Rnordman

An illustrated ode to the art of affectionate surrender to the ebb and flow of existence.

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“A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it,” Virginia Woolf wrote in contemplating writing and consciousness. Nearly a century later, this powerful image of the wave in the mind — the kind of poetic image which perfectly captures in words something previously unformulated and immediately makes us feel that without it “the world’s store of truth would be diminished” — inspired a collection of excellent essays by Ursula K. Le Guin.

English artist Shantell Martin offers a wonderful visual counterpart to Woolf’s famous metaphor in Wave: A Journey Through the Sea of Imagination for the Adventurous Colorist (public library) — a most unusual accordion coloring book that unfolds into a nine-foot-long continuous illustration, which began as a visual diary Martin kept when she lived in Japan.

Martin’s masterful line and wild imagination construct an inviting wonderland of whimsical creatures and psychedelic shapes, fusing the soft surrender of a dream with the active alertness of a jubilant hallucination.

I spoke with Martin about her creative process, the conceptual foundation for the book, and the largehearted personal philosophies radiating from her work.

MP:The book was inspired by your stay in Japan and the ethos behind it makes me think of the Chinese concept of wu-wei — “trying not to try,” actualization through a kind of surrender to the ebb and flow of life. Many Eastern philosophies seem to have this disposition in common. What was it about your immersion in that particular culture that catalyzed this particular project?

SM: The book is actually one of many. At the time of creating these, they acted like my diaries — I would keep one on me most of the time. Whenever I would have a spare moment — maybe waiting for a friend or riding on a train — I would draw in the book. (I should really start doing that again.) What was great about the books is that they were accordion, which meant I could draw here and there, and here and there, and then at the end connect all the lines together to be one coherent story. Over time, they became a collection of my thoughts, ideas, things I saw, and more.

One effect living in Japan had on me and my work was the idea of mastering something. I asked myself what I wanted to master and it took a while to be able to articulate what that was — but it was to master a line; to take something that we all can do and make it recognizably mine.

MP: The drawing in this book seems to have a much more detailed and intimate quality compared to your usual work — was this a deliberate decision or the organic unfolding of your style in this medium?

SM:You could say that this more detailed work is my usual work. But because it is much finer and smaller in scale, it demands your full attention — both physically and emotionally. Although my larger works have only been around for a couple of years, they are perhaps most familiar to people. They are much bigger, bolder, and easier to see — like a giant flag — and take up much of the attention. But I’ve been working on many other types of projects for a long time — from collecting objects and stories to collaborating with my grandmother to music and writing, alongside many other subtler nondrawing projects. I’m working on how I can begin to share these other areas of my art with the world.

MP: Your work radiates a kind of spirit of acceptance — acceptance of self, acceptance of the other, acceptance of the flow of life exactly as it is, even if imperfect. How does this notion of the wave, of riding the wave with a sort of affectionate surrender, relate to your personal philosophies of living?

SM: It’s constant work — constant work. There are many challenges, and also many signs and choices that are presented to us out there that can help us begin to understand. I constantly feel that I’ve just started out on my journey, that there is so much that I need to do, that there is so much yet to understand. This can feel overwhelming at times. But, to the best of our ability, we have to ride the wave. When it takes us up, ride it high, and when it brings us down, don’t fight it — lean into it.

Wave compresses in nine feet of illustration nine billion lightyears of delight. Complement it with Outside the Lines, a quirky coloring book featuring illustrations by beloved contemporary artists, and this charming Finnish coloring book about evolution, then revisit Lynda Barry’s illustrated field guide to keeping a visual diary.

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Using persuasive language is central to consistently carrying out successful sales efforts. Approaching prospects with some bumbling, inarticulate, lazy, passive jumble of words can stifle any sales pitch — regardless of the product or service behind it.

As a salesperson, you need to have some tact and gusto to what you say — and there are certain words and phrases you can use to build the kind of sales vocabulary that will help you see the results you need.

Here, we'll take a look at some of the most persuasive words eloquent, productive reps incorporate into their sales messaging and pitch language.

1. Your Prospect's Name

No one wants to be addressed as "To Whom It May Concern." Think about it. Could you ever apply that in real life? Imagine trying to grab someone's attention by yelling, "Hey! Whom it may concern, I have something to run by you!"

Add a personal edge to your sales outreach by including your prospect's name. That can give you more of a foot in the door than addressing them with something impersonal or distant.

2. "Yes"

As a salesperson, you need to speak with conviction. If you want your prospects to listen and believe what you say, you have to say it with your chest. Speaking with affirmative terms like "yes" helps that case. They project confidence and authority, and exactly zero prospects have ever listened intently to a sales rep who lacked those traits.

3. "You"

You need to address prospects with a certain degree of familiarity. That doesn't necessarily mean talking to them like they're your best friends — but you can't speak to them too stiffly or distantly either.

Strike a middle ground with language like "you." Be pointed in how you capture their attention. Address them personally, and let them feel like you've tailored this outreach to suit their specific needs.

4. "Because"

Most — if not all — of your prospects won't be sold on your initial pitch without any further explanation of your offering's benefits. Qualifying their needs with a compellingly placed "because" can give them the perspective they need to want to learn more. If you don't touch on the why no one will be sold on the what.

5. "New"

Several prospects naturally gravitate towards novel solutions. Everyone is looking for new answers to conventional problems. If you can articulate that your offering is every bit as fresh as it is effective, you can pique interest and engage prospects. Be mindful of how you use words like "new" though. There's a fine line between novel and gimmicky.

6. "Free"

Everyone loves a bargain. It's practically human nature. If you can tastefully and tactfully invoke a word that implies a significant discount — like "free" — you can capture and retain prospects' attention. Just don't go overboard. Overpromising and underdelivering on bargains is cheap and unbecoming.

7. "Now"

Sales is, in large part, the art of creating urgency. You need to capture your prospects' attention and give them the impression that they need to listen. That's where immediate response words like "now" come in handy — they make your pitch seem important, relevant, and timely. You won't move many prospects by leading with, "Our product is great, but you should probably buy it later."

8. "Guarantee"

Like some others on this list, the value of this word is in its emphasis on trust. You're making a promise when you say "guarantee." It means you have confidence in your offering and are willing to stake your credibility on its ability to deliver the results your prospect needs.

But be sure you mean what you say here. You don't want a potential customer seeing through a hollow promise or winding up disgruntled when your product or service doesn't work out for them.

9. "Proven"

Once again, this word leans on the fact that sales is a matter of trust — it's the practice of generating a mutual understanding and comfort within a short timeframe.

Words like "proven" can help you get there. They demonstrate that your offering isn't under-tested, sketchy, or unreliable by alluding to the other businesses that rely on it. While some prospects might be interested in a totally novel solution, most are more inclined to trust something tried and true.

10. "The"

Here's where you can present your product or service as the definitive solution in your space. When you use the word "the" in sales, you're establishing authority.

You're separating yourself from your competition. You're telling prospects that there are not four or five other options that will work just as well as your offering. There's one product or service that will work best for them, and it's the one you're pitching them.

11. "No Obligation"

When reaching out to potentially tentative prospects, you don't want to insist that trying your product or service is a forever-binding obligation. In many cases, potential customers will be commitment-averse.

If you're looking to rope in a nervous prospect with a free trial or demo, it's important to remind them that the choice is ultimately theirs with words like "no obligation."

12. "Limited"

Again, this word is tailored to create urgency. When you say "limited," you're showing that your prospect has a tight window to capitalize on a timely deal or access to your offering in general. It adds some extra oomph to your pitch and gives the impression that other prospects are eager to purchase your product or service.

Don't dismiss the value of an extensive, persuasive sales vocabulary. If you can effectively and appropriately tailor your language and messaging during pitches to be assertive and thoughtful with prospects, you can take your sales efforts from good to great.

So be mindful of the words you use when interacting with potential customers. They could make the difference between a closed deal and a missed opportunity.

Did you see Serena Williams in her opening Olympic match a few nights ago against France’s Alize Cornet? Holy smokes. I got tired just watching the first overtime set, which lasted a whopping 77 minutes.

Even as a spectator who knows only the basics about tennis (a.k.a. I’m terrible and my baby brother could school me when he was 14), I was glued to the television in a trance, tracing the ball back and forth, back and forth. So when I found out Serena Williams was speaking at INBOUND, I was stoked to hear from someone who’s such a legend in her profession.

Fresh off her seventh Wimbledon win (not to mention an appearance in Beyoncé's "Sorry" video), Williams is one of the world's greatest athletes and a fashion and pop culture icon. She has 22 Grand Slam titles, over a dozen magazine covers, and millions of social media followers to her name. We're thrilled to have her coming to INBOUND to share the remarkable story of her success on the court and beyond. Here’s a few lessons the sales world can learn from this all-time great.

1) Simply put, you’ve got to work hard.

When Williams was growing up in Compton, California, her dad began coaching her and her sister in tennis when she was just three years old. Since then, Williams has become the world’s number one in tennis and logged thousands and thousands of hours practicing.

During the 2015 season, Williams aced a whopping 352 serves in 38 matches. An ace occurs when a serve is never returned. That means she earns nearly 10 points per match purely off her serve, which she consistently hits at more than 120 miles per hour.

She’s able to do that because of the daily grind she’s put in since she was three -- time spent on perfecting her serve, strength training, agility drills, and hours more of hard work that goes unnoticed to novice tennis spectators like myself. Those are both aspects of the game in her control that she’s perfected through hard work. As Williams herself says: “Everyone’s dream can come true if you just stick to it and work hard.”

2) Champions are willing to take risks.

In July 2010, Williams accidentally stepped on a piece of glass. She experienced a life-threatening hematoma and later a pulmonary embolism as a result, took nearly a year off from tennis, and saw her ranking sink to 175. She then lost her first ever opening round in the 2012 French Open.

Instead of giving up, she shook things up and hired a new coach -- Patrick Mouratoglou. Since Mouratoglou has become involved in her career, she’s won six Grand Slam titles. On Mouratoglou’s website, it lists that he and Williams’ ultimate goal is to break the 22 Grand Slam title record to make sporting history -- talk about risk takers.

3) Failure is a temporary state.

The Associated Press quotes Williams saying:

“[Failure is] the biggest factor for me. Like, if I lose, all hell breaks loose, literally. Literally! I go home, I practice harder, I do more. I don’t like to lose. I hate losing more than I love winning. It could be a game of cards -- I don’t like it. I really don’t like it.”

Our biggest growth happens outside of our comfort zones, where things are frustrating, messy, and maybe awkward. Failure doesn’t define champions; it’s temporary.

4) Don’t fear the competition.

In an interview with ESPN, Williams said, "It's easy to go out there and say, 'I want to win,' then try to win. But you have to win seven matches. You have to win each match, you have to win each set, you have to win each point."

Every tennis match is made up of two to three sets. To win a set, you must win at least six games. To win a game, you have to win four points. That means you have to win a lot of individual points, and if you’re fearful of the competition, you’re going to get beat over and over.

5) You can’t be successful on luck alone.

With regards to her incredible success, Serena is famously quoted as saying: “Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.”

In sports, in sales, and in life, luck can only take you so far. The rest takes hard work and preparation.

You can purchase discounted tickets today ONLY with the promo code SERENA for $220 off an All-Access Pass. The code will expire on August 11, 2016 at 11:59 PST.

Register for INBOUND to see Serena Williams speak live on the keynote stage. INBOUND is an annual sales and marketing industry event in Boston. This year, 14,000 attendees are expected and for the first time ever, INBOUND will have its very own sales track.

It’s a problem no business can risk putting on the back burner anymore: securing data.

We’ve entered a time when the conveniences of widespread connectivity, including the cloud, have put us at more risk than ever of getting hacked. When data does fall into the wrong hands, the consequences can be devastating. High-profile data breaches and ransomware attacks have organizations and individuals on red alert for the best ways to safeguard their data and networks, both now and for the future.

While good IT security strategies can be very effective in protecting networks—essentially letting the good guys in and keeping the bad guys out—how do you account for all of the data that’s traveling across the airwaves between mobile devices, browsers, databases, and the cloud?

There’s a time-tested science that is increasingly becoming a crucial link in the security chain: encryption. Encryption scrambles text to make it unreadable by anyone other than those with the keys to decode it, and it’s becoming less of an added option and more of a must-have element in any security strategy for its ability to slow down and even deter hackers from stealing sensitive information. If good encryption is capable of hindering investigations by FBI experts, consider what it could do for you and your company’s sensitive information.

If you’ve been putting off adopting encryption as a part of your security policy, delay no more. Here’s a guide to the science of encryption, and how you can begin implementing an encryption strategy today.

What is encryption and how does it work?

While IT security seeks to protect our physical assets—networked computers, databases, servers, etc.—encryption protects the data that lives on and between those assets. It’s one of the most powerful ways to keep your data safe, and while it isn’t impenetrable, it’s a major deterrent to hackers. Even if data does end up getting stolen, it will be unreadable and nearly useless if it’s encrypted.

How does it work? Encryption—based on the ancient art of cryptography—uses computers and algorithms to turn plain text into an unreadable, jumbled code. To decrypt that ciphertext into plaintext, you need an encryption key, a series of bits that decode the text. The key is something only you or the intended recipient has in their possession. Computers are capable of breaking encrypted code by guessing an encryption key, but for very sophisticated algorithms like an elliptic curve algorithm, this could take a very, very long time.

Here’s a very simple example. Say you want to encrypt this sentence:

“Protect your data with encryption.”

If you use a 39-bit encryption key, which it’s estimated would take around 11 months to crack, the encrypted sentence would look like this:

“EnCt210a37f599cb5b5c0db6cd47a6da0dc9b728e2f8c10a37f599cb5b5c0db6cd47asQK8W/ikwIb97tVolfr9/Jbq5NU42GJGFEU/N5j9UEuWPCZUyVAsZQisvMxl9h9IwEmS.”

You can send that encrypted message to someone, separately share the key, then they’re able to decrypt it and read the original sentence.

If you send an encrypted email, only the person with the encryption key can read it. If you’re using an encrypted internet connection to shop online, your information and credit card number are hidden from unauthorized users, like hackers, illegal surveillance, or identity thieves. If you encrypt data before syncing it with the cloud, the cloud—or anyone breaking into it—can’t read that data. Even iPhones are encrypted to protect their data if they’re lost or stolen—something that has made headlines when organizations like the FBI or the NSA need access to them for investigations.

But encryption can be used for bad, too. Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent, also called denial of service (DOS) attacks that use encryption software to lock users out of their computers until they pay a fee.

Encrypting Data “In Transit” vs. Data “At Rest”

Basically, the data we encrypt is always either:

• In transit, meaning it’s moving via email, in apps, or through browsers and other web connections
• At rest, when data is stored in databases, the cloud, computer hard drives, or mobile devices

Encrypting this data is achieved mainly through:

1. Full disk encryption (FDE): the primary way to protect computer hard drives and the at-rest data on them. Any files saved to the disk (or an external hard drive) are automatically encrypted.
2. File encryption: a way to encrypt in-transit data on a file-by-file basis so it cannot be read if intercepted. This isn’t automatic, but it’s beneficial because that data will stay encrypted after it’s left its place of origin.
3. End-to-end (E2E) encryption: obscures any content of messages so only senders and receivers can read it, like the early Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) email encryption software. The idea with E2E encryption is that it tackles all the vulnerabilities on the communication chain: the middle (intercepting a message during delivery), and both ends (sender and receiver). This is not just a niche offering anymore, either—platforms like Facebook Messenger and Apple’s iMessage have E2E encryption now, too.
4. Encrypted web connections: via HTTPS, encrypted web connections use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or transport layer security (TLS) protocols. With secure internet connections, we’re able to have safe, protected communications on the web. How it works: HTTPS uses SSL and TLS certificates when a browser and server communicate over the web. These are encryption keys, and when both browser and server have them, they’re authorized to access the encrypted data that’s passed between them. It’s a very basic, but very important, security measure when connecting to the web. If you’ve ever seen “https” instead of “http,” or noticed a lock in the URL bar of your browser, you’re accessing a secure site.
5. Encrypted email servers: S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) public key encryption essentially gives SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) email servers a leg up by allowing them to send and receive encrypted messages, not just simple text messages.
6. Pre-encrypting data that’s synced with the cloud: there’s plenty of software available that can pre-encrypt data before it even gets to the cloud, making it unreadable by the cloud or anyone who hacks into it.

Encryption can be simple, like secret-key, or incredibly complex, like the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), depending on the algorithm and the length of the key. The longer the key, the more protection, but also the more processing power required to handle the encrypting and decrypting process.

A few types of encryption to know include:

• Secret-key algorithms: Also known as symmetric algorithms, or private-key, this algorithm uses the same key for encryption and decryption. This is a touch more vulnerable because anyone who gets a hold of that one key can read anything you encrypt. Also, passing that secret key over internet or network connections makes it more vulnerable to theft.
• Public-key algorithms: These are also known as asymmetric algorithms. With public-key encryption, there are two different, related encryption keys—one for encryption, and one for decryption. The public key is how the information is sent to you, and the private key decodes it (much like having a secure lock box on your front porch that a delivery person can put a package in, then only you can access that package with your private key). The benefit here is the key isn’t subject to being sent over insecure networks, but it does require more computer processing power so it’s a bit slower.
• Block ciphers: Like the Triple Data Encryption Standard (DES), or 3DES, these encrypt data a block at a time. Triple DES uses three keys and is a pretty great encryption option for financial institutions that need to protect sensitive information.
• Stream ciphers: A symmetric algorithm, it uses a keystream, a series of randomized numbers, to encrypt plaintext one character at a time. Rabbit, W7, and RC4 are popular stream ciphers.
• Elliptic curve cryptography: A form of public-key encryption, it can be practically unbreakable for normal computers.
• Blockchain cryptography: Blockchain technology is essentially a type of distributed database, best known as the basis for Bitcoin, that uses cryptography to safely store data about financial transactions. Blockchain cryptography is a form of “cryptocurrency,” using public-key encryption, and it’s valuable in its ability to provide direct, trustworthy and fraud-proof transactions between users on a peer-to-peer network. Because blockchain databases are distributed, they’re more resilient in the face of a DOS attack, so more companies are exploring this.

A few popular algorithms include:

• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): A block cipher, this is pretty much the gold standard, per the U.S. Government. It offers 128-, 192-, and 256-bit encryption, the last two reserved for instances that require extra-strength protection.
• RSA: This asymmetric algorithm uses paired keys and is pretty standard for encrypting information sent over the internet.
• IDEA (International Data Encryption Algorithm): This block cipher with a 128-bit key has a great track record for not being broken.
• Signal Protocol: This open-source encryption protocol is used for asynchronous messaging, like email.
• Blowfish and Twofish: Both of these block ciphers are free to use and popular among e-commerce platforms for protecting payment information. They were created by the same person and offer symmetric encryption with keys varying in bit length. Twofish is the successor and offers longer encryption keys.
• Ring Learning With Errors or Ring-LWE: This protocol ramps up elliptic curves by adding in a new type of encryption that might be unbreakable by quantum computers.

What Is Key Management and Why Is It Important?

Key management is another important aspect of encryption. Keys are how all of that encrypted data becomes readable, so how you handle them is just as sensitive as the data itself.

Many businesses worry about this aspect of encryption—after all, if you lose an encryption key, you lose access to your data, too. That’s why key management dictates how keys are stored (and shared) so prying eyes can’t get a hold of them, making your entire encryption schema moot.

• Diffie-Hellman key exchange: This secure way for people to create a key allows them to share secure information. This method is also touted as “perfect forward secrecy,” meaning that theoretically, at no point in the future can messages encrypted with a Diffie-Hellman key be decrypted.
• Double Ratchet algorithm: Based on the above, the Double Ratchet algorithm is a key management algorithm used in end-to-end encryption of instant messaging, like the Signal messaging app.

This article just scratches the surface of the art and science of encryption, but hopefully it gives you enough basic understanding of this important security technology. If you’re considering enlisting the help of a data security expert, you’re in luck: there are plenty of IT security freelancers on Upwork with expertise in encryption who are able to consult with you on an encryption strategy that’s best for you and your data.

