospect’s challenges are and demonstrate that you’re listening to them by reiterating and diving deeper:

• “You’ve spoken about [X challenge]. When I encounter prospects with this problem, they’re often also facing Y and Z. How are you thinking about those areas?”
• “So what you’re telling me is… [summary of what they told you]. Will you tell me more about [specific point]?”

5. The positioning statement.

Positioning statements are a sales rep’s secret weapon. They capture the purpose of a product and how it’s used — and they help shape a line of questioning and value proposition that’ll make the prospect say, “Yes! That’s me!”

They have two goals:

1. Make yourself more credible
2. Qualify the prospect to make sure it makes sense to continue the conversation

Say something like: “When I talk to businesses like yours, they often face [challenges]. Are you facing these as well?”

Prospecting at scale is difficult, but with the phrases above or even a sales script, you can ensure you’re making the best use of your time.

Your B2B marketing decisions shouldn’t be made in a vacuum. When you’re spending time crafting and honing campaigns, you want to ensure they hit their mark – and deliver you the leads and customers you’re hoping for.

The best way to achieve this is to allow your B2B data to influence your marketing decisions. Your data is a highly valuable resource that will help you to know who to target, when, and in what way.

Writing for CIO, Tom Kaneshige says: “In words tinged with sombre acceptance, today’s digital marketers proclaim customer data as their new master. No marketing decision shall be made without closely consulting the data-analytics tea leaves. Marketing’s black art has just become quantifiable.”

So what does this look like in practice?

The right people; the right way; the right time

This is an important marketing tripod: it is just as ineffective to aim your marketing campaigns at the wrong people, as it is to target the right people in an inappropriate way. To construct each leg of this tripod, the best place to start is with your current B2B database.

First and foremost, you need to ensure that your database is clean.

You can then start analyzing your database.

By examining your contacts, you can work out who your best customers are, where they’re coming from and what they have in common. You can then target similar prospects, in order to win more sales. For instance, you might find that people who hold a particular position within an organization are the most responsive to your campaigns; or that contacting prospects in the middle of the week leads to better results than doing so at the start or end of the week.

You can also look at which mediums work best – whether email, telemarketing, direct mail, or a combination of the three. Of course, different segments of your audience may produce different results in this area.

All of this information can then be used to inform your future marketing campaigns, helping you to better meet your audience’s needs and significantly improving your return on investment (ROI).

Your content

It’s not just who you target – and how and when – but what you say too. Successful marketing is dependent on providing value to your audience; in showing them that you are the organization that can solve their problems and alleviate their pain.

You can analyze your B2B data to see how your audience reacts to specific topics that you have covered in blog posts and eBooks, emails and direct mail.

Writing for HubSpot, Rachel Sprung says: “One of the most important parts of blogging is figuring out which content performs well and which doesn’t – so you can avoid writing content that doesn’t. To figure out what works on your blog, it’s helpful to understand not only how many visits you get to an individual blog post, but how many leads that blog post generates.” You can achieve this by looking at how many people click-through to a landing page from each of your posts.

Similarly, with emails, you can track how many people respond to each message that you send out and you can also implement A/B testing, whereby you send out two versions of the same email to see which one performs best. Direct mail is a little harder to track but you might, for instance, include a link to an online landing page, where recipients can access other content in return for their contact information.

It may simply be a case of trial and error to figure out what works best for your business. But figuring out what types of content deliver the highest ROI will pay dividends for your company.

Your data can tell you a lot about the people best suited to do business with your organisation. Of course, carrying out this level of analysis on a regular basis can take up a lot of your time. Whether you decide to implement these practices internally, or partner with a B2B data consultancy, who can help you to make the most of your records, your data should be a driving force in your marketing decisions.

Are your salespeople doing lots of presentations but closing very little business?  Do they think, “My job is to help the prospect understand what we do, so I have a great presentation I use.”

Presenting but Not Closing

It’s true that part of the job is educating the prospect but that should not happen until rapport has been established and needs have been determined. There are places in the sales process where presenting can be necessary and there are the times when you get put in that situation before you are ready. Either way, selling should always be more about asking and listening than about telling. Presentations need to be prepared in a way that makes them interactive. Planning questions to ask throughout the presentation gets the prospects talking. This is what will move the sale forward.

Continuous coaching is needed in this area. Your salespeople love the products and services they sell and are very knowledgeable about them, of course, they want to go out and tell everyone. They are excited to give their sales presentation. Where does a presentation fit in your sales process? How early in the sales cycle and what information is required from the prospect before presenting?

Steady, consistent sales come when we learn about our customer; their goals, their problems and their vision for growth and then determine if there is a fit between that and our product and service. The only way to do that is by listening. Salespeople need to be masters at asking the right questions, listening to the answers, and collaborating on solutions. Information on your company may need to be shared at some point but does not necessarily need to be in the form of a presentation.

Offering solutions may come in the form of a presentation, once the right conversations have occurred with the prospect. Even then, the salesperson must be prepared to ask questions throughout the presentation to engage the audience and to get them to participate.

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“Ask the right questions and listen to the answers, even when you are presenting.”
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Let’s Start with Some Basics.  

Once the prospect starts answering, interject only briefly and if relevant with a clarification question or with a benefit that fits something the speaker mentioned. Don’t worry about finishing your presentation. If they are talking, they are engaged.

Most people love to talk about themselves and their company, allow them to do that and ask good questions to keep them on track so you get the information you need.

Interweave the Solution

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“To determine if your solution will be a good fit, be sure you're talking to all of the people who…
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So if salespeople are asking and listening instead of telling and presenting how does the prospect learn about the solution? The solution should be interwoven into the conversation or presentation as appropriate. For example;

Salesperson: (the first slide is a statement of their problem as you understand it)“Your company needs to generate more leads quickly “How has your company done this in the past?”  

Prospect:“We have never really found a good solution.”  

Is this an invitation for the salesperson to dive in with their product information? No, more questions need to be asked. 

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“The only time I am 100% sure I have your undivided attention is when you are talking to me.”
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Salesperson: (Second slide – the word Solution)“What have you tried?” and after they answer, “Why didn’t that work?” 

The answers will help determine if your solution is a good fit, which you should have a good idea about from previous conversations.

Salesperson:“It sounds like you need a solution that will be easy to use, consistent and sustainable, is that right?” 

Depending on the answer, reveal some information about how your solution might work in that case. Share a slide or two about your solution. Keep the slides simple with graphics that show the solution and very few words. You do the talking, not the slides.

Salesperson:“How would this work for your company?” 

Talk to Decision Makers in Advance

It is best to make sure you have the information you need by talking to the decision makers in advance of a presentation. You get what you need and come back with a solution to fit their needs. (Much of the time preliminary questions can be asked over the phone especially when people may need to be reached prior to a presentation and they are not available to meet in person or all at the same time.) Once you have the information create a customized presentation pulling from whatever good general presentation your company already has prepared.

Provide Some Coaching

As a sales manager, this would be a good time to provide some coaching. Be sure the salesperson understands the prospect’s problem thoroughly. ?One or two slides will be needed for each benefit that speaks directly to the solutions they need. There may be lots of other fantastic benefits but don’t let them be tempted to throw them in. They can always have extra materials ready if needed.