Read more about IT security and the top 10 IT security skills you should have on your team.

According to new data, the average human attention span hovers around eight seconds. What’s more: That’s down from 12 seconds since the beginning of the mobile era.

Even goldfish have longer attention spans than the average human at this point in time (nine seconds)…which is strange to imagine.

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What’s happening to our ability to focus? It’s shrinking at an alarming rate.

Marketers have to take this into consideration when creating content and materials. So what do they need to know about hacking audience attention spans with interactivity?

In this post, we’ll examine some stats that indicate how interactive content is effective for the ever-shrinking attention span, as well as what aspects make it so engaging for users.

What Do Internet Users Want?

First things first: Do users actually care about interactive content? Is it interesting and engaging to them?

The short answer: Yes.

Data from eMarketer shows that Internet users find interactive content more interesting and prefer this content format (compared to non-interactive formats). 54% of users pay more attention to highly interactive video content, and 48% prefer highly interactive video content over non-interactive video content.

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The data also showed that more than two-fifths of media and audiovisual executives are already using interactive content as part of their content marketing strategies. From polls to calculators and interactive quizzes, these interactive resources are helping add a fun, engaging element to otherwise static material.

But it’s not just content marketing that’s seeing interactive content as an effective tool for hacking short attention spans.

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Content marketing is the most common use case for interactive content, but it’s followed closely by paid social media campaigns, internal brand promotion, and non-paid social media campaigns as well.

Organizations are finding that while interactive materials are highly effective (and preferred) by the content marketing audience – they’re valuable and engaging for other outlets and purposes as well.

Now what we see how widely adapted and preferred this content format is, let’s explore why it’s so effective.

Why Interactivity Works for Short Attention Spans

What makes interactive content so effective when it comes to the ever-shrinking attention span?

It’s Visually Interesting

Over time, visuals have become more and more important to content marketing. As a result, rather than sticking to static text, as a whole, marketers are realizing that visuals are a way to quickly and easily share ideas and concepts (as images are interpreted 60,000 times faster than text.)

And guess what? According to Content Marketing Institute, 63% of all social media content is made up of images.

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But interactive content goes a step beyond mere visuals. It makes those images interactive and engaging so that the user has an influence on how content displays, reacts, and appears on their screens and devices.

It Leverages Storytelling

Interactive content also engages through the power of storytelling. By placing the user within the story via his or her own unique inputs, each individual gets to create their own narratives. The story they create through interactive content is their own, based on their input.

For example, look at this interactive quiz from Curalate:

By allowing the participant to influence the outcome of the story by sharing their own input, interactive content grabs the attention of the user and holds onto it until the end result is produced. After all, once you’ve started a quiz like this one, you want to know the end result, right? It’s an information gap that simply has to be closed.

It’s Participatory

Last but not least, interactive content hacks attention spans by getting users to participate – by making them an active part of the conversation rather than a passive observer.

If you’ve ever been part of a class where the teacher dumps information and doesn’t ask any questions, you know how quickly the mind can wander. Think of that as your standard, non-interactive content. Then compare it with the class where the teacher has you get hands-on with an experiment, where you’re learning first hand and sharing your personal input. Totally different experience, right?

Interactive content gets the user to participate and taps into different psychological aspects that make it more compelling and interesting for the user.

Short Attention Spans: Interactivity to the Rescue

While the length of our attention spans might be shrinking, the good news is that interactive content formats are still a viable option for capturing and maintaining the focus of those ever-wandering minds.

With content that harnesses visuals, tells a story, and invites users to become active participants, it’s not difficult to see why it’s so widely preferred by users in comparison over non-interactive counterparts.

Haven’t tried it yet? Request a demo to see how you can create an attention-grabbing asset that gets your audience involved, invested, and interested in the content you’ve created.

A hack is a clever bit of ingenuity that makes something better, faster, or more effective.

In fact, there are entire websites dedicated to teaching others hacks that they can apply to their personal lives in a variety of ways. There are workout hacks, organizational hacks, productivity hacks, etc.

If you are the head of a small business, an entrepreneur launching a startup, or a marketing pro, it might be helpful to know that there are also social media marketing hacks.

The following 5 hacks can really help you fire up your social media marketing efforts and get some great results!

Keep reading to check them out.

1. Embrace content curation

Creating a great piece of content involves a lot of time to research, write and optimize.

By curating content, you can also share more complex forms of content with your audience without overcoming any learning curve.

Let’s take infographics as an example. People love them and they love to share them. Learning to create infographics takes time and practice, though. That might not be something you have to spare, but you can find relevant infographics to share with your followers.

Finally, if your content offerings are rather sparse, curation is a great way to fatten things up. Social Bakers did a study that showed that top brands and industry leaders such as iTunes, Skittles, Red Bull, and Victoria’s Secret posted on Facebook at least once per day if not more on average. If you aren’t able to keep up with that demand, how can you get the results you want?

So, where do you begin? First, it’s important to remember that there needs to be as much thought and strategy behind your curation efforts as there is behind your creation efforts.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you curate:

• Focus on industry influencers and thought leaders when searching for content
• Add your own thoughts and insights
• Invite the source of the content to the conversation
• Use BuzzSumo or another similar tool to find what’s trending
• Consider your audience and your branding and select content that Ffits

2. Give engaged followers the VIP treatment

You may have noticed that some of your followers are more active and more engaged with your brand on social media than others. Think of these folks as VIPs. They are the ones who are helping you get the return on investment that you are looking for. Their commenting and sharing has a direct and positive impact on your social media influence. Make sure that they know you appreciate their engagement.

Here are just a few things you can do to reward your VIP followers:

• If they are trying to establish their own social media presence share and comment on their posts
• Invite them to build up their own following by allowing them to Write a Guest Blog for your website
• Look at their posts and figure out what interests them. Then use that to influence the content that you create and share
• Offer discounts, rewards or other incentives to followers who share or comment
• Start a hashtag marketing campaign to earn more brand enthusiasts

Remember that an engaged follower can be converted into a true brand ambassador if you treat them right.

When run correctly, a hashtag marketing campaign can have an extraordinarily powerful impact. If you haven’t created a hashtag campaign before, here are some great tips to ensure that your campaign is a success.

One example of a successful hashtag marketing campaign is Charmin’s #tweetfromtheseat campaign. In spite of the fact that some were (ahem) uncomfortable with the campaign, it resulted in the company’s Twitter following skyrocketing.

3. Balance your knowledge and instincts with ‘The Rules’

There is advice all over the internet on where and how you should be participating on social media. Much of this advice is quite solid, but it must be balanced with your own instincts and knowledge of your niche.

Take Zara as an example. One common rule of social media marketing is that posts should be customized for each social media platform. This fashion retailer doesn’t do this. Instead, they post the same content to each social media platform where they are present.

The consequence of breaking that rule is that they are one of the 20 most popular brands on Facebook. This is why relying on data and your own experiences to determine your approach to social media is key to getting the best results from social media marketing.

Remember that you want conversions and not just traffic. If you only rely on the ‘latest and greatest’ social media marketing advice, you might get traffic, but you won’t likely get conversions.

And don’t spread yourself too thin. Just because a social media platform is being touted as the newest and trendiest place to be doesn’t mean that your audience is there.

Of course, in order to determine what does work, you’ll have to find ways of collecting data. You can do this using analytical tools, however, since social media is all about engagement and feedback, consider going directly to the source and asking your audience what content interests them and where they prefer to engage with you.

Also, don’t forget to ask your ‘boots on the ground’ employees what they are hearing from customers.

4. Give influencers their due

While all shares and comments have value, the truth is some are worth more than others are. When thought leaders and industry influencers link tom your content, share your posts, and add positive comments to your content offerings, people pay attention.

In order to get the attention of the influencers in your space, you have to do a bit of legwork.

Here are a few things to try:

• Become one of their VIP followers. Establish yourself as someone they can count on to share, link, engage and promote
• See if they are accepting guest blogging content and offer up a few insightful posts
• Learn what interests their followers
• Let them know when you have shared their content
• If you’ve created longer form content such as Ebooks or Whitepapers, ask influencers for quotes or reviews
• Invite them to guest blog for you
• Ask them if they would consider sitting for an interview or AMA session

Skype collaborated with Jack Baran who is an exceptionally popular YouTube personality and Instagrammer. By entering into a relationship with somebody who is so influential, Skype opened its doors to well over 1 million of Baran’s followers.

Ultimately, the best way to get the attention and respect of influential people in your space is to focus on quality content and to stay engaged with your own audience. Before a thought leader is going to be willing to give you an endorsement via social media, they need to be convinced that doing so will reflect positively on them.

5. Have a fully formed social media strategy

Too many marketing professionals and small business owners don’t get the results they are after because they take a haphazard approach to social media marketing. As a result of this, ROI is diminished significantly and goals are not only left unmet, they often aren’t set to begin with.

Here are a few points that should be included in a social media strategy:

• Defining the target audience along with their values and interests
• Establishing guidelines to ensure that social media participation does not go counter to branding
• Determining which social media platforms are best
• Integrating the social media strategy into the overall marketing strategy
• Establishing an individual or team as the social media strategist/point of contact
• Setting company policies on employee social media participation when acting as company representatives
• Setting goals and means of measuring success
• Determining which technology solutions will be employed
• Setting up an editorial calendar
• Getting feedback and buy in from all business areas not just marketing

Once established, your social media strategy should be documented, then reviewed on a regular basis just like your overall marketing strategy.

If you follow Netflix on social media, they are an excellent example of a company that has a social media strategy that does a great job incorporating audience members’ interests and needs.

Wrap

If you approach it correctly, using social media can benefit your business by helping you increase your audience, establish authority in your niche, and help you increase your social media presence. By employing the techniques outlined above, you will soon find that you are getting the results that make your efforts seem much more worthwhile.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

When it comes to Internet technologies, most of the value is distributed at the application layer rather than the protocol level.

But for blockchain technology, it's exactly the opposite, according to a blog post from Union Square Ventures analyst Joel Monegro. The protocol layer is the underlying technology that makes a network run — it’s the rails and the governing rules. The application layer is made up of technologies that ride on those rails.

For Internet technologies, many applications have become valuable by capturing data from users. Because this data is siloed, it's scarce and therefore, valuable. This is the model behind Google and Facebook, for example. And because the value is concentrated in the application layer, these companies will often invest in developing underlying protocols. 

In contrast, blockchain technologies rely on shared information. This means that the data itself isn't very valuable because everybody has it. As evidence, Monegro points out that the Bitcoin network has a market capitalization of $10 billion and Ethereum — which is early on in development at the application level — is valued at about $1 billion, while even the top blockchain-focused technologies at the application layer are worth $100 million at best.

The value of blockchain technologies is rooted in the scarcity of tokens. The tokens — Bitcoins, for example — initially attract speculative value because they are scarce, and those who invest become stakeholders in the protocol itself. As demand grows, these tokens appreciate in value and that encourages investment in technology at the application layer. As value at the application layer grows, it creates even more demand for the tokens at the protocol level. In this way, the value of the protocol layer will always be greater than that of the application layer.

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

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

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

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

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

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

In full, the report:

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

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

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

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

Join the conversation about this story »

Just a decade ago, sales was a fairly straightforward profession. Salespeople could be successful with only a fancy suit, an enthusiastic grin, and a well-rehearsed pitch.

But none of those things are relevant anymore, let alone effective.

Pitching prematurely does not work in today’s information-saturated marketplace. Your prospects are more well-informed than ever before. Modern buyers don’t always need or want to meet with you, making your winning smile a bit less critical. And you certainly can’t rely on your fancy suit to impress them these days.

It’s time to adapt to the times.

To catch you up to the current, Marc Wayshak provides some of the most concise and best advice I’ve been seeing lately. Wayshak is the best-selling author of Game Plan Selling, creator of the Sales Strategy Academy, and host of his own channel on YouTube.

In the three YouTube videos below, Wayshak highlights 11 common mistakes that most salespeople make. Read below or watch Wayshak’s videos to stop making these silly mistakes.

1) Putting off your calls.

Phone prospecting is one of the most important sales skills. The only way to get past the fear of phone prospecting is to pick up the phone and get started. No matter the source or warmness of your leads, you have to pick up the phone. Create a calling schedule -- and stick to it!

2) Not using a script.

The only thing worse than a procrastinated phone call is an unplanned one. Salespeople are quick to reject the idea of using a script as a basis for a call -- but scripts only sound scripted if they’re poorly written, inflexible and not practiced. Use a script for every phone call to keep yourself on track, keep the call focused, and to plan your response to pushback from prospects.

3) Using a “sales voice.”

The tone of your voice can literally end a conversation before it even begins. Ditch the salesy, enthusiastic tone that most salespeople use, and opt for a low-key, friend-like greeting instead. Record your sales calls and listen to your voice to see how you can improve.

Watch the video:

4) Focusing too much on yourself.

Prospects don’t care about you. They only care about themselves. Stop worrying about trying to present yourself and your solutions in an attempt to impress. Instead, focus on your prospects’ goals and challenges. Be interested instead of trying to be interesting.

5) Not setting a clear next step.

Never end a successful phone call or sales meeting without a defined next step. Unless it makes no sense to ever talk to your prospect again, always schedule a very clear next step during your current sales meetings or phone calls so both you and your prospect know how to proceed. Don’t wait to get buy-in for next steps after you’ve hung up.

6) Talking too much.

Ninety-nine percent of salespeople talk too much in selling situations. Very few salespeople talk too little. Cut the chat -- and get your prospects talking by asking them great questions. Use my guide to active listening when you’re ready to really master this skill.

To hear how to set up a next step and avoid talking too much, watch this video from Wayshak:

7) Trying to be like everyone else.

Far too many salespeople sound and act like they think salespeople should act. Prospects are sick of it. On the other hand, when you’re perceived as different from other salespeople, your value goes up in prospects’ eyes. Don’t be afraid to be unique. In fact, look for ways you and your company can seem and be different.

8) Not showing value.

Your prospects’ challenges cost them money. If you can find out the dollar amount of that cost, then you can quantify your offering’s value to your prospect. Make this a priority in every selling situation. You’re probably wasting your time if your prospect isn’t convinced you can save them or make them money -- or both.

9) Not qualifying on budget.

Most salespeople never ask prospects about budget. This is a mistake. Prospects usually have a budget, even if they say they don’t. It might not be earmarked for your solution, but most companies have money to spend if they believe they can get better results. Probing what the budget is, why it’s that size, and under what conditions they’ll spend it, will allow you to craft the right solution.

10) Continuing to pursue unqualified prospects.

The biggest difference between top salespeople and everyone else is that top salespeople spend the majority of their time with well-qualified prospects. This requires that you drop prospects who are less likely to buy. Dropping this dead weight allows you to spend your time finding and pursuing better opportunities.

11) Presenting too early.

Many salespeople start their sales meetings with a presentation -- and shoot themselves in the foot. Instead of leading with a presentation, begin by focusing on prospects’ key challenges and objectives. You may need to lead with a story about how you’ve helped people like them, but start a conversation, not a dog and pony show.

Hear the rest of these do’s and don’ts from this third video:

Did you or your team members ever make these silly mistakes? Are you still making them? How will you stop?

OTTAWA – Cash rebates and tax incentives are the best way to convince Canadians to buy electric cars as part of an overall government strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, federal officials conclude in a report to Transport Minister Marc Garneau.

However, those same officials have told Garneau that money set aside in this year’s budget to encourage people to take the electric vehicles for a spin may be going to waste.

The comments from the department’s policy group are in response to a report by Electric Mobility Canada, which made a number of recommendations in March to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) across the country.

The not-for-profit group’s report called for purchase rebates of up to $3,000 per vehicle sold, on top of provincial rebates amounting to a minimum of $3,000.

“EV purchase incentives likely hold the greatest potential to increase EV sales, as they address arguably the most important barrier to uptake — high cost premiums for EVs compared to conventional vehicles,” Transport Canada’s policy group said in internal comments on the report’s recommendations.

“Evidence suggests incentives are the primary reason for existing sales of EVs.”

In documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, officials noted that nearly all sales of electric vehicles in Canada — 95 per cent — were completed in provinces that offered EV purchase rebates.

Applying a federal cash incentive in provinces where rebates already exist would not only spur new sales, but would also encourage other jurisdictions to introduce their own incentive programs, they concluded.

British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec currently offer incentives to buyers of so-called zero-emission vehicles.

The Liberal government hasn’t said whether it’s considering offering cash incentives to buyers of more environmentally friendly cars, but it has been hearing from proponents of the idea.

“The government of Canada has launched broad consultations of addressing climate change and electric vehicles could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the transportation sector,” Garneau’s communications adviser Melany Gauvin said in an email.

“Minister Garneau recently held a roundtable on green transportation in the margins of the Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exhibition in Montreal, where he met with industry key stakeholders, academia and big thinkers.”

The Electric Mobility Canada report also recommended the federal government fund the installation of fast-charging stations as part of a national electric-vehicle highway.

Transport Canada policy advisers concluded it’s doubtful car makers will pay for the stations because they aren’t yet profitable, given how few electric vehicles have been sold in Canada.

“Industry is unlikely to make this investment, as the business case is still weak for the amount of capital required … to attract a limited number of customers,” they said.

The federal government set aside $62.5 million in the 2016-17 budget so Natural Resources Canada could help businesses install workplace fuelling stations for electric cars as well as natural gas and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Last month the Ontario government said it would partner with private-sector companies such as Ikea and Tim Hortons to build a new network of almost 500 charging stations for electric cars at restaurants, stores and Pearson International Airport, among other locations.

But earlier this year it also capped its EV rebate program at $3,000 for cars priced between $75,000 and $150,000, sparking criticisms from wealthy Tesla owners, while expanding rebates for lower-priced vehicles, up to as much as $10,000.

There were just over 20,000 plug-in electric cars on the country’s roadways as of May this year, representing fewer than one-third of one per cent of all vehicles sold in Canada, according to online magazine Green Car Reports.

Industry observers estimate that number could grow by another 10,000 vehicles by mid-2017.

Follow @tpedwell on Twitter

The post Want Canadians to buy electric cars? Cash rebates may help, say officials appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

At some point in the last three weeks, Turkey definitively shifted from ally to adversary.

Turkey has always had a complicated relationship with the Western world, straddling Asia, Europe and the Middle East both culturally and physically. But, in recent years, it still seemed like Ankara was on our team. It has been a strong member of NATO. Its efforts to join the European Union, albeit fitful, were at least efforts to move towards the West and not away. The Turkish economy and its culture have become ever more connected to Europe’s over the last several decades, and large-scale migration made those connections personal and deep.

Over the last 15 years, Turkey has arguably even been an indispensable ally, providing military bases to Western forces fighting in Syria and Iraq, and managing the flow of refugees out of that region. Ankara even sent a battalion to Afghanistan.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strained that partnership right from the beginning. When you review his political career, there is such a long list of scandals, affronts and conflicts with Turkish civil society, ethnic minorities, women, secular groups and Western allies, you wonder why it took so long for relations to break down. Erdogan has ruled Turkey like a 19th-century sultan: mercurial, pompous and severe. In hindsight, with his instinctive animosity towards Turkey’s Western allies and their troublesome fixation on human rights, democracy and the rule of law, it is easy to see how things fell apart.

Under Erdogan, the government has shifted away from its secular traditions towards Islam. A staunch Muslim, Erdogan has supported Syrian groups aligned with the Islamic State, and been accused of channeling money to ISIS. He maintains Turkey committed no crime when 1.5 million people were massacred during the Armenian Genocide, and he even ordered the destruction of a monument dedicated to reconciliation between Armenian and Turkish peoples.

Related: How Turkey became a petri dish for Islamist politics

Erdogan earns only $73,000 a year; and yet, according to media investigations, he and his family have managed to build vast fortunes. Much of it comes from crony deals. In a notorious phone call recording leaked in 2014, Erdogan can allegedly be heard instructing his son on how to hide the money. When police and prosecutors began to move in, the president simply had them fired.

He is a professed admirer of the Ottoman Empire and built a thousand-room presidential palace. He has continually attacked press freedom, cracked down on anti-government protesters, and systematically strengthened the role of the president while kneecapping the opposition and politicizing the judiciary.

In spite of all this, the EU, the United States, and Canada have continued to call Turkey an ally. How could we not? NATO relies heavily on Turkish airbases. And Ankara has helped both to house 2.7 million Syrian refugees, and to staunch the flow of those attempting to migrate into Europe. Erdogan might be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.

The last few weeks, though, suggest this may no longer be the case. In the wake of the failed coup attempt on July 15, Erdogan re-emerged with a righteous fury. He declared a three-month state of emergency and set about arresting over 18,000 people. He purged the civil service of 66,000 people whose loyalty he suspected. He sacked thousands of judges. University professors were banned from travelling abroad. Schools, media outlets and even hospitals were shut down.

When it came time to point fingers, Erdogan accused the United States of sympathizing with and supporting the coup plotters, and lashed out angrily at any country that suggested his crackdown was going too far.

There is no denying that in the last three weeks Erdogan has pushed Turkey well beyond the limits of what is considered acceptable behaviour among the Western allies. This wholesale abuse of democracy and human rights has no recent comparison within Europe, North America, Australia or Japan. It is no longer possible to keep pretending Turkey is a friend.

Instinctively, we will engage. But this has been our strategy towards Turkey to date, and the results are self-evident. And yet, isolating Ankara would likely make matters even worse, allowing Erdogan to blame outsiders for the troubles he himself has inflicted.

Which leaves perhaps only one real option: preparing for failure. We need to accept that that relations will continue to deteriorate whether we offer carrots or sticks. This means NATO should shift operations to other regional hubs like Cyprus, and that efforts to manage the flow of refugees into Europe should refocus on the Balkans and Greece or into Syria itself. We may not be able to stop Turkey from slipping away, but we can stop pretending it isn’t.

The post Why Turkey is our worst friend in the world appeared first on Macleans.ca.

When it comes down to it, the success of a blog ultimately depends on both the quality of the content you write, and your ability to share your content successfully.

There are a ton of options to help you do that – some are fantastic, some not so much.

Luckily, Charles Bourdet of Become a Top Performer did all the research for you and found 59 of the very best tools for creating and sharing remarkable content across the web. I personally found a ton of valuable resources from this, I’m adding to my regular workflow.

With that, enjoy!

—

You spend dozens of hours on a single blog post. You rewrite it, edit it, polish it, and make it the best you can.

It is time to hit publish, but as you give a last look at your article, you realize it sounds like any other piece of content on the internet. Same words, same advice, nothing outstanding.

It’s frustrating, right? You try your best, but creating something original and remarkable is not easy, by definition.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though.

Writing the perfect article and creating remarkable content on a regular basis is a process that can be broken down into manageable steps. There are tools out there that will help you with each step towards the creation of your perfect post.

Writing short articles that don’t provide a lot of value to your readers doesn’t work anymore. That might have worked back in 2005 when you could count bloggers on your hand, but today it’s just a waste of time.

What works today is creating outstanding content that gets noticed. It gets noticed by your readers, of course, but not only. Influencers can recognize good content and help you promote it to even more people.

Writing a crappy post might help you get a bit of traffic after the publication, but it’s not worth the effort.

Besides, writing great content will help convince your readers that you’re worth listening to. They will like you right away and start to trust you more. As a result, they’re more likely to buy your products and follow your advice.

Finally, writing remarkable content doesn’t just give you traffic right after the publication. Instead, it keeps bringing you new readers and subscribers months after it is out.

If you’ve been a regular reader of Location 180, you can’t have missed the recent post from Alp Turan: “How Complete Newbies Can Land Killer Guest Posts: The Ultimate Guide.” It is an excellent example of what remarkable content is.

I reached out to Alp to know what kind of results this post did for him. He got:

• 300+ subscribers (and counting)
• a relationship with Sean and Liz
• two new guest blogging opportunities
• a joint venture offer
• a new client for his consulting business

Remarkable content will give you remarkable results. It would not happen with a short crappy listicle such as “5 Quick Ways to Land Guest Posts.”

Remarkable content stands the test of time.

So how do you write remarkable content?

It seems such a daunting task! It takes time, dedication, hard work, and you don’t want to spend 20 hours on each of your articles.

Don’t worry.

The process of creating remarkable content can be broken down into just a few key elements:

1. Finding the perfect blog post idea.
2. Engineering a remarkable headline.
3. Writing the best outline possible.
4. Writing a sh***y first draft.
5. Making extensive and insightful research.
6. Editing your first draft.
7. Illustrating your article to make it attractive.
8. Promoting the hell of your article as if your life was depending on it.

If you do EACH of this steps perfectly, your post will stand out.

Not only will it be perfect, but it will bring you hundreds of new subscribers right after publication, and still months later.

For each step of the process, I have prepared for you the exact tools that will make it 10 times easier for you.

All you have to do is pick a tool, do what you’re supposed to do with it, do it well, and you’re done. That’s it! Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

To help you navigate into this and help you find the RIGHT tool for your problem, I made a table of contents:

1. Tools to Find the Perfect Blog Post Idea
2. Tools to Engineer a Remarkable Headline
3. Tools to Write the Best Outline
4. Tools to Write Your Sh***y First Draft
5. Tools to Write in the Zone and Double Your Productivity
6. Tools to Make Extensive and Insightful Research
7. Tools to Edit and Transform Your First Draft
8. Tools to Illustrate Your Post and Make it Attractive
9. Tools to Promote the Hell of Your Post
10. Tools You Wouldn’t Even Think Of

To help you keep the list and refer to it later when you need it, I created a condensed version in PDF that you can download right now by clicking here.

1. Tools to Find the Perfect Blog Post Idea

The first step towards creating remarkable content is finding the perfect blog post idea.

You could write the best article on how to write a check, but chances are that nobody would care about it. However, if you write an awesome article on how to guest post, which is something a lot of people care about, you will more likely get a lot of success with it.

If you want to learn how to find the perfect blog post idea, here are a few suggestions for you:

• The Ultimate Guide to Never Run Out of Blog Post Ideas
• How to Find 20+ Blog Ideas Your Audience Can’t Wait to Read
• The Ultimate List of 95 Blogpost Ideas for Creating Craveable Content to Share on Social

And here are the tools that will help you do it quickly and efficiently:

Quora

Quora is a great place to find new blog post ideas because they come from people like you and me.

Type your topic at the top and select either:

• Quora topics.
• Questions.

For example, select Topic: Guest Blogging. You will land on a new page with new blog post ideas submitted by people from your audience.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo takes a different approach. Instead of going to the source (i.e. people), this tool looks at published blog posts and tells you what worked well.

For example, I typed Guest Blogging in the search bar, selected Last Month to get recent results, and finally ranked the results by Most Twitter Shares.

You can see which articles get a lot of shares, take a look at them, and then find a way to make something even better (for example by using the skyscraper technique).

Portent’s Content Idea Generator

With the Portent’s Content Idea Generator, you only need to enter your topic and it will give you a headline.

Because it’s just an algorithm, you will sometimes get generic and boring headlines, but you will find some nice suggestions here and there from which you can build upon a better headline.

Here are some pretty good headlines I could find:

• How to Cheat at Guest Blogging and Get Away With It
• Unbelievable Guest Blogging Success Stories
• An Expert Interview About Guest Blogging
• 12 Ways Guest Blogging Can Make You Rich
• Why You’ll Never Succeed at Guest Blogging

The Blog Post Ideas Generator

This tool will suggest incomplete headlines to give you more ideas.

You will usually need to complete the headline with your topic keyword, the solution you’re offering, or a burning pain of your readers.

The goal of this tool is not to give you a headline, but more to get your inspiration running to find new ideas.

Look at these examples I could find, sometimes after minor modifications:

• The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging
• Things That Nobody Told You About Guest Blogging
• 7 Reasons Your Guest Blogging Strategy is Doomed to Failure
• Guest Blogging: Top 10 Examples of Beautiful Pitches
• 5 Guest Blogging Rules You Should Break!

ContentIdeator Generator

The ContentIdeator Generator is similar to BuzzSumo as it will give you a list of existing articles and rank them according to how many social shares they get.

They seem to have a different algorithm, though, as they don’t provide the same results. Here is what I get:

One drawback compared to BuzzSumo is that they don’t give you access to the number of shares the post got. However, you can go back in time long after 1 year ago, which is the limit for the free version of BuzzSumo.

Content Strategy Helper Tool – Version 3

This tool is unique in its genre. It’s not just a “put your word and get suggestions” tool, but a sophisticated spreadsheet that will tell you:

• What’s trending across many social or news channels (Twitter, Google Search, Reddit, etc.)
• What is the most successful recent content around a topic you choose.
• Tons of information about influencers in your niche.

This tool use goes way beyond just finding blog post ideas, but let’s focus on that for now.

They explain here how to set up the tool to use it. It’s actually a Google Spreadsheet, and all you need to do is make a copy for yourself. They also explain you how to copy/paste the script, but for some reason I didn’t have to do it, it was already filled.

Then, on the first tab Ideas, enter your keyword, and get tons of successful articles for inspiration:

Tweak Your Biz Title Generator

The Tweak Your Biz Title Generator first asks you whether your keyword is a noun or a verb.

This allows them to provide you with more relevant headlines and avoid the so common Here are 10 Ways to Content Marketing Better, which doesn’t make sense (in this example, my keyword Content Marketing is a noun and it was considered as a verb).

The tool separates the headlines between Lists, Questions, How To, etc., and also let you download the whole list of ideas, so that you can put it in your blog post ideas swipe file (you should have one).

As with all headlines generator, all ideas aren’t good, but this tools gives you so many ideas, that if you take only the top 10%, you’re still left with dozens of ideas!

WebpageFX Blog Post Idea Generator

This headline generator will give you one headline at a time.

I find it better to get only 1 headline (with the possibility to generate others) rather than 100 at once, as in the latter case it can get overwhelming and leave you stuck with too many choices.

By giving you only 1, you can give it all your consideration and think of how you could tweak it. Additionally, the WebpageFX Blog Post Idea Generator provides you with a button to google the idea, and thus find other similar content ideas.

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

The HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator is one of the most known topic generator out there. Yet, the first time I used it, I thought it was total crap.

Now coming back to it, I realize it gives some new fresh ideas. Of course, they’re not perfect, but they’re still worth studying when you lack inspiration.

Look at these ideas:

Here is how to tweak these headlines:

1. 5 Tools Everyone Should Be Using When Guest Blogging
2. Are You Ready For Doing Guest Blogging? Take This Quiz
3. How Guest Blogging Was Back in 2007, and Why It Doesn’t Work Anymore
4. 14 Common Misconceptions About Guest Blogging
5. Why We Love Guest Blogging (And You Should, Too!)

The #4 and #5 were good enough without modification. For the rest, the suggestions gave me some extra inspiration to get these ideas!

SEOPressor Blog Title Generator

Look, another blog title generator!

This one stands out from the rest by giving more information on your keyword: Is it a generic term, a brand/product, an event, an industry, a location, a person’s name, or a skill?

For example, you could type Sean Ogle and say it’s a person’s name.

Now you can write an article about Sean and try to get his attention! This would work well on well-known blogger such as Neil Patel or Pat Flynn.

Now, if I take Guest Blogging and say it’s a skill, I get some pretty good headlines too:

Tools to Engineer a Remarkable Headline

In the previous section, we saw a bunch of headline generators. But how do you know if they’re good? Can you use them right away without any tweak?

Most of the time, if you don’t want something too generic, the answer is no.

You don’t have to play the lottery though. First of all, there are tons of articles and courses out there that will teach you how to write the perfect headline:

• How to Write Magnetic Headlines
• The Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Powerful Headlines
• How to Write Headlines That Drive Traffic, Shares, and Search Results

But if you don’t have the time to read these great guides or if you’re still not sure whether your headline is good or not, you can use the following tools. They will give a score to your headline and tell you right away if they’re awesome… or terrible.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

This is by far my most preferred headline analyzer. I use it every time I want to write a new post. I use it to test my headlines when I want to submit ideas for a guest post (since in this case, the blogger takes his decision mostly based on the headline). Sometimes I even include my headline score in the pitch.

Enter the headline and you’ll get a score between 0 and 100, though most of the time your score will be in the (60, 80) range. Anything above 70% is good enough.

The score is based on:

• The word balance (common, uncommon, emotional and power words)
• The headline type (list posts, questions, generic, …)
• The length (too long is not good for SEO). It also shows you how it will look in Google or as an email subject line.
• Keywords
• Sentiment analysis

When I test the headline 101 Amazing Tools to Create Remarkable Content Easily, I get a score of 73%!

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

This headline analyzer from the Advanced Marketing Institute will give you a score based on the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) of your headline. It tells how much emotion your headline communicate.

While we humans like to think we take decision based on reason, most of our actions are based on emotions, and that’s why emotional headlines work much better than rational headlines.

Enter your headline, pick a category (this doesn’t seem to have any impact on the score) and click Submit For Analysis.

As you can see, my headline gets a 87.50% score. Fantastic! As they say, the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines. Maybe I should start a new copywriting career!

As with any automatic tool, you also still need to have a critical mind. Once you understand how the algorithm works, you can craft a headline that gets a 100% score but that doesn’t make sense at all. I found that the more you tweak your headline to add emotional words, the stranger it sounds.

Play with it, improve your score, but keep using your brain.

KingSumo Headlines

Instead of analyzing your headlines based on determined factors, the KingSumo Headlines plugin will determine the best headline based on the choices on your visitors.

Let me explain. In your WordPress article editor, you write several headlines you think are good but don’t know which is the best. The plugin will randomly show different headlines to your visitors and test which one works best.

As it gets more information, the algorithm will display the headline that gets you the most traffic, without you having to do anything.

I am not using this tool, as it is rather expensive at the stage of my business (starting at $99, I won’t be able to have a positive ROI), but if you’re looking for tweaking your headlines in a sophisticated way, this tool seems to be the right one.

Thrive Headline Optimizer

The Thrive Headline Optimizer is like the KingSumo Headlines plugin we just discussed.

After submitting several headlines to your post, it will analyze the click-through-rate, the time readers spend on the article and how much they’re scrolling in it, to determine what is the best headline.

After gathering enough information, the optimizer will show the winning headline to maximize traffic.

It is a bit less expensive than the KingSumo version, with a starting price of $67.

Title Experiments Free

Here is another plugin that will let you test different headlines and compare them over time to find what is the best one. After having accumulated enough data, it will show the winner to your readers, meaning you don’t have to manage it anymore once set up.

The plugin has the advantage of being free, compared to the two previous ones. It also has a pro version that will allow you to test different featured images (that’s useful if you write your headline on the featured image like I do) and provide detailed statistics for a price of 29.99$ per year.

It’s hard to tell which of the three plugins is the best, as they all more or less promise the same things, but might be using different technologies that provide different results.

Tools to Write The Best Outline

Once you have a good blog post idea and a compelling headline, the next step before starting your first draft is to draw a detailed outline of your future article.

The outline is an important step, as it will allow you:

• To write the first draft easily (by already knowing exactly what you need to write about).
• To avoid taking many different directions and waste time (you already have a structure of the article).
• To avoid iterating again and again (you have an initial plan and stick to it).

Here are top articles to help you learn how to write the best outlines:

• 10 Steps to Draft A Blog Outline in 10 Easy Minutes
• How to Write a Blog Post Outline: A Simple Formula to Follow
• How to Write an Outline: A Non-Writer’s Guide

Now, where are you supposed to write your outline? On a piece of paper? In Word? Or are there specific tools for this?

Yes there are, and here are the best you can find:

Evernote

While Evernote is not exactly an outlining tool, but it can still be used for it.

Here is how to use it:

• Create a Notebook called Blog post outlines. Notebooks in Evernote are like folders.
• For each new outline, create a new Note and fill it with your outline.

Evernote provides the basic editing tools for writing your outline and organizes them all at the same place:

If all you need is a place to write your outlines, Evernote will do the job.

Now, if you need fancier outlining tools, keep reading.

OmniOutliner

The OmniOutliner is only available for Mac users. This tool brings outlining to a new world with a bunch of incredible features. Here is a video showing how to use the app:

Introducing OmniOutliner 4 from Vimeo.

I feel that it’s even too powerful for outlining, but if you’re used to write long and detailed blog posts that look like mini-ebooks, it will be useful for you.

WorkFlowy

WorkFlowy is a lot simpler, and you don’t even need to create an account or download anything to try it.

While it’s intended to be used as a to-do list, you can use it to structure your blog post and take notes for each section or subsection.

The coolest features are the possibilities to move around the sections, fold and unfold them, and play with the indents. This helps to focus on creating the content and the structure without wasting too much time on formatting the text.

Scrivener

Scrivener is the ultimate software for writers. It is awesome for writing blog posts.

But in this section, we’re interested in what it can offer us to improve our outlines. Like many other outlining tools, you can write the structure similar with bullet points and then expand them by explaining what they contain.

What I like with Scrivener though is that you can zoom into your outline and know at what step you are in the creation of the article. Is this subsection already finished or still in progress? How many words have I already written for this part?

Instead of writing the outline as a step separated from the rest, Scrivener integrates it in your writing project.

CheckVist

If you want a tool that lets you write without worrying about anything else, you will like CheckVist.

This tool focuses on having a LOT of keyboard shortcuts to help you focus on outlining only and not worry about anything. The shortcuts will help you write the outline at light speed.

They define this tool as the Online outliner for geeks as it’s intended for people who aren’t afraid of complex keyboard shortcuts or writing in Markdown. If that’s you, then give it a try. If not, try something more user-friendly.

Little Outliner

You don’t want a fancy outliner with tons of features?

If you’re a minimalist outliner, then Little Outliner is for you. Right when you arrive on the page, you get a prompt to start typing your outline.

Little Outliner has all the basics of an outliner:

• Indent and un-indent with Tab and Shift+Tab
• Write in Bold, Italic, or put links.
• Re-organize the bullet points. Fold and unfold entire sections.

If you just want a place to write a hierarchical outline and not bother with anything else, look no more.

Coggle

I’m not a huge fan of mind maps for outlining my blog posts, but I know some people only use that. In fact, just creating the example for the screenshot below showed me how powerful outlining with a mind map can be.

Every time you get a new idea, you can create a new branch and divide it in sub-branches to get more and more specific.

Now, there are tons of mindmapping tools out there, so why Coggle? Because:

• It’s free.
• It’s simple. We don’t need fancy features.
• It’s online. No need to download anything.
• It’s easy to sign up. You can link your Google account and be set up in 30 seconds.

Tools to Write Your Sh***y First Draft

So far you have:

• Found a compelling blog post idea with a good headline.
• Written a detailed outline.

What’s the next step? According to best-selling author Anne Lamott, it’s the sh**y first draft.

You just write. And later you will edit.

I won’t direct you to other articles to learn how to write your first draft, because really all you need to know is this:

1. Follow the structure of your outline.
2. Write everything you have in your head.
3. Don’t worry about formatting, grammar mistakes, awkward phrasing or rambling. Don’t edit when writing the first draft. A good exercise is to prevent yourself from using the backspace key.
4. You can only get better at it by getting practice.

Of course, there are tools to help you in this daunting task, but I must warn you: They won’t do the writing at your place!

Google Docs

Google Docs is the holy grail of the modern blogger.

It’s like a simplified online Microsoft Word with which you can collaborate with other people. I used to write all my blog articles in Google Docs, and I still do sometimes, like right now. Indeed, it’s a great collaboration tool, I can share it very easily with Sean and then he can directly add comments or edit the article if I give him the rights.

Markdown Pad

Markdown Pad 2 is where I write most of my articles nowadays (this is going to change though, as I discovered a lot of interesting tools by writing this article).

Markdown is a markup language that helps you write in HTML without knowing HTML. Instead, you have a set of rules to write the titles, to write in bold, or to make bullet points. Most of them are really intuitive, so there’s no steep learning curve.

Now, why should you bother to write this way when nowadays we have tools such as Google Docs that make all the formatting much easier?

Here’s why: I used to write in Google Docs, but then I would waste hours trying to copy/paste it in my WordPress editor. If you’ve tried it yourself, you know what I mean.