Practice

Has the salesperson practiced the presentation? This may cause a bit of grumbling but this type of selling shortens the sales cycle because it keeps the sale moving forward or ends it quickly so time is not wasted. Salespeople appreciate that. They need to practice the balance between presenting and asking questions about what has been presented before moving on to the next idea.

At the beginning of the presentation, there should be a brief review of the things learned at the last meeting letting the prospects know that each will be covered. Start by describing their situation and the current need that led them to contact your company. Take their needs one at a time and match something from your solution that solves each. If there is an area you can’t address properly, let them know that your solution won’t cover that but that you have thought of some alternative ways to handle that. At each point along the way check in with the customer by asking a question.

A salesperson might react by saying, “Now wait a minute, I finally get a chance to present and you are telling me to ask more questions!” That’s right. When you present a solution you need to check in with the prospect to determine if that works for them and if they have any questions about it. Often when people hear ideas fed back to them it helps them clarify even further and develop new thoughts and directions. This may happen during your presentation and you will learn even more about your potential customer. You can address these things as they arise even though they may not be in your presentation. And good thing that you can because that may be the decision point and you won’t need to go through the rest of your slides.

Does this scare you? It shouldn’t. Salespeople waste so much time chasing customers that aren’t going to buy. I like to know as quickly as possible whether there is a fit between the need and my product so I can determine where to spend my time. People really appreciate it when you help them figure out that your product is not a good fit for their particular problem. It builds trust and loyalty that will lead you to future business with them or with someone they will refer you to because of your honesty.

Often I see salespeople spend hours and hours getting every word they are going to say on to a presentation deck. When what they should be doing is getting their presentation notes ready, making a few slides to help the audience understand their main points and spend time practicing. Practicing is what rarely gets done.

For examples of great presentation decks go to www.duarte.com.

Very rarely these days are purchasing decisions made by one person. None of the above will help if the salesperson is talking to one person only or the wrong people. Salespeople need to be coached to find multiple people at each organization that will be interested in their solution. Questions need to be asked of all of them individually or in a group setting.

Don’t Make a Great Presentation to the Wrong People

Presentations need to be made when all of the decision makers can be present. This is another thing that speeds up the sales cycle. Making the best presentation in the world to the wrong people rarely leads to a sale. Coach your salespeople to find all of the decision makers, take the time to ask questions, listen, and tailor their presentations to their audience. Good presentations engage the audience and encourage them to participate.

The post 5 Basics for Powerful Sales Presentations That Close Deals appeared first on Alice Heiman, LLC.

Account-based sales development is a hot topic right now. It is a buzz-worthy term that essentially means that sales development teams sell at the account – as opposed to the lead or individual contact – level.

Selling to an organization, rather than a person, might sound like an idea that is in opposition to the heavily touted “personal touch” that social media has opened up to salespeople in recent years. However, successful account-based sales development strategies are able to personalize and reap the rewards of multi-touch, collaborative sales efforts.

The secret of any great account-based sales development strategy is simple: the sales team develops and leverages personas – just as their marketing counterparts would – to connect with multiple individuals at a single organization.

Account-based selling works because sales teams are able to focus their efforts on a single account, rather than reaching out using the “spray-and-pray” method. The team must strategically think about an account as a whole as well as the individual decision makers at various levels and in various departments throughout. This naturally leads to more targeted content and outreach.

Developing a persona to use as part of your account-based sales development efforts is similar to developing a marketing persona. You begin by looking at the data: what do you know about your prospects? Typically, this will encompass title (are they managers? Executive level?) and department (do they work in IT? Purchasing? Business development?). Which titles and departments within a particular account are most relevant to you will depend on your product and positioning.

From there, work up your content and pitches to address the needs and pain points of each persona. Whether you have one sales rep per account or several, they should all be addressing the basic needs of whichever persona they are connecting with.

Personas are also useful for expanding your account-based sales development beyond sales. This method is ripe for collaboration within your own organization. Your sales team should be talking to your marketing team, business development team and executive team. This enables more focused efforts at all levels: in addition to sending an email to three business development execs at an account, your marketing team can also deliver highly targeted LinkedIn ads or social marketing messages, based on the persona your sales team worked up.

Personas will help you hit a single account with highly targeted messages, across multiple touchpoints. Whether using email, phone calls, social media, or ads, you will maintain a consistent message that is relevant to the decision-makers you ultimately want to convert.

If you’ve ever worked in sales, you probably had to cold call prospects. And if you have ever had to cold call your prospects, you probably hated it.

Those of us in sales are constantly looking for ways to work smarter instead of harder. With new technology emerging daily and a strategic focus on inbound techniques, outbound efforts have the potential to be reduced significantly without compromising growth or revenue. Can you imagine only having hot leads?

Making dials down a random list of cold prospects can often be a massive waste of time. Ask any sales manager what type of leads they would prefer their team work with, and they will say inbound every single time. Ask any real estate professional the types of leads they would prefer and they will tell you “referrals.” The quality of a lead matters. Every minute in a salesperson’s workday matters. Being mindful of where leads are coming from is the new form of smart outreach.

With a strategic plan and a focus on relationships, inbound leads will be your entire dial list. Effective inbound marketing tactics create an influx of leads without requiring the outbound outreach that every sales person dreads.

6 Ways to get better leads and avoid cold calling:

We know what you’re thinking. How can I grow my business without outbound efforts? Where do I turn for leads if not through cold calling? Below are a few techniques that are sure to land you or your team batches of hot, quality leads.

Referrals

Past sales and clients are your best referral sources. A referral is a hotter lead than any you could have prospected on your own. A current customer or past client has vouched for you. As your prospect walks through the door or picks up the phone, he or she already has higher level of trust for you simply because of their friend’s relationship with you.

Not maximizing potential referrals or allowing referrals to slip through the cracks is a mistake many sales professionals make. Staying top-of-mind with your current and past customers is essential for generating referrals. Providing great customer service and closing the sale professionally is usually not enough to maximize your referrals, either.

You should learn to ask your prospects if they know anyone else who may be interested in your services. Actively seek out referrals, because someone who just closed on a home and is getting ready to move in, doesn’t quite have referrals on the brain. They may need a gentle push or reminder in that direction.

Networking

In the age of technology, we tend to forget what actually drives revenue: people. Having a solid network and proactively attending events to meet people can be extremely beneficial in landing new leads. Carry business cards with you and make a point to start conversations. Mention your business without throwing a sales pitch.

Marketing can be just as powerful in person as it is online. Get to know local business owners or other real estate agents who could potentially refer you business, don’t underestimate the power of having a good business relationship with other professionals!

Revisit old leads

Some leads will pass on the purchase and then revisit the idea later down the road. Sift through your old leads and pick up the phone or even shoot them an email. Are they happy with the solution they chose? Or are they in need of your services again? This is your chance to rekindle the relationship because often, old leads are hotter than cold leads, and sometimes can pan out. Those calls are worth the effort.