Now, by using the HTML provided by my markdown document, all I need is one copy/paste, and everything is already beautiful. I’m saving hours writing this way.

One important drawback is that I lose the collaborating possibility that Google Docs was offering.

Twords

If you struggle to write your first draft and tend to procrastinate on it, Twords can help you with that.

It’s not great for collaboration, it’s not great for writing an entire blog post in it, but it’s great to get your writing done! And when you’re writing your sh***y first draft, that’s all that matter.

The best way to make progress in your writing is to write every day. Twords will ask you to set up a daily word count and then nudge you to get it done.

For example, you choose to write 500 words daily, you pick a time to write it (let’s say 30 minutes), and start writing it. Twords has a bunch of features that will get you more motivated to write, for example:

• It told me “If you continue to write 717 words every day, you will write a 50,000 word novel in 70 days.” That’s inspiring!
• It tracks the number of words you write and gives you a score on it. Improve your score by writing more!
• Get you friends on Twords and stay accountable to them. You can add accountability buddies to your account.

ZenPen

If you are struggling with distractions, ZenPen is for you. They define it as a minimalist writing zone, and that’s exactly what it is.

Simply sit down, get clear on what you want to write about, open ZenPen, toggle the Full Screen feature, and start writing.

You can then set a timer if you want to write for, say, 30 minutes, or set a words goal in the application. A progress bar on the right will tell you how close you get to your goal.

Calmly Writer

When I first looked at Calmly Writer, I thought “Well, it’s just another distraction-free writing tool, there’s no point to feature it as well since ZenPen does this job pretty well already”.

But then I looked closer. I tried it. And I fell in love. Here is why this app will probably become my next writing environment:

1. Easy to use and distraction-free. You install it as a Chrome app.
2. Possibility to use Markdown… or not! You can either click on a button or write the Markdown code.
3. Very-easy-brainless integration of images. You just copy-paste it!
4. Finally, the best feature for me: An HTML export so that you can directly copy/paste the html into the WordPress editor. For the pictures, it automatically gets the URL from where you fetched it.

Woah!

It also gets bonus points for being neat, responsive, offering backups, having a focus mode that highlights only the paragraph you’re working on (great for editing!), and many other nice features.

The app is free, but you’ve got to pay about $5 to get the top features of the app (like the backup or Markdown).

Typewrite

Have you ever written an article, then iterated on it, and kept iterating again and again… Only to want to come back at a previous version?

Most of the time, that’s not possible. All you’ve got is your current version and you can’t go back in the past.

If you’re this kind of writer who wants to save versions of your work as you make progress on it, then you may want to give Typewrite a try.

It also offers you a distraction-free environment, a possibility to collaborate with other people, to sync your articles on Dropbox, and also to type in Markdown!

Tools to Write in the Zone and Double Your Productivity

In the previous section, we saw a bunch of distraction-free writing environment. Why is it that most writing apps out there focus on this one feature?

The answer is: Because writing is hard.

Writing is so hard that you will find any excuse to not do it. When comes the time of your writing session, you suddenly realize that your apartment needs some cleaning and that you have the motivation to do it!

You will procrastinate on writing. If you’re not careful, you will waste hours social media, emails, or anything that is not writing. A common example is doing research for hours, thinking you’re being productive, while all you’re doing is actually postponing the writing.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A lot of tools can help you to get the writing done and resist the procrastination.

focus@will

Focus@will takes listening to music while working to the next level.

You may like to listen to your preferred music while writing, and this may be a good idea… or not! The issue with most music is that they’re distracting, especially when there are lyrics.

Focus@will have selected music that will enhance your focus instead of distract you.

Basically, you set up a timer, choose your type of music, and you’re set up. At the end of the time, “Ting!”. You’re done.

I have used Focus@will for more than a year and it has always helped me get in the zone quite easily.

Rainy Mood

Some people find that listening to nature music, especially rain, helps increase their focus. I’m definitely part of these people, and found that Rainy Mood does this job well. All you have to do is launch the website, and that’s it.

While I like with listening to the rain is that it’s a bit similar to white noise. It isolates you from external noise, hence creating a kind of sensoriel bubble that will help you get in the zone.

Cold Turkey

ColdTurkey is a long time favorite of mine. For a while, when I was working full-time from home, I was using it almost religiously. This was my savior from the unlimited world of distractions that is internet.

This tool will allow you to block all the distractions on your computer: Social media, emails, games, webchats, etc. You name it!

You simply make a list of websites and programs that distract you during your writing, and then tells ColdTurkey to block them during a specific time frame.

For example, after I made my list, I told the app to block all my distractions every weekday from 6 am to 9 am, which is the timeframe when I’m working on my business:

If you find yourself spending too much time on Facebook instead of doing your writing, consider doing the same thing. There is no shame in admitting that resisting to distractions is hard.

There is a free version but it won’t allow you to block programs on your computer nor schedule specific times like I do. The paid version is a one-time $19 payment.

Cold Turkey Writer

Nope, Cold Turkey Writer is not the same app!

It is a writing app with a special feature: It won’t let you quit until you’re done.

You set up a number of words to write or a duration. Until the goal is achieved, you can’t quit the app. You can’t anything else but write until you’re done.

You could do with the free version, but the paid version (a one-time $10 payment) offers a setting that I particularly like: It blocks the backspace and delete keys. This is just perfect for writing your first draft! Too many people tend to edit and write at the same time, resulting in wasting a lot of time iterating again and again on the same things.

Tomato Timer

You certainly have heard about the Pomodoro Technique. This time management technique invented by Francesco Cirillo works like that:

1. You set up the timer for 25 minutes.
2. You work until the timer expires.
3. You take a short break of 5 minutes.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3.

One iteration of the process is called One Pomodoro, and every 4 pomodoros you take a long break (at least 10 minutes).

The major benefit of this technique is to reduce procrastination. Instead of thinking of the big daunting task you need to do, all you do is a click to start the timer, and now you’ve got to write for just 25 minutes, which sounds really easy.

Since writing is hard and something we tend to procrastinate on, the Pomodoro technique will help you get started with writing. That the hardest part is always getting started. Once you’re in a flow, it’s easy to keep going.

To help you keep the list and refer to it later when you need it, I created a condensed version in PDF that you can download right now by clicking here.

Tools to Make Extensive and Insightful Research

Nowadays, people want to back up their blog posts with as much research and data as possible.

I don’t always agree with this, as I found that many blog posts get their value simply from you sharing your personal experience. This way, by making people relate to your story, you inspire them to take action and change their lives. Not much research needed in this case.

That’s what matters in the end: Make people to take action. It’s not about feeding them with more information.

In this case, research should only be made to improve your current draft, not to change it or replace your personal experiences by studies and other facts.

But for some articles, like this one actually, you need to do a ton of research before writing the first word. For example, before starting to write this article, I went on an Internet journey to find as many tools as possible. Then I tried them, I discarded some and selected others.

So how to do this kind of research in an efficient and insightful way?

• This Is The Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content To The Next Level
• How We Research: A Look Inside the Buffer Blog Process
• How I write research-based posts

Here are some tools that will help you in this daunting and never-ending task.

Google

Of course… Google!

But it’s not just about typing keywords. Here are some tips that will help you get more relevant results. Let’s say my research revolves around sleep length.

1. Add keywords

• Sleep length statistics

• Sleep length data

• Sleep length science

• Sleep length research

• Etc.

2. Research on a website

Adding site:websitename.com will make your research results focused on only the website that you chose.

For example, site:www.huffingtonpost.com sleep length will allow you to get search results only from the Huffington Post website.

3. Recent research

Use the Search tools to only get recent results. Following the screenshot below, here are the steps:

• Click Search tools
• Click Any time
• Choose the relevant timeframe.
• Ask questions

Before doing research, you should write down all the questions you have. Sometimes, the most naive approach of simply writing down the questions to Google works very well.

Pocket

Have you ever stumble upon an article and thought “Woah! That’s exactly what I need for my next blog post!”, but you’re in the kitchen, preparing a meal for your family, simply browsing your phone, and you can’t take the time to read the whole article right now.

So you take a mental note, hope it won’t disappear, and move on with your life.

The next morning, you sit before your computer, ready to write your blog post, and you try to remember how you found this article the previous… but your mind goes blank.

Damn!

No need for such frustration anymore. Use Pocket and simply save all these articles in one place: In your Pocket.

How does it work?

1. You subscribe to the service (it’s free).
2. You get the extension for your browser (they tell you right away how to do it).
3. You also install it on your phone (they also told me how to do it, it was 1 click away, so I clicked)
4. Every time you stumble upon an article but don’t have time to read it, Pocket it!

Easy!

Evernote

Yes, we already talked about Evernote for outlining, but what was once a simple note-taking app has now become powerful.

I find that Evernote is the perfect research vault for your blog posts.

First, there is a feature similar to Pocket and it’s called the Evernote Web Clipper. It will help you save your articles for later.

But you can also use it for research purposes. First, create a Notebook called Research. Then, for each topic relevant to your blog, create a new note. Finally, every time you read something interesting about a topic, you can add it in your note, with a link to your source.

This way, when you need some scientific facts or data about a topic, you can go directly to your Evernote notebook and directly find everything you need.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is the Google for scientific papers. Every field is subject to scientific research, whether you’re in marketing, fitness, personal finances or travel. Some fields will be more relevant than others though.

For example, if you write about travel hacking, this won’t be useful at all. But if you write about sleep, this will be a goldmine of information.

Tools to Edit and Transform Your First Draft

You should now already have your first draft, and thanks to this list of tools, you could find the time and focus to sit and write something.

This something isn’t good enough yet. It’s just your first draft, it’s just words that barely make sense together and that need some editing.

There are a lot of wonderful tools that will help you get from a sh***y first draft to a compelling new version your readers won’t stop reading.

Let’s get started!

Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway Editor is also a writing app, but really you don’t get any benefit from writing directly in it. It’s better to copy paste what you’ve been writing so far to try to improve it on the go.

This app will tell you:

• The readability of your writing: It tends to tell me that sixth Graders can read my stuff, which is a good thing as it means my writing is very readable. You don’t need to write in a complex way on the internet.
• Which sentences are hard (or very hard) to read. You may want to cut them in two or three parts.
• When you use adverbs. Adverbs brings complexity while you could probably replace them by a better verb that means exactly what you mean.
• When you use passive voice. You should avoid it in some cases as it will prevent you from making the emphasis on the right subject.

Simply go through your post and make minor edits here and there. If you’re like me, you’ll find a bunch of really, very and just that you can easily get rid of.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a grammar checker that propose you a free version or a paid version.

You can also install the Chrome plugin, so that everywhere you’ll be writing it will check grammar for you.

Otherwise, you can simply copy/paste your post in there and it will spot all your mistakes. As a non-native, I find this incredibly useful since I still make a lot of mistakes, sometimes as simple as this one:

With the Premium paid version, Grammarly will also help you improve your post by spotting wrong word choices, wordiness, passive voice use, lack of clarity, etc.

Thesaurus

Has it already happened to you that you’re looking for a word but can’t grasp it? It’s frustrating right?

Or sometimes you just want to find alternatives to avoid repeating the same word over and over.

Then Thesaurus will help you a lot. Simply enter a word close to what you mean and it will give you:

• A list of synonyms.
• A list of antonyms.
• A list of related words with their synonyms.

TwinWord Writer

Do you sometimes get stuck on a word? You know the word, you know exactly what you mean, but it’s empty in your head. How frustrating!

Well, the TwinWord Writer will remove your frustration. If you’re hesitating on a word, it will make suggestions to help you find just the right word. It’s also great for editing, as every time you highlight a word, it will propose you a bunch of alternatives.

This can be a great tool for non-native English speakers who struggle to have a rich vocabulary and tend to write like 6th graders (yes I may talk about how I feel about my writing).

While this tool could be seen as a writing environment, I chose to feature it here as an editing tool for its WordPress plugin. Once installed, you will be able to improve your writing thanks to the word alternatives it suggests to you, but it will also give you some cool stats on your article. See for example:

After the Deadline

Similar to Grammarly, After the Deadline will check spelling and grammar mistakes, but will also spot the use of passive voice, complex expressions, etc.

Again, you can simply copy/paste your post in there to immediately get started. Every time it spots a way to improve your article, it will give you suggestions (for example to completely omit the expression), explain you why, and also give you the option to ignore this kind of recommendation all together.

Word Counter

Almost all writing platforms out there will tell you how many words there are in your article.

But that’s not what WordCounter is about. This tool will rank the most frequently used words of your post.

It can be useful if you have a tendency to always use the same words again and again without noticing it (but your readers will notice and get tired of it!). It can also help identify a keyword that you could focus on for SEO purposes.

If I copy/paste this article into the tool, here is what I get:

Clearly, the keyword I would focus on for SEO would be writing tools, which is not a surprise.

Now I notice that I might be an over-user of the word get. There are certainly many opportunities where I could replace it with a better verb that will improve the readability of my writing.

Tools to Illustrate Your Post and Make it Attractive

We’re almost done!

You’ve written a detailed outline, then expanded it into a first draft that you edited with the help of some insightful research.

It’s almost time to publish your article, but there are a few more details to set up. I usually add the pictures and screenshots right at the end, so that I can focus only on the writing until it’s done. You also need a featured image for your post!

Let’s see what internet tools can do for you.

iStockPhoto

How much time does it take you to find a good featured image for your posts?

It rarely takes me more than 5 minutes, thanks to iStockPhoto. I write some keywords related to my articles, select the Essentials category (for cheaper stock photos) and find something good enough very quickly.

Now, it is expensive. It will cost you between $7 to $9 per picture, while it’s true you can find a lot of free stock photos on the internet.

But I found that when I was searching in the free galleries, every time I would spend an infinite amount of time trying to get something good enough. That’s why I’d rather pay a small fee, but avoid myself the pain of wasting a lot of time.

There are a ton of alternatives you might prefer. For example: Pixabay (free), depositphotos, or Pexels.

PicMonkey

Once I have my featured image for my next post, I put it into PicMonkey to have something shareable on social media. On the home page, I choose Edit / Computer and pick my featured image.

Then, you can play with your picture and add many effects. The almost only feature I use though is to add text on it. In a matter of minutes, you get your featured image with your blog post title, making it easily shareable on social media.

For example:

Canva

Canva is similar to PicMonkey in that it will help you edit an image to add some text or other effects.

You can choose among thousands of layouts, then add text, other elements like shapes, charts, icons, etc.

I very rarely use Canva, as I prefer choosing a stock photo and just adding some text on it. But I know a lot of people who use it and are very happy with it. So give it a try! Here is a social media friendly image I made in just a few minutes:

Skitch

Skitch is amazing! Have you already noticed these bloggers who annotate their screenshots or add pink arrows to it? Sometimes the arrows are red, as in this article. Well, these annotations are made with Skitch!

Now, I have a bad news for Windows users: Skitch is not supported on Windows anymore…

But don’t worry! There is a turnaround. I use Windows and still have access to Skitch. In fact, it is implemented in Evernote. Here is what to do:

1. Open Evernote.
2. Create a new note.
3. Copy/Paste your image in the note.
4. On the top-left corner of the image, click the @ (for Annotate).
5. You can now annotate your picture!

Piktochart

A great way to enhance a post, or to create a content upgrade, is to make an infographic.

At first I thought it was super complicated to make one, but no, it’s super simple in fact! Very similar to Canva, you simply:

1. Pick a template
2. Add elements such as charts, icons, photos, etc.
3. Fill it with your writing.

And that’s all! All the hard work of design is pre-made in the tool. The best part: It’s free!

Meme Generator

A great way to illustrate your blog posts and add a funny touch into it is to create a meme. It is very simple to do so:

1. Pick your meme image (or upload your own).
2. Add your text (be creative).
3. Click Generate Meme.

Tools to Promote the Hell of Your Post

You have created the BEST article on a topic. Now what? How are people supposed to know it exists?

You PROMOTE it! This is a crucial step that will make or break your blog post. You share it with your email subscribers, you talk about it to your friends, you post it on social media, and you reach out to as many people as you can to get the word out.

Here are what the experts say on how to promote your post efficiently:

• 11 Experts on How to Do Blogger Outreach the Right Way
• Blogger Outreach: How to Get Influencers to Promote Your Content For Free
• Become a Super Connector: How to Work With 1,000+ Influencers

It can be a very long and daunting process to build relationships with influencers. Fortunately, a lot of tools can help you achieve similar results.

Buffer

Buffer will allow you to schedule the sharing of your content easily on multiple platforms.

You can add your Tweets (or Facebook shares, or other platforms) directly in the Buffer interface, but really what’s best is to use the browser extension. As I browse the internet, if I stumble upon a good article I’d like to share with my audience, I can directly buffer it to share it multiple times in the next few days.

Of course, you can do the same to promote your own articles.

SumoMe Sharebar

The Sumome Sharebar is a WordPress plugin that will add a small bar at the left of your blog post and allow your visitors to share the article in just 2 clicks.

It is really easy to set up and here is what you’ll get:

If you want to get the tweet count, you will need another app, as since November 20, 2015, Twitter stopped showing share counts. You will need to use TwitCount to get it back.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is a tool that will allow you to systematize and almost automate reaching out to people to let them know about your latest blog post.

This is not for spamming hundreds of people with the same template. You still need to build relationships with people, bring value to them, and be authentic if you want them to share your posts.

However, this tool will allow you to set up lists of influencers and then to email them quickly (you will have the option of personalizing your emails, even if you create a template). You can also find new influencers very easily.

PostReach

PostReach is not a tool to promote your content directly, but it will help you to measure how many shares it got, through which channels, and also discover the influencers who promoted it.

You can give your website name so that PostReach directly track your new blog posts, but also tell him when you publish a guest post on another website.

For each blog post, you have access to a detailed report giving you a bunch of information on how the article has been shared. For example:

Tools You Wouldn’t Even Think Of

There are many tools I use on a regular basis that I would have never known they exist. Even if they are of great help, you’re so used to doing it your way (that is painful and tedious) that you don’t even try to Google to see if there is an easier alternative.

In this last section, you will find many tools that will your life as a blogger a lot easier.

Let’s get started!

Screencastify

Screencastify is a free video recording tool that will help you make quick and easy videos of your screen.

Imagine that a friend of yours or a reader asks you a question, and you want to answer but it’s gonna take hours to write a really thoughtful answer since a lot of explanations are needed. Sometimes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, meaning it’s much easier to SHOW something instead of trying to describe it.

In just a few clicks, you can start recording your screen. Once done, it will automatically upload the recording on Google Drive for example, so that you can share it easily.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Sometimes you need to do repetitive and boring tasks for your business. It might be finding new websites to guest post for, influencers to find, reformatting a document in a robotic way, transcribing a video, etc.

Sometimes, these tasks don’t really require YOU to do them, it could be anyone with a brain. In this case, you should give Mechanical Turk a go.

You can set up a task and pay people to do it at a cheap cost.

Trello

Trello is a productivity tool that can help you manage your blog articles (as well as your to-do list, your Kanban board, your long term projects, and many other things).

For example, by creating a board for your articles, you can then add all your blog post ideas in a first list.

Then, every time you write a first draft, you drag and drop the idea in the second list called “Writing first draft”. As you make progress on it, you drag the blog post to the right until it gets into the “Published” list.

As you get more and more articles in progress, this can be a great tool to manage them.

oTranscribe

Have you already tried to transcribe an interview or a video you recorded yourself?

If yes, you know it’s HUGE pain. You find yourself always switching back and forth between your text editor and the video, returning a few seconds ago, repeating again and again, always switching windows, making miss clicks and… it’s a mess.

oTranscribe makes it much easier. With just a few key shortcuts (basically, Esc to play/pause the video) and a few minutes of practice, you can write continuously on your transcription and finish a lot quicker than with the previous technique. This is a huge time-saver.

Daily Page

Writing is the most important skill you can ever develop for your business. Everything involves writing, whether it’s creating content for your readers, creating a product, or connecting with your subscribers.

You just need to write, and there is no turnaround.

A bad news is that we’re all bad when we start writing. The good news is that you can better if you practice consistently. And what better way to get consistent practice than with writing every day?

That’s what Daily Page proposes you: Daily writing prompts to write daily and get a ton of practice. To increase your motivation, it also provides reminders and personal stats to see your progress.

PhraseExpress

PhraseExpress has the potential to save you a lot of time without even you noticing it.

It has many features, but the one we’re interested in here is the Autotext. You can set up abbreviations and PhraseExpress will automatically expand them into the full words or sentences.

For example, you could just type sig to get your full signature typed up.

If you tend to use the same long words again and again when writing your blog post, this tool will save you a lot of time.

An alternative for Mac users exists, it’s called TextExpander.

Your Getaway

This is a HUGE list of tools for creating remarkable content. I tested a ton of other tools but decided not to include them for many reasons. Sometimes because there are better alternatives, sometimes because it was plain broken, or because it wasn’t really essential to the remarkable blogger.

The goal wasn’t to make the longest list ever, but to present only high-quality tools. Even with this in mind, the list is overwhelming.

My recommendation is that you keep it close with you, so that every time you face an issue, you can come back at it and find a solution.

To help you keep the list and refer to it later when you need it, I created a condensed version in PDF that you can download right now by clicking here.

How can B2B sales people (and the sales organisations they work for) identify and engage the prospects that are most likely to buy from them?

In even the most successful B2B sales organisations there is always a significant fall-off between the number of qualified sales opportunities that enter the top of the sales funnel and the number that eventually emerge as customers.

In less effective sales organisations this fall-off from top to bottom of funnel is significantly higher - and often happens later in the sales cycle, compounded by the number of “zombie deals” that have somehow managed to remain in the sales pipeline despite showing no recent signs of life.

If we’re destined to lose, then we had better lose early - before we have invested significant resources in pursuing a set of opportunities that are never likely to buy from us. But that takes discipline, and a determination to ruthlessly weed out weak opportunities...

This determination to weed out weak deals early by conducting effective sales opportunity qualification is one of a handful of qualities that consistently distinguish top sales performers from the rest. But how can we tell which opportunities to focus our energies on?

The question of which prospects are likely to buy from us really needs to be broken down into two constituent parts: first, we have to establish the chances that the “prospect” is actually likely to do anything, and then we have to determine the chances that they will end up selecting us as their preferred solution option.

A growing number of clients have woken up to this, and are requiring that sales people separately evaluate these two probabilities in their CRM solutions before calculating a blended weighted opportunity probability (probability of action * probability of winning) as a way of dramatically improving sales forecast accuracy.

Judging these two probabilities separately, and then combining them in a weighted value, usually results in a lower but far more accurate assessment of the likelihood that any individual opportunity will close. It’s certainly a far better approach than applying the same default probability to every opportunity at a given stage.

Here’s how I’ve been encouraging sales teams to think about this:

1: DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN INTEREST AND INTENT

If we’re to answer the first question, we need to distinguish between interest and intent, and the failure to do this is why so many sales pipelines are artificially bloated with so-called “opportunities“ that are, by any rational analysis, never actually likely to do anything.

Here’s why: interesting needs will cause our prospects to start investigating their options. Important needs will cause them to evaluate short-listed solutions. But only truly critical needs will guarantee that they will buy. That’s not to say that interesting or important needs don’t sometimes drive buying decisions. But only by uncovering or developing truly critical needs can we be sure that our prospect will inevitably decide to actually do something.

How can we distinguish between interest and intent? One simple way is to ask them what would happen if they eventually decided to stick with the status quo. If their answer is “we could cope”, we’ve got to question their motivation - or do something that will increase it.

2: CONVERTING INTENT INTO ACTION

Let’s assume that we’ve confirmed our prospect’s intent to act. Does having the “best” solution guarantee success? It’s a mistake that many tech-based businesses (in particular) seem to make. The problem is that the modern buyer expects every vendor to claim that they are better, and therefore will tend to discount or devalue any and all such assertions.

If we’re to satisfy the modern, well-educated buyer, we need to do more than claim that our solution is better. In fact in many situations we are better off challenging their perception of what they need, by introducing a new aspect of the problem they are trying to solve that they may not have previously considered. The folks at Corporate Visions refer to this as “unconsidered needs”, and it's a very powerful concept.

Offering a marginally “better” solution to the problem they thought they had is rarely very compelling. Opening their eyes to some previously unrecognised consequences of their situation is much more likely to stick in their minds, and to differentiate us from the other options they may be considering.

ENGAGING EARLY WITH THE PROSPECT

Of course, it’s much easier to influence our prospect’s thinking if we engage with them at an early stage of their buying decision journey. It’s what a long-term client of mine refers to as “finding them while the cement is still wet”. It’s a very relevant metaphor: once their thinking about what they need has solidified, it’s significantly more difficult to reframe their thinking.

I asked him to share his experiences, and here’s what he said: “I always want to know where the prospect was in their decision making cycle when we first made contact with them. I’m always very wary when we seem to have arrived late to the party, and are restricted to answering an RFP we had no ability to influence.”

His inclination is borne out by the experiences of many similar organisations: failing to find the prospect when their needs have not yet been fully defined inevitably means playing a high-risk low-reward game of catch-up, with win rates in the low single digits.

IN CONCLUSION

I recommend that you take a careful look at your current pipeline. If you haven’t engaged early, distinguished between interest and intent, or taken steps to improve your chances of turning intent into action, it’s likely that your prospects will decide to go with an alternative vendor who has managed to better address the needs of today’s well-educated B2B buyer. Or they will decide to do nothing, despite all the effort you and every other vendor may have invested in them.

ABOUT BOB

A fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, Bob Apollo is the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. He works with the executive teams of post-startup expansion-stage businesses with complex sales environments, helping them to engineer scalable sales and marketing machines that deliver predictable revenue outcomes. Follow him on Twitter at @bobapollo.

Related posts:

• A question of priorities (and opportunity qualification)
• Why the Cost of Inaction is so important in B2B sales 
• Neil Rackham reveals the changing face of selling (and updates "SPIN")

An earlier version of this article was first published on CustomerThink.

The scene: December 6, 1975, in Marylebone, London. Detective Superintendent Peter Imbert, Scotland Yard’s chief negotiator, picks up the phone. His team has established contact with three terrorists who have barricaded themselves and two hostages inside an apartment.

Imbert has an extremely difficult mission: Extract the hostages without losing any lives. It takes six incredibly tense days of negotiation, but he eventually succeeds.

You might not think sales reps have much to learn from Imbert and the others in his field, but you’d be wrong. The stakes are clearly different in sales than in hostage situations, but the following five techniques -- sourced from some of the best negotiators in the world -- will help you and the buyer come to a mutually beneficial conclusion.

1) State Your Purpose

It’s crucial to make the other person feel like you’re working with them, not against them. This is hard to pull off in normal negotiations, so you can imagine how challenging it is when you’re talking to a hostage-taker.

Police psychologist Dr. Laurence Miller recommends starting the discussion by stating an ideal outcome that’s good for both you and the other person.

For instance, a crisis negotiator might say, “I’m here to listen to you and to try to make sure everybody stays safe.”

A sales rep, meanwhile, could begin the conversation with: “Thanks for meeting with me today to talk about your enterprise subscription. I’m looking forward to finding the best possible solution to your current needs.

“Best possible” is the operative phrase. This shows you’re striving for a win-win deal (in which both parties benefit), rather than a win-lose deal (in which one party benefits at the expense of the other).

2) Be Honest and Direct

When you’re negotiating, playing with the truth can quickly backfire.

“From a practical standpoint, if the hostage-taker feels he’s being duped, patronized, or manipulated from the outset, he’s not going to want to cooperate with you,” Miller explains.

He advises negotiators to speak with “respect, directness, lack of deception, and integrity.”

What does that look like in a sales negotiation? First, ditch the tactics meant to force the buyer’s hand. You should never threaten to back out of the deal at the last minute, give them an aggressive deadline, or try to make them feel guilty -- at least, not if you want them to trust you.

You should also be transparent about the compromises you’re making. 

“Concessions are often necessary in negotiation,” says Harvard Business School Professor Deepak Malhotra. “But they often go unappreciated and unreciprocated.” 

Malhotra tells negotiators to label their costly concessions while explaining their value to the other side. 

For example, you might say, “Frankly, finishing the website in 10 weeks instead of 15 is going to take a lot of work on our end -- but I know your company wants the redesign done by December.”

On the flip side, don’t pretend an easy-to-make compromise will be hard: It’ll stop being believable if you make every concession seem huge.

Finally, don’t misrepresent your terms or oversell your product. The prospect could easily uncover your lies with a little digging. Plus, even if they don’t find out till later, the relationship will be ruined, and your reputation with it.

3) Build Rapport

Creating rapport is a key crisis negotiation strategy. After all, a hostage-taker is far likelier to listen to someone they feel a connection with. Along the same lines, you’re going to have a much easier time negotiating with a buyer who likes and trusts you.

Build rapport the way hostage negotiators do: By matching the other person’s way of speaking.

That means using the same words and phrases, talking at a similar pace, and echoing their style -- whether that’s casual, professional, cheery, or humorous.

To make this strategy even more effective, leverage your background knowledge of the prospect.

In practice, this might mean spending a couple minutes on lighter, non-business topics at the beginning of the call. If you and the prospect both love Game of Thrones, for example, ask what they thought of the latest episode.

Or, ask a follow-up question on a topic you’ve previously discussed. For example: “Hey, how was the trip to Rhode Island?”

Finally, you can always create some goodwill by paying them a genuine compliment.

(Need some ideas? Learn five ways to praise prospects.)

4) Use Active Listening

You might think good negotiators spend most of the conversation talking. But it’s the opposite: They spend the majority asking questions and listening.

Jeff Thompson, NYPD Detective and research scholar at Columbia University School of Law, says active listening has two benefits: It builds trust and rapport, and it helps the negotiator gather information.

At this stage of the sales process, you should already be pretty well-informed on your buyer’s pain points and goals. However, she probably has some final objections -- without uncovering these, your chances of closing are slim.

Show her you’re engaged and paying attention by recapping what she said, asking confirmation questions (like “Did I get that right?” or “Would you say that’s accurate?”), and avoiding the impulse to interrupt or answer too quickly.

For more pointers, check out our in-depth guide to active listening in sales.

5) Stay Calm

Hostage-takers are usually pretty unstable. In a mere 10 minutes, they can go from extremely angry to reasonable and back again. Negotiators, on the other hand, must stay completely calm. Reacting only pushes a hostage-taker further over the edge.

If you’re negotiating with a buyer, keeping your cool is crucial. After all, whenever you show emotion, you tell the prospect they’ve struck a nerve. Most people will use that knowledge to push forward unfavorable terms.

Plus, the person who stays calm and composed usually gets the upper hand -- even if they started the conversation with less bargaining power. 

You’re probably familiar with the strategy of taking a couple deep breaths, but how else can you avoid boiling over? Expert negotiators suggest briefly pausing the discussion. If breaking for five minutes to “get some water” isn’t possible, then shift the focus. For instance, if you’re getting frustrated haggling over a specific item, move to a different detail or bring up the implementation plan. 

Negotiations will never be easy. However, with these five techniques, you’ll have a much better shot of walking out with the best terms possible -- for everyone involved.

Which of these techniques will you use? Let us know in the comments!

Many, if not most, brands will acknowledge that social media marketing is important for helping them connect with their customers. However, most still believe that social marketing is best for connecting with individual consumers, not business clients.

Contrary to that popular belief, marketing on LinkedIn, specifically, is a great way to reach business clients.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why you should be doing B2B marketing on LinkedIn, if you aren’t already:

Large User Base

More than 430 million people used LinkedIn, and their sole purpose for being there is professional networking.

Of those users, 61 million are senior-level influencers and 40 million are decision makers.

No one signs up to LinkedIn to post pictures of their kids for family to see or to share their weekend escapades with friends. They sign up to make professional connections and to advance their career. Businesses and business leaders sign up to promote their brands.

You can tap into those connections to promote your products and services. Even if you have a lot of followers who are just individuals, they may be influencers in their company or they may suggest your product or service to those who are. Every contact you make on the network is potentially valuable, even if it is not a direct business client.

More Leads

LinkedIn generates more leads for B2B brands than any other social networking site.

According to new information that LinkedIn released, approximately 79 percent of B2B marketers say that marketing on the site is an effective way to generate new leads. Marketers say that 80 percent of the leads they get from social media come from LinkedIn.

Many B2B marketers use LinkedIn specifically to launch a new product, though many also report an increase in web traffic and brand awareness thanks to the site. Marketers say that 46 percent of the traffic they get from social media comes from LinkedIn.

Those are huge numbers that you just can’t deny. If you want to reach more of your audience, you need to have a well-cultivated presence on LinkedIn.

Better Ad ROI

Marketers report that they get a much better return on their investment with LinkedIn Sponsored Content than they do with Google AdWords — in fact, they get a six times better ROI.

Marketers say that they get more leads from LinkedIn Sponsored Content and that those leads are of much higher quality. They also had to spend 75 percent less per lead through LinkedIn than with Google AdWords.

LinkedIn offers a couple of sponsored opportunities: InMails and display ads.

Marketers say they get more traffic and more leads from the display ads, and they get higher open rates and better response rates from their other email campaigns. Overall, they also had to spend less for each of those leads, regardless of whether they invested in display ads, email marketing or both.

The key to their success was to find the right audience and tailor their messages. Thanks to the comprehensive information that most people provide in their LinkedIn profiles, you can get plenty of data to tailor your campaigns. Make sure that you take advantage of that data and tailor your advertising and your messaging as narrowly as you can.

Keys to Success

You can’t just create a profile on LinkedIn or start up some ads and expect results. You need to follow a strategy.

It is important that you take advantage of the opportunity that LinkedIn offers to establish your brand authority. You can do this by publishing informative articles and think pieces on LinkedIn Pulse, by contributing thoughtful commentary to groups, and by providing real value in your posts, comments and other activity.

You may want to promote your brand, but your clients only want solutions. Provide them with answers to their problems, and they will readily listen to anything else you have to say. When you strategically promote your products or services, you will have a much better response.

You also need to build your reputation on the site, and you can do that by being an active participant in groups, on your page, and on the pages of your connections.

Embrace the spirit of the site — business networking — and you will have more success with it. Even when you invest in advertising or sponsored emails, you will have more success because people will have a better perception of your brand long before they encounter your ads.

Social media is no longer the frivolous pastime it once was. It is a powerful business tool, and that is especially true for LinkedIn. If you are a B2B brand, it is important that you have a presence on the site and that you are exploring all the opportunities that it offers. If you do so, you will get closer to your goals this year.

The post How to Dig Deep and Discover the Treasure in Your Niche appeared first on Copyblogger.

Right from the start, Melanie Ziegler knew she wanted to work in engineering. Straight out of college, she began her career journey, moving rapidly through the ranks of innovative engineering teams, first at Texas Instruments and soon thereafter at expansion stage startup Merit Technology in Dallas. Later on, she took on VP roles with a number of software companies including Advanced Visual Systems and VFA at which she led engineering and product development. In 2011, she brought her expansive experience to a new audience when she launched her own consulting firm, MSZ Consulting, LLC, to provide high-impact advisory and leadership services to early-stage and expansion-stage software companies.

The latest in Ziegler’s long list of impressive accomplishments is founding VPE Forum to provide Engineering VPs & CTOs at rapidly growing software companies with a high-caliber peer environment where they can collaborate on solutions and share best practices. “I saw early on that CEOs gained many benefits from having the opportunity to participate in peer groups,” Ziegler says of the inspiration behind VPE Forum. “I felt there was an opportunity to help engineering VPs by providing a trusted and confidential environment where they could get honest insights and advice into how to solve the very real business issues and challenges they were facing.” Since its launch in 2014, VPE Forum has been thriving and consistently helping executive engineering leaders learn and evolve so that they can make important contributions that help the companies they work for grow faster and achieve greater success.

One topic that is continually raised by Engineering leaders Ziegler works with in the VPE Forum is how to overcome the challenge of crafting relevant and useful engineering metrics that the business can use to evaluate success.

The Case Against Productivity Metrics

“Everybody struggles with this,” says Ziegler. CEOs often ask their engineering leaders to report productivity metrics in order to assess Engineering’s contribution to the business. “At the same time, engineering leaders know they can’t accurately measure productivity, their teams know it, and even if they could, they know it’s largely unrelated to the contribution engineering is making to the business.” “One of the main challenges I see is around what I would call activity-based metrics – which, at the end of the day don’t tie back to what’s really important for the business.” The problem stems, Ziegler explains, from the fact that it’s nearly impossible to measure engineering productivity. It’s an age old problem. Years ago the industry established a precedent where VPEs would report on lines of code (LOC) as a performance measurement. Thankfully, the industry has evolved beyond that simplistic and irrelevant metric, but vestiges of that mentality persist. Today, instead of asking for LOC, executives might ask engineering leaders to report on Agile metrics like velocity and story points to measure how much value has been delivered.

All too often engineering leaders deliver these metrics none the less because “Story points and velocity metrics are easy to produce,” Ziegler says, “but they are not terribly meaningful in terms of measuring team productivity. And they convey little about delivered business value. With regards to productivity, the problem is that things shift. The team’s skills make-up, size, engineering consistency, and availability are not constant within a team, never mind across teams. Vacations happen.” The benefit engineering organizations can bring is not about how many story points they delivered or their velocity, it’s about how agile they can be in meeting the changing needs of the business and the customer.

Engineering Metrics that Make Sense

So where should the focus be if it’s not on productivity metrics?

Ziegler says the focus should instead be on business outcomes. “Frankly, the types of metrics CEOs should focus on for engineering are the same types they use to measure the success of other functional areas, be it marketing, sales, or finance – business outcome metrics.” says Ziegler. After all, she points out, “You don’t grow a business on increased activity. You don’t generate revenue by selling story points. You grow a business on outcomes, such as new features delivered that are valued by your customers.”

To determine the most appropriate and meaningful metrics, CEOs and engineering leaders should collaborate to identify and articulate what the business actually cares about that engineering can impact. Is it subscription renewals, international support, features for a new vertical market? Understand the business goals and then define the metrics accordingly. Consider tagging stories in the backlog to the business impact they are intended to serve to make it more visible to all involved.

“Story points delivered do not equate to economic value,” Ziegler says. “Features delivered to enable entry into a new vertical market? That delivers economic value. That’s business impact.”

Another important element of developing sound engineering metrics is to ensure that there’s a strong collaboration between the engineering team and the product team. “Truly great delivered product is the result of a team, a true partnership between product and engineering,” Ziegler explains. “It follows that great metrics are derived from a similar partnership.”

Another challenge lies in balancing the often opposing goals of your development and operations teams. While developers are focused on deploying as much business-enhancing code as possible, the operations team is focused on maximizing up-time, and – conversely – minimizing the risk of breakage and failure that can accompany deployment. To close the gap between these two groups, you have to ensure that both teams are working toward a shared set of outcomes, outcomes that are based on calculated risk and which serve a shared audience and support the overall business strategy.

While Ziegler advocates strongly for this unified and outcome-driven approach, she doesn’t suggest that VPEs throw activity-based metrics out the window. Activity-based metrics are, she says, useful in managing and leading engineering groups. Measuring the team’s velocity, for instance, helps the team determine how much they can take on in an upcoming sprint. The key is to tailor the use of these metrics on a team-by-team basis. “All teams are not created equal,” Ziegler explains. “One team might need to focus more on improving quality, while another might really need to focus on turning up the dial on more effective user interfaces. The metrics you put in place for each of those teams are different.”

Even as she acknowledges the benefit of using activity-based metrics to manage workflow and assess team performance, Ziegler warns against letting those metrics find their way into other parts of the company. “What we don’t want to see as an engineer,” she says, “is the executive leadership looking to measure the engineering organization based on the activity-based goals that the VPE uses to plan the team’s work and drive continual improvement.”

To provide a different perspective – to the engineering team as well as to executives – she recommends evaluating the engineering team’s performance using “big,” outcome-focused questions like:

• Are you delivering value for the customer?
• Are you delivering results each quarter that will help grow the business?
• Are you mitigating risk?
• Do you know the ROI of the features you’re building?
• Did you ship when you said you would ship?