Establish an Online Presence

Do you blog? You should. Do you have a professional website? You should. Establishing an online presence is essential for generating leads. When you make it easy to share your name and your business, more people will do it.

Engaging with your potential clients online (be it social media or elsewhere) can have a profound effect on you staying top of mind. If you are consistently maintaining a professional online presence, leads will begin to come to you. Plus, thanks to social media, you can connect on a more personal level with your leads and clients, building up that crucial trusting relationship.

Become a Guest Contributor

Do you know someone with a podcast or blog where you can guest-star? Maybe you know someone who sponsors a local event. Can you snag a speaking engagement locally? Establishing yourself as an expert in your field will most likely bring you leads. Reach out to the local newspaper, do they need a columnist or want one in your area of expertise? Check out blogs or news sites where they take submissions of articles and get writing!

Start Giving Referrals

In order to receive referrals, you need to give some, right? Try it out yourself by building up your network of professionals and others that you can refer your clients to. A strong list of referral partners is key to business growth. Building relationships with other business professionals that you respect and trust can lead to a partnership for both parties. Giving a referral is appreciated by all and can truly aid in strengthening your own referral base.

Qualified leads are better leads

The next time you block off an hour to call down a list of cold prospects, ask yourself: could I be mining my own network for referrals? Could I be building a blog to establish thought leadership around my craft? Could I be speaking at a local event to generate interest in my business? If the answer is yes, there are still hot leads out there. You just have to look for them.

Sometimes it seems that for every technological advance, there is a counter-force at work. Take the telephone. It’s a strategic tool for B2B lead follow-up, telemarketing and telesales. But with the ascendancy of voicemail and its handy helper Caller ID, it has become increasingly difficult to get a live prospect on the line.

For the sales rep, the question becomes: How do I break through the voicemail barrier, beat the technological gatekeeper and deliver my message? To leave a message or not to leave a message? That is the question you must answer. Here are some B2B phone sales tips to help you.

When to Avoid the Voicemail Time-Trap

There are times when the last thing you can afford to do is wait through a prospect’s voicemail greeting so you can leave a message of your own…a message that probably will be deleted and ignored.

But before you can make the right call on whether you should hang up and move on to the next name and number on your list, you need to consider the variables. Hang up and move on:

• If you’re inviting people to attend a one-time event or drop by your booth at an upcoming tradeshow
• If you have a list of several 1000 names and numbers to get through
• If you have limited resources available to make outbound calls
• And if your objective is to have as many brief conversations with people as possible

Time is money, and your best bet is to spend it seeking out the low-hanging fruit. Personally invite everyone you reach, but should voicemail kick in, go to the next name on your list.

Initiate a Relationship with Voicemail

When your goal is B2B sales and you’re following up on leads to begin a conversation, you need to build relationships with prospects. Instead of grabbing the low-hanging fruit, you’re slowly, steadily shimmying your way to the top of the tree.

If you have 25 to 50 highly targeted, marketing qualified leads (MQL), inside sales can turn prospects into sales qualified leads (SQL). And if you turn even two or three SQLs into clients, you can have a substantial impact on your bottom line. So treat each one like gold.

The odds are that your call will go directly to voicemail, but don’t hang up. Leave a brief message that 1) introduces you and your company, 2) demonstrates your command of the industry and issues and 3) gives the prospect a good reason to return your call.

When you send out a direct mail campaign and get a response rate of 1% to 3%, you’re happy. Use the same reasoning with every B2B sales call. Every contact has the potential to be your next important client. And every message you leave has the promise of bringing you closer to your goal: Engaging the prospect, opening a dialogue, moving them farther along the buyer’s journey and, ultimately, buying from you.

In B2B sales, don’t view voicemail as a technological gatekeeper. It’s a useful communication medium—just like email and direct mail.

To keep on track, you need to measure results the same way you would any targeted marketing campaign. To do so, you need to be consistent and leave messages 100% of the time. Then celebrate when you receive a 1% to 3% response rate to your voicemail messages.

7 Tips for Leaving Good Voicemail

When voicemail is a strategic component of your telemarketing or telesales campaign, don’t wing it. Without a plan, voicemail can leave even the most articulate, silver-throated sales rep tongue-tied and blathering aimlessly. Here are seven tips for leaving a powerful voicemail:

1. Don’t Sell on Voicemail: You can’t cram your entire sales pitch into a phone message, so don’t try.
2. Spark Your Prospect’s Interest: Show that you understand your prospect’s business issues or challenges. When you deliver your message as a question or a tease, you raise your prospect’s curiosity. Leave them wanting more.
3. Don’t Script Your Messages: Few people can recite a scripted message that sounds fresh and engaging. By thinking through what you want to say and practicing your delivery, you’ll be able to speak with confidence.
4. Be Professional: Start by introducing yourself. State your name, company and phone number. Enunciate your contact information—slowly and clearly—and speak with authority.
5. Remember, Less Is More: Keep your message short and to the point. When you know what you need to say, you should be able to say everything in less than 30 seconds.
6. Close with a Simple Call to Action: Give your prospect a reason to call you back. Whether you have a new solution, special pricing, a research report or new white paper, make it clear that there’s something in it for them.
7. Keep Your Message Fresh: If you follow up every week or so, make each voicemail new and intriguing. Build on your message. And if you want to perfect your message, try A/B split testing—with half of your recipients receiving Message A and the other half Message B. Track your results to see what works best.

So stop looking at voicemail as a barrier. Instead, understand its advantages and use the B2B phone sales tips to open doors to new sales.

Then, of course, there is the whole discussion of using technology for leaving voicemail, but we will leave that for another day.

Funnel Ball

Do you guys remember funnel ball? Funnel ball is a game that is played at a park or playground. You throw a ball up into a basket-like thing and there is a funnel that the ball comes through and you get points based on where the ball comes out. You could get two, four, six, or eight points depending on whether the funnel has two, three or four exit zones. The goal is to be the first to get to a particular number. When you throw your ball in, if it comes out the eight, you get eight points. The goal would be to get to twenty-one or whatever number you choose. There are no real rules. I looked it up online. You simply just make your own rules, throw the ball in the funnel, and have fun. You could have a rule where you throw the ball up and if you catch the ball when it comes out, then you get the points. If nobody catches it, nobody gets the points. Or you can just throw it in get the points based on wherever it comes out.

Funnel ball is a cool little kid’s game, but marketing funnels are very random things and that’s the way that people treat them. Now, there are two different kinds of funnels. There’s a marketing funnel and there’s a sales funnel. In a marketing funnel, you get people into the funnel, and then you try to get them out in a particular direction to a specific product or service. A sales funnel is pretty much the same thing, but you’re trying to get them to purchase a specific product or service. Now, from what I’ve seen from many people in multiple companies, their marketing and sales funnels look like Rube Goldberg machines. If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, it’s this very concocted thing where you start a ball and it rolls down a hill and it knocks over a card, and then something drops down and hits a fulcrum, and then knocks another ball … it is just all over the place.