These are the kinds of questions that get the engineering team thinking in the context of what their work means to the business.

Examples of Outcome-based Metrics

So, while activity-based metrics have their place, it’s not to help the C-suite measure engineering performance. What kinds of metrics, then, help the engineering team report on productivity and quantify the value they deliver to the organization? Ziegler has several suggestions:

Feature Usage

“One of the best practices I see amongst the collaboration between engineering and product is around defining the metrics that will be used to evaluate if a feature is successful, is being adopted, as was anticipated. After all, wasn’t there an ROI anticipated for the feature?,” Ziegler says. “Before the feature is developed, they identify the measures that define what success will look like for that feature.” In addition to putting focus on the outcome, this future-looking approach also gives the team the ability to engineer in a way to measure its usage. It gets them thinking about who is going to use the feature and for what benefit, about how the customer will define the success of the feature. Thinking about results in these terms helps eliminate situations in which a team has worked hard to develop ten new features, but no one cares: a situation that would demoralize the engineering team. Ziegler says “the resultant data also has the benefit of providing functional areas across the company with the insight they need to maximize the business benefit after initial release – whether it’s additional development that is required, more training or promotion, or any number of other paths.”

Product Scorecard

While Ziegler acknowledges that scorecards can be more qualitative than quantitative, she does see their value when the questions asked tie back to business goals. “Some companies in the VPE Forum use a product scorecard to review the business outcomes of the engineering organization,” she explains. “By having stakeholders from different parts of the company such as Customer Support, Sales, and Professional Services provide inputs, you put emphasis on the results of what has been developed.” Questions that serve well in this capacity focus on things like how easy the feature is to implement, how easy is it to support, how competitive it is, how is the quality, how satisfied are customers, and how complete is it compared to where it needs to be.

Cycle Time

Cycle time measures from the time work starts until the time it’s finished, and Ziegler finds it a great measure of how quickly an engineering team delivers value to the customer. “I don’t really view it as a velocity metric,” she says ”it does measure velocity, but instead of looking only at speed, Ziegler looks at speed in the context of customer value. For instance, if you’re building out a new vertical area for the product, or if you need to work on stats for how quickly you can get something back to the customer – those are the types of things to look at in order to evaluate engineering performance.

Lead Time

The Lead time metric measures from the time a feature is added to the backlog to the time when the engineering team has the capacity to start working on it. It’s essentially how long the feature is aging in the backlog. “In addition to addressing the organization that feels engineering never gets to anything, measuring lead time can provide a lot of insight into engineering team capacity and other ways to attend to a roadmap,” Ziegler says. There’s value, too, in identifying features and functionality that have aged out because that can help the team recognize misaligned priorities. “Looking at lead time can provide insights that generate executive conversations about how investments are being made in the company and what’s really important,” Ziegler says.

Whichever metrics you use, make sure you consider the energy you’ll need to expend tracking them. Can the data you need be collected easily? Make sure that the return you’re getting warrants the effort. And even more importantly, make sure that the metrics you choose ultimately tie back to growth.

As Ziegler rightly points out, “If it’s not about increasing the revenue, achieving high customer satisfaction and growing the business, then why track it?”

“If you’re an engineering leader, my advice to you is think about the business strategy and make sure you develop metrics that tie back to that,” Ziegler says. “If you do that, it will crystallize your thinking around the decisions you make each and every day with your team. It engages your team and visibly ties their efforts directly to the company’s success.” Ziegler also recommends that the VPE market the engineering team to the rest of the organization. “Engineering simply can’t be heads down in their group, doing all the right things for the business, but not letting the business know about it,” she says. “The more visibility and sharing you have, the more the rest of the organization will know that engineering is producing really great things for the company and the customer.” Whether it’s in a newsletter, company meeting or an internal promotional video about a new feature, Ziegler pushes the teams she works with to establish a presence of success within the organization and a palpable sense of things getting done.

“When the company is happy with delivered results, with the business outcomes” she says, “the CEO’s first question to engineering won’t be about their productivity metrics.”

The post Engineering Metrics: Grow Your Business with Outcomes, Not Activity appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Marketers are always looking for the next trend; they constantly have their finger resting on the pulse of the industry, keen to keep up with the competition while also seeking new and innovative ways to reach, inspire and engage with an audience.

Podcasts are very much ‘in’ at the moment; for consumers they offer an easy way to digest content, while businesses benefit from being able to take advantage of yet another means of reaching new audiences.

As the process of recording and releasing audio becomes increasingly easy, there really is nothing stopping you from grabbing that microphone and expanding your reach

Advancements in technology – the growing smartphone market being key – also mean podcasts are now far more convenient. The phone takes away the effort of having to actually hunt around for something to listen to by downloading episodes directly to your device as soon as they are released.

Estimates suggest that three in every four UK adults owns a smartphone, and in 2015 they overtook laptops as the most popular device for getting online. Podcasts offer businesses another valuable marketing route that involves genuinely engaging content. As the process of recording and releasing audio becomes increasingly easy, there really is nothing stopping you from grabbing that microphone and expanding your reach.

The rise of the podcast

Global statistics for podcast usage tend to vary from place to place and podcast type to podcast type, though one of the best pictures of the rapid growth of the podcast market is painted by US research from globally renowned analyst Triton.

According to Triton research, the number of Americans over the age of 12 listening to podcasts in 2016 is up by 17% when compared to 2015, while monthly podcast listenership has increased by 75% since 2013. It is estimated that around 21% (or 62.3m) of Americans listen to at least one podcast a month, which is a colossal potential audience when you consider that 21% of Americans use Twitter and 13% use Spotify.

A mobile audience

The way podcasts are consumed has changed in recent years. When podcasts first started growing in popularity they were predominantly listened to via computers or laptops, but in 2016 the vast majority of people – approximately 64% – have taken to listening to their favourite podcasts on a smartphone or tablet.

For marketers, this is significant; it means that they are now able to reach and engage an audience that may otherwise have been lost, such as commuters; people driving to work can listen to podcasts while they are in their car or on the train – a time when other kinds of content marketing might not necessarily work.

The instances where podcasts come into their own are many and varied. Whenever a person is active – at the gym, walking the dog, travelling – a podcast can step into the breach and fill an information void that cannot be occupied by the written word.

A podcast can step into the breach and fill an information void that cannot be occupied by the written word

Be succinct, be exceptional, or be unique

While podcasts give marketers the chance to speak to an audience during circumstances that would not be appropriate with ‘traditional’ content, people are always going to be limited by time constraints. There are still only so many hours in the day that people are willing, or indeed able, to dedicate to acquiring new information, learning or entertainment.

Triton ascertains that 79% of American podcast listeners consume five shows or fewer each week, with 13% saying they listen to between six and ten; only 8% claim to take in 11 shows or more during a seven-day spell.

According to a study carried out by Microsoft, the human attention span has shortened from 12 seconds to eight seconds in just over a decade, a decline which is largely attributed to the increase in digital technology. The research concluded by declaring that the average human now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish (nine seconds, on average), so if you have managed to get to this stage in our blog, give yourself a small round of applause.

Just as with the written word, content is king; nobody wants to be preached at for long periods of time, nor do they want to listen to anything monotonous or boring. Content must be crafted with the listener in mind, which means ensuring that which you produce is free from waffle, is presented in an interesting and concise manner, and refrains from repeating anything that could be found elsewhere. Conversations also work well, especially those had between ‘thought leaders’; podcasts that incorporate discussion are generally regarded as being more engaging and dynamic.

Nobody wants to be preached at for long periods of time, nor do they want to listen to anything monotonous or boring

As with all content – be it a blog, an email, a newsletter or podcast – it is essential to give the audience value. Produce something that people will want to listen to, and then promote it in as many ways as possible to ensure your voice is heard.

Know your audience

As is the case when producing any form of content, it is essential that you know your audience and understand what will appeal to them. Keep that which you produce as unbranded and unbiased as possible and, above all, be interesting! Anyone can record themselves talking, but very few can produce something that will hook a listener in and make them look forward to the next edition of your audio offering.

Anyone can record themselves talking, but very few can produce something that will hook a listener in and make them look forward to the next edition of your audio offering

You will not be able to retain a listenership if what you produce is little more than a glorified sales pitch; give those you are reaching out to information that they will value. Offer them insight and knowledge that they cannot find elsewhere. After all, this is your chance to tell a story in a way your brand might not have tried before.

And remember that by speaking to your audience in a way that treats them with respect you will gain their loyalty, admiration, and potentially even their business. Establishing trust is vital in all elements of content marketing, and a podcast should just be a means of further developing your company as a brand that can be relied upon and is worth dealing with.

Much has been written about the art of crafting great outbound prospecting emails and the importance of cadences and email open rates. More often than not, these articles are critiques of emails received by prospects looking at their lack of personalization, thought, or justification.

Unfortunately, all too often – I find sales reps apply the broken method of ‘throw enough and sooner or later one will stick’ to their email prospecting efforts. A combination of not knowing when to take a step back and change things up with a lack of coaching can create a sales workforce of ‘email marketing spammers’.

Here are five ways to help you get a better ROI from your team’s outbound prospecting:

Review, Review, Review

How often do you actually review the emails being sent out by your sales reps? More to the point, how often do your sales reps actually review their OWN emails? As managers, we may happily spend time riding along on calls or ‘overhearing’ a live demo in the office in order to debrief and provide feedback.

But as emailing is a much more discreet ‘behind the scenes’ strategy – we can become ignorant to how these are being constructed. Invest time in reviewing a couple of emails per rep per week.

An effective outbound email should be no more than five sentences. It will therefore only take somewhere between 30 seconds to a minute to read. This is not a huge time swallower, and the benefits of doing so can be significant. 30 seconds could be the difference between getting positive responses to their email and having it thrown into the trash.

Look beyond your open rates!

“We have different templates and track open rates” So what?! Open rates at the end of the day are only a percentage – and that’s all they are. As managers we can get so hung up on KPI’s and statistics that we fail to really look at the source of problems. Open rates are often only an indication to how powerful the subject line of an email is. And believe it or not, sometimes prospects will open emails not because they are interested in what you have to say, but purely because they are intrigued by who you are!

Surely a more important metric, which often gets forgotten about, is the ‘response rate’ – the true indicator as to how effective our outbound emails are. I’ve found that my most successful response rates are not the ones with the most appealing subject line, but the ones which in plain terms link product value to the real reason you are contacting that person.

Give better feedback by breaking emails down

“I like the main pointers in your email but found it a bit too long winded”. I would consign this kind of feedback to the ‘pretty useless’ folder. It’s generic, ambiguous, and not at all helpful. Sales managers need to become more effective coaches, and part of this is giving reps the feedback they crave. In fact, studies have shown that millennials crave feedback significantly more frequently than non-millennials.

Coaching is by no means an inherent skill, but by breaking down emails into ‘coachable’ chunks it will become easier to communicate feedback to your reps in a format that will be received as manageable and understandable. A good guide here is to use a structure I call SlOBS:

            Sl: Subject Line

            O: Opening gambit

            B: Body

            S: Sign Off

Think of it as providing 4 pieces of feedback against each element of the email. I have demonstrated how this could be done with a recent prospect email sent to me by a vendor:

{Sl} Refract & (vendor name)

Hi Richard, 

[O] I noticed that you are responsible for New Business as well as growing the inside sales team at Refract. Similar b2b SaaS teams have set 2-3x more appointments after implementing (vendor name).

[B] Simply put, our platform allows your inside sales team to execute their daily workflow from a single pane of glass, streamlining their email, phone, and social touch points while automatically logging these tasks into your CRM.

[S] When are you available to connect so you can determine if this could be valuable to your sales team?

Take Care,

(Reps Name)

Suggested SlOBS Feedback

{Sl} – I think we can put some more thought into this subject line. Simply putting ‘Refract + our company’s name’ feels very generic and ‘templated’. Can we find anything that this prospect has written on his blog or social media pages which we could reference. E.g. ‘Your blog about writing more effective emails’

{O} Your opening gambit is clearly based on reviewing the job title of the prospect on LinkedIn. This may be perceived as very limited research by the prospect. Good job on bringing some relevance to the prospect quickly afterwards however by quoting ‘similar b2b SaaS teams’. Perhaps name some examples for added influence?

{B} I think you communicate our products value in a concise, succinct, and powerful manner. Great job! We should share this with others on the team!

{S} Well done on linking back to the prospects situation (i.e. ‘valuable to your sales team’). Next time  – try and form a stronger connection between your sign off and the initial reason for contact. ‘When can we connect to discuss how we can help your inside sales team get better results from their email prospecting’?

Embrace peer reviews

Some reps are great at crafting clever subject lines, which can draw a prospect in. Some are better at writing great engaging opening lines. Others are more skilled at encapsulating a products value within a handful of words.

The reality is, each of our team members carry different levels of experience and skill, and unfortunately, given the competitive nature of sales, there is often a reluctance for reps to provide ideas, suggestions, and praise with their peers. It’s time, however, that we change our mind-set, and recognize that learning from each other can be one of the most effective means to raise performance levels and get a sales team firing on all cylinders.

Peer reviews can bring the following key benefits:

Peer learning is sticky – Studies by the Sales Leadership council discovered that peer-to-peer learning resulted in a 2% increase in ‘stickiness’ of sales knowledge application. This helps achieve stronger ROI on training and a greater confidence of reps applying what they learn in their day-to-day activities.

Sales reps are comrades – Sales reps, through their camaraderie with their fellow team members, acknowledge they are living the same whirlwind sales ups and downs day in, day out. Although reps can be a competitive bunch, and sometimes feel reticent sharing all of their tips and tricks- they gain comfort in discussing the common objections, challenges, and frustrations they suffer with those who have the same experiences. Feedback from peers can therefore be seen much less imposing than if they were to get this from their boss.

Less pressure on sales managers – By learning from peers, the burden placed on sales managers to provide frequent feedback and coaching on things such as email performance is reduced.

Furthermore, try creating internal ‘player coach’ roles for the higher performers in your team. Reps can adopt these positions if they want to prove themselves as future coaches or managers. You’ll find that they will love the kudos of a more senior position whilst inadvertently building their skills for personal development and progression.

Share Best Practice

Sounds simple right? But ask yourself the question- how often do you find a fantastic prospecting email written by a rep, and one of the first things you do is share it with the rest of the team? I mean – why wouldn’t you want your whole team replicating high performance? Sharing best practice achieves two massively powerful things:

1. You can showcase a desired benchmark and model of success – challenging your team to strive for greater standards.

2. It’s great for morale. Think how one of your reps would feel if you really screamed and shouted about how fantastic their latest outbound email was!

Ensure that you don’t lose great emails on page 97 of your inbox. Try building best practice libraries of great emails. These could become reference points and ‘on-demand’ learning for your sales reps to access whenever they like.

Furthermore, break these libraries into searchable elements. For instance– have different great examples of the four elements of ‘SlOBS’. You will find that as you build these libraries, you also create an unbelievable on-boarding resource for new hires.

If you are anxious at putting all five of these into practice for your team, try implementing one at a time gradually, and most importantly, always measure success.

The post How Coaching Can Elevate Your Team’s Outbound Emails appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Bullish Markets

Companies whose operations heavily rely on manufacturing have good reasons to be optimistic. The manufacturing industry is currently experiencing a bullish trend. June saw the US Manufacturing Index reach a 16 month high. The index posted an increase of 1.9 points and the new order index is up 1.3% from May. With the export index at its highest level since November 2014, companies that manufacture can have confidence in their industry’s stability moving forward. It is vital that manufacturing businesses make the most of these fortuitous times. In a rapidly changing political and technological environment, companies should be aware and actively working to stay on the cutting edge of business.

Challenges & Opportunities

While 2016 has brought its share of challenges, each one also brings opportunities for growth and success. Technology is the primary driver in improving manufacturing processes and supply chains. Consumer goods, food & beverage, industrial equipment, all these industries can benefit from technologies that make sourcing warehouses more efficient, delivery routes more reliable, and shipping containers more cost-effective. For all of the opportunities at hand, businesses need to address a world at turmoil. China’s heavy, export-driven growth period has come to an end and the economy is now in the midst of transitioning to a more domestic focused model. Brexit has thrown the future of the European economy into question, and the rise of the European right wing have threatened the trade agreements that have made the global economy possible. This uncertainty makes it more important than ever that businesses that rely on manufacturing have a stable and robust network of suppliers, distributors, and vendors.

Importance of Strategic Partners

Strong partnerships are crucial to understanding uncertain markets. Whether it’s food, cosmetics, vehicles or any other consumer good, your dealers are your entry point to local consumers. Your vendors understand the needs and wants of their customers better than you ever will. A strong relationship with your vendors will help keep you at the forefront of changing market trends. As Donald V. Fites, former Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, Inc. attested, “our dealer network generates extraordinary and timely market intelligence. It’s a rich source of information that enables us to introduce new products and support services successfully.”

For equipment and parts manufacturers, it can often be difficult to differentiate your product above the competition. When it’s difficult to compete on product or price, service is the best way to get ahead of your competitors. But to provide that kind of service, you need trusted strategic partners. To engender consumer loyalty, your supply chain must be centered around delivering the most value to your customer: suppliers you can trust to not disrupt your production process, distributors who can deliver your products quickly and reliably, and vendors who are familiar with your product and communicate its value to consumers.

Does your sales process meet the needs of today’s empowered buyer? Does your sales team rely on a scattershot approach of cold calls and unsolicited emails? Buyers have become a savvy bunch — they’re willing and able to conduct the research and identify solutions before coming into contact with a salesperson.

If your buyer doesn’t feel that your team has delivered value or insights into their process, they will likely disconnect until they are equipped and ready to negotiate a favorable contract. In order to remain involved in the process, your salespeople must be able to understand the buyer’s intent to deliver content to address it.

The modern buyer is looking to minimize friction in the sales process — just look at recent news on bots emerging from Google I/O & F8. While these bots might not be ready to replace sales professionals, they are going to disrupt the way in which buyers interact with salespeople. Buyers will still demand access to your content, however, they may come to prefer to engage with bots early in the process in much the same way that modern buyers research via Google or Youtube.

Consistent Personalization

Taking an increasingly strategic approach, top firms are enabling their salesforce with data-driven content. According to Forbes Insights, 44% of top performing organizations recognize the critical role of content. Dan Smoot, Salesforce executive vice-president, noted, “Content creates high-value conversations. In a world where information is readily available online, high-value conversations are more important than ever.”

As we all know, every buyer has different needs, which requires a sales team that can actively produce content from existing assets to personalize for each buyer. The more personalized the content, the better it will be received in a world of generic mass emails and an endless barrage of content.

As your sales team develops more autonomy, you need to assure that your messaging remains consistent. Regardless of where the buyer is in the journey, the information and the proposition must be one in the same; the transition from a marketing to the sales must be seamless. This handover doesn’t just create credibility and build trust for your business, it also strengthens the message in every step.

Anticipate Through Content

Today’s buyers demand relevancy and substance from your content. That’s why you need to make sure your prospective buyer will see the value in the content you send them. Your sales team must be a couple of steps ahead of your prospect and anticipate the kind questions they may have along every step of the sales cycle. This is why sales enablement technologies matter. Forbes Insights reports that 59% of leading companies have sales enablement tools that help them customize their message to each audience segment. These platforms (armed with analytics) allow companies to plan effective content to engage every customer at a personal level.

Accessibility is Imperative

Finally, there is the issue of accessibility. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your content is, if your sales reps can’t get a hold of it in time, it’s pointless. You must ensure that the information your sales team needs is, literally, one click away. This is another reason why many successful organizations turn to sales enablement. Aside from an avenue to create or curate content, it also serves as a repository where marketing and sales can organize their content.

Think of these two possible scenarios: Your client asks you for the most recent case study. You excuse yourself and waste 15-20 minutes checking the files in your computer. Desperate, you email your marketing executive for the information your client wants. Then you wait another 15 minutes for a response. By the time you give the case study to your client, he is no longer interested. With a sales enablement solution, you can readily present the information to your client within minutes of him asking for it. Not only did you answer your client’s need, you did so efficiently and with ease.

The buying process has changed dramatically, throughout the years. As buyers become more intelligent in navigating the buyer’s journey, there is an increasing challenge to adapt to this ever-changing environment. Whether you view this as a hurdle or an opportunity is completely up to you.

As the old joke goes, there are two seasons in my home state of Minnesota: Winter and Road Construction. Right now, we are smack in the middle of the latter.

I’m a guy who doesn’t like pony-sized potholes on my streets. So I try to make peace with the endless lane changes, reroutes, and slow-downs. But sometimes it seems like they go out of their way to mess up our routines, doesn’t it?

If you’re a B2B marketer, you may feel similar desperation looking at your marketing channels. It seems like every route between you and your audience is getting blocked or traffic jammed. Organic social visibility is way down: Each Facebook post you make will reach between 2-6% of your followers. A quarter of those who might be interested in your display ads are using ad blockers. Your content can only engage readers if they can find it, and there’s a lot of commodity content clogging the roads.

What’s the best way to navigate the stops and jams? Do what you wish you could do on the road: Rise above it.

Instead of dodging detours and fuming in traffic, reach your buyers via the people they’re already listening to. [Keep reading for a chance to win a free ticket to the conference!]

The Solution: Influencer Content

To help marketers understand how to approach (and get more out of) influencer marketing, TopRank Marketing’s CEO Lee Odden will be presenting influencer content best practices to attendees at this year’s Überflip Experience.

 

Session Details
Date: August 25, 2016
Time: 10:50am
Session Title: Winfluencer Marketing: How B2B Companies Are Winning Hearts & Minds with Influencer Content

Session Description: 

Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of advertising and recommendations from friends, peers and experts hold valuable influence in the mind of business buyers. Losing business to content overload, disappearing organic social visibility and the effects of ad blocking, B2B marketers are looking for better ways to attract, engage and
convert new business.

This presentation will provide the strategy, tools, and tactics for developing an integrated influencer content program that will put points on your ROI scoreboard.

Attendees will learn: 

• The fundamentals of organic and paid influencer recruiting
• Creative ways to engage influencers to co-create content
• Top influencer marketing platforms and tools
• How to maintain influencer relationships between campaigns

Snackable Q&A with Lee Odden: What is the most compelling reason for B2B companies to start influencer marketing?

“Buyers are tired of being bombarded by salesy brand content and more than 50% say they don’t trust advertising (Nielsen). What they do trust are peers, experts and influencers in their networks. By developing relationships with industry influencers to collaborate on content, B2B companies can scale the quantity of quality content they produce, boost their credibility and influence, differentiate from the competition and substantially extend their reach – all without a substantial increase in budget.”

3 Elements of Successful Influencer Marketing Programs

Create a Strategy for Influencer Alignment

All influencers are not created equal, but everyone is influential about something. It’s your job as a marketer to identify what it is that your customers care about and find influencers that align with those needs.

In addition to finding influencers that align with customer needs, they also should align with your brand message and marketing goals. Influencers that are properly aligned are much more likely to promote the content that you create together.

Develop Relationships with Influencers

Some brands hire influencers as a one-time, strictly business exchange. That’s fine, to a certain point, but developing ongoing relationships with influencers is better for everyone in the long run. Here are some easy tips to begin building relationships:

1. Add Value First. Don’t propose on the first date. And definitely don’t propose before then, either. Start by following influencers on social media, commenting on their shares, and sharing their work with your audience. Provide value first.
2. Start with an Easy Ask. Asking for a quick quote is a good way to begin an influencer relationship. It’s a low effort/high reward proposition, far easier than asking for an hour-long interview or a 1,000-word blog post.
3. Make Promotion Easy. Many influencers are incredibly busy, make sure to provide them with the necessary tools to promote the content that you co-created.
4. Follow up, Follow up, and then Follow up. Stay current with your influencers. Congratulate them when they make the news. Keep promoting their content. Show genuine interest even when (especially when) you don’t need something from them.

Don’t Just Collaborate, Co-Create

There’s no bonding experience quite like joining forces to create something cool. The influencers who are willing to truly co-create with you are far more likely to create with you in the future, promote you to their audience, and introduce you to other influencers.

The Cure for Content Traffic Jams

If your usual routes to reach your audience are blocked, influencers can help your content fly over the obstacles. Even a little influencer collaboration can go a long way. And once you start building relationships and regularly co-creating awesome content over time, the sky isn’t even the limit.

If you’re ready to rise above, join Lee at the Überflip Experience in Toronto, August 24^th and 25^th. Our President, Sue Misukanis, will also be there to answer any questions you might have. And our Director of Agency Marketing, Ashley Zeckman, will be attending and live-blogging sessions.

I know what you’re thinking: “But I don’t have a ticket!” Well, we can help with that.

If you’d like to win a conference pass (does not include flight and hotel) that is worth over $800, all you need to do is answer the question below in the comments. We are looking for the most creative response so give it your all!

What is a creative or innovative way that B2B marketers can use influencers to create awesome content?

Make sure to include your Twitter handle in your response. The winner will be announced on Friday, August 12^th.

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The post How B2B Marketers Can Rise Above Roadblocks with Influencer Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Ask any business owner which resource they want to have more of, and they are almost guaranteed to tell you that they’d love to have more time or money. There are a lot of gadgets, apps, and processes currently being used that are designed to help business owners make better use of the time that they have, and many of these can also help them out on the money front as well. Implementing great marketing automation is not only a time-saver but can also be a great profit-booster – if it’s done right. This infographic from eliv8 outlines a 7-step formula that will help your business create a high-converting automated marketing funnel. Let’s see what they recommend.

Step 1. Product/Market Fit.

Does your product really fit the market? Does your solution really make sense for the audience that you’re targeting? The first step is to really understand your solution and your audience and to make sure that there is a real fit.

Step 2. Choose Your Traffic Source. You have a few choices here. Paid ads, targeted traffic through sites like Google or Facebook, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, local search – there is no shortage of options. Traffic is the easy part, the real trick is to make sure that the rest of your funnel is in place once your audience sees your advertising.

Step 3. Offer a Lead Magnet. Once people click on your ad, give them a hook to hang on to. Create a specific, irresistible offer that qualified leads can take advantage of in exchange for their contact information. A great way to do this is to build an eye-catching landing page – this is also helpful in capturing cold traffic. You can offer a free webinar, video, e-book, promotion, whatever you like. Just make sure that it provides real value.

Step 4. Offer a Tripwire. What’s a tripwire? It’s a low-ticket offer designed to capture as many new buyers as possible. It’s not going to net you the most money per customer, but it will help you to convert a lot of first-time buyers. This is actually more important – it’s a lot harder to get money from someone the first time. Once they’ve already purchased from you, they’re far more likely to do it again.

Step 5. Offer a Core Product or Service. At this point, your new customer has given you their contact information and taken advantage of your great tripwire offer. If they’re with you this far, they are likely interested in your core offering. So remind them what you’re selling!

Step 6. Offer a Profit Maximizer. Profit maximizers include things like 1-click upsells, bundles, subscriptions, memberships, cross-sells, and high-ticket items. Offering maximizers that provide value to loyal customers is a great way to increase the average transaction value per customer.

Step 7. Create a Return Path. No matter how amazing your product or service, customers aren’t going to immediately say yes to every offer you send them – and that’s okay. A return path will allow you to keep in contact with your would-be customer using frequent, strategic communication that inspires them to revisit your website or offer. Loyalty programs, content marketing, and social media reminds your audience that you’re still around and still offering some great solutions.

Many Western countries, Canada, the U.S. and Britain among them, are currently facing a housing crisis when it comes to middle- to low-income residents. A combination of soaring real estate values, high rents, stagnant wages and a premium on urban space have conspired in recent years to make it difficult for regular working people to acquire stable, affordable family housing. It seems the Dutch—known for their industriousness as well as their love of cycling and social liberalism—may have hit upon a surprising solution in the form of radical DIY.

After the devastating financial effects of the 2008 market crash shut down property development in the Netherlands, the Dutch government decided to encourage the notion of self-built housing—i.e. new homes, often constructed in large-scale developments, but financed and customized by private individuals (not developers) with help from government stimulus schemes. While the Canadian and British governments offer first-time buyers certain advantages and incentives (for instance, the right to borrow against any RRSPs in Canada), the Dutch government has, for nearly the past decade, heavily subsidized private investment in new housing projects for middle- to low-income buyers. Similar schemes exist in Germany, Austria, France and Italy as well, but in the Netherlands, self-build now accounts for a third of all homes purchased.

The world headquarters of the self-build movement is the small Dutch city of Almere, in a district called Oosterwold. A hub of radical social planning, Almere is also one of the most rapidly expanding cities in Western Europe. After the financial crisis, when development ground to a halt, the city government embarked on projects geared at providing new housing for families earning less than $29,000 a year.

Under the Almere Poort housing project, private individuals can purchase a plot of land from the government and easily secure a mortgage with a small down payment. After that, Almere residents can build their own customized house (with the help of qualified tradespeople of course) according to basic government standards. The result is a small city of some 190,000 in which the majority of residents live in houses they designed and oversaw the building of themselves. The idea, according to the city government, was to foster a new direct relationship between individuals and the local authority, cutting out developers, who often scoop up large plots of residentially zoned land and act as middle men, pumping up local real estate prices.

The success of Almere has become a fascination for innovative city planners across Europe, and the reason is not just its past success but future ambition. The Oosterwold project is not just a collection of houses but a community that’s part of a 30- to 50-year plan for the development of the outskirts of the entirety of Almere. As Jeroen Zuidgeest, one of the self-build architects who help develop the basic rules on irrigation, road planning and building codes, told the Guardian last year, “It means you are not simply building a house and a garden but also part of the infrastructure, part of the energy network and so on. The most important rule is that you have more liberty and also more responsibility for the development of Oosterwold.”

The theory behind self-build is fairly radical, however, in that it transgresses many of the common zoning and restrictions in countries like Canada and Britain. Looking at the results, these communities might be not be, aesthetically speaking, to everyone’s taste. Self-built designs have a somewhat inconsistent feel that architectural critics might describe as “higgledy piggledy,” or worse, “a dog’s breakfast.” Since the Victorian era and the rise of middle-class housing developments, there has been a conventionally accepted notion in the West that housing facades ought to be more or less aesthetically consistent in terms of design and scope.

But self-build projects across Europe also embrace the idea that people will naturally build what’s best for themselves and their local community if strongly invested from the outset. It’s a notion that runs contrary to the paternalistic view of past social housing projects, i.e. that developers and urban planners are in a unique position to figure out what’s best for low-income families—rather than the low-income individuals themselves.

In any case, the Dutch are doing it their own way and other countries are following suit. Britain has plans to build roughly 20,000 new self-build homes in the coming months and one Tory MP, Richard Bacon, has been crusading around the country promoting the idea that self-build will effectively “break open the oligopoly of companies who control housing development,” and “offer financial help and housing for poorer people.”

Could Vancouver be far behind?

The post What Canada could learn from a Dutch self-build housing movement appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Interviewing salespeople is one of the most difficult tasks a hiring manager must undertake. Unlike many other business professionals, salespeople are geared to ‘sell’; and that includes themselves. Since salespeople are not only trained to focus on the positives, but psychologically tuned to gain trust and demonstrate competence in professional and social situations, interviewers, especially those without experience interviewing salespeople, are at an immediate disadvantage.

We have written extensively on how to identify red flags on a sales candidate’s resume, and the questions effective recruiters ask candidates during the interview process to mitigate hiring risk. One topic that we have not focused on, however, is how to detect, what we call, ‘Hunter DNA’, during the interview process. In order for recruiters to effectively utilize these interviewing secrets, we must define what ‘Hunter DNA’ is and why it can make or break your sales hiring efforts.

Sales ‘DNA’ can be defined as the traits and behaviors common among top performing sales professionals. These traits typically include ambition, competitiveness, sense of urgency, confidence, perseverance, optimism, resilience, and the ability and desire to influence others. The weight an interviewer assigns to each particular trait should be based on the particular selling tasks required to drive sales. In a ‘hunter’ position where the objective is to actively acquire and close new business, competitiveness, a high drive to win, resiliency, and the need to interact with and influence others are the traits ‘pure’ hunters are comprised of.

As we describe in our article, Hiring the Right Salesperson: Sales DNA vs. The Resume, the importance placed by the average hiring manager on a candidate’s sales DNA when screening candidates is typically low. Selling experience, on the other hand, usually takes precedence, with the rationale being that a candidate with experience selling a particular product/service has a deep network of contacts that could be leveraged in the new position. While this is sometimes the case, particularly in industries where relationships are paramount and there is limited turnover in buyer organizations, businesses looking to grow revenues through new client acquisition need to assign more weight to a candidate’s selling DNA.

Why? The right sales DNA finds a way to succeed. The right sales DNA acquires the requisite knowledge quickly, figures out who they need to know and makes the right connections. While they may not have a rolodex in theory, they are able to get to the buyers and influencers and find ways to make themselves indispensable to any selling organization.

In order to spot a hunter during the interview phase of the recruiting process, effective hiring managers utilize the following 5 secrets.

Secret #1: Is the candidate talking openly?

Effective hunters project a sense of confidence and possess all the social skills they’ll need to be successful. They are eternally optimistic believing they can close any prospect, and persisting until they do. During an interview they will be excited to discuss how they have grown a territory, closed the largest deals, and penetrated accounts no one else in their department could.  At any time, true hunters are likely able to draw on specific deal sizes, percentage by which they exceeded quota, or awards they have earned.

Secret #2: Is the candidate talking tasks?

Focusing on the right selling tasks is what separates the top performers from the rest. Selling effectiveness is not a generalized trait, it’s a function of the sales task. When interviewing candidates, effective hiring managers listen keenly to how candidates respond to behavioral based questions. Does the candidate intimately describe how they successfully penetrated targeted accounts? Do they discuss their approach to cold calling, getting past gatekeepers, and how they respond to the word ‘NO’? Do they describe how they have adapted their selling tasks as their brand, offering, and technology may have changed in order to consistently hit their quota?

Secret #3: Does the candidate talk about people?

Influencing buyers is a key part of any selling process, and true hunters have the ability to persuade prospects even when they may not be aware they are in need of a particular solution. Hunters will describe how they successfully establish trust with buyers, work to understand their business needs / challenges, and reframe how a buyer thinks. They articulate how they embrace collaboration across the sales process, and how they demonstrate the value of their offering by precisely incorporating the prospect’s requirements.

Secret #4: Does the candidate walk away from poor opportunities?

Hunters also understand that not every sales opportunity is a “good” one, and that customer selection is a crucial decision that will influence their selling effectiveness.  Elite hunters will be able to speak to their ability to walk away from an opportunity where they are not able to offer a sufficient solution and/or spend time on opportunities that make better “business sense” for the long or short term.

Secret #5: Does the candidate focus on solving business challenges?

Hunters take a consultative approach to understanding a client’s needs and identifying the right solution to solve those business challenges.  They will articulate the value that questioning, listening, and understanding prospects requirements are integral in to their selling success and that forcefully pitching yields unfavorable results.

Fight through the façade often established by sales candidates

Identifying successful hunters during the interview process requires an interviewer to fight through the façade often established by sales candidates. By asking the right interview questions and carefully examining the responses provided using the five secrets above, hiring managers can separate the true hunters from the rest of the pack.

Photo via markus spiske

The post Identifying Sales Hunter DNA: 5 Interviewing Secrets appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

On average, account executives selling software with a small or average annual contract value conduct two to three new meetings each day. Over the course of a year, that’s upwards of 600 appointments. We see most account executives make one crucial mistake as they approach these meetings.

But first, let me say that most modern salespeople recognize that buyers have more power than ever before. Fueled by the growth of the internet and freedom of information, customers are more informed than they’ve ever been. Sales teams have risen to the occasion as the increase in consultative and Challenger selling can attest. These trends reveal how much the modern seller needs to do right by their customers.

But the crucial mistake that we see comes down to this: Modern salespeople view themselves as doctors, not therapists.

When you walk into the doctor’s office, you have no idea what you need. Yes, you have a symptom or two, and maybe you went to WebMD to research your problems, but you’re walking in entirely uninformed. The doctor will ask a few questions, check you out, give a diagnosis with a solution, and you take the doctor’s word as truth.

Most modern sales professionals live in this mindset.

In reality, we’re more like therapists. Their job starts and ends with questions. Questions are the only tool they have. They ask, you answer. They read your body language and ask second-level questions. They interpret what you mean when you’re not clear, and ask a different way to gain clarity.

The best therapists get their patients thinking about things they didn’t consider before. They help connect dots in areas that once seemed scattered. They provide a solution by leading the patient to the answers, not necessarily prescribing them.

This is the philosophy that should guide the modern sales professional.

If you agree, I challenge you to think about your discovery process and the conversations you have. Are you a therapist or are you a doctor? Because like it or not, the buyer will prefer the former.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you build rapport quickly? Does the prospect trust you?
2. When you listen to recordings of your calls, who’s doing the most talking? Like any good therapist, you should talk less. Try getting to 30% you, 70% your prospect.
3. Do you get responses like: “That’s a great question”; “I hadn’t thought about it that way”; and “How do your other clients solve the problem?”
4. Do you understand their business as well as the prospect does? And can you recite their hopes, dreams, and fears?

If you’re not a therapist yet, you can be. As you approach discovery calls, work on these skills one at a time until you’ve mastered them.

1) Preparation

Never come into a call cold if you can help it. Use the tools your company provides to learn as much about the business and your specific prospect as possible. By preparing, you spend less time on basic surface-level questions and gain credibility quicker. Rapportive and Mattermark are two tools we use that can help you get started.

2) Asking good second-level questions.

Second-level questions allow you to peel the layers of your prospect’s problem, and both parties gain value. Often, they start with “why?”. Here are some examples:

• Why is that a challenge?
• If you don’t make a change now, what will happen?
• Why does this align with the business’s strategic objectives?
• Why haven’t you done X or Y in the past?

Learning about the prospect doesn’t stop after the first call. Try to go deeper with each step in the process, learning a bit at a time.

3) Taking a human approach to problem-solving in sales.

Consider how you act outside of work with family, friends, or a significant other. When they bring a problem to you, how quickly do you propose a solution? How do they usually react to that?

Work on asking better questions and delaying your diagnosis in everyday conversations. You aren’t trying to merely sell to your family and friends, you are trying to help them. This mentality should bleed over into your job.

In those roughly 600 meetings each year, use this repetition to your advantage. Build your therapist muscles and focus on how your questions are affecting your prospects. Not only will your prospects appreciate you more, but you’ll close more deals in the process.

As part of an industry built on a foundation of effective communication and influential relationships, salespeople sometimes think of data science as their worst enemy. Data science is often seen as an evil overlord, lurking over reps’ shoulders and reporting back on their every move to their supervisors. And then, of course, there’s the concern that eventually data science and machines will become so advanced that they will replace sales teams in their entirety.

Well, fear not. The truth is that there is no substitute for the human element in sales, and that data science can actually improve reps’ performance, make them more productive and help them develop better relationships with their prospects. As we’ll see, when used correctly, data science can strike an effective balance between helping reps personalize, standardize and automize key actions and activities.

Personalize

It’s no surprise that people respond better to content and communications when they’re tailored to their personal needs and interests. In fact, a recent study shows that personalized emails deliver 6X higher transaction rates than generic messages; however, the same study also shows that only 30% of companies actually personalize their emails. Hey, nobody said personalization was easy! Companies like PersistIQ are leading the way as they’re encouraging reps to pump the brakes with automation and bring the human element back to sales.

One of the biggest roadblocks when it comes to personalization in sales is the time it takes reps to research a prospect and tailor each piece of individual communication. What’s more, data by nature is messy and more often than not is spread across various disparate systems within a single organization, making it difficult to get a complete, consolidated view. Enter data science.