Sales and Marketing Funnels

What I want to do today is talk about sales and marketing funnels, narrow it down and give it some scope. The reason I’m doing this is because I was at a conference and there was a lot of talk about marketing funnels. One person said, “Okay, here’s how you do a funnel.” What you do is you have what’s known as a trip wire. It’s a dollar or free with shipping kind of thing, and you get people to purchase something first. This will be somebody that you know is going to purchase in the future or probably has a more likely chance to purchase in the future. Maybe you give away a freemium. Now, a freemium could be an eBook, a video or a lot of different things. You give the freemium, and now you’re getting these people on your list.

That’s more of a marketing funnel thing, where you get people into your list. I just gave away a $27 product for free, and I got hundreds of people on my list, but then when I emailed them they didn’t know who I was. They don’t have any value into what I gave them. There are a few that do, but most of them just got the free item and moved on. Maybe selling something up front might be the right way to do it.

Funnel Goals

Let’s break it down. First and foremost, every funnel has to have a goal, just like when you’re playing funnel ball. You have to have some kind of goal. The first person who gets to twenty-one wins, right? Or maybe it’s ten or eleven or whatever the number that you pick. You have got to have a goal. I look at it as a series of funnels to do a series of things.

Let’s start off with a basic funnel for a heating and air conditioning company, because I love those guys. Obviously, they would love to sell a furnace or an air conditioner. Maybe to get people into their funnel, they offer a special where they’ll do a dryer vent cleaning for $69. They do this dryer vent cleaning and basically what they do is they suck out all the lint and dust and everything in there so it doesn’t catch fire, which is a good idea. It may start with doing a blog post about dryer vent cleaning, and then inside of that blog post, there is a coupon for a $99 dryer vent cleaning on special for only $69.

You’re hoping that people are reading that. They click on the coupon, they call you up, and now all of a sudden they’re into your system. When you’re finished with the dryer vent cleaning, you hand the person another coupon and say, “Hey, if you would like an air conditioning special, we will first inspect it. Then we will add Freon and make sure everything’s working fine. This is an $89 special which is normally $250.” Now they have a coupon where they can possibly purchase something. You work on the air conditioner, and nine times out of ten, it’s fine. Since you’ve already worked on it, put your sticker on it, then you’ve built up that reputation because you’ve done the dryer vent too. You’ve done the basic service and cleaning, so if the air conditioner goes down, who are they likely to call? You, because you’ve been there a couple of times, you’ve established trust, and if and when they need an air conditioner, you’re going to be the first person they’re going to call!

That’s what a funnel looks like. You start off with something basic, then you add something to it, and then you get them to the end result. Now, it is a true funnel. Just think about this. You’re putting oil into your car, right? The funnel is this big round thing at the top, and it’s got a little nozzle at the bottom, and the whole purpose of that is to make it easier to take a lot of stuff and get it through to that end result. Marketing funnels, a lot of times, are set up like that where your goal is to get them to that high-ticket product. That is the end result. That’s what we want to do. In some cases, you’re better off figuring out step-by-step goals in between and incrementally getting people to go through each one of those steps.

Now, let’s take this to another angle. Obviously, if you’re doing air conditioning, there’s a funnel for that. If you’re doing heating, there’s a funnel for that. Maybe instead of doing dryer vent cleaning, you’re doing duct cleaning. That’s where all the heating and air conditioning goes through, so you have a duct cleaning special where you’re cleaning out all the dust and the mites and the junk that’s sitting in there. Then maybe you offer them a service contract or a monthly maintenance agreement or whatever it is that you want to do. Ultimately, you’re going in there and constantly looking at their systems for them. When they need a furnace, boom, who’s the first person they’re going to call? It’s going to be you, because they’ve already established that they know, like and trust you.

A Funnel Of Funnels

If you think about it, you have an air conditioning funnel and a furnace funnel, and there could be other funnels. A lot of times, these can get as complex as a Rube Goldberg machine, but every funnel has an opening where you draw people in. It has some kind of action that you want them to do. It could be a trip wire or they buy something for a buck. It could be that they buy a $27 product and you do an up-sale. It could be that the ultimate goal is to get them into your high-end coaching program or to purchase a large package from you. The goal with all of this is that each funnel has to be designed as a stand-alone item. Then, when you start to look at the big picture, you could have multiple funnels doing multiple things, but the end result is you’re taking all of this stuff and you’re trying to get it out that hole at the bottom.

What is that hole at the bottom? What is the one thing that you really want to sell? Now, with some people, just like in funnel ball, you might throw the ball up and they come out shoot number two, shoot number four, shoot number six, or even shoot number eight. It doesn’t matter which as long as you get people in there and they’re actively doing something, which means that you’ve got the right people in your funnel.

Final Thoughts

I want you to think about how you can create multiple funnels that talk specifically to different problems that clients may have. Maybe they want to purchase your products or services, but then it leads them to specific solutions. Then, hopefully, you’ll have the opportunity to continue the conversation to guide them towards some more expansive things that you have. A lot of times what I’ve learned is high-ticket items takes a conversation. Maybe the goal is to get them to a point where they trust you enough to get on the phone and have a conversation with you, but you have to design this as a system.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments and maybe some other limiting beliefs you have overcome!

He has done it again. Dave Ulrich, the Renis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and co-founder of Result Based Leadership (disclaimer: I am associated to the same company as a principle consultant) has written another ground breaking book. After having transformed the way the HR function adds value and how companies can build a leadership brand, he has now tried his hand to measure the value of leadership.

In his newest book, The Leadership Capital Index, Dave proposes a model on how outside investors could significantly enhance their ability to judge the quality of the leadership of a company. The quality of leadership matters almost equally to the firm’s performance and industry favorableness for investors to take a position in a certain company. Till now investors’ ability to assess the quality of leadership ranges from gut and feel to more formal individual leadership assessments. None, however, have been able to assess the institutional leadership capabilities of a company.

Dave’s Leadership Capital Index consists of two domains with five factors each:

1. Individual Leader Domain

• Personal Proficiency: demonstrating personal qualities required for effectiveness
• Strategic Proficiency: articulating a point of view about the future
• Execution Proficiency: making things happen
• People Proficiency: building the competence, commitment and contribution of people
• Leadership Brand Proficiency: leaders act in ways customers expect

2. Organizational Capability Domain

• Culture Capability: creating a customer focused culture that is shared throughout the organisation
• Talent Management: building practices that manage the ‘flow’ of talent through the organisation
• Performance Accountability: created performance management practices that reinforce the right behaviours
• Information Processes: managing the information flow to gain information asymetries
• Work Processes: creating work practices that deal with the increasing pace of change

By his own admission, Dave thinks that his model is only the first step towards accurately measuring the market value of leadership. And although the book is light on specific tools and measures it’s a significant step forward. It provides a thinking model for others to hang their hat on.

Would be exciting to watch this space and see how we as HR and Leadership experts can actually measure the impact of our work on the value that companies create. Also of importance would be to prove, once and for all, that the biggest impact to the success of a company, its financial performance, happiness of employees, partnership with suppliers and the impact on community and environment is firmly and directly linked to the quality and value of leadership it has.