New technologies and tools are emerging every day that make it easy for reps to learn about their prospects and reach out with personalized messages. Take MadKudu, for example, a company that monitors prospects’ in-app behavior and gives reps a detailed breakdown of their free trial usage. Having this kind of information makes all the difference between sending an email like this:

Or like this:

Data science also helps to give reps a full picture of prospect and customer activities and interactions by merging information from across company platforms. This single view can highlight otherwise unseen opportunities for customized outbound sales and better-informed communications. For instance, with the new Base and Zendesk integration, sales reps can view customers’ open and past Zendesk tickets directly within Base’s contact and deal cards. This single view ensures that reps are not reaching out to customers for upsells in the middle of a support issue.

Standardize

While it’s important to personalize interactions with prospects and customers, the ability to standardize certain protocols and processes is invaluable to business success. One of the most important procedures for any company to standardize is its sales process, which outlines the exact steps reps must take to move a deal from one stage of the sales pipeline to the next.

Having a formalized sales process in place is proven to lead to a 65% increase in reps hitting their individual targets and an 88% increase in companies hitting their overall goals. But how does a team know if its sales process is right for the business, and how can it tell when and what changes should be made?

Using data and sales science, the effectiveness of a sales process can be accurately measured by mapping each step to the Sales Formula. The Sales Formula provides a consistent and reliable way to evaluate sales strategy over time across the key conversion points needed to turn a lead into a closed deal. While a business may adapt the formula to suit its own unique pipeline and process, the baseline formula and definitions for its variables is as follows:

Mapping a sales process to this formula may look something like this:

By dynamically analyzing hundreds of deals and processes using this same formula, data science will uncover variabilities in sales performance that lead to actionable insights. For example, you may discover that reps who have an onsite meeting sooner in the sales process are 2X as likely to close as those who have these meetings later. Or, perhaps deals where Demo 2 was shown instead of Demo 1 made it through the pipeline in half the time. Both of these discoveries provide the opportunity to standardize these proven practices within the sales process, ultimately saving reps time and setting them up for success.

Science can and should be applied to the sales process. We can go on and on about this. Also note that other dimensions (lead source, industry, contact title, etc.) of sales performance can be measured using this same formula to understand, optimize and standardize other key initiatives like lead scoring.

For reps to consistently execute against their sales process, and for managers to test and continuously refine their strategy, they must be using the latest sales technology that gives full visibility into the daily operations of the sales team.

Automize

While technology will never be able to replace the human element of sales, there are definitely some tasks that data science can automate to make sales teams more effective and efficient. One of these is sales reporting and intelligence.

Traditionally, sales reporting has been a meticulous, time-consuming exercise requiring sales leaders to spend days crunching numbers and rolling up reports in Excel. Sure, these reports might find their way to the frontlines of the business, but once they do, who’s to say they’re the most recent or most accurate versions?

Consider the following statistics:

• 60% of sales leaders have to wait for someone to give them access to their data
• 38% have to use 4+ systems to keep track of their goals and priorities
• Just 31% can view their data in a single dashboard

This poses a huge problem in today’s fast-paced, data-driven market where reps need to have real-time information to independently track progress and make more strategic decisions. Fortunately, data science has the power to seamlessly capture and process big data from across multiple sources in real time. This leads to visual dashboards and out-of-the-box reports that can be made available to each and every person on the sales team.

Jump into your outbound sales platform and see how your efforts are doing at the top of your funnel. Is Email Template A outperforming Email Template B? Does starting out with a call touch work better than a cold email? There are many critical factors for outbound sales success.

Diving into your CRM, at a higher level, you can look at your opportunities and stage conversion by owner. This provides much insight into pipeline health and sales team performance.

Now reps are able to get their hands on the reports they need when they need them, like sales goals, forecasts, call outcomes and more. Rather than entering 1:1s and being told they didn’t send enough emails, are performing at the bottom of the pack or are missing out on deals with the best lead source, reps can monitor data and manage performance on their own.

Striking a Balance

As a rep, seeing how data science can benefit you personally and help solve your day-to-day challenges may seem like a stretch. But the reality is that data science really can help you personalize, standardize and automize the key processes and procedures impacting your sales performance. If you’d like to learn more, check out this free eBook, From Art to Science: 5 Steps to Predictable Sales Growth.

Have you met a “Suspicious Stewart”? That’s sales expert Grant Cardone’s nickname for a type of buyer who really makes you work to earn his trust. Stewart is a critical thinker, meaning he’ll question everything you say. If you don’t shoot from the hip at all times, you’ll probably lose his confidence -- and the deal with it.

Working with this type of buyer poses some unique challenges. But there’s an upside: If you can convert a skeptic into a true believer, you know they’re really on your side.

Read on for eight ways to win over a doubtful buyer.

1) Avoid Jargon and Buzzwords

Stay far away from jargon and filler words. Skeptical buyers are always on high alert for things that sound good yet but don’t mean anything -- so using fancy lingo will convince them that you are, in fact, full of it.

What you say: “Our cost-effective solution is specifically engineered to meet your needs.”

What they hear: “Blah blah blah.”

To see whether your statement passes the “no B.S.” test, reword it without any buzzwords, acronyms, or industry terms. If you can’t put it in everyday language, it’s probably all jargon, no meaning.

2) Reference Case Studies and Testimonials

A dubious prospect might not trust you, but they will trust other customers -- who they usually view as less biased. Bring in case studies and testimonials when relevant, including when you’re first reaching out, when you’re discussing potential use cases, when you’re demonstrating credibility, and so on.

(Want more detailed instructions? Check out our guide to using case studies in the sales process.)

If you’re fortunate enough to have multiple case studies and testimonials, reference only the most relevant ones. A skeptical buyer won’t be overly swayed by a success story from a company totally different from his own.

3) Bring In Plenty of Evidence

You know what they say -- numbers don’t lie. Skeptical prospects typically see your point when it's backed by by cold, hard data.

So next time you find yourself making a generic value statement, reinforce it with some statistics. Don’t have any stats? You probably shouldn’t be making that claim.

Here’s an example of how you’d reframe a value statement:

Bad: “Our tool streamlines internal communication.”

Better: “Our tool reduces the average number of daily emails sent per employee by 25%.”

Best: “Eighty-nine percent of our customers see each employee sending around 25% fewer emails per day. For instance, Greenwood Supply’s average employee used to send 60 messages every day. Now, they send 45.”

4) Be Specific 

On a similar note, steer clear of vague or hypothetical statements. Use the “who, what, when, where, and how” rule to guide what you say -- if your statement doesn’t answer those five questions, it’s not specific enough.

Take this sample line: “Our platform is really easy to install.”

It fails to answer every question but the “what.” Here’s a much more specific version:

The platform will only take you -- or anyone else on your team with admin computer privileges -- roughly 20 minutes to install on your servers. Since the download won’t affect normal operations, you can do it anytime. We’ve also got a dedicated implementation specialist to walk you through the process.”

As you can see, adding a couple details makes the claim far more persuasive.

5) Directly Answer Their Questions

You might be able to get away with evading questions from regular prospects (although we'd never advise it). However, when you pull the same trick with skeptical prospects, they’ll definitely notice -- and it'll make them suspicious.

To avoid seeming shady, always give buyers a straight answer. For instance, if they ask which integrations your platform supports, don't dodge their question by bringing up your API and how simple to configure it is.

Tangents and misdirections will make them think that you're hiding something or are only interested in pushing your own agenda.

This policy applies even when you’re facing a tough question. Sure, admitting that your company has had some quality issues lately won’t be easy, but you’ll gain the buyer’s respect.

6) Always Provide Context

Doubtful prospects don’t take anything at face value. Win their trust by giving them plenty of context -- and letting them make up their minds for themselves.

Imagine you’re discussing the features of your visitor management system. If you were speaking to a normal prospect, they might accept, “You’ll save a ton of time by pre-registering your office visitors.”

But to a skeptical prospect, you’d have to explain: “We added the pre-registration option after noticing how many users would book their visitors hours in advance, just to save the hassle of doing it when the person actually came in.”

This technique also comes in handy during agenda-setting. When you call a prospect, start with, “Hey Jane, here’s why I called … ” They’ll appreciate the no-nonsense approach.

7) Use Your Commonalities

Who are you more likely to trust: The stranger wearing a shirt for your favorite band, or the stranger wearing a plain top? Yup, probably the fellow fan.

“In-group bias is a phenomenon where people favor members of groups they belong to,” explains HubSpot sales blog editor Leslie Ye. “Rapport isn’t enough to close deals on its own, but if you can find a point of commonality, use it to your advantage.”

The key to this technique: Keep it natural. If you’re only “meh” about Mediterranean food, don’t tell the prospect you eat falafel every night just to force a connection. It’ll only take a couple questions for the truth to come out -- and then the buyer will trust you even less than before.

8) Tell It Like It Is

Some prospects respond extremely well to bluntness. If they express their skepticism with phrases like, “Don’t beat around the bush with me … ” or “You say that now, but I’m not sure I believe you … ”, match their style.

Here's an example to give you an idea:

Before: Your website looks good, but I have some suggestions that’ll make it even stronger.

After: You’re likely losing leads because your website looks out-of-date. I have some suggestions for making it more current.

And here's another:

Before: Since you’re just getting started with remarketing, I’d suggest the Basic plan.

After: In my opinion, you won’t get your money’s worth out of Pro. Most of our customers who haven’t done remarketing before only use the Pro features that you can also get with Basic.

Caveat: Being direct doesn’t mean being rude. If you’d be embarrassed to say something in front of your grandparents, keep your lips zipped.

Next time you meet a prospect who’s highly skeptical, don’t write them off. You may have to work a little harder to show them you’re trustworthy -- but once you do, you’ll have won their loyalty for a long time.

Target Your Customers with These 4 Multichannel Tactics

By Jonathan Gray

Multichannel interactions are the norm for brands and consumers. On average, prospects engage in up to 10 touches to gather information and communicate before making a purchase. 

The inside sales landscape is vastly different from a decade ago, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, online advertising, and social media. And with enormous improvements in data analytics and marketing and collaboration software, we now have countless ways to reach prospects at any of these touches.

It’s important to leverage those touches as often as you can: Position yourself as a thought leader by connecting with your prospects on LinkedIn or sharing insights on Twitter. Call, text, or email. Chat with prospects online or using Google Hangouts. 

The traditional inside sales approaches of phone calls and emails used to account for the overwhelming majority of interactions. Today, those techniques are being used less and less often in business-to-business sales. 

Account-based marketing now rules the roost. This approach transforms the way inside sales professionals work by leveraging online channels and targeting prospects with personalized, relevant messages. Try these techniques to get the most from your sales and marketing efforts: 

1. Let data find your leads. 

Many companies think they already know their best target accounts, but today’s data sources and analytics platforms add measurable, actionable information. Predictive analytics is in 89 percent of marketers’ business plans in 2016. 

Using sales performance data and interaction history as a guide, we recently worked with a technology company to determine what its newly acquired customers had in common. When we cross-referenced those attributes with millions of businesses on a B2B analytics platform, we turned up thousands of other companies that could become new customers. Not only did this data expand the company’s target account list, but it also helped eliminate accounts that were unlikely to convert and saved the company from wasting sales resources.

2. Practice account-based digital engagement marketing. 

Marketing automation tools make it easy to nurture and qualify leads. To ensure none falls through the cracks, hire experts to manage the process across the different technologies and marketing and sales operations. Marketers using an account-based digital marketing approach reported 91 percent of sales were “tightly” or “somewhat or moderately” aligned.

We worked with one communications company to target accounts that needed increased awareness of products and offerings before entering the sales process. We developed a marketing plan that leveraged programmatic advertising, content marketing, and retargeted display ads to create multiple impressions — which more than doubled the company’s lead volume and conversion rates.

3. Connect with decision makers any way you can. 

Your clients are constantly talking, chatting, emailing, and texting — so you should be, too. One cloud-based technology company’s inside sales managers leverage all these forms of communication, plus the brand’s LinkedIn and Twitter pages, to share content with decision makers in its book of accounts.

This content drives back to each salesperson’s website, tracking who these customers are and what brought them there. The customers can then engage with the salesperson on the website through voice or chat. And for some clients, texting has become the preferred (and effective) way to communicate about their software purchases.

4. Have an appetite for experimentation.

Show prospects and clients you can keep them at the forefront of today’s technologies. For example, one global online advertising company conducts virtual breakfast meetings over Google Hangouts. To make the collaboration sessions more intimate, the advertising company has breakfast delivered to the client’s office. 

You have more options at your disposal than ever before to engage with prospects in the sales funnel. If you know what platforms your customers are using, you can lead the charge to provide them with the widest range of solutions using the most relevant channels. The best approaches leverage online advancements, software, and data to make strategic decisions and close sales.

Jonathan Gray is the senior vice president of marketing and leader of business development and marketing services for Revana. His team oversees marketing analytics and integrated marketing services programs that automate electronic marketing strategies on behalf of industry-leading clients. He was involved in developing new digital marketing and sales solutions, such as Revana Analytic Multichannel Platform (RAMP) and RevanaAQ360^SM, which won a Gold Stevie as the 2016 Best New Marketing Solution.

Lead forms are like eyebrows – you only pay attention if they look really good or really bad.

Odds are you’re not getting attention for having the worst lead forms around, since they are pretty hard to mess up. At the same time, though, it’s just as hard to create a strong lead form that consistently converts for your company.

The only way to figure out how to do a better job of converting leads is to test a variety of different variables. Here are a few different elements of your lead form that can be effectively tested, and some of the companies that have found success with various methods.

1. Amount of information

This is pretty simple – You can either ask for a lot of information in your lead form, or keep it simple with just a few fields to fill out. The amount of information for which you ask in a lead form is largely dependent on the product or service that is being offered.

For example, if your lead form is a call-to-action encouraging blog subscription at the bottom of a post, you might not need to ask for more than a name and an email. If the lead form is connected to a helpful, lengthy PDF marketed to people lower in your sales funnel, it might be more appropriate to ask for more information from your potential customers.

Drift, a messaging software company based in Boston, has an incredibly simple blog subscription lead form. The form asks for only an email address, and it also lays out exactly what a reader will not get upon subscribing.

So they’ve eliminated two of the biggest pet peeves people have when subscribing to blogs, and they’ve given the reader minimal work to confirm their subscription. Considering that over 8,000 people subscribe to Drift’s blog, they must be doing something right.

2. Location

Do you want to present your consumer with a lead form at the very beginning, in the middle of their experience, or closer to the very end?

There are a few benefits for each option. If you put the lead form at the beginning of the consumer’s experience – say, a quiz or an assessment – you get it out of the way early and let the person know up front what is required of them.

If you put the lead form at the end of the consumer’s journey, you can tease him or her with the entire quiz but then withhold the results until the lead form is filled out.

This assessment from HotSchedules, for example, tests how well a store owner is managing employee schedules. After completing a six-question quiz (and, thus, demonstrating serious interest in the results), the participant is prompted to complete the following lead form.

3. Level of Fun / Creativity

Who ever said lead forms had to be boring?

Most lead forms are the same – dull, drab, and just a formality. But don’t fear – It’s easy to make yours stand out from the crowd and convert.

Andrew Littlefield, creator of One For the Swipe File, does an excellent job of this. At the bottom of each blog post, he attaches a lead form for readers to subscribe to his blog. He asks for the reader’s name and email, of course, but then he also asks what the one movie you would watch for the rest of your life would be.

Now, if you were on the fence about filling out the form, I bet you’re hooked.

By throwing in a fun question like that, you get a sense of the lighthearted tone of Andrew’s blog, you get a sense that he actually reads each individual response, and, in all likelihood, you’re more likely to complete the form.

In addition to the fields to be filled out, you can also get creative with the CTA button on your lead form. It doesn’t need to be as simple as “subscribe” or “confirm,” and often a more creative CTA button can be more effective.

One of the most effective uses of this comes from Lianna Patch, founder of Punchline Conversion Copywriting. The name of the newsletter is “Just the Tips” and her CTA button reads “Give it to me,” so there’s an obvious underlying comedic theme here.

Test, Test, Test

The only way to really know if any of these variables will be effective is to test them on your own site. Don’t just blindly adopt any of these methods simply because they worked for other companies – past success for one individual will not guarantee future results for you.

So get out there, curious marketer, and A/B test until your heart can A/B test no longer. Think outside the box (or inside it, if it’s more appropriate for you). Show us what you can come up with!

It Pays to Be a Positive Seller: Here’s Why

By Michael Maslansky

 

Sensationalist, fear-based advertisements like these, which use images of the worst global villains of all time to scare people, are all too common. Negativity is everywhere. It is the lifeblood of the current presidential campaign. It is also a common sales tactic for companies looking to move people to act. The question is this: Do scare tactics sell? Does fear drive purchasing? And can negative messages create positive behaviors?

Negative’s Not Working 

My firm’s research shows that negative messages are not as effective now as they were in the past. Rather than building trust between communicator and audience, negative messages today are more likely to turn people off.

Regardless of the specific topic or industry, we repeatedly see how negative messaging can damage a company’s communication strategy:

• Companies want to create a need in their consumers’ minds using fear, but generate indecision and paralysis instead of interest and motivation.
• Opposing political sides respond to attacks by going after the credibility of the attacker, but the public rejects these responses as biased and untrustworthy.
• Campaigners try to win elections by frightening voters with how bad things will be if the other side wins, but the public is more likely to turn away from politics altogether than feel motivated to vote for the fear monger.

The language of fear in sales has outlived its relevance. It’s time to infuse positivity back into persuasion.

The New Conversation

The roots of negative selling run deep, thanks to its long (but waning) history of success. Our culture has changed, however, and negative selling doesn’t resonate with consumers like it once did. No one listens to the salesperson crying “trouble right here in River City.” If Harold Hill showed up today, he would be met with more eye rolls than concerned customers.

Even so, salespeople today often find themselves hovering in the gray area between properly illustrating a need and unnecessarily creating fear, which ultimately costs them sales.

The new language of trust is built on a more positive approach to communication. Key principles of the new positive selling include:

1. Practice positivity without delusion. More than anything, being positive is a choice of words. A salesperson wearing rose-colored glasses who attempts to convince his or her leads that everything is great will find little success; people are smart enough to know better. The best sales language assumes the prospect has a positive outlook on the world without asking that person to subscribe to something unbelievable. Don’t tell prospects the glass is half empty, but don’t promise them a full glass, either.

2. Keep looking forward. When it comes to bad news, our instincts fail us. Our feelings are emotional, not technical. We delay physicals to avoid bad diagnoses, and we leave the credit card bill sitting on the counter when we know it’s high. If the markets are down, many of us avoid looking at our brokerage statements for fear of what we’ll find. At the times when we should pay the most attention to the news, many of us prefer to tune out.

Still, marketers and salespeople often focus on the problems of today instead of the benefits of tomorrow. Building trust with customers doesn’t start by dwelling on how bad their situations are now — it starts by helping them see a better future through the product being sold.

For large companies and politicians, the same holds true. Telling customers about your problems puts you in a position to make excuses for them, which instantly lowers your credibility in their eyes.

3. Be for things, not against them. Republicans and Democrats. Hatfields and McCoys. Corporations and activists. From politics to popular culture, everyone is fighting a battle, and yet our research shows that acknowledging these partisan splits is a recipe for failure.

In a world of skeptics, standing against an opponent is no longer enough to attract others. Companies, politicians, and salespeople must instead stand for something. Responding to attacks with attacks just validates the truth of the initial jab in the eyes of the audience and makes both sides look worse.

People today understand the world isn’t black and white, so don’t ask them to see it that way. Avoid defensive messages that make you a partisan of your own interests and provoke further responses. Opt instead for the positive message that defuses situations and attracts people who prefer positivity.

Staying positive doesn’t mean becoming a doormat. It means sending the type of message that people actually want to hear. Drop the negative language, focus on the future, and present values that other people identify with so you can change the tone of the conversation and get more people interested in what you have to say.

And yet, people will inevitably comment that if it didn’t work in politics, why do so many campaigns use negative messaging? The answer is simple: Negative messages drive inaction more than action. They cause people to stay home rather than vote. For some candidates, that is the key to success. But for companies and clients, it is always a recipe for failure.

Michael Maslansky, CEO of maslansky + partners, helps the world’s leading companies find the right language to address strategic challenges like crisis management and rebuilding brand trust. He wrote “The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics” and is a frequent commentator on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. He was named a top thought leader in Trustworthy Business.