Executive teams often struggle to land innovations that will significantly grow the business. A chronic problem is their emphasis on searching for breakthrough innovation — the creation of a truly new, highly valued product or service that could redefine their industry and lead to unprecedented revenue growth. “Where’s our iPhone?” they wonder.

Almost by definition, breakthroughs are rare. When they do occur, they usually come from insurgent entrepreneurs who founded companies such as Nest or Netflix (today), or Eastman Kodak or Ford Motor (over a century ago). Rarer still are breakthrough innovations from established enterprises, Apple’s iPhone being an obvious exception. Breakthroughs may be worth pursuing, but most companies benefit more from incremental innovation efforts that add new forms of consumer value to their present products and services. The trick is to determine what elements to add in order to boost the perceived value of your offering. You don’t want to expend resources adding features that consumers don’t care about.

While what constitutes “value” can be nuanced and vary from person to person, my colleagues and I have identified 30 universal building blocks of value that meet fundamental human needs. These are basic attributes of a product or service that address four kinds of needs: function, emotion, life changes, and social impact. Functional elements, for example, include saving time, reducing risk, and organizing. This latter element is central to brands like The Container Store and to Intuit’s TurboTax, because both help consumers deal with complexities in their world. The pyramid below shows how value elements fit into the four categories.

 
In our September 2016 HBR article, “The Elements of Value,” my colleagues and I discuss the power of the 30 elements in the marketplace and describe how companies can select and integrate innovations into their products to provide value that consumers actually want. Companies that deliver well on multiple elements of value tend to have stronger customer loyalty and higher revenue growth rates, as Bain & Company’s analysis shows. The research documents 50 companies that deliberately added elements over time to improve their propositions, either to turn around a flagging business or to accelerate growth.
In financial services, for example, Charles Schwab has outperformed many other investment companies by excelling on four elements of value: variety (a wide range of investment products), providing access (multiple contact and advice channels available around the clock), making money (generates income for customers), and quality (numerous Lipper Fund Awards for investment performance).

Since 2013 Schwab has added several new elements of value to its services. Schwab’s Accountability Guarantee reduces risk by refunding fees if clients are not fully satisfied with the product. Its Intelligent Portfolios tool informs customers about the status of their portfolios and provides investment advisory services with no advisory fees. StreetSmart Edge reduces effort with an online trading platform to simplify complex trading and provide an intuitive experience for active traders. And its low-fee college savings plans provide heirloom value to parents saving for their children’s college education.

Insight Center

Likewise, in the retail pharmacy industry, CVS Health has embarked on a health initiatives strategy by adding new elements of value for consumers, including providing access, saving time, wellness, and therapeutic value. For example, CVS Health bought Target’s pharmacies, adding over 1,600 locations in 47 states. Many consumers now have more convenient locations, which helps them save time. The company has expanded access to health care through its MinuteClinics, providing both basic medical services, such as general exams, summer camp physicals, vaccinations, and the like, as well as assorted wellness services, such as contraceptive care and smoking cessation.

Other companies have judiciously added elements of value to their core proposition. Throughout 2015 Uber added services to integrate multiple aspects of consumers’ lives, from delivering meals and groceries to providing flu shots. Discover added a feature that allows cardholders to instantly freeze and unfreeze their accounts without canceling their cards, reducing risk and reducing anxiety for cardholders. And Spotify added a feature for runners in 2015 that detects their pace and finds music to match it, hitting on elements of wellness and motivation.

The search for elusive breakthroughs can make the entire innovation process intimidating and discouraging. To help, think about which new elements of value will resonate with your customers and which can be delivered effectively by your company. Judiciously adding elements can bring new life and growth to existing products as well as build customer loyalty — with far less risk and lower costs than hunting for breakthroughs.

For the last six months, Startup Hub has been doing webinars with the real gurus. We talked with Ashley Faulkes from Mad Lemmings, Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, Dre Beltrami, the leader of Branded Solopreneur, and many others.

Not everything went smoothly, though…

All those “how to be a webinar pro and get millions of subscribers” guides promised us a sweet life and tons of traffic. As you might’ve guessed, the reality was different from our expectations.

Instead of loads of traffic generated through our awesome webinar content, we generated some mistakes…

Luckily, we’ve fixed most of them. Moreover, we’ve learned from every single mess-up we made, so we don’t make them again. And here are the lessons, so you don’t need to make webinar mistakes either.

Webinar tips based on a true story

I’m holding a phone in one hand and a case of hysteria in the other.

I’m running around the room and going nuts. I’m trying to reach my boss, or my colleagues, or at least the neighbor’s dog. Somebody has to fix this problem immediately.

What do you think has just happened? An earthquake?

No, it’s worse: our website is down.

And we have less than 24 hours left before our webinar. Tor Refsland, who’s working with us tomorrow, has sent us the third email in a row. And we have no answers.

(Me trying to fix our landing page the day before the webinar)

But look, I’m still here, and we’re still making webinars.

So now that we’ve made it through the hard part, here’s our list of shame: 18 webinar mistakes Startup Hub’s made.

And hell yeah, we dare to talk about them.

Your webinar is in trouble if…

1. If you use poor equipment

Jeff’s headphones fell into pieces like a minute after our first webinar was over. Obviously, they could have broken 10 minutes earlier and then I would have an even funnier story for this post.

My point: please, please, please (I can’t stress it enough) get a good webcam and a microphone.

You don’t need to go with ultra professional stuff, just buy something decent. Nobody wants to hear an echo while seeing that pixelated picture of yours.

2. If you pick up the wrong day

Wednesdays and Thursdays are webinar classics. Tuesdays are popular, too. Like, literally every article recommends hosting webinars in the middle of the week.

Statistics says they give you the maximum engagement. It makes sense: when you’re sitting in the office, webinars can be a good alternative to actually doing your job.

But the best webinar day really depends on your Google Analytics and the days your audience is most engaged. I mean, if your traffic peaks on Sunday, experiment with doing your webinars then.

3. If you do it at the wrong time

There won’t be any new revelations here. Webinars are live – your audience needs to be available for them. So to find out when they’re free and thinking about you:

1) Go to your analytics.
2) Check the countries where your website is popular.
3) Choose the time suitable for all of your fans.

In a nutshell, figure out the hours that work in as many time zones as possible where your audience is located. It might not be possible to catch everyone, but look for the most overlap.

To cut down on the math, we use the WorldTimeBuddy tool to convert it. And don’t forget to consider your own location.

4. If you don’t promote it on social media

Of course, we can’t imagine running a promotion without social media. If you have some money to spend, use paid ads. If you don’t, use your imagination.

Also, stay consistent. We made this huge mistake with our own social media promotion.

For each webinar, we tried to write 4–5 original and funny tweets. Because of Twitter’s characters limitations, we often sacrificed the name of the webinar to make a joke, so it seemed like we were talking about different webinars each time.

5. If you don’t do email marketing

“They” say you have to send two invitation emails — the first going out two weeks before the webinar, and one a week before. Then you have to send two final reminders, in rapid succession.

In reality, it depends on your audience. If you have a weekly newsletter, mention the webinar as the biggest upcoming event.

Statistics shows users are more likely to register for a webinar when it’s soon, like today or tomorrow, so those reminders are the most important things.

6. If you don’t coordinate with your guest for promotion

During our first webinar, the only thing our guest did for the promotion was a retweet. I think we were so happy to get such a guru for our webinar, that we just felt shy to ask for more. That was wrong.

Realize that your guests need this webinar no less than you do. So, coordinate to get as many people signed up as possible.

How many tweets will they write?

How many emails will they send?

Will they promote the event on their website?

Lay out and finalize these plans before you start promoting.

7. If your landing page doesn’t add any value

Okay, you made your audience come all the way from Twitter or their inbox to the landing page. It would be cruel to lose them now.

The first thing they see is the name of the webinar. Is it good?

Sure, it’s really difficult to think of something catchy and original, but it’s worth the effort. One time, we spent three days trying to come up with the perfect webinar name (BTW, the final version was Content Marketing: How to Sell Your Story).

Now that your audience has seen the name, how do they know whether you have any value to offer? Make the “you’ll learn during the webinar…” section as specific as possible – each sentence should be precise.

8. If registration forms on the landing page are incorrect

Proud moment: We were promoting our second webinar using a landing page with the wrong registration forms.

We were backing the release of e-books at the same time, and somehow the forms for ebook subscriptions replaced those for the webinar. So, when our visitors were pressing the button “Save my spot for the webinar,” they were offered to download some ebooks. What’s worse, we noticed this only 24 hours before the event was starting.

Those forms are the key to attendees. If you want your visitors to subscribe, make it as easy and understandable as possible. And don’t forget to check them from time to time. ;)

9. If you choose a topic that’s too broad

We struggled with this one. When you invite the “web idol” of yours, you want to ask them about everything. They’re good at SEO, email copywriting, content marketing, plus hundreds of other skills. But don’t – their answers will be too broad and too obvious.

Choose a narrow topic from the very beginning, and stay focused – don’t try to fit too many topics in. All questions should be short and to the point, even if there’s a temptation to delve into another topic.

10. If you don’t care about the background behind you

Keep it casual. You’re not doing The Late Show, so going full-on David Letterman and buying a cardboard with New York City skyline might be an overkill.

However, don’t keep it too casual: you don’t want your surrounding to be distracting. As we do our webinars from the office, we had such problems like a “fire exit” sign showing in the corner of the video, or the sound of heels clicking and people coughing as our co-workers were passing by.

We could have cleaned house a bit.

In fact, you have to think of your webinar as of a friendly talk. You want it to be homelike, so put up a few posters on the wall, get a comfy chair and have some daylight coming in (if you can).

11. If you don’t frame the shot well

Okay, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Six feet, four inches…That is the height of our host, Jeff – 6 feet 4 inches.

The camera should look right into his face, not higher or lower. So there was one webinar where we had to build a “billiard table+desk+laptop” contraption involving a billiards table, a desk, and a laptop so that we could film him at the right angle.

Now, if you’ve ever accidentally opened your phone’s front-facing camera, you know what I’m talking about: you look bad at that angle, and you don’t want to look like that for the whole webinar.

At Startup Hub, we always have pre-rehearsals via Skype, where we search for the best camera angle together.

12. If you don’t briefly promote yourself during the webinar

Don’t be afraid to show off. You have a great business and it deserves a mention or two – as long as the webinar isn’t an hour-long advertisement.

Add a branded title screen before the webinar, introduce yourself and your company at the beginning, and include a CTA on the final slide. Don’t forget about links to your website in the video description, too.

If the webinar is about the niche you work in, it would be weird not to mention your work once or twice anyway. Just don’t get too salesy. If it stinks, they’ll leave.

13. If you don’t collect questions from visitors

People will be watching your webinar because of the guests you’ve invited. They want to spend those 40 minutes with their favorite influencer, taking in wisdom and finding the answers to their burning questions.

Collect as many questions from your audience as you can (through Twitter or Facebook, or right on your landing page).

For different webinars, we had “What, in your opinion, is the best ready-made template out there?” or “How do I build my website?” And these questions worked. They were simple and needed for all. Try your best to put yourself in your viewers’ shoes (but they still know better what they need, don’t hesitate to ask).

14. If you’re hosting it wrong

Interact, for God’s sake! During a webinar, you don’t just ask a chain of rapid-fire questions. Mix up the content – include a presentation, some conversation, some Q&A.

Also, remember that if you use Google Hangouts like we do, the camera will sometimes switch to you randomly. So having a sip of coffee while your guest’s answering a question might not be the best idea. Try to look into the camera and don’t digress.

Moreover, don’t try to steal the spotlight — play host, banter a bit, and step down. The shorter the better. There will always be a huge temptation to clarify each question. But believe me, they understand or will ask for clarification.

15. If you don’t interact with the audience

Webinars are so popular because you can finish that yearly report or help your son with his homework while watching one. I bathed my cat during our last event (Jeff, if you’re reading this: I’m sorry).

It’s convenient for the viewer, but you want their full attention and distractions are everywhere. And if you don’t get them involved, that yearly report of theirs will be done by the end of the hour. You don’t want that.

You can engage your audience with the help of interactive questions, talking on social media, giving your viewer a task, or asking them about something. Images, videos, and music will do the trick, too. Just don’t do it all at once.

16. If you’re making it too long or too short

Aim for 60 minutes max. Brevity is the soul of wit. Or, in other words, nobody’s got time for every single thing you have to say.

One of our most popular webinars is called “Advanced SEO in 60 Minutes”. The formula is working: a complicated topic explained in a very short time brings great results.

17. If you don’t follow up after the webinar

Okay, the webinar was a blast. The great thing is that after it’s finished, you have a great marketing opportunity at your disposal.

First thing to do is send a follow-up email with a thank you and something useful — freebies, a recording, or the highlights from the webinar.

You can also write a blog post (or a guest post), based on the topic you discussed. Or write one about producing the webinars (that’s what I’m doing right now!).

18. If you’re doing the webinar all by yourself

There must be a person who will publish a social media post the second you’re on air.

Someone collecting the questions. Letting you know if you’re speaking too loudly or there’s an echo the speaker can’t hear.

Always have a backup in case you have problems that cannot be fixed immediately — like if the power goes out or if King Kong bursts into the building. Or if your cat is in dire need of a bath. That happens, too.

Final webinar planning tip

Now, while you can avoid the mistakes we made, you’ll likely make some on your own. And that’s okay. Be prepared to mess up – there are just so many things that can go wrong. What separates the great hosts is how they handle them and pick themselves back up.

Ten minutes before the webinar you’ll call your guest and, I bet you, everything will go down. Like, literally everything — the sound, the picture, your laptop and the whole world.

Don’t freak out. There’s only one way to fix it. Ready? Restart your computer. I know, I know, but it really helps in any emergency. Now, breath in. It’s showtime.

To avoid mistakes with the rest of your content as well, follow Sujan Patel’s content strategy plan in our free email course.

With 1.3 trillion dollars of annual buying power, millennials are now the driving force behind our economy.

If you own your own business, successfully reaching and getting a response from this demographic is probably easier than you think.

Check out the infographic below for the 10 commandments of millennial marketing, followed by even more useful tips to reach this important demographic:

(Having trouble viewing the infographic? View it here!)

1. Mobilize Your Efforts

It’s safe to say that mobile phones are no passing trend, especially amongst the younger tech-savvy generations. Smart phones have found their way into the hands of 85 percent of millennials.

This means that if you aren’t optimizing your content for smart phones, your content won’t be seen. One tip is to make sure that all emails you are sending out look great on mobile phones and computers alike.

Tip: Here’s how to design emails for small screens and short attention spans.

2. Know the Tools and When to Use Them

If you want to market to millennials, then you have to think like a millennial. This means creating a presence for your company on all the channels the millennials you want to target are frequenting (most likely Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr, and YouTube).

Start following and engaging with your audience where they already are.

Brand new to a social channel? Our Social Media Quickstarter has resources to help you master any major social network, from Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat.

3. Content is King

The days of gaining customers by bombarding them with unwanted and manipulative ads have passed. Millennials rated advertising as the least trustworthy source of information, disliked by 85 percent.

Replacing this outdated model of marketing comes content marketing, focused on creative content your audience actually wants. Now, your audience becomes your strongest source of distribution.

Produce a worthwhile video, image, or blog post and sit back while a willing and enthusiastic audience distributes it.

4. Deliver Value

The content you create should directly provide value for your audience. For example, a farm owner may send out an email newsletter in October containing “10 Jack-O-Lantern Templates You Can Use Today!”

Creating valuable content positions your company as a trusted source of information for your audience.

5. Make it Participatory

With the rise of social media, companies no longer have a one-sided relationship with their audience.

Millennials often communicate online with the brands they love; giving shout-outs as well as voicing concerns. All of this should be encouraged and responded to.

When people feel like they can have a conversation with a brand, a once faceless entity becomes humanized and bonds between company and customer form.

6. Live and Breathe Transparency

“Companies are becoming more transparent, whether they like it or not.” –Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos

Before they ever buy your product, many millennials look up your reviews, read about your company, and decide whether or not they want to support you. Embrace transparency by being honest and upfront about the good and the bad.

7. Find Your Cause

Millennials want companies that don’t just measure their success in revenue. In fact, 91 percent of millennials prefer a brand if it is associated with a cause.

Millennials want brands that help the environment, fight for fair labor practices, save the rainforest, fund cancer research, raise awareness for illegal poaching, and countless other problems facing the world today.

While you likely lack the bandwidth and energy for all these causes, try picking one that you genuinely identify with. If your business isn’t supporting this cause, then start. If you already are, then start telling your audience about it. That’s the kind of news they want to hear and share through social media.

8. Tell a Story Worth Hearing

With so much marketing all around us, millennials are no longer drawn in by standard product pitches. Instead, they want brands to embrace storytelling.

An easy way to do this is to tell the story of your company. Think in terms of having a setup, a conflict, and a resolution that brings your company to where it is now, all while conveying your personality.

Tip: Here’s some advice for creating customer connections through storytelling.

9. Listen, Learn, and Leverage

The biggest mistake you can make when marketing to millennials is forgetting to listen to them. Hear what they’re saying and how they’re saying it.

Follow them on social media to become familiar with their patterns and the causes that matter to them.

However, do not attempt to pander using slang or gimmicks like emojis unless you’re able to make it feel completely natural. 9 times out of 10 this feels painfully contrived, and the company ends up looking like a parent trying to act hip to relate to their teenage kid.

10. Be Ready To Throw This List Away

In the time that it takes to read through this article, a new app or website may come out that redefines the millennial experience.

When dealing with a group so entrenched in new technology, one must be completely flexible and ready to create a new plan at a moment’s notice.

The most important thing is to constantly monitor the online presence of millennials by reading articles, monitoring social media, and talking to them.

If you’re simply willing to listen to millennials and adjust accordingly, your business will have no problem reaching this important demographic.

Have any millennial tips we missed? Leave us a comment with your best advice!

The complexity of a sales technology investment today is lightyears away from what it was just a decade ago. Buyers are more educated and informed, the sales software and applications space is saturated and flourishing, and sales organizations have a full plate when it comes to choosing the right tools to enable their teams to succeed while also helping them cater to today’s buyers.

To combat this complexity, Gartner recently released its Hype Cycle for CRM Sales report, which fully analyzes 35 emerging and maturing technologies in CRM for sales to help sales leaders “improve their roadmap for sales execution” and success. Gartner assigns each technology to a segment of its hype cycle, which can be thought of as a steep parabola (starting with the Innovation Trigger, to the Peak of Inflated Expectations and the Trough of Disillusionment), followed by a gradual incline (which includes Slope of Enlightenment and ends with the Plateau of Productivity). If you’re a Gartner customer, you can view the entire report here. If not, we’ve broken down some of the most talked-about sales technologies in the Gartner report below to better understand the hype behind these technologies, what this means for sales organizations, and where budget dollars should be focused in the second half of 2016 and beyond.

At the Peak: Mobile Sales Productivity

• What are they? These tools—typically mobile apps— help salespeople increase day-to-day productivity by streamlining manual, administrative tasks such as logging emails and phone calls, preparing for and scheduling meetings, and accessing content on-the-go. Mobile sales productivity tools are especially useful for field reps and employees on-the-go, and can automatically adapt to rep behavior and analyze activities to provide case- and rep-specific advice for next steps (such as log notes, update the prospect’s information in CRM, and more).
• Goals they help achieve: Increasing productivity, streamlining manual tasks, spending more time selling
• Considerations: Gartner has mobile sales productivity Apps at the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” because these solutions are in a phase of overenthusiasm and potentially unrealistic projections. But the market for mobile sales productivity apps is rapidly maturing, benefits are vast, and demand is high. While mobile sales productivity tools can typically integrate with SFA or CRM systems and can typically improve data quality and user adoption of these systems, they are not capable of replacing them. Sales technology decision makers should be aware that salespeople can purchase these apps on their own—not as part of an enterprise license—so it may be difficult to ensure data accuracy across multiple apps. Gartner says that “it is best to have a strategy to recommend a specific vendor to avoid having multiple apps performing the same task.”
• Vendor sample: Base, Clari, MobileForce, ToutApp

In the Trough: Sales Analytics

• What are they? Analytics are top of mind for most sales leaders this year. Sales analytics systems provide descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive insights to salespeople to facilitate better decision making. These capabilities are offered by a vast array of vendors, including CRM, business intelligence, and even sales enablement and content management.
• Goals they help achieve: Identifying growth areas, aligning sales activities with corporate priorities, managing sales goals and expectations (pipelines, forecasts, etc.) effectively
• Considerations: Sales analytics tools are in Gartner’s “Trough of Disillusionment,” because while many CRM vendors have added tools for integrating sales analytics into their platforms, the “plateau” of widespread adoption is still several years away. Companies haven’t yet begun to extensively adopt tools like predictive analytics or BI, but are open to trying out the native analytics offered by their standard CRM providers. Gartner recommends that sales decision makers continue with this adoption process, and should consider third-party sales analytic apps when “they want to use predictive/prescriptive analytics to help sales reps accelerate deal progress to closure.”
• Vendor sample: Birst, Domo, GoodData, Salesforce

Entering the Plateau: Digital Content Management for Sales

• What are they? Digital sales content management applications consist of content repositories, authoring tools, collaborative environments, and all of the collateral necessary to help salespeople sell more effectively and efficiently. According to Gartner, “the leading solutions also provide external delivery and consumption metric capabilities,” which allow salespeople to see how prospects are engaging with content they share. Digital content management solutions for sales also offer deep integration into CRM and SFA tools, allowing for contextual content recommendations or next-best actions based on the buyer’s role, industry, stage in sales cycle, and more.
• Goals they help achieve: Improving sales efficiency and effectiveness, shortening sales cycles, increasing win rates, delivering the right content to salespeople at the right time
• Considerations: While “plateau” may have a negative connotation, in Gartner’s Hype Cycle it means that DCM for sales solutions are in the early mainstream phase of maturity and have penetrated 20-50 percent of the total market. These solutions are immensely helpful for organizations that require large volumes of content for complex, time-sensitive and multi-product sales cycles. Digital content management for sales solutions also help with version control and approval processes, making them ideal for compliant organizations. To avoid overlapping solutions in content management, organizations should evaluate these solutions alongside the capabilities provided by incumbent systems such as SFA, CRM, and content usage tracking.
• Vendor sample: bigtincan, Highspot, Savo, Seismic

Keep in mind that this is a very small sample of the tools that Gartner analyzes in its Hype Cycle for CRM Sales report. The three technologies above are all at various stages of “hype,” as well as maturity, benefit and market penetration, but are typically high priorities for 2017 enterprise sales budgets. For a more in-depth analysis, download Gartner’s report here.

I hit a big milestone last month: I officially met my goal of having 5,000 people on my email list by mid-year.

Back in May, I wrote a post about what I did to make this happen, but what it really came down to was this: I reached out to other business owners, and by cooperating and collaborating, we reached mutually beneficial results.

The reason these work is that they are beneficial for both of us: When I present a webinar, I get new people on my email list, and my partner gets to offer valuable content to her audience, and vice versa.

Recently, my friend Breanne was trying to figure out how to promote a series of VERY useful and valuable webinars she’s doing this summer, and I told her:

The best way I know to do this is to borrow someone else’s audience. You can do that with paid traffic (you’re essentially paying to borrow Facebook’s authority) or by asking people to share. […] If I were you, I would seek out a partner (at least one) for each of the weeks who reaches a similar audience to you, but hopefully a different segment of that audience. […]

You could also volunteer to produce content for those partners’ sites, which could be a simple interview Q&A style blog post, or even a rewrite/refresh of some of the content as a blog post that then leads people to get more by signing up for the series.

To which, Breanne replied:

I love the idea of finding a partner for each week! So “obvious” and yet I didn’t even consider it. Now to come up with a hit list … Hey, got a spot on your editorial calendar in a couple of weeks? Lol … Kidding… But not (I’ll email you ;))

And, as you may have noticed, Breanne was the author of last week’s blog post! (Did you LOVE IT?)

Borrowing an audience is the fastest way to grow

Whether you choose Facebook groups, guest posts, podcast interviews, paid advertising, speaking gigs, or webinars, it’s all about using someone else’s stage to promote your message. But not all promotional strategies are created equal. Some will convert better, faster, and easier than others.

Webinars just happen to provide one of the shortest distances between your message and the opt-in — and partner webinars are even better than the ones you do on your own with paid advertising.

When I started doing webinars, I was coming at them with the entirely wrong strategy. I was offering webinars to my own audience to try to promote a product — but I was too scared to actually sell from the webinar. I was just teaching. People still found value in what I was doing, and they’re available now in my free library, but they didn’t achieve the goal I set out with.

Then I figured out the power of a joint venture (JV) webinar.

A joint venture webinar is simply when Business A agrees to “host” Business B and allow B to provide a free training (and, potentially an upsell) for A’s audience. The benefit to Business B is that they get to collect email addresses as people register for the training, and potentially sell product. The benefit to Business A is that they get to provide valuable content to their audience with little effort on their part, and potentially earn an affiliate commission on products sold.

My first JV webinar wasn’t even my idea; a business owner reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in doing a webinar for her audience and selling my course. I said sure — and got 200 new opt-ins to my list from that partnership, which was huge for me at the time!

We didn’t sell much off that first webinar, because I was still extremely bad at pitching (you get better with practice!) but it was great experience.

Fast forward to January 2016, when my business mentor challenged me to grow my list fro 1,800 to 5,000 people in six months. The ONLY way I knew how to get those kinds of numbers was to host more webinars. So I started reaching out to business friends and acquaintances.

Over the first six months of 2016, I conducted six joint venture webinars and added a total of 1,824 people to my list.

Now I easily average 200–300 signups per webinar, and have had as many as nearly 1,000 people sign up for a single free webinar!

The key to JV is consistency

The real key that made this such an easy way to add people to my list was that we were able to systematize the entire process. Once I had done the first JV webinar, I could use that as a template for all the others. I could:

• Use the same basic training and slide deck, customized slightly for each audience
• Use the same emails as templates each time
• Use the same LeadPages to collect emails
• Make the same offer each time (so I got better fast!).

My goal was just to add people to my email list, but the sales were a nice bonus. By June and July, I was averaging a 5% conversion rate on my webinars, making thousands of dollars from just a few extra hours work — and paying out thousands to my affiliates, making it well worth their time and energy.

That consistency — using the exact same LeadPage, emails, and offer over and over again — also made it easy for me to see what happened when it didn’t work. I did one webinar that had less than 30 people sign up, and only 8 attended live. (And I made zero sales.)

I knew that my collateral had worked before and gotten me hundreds of signups and sales with the same message. I knew my partner was trying on my behalf — she even set up some Facebook ads to promote the webinar to her audience!

What I realized afterward was that her business audience just wasn’t a good fit for my message. I also realized (afterward) that she didn’t have a huge audience to begin with.

This was a major learning opportunity for me, that I might never have realized if I hadn’t been doing the webinars so consistently.

Systems make it work

After doing more than half a dozen of these webinars — more and less successfully — I’ve broken the whole process down into 5 steps:

1. Choose your partners wisely and pitch them
2. Set up the infrastructure (your squeeze page, email automation sequences, and webinar platform)
3. Create the content and collateral — including 3 specific emails your partner should send, 5 you should send before the webinar, and 3 to send after the webinar.
4. Deliver an incredible experience from start to finish, including especially your training.
5. Follow up!

I’ll be teaching ALL the nitty-gritty details, plus offering up a framework for the systems, PLUS 11 email swipe files in the Joint Venture Webinars Workshop I’m teaching August 15. You can click here to learn more and save your seat now!

But the main idea is this: Find a promotional strategy that works to leverage your time and effort for the most number of leads, and then create a system to replicate that strategy over and over again.